Currents News Staff
President Trump backed down from his effort to add a citizenship question on the 2020 census. However, he’s moving ahead with a plan to deport non-citizens from the country.
“Yeah, we will be removing large numbers of people,” he confirmed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement are expected to start raids on Sunday, July 14.
“I’ve had kids come up to me at forums with tears in their eyes,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo. “They’re afraid to go to school, they’re afraid to come home and find that their parents have been deported.”
The ICE operation will take place in some of the country’s biggest cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. According to a senior official, about 2,000 people are targeted.
“If you are [to] come to this position, you’ve been here [for] years, you’ve gone through a court system, you’ve been found that you have to be deported, you have to follow the rule of law,” said House Minority Leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy.
Critics say there are better ways to address the situation.
“We can both secure the border, be compassionate and bring people into the American way of life through a pathway of citizenship and do that in a compassionate way and a way that is economically competitive,” said U.S Representative Tim Ryan.
These raids were postponed last month, with President Trump saying he was giving both parties time to come up with a solution.
“We are not participating in any raids, we haven’t been asked to participate in any raids and certainly we are obviously a pro-immigrant city,” said Francis Suarez, Mayor of Miami. “What I hope is that the people they’re focused on are people that are very dangerous, because those people shouldn’t obviously be in our community to begin with.”
President Trump has deported fewer people than his predecessor, President Obama. ICE statistics state that just over 256,000 were deported in the 2018 fiscal year. In the 2012 fiscal year, more than 400,000 were taken out of the country.