Lexico defined “campesino” as “a peasant farmer.” Often, the word had an informal, derogatory ring to it.
Georgia Democrat Describes Migrants as ‘Peasants’ While Promising Amnesty for Illegal Worker
Latin Post
Dec 15, 2020
Georgia Senate Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff promised amnesty of illegal migrants, including “campesinos,” in a December 13 campaign video, reported Breitbart.
“We need to protect our Dreamers,” Ossoff said, promising path to legal status for migrants.
He pointed to the agricultural sector in the state, particularly the “campesinos who work in the fields, enduring some of the most brutal conditions of labor anywhere in this country to keep America fed.”
Ossoff promised that once federal agents arrive at these farms, it would be to make sure migrants were working in human conditions and paid the minimum wage.
While the promises seem good for the crowd Ossoff was talking to, it did not sit well with Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
He said when he heard the use of “campesinos,” translated to peasant,” during the speech he felt “revulsion,” especially since Ossoff was specifically talking about people working in the country during that part of the speech.
Lexico defined “campesino” as “a peasant farmer” Often, the word had an informal, derogatory ring to it.
“This is the acknowledgement and even the celebration of the importation of a subordinate class [of people],” he said.
Photo: BuzzFeed
He added that while many things were debatable about the U.S., it was clear to him that the country did not have peasants.
For Krikorian, Ossoff’s words mean the importation of a foreign country’s peasant class, and found the prospect “appaling.”
“What Ossoff is saying is that a post-industrial, knowledge-based, continental nation like ours cannot survive without the importation of a foreign peasant class,” he said.
–> Read the rest and see the short video of Ossoff here.
“People will die and American families will be separated forever because of the politically-based policy decisions of these pandering, “progressive” law enforcement officials. These are dangerous Democrats.”
The essay below originally appeared on the subscription website Insider Advantage Georgia on December 8, 2020
December 9, 2020
MetroAtlanta and Georgia were set on their way to becoming much more dangerous places on November 3rd— and the chaos over the alleged fraud in the election should not distract from that truth. Two Democrats in Cobb and Gwinnett counties— Craig Owens and Keebo Taylor– won on promises to end the 287(g) agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that expand their ability to locate, hold and report to ICE illegal aliens who land in their jails.
People will die and American families will be separated forever because of the politically-based policy decisions of these pandering, “progressive” law enforcement officials. These are dangerous Democrats.
According to federal law, all illegal aliens are removable. And the sole reason for deportation, which can only be done by the feds, is violation of the quite liberal American immigration laws. Put another way, illegal aliens are deported because they are illegal aliens.
Contrary to either incredible ignorance or willful falsehoods on the part of Taylor and Owens, neither is the 287(g) program limited by law to applying only to illegal aliens who were arrested for ‘serious’ or ‘violent’ crimes. Put still another way, and from the 287(g) law itself, authority includes “to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States;”
The corporate-funded, anti-borders crowd has long been pushing for the end of all 287(g) agreements. The names of these well-financed, anti-enforcement Georgia groups is far too long to list here, but mentions should include the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute and Atlanta’s GALEO, which enjoys financial support from Coca-Cola Inc. and Mundo Hispanico. (GALEO was founded by one-time MALDEF board member Sam Zamarippa and currently operated by former MALDEF lobbyist Gerardo E. “Jerry” Gonzalez.)
The ethnic-based MALDEF is known for a defiant 1998 statement from co-founder Mario Obledo:“California is going to become a Hispanic state and if anyone doesn’t like it they should leave.” Followed up with “they ought to go back to Europe.”
In 2004, Georgia’s “flagship newspaper,” the liberal AJC, served as Dinner Chair for a glitzy Buckhead MALDEF fundraiser. MALDEF is on the list of anti-287(g) groups.
Thousands of American families have suffered at the hands of illegal aliens who were released from custody by “progressive” law enforcement officers. A 2017 Fox Five news report (jail records reveal immigrants not deported after minor crimes later commit worse ones) shines some light on the very real danger to the entire state the incoming anti-enforcement sheriffs plan to implement.
Retiring Gwinnett Sheriff Butch Conway, who courageously worked to implement 287(g), reports that in a 26-day period in 2009, a startling 914 illegals were located in the Gwinnett County jail. More than half of them had been arrested previously.
