President Donald Trump is cracking down on illegal immigrants.

The local law enforcement officials who guard the US-Mexico border may support President Trump’s evolving immigration policy, but his widening scope is placing them under the pump.

Pima County Sheriff Mark Napier told the New York Times his district “simply does not have the capacity” to take on such a task.

Napier already paints a grim picture. The Republican officer said it’s reached the point where local authority officials are shoving the recovered corpses of illegal immigrants inside installed refrigerators.

“I wish these were simple issues, but they’re not,” he said. “Just this past weekend, my deputies in the western part of our county recovered skeletal remains.

“I would wager that I’m one of the only sheriffs in the United States (where) one of my district stations has an industrial freezer outside of it, so we can store bodies that we recover in the desert of people trying to cross the border, or drug traffickers involved in violence out in the deserts.

“This is a regular occurrence in southern Arizona. It was two this past weekend.”

DONALD TRUMP’S CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

The Trump administration has vowed to take a harder stance on deporting illegal immigrants.

It’s always technically been illegal to reside in the US without documentation, and anyone who lives in the country illegally is subject to removal at any time.

But the Obama administration never enforced a full crackdown on the estimated 11 million immigrants residing illegally in the US.

Rather, the former President took a specific stance against undocumented immigrants who potentially threatened the security of Americans.

Back in November 2014, Mr Obama stressed the deportations would apply to “felons, not families”, “criminals, not children” and “gang members, not a mum who’s working hard to provide for her kids”.

Donald Trump is dramatically extending former President Obama’s immigration crackdown.Source:AP

On one hand, by numbers, Mr Obama is the most efficient enforcer of immigration laws in American history, having deported more illegal immigrants than any administration before him.

Under his administration, three million illegal immigrants were deported — compared to two million under Bush.

On the other, Mr Obama’s actions shielded 750,000 unauthorised immigrants who were brought to the US as children from deportation.

Still, that leaves over 10 million illegal immigrants who face the prospect of deportation under Mr Trump, although it’s highly unlikely most will be deported.

The Times noted that the country has limited resources for deportation, and the overall number will be “very far from” the amount of illegals residing in the country.

Sheriff Napier said that under the current process, deputies who encounter a potential illegal immigrant will typically assess their criminal background.

If they determine the person is in the country without proper documentation, they will call the federal authorities to assess the person officially according to immigration standards.

A US Border Patrol agent parks on a hill top near the border fence in Nogales, Arizona, on February 17, 2017, on the US/Mexico border.Source:AFP

But now, Mr Trump is also seeking to significantly dial down the time period by which an illegal immigrant can be subject to “expedited removal”.

In the past, anyone who had illegally entered the country within two weeks, and was within roughly 160 kilometres of the border, could be subject to expedited removal — that is, removed from the country immediately without receiving the right to a court case.

The idea was that the immigrant was still in “transit”, and hadn’t yet made it to the heartland of the US or set up a life there.

Mr Trump is seeking to expand this time period to two years, which will give police significantly more power to remove immigrants.

But officials like Sheriff Napier say local police simply don’t have the means to do this.

“This morning I have 1840 people in our jail, and a capacity of about 2000. The other problem for me is I don’t have a lot of deputies right now sitting around wondering what to do,” he said.

“My county is 9200 square miles. It has a population of about a million people. To provide traditional law enforcement officials to an area larger than some states is a huge challenge, I don’t have excess capacity to engage in correcting federal engagement.”

‘IMMIGRANTS LIVING IN FEAR’

Mr Trump claims his new policies are necessary to protect US communities from people who “present a significant threat to national security and public safety”.

Research, however, shows that the level of crime among immigrants is much lower than among native-born Americans.

Mexican immigrants who have spent decades living in the US say any sense of safety or security has been blown apart by the crackdown.

Hundreds of activists have protested high-profile deportation cases under the Trump administration, such as that of mother-of-two Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos earlier this month.Source:AP

Emilio Lopez Bautista has been working in the farm fields of California for the past three decades.

But now, the 66-year-old, who entered the US illegally from Mexico 30 years ago with his wife and six children, says nothing feels safe or predictable anymore.

“We are afraid when we step out of the house at five in the morning to go work in the fields, we are afraid while driving, we are afraid at work and we are afraid at home,” said Emilio, who lives in the Coachella Valley, a rich agricultural region in southern California that is home to tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants employed as farm labourers.

He said since Mr Trump’s immigration policies were unveiled, anxiety has spread like wildfire among community members.

University student Samantha Yanez, 21, shared a similar story.

Samantha entered the United States illegally with her parents and two brothers when she was six years old.

Youth co-ordinator Samantha Yanez opened up about the challenges faced by immigrants because of steps taken by US President Donald Trump to drastically increase deportations.Source:AFP

Although she has a special status under the “DACA” program, which protects her and her brothers from deportation, she says she is terrified her parents could sent back to Mexico and is now wary of any law enforcement.

“I went for a run the other day and I saw some police lights on the way back home ... and I genuinely got scared and wondered whether I should continue,” she said.

Earlier this month, the high-profile case of illegal immigrant Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos sparked protests after she was forcibly deported to Mexico under Mr Trump’s administration.

Guadalupe had lived illegally in the US for about 20 years, having snuck across the border into Arizona with her family when she was just 14 years old.

Having built a life in the US, with a husband and two American children, her abrupt arrest and deportation sparked furious protests among activists calling for her release.

The case of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos sparked protests after she was forcibly deported to Mexico under Mr Trump’s administration.Source:AP

Guadalupe remains locked out of the US, but her children, aged 16 and 14, have been invited to Mr Trump’s first State of the Union address as the guests of Democratic representatives Ruben Gallego and Raul Grijalva.

“Congressman Grijalva and I invited Angel (Garcia de Rayos) and his sister Jaqueline (Garcia de Rayos) to the address because we believe it is important for Donald Trump to face the people who have been victimised by his disastrous policies,” said Mr Gallego.

Mr Grijalva added: “Their example is a bright light of hope for immigrant communities across this country who are fearful that Trump will come for them next. Their fight is all of our fight, and I am proud to stand side-by-side with them in opposition to these atrocious policies.”

— with AFP