The congressman said the raids have caused a panic within the immigrant community. Still, Kyes said, the rumors raged “like wildfire”. The focus, the article said, would be on adults and children who already have been ordered deported by an immigration judge.
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US officials say immigration authorities have taken 121 people into custody since Friday, in the first raids targeting the deportation of families who have entered the United States illegally since May 2014. This should come as no surprise. Jeh Johnson claims more raids will occur. That includes children who arrived without their parents.
“We met someone who said she didn’t go to work because she was terrified of what was going on”, he explained. A Homeland Security official who was denied permission to speak on record told reporters that the weekend raids were just the beginning of an effort to deport undocumented Central American families and convince other potential migrants that illegally entering the United States is “fruitless”. Now, some of them are facing deportation.
Attorneys with the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project filed for an appeal at 4 p.m. Tuesday, and by 8 p.m. the Board of Immigration Appeals chose to briefly stay their removal while it reviews their cases, said Wendy Feliz, a spokeswoman for the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group in Washington D.C. The next time he checked in with ICE, as required, they attached a Global Positioning System device to his ankle to monitor him.
“Migration is a natural human phenomenon that when people are hungry they move where the food is, when they are thirsty, they move where the water is and where there is violence, they move away from the violence”, said Rev Ken Heintzelman, the head pastor of Shadow Rock. “What can I do?”
“If it was November right now, this would be a disaster for the Democratic Party”, Ms. Tramonte said.
Wednesday night, more than 150 people holding signs and lighting candles attended a vigil at the State House to protest the roundups. A national organization set up a hot line to report any raids. The teen is in the process of applying for legalization through the federal government’s Special Immigrant Juvenile program.
Thousands of the immigrants are from Honduras and El Salvador, which have some of the highest rates of violence in the world.
GREENE: No, no, I understand. And they continue to come, well, because they can – because they know that the chances of being able to stay once they get here will be far better than even. They know that because this is an administration which not only hasn’t expressed an interest in real border security, but this president has even attempted to grant his own brand of executive amnesty to those who made it here earlier.
Most public attention has focused on these unaccompanied children, whose numbers have spiked in recent months.
After a decline, Johnson said, the number of crossings began to rise again in August.
Although federal officials have showed up at some businesses – including strip malls on Long Island, New York – advocates said mostly they have sought immigrants at home.
Immigration is expected to be an important issue that sways voters in this year’s presidential election.
“People should take from this the understanding that the administration is quite serious when it comes to enforcing immigration laws”.
Obviously, sourcing more federal funds to the courts to make sure legit cases don’t slip through the cracks is not something most politicians are willing to propose when popular rhetoric in the country is antagonistic toward immigration in general. “It’s been a really miserable time for immigrants”.
Some hailed Homeland Security for the increased enforcement.
Those targeted in the raids had been issued final orders of removal by immigration courts and had exhausted other legal remedies, including claims for asylum. “America is a nation of laws, but those laws are meaningless unless they are enforced”.
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“It would tip our community upside down”, Kyes said. “It confounds me”, Sharry said.