The liberal AJC drops all pretenses
In one of several victory-lap news reports on the looming demise of 287(g) in the Atlanta area, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution went with the misleading headline “Cobb reckons with immigrant legacy” explaining it was withholding the names of multiple illegal aliens quoted in the long weeper. The mostly balance-free yarn included the stated AJC policy of shielding illegal alien’s identities “due to their concern over stigma or deportation.” This remarkable arrangement should be noted and a question should be asked: Will this ‘woke’ protection apply to all criminals in the future?
“Being undocumented, your dream is just not getting deported” one illegal alien laments to the AJC.
The vanishing dream for Americans — in their own country— is family safety, security and an equal application of our immigration laws. That ideal could easily have been illustrated in the AJC story with a quote from Woodstock’s Kathy Inman. If asked, Inman would have replied from her wheelchair. That’s where she has been since 2000 when an illegal alien who was released after multiple contacts with local law enforcement put her there, and killed her only child, Dustin Inman.
We don’t think “family separation” is a universal concern at the “credible, compelling and complete” Atlanta Journal–Constitution.
Not for the first time, we remind AJC editors that illegal aliens are not “immigrants.” Real immigrants do not require shielding in “news” stories to protect them from deportation.
D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which supports enforcement of immigration laws. He is not a member of any political party. NewDustinInmanSociety.org
“Summarized, Jordan is heavily (if not exclusively) dependent on two sources: immigration lawyers and immigrants, often illegally present.”
Re-run: From the Gainesville Sun, April 4, 2019
In a recent interview, New York Times immigration reporter Miriam Jordan revealed how she goes about putting together an immigration story.
Summarized, Jordan is heavily (if not exclusively) dependent on two sources: immigration lawyers and immigrants, often illegally present.
Jordan also occasionally reaches out to advocacy groups and aid workers, but is cautious about citing federal immigration statistics. Jordan called government data “untrustworthy” and not “necessarily credible.” For her stories that require hard facts, Jordan also relies on the Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute.
While these reputable think tanks are not advocacy groups per se, they promote higher immigration levels.
Conspicuously missing from Jordan’s sources are immigration victims or any of the half dozen, well-established research organizations that promote less immigration.
Jordan hasn’t reported on immigration victims, including those who lost loved ones because of criminal aliens’ murderous acts or whose jobs have been given to immigrants with employment-based visas. She hasn’t covered aliens who present falsified Social Security numbers or who work for cash off the books.
Since she relies exclusively on sources that promote more immigration, Jordan cannot write a fair and balanced immigration story.
Consider the lawyers she depends on for her material. No organization more richly profits from immigration increases than the American Immigration Lawyers Association. As evidence of how lucrative the immigration law profession is, AILA’s membership has grown from 600 in 1975 to 15,000 today.
Imagine that a reporter gets an assignment to determine how often consumers should buy a new car. Then the reporter exclusively interviews National Automobile Dealers Association members. The high probability is that, according to the dealers, the prudent plan would be to purchase new every couple of years — more safety features have been added, the latest models yield better gas mileage, and better long-term financing is available to the buyer.
Missing from the story is the buyer whose 8-year-old, regularly serviced car has logged 100,000 miles, and is still going strong. Just as automobile dealers’ profit from more car sales, so too do lawyers gain from more immigration.
The 110-year-old, 10,000-plus member-strong Society of Professional Journalists posted in their Code of Ethics principles essential for public enlightenment. Among them are to seek truth and report it.
As part of truth seeking, the SPJ deems that ethical journalism requires “a special obligation to serve as watchdogs over public affairs and government.” But when only the pro-immigration side is written, as Jordan and countless others do, then they have failed in their mission as watchdogs.
The simple solution is to write a balanced story that gives an equal number of pro-immigration and immigration-reduction sources.
The lower immigration perspective is an important, statistically inarguable, but ignored, part of the mainstream media’s bias.
More than 1 million new lawful permanent work authorized immigrants arrive annually along with about 750,000 guest workers, allegedly but not always temporary. Assuming the immigration status quo stays the same, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that immigrants and their children will drive U.S. population to more than 400 million by 2060. These facts are crucially important for Americans to know and understand as they deliberate their individual opinions on more or less immigration.
Yet, Jordan and her peers deliberately withhold information that may lead their readers to conclude that immigration levels must be reduced for sustainability concerns if no others.
The New York Times and other prominent daily newspapers largely refuse to publish information that reflects poorly on immigration, including unchallenged government data, hardly the definition of a watchdog.
With its huge reach — nearly 4 million subscribers — The New York Times has an obligation to tell the whole immigration story, not just the portion of it that matches a reporter’s personal views and biases.
