Trump Signs Orders That
Would Allow Police Officers to Enforce Immigration Laws, 2/1/17
President Donald Trump had a busy first
week in office issuing a flurry of executive
actions and orders to kick start his agenda, some of which
flew under the radar of both the media and perpetually outraged liberals.
While most of the attention last
Wednesday was focused on Trump’s orders authorizing construction of the border
wall and efforts to crack down on sanctuary cities, ABC
News reported that Trump also ordered the
revival of an old program that had nearly been mothballed by the Obama
administration.
The program permits the Department
of Homeland Security to essentially “deputize” local law
enforcement agents and officers to aid in enforcing federal immigration laws,
such as by checking an individual’s immigration status through the course of
routine contact, and certainly if they’ve been arrested or jailed in
connection with sort of crime.
The program had more than 60 various
police departments and sheriff’s offices enrolled as of 2009, but President
Barack Obama’s administration rolled it back and limited it significantly,
to the point that about half of the participants dropped out while the rest
were consigned to simply check their local jails for violent violators of
immigration laws who needed to be turned over to federal agents.
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona was perhaps the most
well-known participant in the program, even as he was repeatedly harassed and
sued for taking part in it.
To be sure, civil rights groups and
immigration advocates have decried the program and stated that they believe it
will inevitably lead to an increase in racial profiling or the rights of
immigrants being violated, which is what they accused Arpaio of doing. However,
other groups, like the Center for Immigration Studies, cheered the return of
the “great program” that at one point accounted for nearly 20 percent of
criminal deportations by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officials, according to The
Washington Post.
The Post also reported that Trump
concurrently revived the Secure Communities program, a program both started and
stopped under Obama that checked the fingerprints of everyone taken into
custody by law enforcement across the U.S. against a federal database of
immigration records, quickly identifying those individuals who needed to be
handed over to the feds for deportation.
BizPac
Review noted
that several local law enforcement agencies have already jumped at the chance
to enlist the services of their officers in aiding federal immigration agents,
including the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas.
Jackson County Sheriff A.J. “Andy”
Louderback estimated that it would cost his department roughly $3,000 to train
a few of his deputies to take part in the program, but he wasn’t worried about
the cost at all as he figured it would be money well-spent.
“It just seems like good law enforcement
to partner with federal law enforcement in this area,” said Louderback. “It
takes all of us to do this job.”
Indeed, it does take the cooperation of
everyone on the federal, state and local level to effectively enforce
immigration laws. This program should serve as a counter to those uncooperative
jurisdictions across the nation that profess to be “sanctuaries” for illegal
immigrants in violation of federal laws.
Please share this on Facebook and
Twitter to let everyone know that Trump just revived a program that lets local
law enforcement assist the feds in enforcing immigration laws.
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