In Dalton, candidate for governor
Stacey Abrams touts pro-immigrant policies, by Tyler Jettin, 8/1/18.
DALTON, Ga. — Democratic
candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams said Wednesday night that a
program of the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office "terrorizes
families."
Though she did not
address the local law enforcement agency specifically, she told a packed
audience at the Dalton Convention & Visitors Bureau that participation in
the 287(g) program destabilizes communities. The program, administered through
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allows sheriff's offices to train and
enforce immigration laws.
Whitfield County Sheriff
Scott Chitwood signed a memorandum of agreement with an ICE associate director
to take part in the program in June 2016. The program allows the department's
officers to check an ICE database on an inmate at the jail, revealing whether
the person could be subject to deportation. The jail can hold the inmate for
three days as they wait for ICE officers to pick them up.
During her speech
Wednesday, Abrams said the program can actually make communities less safe. She
believes immigrants who entered the United States illegally will be less likely
to call the police during an emergency.
"If you see a
crime, you won't report it if you think reporting a crime means that you are
putting your family at risk," Abrams said. "That means criminals go
unpunished and uncaught because we've pushed the right people in the
shadows."
A spokesperson for the
sheriff's office did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday
night. But in January 2017, Chitwood told the Times Free Press he believed the program makes the county safer
because it allowed the county to help deport violent criminals.
"It addresses a
criminal element," he said last year.
Abrams came to Dalton as
part of her campaign for governor against Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who
overwhelmingly defeated Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in a Republican primary runoff
July 24, earning about 70 percent of the vote.
Compared to other
statewide Democratic candidates in Georgia in recent years, who promised to be
moderates, Abrams is unabashedly running a progressive campaign.
On Wednesday night, she
spoke about the need for gun control and said she would not back down from her
belief in a woman's right to an abortion. She also spoke passionately about the
need to remove Confederate statues — or, in the case of Stone Mountain, to at
least provide more context about Georgia's history of slavery.
During Abrams' speech,
Republican Beau Patton sat in the front row, filming her with a cellphone.
Patton unsuccessfully ran for a state representative seat in Dalton last year.
He said he is volunteering for Kemp's campaign.
"I'm not a
fan," he said after the event. "It is what it is."
Concerning immigration,
she said students should be able to enroll in all state universities,
regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens. (The Board of Regents bars DACA
recipients from attending some schools, including the University of Georgia and
Georgia Tech.) She also said these students should qualify for the HOPE
scholarship.
Lawsuits on both issues
are still being debated in state and federal courts. "There are those who
say, 'You shouldn't do that because there are tax dollars,'" she told the
audience. 'The reality is, it's paid for by the lottery. I promise you:
Everybody plays the lottery. So everyone deserves to benefit from it."
In Abrams' bid to win the governor's race, the voters of
northwest Georgia likely won't carry her far. This is one of the most
conservative regions in the country. In the May 22 primary, in which Abrams
defeated Ringgold-native Stacey Evans, she only received 2,658 votes in the
northwestern corner of the state: Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Gordon, Murray,
Walker and Whitfield counties.
That number was greater
than what Evans received here. Still, it represented only 0.6 percent of her
total votes in that election.
At the same time, Dalton
is trending blue. This is a city with a large immigrant community, where about
half of the residents are Latino. Many of them came in the 1980s to work the
carpet mills. While they could not vote, their children can. A liberal block is
beginning to emerge.
In the six most
northwestern counties in the state, all but two precincts voted for Donald
Trump in the 2016 election. The exceptions? A couple of downtown Dalton census
blocks, where 70 percent of about 1,500 total voters cast ballots for Hillary
Clinton.
In a room on the first
floor of the conference room, the crowd filled all of the about 130 seats. A
much larger crowd filled a second floor room during Mike Pence's visit during
the 2016 campaign.
Before the event, Abrams
said she recognized the shifting dynamics here. But she hopes to pick some
voters in the darker red regions, too.
"We have to run in
every county, no matter where we are," she said. "Because I want
every vote that I can get. What I see in Dalton, what I've seen in Whitfield
County, what I saw in Catoosa County and in Dade County, is that these are
areas of the state that are hungry for attention and hungry for investment. Everyone wants to be prosperous. But
my job isn't to flip every county. It's to get as many voters as I can from
every single place."
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment