Bummer: Arrests Of Illegal Aliens With No Criminal Records Doubles Under Trump

According to Merriam-Webster

Illegal – not according to or authorized by law : unlawful, illicit;

According to the Washington Post

Immigration arrests rose 32.6 percent in the first weeks of the Trump administration, with newly empowered federal agents intensifying their pursuit of not just undocumented immigrants with criminal records, but also thousands of illegal immigrants who have been otherwise law-abiding.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 21,362 immigrants, mostly convicted criminals, from January through mid-March, compared to 16,104 during the same period last year, according to statistics requested by The Washington Post.

Arrests of immigrants with no criminal records more than doubled to 5,441, the clearest sign yet that President Trump has ditched his predecessor’s protective stance toward most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Otherwise law abiding, except for the part of being in the United States against the law.

Advocates for immigrants say the unbridled enforcement has led to a sharp drop in reports from Latinos of sexual assaults and other crimes in Houston and Los Angeles, and terrified immigrant communities across the United States. A prosecutor said the presence of immigration agents in state and local courthouses, which advocates say has increased under the Trump administration, makes it harder to prosecute crime.

And well they should be terrified, as they are unlawfully present. They are not authorized by law to be here. People engaged in breaking the law should be fearful.

“My sense is that ICE is emboldened in a way that I have never seen,” Dan Satterberg, the top prosecutor in Washington state’s King County, which includes Seattle, said Thursday. “The federal government, in really just a couple of months, has undone decades of work that we have done to build this trust.”

And right there is a major problem: a duly sworn member of the Justice system, tasked with upholding and enforcing The Law, is ignoring the law in order to coddle illegal aliens. Heck, King County has authorized the use of $750,000 in taxpayer money that was left-over from 2016 to help protect illegal aliens.

In January, he issued executive orders that made all undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation. In February, Trump’s press secretary said the “shackles” were off immigration and border agents, whose unions backed Trump in the election.

“I think the instruction is, ‘Go about your business in terms of apprehending immigrants,” said Joanne Lin, senior legislative counsel with the ACLU. “It’s wherever they can find them.”

Well, yes, that is the job of ICE, and federal government, to catch and deport anyone who is unlawfully present in the U.S. Why is that so hard to understand?