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Welcome to the (Deportation) Machine: Trump plan turns cops into Immigration Agents
Trump's Deportation Plans Will Turn Cops Into Immigration Agents
"This is the deportation machine."
BRYAN SCHATZFEB. 28, 2017 6:00 AM
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/donald-trump-deportation-police-program
Donald Trump is quickly amassing the means to make good on his promise to deport millions of people from the United States. One of those tools is a federal program that enlists state and local cops and jail officials to identify people they believe may be undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration scaled down the program, in part due to criticism that it encouraged racial and ethnic profiling, created financial incentives to detain immigrants, and undermined relations between the police and immigrant communities. Now Trump is preparing to bring it back.
The program is known as 287(g) for the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 that created it. It established "task force" agreements that allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deputize local and state law enforcement officers as immigration agents. The program gives these law enforcement officers the authority to stop, interrogate, and arrest anyone they believe to be unauthorized immigrants. It also gives deputized jail administrators access to immigration databases so they may refer undocumented immigrants to ICE for possible deportation. The 287(g) program enabled more than 175,000 deportations between 2006 and 2013, according to an analysis by the Marshall Project.
Last Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued memos to senior officials in his department outlining instructions for enforcing the president's January 25 executive order, which called for an aggressive effort to deport undocumented immigrants regardless of whether they had committed serious crimes. Referring to 287(g), Kelly called the program a highly effective "force multiplier" that has led to the identification of more than 400,000 "removable aliens" between 2006 and 2015, and he directed ICE to "engage immediately with all willing and qualified law enforcement jurisdictions" that may cooperate with the federal government under 287(g).
"This is the deportation machine," says Daniel Stageman, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies immigration and criminal justice. "If Trump is going to meet the kinds of numbers he announced during his campaign, this is how it will happen." Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, puts it in stark terms: "There's potential for this to be an enormous driver of people coming into the system through the task forces and people being processed in the jails. 175,000 is a staggering number of people to have gone through this, but that may be only a small fraction of what's intended now."
"This is the deportation machine."
BRYAN SCHATZFEB. 28, 2017 6:00 AM
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/donald-trump-deportation-police-program
Donald Trump is quickly amassing the means to make good on his promise to deport millions of people from the United States. One of those tools is a federal program that enlists state and local cops and jail officials to identify people they believe may be undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration scaled down the program, in part due to criticism that it encouraged racial and ethnic profiling, created financial incentives to detain immigrants, and undermined relations between the police and immigrant communities. Now Trump is preparing to bring it back.
The program is known as 287(g) for the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 that created it. It established "task force" agreements that allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deputize local and state law enforcement officers as immigration agents. The program gives these law enforcement officers the authority to stop, interrogate, and arrest anyone they believe to be unauthorized immigrants. It also gives deputized jail administrators access to immigration databases so they may refer undocumented immigrants to ICE for possible deportation. The 287(g) program enabled more than 175,000 deportations between 2006 and 2013, according to an analysis by the Marshall Project.
Last Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued memos to senior officials in his department outlining instructions for enforcing the president's January 25 executive order, which called for an aggressive effort to deport undocumented immigrants regardless of whether they had committed serious crimes. Referring to 287(g), Kelly called the program a highly effective "force multiplier" that has led to the identification of more than 400,000 "removable aliens" between 2006 and 2015, and he directed ICE to "engage immediately with all willing and qualified law enforcement jurisdictions" that may cooperate with the federal government under 287(g).
"This is the deportation machine," says Daniel Stageman, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies immigration and criminal justice. "If Trump is going to meet the kinds of numbers he announced during his campaign, this is how it will happen." Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, puts it in stark terms: "There's potential for this to be an enormous driver of people coming into the system through the task forces and people being processed in the jails. 175,000 is a staggering number of people to have gone through this, but that may be only a small fraction of what's intended now."