Status of Trump's mass deportation effort

The White House has approved some drastic new Homeland Security guidelines in new memoranda dated February 20 that are clearly aimed at mass deportation and the state terror against Latino communities that comes with it. Simon Maloy summarizes some of their provisions in Mass Deportation Is Coming Salon 02/21/2017:

Despite the president’s insistence that “criminals” will be the focus of his deportation policy, both his executive order and the Homeland Security memoranda make clear that pretty much any undocumented immigrant detained by authorities will be subject to removal from the country. The Department of Homeland Security states that undocumented immigrants who have “committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense” will be prioritized. As The New York Times wrote in January, this is an expansive designation that encompasses “anyone the authorities believe has broken any type of law — regardless of whether that person has been charged with a crime.”

The department’s guidance also states that undocumented immigrants who “pose a risk to public safety or national security” in the judgment of an immigration officer should be prioritized for removal. That nebulous phrasing puts immense power in the hands of individual immigration enforcement agents to determine who is kicked out of the country.

Above all, the memos indicate that the policy of the Trump administration will be to remove as many undocumented immigrants as it can in the shortest amount of time allowable. The criteria for expedited removal has been expanded so that any undocumented immigrant who can’t prove he or she has been in the country for more than two years can be deported without being able to make a case before a judge. Under the new guidelines, undocumented immigrants who crossed the southern border and are waiting to appear before an immigration judge can now be pre-emptively deported to Mexico, where they will hypothetically have access to “a functional, interoperable video teleconference system” to complete their deportation proceedings.

I think the headline on the piece understates what's happening. Because mass deportation is here. This is an early moment of it, and it can still be stopped. But it's underway.

Here is a discussion from The Young Turks, Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola in this case, discussing the mass deportation and the dishonest argument is supporters use that it's just a continuation of what Obama was doing. It's still all Obama's fault in the Republican corner of the universe. Abused Woman Goes To Authorities, Gets Deported 02/20/2017: