Sen. Kamala Harris grills Homeland Security head on deportation threats to DACA recip
(For Alipac Archives)
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California
Mar 05, 2020 3:18pm EST by Gabe Ortiz, Daily Kos Staff
During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Kamala Harris pressed acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf about deportation threats to hundreds of thousands of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients should the Supreme Court end the program. Harris cited a recent statement from acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Matthew Albence that the agency has in fact been set to target DACA recipients should the justices side with the Trump administration in a ruling that could come any day now.
“Mr. Secretary, last year Chief Justice Roberts said that the administration has ‘said they’re not going to deport’ DACA recipients and instead ‘work authorization and these other benefits are what’s at stake,’” she told Wolf. “Yet in January, acting ICE director Albence said that ‘if DACA is done away with by the Supreme Court—we can actually effectuate these removal orders.’ So that sounds to me like if the Supreme Court rules in your favor that you’re going to start deporting DACA recipients. Does the administration plan to deport DACA recipients?”
“That would not be our priority, no,” Wolf claimed, but when later asked by Harris if a Supreme Court ruling would change “what you’ve been doing as it relates to DACA recipients that have remained productive law abiding members of their community,” he told her, “Again, it’s hard for me to say yes or no in a blanket. Obviously, they have a certain legality to be here in the U.S. If that is changed, we obviously have to access that. But again, what I’m telling you is—our focus will remain on removing criminals from the general public.”
But we know that what ICE claims before legislators and what it then does outside of a hearing room are two different things, because while Wolf keeps repeating that ICE’s focus “will remain on removing criminals from the general public” (here’s everyone’s regular reminder that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than U.S-born folks), agents assisting in raids have reportedly been told to, as The New York Times reported, “[a]rrest as many undocumented immigrants as possible, and ‘flood the streets,’ as one official involved said his bosses had put it.” Harris was not assuaged by Wolf’s response and continued to press for more clarity.
“Ok, but what I’m trying to understand is this—there are many organizations out there right now who have as their business to concern themselves with the wellbeing of immigrants, who are very concerned and making contingency plans based on what the Supreme Court might rule,” she continued. “I find it very hard to believe that your agency is not also making contingency plans around what might be 3 to 4 scenarios in terms of what the Supreme Court would rule. Are you telling me that you don’t have any contingency plans?”
“No, I’m not saying that,” Wolf responded. “I’m saying that our focus will remain on removing criminals from our community.” But, again, ICE agents have been instructed to go after everyone, and the thuggish agency has time and time again warned that even people who aren’t targets of raids but just happen to be there at the time will also get swept up, in what the agency crassly calls “collateral arrests.” Once again pressing for a definitive response, Harris got Wolf to commit to handing over ICE’s plans “based on what might be the Supreme Court ruling.”
”I will go back to ICE and we will look at that, yes,” Wolf said. “And can you have that to us by the end of next week please?” Harris asked. “Let me check … let me confer with ICE. I have not seen those contingency plans personally, so let me look with ICE and review those—and we’ll get those up,” Wolf replied. “And you’ll get those to the committee?” Harris asked. “We will get those to the committee,” he replied.
Undocumented immigrant youth and their advocates have every reason to be cautious, following reports that ICE had been reopening some DACA recipients’ long-closed cases ahead of a Supreme Court decision, including those of people “who kept their noses clean,” immigration attorney Mo Goldman told CNN. Goldman said that he was so shocked by receiving two notices in as many days that he got in touch with ICE to see if this was a terrible mistake. It wasn’t. "I contacted the office of chief counsel at ICE, to see—they're the ones who file these motions—to see if it was an error. The response was, that it was not and that they are re-calendaring people with DACA,” Goldman said.
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