US President Donald Trump’s immigration policies have been extremely divisive and has led to rising social tensions across the country, says an American political analyst in Virginia.
“Within
the United States right now, immigration is one of these very divisive
issues,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
“In American politics, there will always be occasionally some very
divisive issue that emerges in which people have very emotionally-held
beliefs,” Preston told Press TV on Sunday.
“It appears that this issue is now escalating and becoming more intense,” he added.
A 69-year-old man armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at an
immigration jail in Washington state early on Saturday morning, then was
found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire,
authorities said.
A friend of the dead man said she thought he wanted to provoke a fatal
conflict, the Seattle Times reported, and described him as an anarchist
and anti-fascist.
The Tacoma police department said the officers responded about 4am to
the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, a Department of
Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending
deportation proceedings.
Immigration has been the subject of a divisive political battle in the
US, which has struggled for more than a year with a migration crisis on
its southern border with Mexico.
Many Americans oppose immigration and believe that immigrants bring
crime and steal good jobs, while others are sympathetic to immigrants
and recognize that the US is an aging nation of low birthrate and needs
immigration to make its economy and population grow.
Thousands of protesters staged rallies across the United States on Friday to protest Trump’s immigration policies.
Trump has made his hard-line stance on immigration an integral part of
his presidency and has promised to build a wall along the US-Mexican
border to curb the flow of migrants from Mexico and Central America.
The Trump administration has sought to curb the flow of undocumented
migrants and limiting legal immigration, and replace it with a
merit-based system.
Many undocumented migrants crossing illegally into the US are asylum
seekers fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala and El
Salvador.
The treatment of migrants in the detention centers, particularly child
migrants, has come under fire in recent months, with reports emerging of
filthy conditions and cruelty from staff.
Last week, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet,
said she is “deeply shocked” at the conditions in which the US
government is keeping detained migrants and refugees, including
children.
