COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. — Hispanic community leaders in Southwest Florida are reacting after President Donald Trump said Friday that a crackdown by immigration officers - including mass deportation roundups - could be happening "fairly soon."
Human rights activist Victor Valdes of Golden Gate said he hates to see detention facilities for undocumented immigrants get any more crowded.
"It broke my heart when I saw kids separated," Valdes said.
Valdes hopes that officers with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, or ICE, will focus on immigrants who come the U.S. to commit serious crimes.
"(Crimes such as) human trafficking, drug trafficking, and men beating their wives," he said.
ICE officials said the focus would be on arresting people with criminal histories, but that any immigrant in violation of U.S. law could be subject to arrest.
Yudy Barbera of Collier County's Democratic Hispanic Caucus said the President's comments have made many people nervous in the local Hispanic community, in which she said everyone knows at least one person who is undocumented.
"Hispanics are not the only community that has a lot of undocumented people in this country," Barbera said. "But Hispanics are the communities that are targeted specifically (for deportation.)"
Last year, ICE confirmed that several people had been detained in the largely Hispanic community of Immokalee, but that the detainees were people that ICE had been seeking specifically.
Barbera said that a more sweeping crackdown could be a major blow to an economy in which approximately a quarter of service and agriculture jobs are filled by undocumented workers.
"What is going to happen to our economy if you take millions of people living here undocumented, just because you don't want to provide a path to citizenship?" she said.
She said that local groups are sharing messages on social media, such as Facebook, about what to do if officers knock on their door.
"They have the right to say, 'if you want to come in, you've got to have a warrant,'" she said.
