President-elect Trump and individuals he is nominating to top positions in the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice have stated unequivocally that on day one of the new administration the federal government will launch a vast campaign of mass-deportation and mass-detention that will be unprecedented in U.S. history.
The mass-deportation plan will largely unfold far from our national borders. President-elect Trump has stated he will declare a national emergency and then mobilize military forces—including state National Guard troops—to enforce civil immigration laws throughout the interior of the United States. This stands to touch every community throughout Minnesota, it will result in the separation of thousands of families, and it will cause extraordinary social and economic upheaval. Hundreds of thousands of people will face internment in large military-organized detention camps.
The social disruption and human cost of the coming federal mass-deportation campaign will be by far the greatest in those states that allow or encourage state and local law enforcement officials to cooperate with federal immigration officials in the effort. But this is a choice that each state makes. Federal civil immigration law enforcement is not the work of state and local governments. Minnesota can choose now to join other states – including Illinois, Washington, and California – that have enacted common sense, time-tested laws to ensure that state and local law enforcement resources are kept separate from federal enforcement of civil immigration laws and remain focused on the priorities of local criminal law enforcement.
To protect Minnesota’s values of family and community unity, and to limit the social and economic upheaval that the coming mass-deportation campaign will otherwise inflict upon our state, the Minnesota legislature can and should take urgent action to pass a separation law.