How mass deportations play a role in Trump’s immigration plans

President Donald Trump ran on a platform of mass deportation. As President, he has already taken action on several executive orders related to immigration enforcement and border security.

In this episode of “Horizonte,” we spoke with Dr. Edward Vargas, Associate Professor at ASU’s School of Transborder Studies, and Delia Salvatierra, an immigration attorney at the Salvatierra Law Group, about the deportation efforts.

“I think there is a tremendous amount of confusion, which is exactly what these policies intend to do,” Salvatierra said. “Folks are scared, folks are afraid, especially people who have been here for a very long time and stand to be swept up in deportation proceedings, to be separated from their American children, not knowing what the long-term outcome goals of the new administration will have as an impact on their daily life.”

Dr. Vargas said he is seeing varying things in different communities, but all aspects of society and our communities are impacted in some way or another by President Trump’s immigration policies.

“The executive orders translate ICE memoranda and those memoranda enforce that the priorities for arresting undocumented people are the following: National security threats, gang members, individuals who are non-citizens who will have committed crimes, individuals who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge and have not departed, and finally those who have been deported and returned illegally and are in the country,” Salvatierra said. “Those are the priorities simply because those, according to the new administration, pose the greatest threat to national security, they are the biggest bang for the buck that they’re going to get on their limited resources in detaining those types of individuals.”

Salvatierra said one of the memos from ICE said they have removed the sensitive destination for arresting individuals. This means ICE can arrest an individual at a school, courthouse, hospital or church.

“I don’t want to be an alarmist, and I do think that after years of experience working as an immigration attorney in this town, I do think that the local office will exercise what the administration has called ‘common sense,'” Salvatierra said. “I don’t think that going to a church on Sunday afternoon in a Latino neighborhood is what ICE is going to do. I think that this directive is giving all the authority that the department has to local offices to arrest someone of interest who meets those priorities that I just announced and also to forewarn churches and nonprofit organizations who’ve in the past harbored undocumented individuals to prevent the department from arresting them. I don’t think that the department will enter without notice or reason or cause [in] schools and churches. I just don’t see it.”

However, Salvatierra does believe it is more likely for ICE officials to go to a courthouse and try to arrest someone they know has committed a crime.

Individuals working in public health and academic literature have been following deportations, separations and the disruptions of families. Dr. Vargas said the immigration executive orders President Trump signed have implications on everyone.

“What’s important here is that it’s not ICE against Latinos, it’s not ICE against immigrants, it’s ICE against all of us because this is our community,” Dr. Vargas said. “I think that’s really important to point out, is that in all aspects of life, this is going to have implications.”

Salvatierra shared she has a packet available in English and Spanish on her website providing advice for what to do in times of an arrest by a local officer or a local ICE agent. It also offers tips on how to create a family plan for parents and their children who are U.S. citizens in the event that the parent is detained and separated from them.