The Trump administration on Tuesday unveiled sweeping reforms that reverse many of former President Barack Obama’s immigration policies — and allow the United States to give the boot to virtually every illegal immigrant in the country.
Under the new regulations — contained in two memos from the Department of Homeland Security — undocumented immigrants caught crossing the southern border will be busted or sent packing.
The revised rules reflect President Trump’s get-tough stance on illegal immigrants and overturn the Obama administration’s “catch and release” policy — which let non-criminal undocumented immigrants remain in the US even after being caught.
“The Department no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement,” said one memo.
“Department personnel have full authority to arrest or apprehend an alien whom an immigration officer has probable cause to believe is in violation of the immigration laws.”
While the policy authorizes it, authorities will not be conducting mass roundups of undocumented immigrants, according to White House spokesman Sean Spicer.
Highlights of the memos include:
- Immediately begin planning and building a border wall between the US and Mexico — a key Trump campaign promise.
- The hiring of 5,000 more Border Patrol agents and 10,000 extra Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
- Local cops and sheriff’s deputies would be recruited on a voluntary basis to help with deportations under a program that was scaled back under Obama. An NYPD rep said the department has not and will not participate in the program.
- Increasing jail space in anticipation of more captures.
The memos, signed by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, do not change immigration laws, but take a much harder line on enforcement.
“The message from this White House and the DHS is that those people who are in this country and pose a threat to our public safety or have committed a crime will be the first to go and we will be aggressively making sure that that occurs,” Spicer said at a White House press briefing.
There are as many 1 million dangerous illegal immigrants in the United States who will be among those targeted first, he said, before taking a swipe at Obama, saying that immigration and border agents “had their hands cuffed behind them.”
One example of the tougher stance is the expansion of a program that fast-tracks deportations, which will now apply to immigrants who can’t prove they had been in the US longer than two years.
Since at least 2002 that fast deportation effort — which does not require a judge’s order — had been used only for immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border within two weeks of crossing illegally.
Trump, meanwhile, tweeted about a report in The Hill that said a survey from Harvard–Harris Poll found that 80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting illegal immigrants to the feds.
“Americans overwhelmingly oppose sanctuary cities,” he wrote.
The new policy expands the priority list for deportation, including for crimes related to illegal immigration such as the use of forged documents, people charged but not convicted of a crime and anyone immigration authorities consider to pose a danger to the public.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it would challenge the directives.
With AP