Trump’s immigration strategy is a mess. That is unless you are a member of his rabid base who thinks all immigrants (undocumented or not) should be rounded up and booted out of the country—no questions asked. Then, his strategy makes perfect sense. Because since he’s expanded the definition of “criminal alien” to include a wide swath of immigrants, he’s basically given permission for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain anyone, including those without criminal records.
Here’s what Trump’s deportation force has been up to so far:
In Chicago, a student called her high school teacher to tell him that ICE had raided her home the night before, arresting her father, an undocumented immigrant whose criminal record included only traffic violations, the teacher said. In Centreville, Va., a woman told officials at London Towne Elementary School that a student’s father had been arrested after dropping their son off at school that morning. And in the Baltimore parking lot of a Walgreens, ICE agents arrested a barber and a local business owner who advocates said also had no criminal records.
Let’s recap—snatching parents from their kids at night, stalking schools to arrest parents after they drop their kids off at school, barbers who have no criminal records. Those don’t sound exactly like the criminal immigrant boogeymen running around murdering people that Trump has told us again and again that we should be afraid of. He wants you to think he’s deporting only criminals. But that’s one of his many lies.
Apparently Trump’s administration isn’t really concerned with who has a criminal record and who doesn’t. They are detaining anyone who might even be confused with or in proximity to a criminal.
ICE officials said the operation aimed to capture people suspected of living in the U.S. illegally who were fugitives, re-entrants or dangerous, violent criminals. But in a review of federal documents by the American-Statesman, more than half of the 51 people detained in the Austin area had no previous criminal convictions.
What’s worse is that they have a name for these mistakes. Called “collateral apprehensions,” they allow ICE to detain persons who were not on the original warrant. And ICE is tight lipped about just exactly who the “collateral apprehensions” are—which could make it difficult for anyone to identify them and/or advocate for their rights.
It is unclear why the Austin area had more noncriminal arrests, but federal officials said they suspect it could be the result of “collateral apprehensions” — the arrest of a person because they might have been with a wanted individual at the time. ICE has refused to release the identities of those arrested in the enforcement operation, and federal court records reviewed by [the Austin American-Statesman, a local newspaper] do not include that information.
And here’s the latest example of the face of deportation under Trump—22-year-old DREAMer, Daniela Vargas, who dared to speak out after her family members were detained.
Federal immigration authorities arrested a 22-year-old woman in Jackson, Mississippi, on Wednesday shortly after she spoke to the media about the detention of her family. Law enforcement had initially declined to arrest Daniela Vargas, who was previously granted deportation reprieve under the Obama administration’s deferred action program.
Students, young people, parents dropping their kids off at school, barbers—no immigrant is safe. Trump’s approach to immigration is wrong and dangerous and will impact not just immigrants but their American family members, our economy and the fabric of our nation well into the future.