Tri-Cities immigration lawyer: Trump’s deportation threat is ‘same movie,’ different president
Pasco immigration attorney Eamonn Roach said President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport millions of unlawful immigrants next week will cause many to lose sleep but isn’t likely to affect the Mid-Columbia.
“It’s the same movie every eight years,” Roach said, referring to immigration crackdowns by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Monday, Trump tweeted that his administration “will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”
Roach noted the threat came shortly before the president formally announced his re-election bid Tuesday in Orlando, Fla.
By coincidence, Roach traveled to Orlando this week for the annual conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which referenced the immigration crackdown in marketing materials.
“Join over 3,000 of your colleagues from around the world to learn the latest strategies to defend your clients’ rights against the current onslaught against immigration,” it said.
Roach said the president seemed to be targeting recent asylum-seekers who entered the country after making credible claims they could not return to their home countries.
Asylum-seekers face deportation when they miss court hearings associated with their cases.
Little chance of local impact
Roach said immigrants living in the Tri-Cities may lose sleep worrying about the threatened deportations, but he said there’s little chance it will have much of a local impact.
“If you stay out of the hands of immigration, follow the law, continue leading your life as you had, more likely than not this rhetoric won’t hurt you at all,” he said.
The American Immigration Council reports nearly 1 million immigrants live in Washington state, about a quarter from Mexico.
Nearly 460,000 are naturalized U.S. citizens and about 185,000 more were eligible to become naturalized citizens in 2015. One quarter, or 250,000, were undocumented, representing nearly 4 percent of the total state population in 2014.
More than 16,000 Washington residents qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in 2016.
More than 53 percent of all workers in Washington’s farming, fishing and forestry industries were immigrants.
This story was originally published June 20, 2019 at 5:17 PM.