Americans who originally backed President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign are having a change of heart due to protests, military involvement and the targeting of immigrants without criminal histories, migrant advocates and new polling suggest.
“It seems the deportation operations that set off the protests could alienate many Americans — as could Trump’s latest move to apparently involve troops in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations,” CNN’s Aaron Blake observed. “Americans voted for deportations when a plurality backed Donald Trump — who’d spoken openly about his plans on the trail — last November. But they didn’t necessarily vote for this.”
Sirine Shebaya
Arresting immigrants showing up for routine check-ins at immigration courts and Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices has become “truly shocking” to many Americans, added Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project.
“We are witnessing families being torn apart by masked federal agents; working people being abducted off the streets into unmarked vehicles; civic and labor leaders and everyday people who are protesting peacefully to protect their neighbors, friends, workers and communities being targeted and people being disappeared where their families, attorneys and other community members who are looking for them cannot find them, and have no idea what is happening to them and where they are being taken,” she said.
Some Republicans are expressing alarm at the administration’s detention and deportation tactics, as well.
U.S. Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., appealed to the White House to remember its promise to focus on dangerous immigrants in its expulsion efforts. “I remain concerned about ongoing ICE operations throughout CA and will continue my conversations with the administration — urging them to prioritize the removal of known criminals over the hardworking people who have lived peacefully in the Valley for years.”
Polling data is beginning to unmask American discontent over Trump’s handling of deportation and of immigration as a whole.
“The poll finds the public rating Trump’s immigration policy — including deportations — negatively by a 15 percentage-point margin, 52% to 37%, an issue that was a strong point for him a few months ago,” according to a recent Washington Post/Schar School survey.
A June 11 Quinnipiac poll found 40% of registered voters approve of the president’s handling of deportations, compared to 56% who disapprove. On immigration, 43% approve and 54% disapprove of Trump’s performance.
Yliana Johansen
Particularly alarming to many is the government’s practice of nabbing immigrants from streets, jobs and homes without disclosing where they are being detained or if they have been deported, said Yliana Johansen, chief program officer at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“ICE has used the protests in Los Angeles as an excuse to deny access to counsel. They have been disappearing people,” she said. “We are trying to locate around 80 community members who have been swept up, and half of them do not appear in the ICE detainee locator. What we’re seeing in Los Angeles is an absolute affront and abomination of due process.”
“What we’re seeing in Los Angeles is an absolute affront and abomination of due process.”
Agents are deliberately creating chaos to justify silence and secrecy around detentions, Johansen explained.
“They are separating families and people are being disappeared before they can speak to a lawyer,” she said. “We are at a critical time for immigration policy and a time for all of us to really come together and speak up. This is not acceptable in our democracy.”
A new lawsuit seeks to block the administration’s practice of “disappearing people indefinitely” from the U.S. to El Salvador’s prison system, according to the coalition of legal and advocacy groups that filed Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights et al. v. U.S. Department of State.
Skye Perryman
“Disappearing people into foreign black sites is un-American,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, one of the groups behind the action filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “It is not immigration policy — it’s an abuse of power typical of autocratic regimes and a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal law and human rights.”
And it’s just as wrong for the administration to pay El Salvador up to $20,000 for each deported immigrant, she said. “Our lawsuit makes clear: No president — past or present — can buy their way out of the Constitution to disappear people behind a paywall of impunity. The State Department has acted without proper legal authority and in contravention of multiple constitutional guarantees and federal laws. Our suit urges the court to stop these abuses.”
Secreting immigrants to El Salvador violates the rule of law, said Aaron Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality.
“The Constitution guarantees every single person in this country due process, including LGBTQ asylum seekers. Disappearing them to one of the most sinister prison systems in the world, in a nation from which LGBTQ people are regularly forced to flee persecution, is atrocious and blatantly illegal.”