GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – In 55 days, President-elect Donald Trump will be back in the White House. Locally, conversations are underway about his promise of mass deportation efforts starting on day one of his term.
Trump has promised the largest deportation program in American history, starting with what he says are illegal immigrants who pose public safety and national security threats.
How Trump plans to carry out those efforts, and the extent that deportations will go, has created a lot of uncertainty for those who could be impacted.
“I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this, about what this presidential election means for Latino community members,” said Amanda Garcia, executive director of Casa ALBA Melanie.
Casa ALBA Melanie is a Hispanic resource center in downtown Green Bay that serves an average of about 20,000 people each year. There are about 25,000 Hispanic people living in Brown County, according to the latest census data.
“At the community level, I will say some families are starting to prepare,” said Garcia about the threat of deportations. “There is some fear that this will impact households in Green Bay or Brown County.”
Garcia says there is fear that families could be separated, and fears of people being deported to locations where they are not originally from or are unfamiliar with.
“I think the reaction shouldn’t be fear,” said Garcia. “I think it should be just really listening and understanding what’s going to be implemented.”
The Green Bay Police Department is taking a similar approach, according to Chief Chris Davis.
“We’ll be waiting to see what the federal government has in mind,” said Davis.
FOX 11 asked Davis if the department would participate in any sort of federal mandate related to carrying out deportations.
“I think it would depend on what was meant by mandate,” said Davis. “There is the whole government setup on the concept of federalism that state and local affairs are state and local affairs. Federal affairs are the prerogative of the federal government. So, I don’t think it’s likely we’d get any kind of mandate from the federal government to make arrests for immigration violations because we usually don’t enforce federal laws.”
FOX 11 followed up by asking if the department would participate in any sort of request or guidance related to deportations.
“Again, I think it depends what is being requested,” said Davis. “The parallel I like to use is tax law. The federal government has a very sophisticated apparatus for enforcing the tax law and we really don’t have anything to do with that. If the IRS comes to town and says we’re serving a search warrant and we need some help keeping the peace while we do this enforcement action, we probably would help with that. But when it comes to actually putting our hands on people, there are constitutional standards for that and it really depends a lot on the circumstances.”
On FOX News last week, Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, said efforts will include local law enforcement agencies willing to help. Homan also had a warning to any agencies who try to obstruct efforts.
“If they don’t want to help us, get the hell out of the way because we’re going to do it,” said Homan. “If I have to send twice the amount of resources to that city, that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Whether we have raids in Green Bay or Brown County or not, this community is incredibly resilient, and it shouldn’t really paralyze a family to where they can’t do anything,” said Garcia. “Really, our role in this space is letting people know what their rights are.”
Garcia says those rights include not answering the door if ICE shows up, asking for a search warrant, not answering questions and requesting an attorney.
She says Casa ALBA Melanie is available for anyone who needs support or guidance, regardless of immigration status.
There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., according to the latest national figures. About 80% have lived here more than a decade.
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