Explaining the weekend’s raids, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Monday that ICE agents “engaged in concerted, nationwide enforcement operations to take into custody and return at a greater rate adults who entered this country illegally with children”.
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Thirteen months later, the Department of Homeland Security began raids in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina to round up families who have been ordered out of the country by an immigration court for deportation. He said through the information line they’ve assisted about 75 Central American families, many who immigrated about a year and a half ago and settled in the Inland area.
Johnson said the he recognized the pain that deportations cause, but added that officials “must enforce the law consistent with our priorities”.
Rene Morales said his sister Rosa and her children were captured by immigration agents in Houston after they crossed illegally in July 2014. The operation is targeting only people, including children, who have been ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge, officials familiar with the raids have said. Many on Facebook were chatting late Monday about some sort of supposed operation involving ICE that led to the detention of a man at an apartment complex just south of the Elkhart city limits.
“This is consistent with the kinds of priorities that the president himself has talked about; that our enforcement efforts need to be focused on deporting felons, not families, and with a particular focus on individuals who have only recently crossed the border”, Earnest said.
He added that those targeted for removal have gone through due-process legal proceedings and said that the effort will help discourage Central American families from sending their children on unsafe journeys to try to enter the United States illegally. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is looking through the wrong end of the telescope, viewing this as an immigration enforcement challenge instead.
Johnson said the department’s weekend roundup is part of President Barack Obama’s overall plan to allow a path to citizenship while at the same time maintaining some control over migrants who don’t intend to follow the legal track.
Johnson said similar sweeps will continue at his discretion.
Johnson said his agency has been focusing on immigrants with criminal records, gang ties or post a threat to national security.
Immigrant rights activists said the raids are cracking down on a vulnerable population uncertain of its legal rights.
“These raids are a scare tactic to deter other families fleeing violence in Central America from coming to the United States”, said Cecillia Wang, director of the immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Despite the surge in unaccompanied children and families crossing the border since past year, Espinosa, the advocate in Houston, pointed out that the number of unauthorised immigrants in the U.S. has decreased during Obama’s tenure.
While DHS has started to execute removal orders, the number of unaccompanied minors and family units who arrived in the USA over the past several years is substantial. Illegal immigration has been a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, with Republican candidates calling for stricter border patrols.
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