Cleveland, OH – In a new Medium post, America’s Voice Ohio Director Lynn Tramonte discusses the ever-worsening conditions for undocumented immigrants living in Ohio.
Tramonte cites several recent proof points, including a 2015 report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, UCLA Blum Center on Poverty and Health in Latin America, and UC Global Health Institute, which documented Ohio’s worst-in-the-US record on immigrant-friendly policies; a 2017 New Yorker expose about worker abuse at Case Farms, a major Ohio poultry processor; and a 2015 America’s Voice Ohio report detailing state-specific factors contributing to Ohio’s police state like atmosphere for immigrants.
As Tramonte notes, Trump’s presidency and mass deportation policy has only worsened conditions for undocumented Ohioans, as Detroit ICE Field Director Rebecca Adducci is exhibiting an “appetite for destruction” of Ohio and Michigan families.
The column, “Study Shows Ohio is Worst State For Undocumented Immigrants – But We Can Change,” is excerpted below and available online here.
The situation has only gotten bleaker since Donald Trump became President, and federal immigration agents were told to deport as many immigrants as possible. Any notion of common sense law enforcement priorities — like, focusing on people who pose some sort of safety risk — was thrown out the window. It became a race to see which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office could ramp up its deportation numbers the fastest, not which office could arrest the most dangerous individuals.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports: “in the ICE Detroit region that includes all of Ohio and Michigan, 36 percent more people were deported in the 2017 fiscal year than the last.” The number of people without criminal records arrested by ICE has more than doubled in the two-state region.
Rebecca Adducci, the Detroit ICE Field Office Director who is responsible for deportations in Michigan and Ohio, has racked up quite a track record destroying families. She focuses on the easy targets — the people on Orders of Supervision who are trying to comply with the government’s demands, but remain at risk of deportation.
[…]
Public News Service-Ohio and Media in the Public Interest just published a piece showing that Ohio’s state and local police work hand in glove with immigration officials. Using government data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, the piece reveals that “detainer” requests from ICE to local police are way up — despite Constitutional challenges to their use — and Ohio police are going along with them.
While one would expect state and local law enforcement to work with federal agents on issues like national security and drug trafficking, it’s another thing entirely to enforce civil immigration laws. We’re talking about people being pulled over for a broken taillight, or some other pretext. What should have been an ordinary traffic stop — or no stop at all — turns into a deportation arrest at the side of the road, and the last time a father may see his kids.
Not only are Ohio police helping to break up families, but they are also walking right into 4th Amendment violations.
Americans need to know what is happening in our communities, with our tax dollars. And they also need to know that the immigration system doesn’t work the way we would expect.
