Trump admin defends immigration tactics after California worker death
WASHINGTON — Federal officials on Sunday defended President Donald Trump's escalating campaign to deport immigrants in the US illegally, including a California farm raid that left one worker dead, and said the administration would appeal a ruling to halt some of its more aggressive tactics.
Trump has vowed to deport millions of people in the country illegally and has executed raids at work sites including farms that were largely exempted from enforcement during his first term. The administration has faced dozens of lawsuits across the country for its tactics.
Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem and Trump's border czar Tom Homan said on Sunday that the administration would appeal a federal judge's Friday ruling that blocked the administration from detaining immigrants based solely on racial profiling and denying detained people the right to speak with a lawyer.
In interviews with Fox News and CNN, Noem criticized the judge, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, and denied that the administration had used the tactics described in the lawsuit.
"We will appeal, and we will win," she said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."
Homan said on CNN's "State of the Union" that physical characteristics could be one factor among multiple that would establish a reasonable suspicion that a person lacked legal immigration status, allowing federal officers to stop someone.
During a chaotic raid and resulting protests on Thursday at two sites of a cannabis farm in Southern California, 319 people in the US illegally were detained and federal officers encountered 14 migrant minors, Noem said on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
Workers were injured during the raid and one later died from his injuries, according to the United Farm Workers.
Homan told CNN that the farmworker's death was tragic but that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were doing their jobs and executing criminal search warrants.
"It's always unfortunate when there's deaths," he said.
US Senator Alex Padilla said on CNN that federal agents are using racial profiling to arrest people. Padilla, a California Democrat and the son of Mexican immigrants, was forcibly removed from a Noem press conference in Los Angeles in June and handcuffed after trying to ask a question.
Padilla said he had spoken with the UFW about the farmworker who died in the ICE raid. He said a steep arrest quota imposed by the Trump administration in late May had led to more aggressive and dangerous enforcement.
"It's causing ICE to get more aggressive, more cruel, more extreme, and these are the results," Padilla said. "It's people dying." — Reuters
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