“But as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office and promises to swiftly deport two million to three million undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, bipartisan experts say they expect a return of the raids that rounded up thousands of workers at carwashes, meatpacking plants, fruit suppliers and their homes during the Bush years.
“If Trump seriously wants to step up dramatically the number of arrests, detentions and removals, I think he has to do workplace raids,” said Michael J. Wishnie, a professor at Yale Law School who represents detainees in civil rights cases.
Since the election, Mr. Trump has suggested that he plans to focus on deporting criminals. “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers,” he told CBS News in November. “We’re getting them out of our country.”
But Mr. Trump’s advisers have said that to promptly reach his target number of deportations, the definition of who is a criminal would need to be broadened. In July 2015, the Migration Policy Institute, a bipartisan think tank, estimated that of the roughly 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, 820,000 had criminal records — a definition Mr. Obama mostly adhered to during his second term, evicting some 530,000 immigrants convicted of crimes since 2013.
Mr. Trump would need to expand the basket to include immigrants living in the United States illegally who have been charged but not convicted of crimes, those who have overstayed visas, those who have committed minor misdemeanors like traffic infractions, and those suspected of being gang members or drug dealers.
Targeting workers for immigration-related offenses, such as using a forged or stolen Social Security number or driver’s license, produced a significant uptick in deportations under Mr. Bush. But the practice was widely criticized for splitting up families, gutting businesses that relied on immigrant labor and taking aim at people who went to work every day, rather than dangerous criminals.”
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There is no statutory or other widely accepted definition of a “criminal alien.” As shown by this article in the NY Times, it could be narrow — covering only those who are actually removable from the United States by virtue of their crimes — or broad — covering anyone who has ever had contact with the criminal justice system and is potentially removable, regardless of whether there was a conviction or whether the crime itself is the ground for removal. For example, “driving with an expired license” is not a ground for removal. But, an undocumented individual arrested for “driving without a license” could be referred by the state or local authorities to the DHS to be placed in removal proceedings before a U.S. Immigration Judge. If the Immigration Judge finds that such an individual has no legal status in the United States, and that individual cannot establish that she or he is entitled to some type of relief from removal, the Immigration Judge must enter an order of removal, regardless of the circumstances of the arrest or the overall equities of the case.
PWS
01/04/17