‘Sloppy, if Not Inhumane’: Outrage Explodes At The Start of Mass Deportations
More than criminals being rounded up, sources say
The mass deportations Donald Trump long promised have begun, and more than violent criminals are being rounded up in the process.
Reaction has been strong as legal citizens, young children and others are being caught in the nets thrown by federal agents.
Trump, during the campaign, vowed to detain and deport millions of undocumented migrants living in the United States. And he began making good on that promise within days of being sworn-in as president a week ago.
But those being detained around the country by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are not limited to violent criminals, according to many experts, who have added that Trump administration officials have imposed arrest quotas for ICE, of between 1,200 to 1,500 people each day.
Adriano Espaillat, a Democratic state senator from New York, called Trump’s actions “sloppy, if not inhumane.”
“Citizens have been stopped, detained and questioned. A veteran was stopped and questioned. Attempts were made to go into a school, an elementary school. So this is a real sloppy approach to what he tries to implement, this new massive deportation, and we will be monitoring this as we move forward,” Espaillat said. “We will be educating the public as to what their rights are. The public needs to understand what their rights are, and we don’t want to see that kind of heavy-handed approach against American citizens, including a veteran.”
Trump’s policy of allowing ICE agents to target children in elementary and middle schools doesn’t make sense, according to Sen Elissa Slotkin, the new Democratic senator from Michigan.
“I mean, I just don’t understand, you know, if the focus and the priority is on criminals, I’m not sure going after an 11-year-old is where you start, and this is, again, the inconsistency between what they’re saying and then what we saw happen in this past week, right?” Slotkin said. “Going after places that were not sanctuary cities kind of in this — what felt sort of arbitrary way, so I think to me, you know, the idea of going into children and terrorizing children, I just don’t believe in supporting that kind of action, and I don’t believe that most Americans think that 11- and 12-year-olds are the criminals.”
Trump seems to be trying to make a statement with these deportations, according to Maria Cardona, a public policy analyst and political strategist.
“And this is what is so incredibly frustrating and mind-boggling about the way that the Trump administration is now handling deportation,” she said. “Just a quick note on the flights. You know, they act like there were no deportation flights under the Biden administration. And we all know that even, you know, to the chagrin of many activists, Joe Biden deported many, many undocumented immigrants. So, again, this is just for show because Trump needs to feel like the strong man, like the bully. It just underscores huge insecurity amongst his leadership capabilities. That‘s number one.
“Number two, on the deportations themselves, in terms of criminal undocumented immigrants, Jessica, of course, everyone supports that. Everyone supports that. And that has been going on under Democratic administrations, under Republican administrations. That has been an ongoing policy of the United States of America, which is another thing that this administration kind of belies doing this now saying, ‘Oh, my god, we‘re the first ones to do it.’ Well, no, they‘re not the first ones to do it,” Cardona added. “But what they are the first ones to do is to lead with cruelty, to lead with divisiveness, to lead with fear-mongering among these communities.
“And to put in place quotas, those 70 arrests per day, per ICE office, Jessica, means that they very soon will be deporting grandmothers, deporting business people, deporting people who are the ones that run our Sunday markets that we love so much on the weekends, they will be deporting people that are our colleagues when we go to work,” she said. “They are people that we don‘t know right now, are undocumented in our communities, but will be soon handcuffed and will be treated like dangerous criminals when the only thing they are doing is injecting $7 trillion of economic heft into the United States. That is not leadership. That is not a real effective deportation policy or immigration policy itself.”
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