Immigration plans from President Donald Trump’s administration have increased concerns about racial profiling in the U.S., according to reports.
“This is a warning to all criminal illegal aliens: We’re coming for you,” said Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in a Saturday X post. “And our state partners will hunt you down, arrest and deport you. That’s a promise.”
Earlier this week, Noem announced new nationwide and international multimillion-dollar ads regarding crimes committed by illegal aliens. That announcement said that illegal aliens face fines of nearly $1,000 per day as well as imprisonment and deportation.
Racial profiling is described by the American Civil Liberties Union as “the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion or national origin.”
It said “the federal government’s encouragement of unprecedented raids on immigrant communities and workplaces by local law enforcement in cooperation with federal agencies has targeted Latine communities in particular,” and that “anti-immigrant rhetoric has led to a dramatic increase in hate crimes against and racial profiling of people of color.”
According to a Friday report from the Associated Press, another Trump administration immigration plan to strictly require anyone illegally in the U.S. to register with the government and carry documentation is, in particular, contributing to panic about racial profiling. It said that, in the past “police departments and other law enforcement agencies’ insistence on documentation drove immigrants underground and increased public safety concerns.”
Jose Patiño, vice president of education and external affairs for Aliento, an Arizona-based advocacy organization that supports immigrants without documents said “it creates ambiguity of how you’re going to enforce and identify people who are not in the country (legally),” per the AP. Furthermore, the outlet noted that a federal judge sided with President Donald Trump earlier this month in a lawsuit brought by immigrants’ rights groups over the policy.
“The Trump administration’s Registration requirement for most undocumented immigrants is another hateful tactic in its campaign to cause panic and fear throughout the country,” said the Immigrant Legal Resource Center when the law went into effect on April 11.
The DHS announcement was one of multiple related to immigration released by federal agencies this week. In a Thursday press release, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it issued guidance to all state agencies “directing them to enhance identity and immigration verification practices when determining eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” and the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday that eight Guatemalan nationals had been indicted for smuggling illegal aliens into the U.S.
On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also announced the arrest of a judge over illegal immigration issues, Audacy reported.
“Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction – after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week,” said Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in a Friday X post that was quickly deleted.
Since Trump took office, he has been following through on his campaign promise to be tough on illegal immigration. So much so that his administration admitted to erroneously sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a protected immigrant, to El Salvador, where his is at risk of torture. However, the administration later made claims that Garcia is a gang member.
“At a time of global anxiety about the U.S. economy, a new analysis of data from the American Immigration Council shows how immigrants are contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy,” the council said this week. “Despite this reality, the Trump administration and Congress are on the verge of finalizing a budget that would fund mass detention and deportation.”