As the world eagerly awaits new details on Trump's future immigration policies, organizations around the country like the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) are being flooded with requests from illegal immigrants for legal assistance in drafting temporary guardianship papers just in case ICE officials raid their places of work. According to CHIRLA officials, they've seen a 100x spike in requests for legal assistance compared to last year. Per Reuters:
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) advocacy group has been receiving about 10 requests a day from parents who want to put in place temporary guardianships for their children, said spokesman Jorge-Mario Cabrera. Last year, the group said it received about two requests a month for guardianship letters and notarization services.
At the request of a nonprofit organization, the National Lawyers Guild in Washington D.C. put out a call this week for volunteer attorneys to help immigrants fill out forms granting friends or relatives the right to make legal and financial decisions in their absence.
In New Jersey, immigration attorney Helen Ramirez said she is getting about six phone calls a day from parents. Last year, she said, she had no such calls.
"Their biggest fear is that their kids will end up in foster care," Ramirez said.
Meanwhile, the alleged "panic" comes as ICE and other immigration officials say that families, consistent with policies under the Obama administration, will be granted access to lawyers and consular officials to help parents execute powers of attorney for their children to the extent it become necessary.
For parents of U.S. citizens who are ordered removed, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency "accommodates, to the extent practicable, the parents' efforts to make provisions" for their children, said ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez. She said that might include access to a lawyer, consular officials and relatives for detained parents to execute powers of attorney or apply for passports and buy airline tickets if the parents decide whether or not to take the children with them.
During the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, the likelihood of both parents being deported was slim, Capps said.
He doubts there will be a huge shift under Republican Trump toward deporting both parents.
"The odds are still very low but not as low as they were – and this is just the beginning of the administration," he said.
About five million children under the age of 18 are living with at least one parent who is in the country illegally, according to a 2016 study by MPI. Most of the children, 79 percent, were U.S. citizens, the study found.
Of course, in today's era of 'fake news' it's often difficult to decipher fact from fiction. Just a couple of weeks ago the media was simply beside themselves after news surfaced that Trump had allegedly, and quite suddenly, launched a "crackdown" on illegal immigrants that resulted in 680 detentions in a matter of a week.
That said, any one of the media outlets covering the story could have easily looked at "removal" statistics published by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and within seconds realized that Obama removed, on average, 4,620 illegal immigrants per week during his last year in office, or roughly 580% more than the 680 detentions that caused much of the progressive left to suffer a nervous breakdown in mid-February.
So was the media just too lazy to check the facts or just too willing to ignore the facts in an effort to push the latest 'fake news' narrative? Bit of both, maybe? As always, we leave it to readers to decide.