As Trump raises deportation quotas, advocates fear an expanding ‘dragnet’ | Donald Trump News

Washington, DC – There were lines with wrists. Its size. His ankles.

The memory of being linked still haunts Ximena Aria Cristobal, 19, even after her release from the guard of immigration and customs (ICE).

Almost a month after her arrest, Georgia College student said she was still struggling with the way her life had been transformed. One day at the beginning of May, she was arrested for a stop of minor traffic: turning right on a red light. The next thing she knew, she was in a detention center, faced with a hearing date for her deportation.

“This experience is something that I will never forget. It left me a brand, emotionally and mentally,” said Arias Cristobal at a press conference on Tuesday, telling his time at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.

“What hurts the most,” she added, “is to know that millions of others have crossed and still live the same kind of pain.”

Defenders of rights say that its history has become emblematic of an “dragnet” expulsion policy in the United States, the one that targets immigrants from all walks of life, whether they have a criminal record.

President Donald Trump had campaigned for a second term on the promise he would expel from “criminals” who were in the country “illegally”.

But while he accelerates his campaign to “mass deportation” of the White House, criticism say that immigration agents target immigrants from various horizons – regardless of the little risk they represent.

“The quotas they push [are] Create this situation on the ground where ice literally tries to continue anyone who can catch, “said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration defense group.

She explained that young undocumented immigrants, known as dreamers, are among the most vulnerable populations.

“In the Dragnet, we get dreamers and other people established for a long time and deeply rooted who have been in the United States for a long time,” said Cardenas.

A vulnerable group

Passionate runner who studies finance and economy at Dalton State College, Arias Cristobal is one of the 3.6 million People known as dreamers. Many have been sent to the United States as a child, sometimes accompanied by family members, others alone.

For decades, the US government has struggled to manage these young undocumented arrivals in the country.

In 2012, the president of the time, Barack Obama, announced a new executive policy, the delayed action for children’s arrivals (DACA). He provided temporary protection against the expulsion of young immigrants who have lived in the United States since June 2007.

About 530,000 dreamers are protected by their DACA status. But Gaby Pacheco, the leader of the Immigration Group Thedream.us, said that this number represents a small proportion of the total population of young immigrants facing a possible deportation.

Some have arrived after the deadline of June 15, 2007, while others have not been able to apply: the processing of new applications has been interrupted in recent years. Legal challenges on the DACA also continue to make its way in the federal court system.

“Unfortunately, in recent months, several scholars and former students have been arrested, detained and even expelled,” said Pacheco.

She noted that 90% of the dreamers that her organization supports during their first year of higher education have no protection under DACA or other programs.

All in all, she said, the last months have revealed a “painful truth”: that “the dreamers are attacked”.

Adjustment quotas

But defenders and Pacheco warn that the first months of the Trump administration may be just a warning sign of what is to come.

Last week, internal security secretary Kristi Noem, and the deputy chief of staff of the White House, Stephen Miller, informed the ICE agents that the Trump administration had increased his daily quota for immigration arrests, from 1,000 per day to 3,000.

The current Trump budget legislation project – known as one Big Beautiful Bill – would also increase around $ 150 billion in public funds to expulsion and other immigration activities. The bill has narrowly adopted the House of Representatives and should be taken over in the Senate in the coming weeks.

The two actions could mean a significant increase in the application of immigration, even if the defenders argue that the representation by Trump of the United States as a country invaded by foreign criminals is clearly offset of reality.

Studies have shown several times that undocumented immigrants commit less crimes – including violent crimes – than citizens born in the United States.

Available data also questions Trump’s claims that there are a large number of undocumented criminal criminal offenders in the country.

The rate of arrests and deportations remained more or less the same as when the predecessor of Trump, former president Joe Biden, was in office, according to a report Stage fright Research project.

From January 26 to May 3, during the first four months of Trump’s second term, his administration made an average of 778 immigration arrests per day. This is just 2% higher than the average in the last months of the Biden presidency, which had around 759.

The number of daily moves or deportations under Trump was in fact 1 percentage point lower than the daily rate of Biden.

‘More and more perspective’

All in all, Pacheco and Cardenas have warned that the pressure to increase arrests and deportations could lead to increasingly desperate tactics.

The administration has already back A policy prohibiting the application of immigration in sensitive areas, such as churches and schools. He also sought to use a law in wartime of 1798 to quickly expel members of alleged gangs without regular procedure, and revoked temporary protections which allowed certain foreign nationals to remain legally in the country.

In order to increase immigration arrests, the Trump administration also put pressure on local officials to coordinate with ice. Based on article 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the administration has even delegated certain immigration powers to local police, including the right to make immigration arrests and to detect people for expulsion.

In one case in early May, the Tennessee road patrol coordinated with ice in a traffic scan that led to nearly 100 immigration arrests. Another large -scale operation in Massachusetts in early June saw the ice perform 1,500 arrests.

Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an 18 -year -old high school student, was swept away in this 18 -year -old arrest. His arrest sparked demonstrations and a conviction in the hometown of Gomes Da Silva in Milford, Massachusetts.

Cardenas highlighted these demonstrations, as well as the bidding of support for Arias Cristobal, as proof of an increasing rejection of Trump’s immigration policies.

“I think we are going to see more and more behind the Americans,” she said.

“That said, I believe that this administration intends to implement their plans … And if the congress gives them more money, it will continue our communities.”