The US has been targeting not only people who have violated the law but many who are in the country legally
The Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration policy has led to a crackdown on immigrant communities that, increasingly, targets not just people who have violated immigration law but many immigrants who are in the US legally.
Throughout the past year, policies – many of which are actively being challenged in court – amount to the government attempting to strip people of their status, with countless numbers suddenly finding themselves undocumented, or about to be, and under threat of deportation.
“They are looking for every way to make the undocumented population as enormous as possible,” Ghita Schwarz, litigation director for the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), said of the federal authorities, as they seek to meet mass deportation targets. She added: “It’s the great de-legalization campaign, rendering vulnerable to detention and removal millions of people who were not here unlawfully.”
Here are the main ways Trump is undermining legal immigrants:
