I am the proud grandchild of four immigrants, most of whom immigrated legally with all the requisite paperwork. A few didn't although most of them returned to the country of origin. None had high school educations; their paperwork said they could read and write. At the time they immigrated, all sorts of people in many parts of the US objected to people coming from other countries for all sorts of reasons. My grandparents felt and witnessed the rejection.
However, my generation has produced four Ph.D.s, an architect, a pioneering computer programmer, an inventor with fifty patents and and another with ten books. We have all embraced the American dream and, indeed, contributed to the country.
I am very happy that my grandparents are not here to see how immigrants are again being treated. They would be appalled although not surprised.
I am glad that the Times has published an unvarnished report about how some immigrants are being treated. It speaks badly of American society and bodes ills for the future of the country.
16
@Babs
A 2/17 Inter American Dialogue Report titled "Educational Challenges in Honduras and Consequences for Human Capital and Development” said the average Honduran, age 15 and above, has only a 4th grade education. Even those Hondurans who have attended school for more years do not do well on international tests for their grade levels. Guatemala and El Salvador have higher illiteracy rates than Honduras.
Many people who migrated to the U.S. in earlier centuries were able to sustain themselves and their families despite having little formal education, but would not be able to do so today. It does not matter where migrants are coming from - if they have little education, today they will have a difficult time. Today’s poorly educated migrants will be heavily dependent on welfare and other subsidies for the rest of their lives.
Many of the Salvadorans who migrated here in the 1980’s were so poorly educated they could not find places for themselves in our society. They formed a gang- MS -13 through which they committed such horrendous crimes that many of them were deported. Today’s migrants are no better educated than their earlier counterparts. How many of them will turn to gangs to supplement their incomes?
Rather than trying to absorb such poorly educated people, we could offer their countries Peace Corps volunteers who could improve their educational systems and who could encourage parents to send their children to school for more years.
23
@Babs I admire your family, but do not see how they can be compared to the present situation on the southern border. If you were able to talk to your grandfather (May he Rest In Peace!), we could learn if he has a view that is different from yours.
8
Yes. And send them back.
8
Since January 2019, people fleeing violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world are not imprisoned when they ask for asylum in the US. They are instead waiting in refugee camps on the Mexican side of the US - Mexico border. Unlike refugee camps in Syria, Libya, & Bangladesh, no governments or relief agencies are providing services for these refugees. What food, shelter, medical care these thousands of people receive is provided by volunteers.
Why has this issue become so pointlessly cruel? Before January 2019, people seeking asylum in the US applied at the border & were allowed into the US to await their asylum hearings. Government records show that almost all asylum seekers showed up for their hearings before this new policy went in effect. We will look back at this time of brutality & blindness to human suffering with shame & sorrow.
In 1939, the US refused to allow refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the MSS St Louis to land in the US, sending them back to their deaths because they had not followed proper immigration procedures as they fled for their lives. In 2012, the State Dept apologized formally for this cruelty. And now, so soon, we are doing it again.
2
The American citizenry is under NO obligation to offer up our country as a pressure release valve for the world’s impoverished, overpopulated billions.
Our government’s obligation is to serve the best interests of the ‘American citizenry’...which doesn’t include the over 20 Million illegal aliens brazenly residing here...and the tens of thousands jumping our borders every month, at a cost to American taxpayers in the $Billions every year.
Enough histrionics over this issue! Last I heard, we’re still a sovereign nation with defined borders and immigration laws. And that ain’t about to change anytime soon.
12
As you can see from the reader picks; "an enlightened civilization" we are not.
1
NYT draws no Distinction between LEGAL and ILLEGAL. Only the NYT can do these mental contortions of 1 thing and it’s opposite are actually the same thing. PT Barnum never hAd such an elaborate humbug in his circus. Trump was elected because people are tired of such scams; the joke is always on taxpayer
7
Another open borders piece full of emotion.
How many millions more does this writer advise? We already have at least 13.
How much can the environment take?
Do we want to resemble SAmerica? Really?
10
The American citizenry is under NO obligation to offer up our country as a pressure release valve for the world’s impoverished, overpopulated Billions. Our government’s obligation is to serve the best interests of the ‘American Citizenry’....
...which doesn’t include the over 20 Million foreign nationals brazenly residing here illegally...along with the tens of thousands jumping our borders every month....exploiting our schools, hospitals, labor market, and public welfare services at a cost to American taxpayers in the $Billions year after year. Meanwhile, we can barely take care of our own.
Enough histrionics over this issue! We’re a sovereign nation with defined borders and immigration laws. And that ain’t about to change anytime soon.
9
Even at the very liberal New York Times, at least half of the readers commenting have no patience with these arguments or with illegal immigration and bogus asylum claims which take advantage of our laws and generosity. Illegal immigrants should be immediately deported; asylum laws must be changed so that we are not beholden to every person who enters the country and makes a claim; and legal immigration should be restricted in numbers and by merit. And while praising Eisenhower for shutting down the detention centers, the author fails to mention that in the same year -- 1954 -- Eisenhower created a program to identify and deport illegal aliens.
16
close *all* prisons
1
Go home and make Your country great!
10
Close all the disgusting immigration prisons. Yes, locking up immigrants for a civil violation is legal. Slavery and Jim Crow were also legal, as is the whole racist criminal justice system.
Get rid of the ICE gestappo, who terrorize families in the middle of the night. ICE are just runaway capitalism’s jack-booted thugs, instilling fear in workers so that they will never assert their rights or challenge labor violations.
Allow undocumented people to adjust their status so that they can come out of the shadows. Give all workers equal rights so that businesses no longer have an incentive to exploit migrants. Stop using my tax dollars to exile and jail people because of their national origin.
The NYT and the Democratic Party seem to have the same program: celebrate everything that reflects badly on white people (as Michelle Goldberg does today) and push for virtually limitless immigration (as this writer does). Since we live in a democracy, I imagine that they will finish by winning, since the importation of people fond of Democratic policies will eventually tip the electoral balance in their favor. Which, as political thinkers have warned about for centuries, will lead to something resembling an American Caesar. You'd think Trump would be bad enough for them. Why don't they take the hint and stop?
7
Mr. Garcia Hernandez assumes that the government wants to behave benevolently. The current U.S. government wants to hurt a great many people, and immigrants are at or close to the to top of the list. It's horrifying to realize, but it actually does seem that a variety of people in the Trump Administration and among Republican politicians in Congress take pleasure in inflicting suffering not only on immigrants, but on non-elites among U.S. citizens. To such people, Mr. Garcia Hernandez' observations are a reason to continue doing what they're doing.
How about we ban these lawbreakers from invading our country?
There are immigration jails because people refuse to follow the laws currently in place, and criminals need a place to go-jail.
Stay and fix your 3rd world country instead of bringing your problems here.
18
Apparently, we need more.
5
I'm sorry but spending billions of dollars on legal services for illegal immigration advocacy is not a solution. Neither is calling illegal immigrants "migrants", as if changing the word somehow changes the legality of crossing a sovereign nation's border, without permission to do so. Sparing migrants the long trek and ultimate disappointment of not getting in to the US (or for those who do cross, the constant fear of being deported) should be the priority. This means investing in South and Central American countries and stopping gang violence so that people don't have to risk everything, including their lives, for a dream that is likely to end in sorrow. We can be practical and humanitarian at the same time.
136
@John Spelled out: It is not a fundamental human right to demand access to live and work in a country in which you are not a citizen.
We suggest only Americans who have traveled and worked - legally - in foreign countries and gone through the lengthy, legal processes to get work visas have the right to opine on immigration.
First hand experience as a worker/immigrant changes your attitude.
Just this past week the New York Times published a piece telling young (US citizens) what they needed to work in a foreign country: A college degree, no criminal background.
Would the NYTs extend the same requirements to those looking to come to the US?
13
No person either born in Mexico or in Canada should be imprisoned if that person is here without the proper documents. The reason is that it is only right that Mexico, the USA and Canada become one nation soon.
Mexicans have a greater right to the entire North American Continent than any one else except for Native Americans. They were here before the Asians, Africans or Europeans arrived.
Let us work to speed up the process of creating one nation, the United States of North America, USNA.
3
Trump's cruelty 're' jailing immigrants seeking asylum is a corrupt practice based on xenophobia (under the White House 'boot' of White Nationalist Stephen Miller). Allowing these United States to renegue on it's status as 'an immigrant country' is hypocritical... if not perverse.
