A day after California declared itself a sanctuary state, the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency said they would start making arrests in the workplace and neighborhoods. Thomas Homan, the director of ICE, said in a statement that Governor Jerry Brown is undermining federal laws.
“ICE will have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at work sites,” said Homan. “Which will inevitably result in additional collateral arrests, instead of focusing on arrests at jails and prisons where transfers are safer for ICE officers and the community.”
ICE would also have to send the arrested individuals to jails in other states because of Jerry Brown’s enacted law that prohibits undocumented immigrants from entering a private prison. Unfortunately, this only separates those under arrest from their families even more.
Brown’s SB-54 initiative, a measure to make California a sanctuary state, will go into effect starting January 1st, 2018. The Californian authorities will not be able to ask anybody about their legal status in the country, and won’t participate in federal operations regarding immigration.
Homan said in a statement Friday, regarding SB-54:
Ultimately, SB54 helps shield removable aliens from immigration enforcement and creates another magnet for more illegal immigration, all at the expense of the safety and security of the very people it purports to protect. – Thomas Homan, ICE
Federal agents have already conducted immigration raids in sanctuary cities in the past, taking the arrested people to another state. This reason is why Jerry Brown had to emphasize the fact that signing SB-54 will not prevent ICE from conducting raids in California.
Brown has yet to comment on the statement released by Thomas Homan, but he mentioned that ICE is free to use federal funding to carry out their missions. But California will take no part in destroying families or in Donald Trump’s fear-mongering agenda.
California’s legislators are committed to protecting the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants in the state. The state also plans on giving scholarships to undocumented students and money for legal counseling to anybody facing deportation.
There are sanctuary cities throughout the United States that ignore Trump’s warnings of withholding federal funds. Many of them have attempted to sue Trump’s administration to prevent him from carrying out his promises of cutting funds to those cities.
Article inspired by The Hill/ICE director signals ‘at-large arrests’ over new California sanctuary law