CNN Politics does a Q & A with one of its reporters, Priscilla Alvarez, , that covers the current immigration action/policy of the US Government….
Less flashy on the raids…..
Still deporting people to far away places…
Still detaining illegal and legal migrants…
People STILL crossing the Souther Border….
Questions on the numbers fronted by Homeland….
Well, I think what you’re getting at is something that I’ve heard from multiple Homeland Security officials, which is to make it so hard for undocumented immigrants and some immigrants in the US legally to be in the United States that they choose to leave the country. Deporting someone is hard. There is a reason that previous administrations have not been able to get to a million deportations in a year. It’s a process. And so to reach the numbers they want to reach, they do have to depend in part on people deciding to leave on their own, and they can get people to do that by making them feel the squeeze.
Yes, the administration has rescinded temporary protected status, which is a form of humanitarian relief for people already in the US to live and work here legally for a period of time. This happened under the first Trump administration as well. Republicans generally don’t like this program because they feel that something that is meant to be temporary gets extended over and over again, and it loses sort of the temporary aspect, which is true.
Some of these statuses have gone on for a very long time. They get renewed over multiple administrations, so that makes someone who was living here with the protection they have, protections to be here, to live and work here. You strip that away, then they are here illegally, right? And that makes your life much more difficult. So, you were able to work legally, now you’re not able to work legally.
All of this is the subject of lawsuits that are still ongoing in the courts, but I think what this really boils down to is make it so hard to be in the US that you choose to leave, you being the person that is the subject of this crackdown….
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No, people are always crossing the border. I think it’s just a numbers game. There are fewer crossing the border than there used to be. There are fewer releases than there used to be. What does that mean? Under, for example, the Biden administration, they were so overwhelmed by the number of people crossing that after screening and vetting individuals, they would release them into the United States to continue on with their immigration proceedings.
That is happening far less under the Trump administration. They are being apprehended and then they may be detained, or they may be immediately sent back to their origin country. But people are always crossing the border, it’s just a matter of how many, and certainly there are far fewer that are crossing now than were under the previous administration, when there was a crisis along the US Southern border…
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We often use the term mass deportation because that is what President Trump campaigned on. It is what we hear from his officials when talking about his immigration agenda, but the administration’s immigration agenda is not solely focused on people who are in the United States illegally, nor people who are in the United States illegally and have committed crimes.
The agenda is broader than that. It is a tightening of the screws of the entire US immigration system that not only has consequences for people in the US illegally, but also for people who are here legally, who are, or who are trying to come to the US legally, and I think that that part of this often gets missed. It’s not just about deporting undocumented immigrants, it is a wholesale rethinking of the US immigration system, and who is allowed to be here or not be here….
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