No, immigrants don't endanger public safety...unless you were were one of illegal immigrant Mr. Escobar's victims, one of three sleeping homeless men he bludgeoned to death in LA - several were African-American by the way. Sorry about that.
Unless you were a Washington State deputy who was killed by an illegal immigrant. He left a grieving family behind. Sorry, but there will be some collateral damage, it can't be helped..
Unless, you were Ms. Bambi Larson and killed by Mr. Carranaza in San Jose.
Unless.......the list goes on and on.
But please, don't let me interrupt your lofty virtue-signaling and coffee shop philosophizing.
12
The author is no kook. But his proposal is way out there. And he surely knows it. The purpose here must be to stretch our imaginations and get us to think. Mission accomplished.
3
When the business is bigger than humanity and decency, the business will prevail. As the climate change effects worsen conditions of livelihood in Latin America, the business of imprisoning immigrants is going to grow like waltmarts.
They've overpopulated their own countries so badly they've become unlivable, but we're supposed to spend $2.7 billion a year helping them game the system to get permanent residency here? No thanks.
15
@Green Tea
I am not in favor of open borders , but I'm going to have to call malarkey. I googled population densities for these countries. Guatamala 418/sq.mi., Honduras 226/sq.mi., Mexico 150/sq.mi., Germany 750/sq.mi., England 780/sq.mi. While the USA as a whole comes in at 92/sq.mi. New York State comes in at 421/sq.mi and Florida has 353/sq.mi. They don't walk thousands of miles on a whim . They come desperate to escape violence and famine. Gee where have we heard that narative before.
It looks like I dont have to go into how outrageous this article is. The folks already get it. Its advocating for open borders, period. The question is, where is such anti-American advocacy coming from, and how do we stop it? Well, we all know the political leanings of this paper. Its pro Democrat anti-Trump to the tenth degree. Just by printing such an article, it offers a platform, whose intention is to change the conversation, create a narrative, and hope it becomes mainstream enough to translate into votes.
Elections are about choices. Its a binary choice. We have Republican and Democrat. We will have Trump, and whomever is the Democrat nominee, of whom all of them lean in the direction of the premise of this article. Yes, even Joe Biden when he raised his hand to decriminalize crossing the border illegally.
The question is, whom would Professor Hernandez hope we vote for?
Trump, or the Democrat?
5
@Sports Medicine
I know who Putin wants for president.
1
We could certainly redirect the money to repatriation flights/buses and close the prisons.
"Even when migrants have a criminal history, immigration prison isn’t the right answer. "
No other sentence from this op ed need be read to assess the author's wokeness. Of course, he doesn't supply any "right answer" either, but just another anecdote.
9
I do not understand why kidnapping children during these past months was not in itself immediately impeachable. Who are we? Where are the sane and humane leaders we have always relied on to uphold American values? So let’s go on spending millions of our dollars to feed the fat Orwellian cats running these centers that reek of human suffering.
The title of this op ed should be "Abolish Immigration Controls" because that is exactly what this author is espousing in this piece.
"And there will be others who get their day in court only to lose. When that happens, two options are available. We could arrest and deport those people, or we could turn the other way."
Turn the other way? You mean just let them go? What a lame argument for open borders. As I read that I sank back into my chair knowing that Trump is going to win in 2020 on this issue. Just like he won in 2016 on this issue. Sad!
10
Obviously, the easy way to stay out of jail is to obey the law. "Migrants" are not being sent to prison; criminals are. There is precisely no reason to afford someone here illegally with the slightest "process". The interview should consist of one question: "are you here legally"? If not, out you go. Immediately. No courts. No lawyers. No delay. Out.
Unskilled immigrants in general and illegals in particular are hugely expensive drags on the taxpayers. We do not owe foreigners anything, let alone foreign criminals who break immigration law, impersonate others, commit fraud to work, and soak up scarce taxpayer dollars.
Truly, this is not a difficult question: if you're here illegally, go home. Do it tomorrow. And if you refuse, don't whine when the law catches up with you and send you back where you belong.
Should we have "comprehensive" reform? Of course! We should adopt immigration policies akin to those of Canada or Australia. And adopt policies which ensure that anyone violating those laws is caught and evicted. With all deliberate speed.
We don't need jails for illegals; they should be deported the day they are detained. Problem solved.
