Keeping retirement weird. Immigration raids and a citizen’s responsibility in the Time of Trump
Our guest on yesterday’s Hitting Left radio show with the Klonsky brothers was dean of the Chicago City Council’s Hispanic and Progressive Caucuses, Alderman Ricardo Muñoz of the 22nd Ward.
The 22nd Ward includes Little Village, home to tens of thousands of Mexican immigrants in a city that Alderman Muñoz accurately describes as the Mexican Capital of the Midwest.
The issue of Trump’s immigration policies was a center piece to our conversation with the Alderman.
Only the day before a three-judge federal panel upheld the stay of the Executive Order Tump has issued banning Muslim entry into the United States.
Our conversation shifted to how Trump’s immigration policies would impact the nearly one million Mexicans and their families that live in Chicago.
Hours later this happened.
U.S. immigration authorities arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least a half-dozen states this week in a series of raids that marked the first large-scale enforcement of President Trump’s Jan. 26 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally.The raids, which officials said targeted known criminals, also netted some immigrants who did not have criminal records, an apparent departure from similar enforcement waves during the Obama administration that aimed to just corral and deport those who had committed crimes.Trump has pledged to deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Last month he also made a change to the Obama administration’s policy of prioritizing deportation for convicted criminals, substantially broadening the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all.Immigration officials confirmed that agents this week raided homes and workplaces in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, the Los Angeles area, North Carolina and South Carolina, netting hundreds of people. But Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said they were part of “routine” immigration enforcement actions. ICE dislikes the term “raids,” and prefers to say authorities are conducting “targeted enforcement actions.”
In Chicago, using perfect Trump-speak, ICE officials denied the raids were raids. ICE Keeping retirement weird. Immigration raids and a citizen’s responsibility in the Time of Trump. | Fred Klonsky: