Mass Deportations Continue to Tear Families Apart and Stoke Fear in Immigrant Communities

Every week Donald Trump’s mass deportation force continues to tear families apart, detaining immigrants without justification, leaving U.S. born children without their parents, conducting raids in workplaces and forcing mothers to take refuge in churches with their children. The Trump administration continues to abuse its authority to expedite removals and deprive detained immigrants of legal counsel and due process. All these actions are examples of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and his hostility towards immigrant communities.

 

See it for yourself:

 

Trump’s ‘unshackled’ deportation force is tearing communities apart, stoking fear and separating hardworking families with little care for due process or basic humanity.

 

ProPublica: In Pennsylvania, It’s Open Season on Undocumented Immigrants

 

“Since Trump took office, deportation officers have been unshackled, as the White House describes it, from an Obama-era mandate to focus limited enforcement resources on deporting immigrants with serious criminal convictions. Across the country, they have been rounding up people like Franco who have sunk roots in this country, living for years, if not decades, with little fear of apprehension.

 

“Nowhere, however, have federal agents more aggressively embraced their newfound freedom than in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Delaware, an investigation by ProPublica and the Philadelphia Inquirer found.”

 

Washington Post: ICE raids meatpacking plant in rural Tennessee; 97 immigrants arrested

 

“The raid on Southeastern Provision in Bean Station, Tenn., follows arrests at 7-Eleven stores and other workplaces nationwide. Last year, the nation’s top immigration official said he had ordered agents to increase the number of work-site inspections and operations by ‘four or five times’ this year, to turn off the job ‘magnets’ that attract immigrants who are in the country illegally and punish employers who hire them.”

 

The Intercept: The day after Trump’s ICE raid in a small Tennessee town, 550 kids stayed home from school

 

“Though ICE claimed all 97 of the workers it arrested were eligible for deportation, advocates said the interviews conducted over the last week indicated the potential arrests of individuals who had authorization to work, as well as indiscriminate targeting of workers who appeared to be Latino. ‘We’re still, of course, verifying and documenting everything, but the emerging narrative is that actually they weren’t asked any questions,’ Teatro said. ‘Nobody was given a chance to know why they, in particular, were being arrested or what they were being arrested for.’”

 

Boston Globe: In Springfield, officials secure warrant to inspect church granting sanctuary

 

“Springfield officials on Wednesday secured a search warrant to conduct health and safety inspections of a church providing sanctuary to a Peruvian woman facing deportation by US immigration authorities. … The action comes more than a week after Gisella Collazo, an undocumented immigrant, and her two US-born children were granted sanctuary by the church, as she faced a March 27 deadline to return to her native Peru by federal immigration officials.”

 

Dallas Morning News: U.S. citizen kids face the deportation of their immigrant parents

 

“Everyone from parents to school officials, medical personnel and parish priests are focusing on how to prepare these citizen children for the deportation of a parent not here lawfully. There are nearly 5 million children in the U.S with a parent who is here illegally, according to the Pew Research Center.”

 

Washington Post: A ‘dreamer’ traveled to Mexico. Now he can’t get home to his husband.

 

“‘Dreamer’ Marco Villada Garibay left the country on the U.S. government’s promise of a possible green card. Now he’s trapped in Mexico and might never be allowed to return.”

 

Abusive practices abound during detention proceedings and also while immigrants are in custody.

 

The Intercept: Detained, then violated

 

“While the reports obtained by The Intercept are only a fraction of those filed, they shed light on a system that operates largely in secrecy, and they help hint at the magnitude of the abuse, and the incompetence and complicity of the agency tasked with the safety of the 40,000 women, men, and children it detains each day in more than 200 jails, prisons, and detention centers across the country.”

 

San Francisco Chronicle: Detained immigrant says he was roughed up by agents, denied pain medication

 

“The next day, on Sept. 27, Cruz was brought back to the Sacramento ICE office, where he says four agents teamed up to pull both his arms from behind in an attempt to force him to fingerprint the document. He said they grabbed him by the neck and smashed his head into the desk and twisted and pulled his arms behind him, injuring both his shoulders.”

 

Miami New Times: Thousands Demand ICE Stop Abusing Somali Detainees in Florida

 

“The 92 detainees described ‘slave ship’ conditions on their December plane flight, alleging in legal documents that ICE guards verbally abused them, beat them, and potentially left some with permanent injuries. Then 52 of those detainees were sent to Glades County Detention Center, where they've alleged in administrative complaints against ICE and letters to Florida politicians that they've been repeatedly beaten, pepper-sprayed, subjected to racial slurs including the N-word, and held in solitary confinement.”

 

KOUW: More than 500 pregnant women in ICE detention, after reversal of Obama policy

 

“Under the Obama administration, ICE updated its guidelines for pregnant women facing deportation. Generally, they avoided locking up women unless there was a serious criminal history or extraordinary circumstances. The Trump Administration just scrapped that policy, saying the shift is in line with the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.”

 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is halting a legal counseling program for detained immigrants and imposing quotas to immigration judges in order to expedite removal proceedings.

 

Washington Post: Justice Dept. to halt legal-advice program for immigrants in detention

 

“In Vera’s Legal Orientation Program, lawyers and others hold hour-long group information sessions with detainees to explain their rights, how the court process works and their possible defenses to deportation in federal law, such as seeking asylum if they are in fear for their lives. They also meet with detainees individually and refer detainees to free or low-cost lawyers, but do not represent them in court.”

 

CNN: Justice Department rolls out case quotas for immigration judges

 

“Critics argue that by making the process quicker, the courts could stack the decks against immigrants to deny them the time to prove they have a legitimate right to stay in the country. Asylum seekers, for example, are often traumatized, unfamiliar with English and with US law, and may not have advanced education or the ability to quickly secure legal representation to help make their cases, let alone quickly produce evidence and witnesses.”

 

Dallas Morning News: AG Sessions' plan to clear immigration case backlog will make things worse, judges and attorneys fear

 

“Quotas planned for the nation’s 334 immigration judges will just make the backlog worse by increasing appeals and questions about due process, says Ashley Tabaddor, Los Angeles-based president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.”

 

And Trump’s toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric is stoking anxiety and division as states under Republican leadership are following the White House’s lead.

 

Boston Globe: For DACA recipients, Trump’s tweetstorms can be panic-inducing

 

“What if President Trump kept talking about you? There are the 280-character bursts that equate undocumented immigrants to criminals storming the border. The repeated calls to build walls to keep immigrants out. And tweetstorms that treat DACA like a deal to be bartered and not a lifeline protecting more than half a million young people from deportation. […] And so each news alert or iPhone notification about the president’s ever-changing immigration agenda can be panic-inducing.”

 

Associated Press: Iowa governor signs into law ban on ‘sanctuary cities’

 

“The legislation will require law enforcement to follow requests from federal agents to hold a jailed person suspected of being in the country illegally. Local governments risk losing state funding if they don't comply with the law. Attorneys say the provision could open the state to litigation. Community organizers argue the bill will lead to racial profiling.”