Green card checks at Subway increases deportation tension in New York

With President Trump fully ready to implement his electioneering promises, of which immigration is one, immigrants living all over New York fasten their seatbelt for harsher immigration status checks over the past week.

Information reaching us has it that New York is experiencing rising number of unplanned immigration status checks being done by men of the Department of Homeland Security, namely on the city’s subway system.

Officials from the Homeland Security disclosed two memos last Tuesday which detailed wild stretching directives centred on both interior implementation and the US-Mexico border crackdown.

According to the report, it was indicated in the memo that there would be recruitment of thousands new enforcement agents, and the empowerment of officials to “immediately deport” any detained individual who had been in the country for less than two years.

Accordingly, it has been confirmed by ICE operation that 41 arrests have been recorded in the New York City area.

Over the past 10 days, various occurrences of green card spot checks apparently happened in immigrant-heavy boroughs of New York, namely Queens and Brooklyn.

Graphic designer Jason Shelowtiz took to Twitter to document his wife's experience on a train.

He said: "Wife's coworker held up on subway in Queens because police were checking for green cards. This is not bull****. Racial profiling."

In subsequent tweets he added: "7 train at Junction Blvd was stopped. Police came on asking to see Green Cards.

"They're also stopping R trains asking to see Green Cards. This is scary."

The Twitter allegations have been denied by New York's Police Department, who told local media: "The police department does not check anybody's green card. Period."

Nearly 40 per cent of the city’s 8.2million population are foreign-born, according to a 2013 study by the City Planning Commission. In at least nine neighbourhoods, more than half the residents are foreign-born.

Elsewhere in Chicago, public transport users expressed their confusion and concern after encountering random security checkpoints set up at Addison Ted Lime stations on the city’s subway system.

Locals described the scenes as “peculiar” and “worrying” after Homeland Security personnel carried out bag searches in ticket halls.

Student Abby Seitz tweeted: "Stopped at the Addison CTA stop by Homeland Security for a "random bag check." ...what?"

She told local media that she had encountered at least seven or eight officers, all of whom wore Homeland Security badges and vests.

She said: “I did not see a single CPD [Chicago Police Department] officer in the line. They all had visible Homeland Security credentials."