Avoiding deportations easier said than done

Leaders of a Tuesday rally outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Cedar Rapids seemed happy to take the credit for the preferable outcomes of mandatory ICE check-ins for five Iowa residents who are living in the United States without legal authorization. Each of the five for whom hundreds had showed up to offer “protective accompaniment” were released after their appointments with instructions to return in one year.

“Make no mistake,” said Miriam “Mimi” Daoud of Cedar Rapids, a sexual assault survivor advocate and organizer with several local activist groups. “The only reason that is happening is because we have our eyes on ICE.”

“Thankfully,” she continued, “the people and the families who’ve showed up here today have a check-in in a year. But that only happened because of our presence …”

Several detained by ICE after rally

Yet only a few hours later, three other unauthorized immigrants were detained — including some who accepted organizers’ offer during the rally to provide the same protective accompaniment.

What a terribly unfortunate way to learn that a stranger’s hasty offer to stick close by is not enough to stop a person deemed removable from being detained.

Several activists who had stayed behind after Tuesday morning’s rally parked their vehicles outside the ICE office in a manner that would block ICE vehicles from leaving the parking lot. Police were called to the scene as well as tow trucks. Activists ended up removing their cars, avoiding arrest.

ICE had not provided a reason for detaining any of the three individuals, who were not previously acquainted with the people who remained in the area after the rally. Activists had no way of knowing if there was a legitimate reason for their detainment, yet they clearly assumed that one did not exist — to the extent that some were willing to commit actions that almost got them detained themselves.

Stunts like that — and last week’s protest outside congressional offices in Cedar Rapids, when organizers with immigrant advocacy group Escucha Mi Voz held a food drive without an apparent plan ahead of time for delivering the collected food items — paint an unserious picture of serious people.

How can deportations be avoided?

If advocates want unauthorized immigrants to be able to stay — permanently — then whether they realize it or not, they arguing two possible options. The first is for the federal government simply to ignore its own immigration laws forever.

That will not happen. To ignore a law is to render it meaningless. A country perceived as not enforcing its laws is a country perceived as inviting people to break them. Huge consequences result: former President Joe Biden’s anemic immigration enforcement enabled a run on our southern border that resulted in a terrible uptick in illegal entries — almost 11 million encounters and up to several million more “known gotaways,” or people known to have entered without inspection by Border Patrol. That stuck the U.S. with millions of people to track and often provide for and a boatload of cases needing adjudicated.

Another huge consequence of Biden’s immigration ignorance was voters’ choice to return Donald Trump to the White House.

The second, more palatable option is for the federal government to create legal avenues for most unauthorized immigrants to stay permanently. That would require legislation, which anyone who ever saw “Schoolhouse Rock” knows does not happen overnight. (For the purposes of this argument, let’s assume that Americans have not been clamoring for immigration reform legislation for decades.)

Let’s also assume that “most” means that everyone but those colloquially known as the “the worst of the worst” should be allowed to stay permanently.

Everyone is willing to boot the worst of the worst, of course. If for some reason you’re on the fence, ICE has a whole website where you can learn about the dozens of drug traffickers and child rapists and human smugglers and spousal abusers they’ve nabbed just in the first 10 days of this month.

Define ‘worst’

Morally, defining “worst of the worst” isn’t hard. Legally, it’s no picnic. Just as with any other piece of legislation intended to cure the ills of society, legislators would risk deporting too many decent people along with the scumbags if “worst” is too broadly defined. Define it too vaguely, though, and the monsters would slip through the cracks.

But beyond that, the nation would still need the means to separate the worst of the worst from the best and the rest. (Let’s assume once again for the purposes of this argument that our immigration enforcement system’s infrastructure is not already severely lacking.)

No magic wand exists to ensure every decent and hardworking person who wants to come to this country may do so, any more than one exists to send every depraved monster back to the slithering swamp they crawled out of.

Many of the problems with our immigration system are those of our own making. Others are simply the products of reality. Our recent reality is that millions upon millions of noncitizens entered our country illegally and now reside here without legal status. Most are decent people who work hard and live productive lives. Some are real dirtbags who pose a threat to any community in which they live — and who should not be allowed to be here.

How to separate the ‘worst?’

How do we find the dirtbags to kick them out? That might depend on the particular state in which one resides — or more specifically, which political party has governing control. A recent CNN analysis showed that “ICE follows starkly different playbooks” in how it apprehends people suspected of being in the country without legal authorization.

Here’s what those differences look like: in red states, ICE arrests are more likely to happen inside jails and correctional centers. In blue states, some of which have statewide “sanctuary” policies barring law enforcement from cooperating with ICE, 70% of ICE arrests happen right in the community, often through raids in the workplace or neighborhood or public spaces.

There are drawbacks to both. ICE raids such as those that have happened all over Southern California often scoop up a lot of people without criminal records in addition to the hardened criminals, which instills a lot of fear in whole communities. Raids can also attract nutcase protesters who resort to physical violence, making things unsafe for everyone.

Ironically, a good way to dissuade the raids is to allow law enforcement to do things such as alert ICE whenever they have a removable person in custody, which I’ve pointed out in this column before.

But there are also drawbacks to how red states such as ours are doing it. Having the majority of ICE arrests take place at jails and prisons means that most of the people taken into ICE custody have first committed (or are at least suspected to have committed) a crime. Waiting for that to happen before initiating immigration action poses a risk to any potential victim — and the moral question that accompanies it.

This leads me to another point, steeped in loathsome irony: Other than at a courthouse or other secure facility, the safest, most incident-free detainments are likely the ones that have happened at ICE facilities.

Don’t take that as an endorsement of making ICE check-ins the standard target for enforcement and removal. As it is, those check-ins are already at risk of becoming less safe — for everyone — if protests on ICE facility grounds continue to grow, activists continue to pull stunts and larger police presence becomes necessary.

Advocacy becomes self-serving

Tuesday’s rally was just that — a rally, at which a sizable group of politicians and activists all got their turn behind a microphone. Everyone who gathered that morning believed they were doing something good, sure. But there’s a fine line between supporting a community and using others’ trauma to channel one’s own political frustrations.

As I’ve written many times now, it’s heartbreaking that some people with no criminal history are facing deportation sooner than the “worst of the worst.” It is also heartbreaking that multiple administrations let the immigration crisis get to this point. To attempt to fix it presents both a devastating task and humbling realization.

But a fix is needed. People are eager to make a life in the United States because they want to embrace the freedoms and opportunities that make us a great country. That greatness can be lost if we fail to uphold our own standards — for those of us lucky enough to be born here, and those who will one day join us.

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