The release of the Trump administration’s immigrantion enforcement plans is causing “a whole lot of panic in communities,” an immigrantion rights advocate recently told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The two memos from the Department of Homeland Security call for increases in the number of border agents, arrests and deportations.
DHS officials are cautioning people not to overreact to the plans, which they said cannot yet be enforced.
The human rights director for Alliance San Diego said the policies have been tried in the past and were proven then to be “very disruptive” and “inefficient.” He added that the organization expects upcoming enforcement efforts to include “things like Border Patrol boarding public transportation, things like (immigrantion and Customs Enforcement) conducting work site raids to go after unlawful employers and employees.”
Former U.S. Attorney for San Diego Peter Nunez welcomes a crackdown, saying that he hopes it will tell undocumented immigrants “everywhere that this is a whole new world.”
The DHA memos include plans for expansion of a federal program that enables local police officers to act as immigrantion officers by investigating and arresting suspected violators of immigrantion law.
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said the department “will not enter into that” kind of arrangement with the federal government.
San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman reiterated department policy which states that immigrantion is a federal enforcement matter.
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