Donald Trump is being given credit for a new L.A. County policy that lets federal agents “interview [jail] inmates who have committed serious crimes” to gauge if they need to be deported.
“It appears the ‘Trump Effect’ is now having an impact on Los Angeles County policy,” complained Pablo Alvarado, a spokesman for the pro-migrant National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
GOP presidential hopeful Trump has surged to the top of national polls by campaigning for the construction of a wall on the southern border, an end to illegal immigration, and the capture and deportation of dangerous illegals.
The county’s popular pro-American shift, announced Sept 22, came amid public anger after five-time illegal migrant Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez allegedly shot and killed Kathryn Steinle on Pier 14 in San Francisco. “The [new] policy appears politically motivated and impacted by sensationalized tragedy,” Alvarado complained.
Prior to this shift, county officials had imposed rules that stopped federal agents from checking jailhouses for illegal migrants.
Alvarado also said immigration enforcement is bad policy. The policy shift entangles “local criminal law enforcement with the enforcement of outdated, unjust civil immigration laws,” he said.
However, it is not clear if the federal enforcement agency will use their recovered opportunity to repatriate foreign migrants. For several years, President Barack Obama and his deputies have sharply reduced enforcement of immigration law within the United States, and have actually released more than 30,000 foreign criminals back into Americans’ streets.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the new policy requires jail officials to “notify ICE up to seven days before those inmates are being released so immigration agents can pick them up and initiate deportation proceedings.
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