In this emotionally agonizing time for unauthorized immigrants living in Southern Nevada, there’s at least one bright spot: Some of the state’s top leaders are showing them they’re not alone.
That group of leaders includes state Sen. Yvanna Cancela, D-Las Vegas, who recently introduced a proposal to protect immigrants living in the state. Cancela’s bill would prevent state and local police in Nevada from transferring custody of a person to federal immigration authorities, and from detaining people for those authorities.
It also would bar police departments from providing information to immigration authorities unless it involved a person’s criminal history.
The legislation may or may not prove to be a workable way to shield Nevada from a mass deportation sweep, but Cancela deserves credit for bringing it to the table.
Amid uncertainty about how aggressively the Trump administration will enforce immigration laws, it’s crucial that Nevada protect immigrant families from federal government overreach.
To be clear, a mass deportation sweep would be very, very bad for the state and for Southern Nevada.
The estimated 170,000 unauthorized immigrants in the Las Vegas Valley are an essential part of our community — contributing tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue and purchasing many times more that amount in goods and services while also contributing work product and helping Las Vegas remain a vibrant business community. In addition, their contributions to our cultural diversity and quality of life are simply incalculable.
Obviously, the criminals among our community’s undocumented immigrants should be dealt with. But contrary to President Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric, the vast majority of immigrants are nonviolent, hard-working families, and decades of studies bear that out.
Trump simply won’t acknowledge it, as he proved again in his Feb. 28 speech to Congress when he cited a report saying the government spent more on first-generation immigrants than those individuals paid in taxes. While that was true, what Trump didn’t mention was the broader point of the report — that over a 75-year period, a recent immigrant and his or her descendants would pay in more taxes than they would receive in benefits.
Drumming them out of the country would hurt the economy, especially in Southern Nevada. Just imagine what would happen in the valley if 8 percent of the population — the equivalent of the size of the undocumented-immigrant group here — were to vanish overnight. The effect would be on par with Great Recession.
Then, there’s the human impact — the horrible prospect of splitting up families, or creating an entire community of crime victims by making immigrants afraid to report criminal activity for fear it would put them on the radar of immigration officials.
“I’ve gotten to hear from a mix of people, and there’s no question that the uncertainty that’s coming from the federal level is really scaring a lot of families,” Cancela said during a recent interview. “The more we hear from the federal level, the more important it becomes for those of us at the state level to lead, at the very least with distributing information about what people’s basic rights are all the way to trying to pass good laws.”
She’s right, especially with a loose-cannon president making outlandish statements on immigration — such as claiming that the deportation effort was a “military operation,” which Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly immediately had to walk back.
No wonder ACLU of Nevada reports that it has been receiving one or two requests a week to hold community forums for immigrants to explain their rights. Those forums have drawn crowds of several dozen to more than 200.
“People are panicking at the idea that ICE/law enforcement can stop them while traveling, seeking government services, or simply being at home,” said Tod Story, executive director of ACLU of Nevada, in an email.
In such an environment of fear, it’s encouraging that leaders like Cancela are stepping forward on immigration.
That list also includes Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who have consistently criticized the presidential administration’s immigration actions; and Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, who pushed back on a notion of using as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to carry out a mass roundup of undocumented immigrants.
That’s good, because ICE doesn’t appear to be recognizing any limits to the deportation effort. Witness the story of Daniela Vargas, a 22-year-old Dreamer in Mississippi who originally was spared from being arrested but then was picked up after speaking out about the detention of her family, or a recent allegation by the police chief in Santa Cruz, Calif., that federal officials had conducted an immigration sweep under the guise of a crackdown on gang members.
In Nevada, it’s important that leaders work toward preventing such actions here.
Although the people who are being directly affected by the Trump gang’s immigration actions may be our neighbors, our fellow church congregants, our friends, our co-workers or all of the above, this is an issue that affects every single one of us in Nevada.