Amnesty groups operating in California has asked Kamala Harris to block the federal government’s access to California’s database of gang members. They are afraid Trump will deport them. The groups claim there could be people on the list that don’t belong there but are illegal aliens nonetheless. They have asked that the list not be given out until the state is certain that every person on the list is a gang member. In other words, never, because that is literally impossible.
Donald Trump appeared on 60 Minutes (Did you know that Madonna needs an hour and half to watch 60 Minutes?) and he repeated that he plans to deport illegal aliens, especially ones with criminal records. Under Obama an illegal could kill an American citizen and not be deported.
Advocacy groups fear that Trump would sift through the names on the database in a search for immigrants who have amassed a criminal record in the US, only “to deport…[illegal] immigrants who’ve been erroneously labeled as gang members.”
In a post-election 60 Minutes appearance, Trump “vowed to immediately deport as many as three million undocumented immigrants, specifically those with criminal records such as gang members and drug dealers.” The pledge to secure the border and “immediately deport” illegal immigrants with a criminal record was popular with voters in the general election. And the Border Patrol’s National Border Patrol Council has made clear they are eager to see Trump secure the border, especially as it relates to building a wall.
But the Urban Peace Institute’s Sean Garcia-Leys does not want the CalGang database anywhere near Trump at this time. Garcia-Leys said, “Until the Department of Justice can assure people that there is accuracy and that there are no harms to being put in the database…basically the plug should be pulled on CalGang until those things happen because the risk of the database being used in immigration is just too high to allow it to continue right now.”