When President Donald Trump ran for office in 2016, he promised, among many things, to build a sky-high border wall, stem travel into the country and bring law and order back to the U.S.
Conveniently left out of that list of campaign promises: turning the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency into a tool to punish political enemies.
It’s no secret ICE doesn’t have a soft spot for cities that enact sanctuary policies, or practices where local law enforcement officials tend not to report undocumented immigrants to federal officials. And that’s especially true for a state like California, where Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill in October to make the state a sanctuary state.
ICE arrested 167 individuals in September in and around Los Angeles communities, and in January conducted an unprecedented raid of 77 Bay Area businesses, demanding proof that employees were legally permitted to work in the country. Just last week, the agency arrested 212 people in the Los Angeles area for violating immigration laws.
These often covert operations have forced undocumented immigrants in California to live in fear of arrest and deportation, even if they don’t have a criminal record. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are law-abiding people, and that numerous studies have shown undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens do.
ICE’s specific targeting of so-called sanctuary cities is, in plain form, an attempt to punish California cities for enacting sanctuary policies. It seems the agency is less focused on keeping people safe from those with criminal records, and more intent on striking political blows – a frightening indication of the Orwellian police state this nation is on course to become.
Trump’s administration isn’t even attempting to conceal its vendetta against the state. In December, Thomas Homan, ICE’s acting director, demonstrated that the agency is trying to score petty political points against the state rather than genuinely trying to keep the country safe.
“California better hold on tight,” Homan said while speaking on Fox News. “They are about to see a lot more special agents, a lot more deportation officers.”
As much as the administration has focused its immigration rhetoric on the danger of gangs like MS-13, the agency’s actions show a different agenda. According to immigration officials, ICE arrested 834 individuals without criminal records between January 2017 and September. Only 244 such arrests happened during the same period in 2016. ICE has clearly made it a point to target undocumented immigrants, regardless of their criminal record.
These tactics are obviously meant to instill fear in both local officials and residents and intimidate them from publicly advocating for the undocumented community. Of course, it might seem these measures are taken with the public’s safety at heart, but arresting peaceful residents with no criminal record does little to make this country safer. On the contrary, it has the potential to increase the number of unreported crimes: Wanton targeting of communities by immigration authorities can make them less likely to report crimes and cooperate with local police.
Law and enforcement are certainly important for a nation of more than 327 million. But when it comes at the expense of peaceful, innocent civilians’ livelihoods, it’s no longer law or enforcement at that point – just distasteful politics.
you should go live in Mexico with your peaceful innocent civilians, already
ICE uses legally sanctioned tools like raids, I-9 audits and detainer requests to hold illegal immigrants accountable for the the laws they broke. Meanwhile, illegal immigrants use smugglers, forged identity papers, stolen social security numbers and reproduction on US soil in order to embed themselves within our communities. ICE has the law on its side, illegally present aliens do not.
“These often covert operations have forced undocumented immigrants in California to live in fear of arrest and deportation, even if they don’t have a criminal record. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are law-abiding people…”
100 percent of illegal aliens have violated our immigration laws and therefore are not “law-abiding” people. What is wrong with having those who have no right to be here “live in fear of arrest and deportation” which is current law?
DACA recipients get full scholarships and admisssion to the top schools instead of legal residents. Legal residents can pay for their own college costs and go to community college. Harvard and Stanford Medical and Law School give admisssion to DACA recipents with full scholarships, and everyone else can go to paralegal school since DACA recipents took your place.
How do you know they would have earned the scholarships and not another American? Quit making us look stupid. I’ll stop calling myself an American the day an illegal from some shithole country outperforms me.
It’s called enforcing federal law, moron. Nothing “intimidating” about arresting criminals and holding businesses accountable for committing criminal acts.
No, they are enforcing the LAWS of our country, unlike our snowflake governor! Go ICE!!
ICE enforcing federal US immigration law is what Americans want. This editorial piece is propaganda and a political tool to deflect from illegal aliens breaking the law.
SURGE of Arrests for Obama’s DREAMers
https://truthfeednews.com/breaking-surge-of-arrests-for-obamas-dreamers/ Jan 13, 2018
EXCERPT: Late last year, statistics from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) revealed that in just the last few years a total of 2,139 DACA recipients have been convicted or accused of committing crimes against Americans.
Federal agents told The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard that the number of DACA recipients that have lost their protected status due to crime or gang affiliations “surged 30 percent” in 2017 with more and more DACA recipients seemingly committing crimes every year. For example, 56 recipients lost their protected status in 2013 due to crime or gang activity, a number that shot all the way up to 622 in 2017 — a near 1,200% increase.
According to a statement provided to the Examiner from USCIS:
The deferred action terminations were due to one or more of the following: a felony criminal conviction; a significant misdemeanor conviction; multiple misdemeanor convictions; gang affiliation; or arrest of any crime in which there is deemed to be a public safety concern. Most DACA terminations were based on the following infractions (not ranked): alien smuggling, assaultive offenses, domestic violence, drug offenses, DUI, larceny and thefts, criminal trespass and burglary, sexual offenses with minors, other sex offenses and weapons offenses.
The director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, Jessica Vaughn, said that the numbers show the nightmare that the DACA program has been for the U.S.
“It confirms that the DACA screening process was woefully inadequate. The eligibility bar was set very low, explicitly allowing people with multiple misdemeanor and certain felony convictions to be approved. Only a handful of the applicants were ever interviewed, and only rarely was the information on the application ever verified,” Vaughn said.