A hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning looked at how mass deportations promised by the incoming Trump administration would impact families, the military and the labor market.
Trump has said mass deportations of the roughly 13 million undocumented people living in the U.S. would begin on his first day in office, and he’d even use the military to carry them out.
In a hearing Tuesday morning retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, told lawmakers the military’s already engaged in over 160 countries and working to counter threats from China and Russia.
“Additional training or deployments to support deportation operations would absolutely harm operational readiness and reduce the military’s ability to counter adversaries or respond to crises in combat,” he said.
Manner said directing resources into a controversial mass deportation mission could also degrade public trust in the military and harm morale among soldiers.
Manner testified alongside DACA recipient and Assistant Philadelphia District Attorney Foday Turay and Patty Morin, the mother of a woman killed by an undocumented immigrant earlier this year.
President-elect Donald Trump has said deportations would begin with immigrants with criminal convictions. But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, told lawmakers those without records would very likely be swept up as well.
“We know this because this is what happened during the first administration, when there were no enforcement priorities, everyone was an enforcement priority. And the single largest group of increased arrests under the Trump administration was people with no criminal record,” he said.
Reichlin-Melnick said over 90% of roughly 13 million undocumented people in the U.S. have no criminal record, and 5 million U.S. citizen children have at least one parent.
“Over 4.8 million people have been here for 25 years or more, with no path to permanent legal status, no line for them to stand in, most undocumented immigrants have spent decades living, working and putting down roots at constant risk of deportation,” he said.
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The ruling comes a day after news broke of the government’s plan to offer legal aid to detained immigrant children through a $150 million contract Burke Law Group — a small Texas-based firm with a co-founder who is a former Trump appointee. -
A notice posted on the Federal Register this week details a $150 million government contract with Burke Law Group to represent unaccompanied immigrant children. A multimillion-dollar contact with nonprofits across the country to do the work expired Friday. -
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is supposed to help people during disasters like floods and fires. But a new report finds the Trump administration diverted FEMA staff at key times to do something very different — help ICE in immigration enforcement. -
The DACA program turned 14 this year. The Obama-era initiative is supposed to give some undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children a work permit and temporary protection from deportation. But community members say that’s no longer the case under President Donald Trump. -
Some 20,000 children alone in the US receive legal aid through the contract — part of a federal program established by Congress almost two decades ago. The contract to do that work expires July 31.
