Trump ramps up criminal charges against migrants in California

By Alicia A Caldwell and Myles Miller Bloomberg The Trump administration is filing criminal charges against more immigrants in the US illegally as part of an effort to skirt state and city policies that limit local cooperation The effort is starting in California where prosecutors are tracking everyone booked into state and local jails in a seven-county region They re looking for foreigners who have been previously deported in order to charge them with a felony for re-entering the US without permission stated Bill Essayli the US Attorney for the Central District of California which includes Los Angeles Related Articles Opinion Californians insist that immigrants deserve a path to citizenship Man facing deportation charged with assaulting ICE officer in San Jose Largest part AAPI adults oppose college funding cuts and learner deportations a new poll finds After passing the dividing line for better schools selected parents are pulling their kids and leaving the US US immigration bureaucrats appear to have begun deporting foreigners to South Sudan attorneys say Under Operation Guardian Angel federal prosecutors have filed about criminal arrest warrants for foreigners arrested on state or local charges in the area since January compared with about during all of and Essayli revealed in a interview Being a foreigner in the US without permission isn t a crime per se but those caught traveling the confines illegally can be charged with a misdemeanor or felony if they ve been caught and deported before Anyone caught in the interior of the country after being deported can also be charged with a felony We re going to file on anyone and everyone who qualifies under the statute Essayli stated We ve got the information and the administration has made it clear guidance will not be an issue for immigration-enforcement operations The warrants supplant previously relied-on detainer requests sent to local jails asking officers to hold someone on civil immigration charges Multiple jurisdictions around the US have in new years stopped responding to those requests arguing that local and state representatives have no authority to enforce the administrative immigration notices California has statewide policies that generally bar local agents from honoring those detainer requests The new warrants Essayli reported will ensure that foreigners in local jails will be turned over to federal functionaries to face accusations that they came back to the US without permission Zero Tolerance Successive administrations from both parties have routinely filed misdemeanor and felony charges for displaced persons caught at the perimeter During the first Trump administration the Justice Department launched a zero-tolerance procedures and pledged to prosecute nearly every adult caught overcoming the edge illegally expanding a plan launched by former President George W Bush and used in one section along the Texas boundary The mass-prosecution effort which included the administration s controversial family-separation protocol was short lived and fast overwhelmed federal courts along the perimeter Since then prosecutors have returned to generally charging those with criminal histories and those previously expelled Essayli described his California judicial district as a testing ground for the focus on criminal charges and declared federal agents want to expand the effort to other so-called sanctuary cities and states Our primary goal is to keep the general safe that s one of regime s preponderance sacred responsibilities Essayli announced The administration has made it clear we re getting back to basics targeting violent organized crime transnational criminal organizations and fraudsters who victimize innocent people More stories like this are available on bloomberg com Bloomberg L P