Under Donald Trump, unshackled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents are terrorizing immigrant families with apparent impunity, sweeping up moms and dads with no criminal record by the thousands since his poorly attended inauguration. Now that Trump has also cruelly ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, many of the children of these undocumented parents will also be vulnerable to deportation if congressional Republicans don’t listen to the majority of American voters and pass a clean, bipartisan DREAM Act.
When dozens of activists stormed the offices of congressional Republicans Tuesday to push them to act, “one interaction stood out”:
Walter Barrientos, an organizer with the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road NY met with Rep. Peter King (R-NY) who told him, “You should thank God for ICE agents.”
Barrientos did not respond in kind. After college, he had encountered U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents near the Canadian border on his Amtrak train. He was detained for two days and released on $10,000 bail, according to a 2011 WNYC radio news report.
“I do not thank God for ICE agents, I was arrested too,” Barrientos responds as King begins to walk away. “They almost deported me.”
As David Leopold, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, tweeted, “Trump is incompetent … but his deportation force operates with ruthless efficiency; tearing apart families across the U.S.”
Leopold knows this firsthand: Jesus Lara, one of his clients, was deported in July despite having four U.S. citizen children, no criminal record, and nearly 20 years in America. This family does not “thank God for ICE.”
Another one of Leopold’s clients, Pedro Hernandez, faces deportation this week despite being the primary caregiver of an adult son with cerebral palsy and having prior permission from ICE to stay.
Hernandez was even given a work permit from the federal government so he could legally support his family. But last month, Hernandez’s wife was startled by ICE agents pounding on the door, telling her Hernandez’s time is up and he should prepare to be torn from his home. This family does not “thank God for ICE.”
Some of those “others” targeted by ICE also include Maria Mendoza-Sanchez, an Oakland nurse who, along with her husband, Eusebio, were deported in August after nearly 20 years here. Not even a personal plea from U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) swayed ICE, with heartbreaking video capturing the family saying goodbye at San Francisco International Airport.
Accompanying Mendoza-Sanchez and her husband to Mexico was their 12-year-old U.S. citizen child. Their daughters, the youngest only 16, stayed behind to continue their education and somehow cope without their parents or little brother. This family does not “thank God for ICE.”
“I’m not leaving this country defeated,” Maria said as she was being deported from America, “because I graduated from the university and that was not in my plans when I came here, or when I was a kid.”
So no, Congressman, none of these immigrant families “thank God for ICE.” If anything, the ICE and CBP actions Donald Trump and the Republicans have been supporting, cheerleading, and enabling have been the devil’s work.