Arrests of non-criminal immigrants have reportedly more than doubled under the Trump administration.
Arrests of non-criminal immigrants have reportedly more than doubled under the Trump administration. According to the Washington Post, those individuals account for much of the surge in apprehensions since President Trump took office. Detainments involving immigrants with criminal records, including those with histories of violent offenses, has increased only slightly. The Week notes that in recent times, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been given increased discretion regarding the people they target. It also faces increased pressure. "Critics say ICE is increasingly grabbing at the lowest-hanging fruit of deportation-eligible immigrants to meet the president's unrealistic goals, replacing a targeted system with a scattershot approach aimed at boosting the agency's enforcement statistics," reports the Post. Some of those detainments have involved people who've been here since they were children and have gone on to establish careers and families. They include a doctor in Michigan who is a legal U.S. resident, a college chemistry instructor who was arrested when dropping his daughter off at school, and the Arizona father of a child with cancer.
In regard to the apparent abandonment of detainment policies linked to the severity of criminal offenses, John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director, told the Post, "The problem is, when you remove all priorities, it's like a fisherman who could just get his quota anywhere."
The American Civil Liberties Union further suggests that the Trump administration is using the less-structured approach as "part of a broader trend…to target anyone that doesn't agree with its policies" and notes that a number of immigration activists have been threatened with deportation.
