President Donald Trump's administration is working to prevent "panic" in immigrant communities over guidelines for law enforcement agencies that allow "stronger enforcement actions against illegal immigrants," according to The Washington Post.
Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly released two memos over the weekend, which allow his department to hire thousands more enforcement agents, speed deportation hearings and enlarge the pool of immigrants indicated for priority removal.
"We do not need a sense of panic in the communities," said a DHS official in a conference call with reporters, according to the Post.
"We do not have the personnel, time or resources to go into communities and round up people and do all kinds of mass throwing folks on buses. That's entirely a figment of folks' imagination," added the official. "This is not intended to produce mass roundups, mass deportations."
Some of the changes, according to the DHS officials the Post spoke to, will not take effect immediately.
"We're not going to start changing this today, it's not going to start happening tomorrow," the official said, according to CNN. "You will not see folks rounded up or anything of the sort."
"We're just simply trying to execute what Congress and the president has asked us to do," an official added. "We're going to do so professionally [and] humanely ... but we are going to execute the laws of the United States."
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