Joe Guzzardi (jguzzardi@pfirdc.org) is an analyst for Progressives for Immigration Reform and columnist for the Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
“..immigrants were flooding into California in hopes of landing jobs in labor-intensive industries such a apparel and electronics assembly that NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] had steadily been sending to Mexico — where most of the immigrants come from! In other words, the state was importing people while exporting their likeliest jobs.”
From Reality check – so much out there, so little time
Alan Tonelson
Apparent President-elect Joe Biden emphatically and repeatedly told the nationthat he’s determined to increase the flow of immigrants to America – whether we’re talking about his promises that will greatly strengthen the immigration magnet (like creating a “roadmap to citizenship” for America’s illegal alien population, tightly curbing immigation law enforcement activities, and offering free government-funded healthcare to anyone who can manage to cross the border lawfully or not), or his promises to boost admissions of refugees, speed systems for processing applications for asylum and (legal) green card applications, and generally “to ensure that the U.S. remains open and welcoming to people from every part of the world….”
During normal recent times such pledges – and the fallout of pre-Trump efforts to keep them – had proven troublesome enough for the U.S. economy and for working class Americans in particular. Inevitably, they pumped up the supply of labor available to U.S.-based businesses, and created surpluses that enabled companies to cut wages with the greatest of ease – exactly as the laws of supply and demand predict.
According to Porter in a December 1 piece, “The [U.S.] labor market has recovered 12 million of the 22 million jobs lost from February to April. But many positions may not return any time soon, even when a vaccine is deployed.
“This is likely to prove especially problematic for millions of low-paid workers in service industries like retailing, hospitality, building maintenance and transportation, which may be permanently impaired or fundamentally transformed. What will janitors do if fewer people work in offices? What will waiters do if the urban restaurant ecosystem never recovers its density?”
What’s the connection with immigration policy? As it happens, the service industries the author rightly identifies as sectors apparently vulnerable to major employment downsizing are industries that historically have employed outsized shares of immigrant workers (including illegals). And along with other personal service industries, they’re kinds of sectors whose modest skill requirements would continue to offer newcomers overall their best bets for employment…. More here.
By Stephen Dinan– The Washington Times – Sunday, November 29, 2020
Republicans’ Georgia election troubles went deep down the ballot last month, including losing two sheriff’s jobs that flipped to Democrats, both of whom have promised to end cooperative agreements with ICE.
Craig Owens, the winner in Cobb County, has said he wants to suspend all dealings with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Keybo Taylor, in Gwinnett County, hasn’t gone that far but is planning to cancel the 287(g) agreement that effectively deputizes the county’s officers to begin the deportation process for deportable migrants booked into local jails.
The results could be devastating to ICE.
Gwinnett this year ranks third of all U.S. counties in migrants flagged for deportation, with the vast majority of those coming out of the 287(g) program.
In Athens-Clarke County doesn’t take part in 287(g), but the incoming sheriff, who unseated a fellow Democrat in a primary this year, campaigned on a promise of refusing other forms of cooperation with ICE, effectively creating a sanctuary.
“Outsiders watching Georgia should know that this is only the end of the beginning of the Democrats’ takeover of a Republican stronghold,” said D.A. King, president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which pushes for enforcement of immigration laws. “The 287(g) programs in both counties served to constantly reduce the overall jail population. The howls from the leftists that 287(g) was too successful should be remembered when illegal aliens released for ‘minor offenses’ go on to hurt or kill Americans in Georgia.”
Named after the section of immigration law that created it, the 287(g) program allows ICE to sign partnership agreements with state and local law enforcement. Officers and deputies go through ICE training and can then begin the deportation process for migrants who come through their prisons or jails and are removable under the law.
There used to be another side to 287(g). The task force model trained officers and deputies who went out on patrol, but the Obama administration canceled those agreements.
The Obama team did, though, see value in the jail model. It argued that immigrants with rap sheets were worthy targets for deportation.
Immigrant rights activists disagree. They say too many migrants are being snared for what they consider to be relatively low-level offenses.
Activists have pressured some of the country’s largest jurisdictions to withdraw from the program and, in many cases, to refuse cooperation at all.
Prince William County in Virginia allowed its 287(g) program to lapse this summer. Los Angeles County’s sheriff canceled all cooperation in August.
All told, 28 jurisdictions have ended 287(g) deals, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
Still, more jurisdictions are enrolled now than were at the start off the Trump administration, thanks to strenuous efforts by ICE and sheriffs who see value in cooperating.
