Facing A Population Decline, Baltimore Set Up A Legal Defense Fund For Immigrants

“In the mayor’s office on the second floor of Baltimore City Hall, Catalina Rodriguez-Lima has been uneasy lately. Rodriguez-Lima runs a city office whose mission is to attract new immigrants to Baltimore — a strategy for reversing decades of population decline. But President Donald Trump’s plans to ramp up deportations of immigrants in the U.S. illegally have cast a pall over her efforts. ‘We have been working to develop economic tools for immigrants to open businesses, to buy homes, to be employed,’ she said. ‘Our efforts are being threatened because there is that constant reminder in the back of their heads that they could be deported.’ As President Trump’s widening deportation dragnet has heightened anxieties in immigrant households across the country, local officials have spoken about the moral responsibility they have to protect these families through steps like limiting the role police officers play in immigration enforcement. But in cities like Baltimore, which see growing their immigrant populations as a way to revive a shrinking tax base, there’s also a strong financial imperative to act.”