The White House is supercharging its deportation efforts again, and the timing shouldn’t go unnoticed.
According to The New York Times, daily immigration arrests have recently doubled as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers put in seven-day workweeks to sweep the streets of people they’ve deemed deportable.
Over 10,000 immigrants were reportedly detained within a five-day span, with many being targeted at immigration check-ins, traffic stops, and simply while walking down the street. This increase in quota—which demands agents to hit 2,000 arrests a day—comes from the White House, according to the Times.
The timing of this deportation push speaks volumes. The documented and undocumented immigrant communities in the U.S. have been in mourning and shock.
Last week, The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to rip away Temporary Protected Status from Haitian and Syrian immigrants, enabling Trump to deport them more easily and leaving them vulnerable to his will. Many are now scrambling to secure a different type of protected status before ICE comes knocking on their doors.
“Now we are vulnerable, we are exposed to detention and to deportation,” Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center, told Daily Kos in a phone call this past weekend.
“I think now the type of life they have here just goes away because of the ruling of the Supreme Court,” he continued. “Even though we have all types of issues with racism, discrimination, and bigotry here in the U.S. … at least they were able to work and provide for the kids and for themselves.”
In back-to-back blows, Venezuelans—many of whom in the U.S. are also dealing with uncertainty after losing TPS—also experienced a major natural disaster in their home country. Last week, the South American nation was hit with twin earthquakes that toppled buildings and has claimed at least 2,295 lives—a death count that is expected to rise. Additionally, nearly 50,000 people are unaccounted for.
As Venezuelans and other members of the immigrant community gather to grieve and support one another, there is the concern of ICE targeting them too.
Packing boxes full of diapers, tampons, and canned food in Downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, multiple Venezuelans told Daily Kos of the collective call to action to help in any way they could back home.
Feeding the volunteers with homemade Venezuelan street hot dogs, a man named Hector told Daily Kos that his wife’s parents are presumed dead, lost in the quakes. His wife, Kelly Montano, has turned her restaurant, Full Arepas, into a donation center.
Another man, Alonso, fled the country following political persecution and has multiple family members missing or dead, he said.
But as a shipping container was filled to the brim with donations and as volunteers worked until sundown, ICE was already targeting others within the community, according to the news outlet El País.
The White House’s decision to ramp up immigration arrests flies in the face of increased public opposition to ICE. Celebrities and hit songs are speaking out on the injustice, and Republicans have reportedly been urged to drop the phrase “mass deportation.” It’s no longer a secret that the government’s deportation campaign is unpopular.
Even Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin—who succeeded Kristi Noem—clearly aimed to get deportations out of daily headlines.
However, in the face of tragedy, these immigration arrests and deportations aren’t going unnoticed. As it stands, the White House has not expressed any interest—despite Daily Kos’ repeated inquiries—in slowing down in the face of a tragic natural disaster.
Published with permission of Daily Kos