10
When you set the quota of legal immigrants low enough you will have plenty of illegal immigrants fleeing poverty and violence. Welcome to the so called greatest and christian country in the world where we throw the poorest and unprotected in cages owned by corporations.
Something like 70% of the legal applicants for asylum never return to court after their release.
And you want to encourage illegal immigration.
No.
9
Immigrants increase the labor pool thereby depressing wages for existing citizens. Democrats cannot be the pro-labor party if they advocate for increasing immigration.
10
The headline is a lie. We do not imprison "immigrants" -- those who entered legally. I was an immigrant. And, even before I acquired citizenship, cleared for classified US military research.
We imprison those who have broken the law.
A law professor should not preach lies.
12
They are serving their purpose.
3
So the conditions (according to this columnist) are terrible and we should get rid of immigration prisons.
Well, one way to insure not to end up in one of these (so called) prisons and endure these conditions...is to not break our immigrations laws in the first place by coming here illegally.
And as "horrific" as these conditions supposedly are, they apparently don't seem to be any type of a deturrent judging by the crisis at our southern borders
17
As a nation, we have a right and duty to decide how many people to allow in.
We also need a mechanism for enforcing this decision, but it needs to be well managed, without the various cruelties listed and described in the article. And it should not be done on a for-profit basis.
I have to believe that our government is capable of managing a detention and removal system in a humane way; otherwise I would lose faith in our government's ability to do anything right. I'm not there yet. So by all means, let's fix it.
Conflating these two separate issues is a handy way to bias the decision in favor of more immigration, but this is a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that leads to false conclusions. If the enforcement mechanism is broken, we should fix it, not abandon it.
11
Rather than imprisoning illegal immigrants at considerable expense, the government should immediately deport them and their families, who cost society a great deal in terms of education, healthcare, etc . . . The government should also impose steep fines on employers of illegal immigrants. From the corporations in agriculture and construction to the families who hire nannies, employers fuel illegal immigration, leaving the shrinking middle class to effectively subsidize their businesses and tax evasion.
18
In 1965, when my wife was picked up by immigration police, her choices were deportation at US gov't expense which meant never ever being able to get a US visa or deportation at her own expense which meant returning home and starting at 0 in her wait for the lottery. I got her out by marrying her. She was detained in Manhattan civil jail which did not confer status as a criminal on her. (Civil jail was on the site now occupied by the Javits center. ) Children were not detained. That is how it was, not good but not egregiously sadistically nasty as it is now. And ICE didn't exist and we did just fine without them. What a waste! How much tuition could you pay by eliminating ICE?
1
Sure, lets have a Robin Hood department of justice and lawful restitution for all law offenders who can be deemed to be victims of a bureaucratic and legal system that is governed by 'abstract' ideas of sovereignty and protection of a nation.
5
Here in Minnesota, like much of the country, many jobs go unfilled. I've worked with MANY immigrants of varying skills, ethnic and religious backgrounds, ages and education. No exceptions, they work hard, have high degree of integrity and fit in as best they can. When will we have a sensible immigration policy that permits these people to live without stress? These prisons are the most inhumane aspect of our wildly broken immigration 'policy'.
33
@Annie
I believe Minnesota should reach out to South Carolina. Only a few years ago, I heard that, in Horry County, nearly 40% of young black men were unemployed.
So, perhaps incentives could be given such as housing to encourage them to move. These days, its awfully hard to leave the support of family and pay rent and auto expenses, etc. in a new place. The first third of the 20th century has passed and, without a support system, it's many times harder to make it.
There's labor in this country if anyone truly wants to find it. I weary of those who say otherwise and continue to entice immigrants to exploit.
27
@Annie
When they come legally.
16
I am staggered and horrified at the treatment of immigrants and refugees by my government.
I am paralyzed by the reality of children in cages. Worse than many internment camps, the children are without parents. The emotional harm done to the youth will reverberate into the future.
We deserve the strongest international condemnation. There will be no walls strong enough to protect us from the future world of civil disorder and mass migration due to climate change and political unrest.
The best of the human spirit does not build walls, but takes gracious steps toward healing despair. That is not what child prisons and indiscriminate walls between nations does.
2
@Wyncia Clute A
Your ‘vision’ for our country is a glorious picture of overpopulation, economic impoverishment, environmental decimation, and ideological/cultural divisiveness that would destroy this nation.
