By Evaristo Lara
Data from a study conducted by the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) at UCLA in collaboration with Unseen indicate that operations to detain immigrants in the United States focus on Latinos without criminal records and despite not representing any type of threat to national security.
Another fact worth highlighting is that 90% of the arrests of foreigners lacking good status are of Latin origin.
The report emphasizes how, by restricting the due process to which anyone detained by the authorities is entitled or by pressuring them to self-export, the Trump administration has managed to accelerate deportations to levels not seen in decades.
In a segmented manner, the information analyzed shows that the latinos They account for 96% of removals and 91% of all immigration detentions.
In fact, between January and October of last year, more than 126,000 Latinos were expelled from the country.
On the other hand, the proportion of deportees classified as “the worst of the worst” decreased from representing about a third to an eighth of the total number of people expelled from US territory.
Regarding the deportations of people without criminal records, the analysis carried out mentions that they went from appearing as one in five; one in three.
And the most controversial thing is that, A large number of these immigrants, lacking documentation to justify their stay in the nation, were detained in their homes, workplaces and public spaces.
“Deportations are increasing rapidly, but not because the system is focusing on more dangerous people. On the contrary, law enforcement is expanding in ways that disproportionately affect Latino communities and move away from the stated focus of focusing on ‘the worst of the worst,'” noted Paul Ong, director of the UCLA Neighborhood Knowledge Center.
The study also mentions that, by limiting procedural guarantees and access to appeals, the federal government has managed to accelerate the time between the detention and expulsion of Latino immigrants.
Under this approach, the conditions of law enforcement have become more severe, prompting a large number of immigrants to self-deport, which is highly controversial for Melissa Chinchilla, research director at Unseen.
“What we are seeing is not just an increase in deportations, but an extremely racialized system that is being redesigned to prioritize scale and speed over due process and equity. The result is a deportation apparatus that is sweeping away non-criminals, separating families and wreaking havoc on the American economy,” he said.
Keep reading:
• More and more Americans reject ICE operations to detain immigrants
• Why should Trump’s policy of deportation to third countries concern undocumented immigrants?
• Trump cuts good immigration more than irregular immigration in his new mandate
• Trump loses ground among Latino voters over immigration issues
