A Reuters exclusive revealed Friday the actions that President Trump is taking to fulfill his promise to deport illegal aliens by speeding up the process for criminal illegals.
According to the report, the Trump administration is temporarily reassigning immigration judges to cities with large populations of illegal aliens. A list of cities named New York, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, San Francisco, Baltimore, Bloomington in Minnesota, El Paso and Harlingen in Texas, Imperial in California, Omaha and Phoenix, Arizona.
Trump has already shifted the focus of deportations from the Obama era, where only illegal aliens with serious criminal offenses were targeted, to include those with any simple criminal charge.
The cities slated to receive more judges have more than half of the 18,013 pending immigration cases that involve undocumented immigrants facing or convicted of criminal charges, according to data provided by the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review.
The Justice Department will send immigration judges as soon as Monday to the border to speed up deportations as well, says Reuters.
Trump is also moving on his promise to build a border wall by seeking billions from Congress to fund the beginning of construction. He persists in claiming that he will get Mexico to pay for it. Critics like Univision's Jorge Ramos say that the wall won't work to keep out illegals, and that it is a waste of time and money.
He has also been successful in shutting down some "sanctuary city" policies just through the threat of cutting off federal funds to such cities, but others say that they will fight the government to allow them to harbor illegal aliens from deportations. Some liberal faith leaders are also organizing "underground railroad" safe houses to hide illegal aliens.
Border security supporters also enthusiastically point to an "unprecedented drop" in illegal crossings at the border reported by enforcement officials as a sign that even Trump's talk on immigration is driving away illegal aliens.
Trump also appears to be mulling over the idea of allowing some kind of amnesty to remain in place for Obama's "DREAMers," the recipients of his executive order on illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. as children.
Carlos Garcia
Staff Writer
