Pets are being abandoned, surrendered amid Trump’s immigration crackdown
The heightened need is colliding with a shelter system already stretched thin by post-pandemic overcrowding, chronic staffing shortages and plummeting adoptions.
By María Luisa Paúl, Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT, 6 min
Daymi Blain dreads the sound of her phone.
It rings at all hours now — and every time, she braces for the voice on the other end. A person calling because their relative was taken in an immigration raid, leaving several cats behind. A neighbor reporting dogs wandering the street after their family vanished overnight. A trembling voice begging her to take in a pet because its owner is leaving the country and can’t bring it.
“This is all we’re getting now: pets with deported and detained owners. Nobody calls for anything else,” said Blain, who runs the South Florida-based Adopt and Save a Life Rescue Mission. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with all this, but I can tell you that the animals are the ones paying the price.”
From California to Tennessee, the effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown have reached a place most wouldn’t think to look: the kennels of overcrowded animal shelters.
Animal welfare groups across the country say they’re fielding a surge of calls about pets left behind when their owners are detained or deported, or self-deport in fear. That heightened need is colliding with a shelter system already stretched thin by post-pandemic overcrowding, chronic staffing shortages and plummeting adoptions — leading to longer stays for animals, difficult choices about space and growing fears that more pets could be euthanized simply because there’s nowhere for them to go.
Editor’s Note: So sad, and the reality of homeless people, and these ICE kidnappings without cause, and their pets. They are love, loved, and sometimes all these people have in the world.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s immigration crackdown has led to abandoned pets, crowded shelters – The Washington Post
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