Photo: Rob Schumacher ~ USA TODAY NETWORK
MICHIGAN, Nov. 12, 2024 ~ While the not all the logistics are known yet, President-elect Donald Trump‘s plan to mass deport undocumented immigrants could greatly affect Michigan‘s economy.
Trump promised to deport the over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., including 91,000 in Michigan, during his campaign, raising the alarm of many immigrant advocates over the possible impact on the U.S. economy, increasing grocery prices, and future family separations nationwide. Michigan Immigration Rights Center Senior Attorney Ruby Robinson said that mass deportations could negatively impact Michigan’s large agriculture industry, with 42% of agriculture jobs in the state filled by undocumented immigrants as fewer U.S.-born citizens are interested in taking these jobs. Deporting these workers would cause shortages, thus raising grocery prices, she said.
PODCAST:
Nov. 12, 2024 ~ President-elect Donald Trump has promised to remove illegal immigrants from the United States, and it could have lasting effects on the Michigan economy. Guy Gordon, Lloyd Jackson, and Jamie Edmonds talk with Michigan Immigration Rights Center Senior Attorney Ruby Robinson about the process of mass deportation.
(CONTINUED) “Someone who is not authorized to work in the United States, they don’t have as many options, right? Those circumstances and those situations are rife for abuse, trafficking, and withholding wages,” Robinson told WJR. “We see that every day in the individuals we work with.“
Immigrant rights groups are concerned that mass deportations could reflect some of the darkest immigrant policies under Trump’s first term, including family separations at the U.S.-Mexico Border. According to FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group, 28.2 million U.S. residents (including 270,000 Michiganders) live in “mixed-status households,” or families that have citizens, documented immigrants, and undocumented immigrants living together. While Trump said he would first focus on deporting “suspected gang members,” he did not rule out family separations in an interview with NBC News, while also saying the separation program could cost “trillions” of dollars.
Trump recently named his former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan as his new “border czar.” Homan oversaw the controversial family separtion policy that separated an estimated 5,000 migrant families, with 998 children still not reunited with their parents as of Feburary, 2023.
During his time in charge of ICE, the condidtion of familiy detention centers led to comparasions to “concentration camps” from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and historians, a comparassion that drew criticism at the time. ICE under Trump continued to recieve criticisms following Homan’s exit in 2018, with an ICE dentention facility accused in a wistleblower report that women were pressured into “unnecessary” hysterectomies, surgeries that remove a women’s uterus, something ICE officials have denied.
While Homan said in a recent 60 Minutes interview that families could be deported together and that the administration’s focus on migrants with criminal records would not result in neighborhood sweeps, Robinson has doubts that mass deportations won’t affect immigrant families in Michigan.
“I do expect a lot of individualized enforcement and targeted enforcement, but that’s cold comfort to our clients and the communities that we’re working in, to say, ‘Well, there’s not going to be blanket raids around the neighborhood. It’s going to be targeted,‘” Robinson said. “If you, your neighbor, or your family member is undocumented, or a family member is in removal proceedings, that person is not going to be sleeping well because they know that they could be next on the list.“
760 WJR TOP NEWS STORIES:
