Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images
By: EFE
Saturday, September 28
Trump recruited sheriffs to go after immigrants
The ex-president Donald Trump recruited sheriffs and other local security forces to arrest illegal immigrants , which caused terror in migrant communities in different parts of the country, as revealed on Tuesday by The Washington Post newspaper.
The newspaper counted the scope of the actions of the Trump Administration (2017 – 2021) for detain and deport undocumented immigrants living in the US, in some cases for years.
According to this information, Trump resorted to a controversial federal agreement called 287 (g) and in which police forces are given the ability to interrogate and detain undocumented immigrants, a task that normally falls to federal authorities.
Since the creation of this agreement, groups defending the Migrants have denounced that the alliance between federal and local authorities terrorizes migrant communities and puts the undocumented in a defenseless situation since they cannot ask the police for help for fear of being detained.
The scope of that agreement 287 (g) was limited to 2012 by then president Barack Obama (2009 – 2017) , but after arriving at the White House in 2017 Trump began recruiting Sheriffs known for their tough policy toward migrants, according to dozens of internal government emails obtained by the Post.
In specifically, in February of 2017, the then Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, sent instructions to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), in charge of detaining migrants within the United States, to expand the agreement 287 (g) “the highest possible degree.”
Immediately, ICE began requesting meetings with sheriffs and other local agencies to which it sent propaganda materials to ask them to join the agreement, according to the Post.
This policy implemented by Trump joins others that were especially hard on immigrants and refugees, such as the separation of families that crossed the border irregularly with Mexico.