‘Force’ dark side

Fury at move to give more feds deport power

CIVIL RIGHTS advocates blasted a new set of Department of Homeland Security directives designed to accelerate the building of President Trump’s “deportation force,” saying it would lead to abuses of undocumented immigrants.

President Trump, who promised during his campaign to kick out of the country millions of undocumented immigrants, is inching closer to creating such an effort. The administration has directed Homeland Security to begin finding ways to quickly ramp up the hiring at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Guidelines that could be suspended or eliminated include requirements for potential officers to take polygraphs, physical fitness and competency tests.

“The plan is to give guns and badges to fat, lying semiliterate people. What could go wrong?” said lawyer Ron Kuby. “There’s always tensions on the border between law enforcement and the community, but when the law enforcement is no longer prepared to communicate with the people they’re investigating, that creates, almost certainly, serious misunderstandings and abuse.”

Under the Homeland Security guidelines, first reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post, the White House could also loosen rules governing the detention of undocumented people. Those include mandatory notification if a detainee spends two weeks or longer in solitary confinement and checking on suicidal inmates every 15 minutes and evaluating their mental health status on a daily basis.

Other rules that could be scrapped include informing detainees, in languages they can understand, how to obtain medical care and the providing to detainees during disciplinary hearings a staff member who can advocate in English on the detainee’s behalf.

“It’s part and parcel of the Trump era to have draconian measures like this being employed,” said Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “And very often they’re employed in an unthoughtful, bully-like fashion.”

The new guidance stems from two executive orders Trump signed designed to help make good on his campaign promise to increase deportations and strengthen border security.

The recommendation would affect new contracts for facilities where both criminal and immigration detainees are housed.

Only 10% of immigrant detainees are held in ICE-operated facilities. Private prisons house more than half the rest.