The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has authorized this Tuesday the federal law enforcement agencies to arrest illegal immigrants and carry out police operations in places considered sensitive, such as churches, hospitals or schools.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in schools and churches in the United States to avoid being arrested. The Trump Administration will not limit our brave law enforcement and expects them to use common sense,” said the Department of Homeland Security, led by the acting secretary, Benjamine Huffman.
The objective is to “catch foreign criminals, including murderers and rapists, who have entered illegally” in the United States. The new administration has also issued a second directive that includes the gradual elimination of the programs that allow migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba or Haiti to enter the country “for humanitarian reasons.”
Although it has not detailed further on the matter, the Department of Homeland Security has stressed that it will be studied “case by case.” “The Biden-Harris Administration abused the humanitarian program to indiscriminately allow 1.5 million migrants to enter our country,” he added.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service established a policy in 2011 that prevented agents from carrying out arrests in sensitive places, although it allowed police operations in certain cases, such as a threat to national security, for terrorism reasons or for imminent risk of death or physical harm to people or property.
This new policy of the Trump Administration could stoke fear in migrant communities and even prevent many children from going to school due to possible arrests. Arrests could even occur at weddings, funerals or pro-immigration demonstrations attended by undocumented people, according to NBC News last December.