Want to live in a third world country? There are plenty to choose from. Go. Enjoy!
8
I really have difficulty understanding the writers of this column. Are the proposing that undocumented migrants be released on their own recognizance?
Why is no alternative to incarceration even mentioned? If the writers advocating open borders why don't they say so directly.
I want the undocumented and those overstaying their visas to be treated humanely but any politician calling for open borders is committing political suicide and I sure hope the eventual Dem Pres. nominee articulates a clear plan that stresses both humane treatment AND rule of law.
Immigration policy needs to be based on what the citizens of this country want- American tax dollars could be used much more efficiently through foreign aid (including family planning) than allowing an unregulated influx of people from failed states that aren't fulfilling a skill deficit here.
And this policy has to be in sync with what serves our ecological interests as well. Our human population in the U.S. has doubled in my lifetime and every additional human requires more land taken out of wilderness and used for agriculture, more carbon emissions and all the other pollution that comes from another consumer. One thing I agree with Trump on- "we are full". ZPG
48
I represented asylum seekers as a pro bono attorney for many years in the Dallas, Texas Immigration Court for many years. One of my clients was an unaccompanied minor who had been detained in a jail for a year before I took on his case. All the clients I represented were fleeing legally defined persecution because of their nationality, ethnicity or religion. All of them deserved asylum under international law and U.S. laws and regulations. I only lost one case and sadly, that asylum seeker was the most deserving but the particular immigration judge typically ruled against asylum seekers . Having established my "credentials" as a person who has assisted asylum seekers; I respectfully disagree with Mr. Garcia Hernandez's article. For example, he writes: "And there will be others who get their day in court only to lose. When that happens, two options are available. We could arrest and deport these people, or we could turn the other way." I assume he means we should just let them stay here regardless of the legitimacy of their asylum claim. The larger problem with the author's argument is that most of the people who show up at our southern border seeking asylum do not qualify for this status since they are not fleeing what international law and U.S. law defines as "persecution" - rather they are fleeing poverty, gangs and generalized violence in their home countries. The solution for human suffering is not open borders.
12
A law professor should have a better understanding of incentives. If migrants know there's no detention, and that they will be provided free lawyers, social workers, and case managers to "navigate the immigration process", it's an open invitation to illegally enter the US.
14
This is a dilemma. Though the prison system is ripe with abuse, letting illegal immigrants who recently crossed the border roam free in the United States is also a problem. A nation without borders and immigration controls is not a nation. I do not care what the circumstances are, if one is not a U.S. citizen, one does not have the protections under the U.S. Constitution. Coming to the United States is a privilege, not a right. As a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, I ponder if an alternative is perhaps better than prison, but removing any sort of penalty for illegally coming to this country opens the floodgates to illegal immigrants, who desire resources already stretched thin for U.S. citizens.
52
@Gregory Ziegler Which means that the best solution is the wall. Build the wall, and there won't be any immigration prisons. The US will then get to decide whom it takes in.
22
@Eugene
What could does a wall do?
That means we are walled in too
To say nothing of the environmental destruction.
It is a stupid” solution” to a minor problem facing us, unlike other problems like
The planet is burning.
Spend the money we spend on housing illegal immigrants on creating and enforcing E-Verify. Start prosecuting those who knowingly employ illegal immigrants, including corporate CEOs, Beverly Hills housewives, construction contractors and Trump who employs illegal workers at his resorts, and everyone in between.
The need to fill those jobs would give legal workers leverage to demand better pay and benefits.
And that, of course, is why it won't happen, because having an endless in flow of desperate workers benefits our corporate overlords.
102
When does it stop? How many immigrants need to arrive until we say that we cannot take in any more?
What does a country do with more than 100,000 poor, uneducated people arrive -each month- who don't speak English and provide no real world contributing skills, yet demand asylum?
What of the communities that have been flooded by recent immigration and are now faced with the problem of finding jobs for these people? Educating their children? Housing them?
Who is going to pay all of this? You? How much more taxes are you willing to pay?
No. We do not need any more immigrants. Some claim that our population is growing old and the influx of new immigrants is required. Those voices arise from the almost empty churches, the low paying farmers and construction companies.
Automation, robotics and a lower population will be the cure for most of the problems we face today. Never try to fix tomorrow's problems with yesterday's answers.
