Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson says congress may provide a reprieve for so-called DACA recipients — people who were brought into the country illegally when they were children, but Hinson says any adult who entered the country illegally should consider leaving now.
President-elect Trump has said he will declare a national emergency when he takes office January 20 and start the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. “Some of these people need to take a look at what’s happening and consider self-deporting,” Hinson said during an appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS. “If they’re here illegally, they should have that conversation.”
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, there are nearly 2200 Iowa residents who were brought into the country illegally as children and have so-called DACA protection from deportation. “I actually would support a DACA fix and I think that that’s something that there is actually broad, bipartisan support for,” Hinson said. “I think that’s a case where many of these children were brought here through no fault of their own, right? And I think that’s a completely different conversation than the mass encouragement of asylum seeking that we’ve seen under the Biden Administration.”
Hinson, a Republican from Marion, says she hopes Immigration and Customs Enforment removal efforts target criminals. “The most important thing is we’ve got these gang members, sex crimes perpetrators — we’ve got some really dangerous people in our communities and that’s what I hope ICE is focused on,” Hinson said. “…Then we can have a conversation about workforce, because I do think that’s a conversation that needs to be had around legal workforce visas.”
A citizen of a foreign country must have a visa in order to legally work in the United States. The American Immigration Council estimates there are 52,000 people living in Iowa entered the country illegally and are not authorized to work. “Even in Iowa classrooms — right? — where you have dozens and dozens of students coming into these districts that are not English-speaking it creates a challenge for our Iowa teachers and our Iowa students here, so that’s where you see, like, the local impact of that,” Hinson said. “…That’s why I’m so passionate about making sure we have a good solution here because it’s just not sustainable and it is having an impact on our local communities.”
However, Hinson said she does not expect immigration raids in Iowa as deportations focus on the 40- or 50-thousand illegal immigrants with criminal records. “I’m hopeful that’s the tactic we’ll take,” Hinson said, “and we won’t see huge disruptions to our communities here.”
Nearly 6% of Iowa’s population is foreign born. That includes those who have become naturalized U.S. citizens, people with work or student visas as well as those who entered the country illegally. Hinson said once congress has a bigger conversation about fixing the immigration system, one of her priorities will be helping DACA recipients who’ve applied for legal residency, but haven’t yet received what’s called a green card.
“Once they get to a certain age, they are forced out of the country and I don’t think that’s fair,” Hinson said. “We have these kids who, you know — for example, came to the U.S. with their parents when they were five years old. They’re Americans at this point and they’ve gone through the education system with legal status with their parents and n many cases they’re getting engineering degrees from the University of Iowa or they’re really smart people who we want to keep here.”