Arrest
rants in Jackson and other Mississippi towns Wednesday. Such actions have been rare in recent years.
Though increased enforcement arrests cause fear in immigrant communities, some people welcome the change. Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, who chaired Trump’s campaign in West Tennessee, said he can’t understand why anyone opposes strict immigration enforcement. “They’re here illegally. How could anybody get upset?”
He said people here illegally have no right to complain, either.
“If you’re illegal you don’t have a voice. You know what I’m saying? That’s what I can’t get through to everybody. They have no rights. An illegal immigrant, an alien, whatever, they don’t have rights, in my opinion.”
Unauthorized immigrants don’t have the same rights as citizens, but often do have the right to argue their case before immigration judges.
And any child born in the U.S. is a citizen, regardless of parents’ immigration status. Children of immigrants are one of the biggest concerns for Margot Aleman, an outreach worker with the Christian group Streets Ministries in the heavily Hispanic Kingsbury neighborhood.
“What about the kids that were born here but the parents were not?” she asked. “What’s going to happen? Are they going to deport the mom, the dad, but not the kids?”
She said Trump’s administration has left immigrant families terrified. She recalled a conversation with a mother. “She told me ‘Every day I’m just waiting for something super chaotic where ICE is going to go door to door. And just ‘Show me your papers. You don’t have any? Get in the truck.’ And I don’t know if it’s going to go to that extreme, but I hear your fear. Your legit fear.”
The Census estimates there are 57,000 Hispanics in Shelby County, or about 6 percent of the population. Most are of Mexican descent. A significant number of immigrant adults arrived illegally or overstayed visas.
This week’s memos issued by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly call for aggressive enforcement of immigration laws at the border as well as in non-border areas like Memphis.
That’s a big change. At the national level, business owners have lobbied against strict immigration enforcement, leading to a situation in which many unauthorized immigrants live and work openly, but with limited rights.
Under Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, for instance, business owners objected when the government went after unauthorized immigrant workers in the Vidalia onion fields of Georgia and in meatpacking plants in the Midwest. The business pressure prompted the government to reduce enforcement in the middle of the country. But at the same time, the government boosted border enforcement. Similar patterns played out under George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“I think it’s a pretty dramatic shift,” Bryce Ashby, an attorney and board member of Latino Memphis. “The memos that were issued under President Obama, his efforts were to push more efforts to the borders themselves. What you saw was largely less enforcement at the workplace, less enforcement within communities like Memphis. What this seems to indicate is that enforcement would be sort of nationwide, although there will be buildups at the border.”
Many unauthorized immigrants in the Memphis area have lived in the country for years and own houses, vehicles and other property. Some run small businesses. Many have children in school.
Their established lives mean that an arrest and deportation could lead to unpaid mortgages and other loose ends, said Calvo, the Latino Memphis leader.
“Maybe dad’s leaving but mom’s here. Or maybe both of them are leaving . . . Who’s going to take care of the children?”
Latino Memphis is urging immigrants to sign power of attorney documents that allow trusted family members or friends to make key decisions for them if they’re arrested.
The group has used social media to push out information about power of attorney documents and is also planning information sessions.
Calvo said Latino Memphis is working on a broader strategic response to the situation.
Another local Hispanic group, Comunidades Unidas en Una Voz (Communities United in One Voice), has organized demonstrations opposing the Trump administration actions. Efforts to reach a representative of the group were unsuccessful Wednesday.
The federal memos said the government would prioritize deportations of immigrants who have committed crimes — but the memo says any immigrant who’s violated immigration laws could be deported. And any unauthorized immigrant who’s been in the country for less than two years could face summary deportation without seeing a judge — previously, this status applied only to immigrants at or near the border.
However, a Obama administration immigration protection program for young people brought into the country illegally stays in place — it’s called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Some questions
The federal agency that enforces immigration laws away from the border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appears to lack the resources to carry out a broad crackdown without help.
A federal Office of Personnel Management web site says ICE had just 23 staffers cq in Tennessee as of last year. Robert Hammer,cq an ICE official in Nashville, said the true personnel count in Tennessee is higher, but didn’t want to release specific numbers without getting clearance first.
To boost ICE manpower, the government directive this week called for expansion of a program called 287(g), in which state and local police are trained to enforce federal immigration law. And the government also called for the hiring of 10,000 more ICE staffers.
Congress would have remain. to approve money to pay their salaries, as well as for other elements of immigration enforcement, including 5,000 new Border Patrol staffers,cq judges and new detention centers. The cost is likely in the billions of dollars.
USA TODAY immigration reporter Alan Gomez contributed to this story.