Aside from the predictable logistical hurdles, President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign — fueled by xenophobic fervor among his base — is, 100 days in, well underway.
While immigration crackdowns at the federal level, rightly so, have generated many headlines and spurred much public outcry, for Trump to follow through on his promised mass deportation campaign, collaboration with local enforcement is required. In Hamilton County, the president’s greatest ally on that front is Republican Sheriff Austin Garrett.
Elected to maintain public safety, to protect the people of Hamilton County, the sheriff, by bending the knee to his dear leader Donald Trump, is doing the opposite.
As reported by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Sheriff’s Office, even before Trump was inaugurated, has begun to forge an alliance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, via the federal agency’s 287(g) program, which, under a Trump executive order, gives interested sheriff offices the authority to carry out immigration enforcement “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”
Thus far in Trump’s second term, that maximum extent is a roughly threefold increase — compared to the monthly rate last year — of people released from the sheriff-operated Hamilton County Jail to ICE.