Punishing sanctuary cities, that protect their undocumented immigrants, promoting deportation, and harsher punishment on illegal immigrants are just some of Trump's proposed bills. His orders are controversial, make local police duties harder, and even go against human rights.
Storified by biene · Mon, Nov 20 2017 19:56:09
Trump’s executive actions were not always successful and caused frustration among fellow conservatives who had expected much more in motion. Nothing big has happened so far in the legal system concerning immigration law on refugees, border security, and interior enforcement, since the opposition is strong and public opinion too generally seems to value immigration according to a 2016 Gallup poll. 72 percent of Americans denote immigration to be a “good thing” for the United States, and a clear majority of 84 percent supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants if specific pretenses are met.
These poll numbers display how American society is in favor of immigrantion and does not fear to live in an “unsafe city” that supports their illegal immigrants. After all, politics should reflect public will and opinion, hence, it is good that Donald Trump’s immigration bills were not enacted or at least not in their full extent. Surely, solutions to the topic of illegal immigration must be found, but simply deporting them and banning federal funding for cities is not the answer.
These poll numbers display how American society is in favor of immigrantion and does not fear to live in an “unsafe city” that supports their illegal immigrants. After all, politics should reflect public will and opinion, hence, it is good that Donald Trump’s immigration bills were not enacted or at least not in their full extent. Surely, solutions to the topic of illegal immigration must be found, but simply deporting them and banning federal funding for cities is not the answer.
Trump has always voiced a strong opinion on immigrants, especially during his campaign; he labelled illegal immigrants as well as some legal immigrants as potentially dangerous such as suggested in the giph above. Further, he used the immigration issue as a major campaign topic to play on people's fears, and after his inauguration, he signed executive orders on "refugees, border security, and immigration enforcement". Trump also revoked two programs to protect undocumented children and their parents from the strict federal laws on deportation. President Trump's actions concerning immigration obviously do not reflect the general opinion of the country; they also discriminate, even insult immigrants and do not offer a progressive or humane solution. With his bills, he attacks a significantly big amount of people living in the United States, while also stigmatizing all immigrants to be bad people. Before drawing such conclusions one should consider the outreach of these bills to understand the magnitude of them.
Therefore, we should be familiar with the numbers and facts about immigrants in the United States. Immigrants make up 13 percent of the U.S. population; together with their U.S.-born children the number rises to 27 percent, according to Census Bureau data from 2015. 43 million out of 321 million people are immigrants. The number of illegal immigrants in the country amounts to about 11.1 million and has declined since the 2008 economic crisis. 2.35 million of them live in the state California; next on the chart are Texas followed by Florida according to estimated numbers from 2014. Customs and Border Protection also reported a decrease of border crossings by 36 percent compared to last year, which may be due to President Trump’s policies. More than half of the undocumented immigrants have lived in the country for more than 10 years and nearly one third have U.S.-born children, according to the Pew Research Center. Most of the policies in place right now focus on border protection.
With that in mind, we can evaluate the two major bills proposed by President Trump. One of the bills is called the ‘No Sanctuary for Criminals Act’. It would take away federal funding from so-called “sanctuary cities” if the municipal entities do not cooperate with the federal immigration enforcement in locating and deporting illegal immigrants. Moreover, the bill would allow victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants to take legal steps against the cities. It would end any municipal limitations on cooperating with federal immigration officers, and law enforcement officers could not be restricted to inquire immigration statuses of residents. Those bills propose a really negative picture on immigrants and basically diminish all illegal immigrants to be criminals that need to be deported immediately.
Now, what exactly are “Sanctuary Cities”? There is no clear, universal definition for it, but one could describe it as a city or other jurisdiction where local authorities do not enforce or help with federal immigration policy. More than 300 jurisdictions are considered as sanctuaries. That includes whole states, counties, regions, and cities. Below is a map showing where these sanctuary jurisdictions are located.
One example of a sanctuary city would be Chicago. The city launched the sanctuary status already in 1985 under mayor Harold Washington. In 2006, the city council made sanctuary policy laws, such as: ”The city’s policy is to ensure that all of its residents be able to access city services to which they are eligible or entitled, without regard to their immigration status under federal law;…”. In 2011, Chicago denied federal immigration detainers. Another example is California, where officials have passed laws to forbid jurisdictions from using public funds to sponsor federal immigration enforcement actions. The state also allows undocumented immigrants to apply for drivers’ licenses, receive in-state tuition at universities, and obtain other benefits.
