end of TPS protection for Haitians<\/a> and Venezuelans was a topic at the gathering, with the activists saying those communities are suffering incredible amounts of stress.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cPeople are living in fear, they\u2019re in this legal limbo, and they\u2019re not really sure what to do; we don\u2019t need to add on to that,\u201d said Candice Mondesir of the Haitian American Chamber of Commerce.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miami city commissioners discussed the issue at their last meeting. Commissioner Rolando Escalona got emotional talking about his wife, who is a legal resident but not a citizen, fearing she could be deported.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe everybody should follow the law, but that\u2019s not what we\u2019re seeing right now; I think we\u2019re going too far,\u201d Escalona said.<\/p>\n
The organizer of the event Monday accused ICE of arresting ordinary people, not the hardened criminals President Donald Trump promised would be the targets. The result, he said, is that a climate of fear has been created.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s also creating a dynamic where people are afraid to call the police to report crimes,\u201d said Thomas Kennedy, leader of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe do not want anyone in the community to feel like we\u2019re the boogeyman and we\u2019re out to get them when they need our help,\u201d said Miami Police Chief Edwin Lopez at the city commission meeting on June 25.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lopez said he wanted the community to know that Miami Police officers have not helped ICE arrest anyone who was not wanted for criminal charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins campaigned against the 287(g) agreement when she ran for office, and sent NBC6 a statement Monday, saying\u00a0\u201cSince my campaign and since taking office, I have made clear to the community that we must treat all residents humanely and with dignity, which is why I said the City should revisit the 287(g) agreement. Since then, the Commission held a discussion at the end of June, and I look forward to a legislative item reaching my desk so I can sign it swiftly.\u201d<\/p>\n
During her campaign, Higgins said Miami should\u2019ve joined the city of South Miami in resisting the pressure to sign the 287(g) agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Local police working with ICE agents on their deportation roundups is a thorny issue nationwide.\u00a0 In Florida, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1841,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-362760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-immigration","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}