Close to Home: Deportation plan has destructive local impact

During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants. He recently announced his plans to carry this out with an executive order on immigration. If this order is implemented, a large majority of these undocumented immigrants deported would not be serious criminal, but families and workers.

To put this in perspective, there are currently about 600,000 cases in all of the deportation courts around the country. An expansion like Trump proposes would mean large numbers of North Bay families would face deportation or separation. This would devastate our immigrant community and adversely affect us all.

Trump's executive order would set in motion the deportation structure to remove millions of families from this country, not just serious criminals. As David Leopold wrote in the Huffington Post: “Trump's executive order targets anyone ever convicted of any criminal offense, regardless of what the offense was, when it occurred, or the circumstances of the conviction. This puts parking tickets in the same category as murder. Of course, that sort of logic defies common sense, but it's there in black and white.”

According to Leopold, Trump's directive also could include people who have just been accused of committing a crime, even if not charged. This could include massive numbers of immigrants with infractions such as driving without a license or minor drug and alcohol offenses, no matter how long ago they happened.

Of course, when a parent is deported due to a criminal offense in their past, typically the spouse and minor children leave the country too, uprooting them from jobs and schools and separating them from extended family here.

How would the Trump administration deport so many people? The likelihood is that it will use the extensive state Department of Motor Vehicles database, with immigrants' name, photo, address, fingerprints, date of birth - now replenished with almost all undocumented immigrants' information, since California allows undocumented immigrants to get licenses. Most have done so, dutifully giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement an easy path to finding them.

As it did during the Bush years, ICE can arrest people at home, usually in early morning or late at night.

They can also use many other sources on the internet to find people through credit checks, bank records, etc. Trump also plans to have ICE arrest undocumented immigrants at work, using records such as payroll information or credit reports.

The “sanctuary” declarations by counties, cities, universities, etc. are nice symbolically but do little in practical terms. ICE doesn't arrest undocumented immigrants in their classroom.

The Trump administration can easily sidestep “sanctuary” laws and just arrest people at their home or workplace, as was done to thousands of North Bay immigrants arrested during the Bush years. Trump will just be doing so on a much bigger scale than his predecessors.

So, there may be no way to stop a massive round-up of immigrants by Trump's administration. However, if given adequate information and representation, any immigrant can prevent their deportation for years and often obtain permanent residence here through the Immigration Court.

A local nonprofit, My American Dreams Foundation, has a plan to create a pro bono defense program for immigrant families facing deportation in the North Bay. It would be a low-cost pilot program, relying on volunteer lawyers and in partnership with local community groups. The community should support this idea. It is the best way to answer this threat to our immigrant community.

Christopher Kerosky is a lawyer and member of the Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights. He lives in Santa Rosa.