Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Immigrants fear redefining of ‘criminal’
Minor offenses could lead to deportation if policy shifts
“I’m not a bad person. I shouldn’t be here . ... I’m not a threat to society and I’m not going to hurt anybody. I should be taking care of my children.” —Mayra Machado
LOS ANGELES — Mayra Machado had a well-paying job as an ophthalmologist’s assistant that allowed her to drive her three children in a BMW to back-to-back school activities in her suburban Arkansas town.
Few knew that her own mother had illegally brought her as a 5-year-old to the United States from El Salvador to escape civil war. Machado had been raised in Santa Ana, Calif., by her grandmother, moving in with her estranged mother in Fayetteville, Ark., after high school.
There, a teenage Machado forged her friend’s signature on a $1,500 check.
Machado, then 18, pleaded guilty to a felony charge — but the real cost of her crime bore down on her 12 years later when it popped up after a traffic stop and set her on a course to be deported to El Salvador.
“I was an everyday soccer mom,” she said during a phone interview from a detention facility in Louisiana. “I’m not a bad person. I shouldn’t be here . ... I’m not a threat to society and I’m not going to hurt anybody. I should be taking care of my children.”
Machado’s arrest underscores a growing fear among immigrant advocates: that deportation policies that began under the Obama administration are likely be wielded to even more draconian effect during the presidency of Donald Trump, who made promises to crack down on illegal immigration a cornerstone of his campaign.
Under immigration law, Machado is considered a “criminal alien.” It’s a term repeatedly used by Trump during his campaign to describe people whom he would target for deportation. Trump frequently cites the case of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national who had been repeatedly deported before returning to the United States and fatally shooting Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco.
Some immigrants in the country illegally do have serious criminal histories. But others have committed low-level crimes that are considered deportable offenses but are relatively minor, such as immigration or traffic violations.
In some states, such as Georgia, driving without a license is a misdemeanor and a priority deportable offense.
Some immigration advocates fear these more minor offenders will be swept up under a Trump crackdown.
After his election victory, Trump told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that his administration would deport 2 million to 3 million criminal aliens.
To reach that number, Trump would probably have to go beyond violent criminals.
A 2013 Department of Homeland Security report found that an estimated 1.9 million “criminal aliens” resided in the United States. But that encompasses any foreign-born person who has been convicted of a crime in the U.S, including immigrants in the country illegally, legal permanent residents and people with temporary visas who have a criminal conviction.
A 2015 study of immigration and population data by the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, concluded that about 820,000 of the 1.9 million “criminal aliens” were in the country illegally. About 300,000 had felony convictions and an estimated 390,000 had been convicted of serious misdemeanors. The rest — about 130,000 — had been convicted of low-level offenses, such as immigration, nuisance or traffic violations.
Whether Trump delivers on his promises to crack down hard on immigrants in the country illegally is unclear.
But he has made hardliners such as Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach notable figures in his transition.
According to two senior officials in his transition team, Trump’s advisers will try to widen the deportation net to include migrants who have been charged but not convicted, suspected gang members and drug dealers, and people charged with such immigration violations as illegal re-entry and overstaying visas, as well as lower-level misdemeanors.
During the Obama administration, about 2.5 million immigrants — both those in the country legally and illegally — were deported.
The administration created a large, robust system that ramped up cooperative arrangements between local and federal immigration officials, pushing a large number of people into the country’s deportation and removal system.
“What’s happening to this poor woman is happening under Obama,” Olga Tomchin, a spokeswoman and staff attorney for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said of Machado. “Now he’ll turn over this huge and vast deportation machinery to Trump, who will make things worse than they already are.”
That worries people such as Benjamin Suy, a street vendor in Los Angeles who is in the country without legal status. Suy, 34, sells corn on the cob smothered in lime, chili powder and mayonnaise for $2 out of a shopping cart so he can provide for his wife and four children in Guatemala.
Like many other vendors in similar situations, he sells food without a license, saying he can’t afford to pay the money necessary to get licensed. He’s worried that a misdemeanor conviction for selling food without a license from three years ago could make him a priority for deportation under Trump’s presidency.
“I’m just trying to make a living. I work 15 hours a day. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not out stealing. Nobody has died from eating my food. I’m not selling something dangerous,” he said.
On Nov. 23, Los Angeles City Council members Joe Buscaino and Curren Price announced they would introduce a new policy that would prevent street vendors who are in the country illegally from being charged with misdemeanor penalties, which they said could put many at risk for deportation under Trump.
“We want to make sure that with this administration coming, that we can make them less vulnerable,” Buscaino said. “These are individuals who are providing for their families and doing everything they can to put food on the table.”