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erronis

(17,755 posts)
Mon Jan 27, 2025, 09:20 AM Jan 27

Preparing for the Worst -- The American Prospect

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-01-27-preparing-for-the-worst-immigration-deportation/

From the church to the schoolyard to the legislature, Americans are making plans to protect themselves and their loved ones from deportation.

by Emma Janssen
January 27, 2025


Across the country, some Americans are steeling themselves for the moment when agents of the federal government, whether from the military or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), storm into their communities and deport anyone suspected of lacking legal documentation. These preparations are happening across a wide scale, with nonprofits and legal organizations dusting off strategies from the first Trump administration, teachers discussing plans in break rooms, and mixed-status couples marrying to get their documents in order.

During the 2024 campaign, President Trump promised to enact the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history. Such an act would take an immense coordination of federal, state, and local law enforcement entities, including the National Guard and local police departments. Democratic-governed states would almost certainly throw sand in the gears, as some are already planning to do.

Trump’s soon-to-be “border czar,” Tom Homan, has said that any immigrants who pose “public safety and national security threats” will be targeted for deportation first. Rhetoric that paints America’s 45 million immigrants as “threats” to public safety is a key Republican strategy to drum up support for mass deportations. One of the first bills passed by the Republican House in the new Congress was the Laken Riley Act, after the 22-year-old nursing student who was killed in February 2024 by a Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally. The bill would require any undocumented person or DACA recipient arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting-related offenses to be detained, even if they are ultimately never charged with a crime.

The criminal justice system has long been a mechanism for deportations. Since 2015, 82 percent of ICE arrests have occurred within a local, state, or federal jail, according to Immigration Impact. During the second Trump administration, this connection between ICE and the prison system may be strengthened, with local sheriffs empowered to detain those suspected of being undocumented during even routine stops. Though much of their rhetoric has focused on immigrants already involved with the criminal justice system, Trump, Homan, and other advisers have given no indication that they’d stop there.

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