JUST LEGALIZE THEM:

An analysis of the 44,000-some immigrants in ICE custody last summer found that a full 80 percent of detainees had only committed a minor offense such as a traffic violation or had no prior convictions at all, according to a report by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. According to the agency's own numbers for the last fiscal year, ICE charged or convicted roughly 75,000 immigrants for simple traffic violations (DUIs were not included).

Crispin Hernandez is tired of living in fear of immigration agents. Hernandez, an organizer with the Workers' Center of Central New York and a former upstate dairy worker, says that he's seen too many families in his community separated. "They'll take a father or a mother from their family and the kids are the ones left to suffer," Hernandez says.

If ICE wasn't enough, undocumented immigrants in upstate New York must also contend with Border Patrol, which is allowed to conduct searches within 100 miles of the border under federal law. Both agencies have proven emboldened under the Trump administration, targeting bus stations and workplaces for raids.

"The need for driver's licenses [for undocumented immigrants] has always been there, but in many ways it became more urgent when Trump became president. It woke up a lot of people," says Hernandez, who is also at the center of a lawsuit against the state of New York to allow farmworkers to unionize. "Farm owners have a lot of power over their [undocumented] employees. With driver's licenses, we would have more freedom."

Although the majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States reside in big cities, the most vocal calls for expanding driving privileges come from rural towns where a growing number of undocumented workers have found work on farms and in meat-processing plants. It's in these areas, underserviced or not serviced at all by state public transport, largely ignored by Uber and Lyft, and increasingly dependent on migrant work for their economic stability, where the need for licenses is greatest.

Tweet   @brothersjudd