These Could Be the Most Vulnerable Immigrants in Trump’s America

 

""What President Trump wants to do is increase that kind of enforcement and target—not just certain crimes, but anybody that has any kind of criminal past, any kind of ticket or infraction," says Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center. "That's the danger" for day laborers.

While reliable numbers are hard to come by, a 2006 national study of day labor estimated that 117,600 people seek this kind of work daily. The laborers often stand out on public streets near lumber yards or home improvement centers in the hope that a contractor or homeowner will hire them for help with heavy jobs such as landscaping, hauling, clearing, or moving.

This makes them highly visible to law enforcement. And while it is legal to solicit work in public in many cities, local ordinances banning loitering or jaywalking can get laborers ticketed and their names put into police databases. If undocumented immigrants are detained and fingerprinted, for whatever reason, they have more to fear. Under Secure Communities, a controversial and since shuttered Obama-era program, fingerprints were automatically sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents could ask local officials to hold undocumented immigrants for deportation."

more in article by Jennifer Velez

These Could Be the Most Vulnerable Immigrants in Trump’s America | Mother Jones