Trump immigration policies are also affecting Black communities, officials and activists say
For those who think the Trump administration’s immigration policies are only targeting Latino communities, Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost would like to set you straight.
Maxwell said recently that thousands of Black people, who like him are of Black and Latino descent, are experiencing fear as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and state and local law enforcement arrest people regardless of their legal immigration status.
“I see it very prevalent in my community here from Orlando, Florida, with our Haitian community that is being targeted, and also with Black Latinos that are being targeted,” Frost said during a panel discussion at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s legislative conference in Washington, D.C.
The discussion came on the day that Des Moines Public Schools superintendent Ian Roberts, who is Guyanese, was detained. School district officials said they had no information on why he was being held.
Frost questioned the need for ICE.
“The fact of the matter is that we have other federal law enforcement to help ensure that we have an orderly and humane immigration process at the federal level,” he said. “Creating a whole agency to literally go to our communities and now en masse and terrorize our people, I think is not needed.”
President Donald Trump has authorized National Guard troops to take over law enforcement duties in Washington D.C., and dispatched them to cities led by Black Democratic mayors, including Los Angeles and Memphis, while weighing whether to send troops to Baltimore, Chicago and New Orleans.
Some Republican governors such as Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia and Mike DeWine of Ohio were quick to send their National Guard units to D.C., while Republican Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee deployed troops to Memphis, his state’s second largest city, in aid of Trump’s orders.
Haddy Gassama, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said people need to know the laws in their states.
Gassama said local and state agencies can participate in 287g agreements with ICE, allowing the federal agency to delegate certain tasks to state and local law enforcement officials such as executing warrants in their jails and identifying and beginning removal proceedings against individuals arrested by local law enforcement.
“The Trump administration has said that their goal is to, just this year alone, detain and potentially deport up to 100,000 immigrants. They’re well on their way to that goal,” Gassama said. “Currently, there are over 60,000 immigrants in detention. It’s almost flipped on its head where it is using immigration policies to expand the mass incarceration system.”
Panelists also urged conference participants to vote.
“If you don’t vote, you’re dishonoring the legacy of people who sacrificed, paid their lives so that we would have opportunities to participate in [a] democracy that they did not,” former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said during a discussion Friday morning with Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.)
“This is not a non-contact sport,” said Holder, who is chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “We just can’t watch television and yell at Fox News or something, or agree with MSNBC, [or] whatever. You got to be doing more than that. Got to be engaged.”
This story was originally produced by News From The States, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.