Immigration agents have taken a heavy-handed approach to enforcing the law around the United States . . . . They are separating families and creating a heightened atmosphere of fear where many undocumented immigrants are retreating from society—avoiding work, not taking children to school or to medical appointments, and not reporting crimes. . . . City leaders are speaking out. Mayor Megan Barry wrote a letter to ICE decrying the agency’s detention tactics, and on Tuesday Metro Council is holding the second of three readings of two bills that would change the way local public employees and officials interact with federal immigration agents. . . . The nation’s immigration system is broken. Laws must be enforced, but tearing communities apart is not the way to get the job done. – Nashville Must Put the Feds in Check on Immigration, Tennessean Editorial Board and the USA Today, David Plazas, 6/19/18 [Link]
Fact Check: This commentary seems to regard any enforcement of immigration law as “heavy-handed.” Why should it be a problem if enforcement discourages illegal aliens from taking and holding American jobs? That is what the law requires. Also, it is not appropriate to keep illegal aliens from using tax-paid educational and medical services intended for American citizens.
The issue of enforcement separating families is one illegal alien advocates commonly raise to manipulate emotion and overshadow all other issues related to illegal immigration. One key point to consider is that domestic law enforcement commonly breaks up families, when it sends fathers, mothers and children to jail. This is the understood consequence of people breaking the law.
For illegal immigrants, the penalty they face is deportation if they have not committed other crimes which call for incarceration. Being deported doesn’t necessarily mean they will be separated from their families. They can choose to take their families home with them. In many other cases, they left their families at home when they came to the U.S. In these cases, deportation would promote family reunification.
Illegal alien advocates commonly claim, as does this editorial, that local enforcement of immigration law discourages illegal aliens from reporting crimes to police. But this claim seems to be more speculation than anything else. Considerable research and other data indicate otherwise.
The editorialist comes across as insincere when he says immigration laws must be enforced but not “tear communities apart.” Presumably he refers to communities of illegal aliens. If immigration laws are enforced those communities would come apart, and properly so, as their members are either deported or persuaded to return to their homelands.
Illegal alien advocates may pay lip service to the rule of law, but it becomes increasingly obvious that open borders are their real agenda.