Trump’s ICE ramped up arrests of non-criminal immigrants in 2017
As promised and sanctioned by President Trump, immigration officers made far more arrests in the 2017 fiscal year than they did the year prior. As a Washington Post report details, however, those arrests have disproportionately targeted immigrants who don’t have criminal convictions. Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 37,734 “non-criminal” immigrants, which includes people without criminal records and those who might face charges—more than twice the number of non-criminal arrests in fiscal year 2016, according to the Post.
As the Trump administration has given ICE more rope, the agency has also issued more arrests for immigrants with criminal records—105,736 in total—but that’s a slighter increase. (ICE made 94,751 such arrests in the 2016 fiscal year.) That refers both to serious convictions like sexual assault and less weighty ones, such as traffic offenses or entering the country illegally. Overall, since Trump took office, ICE arrests have increased by 40%.
So in other words, immigrants who have committed no crime save for living in this country illegally—long considered a civil violation, not a criminal one—are now fairer game for ICE crackdowns.
Fast Company , Read Full Story
(17)
