This past week, Trump delivered on his promise to crack down on undocumented immigration as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staged raids around the country in which 600 people were arrested. Of course, this is nothing new. Under the Obama administration, approximately 2.5 million people were deported between 2009-2015 earning him the nickname of “Deporter-In-Chief.” However, there seem to be a few notable differences between Trump and Obama and their respective approaches to immigration enforcement.
In fiscal year 2015, 91 percent of people removed from inside the U.S. were previously convicted of a crime.
The administration made the first priority "threats to national security, border security, and public safety." That includes gang members, convicted felons or charged with "aggravated felony" and anyone apprehended at the border trying to enter the country illegally.
In 2015, 81 percent, or 113,385, of the removals were the priority one removals.
This means the last administration at least tried to prioritize violent criminals for deportation. It was also under Obama that certain undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors qualified for relief under DACA, something Trump is likely to repeal.
Meanwhile, last week this happened under Trump’s watch. Guadalupe García de Rayos, an undocumented immigrant who had been reporting to ICE for 8 years after being caught working with a fake social security number, was suddenly deported. She was separated from her two American-born children, both minors.
The Phoenix mother was detained for months and eventually ordered to be sent back to Mexico. But for the subsequent years, after she appealed her voluntary deportation, García de Rayos was allowed to remain in the United States, as long as she checked in once a year, and then every six months.
Each year, she did so, and each year, immigration officials let her stay.
ICE officials maintain that the recent crackdowns have nothing to do with the change in administration or policy but instead were part of routine enforcement actions that had been planned for weeks.
The New York operation was planned one week ago and was part of a national action that was planned several weeks ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
...“All these people are in violation of some sort of immigration law,” the official said, adding that some of their convictions included rape and aggravated assault. “We’re not going out to Walmart to check papers — we know who we are going out to seek.”
But it’s hard to actually believe that when we know that Trump issued an order on January 25 which authorized officials to also target undocumented immigrants without criminal records.
Officials said the raids targeted known criminals, but they also netted some immigrants without criminal records, an apparent departure from similar enforcement waves during the Obama administration. Last month, Trump substantially broadened the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all.
And then of course it’s hard to believe this administration would have any kind of humane approach to keeping families together when SCROTUS (short for “So-Called Ruler of the United States”) gleefully tweets out things like this:
Without getting into the unhelpful “good” v. “bad” immigrant debate, it’s the “others” in his message that should concern us. There are lots of varying viewpoints on immigration but it would seem like a mom, with two U.S. citizen kids, whose only crime is working without proper documentation because she wants to feed her family, shouldn’t really be a priority for deportation. Particularly because she had already served several months in detention and reported yearly to authorities. And especially because she’s likely paid more taxes than Trump has. Meanwhile, the Wall Street bankers whose greed sent the economy into hell and cost countless millions of people their homes, their jobs and pensions, have yet to spend a day in jail.
Here’s an idea—instead of focusing on those immigrants who are trying to eek out a living in this country, why can’t we deport Donald Trump and his friends instead?