LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga — Immigration cases at Gwinnett County’s jail have soared since Donald Trump took office as president. That’s according to a new report released by an immigration advocacy group. It says immigration detentions have increased four-fold at the jail.
The Gwinnett County Jail unmistakably displays its label as a 287(g) facility. It means it has a special relationship with the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE.
It means that people booked into Gwinnett’s jail get automatically screened for federal immigration law violations. In fiscal year 2016, 150 Gwinnett inmates got detained by ICE. But in 2017, ICE detainments jumped to 746 – an increase of (397) nearly four hundred percent, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. That’s because President Trump loosened Obama-era restrictions that protected many jailed immigrants from ICE.
"The current administration essentially did away with that and broadened the scope to where all illegally present foreign nationals are subject to immigration enforcement," said Bryan Cox, an ICE spokesman in Atlanta.
During Barack Obama’s presidency, ICE couldn’t detain an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally unless he had a felony or aggravated misdemeanor on his record. President Trump eliminated those restrictions.
"We’ve seen a lot of people here in Gwinnett County with minor traffic citations, such as driving without a license, get arrested and they immediately get an ICE hold," said attorney Claudia Acosta of Norcross.
She says the wave of ICE detentions at the Gwinnett County jail have spread fear in the immigrant community, in a county where the Hispanic population has soared.