We need to educate girls and women around the world. We need to limit the number of children anyone can have -until they have proven that they can afford to take care of themselves.
Trump propaganda? Fear and racist type of theme? No. There is a difference between blame, empathy, and ignorance, yet César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández tries to blend them all.
Simply: I have just grown tired of having to fix other people's problems.
65
@Allen Yeager
We need to develop an Immigration policy that is fair.
How is it fair to Poor American Citizens to allow Immigrants who will directly compete with them for Jobs, for Housing, for Medical Care and overfill their local schools - just, as you say, so Farmers, Light Construction,
Restaurants can have an endless supply of cheap labor ?
If hundred of thousands of qualified lawyers, doctors, editorial writers, professors, judges, politicians
and other professionals were
entering the country and the wages of American professionals were dropping to minimum wage, the houses they wanted were being bought up - Trump's Wall would be built by tomorrow afternoon.
If there are jobs that no American citizen will take and that pays a living wage, then set up a computer system that allows Worker Immigrants to be given a Work Card for that job and if the Immigrant commits no felonies and agrees and does actually return to their country of origin let them accumulate points toward a Green Card and apply for the next job.
In the meantime the United Nations should work diligently at improving the lives of those in the countries where so many wish to emigrate from.
Why are we standing by why Drug Lords, mostly financed with the money of American Drug Addicts, destroy their own countries ?
I don't find fault with anyone wishing and seeking a better
and safer life for themselves and their families, but why must the Poor of America bear the brunt of the burdens of Immigration ?
8
It is the fault of the US that these people are so poor. Borders should be abolished.
1
Every crime committed by an undocumented person was preventable by respect for the law or better enforcement. The professor’s argument is unmindful of the victims of these tens of thousands of crimes. Where’s the compassion for those preyed upon because of lax border security? Why should we tolerate preventable crime?
67
@Addison Clark where are you getting the idea that "tens of thousands of crimes" are occurring? are you suggesting that somehow, just by possessing a piece of magical paper - "the visa" - you've now become a valid individual in the eyes of the law, according to y'all, not able to hurt a fly, much less an red blooded American!
Send them back home as quickly as possible. Let’s spend that prison money on our own citizens. We should also recognize that if they are dealing meth or heroin they are a threat to us and our families. In that case they should be labeled as “enemy combatants” and held in military prisons until the drug crisis abates. That might take a generation, or two. After all, “no one is forcing them to sell drugs to our children.”
94
Most Americans welcome LEGAL immigrants, but do not want ILLEGAL immigrants. They recognize that the US cannot afford (or choose not) to support our own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al., and that they and other US taxpayers cannot possibly support the 20 million illegal immigrants already in the US, much less the hundreds of millions of foreigners who would like to come here.
US laws allow foreigners to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws are in this country illegally and should be detained and deported; this is policy in other countries, too.
The cruelty lies not in limiting legal immigration, or detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, or forcing those who wish to enter the US to wait for processing. What is cruel, unethical and probably illegal is encouraging parents to bring their children on the dangerous trek to US borders and teaching the parents how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, etc. Indeed, many believe bringing children on such perilous journeys constitutes child abuse.
No other nation has open borders, nor should the US.
162
@Mon Ray "No other nation has open borders, nor should the US"
I agree with most of your comment, however as of 2015 this is false, since Europe let in millions. That is going to be the ruin of Europe.
25
@Mon Ray There should be a complete halt on immigration both legal and illegal. The U.S. is grossly overpopulated due to immigration. Anyone who cares about the environment and loves wildlife/animals is against all immigration.
29
@Mon Ray The US does not have open borders, in fact the US seems bound and determined to cut off every legal option for immigrants. You keep screaming 'do it legally' while ignoring that the "legal" options of past generations have all but disappeared.
5
Our need for immigration detention facilities is a direct outgrowth of the flagrant abuse of our immigration system.
We now experience hoards of people -- many of them advised by well-meaning immigration activists -- who ignore our laws, get into the country by any means necessary, assert spurious claims of amnesty, forestall adjudication of their status, and if all else fails, simply disappear and live illegally. Detention facilities are the logical response to that behavior.
Very few find themselves in detention facilities for having attempted to enter our country through legal means that respect our laws.
9
Yes I agree. Take the money saved and spend it on a big beautiful wall.
