It looks like Donald Trump has found a brand-new way to combine his all-consuming hatred of former President Barack Obama and undocumented immigrants. According to a report from Reuters, the Trump administration has taken steps to reopen hundreds of cases of undocumented immigrants who were given deportation reprieves under the Obama administration, and yet again subject them to deportation.
“While cases were reopened during the Obama administration as well,” several immigration attorneys told Reuters, “it was generally only if an immigrant had committed a serious crime.” This appears to be happening again, except Trump has added his trademark vindictiveness by also targeting undocumented immigrants whose sole crimes have been traffic tickets, driving without a license, and in one woman’s case, selling pumpkin seeds as an unauthorized street vendor:
"This is a sea change, said attorney David Leopold, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Before, if someone did something after the case was closed out that showed that person was a threat, then it would be reopened. Now they are opening cases just because they want to deport people."
According to Reuters, “motions to reopen closed cases have been filed in 32 states, with the highest numbers in California, Florida and Virginia.” One case includes a woman whose case was closed in 2015 and has been in no trouble since arriving to the U.S. several years ago:
Sally Joyner, an immigration attorney in Memphis, Tennessee said one of her Central American clients, who crossed the border with her children in 2013, was allowed to stay in the United States after the government filed a motion to close her case in December 2015.
Since crossing the border, the woman has not been arrested or had trouble with law enforcement, said Joyner, who asked that her client's name not be used because of the pending legal action.
Nevertheless, on March 29, ICE filed a two-page motion to reopen the case against the woman and her children. When Joyner queried ICE, an official said the agency had been notified that her client had a criminal history in El Salvador, according to documents seen by Reuters.
The woman had been arrested for selling pumpkin seeds as an unauthorized street vendor. Government documents show U.S. authorities knew about the arrest before her case was closed.
Yeah, there’s no deportation priorities here. It’s just the latest in the Trumpian saga to make America white again, stick it to a former president who remains leagues more popular than him, and make life as miserable as possible for anyone with a tan. Not only that, Trump’s move isn’t just cruel pettiness, it also stands to waste resources during a time when the federal government is also trying to cut things like food stamps to pay for fat cat tax breaks:
Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said that revisiting previously closed matters will add to a record backlog of 580,000 pending immigration cases.
"If we have to go back and review all of those decisions that were already made, it clearly generates more work," she said. "It's a judicial do-over."