(Radio Iowa) – The number of deportations in Iowa has jumped since President Trump started his second term. The Deportation Data Project reports more than 16-hundred people were deported from Iowa between January and early March, three times more than when President Biden was in office. Elena Casillas-Hoffman, spokeswoman for the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, says it’s been a challenging time for immigrants.
“Families are getting ripped apart. Individuals are finding that they have little to no other resources to fight their cases,” Casillas-Hoffman says. “Potentially, individuals had a status and lost that status, not by anything that they did, but because the government pulled that out from underneath them.” The data also shows more than 15-hundred immigration arrests in Iowa last year. That’s more than five times the previous year.
Casillas-Hoffman says every number represents a person.She says, “Every individual that is detained and deported from Iowa is an individual that came here potentially seeking safety, freedom, and opportunities.” Casillas-Hoffman says the true numbers are likely higher, because the federal government has not released complete information on arrests and deportations.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says nearly 70 percent of all ICE arrests involve someone with criminal charges, and three-million people were deported nationwide. Specific information for Iowa wasn’t released.
