Dear Editor,
While everything else seems to be spinning out of control, so do the lives of our U.S. immigrants. President Trump tells us he is only going after “the worst of the worst,” but that is not what is happening.
Jumping and beating and arresting a working father with no criminal record that has been in our country for decades with not one, not two, but three U.S. Marine sons is not going after the worst. And now my worst fears are happening. ICE aggressive tactics are causing deaths and retaliations.
Violence begets violence. And that is what is happening today.
A father dropping his children off at school on his way to work—ICE shot and killed him in his car while onlookers watched in horror. A loving father with no criminal record. And a mother and daughter coming out of church were grabbed and thrown to the ground handcuffed, both crying out for help while parishioners pleaded to let them go. And people dying in makeshift detention camps and ICE facilities because they can’t get their medication.
Thousands of stories like these are going unnoticed that this administration wants to keep from the public eye. As Danny Baker said in his op-letter “The United States Disgrace”: “We are treating immigrants with less respect and love than we giver our animals.”
Yes, many are not U.S. citizens, but they deserve better than this. Many have been living here for years working with homes and families. They pay their taxes that support our Social Security and other government programs. As well, they help slow down the drop in birth rates we need to support our future tax system. As well, our current economy.
Many who are farmhands and pick our crops and work in meat factories and make our clothes—“made in the U.S.A.”
Many jobs Americans don’t want—but work that needs to be done. As it is, we have a shortage in our healthcare system where many non-citizens work, taking care of our elderly and disabled. Why would we want them to leave or lock them up when they could be doing all of the above, as they always have, living in our country no differently than the rest of us. Other than being ‘low hanging fruit’ for ICE to go after to meet a mandated quota to arrest 1,000 U.S. immigrants per day.
Masked marauders with guns abducting men and women and children from their homes and schools and workplaces and senior centers and nursing homes and hospitals and marketplaces and community ball games and parks where children play. Even when they’re abiding by the rules, renewing their immigration status at immigration offices, they’re being abducted there too.
Nowhere is safe or off limits where ICE will not terrorize immigrants and citizens alike. Racial profiling that hasn’t been seen like it since the mass internment of American Japanese. Still a stain on our country as this is too.
In the early 2000s, I worked with immigrants who told me they wanted to be an American citizen but it was difficult and the delays were getting longer to receive and renew a Green Card while the cost kept going up. A thousand dollars then and I’m sure even more today.
It is not the immigrants who have failed us it is our immigration system that has failed them. But something that still holds true are the words that lie at the feet of our Statue of Liberty. Words that are there to remind us who we are as a people and who have built our nation. That we need immigrants as much as they want to be here. Many who are refugees who have escaped from environmental collapse and war-torn countries overrun with gangs. So, yes, go after the criminals and the gang members—immigrants want to feel just as safe as we do. That’s why they are here.
But for God’s sake and for the sake of our country’s humanity, leave our hard-working U.S. immigrant moms and dads and their parents and grandparents and children alone. They are not “The worst of the worst.”
JM
