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REUTERS
SACRAMENTO
SUPPORTERS and critics of President Donald Trump's tough stance on illegal immigration packed a gymnasium in California's heartland on Tuesday for a boisterous town hall meeting featuring the head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who endorsed Trump's Republican bid for the White House with strong backing in the region's conservative suburbs, invited acting ICE Director Thomas Homan to address a public forum in the state capital.
The gathering got off to a raucous start with Jones'opening remarks interrupted by shouts and heckling, as the sheriff warned he would move to eject members of the crowd who continued to disrupt the meeting, attended by about 400.
Homan, whose agency has drawn fire for what some civil liberties advocates have criticized as heavy-handed tactics in rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants, insisted ICE was acting in a targeted fashion against those with criminal records.
He said ICE was focusing on individuals who have violated final deportation orders or have returned after being removed from the country.
"We don't conduct neighborhood sweeps,"he said over cat-calls."I don't want children to be afraid to go to school. I don't want people to be afraid to go to the doctor."
Still, he warned that ICE intended to"enforce the laws that are on the books."
Democratic officials in the Sacramento area, home to about 2 mn in California's Central Valley some 90 miles east of San Francisco, have opposed the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and are leading a charge in the state legislature to fight his policies.
The divide illustrates the complicated politics of the capital region, straddling jurisdictions where the predominantly liberal coast bleeds into the more conservative interior of the state.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a former top Democrat in the heavily blue state legislature, said at an earlier protest rally that ICE had failed to earn the community's trust.
