The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will ensure a nationwide crackdown on families ordered to deport from the country by court order, President Donald Trump announced recently.
While the arrests of immigrant families have not been an unusual sight by any measure during Trump’s administration, the decision to announce ICE’s proposed crackdown ahead of time is a show of intent, political experts say.
Reports from South and Central America in recent weeks have suggested that a wave of migrants might be heading toward the highly-fortified US border, and analysts argue that the concentrated wave of arrests scheduled for this weekend is a measure to deter them from seeking refuge in the country.
Trump had previously envisioned the plan to go through in June, though it became subject to postponement due to unknown reasons.
Lawmakers from the Democratic Party, meanwhile, have expressed their concern regarding the measure, voicing their reservations about the conditions such families would be kept in during the course of their detention, having earlier derided sanitary levels at detention centres across the border as unsatisfactory.
Further, the party urged immigrant families under the purview of the forthcoming clampdown to not open their doors unless they were presented with a court-issued warrant.
Human rights authorities, both, within and outside the United States, have brought into question ICE’s actions consistently since Trump’s hardliner immigration stance truly started taking shape through policies in early 2017.
Chief among the concerns has been the separation of children from their families, with cursory to little information than provided about the whereabouts of the other to either.
Moreover, activists have highlighted the overcrowding that is the bane of many such centres, and how detained individuals are given neither proper legal counsel nor the resources to arrange a factual defence in time for their final deportation court hearings.