In Gwinnett, Sheriff Butch Conway decided to step down after 24 years and didn’t run this year. He said the 287(g) program cut his jail population over the past decade, even as the county grew by more than 300,000 residents.
He said working with ICE helped keep the deportation agency’s own efforts focused on criminals while protecting illegal immigrants who managed to keep clean rap sheets.
“I had been with ICE prior to implementing the program when they attempted to apprehend subjects and took anyone at the location they found without documentation into custody to be deported. Under 287(g), this didn’t occur,” Sheriff Conway told The Washington Times.
He continued: “I believe the program made us safer when serious offenders weren’t released back into the community to commit the same or worse offenses.”
Neither Mr. Taylor nor Mr. Owens responded to multiple requests for comment from The Washington Times, but both confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this month that they will follow through on their promises to curtail cooperation.
The Times reached out to a number of Georgia-based migrant rights groups, but none replied for this article.
Not all will go free if Mr. Taylor holds to his promise to cooperate with ICE detainer requests. But without deputies on duty 24/7, some will be released without ICE having a chance to pick them up.
ICE is still holding out hope for some cooperation…
“What are we actually doing to keep Gwinnett County safe?” he asked rhetorically.
Gwinnett County’s new sheriff plans to make changes
The FOX 5 I-Team speaks to the incoming Gwinnett County sheriff who plans two huge changes the first day he takes office in January.
Fox Five News
November 12, 202
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – Gwinnett County’s new sheriff plans two huge changes the first day he takes office in January.
Both involve controversial ways in which inmates are treated at the jail.
Democrat Keybo Taylor won the seat left open with the retirement of longtime Republican sheriff Butch Conway.
It was Conway who joined the 287(g) program in 2010. It allowed deputies to serve as federal immigration officers, screening all prisoners who come into the jail to determine their legal status.
If a prisoner is in the country illegally, they are detained until immigration authorities can transfer the inmate into federal custody and ultimately for deportation.
But Taylor believes the program actually wastes money.
“The program was originally to deport violent criminals,” he said. “When you go in and look at the percentage of people that are in that jail now that is in there on ICE detainers, they are non-violent offenders.”
He said when he takes office in January, he will remove Gwinnett County from the 287(g) program and put those deputies into a beefed-up anti-gang unit. Taylor believes that’s the real source of violence in Gwinnett.
“What are we actually doing to keep Gwinnett County safe?” he asked rhetorically.
But some critics fear what will come next in Gwinnett if the 287(g) program is scrapped.
“I make this very sad prediction,” said DA King, an anti-illegal immigration lobbyist who supported Gwinnett’s arrangement with the 287(g) program.
“There are going to be people killed in Gwinnett County by people in the country illegally who were passed over by the enforcement of — or lack thereof — of this incoming sheriff,” said King.
“Previously, the signature on the absentee ballot had to match the signature on eNet, a computer database that maintains Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot information. If the signature on the ballot didn’t match, it was thrown out.”
Insider Advantage Georgia
November 11, 2020
By Phil Kent
Criticism of poor management and decision-making by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger continues, coupled with GOP voter fraud lawsuits that have been filed or will be filed. The controversy and lawsuits are partially spurred by changes in state election laws. One change, agreed to by the Republican secretary of state last March, is especially stunning. And it leads to a big question: Why did he agree to a settlement that smuggled in a major change to mail-in voting?
John Daniel Davidson, writing in The Federalist, has researched and written about Raffensperger’s incredible cave-in involving a settlement in federal court with the Georgia Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee which had sued the state over for absentee voting rules.
The settlement introduced “ballot curing” to Georgia law. Ballot curing, as Davidson describes it, is when voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for some reason— the signature on the ballot doesn’t match the one on file, the ballot is missing certain voter information, etc.— are notified and given a chance to correct or “cure” their absentee ballot. “Under the settlement, state election officials agreed to contact voters whose ballots were rejected within three business days. If an absentee ballot is rejected in the 11 days before Election Day, officials agreed to contact the voter in the next business day,” Davidson writes.
But here’s where it gets worse. Because more than 8,000 absentee ballots were rejected in Georgia’s 2018 general election, this provision in the settlement got the most media play. Yet the most important one is a crucial change to the rules for accepting absentee ballots in the first place. Consider Davidson’s findings:
“Previously, the signature on the absentee ballot had to match the signature on eNet, a computer database that maintains Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot information. If the signature on the ballot didn’t match, it was thrown out.
