rump is sending armed tactical forces to arrest immigrants in sanctuary cities
It’s yet another attempt to target sanctuary cities.
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The Trump administration is reportedly sending armed and highly trained law enforcement units to sanctuary cities across the country to support US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out immigration raids.
As first reported by the New York Times, 100 US Customs and Border Protection officers, including those from the SWAT-like Border Patrol Tactical Unit, will be deployed from February through May across nine sanctuary cities: Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, and Newark, NJ.
Border Patrol Tactical Unit agents receive special training for high-risk law enforcement activities, including sniper certification and other advanced weapons training. Their primary charge has been tracking down drug traffickers on the US-Mexico border, where violence can often break out, but now they will also be responsible for conducting routine immigration arrests in some of America’s largest cities, according to the Times.
It’s just the latest instance in which President Donald Trump has sought to target sanctuary cities — which do not allow local law enforcement to share information with ICE or hand over immigrants in their custody — for refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Immigrants advocates say that the deployment is not only a waste of federal law enforcement resources, it also might endanger immigrant communities.
“This is transparent retaliation against local governments for refusing to do the administration’s bidding,” Naureen Shah, senior policy and advocacy counsel on immigrants’ rights for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “It will put lives at risk by further militarizing our streets.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Heather Swift said in a statement Friday that the additional CBP agents (which she emphasized come from a variety backgrounds and not just tactical units) will help overstretched ICE officers deal with the rising number of immigrants who could be arrested on immigration violations but have yet to be detained.
“ICE does not have sufficient resources to effectively manage the sustained increase in non-detained cases which is exacerbated by the rise of sanctuary jurisdictions,” she said. “These officers have also been trained in routine immigration enforcement actions, which is what they have been asked to do.”
It’s all part of Trump’s campaign against sanctuary cities
Friday’s decision is just one in a long line of Trump’s attempts to crack down on sanctuary cities. The administration has tried to withhold federal law enforcement grants from sanctuary states and vacate California’s sanctuary laws (but has mostly failed). And it recently blocked New Yorkers from enrolling in Global Entry and other programs that offer faster processing for pre-vetted travelers in response to new state sanctuary laws.
At his State of the Union address earlier this month, Trump characterized sanctuary cities as a danger to public safety and broadly painted immigrants as violent criminals, highlighting a case of an immigrant arrested on charges of murdering and sexually assaulting a 92-year-old woman in New York City.
Trump has done this over and over during his time in office, turning his ire on international criminal gangs like MS-13 and invoking the stories of “angel moms,” parents of those killed by gang members.
But in reality, research suggests that his characterization doesn’t hold water: Sanctuary policies don’t appear to make a city more dangerous. While there isn’t a huge body of research on sanctuary policies’ impact on crime rates, studies have found that they either slightly decrease crime rates or have no effect.
A study published in the journal Urban Affairs Review in 2017 found that cities with similar characteristics but for their sanctuary policies had “no statistically discernible difference” in their rates of violent crime, rape, or property crime. Using data from the National Immigration Law Center and the FBI, researchers compared crime rates before and after cities passed sanctuary laws, finding that they had no effect on crime.
Another study by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, examined the almost 2,500 counties that don’t accept requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain unauthorized immigrants. The study found that counties with sanctuary policies tend to have lower crime rates than those that don’t: about 35.5 fewer crimes per 10,000 people on average. The counties with the smallest populations exhibited even bigger differences in crime rates.
Many police chiefs say there’s good reason behind those results: Sanctuary policies facilitate better crime reporting and cooperation with law enforcement in criminal investigations.
It is good that those officers are making sure the US-Mexico is safe from drug traffickers, but it is unnecessary for them to help in immigration raids. Throughout his time in office, Trump has made it obvious that he wants immigrants to appear as violent criminals so the people could be more inclined to having them be deported. When in reality, he chooses to focus on cases here and there where immigrants have been responsible for hurting others, but he doesn't highlight the good that immigrants have done in the US.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fact that Trump only likes to focus on the bad things that only SOME immigrants have done. Not every immigrant is a criminal, in fact there are immigrants that are better contributors to the country than a person you consider to be legal.
DeleteI agree that enforcing drug laws above the border is a good thing but sending highly trained soldiers to immigration raids seems a bit excessive.
DeleteI found it interesting that sanctuary policies had a positive impact on multiple counties. Many other counties have seen no difference in crime rates. It is weird that despite this, Trumps administration still seems adamant in destroying sanctuary cities
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this data likely doesn't matter much to the Trump administration, considering that it doesn't support the image they've painted of immigrants as violent criminals.
DeleteTrump has a one track mind and he made promises his followers expect him to fulfill, so logic and statistics wont appeal to him. He'll pick out the stories that have a negative impact on sanctuaries or immigrants in order to justify his actions.
DeleteSo I see what our government is doing rather then supplying water to its citizens.... While I feel like protecting the US-Mexico border from drug traffickers is good, the raids and forceful removal of immigrants are unnecessary. True, they are here illegally, and a small portion of them commit heinous crimes, but that small portion shouldn't be attached to the entire immigrant population. Some of them are just living their lives and if they are making an effort to become a citizen, then I don't see why violent means of removal are necessary. If he want's them gone he should have a better process of removal, or help them obtain their citizenship. You don't need a trained sniper to do so.
ReplyDeleteIt is easy to understand why those officers are at the border, but it is unnecessary for them to help during ICE raids. Their skills wouldn't be as useful during raids as they would be at the border.
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