Trump wants to empower local police to enforce immigration law, raising fears of racial profiling

MSN.com ^ | January 26, 2017 | Matt Zapotosky

[Hadean]

President Trump on Wednesday directed his homeland security secretary to deputize local law enforcement officials to enforce immigration laws, a move that civil rights advocates fear could embolden police to racially profile those they encounter.

The directive came as part of a sweeping executive order that cracks down on people in the country without documentation and the cities that don’t readily hand them over for deportation.

The order instructs the homeland security secretary to broker agreements with governors and local officials so that state and local law enforcement authorities can enforce immigration law. It declares that those places deemed “sanctuary jurisdictions,” for blocking government communication about people’s immigration status, be disallowed from receiving federal grants. And it reinstates a program meant to deport those in the country illegally when they are arrested on other, sometimes minor, offenses.

The directives send “a shot across the bow of immigrant communities and those localities or states that are welcoming of immigrant communities,” said Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Certainly, I think the immediate purpose is to scare immigrant communities and to scare states and localities that have these so-called sanctuary policies, but I do think there’s meat to this,” Wang said. “It’s not an empty letter, and it’s not an empty threat.”

[itsahoot]

Don’t police take an oath to enforce all laws, local, state and federal?

Arizona attempted to enforce Federal immigration law and was sued into submission by Obama.