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US-POLITICS-IMMIGRATION
Trump defends immigration raids as ‘good deterrent’
WASHINGTON, Aug 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – President Donald Trump on Friday
defended controversial mass raids that led to the arrest of 680 undocumented
migrants in the southeastern United States, saying they were an effective way
to thwart illegal entry into the country.
The raids, which took place at seven chicken processing plants scattered
across six Mississippi cities, were the largest in a single state in US
history.
“I want people to know if they’re coming into the US illegally, they’re
getting out,” Trump told reporters. “And this serves as a very good
deterrent.”
He added that when “people see what they saw (Wednesday), like they will
see for a long time, they know that they’re not staying here.”
Local media showed images of confused children crying after coming home
from school and finding themselves with nowhere to go and nothing to eat
after their parents had been detained.
Mississippi Attorney General Mike Hurst, who was in charge of the
operation, has also defended the raids, assuring that officers had been
concerned about the children’s ability to reconnect with their parents.
“We are unaware of any child presently w/o (without) a parent as a result
of this operation,” he wrote Thursday on Twitter.
Meanwhile, area chicken processing plants found themselves with drastically
reduced staffs.
Koch Foods, a $3.2 billion business, posted on Facebook that it would hold
a job fair Monday, while another plant belonging to PH Food had closed its
doors on Thursday after 70 to 80 of its 100 workers were arrested, according
to local media.
Of those detained, 300 have been released with ankle monitoring devices and
instructions to appear before an immigration court judge to determine whether
they will be deported, according to officials.
Authorities added that 30 were released on a humanitarian basis so that
their children would not be left without a guardian.
On Thursday, former vice president Joe Biden, the frontrunner in the
Democratic presidential primary race, said the raids were “simply wrong.”
“What are we doing?” he asked during a meeting with Latinos and Asians on
the campaign trail in Iowa.
“There are US-born children wondering whether or not they’ll ever see their
parents again.”
Photos and videos showed the children crying, covering their faces,
comforting each other and sitting on the floor eating slices of pizza off
napkins.
Of the 680 detainees, 122 were from Mexico, a country with which the United
States recently reached an agreement to help block Central American migrants
from reaching US soil.
As a result, in July, there were 21 percent fewer arrests at the US border
with Mexico as compared to the previous month.
The raids follow a weekend in which a gunman killed 22 people in El Paso,
Texas after publishing a racist manifesto online which expressed fears of a
“Hispanic invasion” of the state.
The shooting suspect admitted to police he had been targeting Mexicans,
according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0850 hrs