6
I am appalled as I read the comments and the many people who are against giving a home to immigrants. I expected readers of the NYT’s to think differently. After all, arn’t we the more progressive thinking group? Don’t we pride ourselves on our intelligence?
Cesar Hernandez’s opinion in this article points to a good, long lasting solution to a serious problem. To follow this advise would agree with the decree of Heaven: Love your neighbor as yourself. Or, at least, try.
4
@Diane Marie Taylor
The fact that NYT readers are pushing back should tell you something. Even east coast liberals are getting tired of feel-good but wholly impractical solutions
4
A nation needs to control its borders, know whose coming and going, and enforce its laws. Good fences make good neighbors. Those fleeing their homelands need to direct their energy to changing their countries for the better, using American democracy and capitalism as models.
22
@Steve
It's hard to change your country when those at the top are corrupt and those at the bottom have no safety net, making daily life a struggle for food and shelter. It's difficult to recreate "American" democracy in a culture where illiteracy prevails, and past history is vastly different. What sort of "capitalism you advocate is unclear. If it's the early version where social darwinism prevailed, then that is exactly what is happening throughout many countries in Central and South America. To keep our neighbors from crowding into our house seeking food to feed their families, we should assist in confronting the elite in their country who pocket the aid we send them, even from the docks where it's unloaded. We should help put an infrastructure in place that will make sure the assistance is funneled to those who need it. If they don't have to worry about hunger and shelter, they will have more time and energy to focus on changing their government.
5
@Steve
The ancestors of every person in America came here from somewhere else. Now many like you are afraid immigrants will change your standard of living and must be kept out. Some, maybe not like you, are afraid the white, Christian majority will be lost and everything will change for the worse. However, facts do not support these fears. Immigrants work harder, do jobs others won't, and commit fewer crimes than native born citizens. They make the economy stronger and our culture more vibrant. Regardless of the garbage that Stephen Miller spreads, we need immigrants.
We need strong borders to keep drugs from coming north and guns from going south, and the focus should be on that, not on immigrants.
In immigration court, there is no government-paid lawyer, and most detained migrants can’t afford to hire one. But going back to the Reagan administration, pilot projects that offer support consistently display remarkable success getting migrants to show up for court dates and stay out of trouble.
-----------------Immigration court is a CIVIL proceeding, and Americans don't get government-paid lawyers for civil proceedings, either. If you want migrants to get government-paid lawyers, then let's make illegal immigration a crime, with criminal penalties. The pilot project you mention was NOT based on a random sample, consisted of migrants who had people here who could pay bail or for monitoring, and is not generalizeable to the entire migrant population.
9
About 40 million US citizens live in poverty. We can't take care of our own.
This author like many in the Times before him advocates in effect for open borders, with illegals allowed all the time they need to be granted permanent status here -- with housing, food & education provided by taxpayers, lawyers provided by tax payers, medical provided, etc.
Anyone with common sense knows open borders will ultimately bring countless millions here, and only a small percentage would actually qualify for asylum (an applicant proving a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country on account of race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group).
Living in poverty or fear of crime or war exists in many nations and does not qualify one for asylum. Sad, but we don't have the resources to right every wrong in the world. We can't fix our own country as it is now.
Most US citizens support legal immigration with common sense rules applied. Like Canada, we should support those entering on a points system...those who already have the education, skills and experience needed to fuel expansion of the economy where the country deems there is a need.
There has to be a rational balance between feeling compassion for others and what we have as resources to help those in need, in the face of billions who need help.
Immigration based on rules that are as fair and doable as possible is the only sensible solution. Not in effect open borders.
31
Another open borders radical, who has the bizarre idea that any noncriminal anywhere in the world, no matter how poor or unskilled, should be welcomed to the united states to do as they please, despite the immense pressures on employment opportunities and government services such people create. It's a totally insane and unworkable policy position that has minimal popular support among citizens, both naturalized and native born.
Mr. Garcia Hernandez and his ideological compatriots are directly responsible for the election of Donald Trump. If we had been enforcing immigration rules over the last 20 years as they are written, or even 50% closer to how they were written than we do, DJT would not be president today, that is for certain.
27
@Big Cow This is 100% correct. It is the only reason I voted for Trump -- I don't even like the guy. And I'll vote for him again because of open borders radicals such as this author.
