Joseph Rosen's Atlanta area immigration law office has been busy. And that was happening even before the Trump administration on Tuesday released sweeping new guidelines that target more people for deportation.
“I have about four attorneys working for me and about five paralegals and we are all swamped,” said Rosen, also an adjunct instructor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School. He added about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: “All of us are already being inundated now with individuals who are being arrested and being held for ICE for extremely minor offenses.”
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In addition to beginning the process of hiring 15,000 immigration enforcement and Border Patrol officials, building a new wall on the southwest border and finding more detention space, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security guidelines vastly increase the government's priorities for deportation. The focus will now be widened to include not only people with criminal convictions but those whose charges have not yet been resolved and others who "have committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense." People caught engaging in fraud or abusing public benefits programs could also face deportation. So could those considered to "pose a risk to public safety or national security."
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