Omar: I Fear People Will Get Profiled Under Trump Deportation, Lots of MN’s Counties Don’t Use ICE’s System to ID

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) expressed concern that law enforcement will “pull people over that look like they might be an immigrant” to enforce deportation operations by the Trump administration and also stated that “In Minnesota, there are so many counties where the county does not have a relationship with ICE, where they are not identifying folks through that system. So, we have to find ways to implement programs and carry out protections and boost advocacy and fight like we’ve never fought before to make sure our communities remain safe and stable.”

Omar stated, [relevant remarks begin around 29:50] “[W]hen he talks about deportation, he’s talking about deporting people with their children who were born in the United States. That is — nearly 50% of everyone that is undocumented in this country has at least one child, right? Mixed family — mixed-status families are very common in the United States. That is uprooting a sixteen-year-old that is in high school, planning for the college that they’re going to go to and sending them to a country they know nothing about and have not been [to]. That is what he is planning to do to Americans. And that is not only going to destabilize so many communities, but it will create an outright fear in so many people, because how are you even going to find people? How do you create the distinction? Are they going to pull people over that look like they might be an immigrant? Are they going to snatch people from their workplaces? Are they going to snatch people from their places of worship?”

She added that if Trump tries to go forward with deporting mixed-status families, “we do what we have done in his previous term. This is why we were warning people we knew what he is capable of. We resist. We work with our attorney generals in states, we work with our governors, we work with our mayors, we have to do everything that we can. In Minnesota, there are so many counties where the county does not have a relationship with ICE, where they are not identifying folks through that system. So, we have to find ways to implement programs and carry out protections and boost advocacy and fight like we’ve never fought before to make sure our communities remain safe and stable.”

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