Many local police officers favor their jurisdiction’s policies because they rely on immigrant residents in their communities to report crimes. Having to work together more closely with the federal immigration agents would only make their jobs harder because none of the undocumented immigrants would dare to come forward anymore. Resident cooperation and a postitive attitude towards local police is of tremendous importance for successful crime prevention or investigation.
That is one of the reasons why several cities have filed lawsuits against the retention of federal money. In the end, the bill was temporarily blocked in April 2017 by a federal judge, arguing that only Congress had the authority over such spending matters. Other reasons can be analyzed by looking at some statements of the Republican Party and how they describe the situation.
“This is about protecting law-abiding citizens and getting criminals off of our streets, plain and simple," quote from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. – Chicago tribune
“Mr. Trump and many Republicans say sanctuary cities allow criminals to go free, leading to crimes that could have been avoided if the immigrants had been deported.” -quote from the NewYork Times
“Mr. Trump and many Republicans say sanctuary cities allow criminals to go free, leading to crimes that could have been avoided if the immigrants had been deported.” -quote from the NewYork Times
These utterances suggest that all illegal immigrants are automatically criminals and evil people wanting to harm American citizens. It sounds as if these undocumented immigrants main goal was to hurt others after coming to a new country, which is very unrealistic since most immigrants come to the U.S. in search for a job and a better life, or to be with their family. Those reasons strongly correlate to the American dream, the praised virtues of freedom and the pursuit of happiness. So, this one-size-fits-all approach of the Republicans quoted above is not at all close to reality.
The video below was posted by the Human Rights Watch; a nonprofit, nongovernmental human rights organization dedictated to defending the rights of people worldwide and to uphold human dignity. They posted a video, which is a response to Donald Trump's immigration legislation, and explain how these bills would treat illegal immigrants even more unfairly. It also emphasizes the fact that laws currently in order already abuse immigrants rights. Especially the section starting at 2.44 highlights how immigrants are not strangers but part of our community.
The video below was posted by the Human Rights Watch; a nonprofit, nongovernmental human rights organization dedictated to defending the rights of people worldwide and to uphold human dignity. They posted a video, which is a response to Donald Trump's immigration legislation, and explain how these bills would treat illegal immigrants even more unfairly. It also emphasizes the fact that laws currently in order already abuse immigrants rights. Especially the section starting at 2.44 highlights how immigrants are not strangers but part of our community.
Let alone the fact that a human rights organization has to advocate for human rights in the United States, which is a developed, industrial country that takes great pride in citizen's freedom, equal rights for all, and giving everybody who works hard the same chance, is puzzleing. This outcry makes a claim that cannot be ignored. However, Trump proposed another stunning bill.
The second bill is named after Kate Steinle. She was 32 years old when she was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant in a touristic spot of San Francisco. The bill is an answer to this and many other cases. It increases punishments for convicted and deported immigrants reentering the country illegally.
On July 1st 2015, Kathryn Steinle was killed by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national, who had been convicted with several felonies and had been deported 5 times back to Mexico. Just before Steinle’s killing, Lopez-Sanchez had been released after a 4-year long prison sentence for illegally reentering the country. He was turned over to San Francisco Law Enforcement Officials because of a marihuana-related charge which was officially dismissed. Federal Law Enforcement officials requested to keep him in custody even though he had legally served his sentence and was absolved of all further charges. Still, accusations were brought forth against the local enforcement officials and the case was media-hyped to stirr up anger and hate against illegal immigrants among citizens. Additionally, the administration "twisted the facts (...) to stoke America's xenophobia"; it was mere exploitation of the case to support Donald Trump's order to punish illegal immigrants more severely. That is also reflected in the following twitter posts.
How about just opening our borders to every drug dealer, Terrorist, criminal in the world! Oh that’s right you already did that!#kateslaw https://t.co/RaFLLD1rSe
@PWilliamson2006 @FoxNews Well then let's pass immigration reform. Pass #kateslaw how many more terrorist attacks do we need to see. How many more US Citizens killed
Opponents also state that it undermines a false notion of undocumented immigrants as criminals and that it would punish those who come to the United States as refugees from persecution. In the end, the bill was rejected by the Senate and hence, not enacted, which ensured a victory to the Democrats.
But those two bills were not the only action concerning immigration Donald Trump pursued since he is in office. His executive orders are an attempt to walk the walk after his campaign focusing on illegal immigration. One of the first orders concerned building a physical wall at the border of Mexico which failed miserably. Another addressed ‘terrorism prevention’ and banned citizens of the Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the United States of America for at least 90 days. It also suspended Syrians indefinitely, and stopped the U.S. refugee program for 120 days.
