The Guardian reports:

Since 2017, Donald Trump has pushed a hardline immigration agenda that has sown confusion, fear and distrust among immigrant communities. Now, as the world deals with a public health emergency in the shape of the coronavirus outbreak, experts worry his immigration policies may put everyone at risk.

There is a widespread fear that the president’s policies have sown such fear of deportation and wariness of any contact with US authorities among immigrants – who also have greater difficulty getting healthcare – that many of them will not seek help if they fall sick with the virus.

“If you continue to discourage people from seeking services under normal circumstances, you cannot expect them necessarily to seek those services just because you as the racist, anti-immigrant president have decided that now it’s a good idea. That’s not gonna work,” said Max Hadler, director of health policy at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Even as coronavirus spreads across the US, the Trump administration is ramping up surveillance in so-called sanctuary cities, places where local police don’t always work with federal immigration enforcement. The operation’s goal is to “arrest as many undocumented immigrants as possible”, the New York Times reported, and it is being executed as prominent sanctuary cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles and New York stare down a potential coronavirus public health crisis.

Randy Capps, director of research for US programs at the Migration Policy Institute, warned that officers could spread the coronavirus if they go door-to-door in localities that have already been affected.

Meanwhile, Hadler worried that an increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) presence could deter immigrants from accessing healthcare. [Continue reading…]