{"id":288767,"date":"2017-02-13T11:40:21","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T18:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=288767"},"modified":"2017-02-13T19:01:08","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T02:01:08","slug":"lujan-grisham-and-others-to-meet-with-ice-about-raids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/02\/lujan-grisham-and-others-to-meet-with-ice-about-raids\/","title":{"rendered":"Lujan Grisham and others to meet with ICE about raids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, including New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, are meeting with the acting U.S.\u00a0Immigration and Customs and Enforcement director on Tuesday after a series of raids last week put many\u00a0people on edge.<\/p>\n

\"Michelle

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Michelle Lujan Grisham<\/p><\/div>\n

Lujan Grisham, the Albuquerque-area 1st Congressional District representative in the U.S. House, and other Democrats sent a letter to acting ICE Director\u00a0Thomas D. Homan on Friday demanding the meeting. Lujan Grisham chairs the group, and the letter was also signed by U.S. Reps.\u00a0Zoe Lofgren,\u00a0Judy Chu and\u00a0Lucille Roybal-Allard of California; John Conyers of Michigan; and Luis Gutierrez of Illinois.<\/p>\n

The meeting is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. MST.<\/p>\n

ICE agents\u00a0arrested hundreds of immigrants<\/a> without legal status in at least six states last week, sparking fear of large-scale deportations and a policy shift under new U.S. President Donald Trump. ICE, meanwhile, insisted the raids were “routine,” pointing to raids in 2015 and 2016 when Barack Obama was president.<\/p>\n

But the concern is that under Obama ICE focused on people with records that included convictions for violent crimes, while ICE under Trump may be going more generally after any immigrants without legal status.<\/p>\n

“These raids have struck fear in the hearts of the immigrant community as many fear that President Trump\u2019s promised ‘deportation force’ is now in full-swing,” the letter to Homan states. It states that, without guidance and clarification, “our communities will be paralyzed as students will remain home from school, parents will be afraid to leave children alone and our local economies will be irreparably damaged.”<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0signed an executive order on Jan. 26<\/a>\u00a0that expanded the definition of which immigrants without legal status are criminals to\u00a0be targeted for deportation. And he\u00a0has said he may deport as many as 3 million immigrants without legal status.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times estimated<\/a> that Trump\u2019s executive orders could target as many as 8 million of the 11 million people living in the United States without legal status.<\/p>\n

In an interview with NPR<\/a>, Lujan Grisham, who is giving up her U.S. House seat in 2018 to run for New Mexico governor<\/a>, said she is “very concerned about what’s going on.”<\/p>\n

She said there is “panic” in New Mexico and advocates for immigrants “are getting a flood of phone calls.”<\/p>\n

“We’re going to have to assess all of the shift in the climate about where people can be really protected until we sort things out,” Lujan Grisham said. “And the Hispanic Caucus, the Minority Caucus, the Democratic Caucus, moderate Republicans are going to have to stand up for their constituents.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham said there is “panic” in New Mexico and advocates for immigrants “are getting a flood of phone calls.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,3307,116],"class_list":["post-288767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-donald-trump","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}