The Public Safety Costs of Trump's Immigration Policy

For my first substantive post I thought I would sound off on an issue that has been causing a lot of consternation down here in SoCal, which is the unintended consequences of the Trump DOJ's re-prioritization of immigration enforcement. Many have rightfully critiqued it for its racialized demonification of otherwise law-abiding, working immigrants. What has gotten less attention is the horrific potential consequences for public safety--a deeply ironic outcome for an administration that purports to care about crime-fighting. 

In recent years the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California has led the nation in its prosecution of drug traffickers--the primary drivers of actual trans-border violent crime. Just a few miles away from Tijuana, a notoriously dangerous city due to cartel presence, San Diegans--immigrants and non-immigrants alike--enjoy one of the lowest violent crime rates in the U.S. In a recent interview, outgoing U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath gave a scathing critique of the negative changes for crime-fighting that will result from Trump's directive to refocus more than 20% of her District's federal law enforcement resources onto immigration offenses:

"They're preventing mass shootings, they're preventing terrorist attacks, they're preventing hate crimes. And they do that through generating intelligence. And they have an expertise in IT analysts and agents who track this information in our district and across the United States. And they do that day in and day out to keep track of who might be setting off alarm bells. And then they respond also equally...[S]o we have these organizations that are specialized in really essential components of what keeps people in this country safe from mass shootings, from ghost guns, from fires, from fentanyl. And now those organizations are devoting significant time to immigration enforcement."

I comment on this problem a bit more in this article. Immigrants are not going to be the only victims of Trump's xenophobic monomania.