ཧIn response, the Sikh American Legal Defence and Education Fund (SALDF) issued a statement expressing concern over the policy change.
♛The US President Donald Trump's administration crackdown against 'illegal immigration continues to intensify, as the US Department of Homeland Security said it had begun making arrests in Chicago as part of a multi-agency enforcement operation, the New York Times reported.
✱Few details of the operation were immediately made public, including the number of arrests. But the sheer number of federal agencies involved showed President Donald Trump's willingness to use federal law enforcement beyond the Department of Homeland Security to carry out his long-promised mass deportations.
Within hours of Donald Trump ❀being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin Huffman rescinded the Biden administration's guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enforcement actions that thwart law enforcement in or near so-called "sensitive" areas.
ℱThese "sensitive" areas included places of worship such as gurdwaras and churches.
Read More | Trump's Immigration Overhaul Runs Into Hurdles
🉐“This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens—including murders and rapists—who have illegally come into our country,” a DHS spokesperson was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
😼“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense," the spokesperson added.
🦩As a reply, the Sikh American Legal Defence and Education Fund (SALDF) issued a statement expressing concern over the policy change. “This troubling shift in policy comes in tandem with community reports of DHS agents visiting gurdwaras in the New York and New Jersey areas just days after the directive was issued,” the group said, as reported by PTI.
✤Kiran Kaur Gill, executive director of the Sikh American Legal Defence and Education Fund (SALDEF), said, “We are deeply alarmed by the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to eliminate protection for sensitive areas and then target places of worship like gurdwaras.”
𒅌Gill further explained that gurdwaras are more than just places of worship. “They are vital community centres that provide support, nourishment, and spiritual solace to Sikhs and the broader community. Targeting these spaces for enforcement actions threatens the sanctity of our faith and sends a chilling message to immigrant communities nationwide,” she said.
𓄧The Sikh Coalition said that the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the DHS policy on “protected areas” (which also included hospitals, schools, social service providers, and more) opens the door to ICE agents to conduct surveillance, investigations, arrests, and raids at gurdwaras."
🔴"The idea that our gurdwaras could be subject to government surveillance and raids by armed law enforcement with or without warrants is unacceptable to the Sikh faith tradition. It will burden religious exercise by limiting the ability of Sikhs to gather and associate with one another in accordance with our faith. It also harkens to dark periods in our collective memory when governments interfered in the ability of Sikhs to practice our faith freely—with deadly consequences," the coalition added.
(With PTI Inputs)