The Dystopian Bungling And Brutality Of Immigration Enforcement – OpEd

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A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old Dallas girl was deported by U.S. immigration officials to Colombia. She spoke no Spanish and they did appear not to have even checked her fingerprints to ensure she was who they thought she was. It’s true, she gave a false name to local police, but there is simply no excuse for the government deporting anyone for any reason without even bothering with the basic bureaucratic steps it supposedly has in place to prevent such injustices. But of course, the fingerprint system is not there to protect people from government overreach; it’s there to empower the state.

I wonder how so many Americans can actually fear immigrants—legal or illegal—more than the state and its vast powers that are needed to “crack down” on them. There are millions of illegals living in the U.S., and to expel them, or even stop the entrance of millions more, would require a police state likely far greater than anything seen in American history. Already, the U.S. detains suspected aliens without real due process. Many have died in “administrative custody.” The Obama administration, far from ushering in a more liberal era of immigration enforcement, has engaged in record numbers of deportations. Obama is on track to deport more people in his first term than his predecessor did in two. Yet this does not satisfy those who strangely think that the current administration has been soft on immigration. What would? How many more American teenagers are we willing to see sent to foreign countries where they don’t know the language? How many more poor people are we willing to see die in custody? How many businesses turned upside down in the name of interfering with an employer’s and employee’s God-given right to make a mutually beneficial deal regardless of where they were born? The collateral damage in a war on illegal immigration—one that would satisfy those who want to see the federal government really “do something” about the “problem”—would be on such a grand scale of horror, the atrocities mounting up every day, that I shudder to think about it.

Liberty means liberty for all. We can choose between an unbridled state, lawless government, peaceful people crushed under the weight of an American dystopian bureaucracy, or we can choose to restore the freedom for people who want to come here that existed almost fully before the Progressive Era. That is the choice.

Anthony Gregory

Anthony Gregory is a Research Editor at The Independent Institute. His articles have appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune, East Valley Tribune (AZ), Contra Costa Times, The Star (Chicago, IL), Washington Times, Vacaville Reporter, Palo Verde Times, and other newspapers.

2 thoughts on “The Dystopian Bungling And Brutality Of Immigration Enforcement – OpEd

  • January 5, 2012 at 1:54 pm
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    Anthony,

    Your piece is a little bit much on the emotional side. Let’s wait until the inquiry into the deportation of the young girl is finished. Please be aware that the government couldn’t simply have put her on a plane without a travel document (passport). She would have been interviewed by the government first to establish her date and place of birth, manner of entry, etc. She would have been asked about her parents. A Request for Travel document would have been filled out and then the Colombian government would review that request. Typically, the would interview the person claiming to be a Colombian. It’s not “the government” just snatching someone off the street and deporting them.

    On your other comments, I will agree that the government cannot deport all the aliens illegally in the U.S. It won’t happen. I agree the border has been militarized too much. The simple solution is to enforce eVerify to require all new employees to have their Social Security Number verified. Yes, there are some errors, but they are small in number. Finally, I don’t think we can have open borders which you state existed almost fully before the Progressive Era. We are not a young country looking to fill up vast spaces. We do need a rational examination of our existing laws to see whether increases on aliens seeking work rather than so-called “family reunification” might be more appropriate.

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  • January 5, 2012 at 2:35 pm
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    Advocates for illegal alien amnesty like to point to the heart-braking cases, like that of the young Mexican girl who was sent home to her country even though she had been denied the benefit of knowing her native language. Does the case of this your person really speak well for our police of looking the other way with illegal aliens? Our failure to rigorously and seriously enforce the immigration laws has encouraged her parents to smuggle her into our country. Once here she was deprive of the opportunity to know her grandparents and other relatives and to learn about the culture of her homeland and to speak her native language. Is this the way you would want your own child to be raised? The parents of this young girl have deprived her of the chance to develop a healthy sense of self identity. Shes not an american and yet she is not mexican either. She will have great difficulty bonding with either society and this is just not right. The thing to do is to prevent these sorts of situations from arising in the first place. This means enforcing the laws.

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