“In a cleverly worded section of the settlement, Georgia election officials agreed to a subtle but profound change…, we hope you read the rest here.
This was not just voter fraud out of Philly. It’s a coup by the oligarchy
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The plan was simple.
Saturate the media with polls showing a blue wave and an inevitable victory. Discourage people from voting in person. And then, after tabulating the paltry votes of those who defied the media to vote in person, dump all the tampered, altered, and harvested ballots for Biden in key cities.
Even before Election Day, the Democrats knew their plan was going awry. Suddenly, instead of urging their base to use mail-in ballots they were, just as loudly, telling them to vote in person.
Why? Too few Republicans were voting by mail and too many were going to vote in person.
If the Election Day numbers tilted too decisively to President Trump before suddenly going Biden’s way, the election would look rigged, and there would be an outcry from Republicans.
Despite last minute efforts urging Democrats to vote in person, that’s exactly what happened.
Once again, Democrats had overreached, committed a massive crime, and have been left with no choice except to ride the tiger. That’s what happened last time when the Obama administration allied with the Clinton campaign to eavesdrop on its political opponents. And then doubled down with investigations and indictments, not of the perpetrators, but the victims.
Despite the blatant irregularities in key battleground states, they’re doubling down again.
The American Coup is underway. In classic Leninist fashion, its initial goal is to control the propaganda and the process. The media has declared Biden to be the winner while mass celebratory gatherings cheer the new order. Big Tech censors any skepticism about the election.
And the same faction that declared four years ago that casting doubt on an election was patriotic and the best defense of democracy now claims exactly it’s treason.
The only Democrat rule is that it’s patriotic when they do it and treason when their opponents do. That’s not how ‘democrats think. It’s how dictators rule.
All of this is a sideshow. What really matters is the process, not the propaganda. The propaganda is meant to divert attention from how implausible the media’s numbers are.
Republican turnout rose, instead of falling, in in-person voting, and the GOP also went into Election Day with clear leads in mail-in ballots in key battleground states, including Wisconsin and Michigan. The tide of Biden ballots that arrived during the night resulted in implausible turnout figures. The photos, videos, and whistleblower accounts of poll and postal workers tampering with ballots didn’t take long to show up. And just as quickly to be censored.
The odd numbers mostly came out of urban areas run by notoriously corrupt political machines. And the race between those trying to steal and unsteal the election began with a power struggle. In Philly and Detroit, efforts were made to keep Republican observers out of view.
In Philly, it took a court order to even get the observers within sight of the ballots, while the city continued to fight the ruling. In Detroit, windows were covered up with cardboard, and Republican observers were locked out. Potentially tens of thousands of ballots were illegally transposed with no Republican observers. In Pennsylvania, Democrat operatives had been illegally given access to rejected mail-in ballots so that they could arrange for provisionals. And back in Detroit, workers were told to backdate ballots that had arrived after the election.
In Wisconsin, thousands of witness statements may have been illegally altered.
Meanwhile the glitches, errors, and irregularities began piling up.
In Antrim County, Michigan, a “glitch” turned over a county that President Trump had won to Joe Biden. The glitch was only noticed because the results didn’t match past trends. More than half of the state’s counties use the same software.
“Just last night in Oakland County, we found 2,000 ballots that had been given to Democrats, that were Republican ballots, due to a clerical error,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel announced at a press conference.
Oakland had been one of three counties that were crucial to the state being called for Biden.
And then there were the voting dead who went on voting and being registered after death. That allegedly included a woman who voted a week after she died.
The voting dead are not a new problem in Philly. If the dead didn’t vote, few elections would go on as usual. And yet the same media that spent four years falsely claiming that Russians had somehow rigged the previous election with a few thousand dollars in Facebook ads, have declared that accusing the incorruptible City of Brotherly Love of corruption is an outrage.
It’s no coincidence that the areas at the center of the vote fraud controversy, Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta, are also some of the most corrupt cities in the country with plenty of jailed officials. We hope you read the rest here on the Frontpagemag website and that you subscribe to their feed. It’s far undervalued at no-cost.
An Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter with a growing reputation for blundering inaccuracies has been allowed to strike again by AJC editors.
Amanda Coyne has a news report in the October 30, 2020 print version of what is often referred to as Georgia’s “flagship newspaper” in which she tells readers that the I-9 employment and identity verification form is a “tax form.” It isn’t.
