West Liberty man’s deportation is sad, but not wrong

The recent deportation of Pascual Pedro is a heartbreaking situation.

The 20-year old former West Liberty resident and Guatemalan national, who was not a lawful resident of the United States, was detained on July 1 during his standard check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Guatemala on July 4. Pedro, whose legal name is Pascual Pedro Pedro but is often referred to as Pascual Pedro in news coverage, had lived with his grandparents in West Liberty for seven years and graduated from West Liberty High School, where he played on the school’s state championship soccer team. He was employed by his family’s siding company and a member of his local Catholic parish. He had complied with all of the terms of his supervised release, had no criminal record and was not known to local law enforcement.

But as sad as it all is, his deportation is not illegal. Given the mess that has been made of our immigration system and our lack of enforcement, it is not wrong. And contrary to what his supporters claim, Pedro has not been denied due process.

A ‘travesty’ in which due process was followed

The name of the legal concept doubles as a rallying cry against deportations in general, most notably in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man living in Maryland who was incorrectly deported to his home country in violation of an immigration court order prohibiting his removal to that specific country.

As a rallying cry, due process seems an increasingly fluid concept. Pedro’s supporters appear to believe that due process requires that he be returned to the United States and allowed to remain.

In law, the concept is not amorphus. “Due process of law,” as it is written in the 5th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, is the full and correct application of all legal procedures in order to ensure that a person is not deprived of their rights. In the case of Abrego Garcia in Maryland, his right to due process was allegedly/arguably violated not by his deportation itself but because he was removed to the one place he wasn’t supposed to be sent.

While Pedro’s deportation has been called a “travesty,” it cannot be called unlawful. And due process is not denied when the legal process is correctly followed.

What is expedited removal?

Pedro and his father came to the U.S. in 2018. Shortly after they arrived, they were both issued an order for expedited removal, a process created by statute by a bipartisan congressional vote in 1996 that allows for immigration enforcement agents to remove a person present in the U.S. illegally without a hearing.

At the time of their arrival, expedited removal was limited to non-citizens who either arrived at a port of entry or entered the U.S. without inspection by land or by sea and who were encountered within 100 miles of the border within two weeks of their arrival. Expedited removal does not supersede asylum claims.

His father was deported; Pedro was released under an Order of Supervision (OSUP) which required regular check-ins with ICE and other conditions.

Importantly, an OSUP does not grant permanent legal residency or halt the deportation process. An OSUP simply allows a person to not be stuck in a detention center while they await deportation or resolution to any legal challenge.

Tim Farmer, an immigration attorney who took Pedro’s case on July 3, told The Gazette Friday that he was not aware of any previous attempts Pedro made to challenge his expedited removal order prior to his July 1 detention.

An innocent cog in a sinister machine

All reports are that Pedro was a good kid who has grown into a well-respected young man. It wasn’t his fault that he entered the country illegally. He was brought here by his father when he was just 13 years old.

But while a cog on its own is innocent, does it not play a role when it functions as part of a sinister machine?

Few agree that a 14-year-old with no criminal record living in a gang-infested neighborhood should have the rest of his life derailed for getting caught with little baggies of pills he was enticed to sell to help his impoverished family financially. But by doing so, he is, however reluctantly, a cog in a machine that has caused the deaths of over 1 million Americans since 1999 and ruined the lives of countless more.

If there’s no accountability – i.e., if there’s no enforcement of the law that prohibits drug trafficking – that operation doesn’t just continue to claim the lives and livelihoods of everyone whoever struggled with addiction. Violent street gangs will continue to run rampant, neighborhoods will become only more consumed by violence and poverty and even more 14-year-olds will be conditioned to believe their only way forward in life is to sell drugs.

Illegal immigration is the same. Many agree that Pedro deserves a life in the community he has thrived in for the last seven years. But he arrived in the United States via a sinister machine that enables traffickers to rake in billions; shelters to become overcrowded, government resources to become strained and innocent people to get hurt (or worse).

If immigration laws are not enforced at all, illegal immigration will continue to run rampant, as we found out over the previous four years. If we do not secure the border, cartels will continue to grow in size and in power and unleash further hell in the countries and communities where they operate. Innocent people will be enticed to take harrowing journeys, and dangerous people will continue to enter the country and put anyone around them in harm’s way.

Our country does not enforce immigration laws to target people like Pedro. We enforce them because of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who entered the country illegally from Mexico and later abducted a 20-year-old woman while she was out jogging, stabbed her to death and buried her body in a cornfield. And because of Eswin Mejia, who entered illegally from Honduras and later killed 21-year-old Sarah Root by street-racing while heavily intoxicated.

Those are just cases that happened in Iowa.

A good guy with one link to bad men

What links Pedro and the others is not their skin color or ethnicity, as some have claimed. The sole common denominator is that they all entered the U.S. without authorization.

Pedro does not deserve to be associated in any context with people who commit heinous crimes. Yet he is because past lack of urgency (and some say competency) allowed the door to be left wide open for any willing person to enter illegally – both good people and dangerous ones.

Do advocates support any enforcement at all?

Some seem supportive of allowing bad people to stay. Around the country, leftists and Democrat politicians have pushed a sharp message against any and all deportations. Some have mobilized to help people evade ICE without any regard for whether they have serious criminal history that should unquestionably get them kicked out of the U.S. forever.

Some have even chosen violence, leading to an increase of attacks against ICE officers of nearly 700%.

Pedro’s community has chosen to advocate for him by holding vigils, contacting federal legislators, raising funds and pursuing legal avenues including filing for a stay of his removal, all appropriate and laudable activities.

In a Thursday morning press release, however, Escucha Mi Voz, an immigrant advocacy organization in Iowa City, noted that planned meetings with congressional staff at the offices of Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks would “also serve as an accountability session” to rebuke them for voting for increased funding of border security and immigration enforcement.

That does not inspire confidence that immigration advocates are truly supportive of seeing the worst offenders removed. If they are not agreeable to that, they shouldn’t expect immigration officials to be agreeable to limiting enforcement.

Support for allowing certain people who have been residing in the U.S. without authorization the opportunity to stay has grown and waned – and grown again – among Americans of all political stripes. Failure to enforce our laws, which has incentivized illegal migration by the millions and enabled harm to innocent people at the hands of some who should have never been allowed to be here, eviscerates that goodwill.

Deportation was inevitable

Pascual Pedro has been under a deportation order for virtually the whole time he has been in the United States. He was living here on borrowed time. It was never a matter of if he would be removed from the country, but when.

It is heartbreaking. And if legal avenues remain to challenge his deportation and allow his legal return to West Liberty, I hope they are pursued – and that they are successful. But we cannot simply decide arbitrarily not to enforce the law.

Pedro is one person. There are many more like him. And there will be even more if we ignore the problems that we have allowed to proliferate.

Find a legal avenue for his return, yes. But we must also find the will to put back together a system that has been badly broken.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com