ICE Officers Told to Take Action Against All Undocumented Immigrants

It can be a struggle in daily conversations to explain the real life impact this election has every day on the decisions being made to govern our society.  This election has put numerous individuals in positions of real, tangible power who are spending every hour of every day implementing policies in an efficient, destructive manner.  They are doing the exact things their prior words, actions, and lobbyist bosses should have made obvious.

This White House has issued executive orders related to enhanced immigration enforcement and its Department of Justice has instructed staff to act as aggressively as possible. The statistics show the depraved results tearing apart families and the fabric of this nation after a mere months of the destructive new policies.  Several prior Smart Dissent stories will get you up to speed.

Now we've learned more and it is not good. The White House and Department of Justice continue their depraved goals beyond what's been publicized up until now with a directive from the head of ICE’s enforcement unit calling for action against all undocumented immigrants encountered while on duty.

The head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit in charge of deportations has directed his officers to take action against all undocumented immigrants they may cross paths with, regardless of criminal histories.... informed 5,700 deportation officers that, “effective immediately, ERO officers will take enforcement action against all removable aliens encountered in the course of their duties.”

“When you use the word ‘will’ instead of ‘may’ you are taking it a step further,” said [Sarah] Saldaña, [former head of ICE]. “This is an important directive and people at [Enforcement and Removal Operations] are bound by this directive unless someone... comes back and says, ‘You went too far.’ I don’t think you are going to find that person in this administration.”

David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the fallout from the memo has been evident for months. “The memo explains what we have actually been seeing on the ground,” Bier said, asserting that immigrants without criminal backgrounds were routinely being arrested and ordered deported.

Since 2008, Congress had traditionally used its annual spending bill to instruct the secretary of homeland security to prioritize the deportation of convicted immigrants based on the severity of their crimes, but that language was left out of this year’s bill, helping to pave the way for broader enforcement.

Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-officers-told-to-take-action-against-all-undocumented-immigrants

Date: 
Tuesday, July 18, 2017