The yarn, headlined “Application process stymies 200 + plus would-be poll workers in Gwinnett”explains at length that people who wanted to work at Gwinnett County polls have not been contacted after completing an application. The Gwinnett application is online and requires an easy and quick registration if you want to see it.
From the liberal AJC via reporter Amanda Coyne:
Gwinnett County’s human resources department requires potential poll workers to submit an I-9 form before their application is moved over to the elections department. The I-9 is a tax form that allows the county to pay poll workers. Applicants are supposed to get an automated email after submitting their application with instructions on how to submit the tax form, country spokesman Joe Sorenson said. Nothing in the job posting or application indicates the I-9 is necessary to move forward.”
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the people who administer the I-9 form describe it as the ‘employment verification’ form that it has been since 1986.
From the USCIS I-9 website:
Use Form I-9 to verify the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the United States. All U.S. employers must properly complete Form I-9 for each individual they hire for employment in the United States. This includes citizens and noncitizens. Both employees and employers (or authorized representatives of the employer) must complete the form.”
Along with a request for correction sent to editors, Coyne was noted here (AJC inventing “facts” on state legislation again – HB960 and “illegal alien”) in February when her editors allowed her to report on legislation introduced by anti-enforcement Democrats in the Georgia Capitol aimed at removing the term “illegal alien” from state law. She apparently didn’t read the bill, invented language that was not there and as usual, to our knowledge (I asked several times via Twitter and email), the AJC never ran a correction.
We don’t think Coyne or her editors spend much time on research.
The slogan for the AJC is “compelling, credible and complete.” It isn’t.
Republicans’ Georgia election troubles went deep down the ballot last month, including losing two sheriff’s jobs that flipped to Democrats, both of whom have promised to end cooperative agreements with ICE.
Craig Owens, the winner in Cobb County, has said he wants to suspend all dealings with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Keybo Taylor, in Gwinnett County, hasn’t gone that far but is planning to cancel the 287(g) agreement that effectively deputizes the county’s officers to begin the deportation process for deportable migrants booked into local jails.
The results could be devastating to ICE.
Gwinnett this year ranks third of all U.S. counties in migrants flagged for deportation, with the vast majority of those coming out of the 287(g) program.
In Athens-Clarke County doesn’t take part in 287(g), but the incoming sheriff, who unseated a fellow Democrat in a primary this year, campaigned on a promise of refusing other forms of cooperation with ICE, effectively creating a sanctuary.
Named after the section of immigration law that created it, the 287(g) program allows ICE to sign partnership agreements with state and local law enforcement. Officers and deputies go through ICE training and can then begin the deportation process for migrants who come through their prisons or jails and are removable under the law.
There used to be another side to 287(g). The task force model trained officers and deputies who went out on patrol, but the Obama administration canceled those agreements.
The Obama team did, though, see value in the jail model. It argued that immigrants with rap sheets were worthy targets for deportation.
Immigrant rights activists disagree. They say too many migrants are being snared for what they consider to be relatively low-level offenses.
Activists have pressured some of the country’s largest jurisdictions to withdraw from the program and, in many cases, to refuse cooperation at all.
Prince William County in Virginia allowed its 287(g) program to lapse this summer. Los Angeles County’s sheriff canceled all cooperation in August.
All told, 28 jurisdictions have ended 287(g) deals, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
Still, more jurisdictions are enrolled now than were at the start off the Trump administration, thanks to strenuous efforts by ICE and sheriffs who see value in cooperating.
In Gwinnett, Sheriff Butch Conway decided to step down after 24 years and didn’t run this year. He said the 287(g) program cut his jail population over the past decade, even as the county grew by more than 300,000 residents.
He said working with ICE helped keep the deportation agency’s own efforts focused on criminals while protecting illegal immigrants who managed to keep clean rap sheets.
“I had been with ICE prior to implementing the program when they attempted to apprehend subjects and took anyone at the location they found without documentation into custody to be deported. Under 287(g), this didn’t occur,” Sheriff Conway told The Washington Times.
Neither Mr. Taylor nor Mr. Owens responded to multiple requests for comment from The Washington Times, but both confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this month that they will follow through on their promises to curtail cooperation.
The Times reached out to a number of Georgia-based migrant rights groups, but none replied for this article.
Not all will go free if Mr. Taylor holds to his promise to cooperate with ICE detainer requests. But without deputies on duty 24/7, some will be released without ICE having a chance to pick them up.
ICE is still holding out hope for some cooperation…