Except Homan and Donald Trump haven’t been targeting solely “bad hombres” for arrest. In fact, far from it. With no enforcement priorities in place because Trump and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly threw them out, arrests of immigrants with no criminal record more than doubled in 2017 compared to last year. Caught in ICE’s grip this year were parents of U.S. citizen kids, grandparents, janitors, nurses, farmworkers, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, the very people Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan told that if they were worried about “some deportation force coming, knocking on your door this year, don't worry about that.”
Lara, an Ohio father of four American citizens, was deported to Mexico in July after nearly two decades in the U.S. Lara had no criminal record, was a taxpayer, and followed ICE’s rules by checking in regularly for years. That didn’t matter to immigration officials, who treated Lara no differently than they would someone who actually did pose a danger to public safety.
Instead, ICE ordered him to leave his family and country.
"These are the darkest times I've ever seen as an attorney,” said former American Immigration Lawyers Association president David Leopold, who represented Lara. “When the best and the brightest that we have to offer are taken from their homes and sent away. The law is so broken.”
Maria Mendoza-Sanchez and Eusebio Sanchez
Mendoza-Sanchez and her husband were deported to Mexico this past August after two decades in the U.S. Neither had criminal records. ICE didn’t care.
San Jose Mercury News: “At the airport, the 46-year-old mother related how she had arrived in Oakland in 1994 when she was young and in love. She began working in a nursing home, where she was promoted several times, then studied to become a nurse. Eusebio had started working in construction, and later graduated to become a truck driver for the last 12 years. Asked by a reporter Wednesday night if not getting the stay of the deportation order was a failure, she said no. ‘I’m not leaving this country defeated, because I graduated from the university and that was not in my plans when I came here, or when I was a kid,’ she said.”
Maribel Trujillo
Immigrant rights group America’s Voice: “Trujillo, 42, a mother of four U.S. born children (including her 3-year-old daughter who suffers from epileptic seizures) with no criminal history, was deported to Mexico. Despite the overwhelming international attention and support from Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), Washington politicians, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati and national advocacy groups, ICE chose not to exercise prosecutorial discretion to stay Maribel’s deportation. Maribel originally came to the US to flee violence from Mexico’s gang-ridden west coast state of Michoacán, and filed for asylum after her father and brother were kidnapped and her mother extorted. Upon her recent return to Mexico, Maribel has already received death threats.”
Fatiha Elgharib
Elgharib, an undocumented Ohio mom of four, was previously allowed by the Obama administration to stay in the U.S., so long as she checked in regularly with ICE. But during her first check-in under the Trump administration, she was ordered to buy a one-way ticket back to Morocco.
Despite receiving a one-month stay, Elgharib remains vulnerable to deportation and could be torn from her kids, one of whom has Down’s Syndrome and was born with a hole in his heart, any day now. “What is happening is not about protecting American communities—my 15-year-old brother, a citizen by birth, is about to lose his main source of care and support,” wrote Elgharib’s daughter. “While I am a DACA recipient, my status will soon be in limbo, too, since the administration revoked the program. And then what will my brother do? And what of the communities that my sister and I are enmeshed in, that we’ve contributed to?”
Diego and Lizandro Claros Saravia
In 2009, brothers Diego and Lizandro fled violence in El Salvador for the safety of the U.S. In 2017, Trump deported them back to it. Their attorney told The Washington Post that it “was the fastest deportation process he has ever seen”: “In El Salvador, the brothers were to be met by two aunts and three grandparents. But their family here—including their parents; their older brother, Jonathan; and their sister, Fatima — are worried about the violence they could face there. El Salvador was named the hemisphere’s murder capital in 2016. ‘They have separated my family,” Lizandro and Diego’s mother, Lucia Saravia, said at a news conference outside CASA’s headquarters. ‘The system is supposed to deport criminals—I am fine with that,’ said Jonathan, 29, a carpenter. ‘But my brothers did nothing wrong. They’ve had their futures taken from them.’”
Rosamaria Hernandez
While not arrested by ICE, Rosamaria’s arrest by another federal immigration agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), best exemplifies the sheer cruelty of Trump’s immoral mass deportation force. In October, the 10-year-old was being taken by ambulance to Driscoll Children's Hospital in Texas for emergency gallbladder surgery when the vehicle had to go through a Border Patrol checkpoint.
According to the girl’s family, immigration agents allowed them to pass but followed the ambulance to the hospital, stalking the child outside her room as she recovered from the procedure. Hours later, agents took Rosamaria, who has cerebral palsy, into custody. According to her advocates, government officials repeatedly blocked Rosamaria from accessing post-operative care. Following national outcry and a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union—and zero public statements from Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz—Rosamaria was released from detention.
“Instead of mass deportations,” America’s Voice notes, “Americans overwhelmingly back legalization and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. In fact, in the face of President Trump’s radical immigration agenda, Americans’ support for immigrants and a path to legal status is growing”:
And, standing up for immigrants is increasingly becoming a focus of organizations beyond those that traditionally operate in the immigrant rights space. Fighting for immigrants and refugees is firmly central to the broader Resistance and People Power efforts that have sprung up in response to Trump.
We’re pushing back, we’re taking the Administration to court, we’re making them fight at every step of the way, and we’re working to channel energies and outrage at the ballot box in order to ultimately reclaim the political power that will lead to legislative and policy breakthroughs, and a return to a pro-immigrant America that we aspire to.
“As recent elections in Virginia and Alabama help demonstrate,” America’s Voice continues, “those fighting for an inclusive vision of immigrants in America are mobilized and on the march. It’s been an exceedingly difficult year for immigrants and refugees, but we believe eventually the kind-hearted, fair, and compassionate side of America will prevail.”