Bad hombres.” Those are the people Donald Trump says he is targeting for deportation under his immigration policy – the people he calls “illegal aliens”, the gangbangers, violent criminals and drug dealers who threaten public safety and undermine national security.
But a very different pattern is emerging on the ground. In communities from Maryland to California and Oregon, immigration lawyers are reporting that individuals are being picked up with minimal or no criminal records who pose no risk at all to anyone.
More than 90% of removal proceedings initiated in the first two months of the Trump administration have been against people who have committed no crime at all other than to be living in the country without permission. Early figures on deportation arrests show that the number of people with no criminal record who have been picked up has doubled, dragging people who were previously considered harmless into the deportation net.
William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that Trump had clearly widened the focus, emboldening federal agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in turn to expand their activities. “The Trump administration has expanded deportation priorities to anyone with a removal order, even where there are good reasons not to execute it.”
Bruce Coane, an immigration attorney operating out of Florida and Texas, pointed to a gulf between Trump’s rhetoric and practice. “The president says one thing and his homeland security officials in the field do something different. He says he is focused on serious criminals but Ice is deporting anyone who is undocumented.”
Ice told the Guardian that it is prioritizing cases that fall into seven categories, from those charged with a criminal offence to individuals who “pose a risk to public safety or national security”. But the agency pointedly added that “while criminal aliens and those who pose a threat to public safety will continue to be a focus, DHS [Department of Homeland Security] will NOT exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and removal from the United States.”
In other words, no one is exempt.
To explore the human toll of what appears to be a nascent but potentially significant redirection in immigration efforts, the Guardian contacted four families who have been tapped for deportation. Here are their stories:
Angel Ortiz, aged six, was getting ready to go to school when he saw Ice agents take away his father. Now whenever he watches Law & Order on TV he points at the screen and yells: “Those guys kidnapped my daddy!”
His father, also named Angel Ortiz, was getting into his car to go to work on a construction site last month when federal officials turned up looking for someone else. They asked Ortiz if he knew the man, and when he said no they checked his ID and found that he had entered the US illegally in 2000 and in 2008 had been caught drink-driving, for which he completed a spell of community service.
The Ice agents put him into an unmarked car and, under the eyes of his children – the younger Angel and his 14-year-old sister Adriana – they drove him away. The last time the kids and his wife, Francis, saw him was on 19 March.
In the process, an ordinary American family was shattered. Francis and the kids are all US citizens, and they live in a townhouse in Gaithersburg, Maryland. None of their neighbors knew Ortiz was undocumented – they only found out when he disappeared and his car stayed unusually in the drive.
Ortiz was known locally for his routines. Every morning for years he would leave for work at about 5.30am, stopping off at Dunkin’ Donuts without fail. He would return home in the afternoon to look after the children while Francis worked in accounts in a local business.
At weekends the family would go to the mall or movies. They’d have summer holidays at the beach – they couldn’t leave the country as Ortiz didn’t have a passport, but that was about the only thing that set them apart.
“There was nothing different about us. Just a regular family,” Francis Ortiz said.
Last month, Ortiz was put on a plane and sent back to Honduras, his native country that he hadn’t seen for 17 years. He’s living with his sister in the capital, Tegucigalpa, jobless and penniless, grieving the loss of his kids.
“It’s a hard time for me,” he says, speaking from Honduras. “I’m suffering emotionally and economically too – I’ve lived for years as a responsible working father, and now I can’t.”
Young Angel also spoke to the Guardian. “Ice police got my dad,” the six-year-old said. “It’s different now. I can’t play soccer with him.”
The Ortizes have already clocked up $16,000 in legal fees, and are being advised it could take five years or more before the elder Angel can make it back to the US with papers intact. “Five years!” exclaims Francis Ortiz. “I could suffer one or two, but five! Come on! I tell you, Trump is destroying my family.”
(TheGuardian US)
