Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rose 36 percent in the first three months of President Donald Trump’s term, a figure that will continue to increase as immigrant advocacy organizations warned today.
“This is the clearest sign of what awaits us, these agents are abiding by the orders of the White House and so far the true persecution is beginning,” Salvador Sanabria, director of the El Rescate group, told EFE.
According to ICE figures, between January 20, Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the US, and on April 29, Immigration agents arrested 41,898 people across the country, that is, more than 10,000 of what Was recorded in the same period in 2016, when 31,128 were recorded.
Although ICE officials and the White House have said that at the time of the deportations the priority is people with criminal records, some activists believe that the target is generally any undocumented.
“Everyone is at risk, that’s clear, changing priorities even affects those who have some protection like DACA students,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, director of Voces de la Frontera, Wisconsin.
For his part, Sanabria believes the situation will worsen as the federal government completes the selection process of the thousands of Immigration agents Trump promised to bolster border security.
“We fear that things will come back like the 1980s, when they raided businesses or neighborhoods. That’s what we should be prepared for,” he said.
The community leader alluded to reports of arrests on agricultural farms such as those in Pennsylvania, where 12 undocumented immigrants were arrested, as well as arrests made in courts and courts.
Although ICE agents in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties carried out the largest number of arrests (2,273) in February The increase over the previous year is only 5%.
Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said most of the federal agency’s arrests in Southern California focus on people with criminal records.
For Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborers Network (NDLON), the current White House Administration is using the “deportation machine” he inherited from former President Barack Obama and warns that if Trump expands the system the number of arrests and deportations They will have no precedent.
“The only solution is that we unite as a community and resist, there is no other option,” he said.
