American immigration lawyer Brad Bernstein commented on the ongoing ICE crackdowns all across the country and observed that the pattern of ICE arrests has changed. They are not raiding criminals; they are lifting undocumented people from workplaces, airports, Green Card interviews. Berstein claimed that when President Donald Trump took office, 46% of ICE arrests involved someone with a criminal conviction, but by mid-October, the percentage dropped to 28. “If the idea is to get rid of criminals, that’s not what’s happening. But if the idea is to get rid of people who don’t look like me, that’s what is happening,” the immigration lawyer said. Many people who are being arrested and will now be thrown out of the US have a traffic ticket against them as the maximum offence and zero criminal record. “The new federal ICE crackdowns look like they’re aimed at violent criminals, but the numbers tell an entirely different story. In major operations across Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and Massachusetts, more than half of the people arrested had zero criminal history. In Washington DC, that number jumped to 84 percent. Violent convictions were almost nonexistent: 2 to 6 percent, depending on the city. Nationwide, ICE has shifted away from arresting people with criminal backgrounds,” Bernstein said. These immigration raids are taking place with big deployments of officials in military gear but they are arresting people with no criminal record, the lawyer said. ICE is targeting city after city and arresting en masse, spreading fear among immigrants. While this has been going on for quite some time, the pace has now picked up after the DC shooting that prompted the administration to ban any immigration requests from 19 countries of concern. Nationals from these countries got their citizenship ceremonies canceled which is the last step before getting US citizenship and are left clueless about what lies for them in future.
75,000 people with no criminal records arrested this year
UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project has revealed that ICE arrested nearly 75,000 undocumented immigrants with no criminal records in the first nine months of Trump’s administration. ICE deported nearly 200,000 people in the first seven months, with total removals reaching around 350,000 including self-deportations.
