Millions targeted under Trump rules
Millions of people living in the United States illegally could be targeted for deportation — including people simply arrested for traffic violations — under a sweeping rewrite of immigration enforcement policies announced by the Trump Administration.
Any immigrant who is in the country illegally and is charged or convicted of any offense, or even suspected of a crime, will now be an enforce- ment priority, according to Homeland Security Department memos signed by Secretary John Kelly.
That could include people arrested for shoplifting or minor offenses — or simply having crossed the border illegally.
The Trump Administration memos replace narrower guidance focusing on immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes, are considered threats to national security or are recent border crossers.
Under the Obama Administration guidance, immigrants whose only violation was being in the country illegally were generally left alone. Those immigrants fall into two categories: those who crossed the border without permission and those who overstayed their visas.
Crossing the border illegally is a criminal offense, and the new memos make clear that those who have done so are included in the broad list of enforcement priorities.
Overstaying a visa is a civil, not criminal, offense. Those who do so are not specifically included in the priority list but, under the memos, they are still more likely to face deportation than they had been before.
The new enforcement documents are the latest efforts by President Donald Trump to follow through on campaign promises to strictly enforce immigration laws that have included an executive order that was struck down in the courts and promises to build a wall along the border with Mexico.
Kelly’s enforcement plans call for enforcing a longstanding but obscure provision of immigration law that allows the government to send some people caught illegally crossing the Mexican border back to Mexico, regardless of where they are from.
The memo also calls for Homeland Security to provide an account of U.S. aid to Mexico, a possible signal that Trump plans to use that funding to get Mexico to accept the foreigners.
Historically, the U.S. has quickly repatriated Mexican nationals caught at the border but has detained immigrants from other countries pending deportation proceedings that could take years.
Mexico’s new ambassador to the U.S., Geronimo Gutierrez, called the policy changes “something very serious.”
In a hearing last week on Feb. 21 with Mexican senators, he said, “Obviously, they are a cause for concern for the foreign relations department, for the Mexican government, and for all Mexicans.”
The memos do not change U.S. immigration laws, but take a far harder line toward enforcement.
One example involves broader use of a program that fast-tracks deportations. It will now be applied to immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the United States longer than two years. It’s unclear how many immigrants that could include.
Since at least 2002 that fast deportation effort — which does not require a judge’s order — has been used only for immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border, within two weeks of crossing illegally.
The administration also plans to expand immigration jail capacity. Currently Homeland Security has money and space to jail 34,000 immigrants at a time. It’s unclear how much an increase would cost, but Congress would have to approve any new spending.
The directives do not affect President Barack Obama’s program that has protected more than 750,000 young immigrants from deportation. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals remains in place, though participants could be deported if they commit crimes or otherwise are deemed to be threats to public safety or national security, according to the department.
During the campaign Trump vowed to immediately end that program, which he described as illegal amnesty.
The directives indicate that some young people caught crossing the border illegally by themselves may not be eligible for special legal protections if they are reunited with parents in the United States. And those parents or other relatives that the government believes helped the children would face criminal and immigration investigations.
Under the Obama administration, more than 100,000 children, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, were caught at the border. Most were reunited with parents or relatives living in the United States, regardless of the adults’ immigration status.
The enforcement memos also call for the hiring of 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, but it’s unclear how quickly that could take place. Currently, two of every three applicants for Customs and Border Protection jobs fail polygraph exams and there are about 2,000 vacancies.
The government also plans to review a program that allows local police and jailers to act as immigration agents and a program that used fingerprint records from local jails to identify immigrants who had been arrested.
Over the past years, local law enforcement hasn’t been actively involved in immigration. The policy has been if a suspect was arrested and held at the Polk County Jail and was identified as an illegal immigrant, they’d report the status to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at the Department of Homeland Security.
With the new memo pushing for more local law enforcement to get involved in the process, the heads of Polk County’s law enforcement agencies are pondering what to do.
Cedartown Police Chief Jamie Newsome and Rockmart Police Chief Keith Sorrells both have a wait and see policy in mind for immigration enforcement.
Sorrells main issue with enforcement is that at least in Rockmart, the numbers don’t support his need to worry about major changes in local policy on immigration.
Newsome, on the other hand, is waiting for word to come from the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, which as a member gives him access to information and policy guidance on these kinds of issues.
“Usually we make decisions on the guidance of the police departments together in this way, all of us using the information with the understanding that it comes from the collective reasoning of the chiefs,” he said.
His main concerns are that local police departments would find themselves under heavier scrutiny for liability issues, and that he wants to make sure the Cedartown Police Department has the appropriate response to the situation.
The other problem likely to come from any directive from the Federal government down to local departments is that it comes in the form of an unfunded mandate.
All local police departments are required to enforce the laws of the land, but that doesn’t always come with extra money from the federal or state governments in order to combat criminal problems, like immigration.
The big issue with agency heads like Newsome and Sorrells is that they get directives to help enforce major issues on the national stage at a local level, but no help to do it.
Therefore, any real change in Polk County on immigration will likely come in the form of reporting on those who commit crimes in the country illegally to the federal authorities.
It’s a change that Sheriff Johnny Moats said is welcomed for his jail.
“We get a lot of offenders who are immigrants to come into our jail,” Moats said. “They are illegal and commit crimes, and they serve a little time.”
He said he would like more tools to help deal with the problem on a local level, but that because the problem is of a smaller scale in the Polk County community enforcement issues will unlikely be as big of an issue locally.
“It’s going to effect smaller communities like us, but really a policy like that is more targeted to big cities who have hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants,” he said.
The Associated Press’ Alicia A. Caldwell reported from Washington. Standard Journal Editor Kevin Myrick also contributed to this report.