2
I'm thankful that I was born in America and for all the liberties and freedoms that I possess as a U. S. citizen; however, I can imagine (to a limited degree) to how it must feel to desire a better life for oneself and one's children, or to escape horrific conditions that I, thankfully, cannot imagine. Where is our empathy? What if we were one of these people guilty of nothing but desiring a better life? There but for the Grace of God go I . . . There has to be a better solution than these horrific "prisons" described in this article. And as for being tired of "fixing" the world's problems - so was the fictional character Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' classic: "A Christmas Carol". If you read the teachings of Jesus, He had pity on the multitudes - I doubt He'd agree to our lack of empathy and concern for those less fortunate than ourselves.
3
@Misty Martin
The question one should be asking is not "whether or not" but the more productive "how." It is clear that if we persist in advocating "open borders" and "abolish ICE", Trump will easily win again. Democrats could start with more attention to those using legal means to immigrate, with far more poignant stories than the one used in the article. USCIS too often denies waivers to those persons legally married to citizens of the U.S., with children and property ties, and no criminal record--only immigration violations. U.S. Department of state is much better, exercise less "discretion." Therefore, too many spouses (arriving aliens, ineligible for adjustment before judge) now using consular processing, although that was intended for those who entered without inspection, so they would come out of the shadows and waived "unlawful presence" only. Moreover, women who flee abusive citizen spouses too often denied relief, mocking the intention behind VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) because they entered using a false passport, which they confessed to at airport when asking for asylum. Recently, a legal resident married to a citizen for 40 years, was stripped of his residency after he applied for naturalization because he failed to apply for a waiver for marijuana possession when he adjusted under the Simpson Act, amnesty instituted under Reagan. Too many articles focus on Latin American immigration of illegals. More focus needed on those whom law/discretion has failed.
@Misty Martin -- Same could be said of millions of would-be LEGAL immigrants waiting to come here. Why should these people get to break our laws in their search for a "better life" while others wait in line, sometimes for years, pay high fees, and generally follow our laws?
There are literally 5 billion people living in countries poorer than Mexico. How many of them are we supposed to take in?
3
Why you are it, the US should also abolish or at least severely restrict birthright citizenship. How can two people who are in the US illegally produce a US citizen? Unless you take that away there will always be people sneaking in trying for a better life for their future kids. You should have to prove that at least one parent is in the US legally before being granted citizenship.
38
@Elizabeth
Trump already making amendments to longstanding derivative citizenship, where children could apply for U.S. passports provided citizen parent spent required amount of years in bodily presence in U.S. Although there is still an Armed Forces exemption (to INA Section 301(g)) passed in 1994,and applied retroactively, that may not last long under Trump. A child who spent time with grandparents in Panama Canal Zone, where Senator John McCain was born, may have a fight on their hands with the Department of State under new amendment passed in August this year. Question one might ask is how do Americans feel about denying citizenship to children of the military, whose parents have not spent requisite number of years in "bodily presence" on U.S. soil? I agree that "anchor" babies produce abuse of the system, where nationals from abroad even have pregnancy trips to U.S. expressly to have children born here. However, to do the converse is worse: if we deny citizenship to those born here from illegal parents, then we have created a potentially dangerous and unstable "underclass" of people who remain as "guest" workers. Although this has been done in other so-called "democracies," this is not how most Americans view the democratic system and I don't believe the majority would find this acceptable.
1
We should give the migrants that have been detained a choice; the detention center or volunteer for deportation back to their respective countries.
47
@kj
This is how it's done for most nationals outside of Central and South America. Nationals from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, etc. spend years in detention as their cases unfold. They are shuttled from one detention center to the other, throughout the U.S., particularly benefiting those with stock in private prisons (Geo Group, etc.) Depending on the way they entered, their past history regarding whether they have committed any crimes or not, (and in some cases depending upon whether they the money to pay to depart), many eventually ask for voluntary departure and do, while others with more serious consequences if deported engage in unheralded hunger strikes. Based on my observations, the groups who sustained hunger strikes the longest came from South Asia. The most visible and vociferous were the Cubans, when the wet food, dry foot policy stopped, with persons from the community setting themselves up alongside of the road on the way to the detention centers, participating in and drawing attention to the hunger strike inside the detention centers.
1
@kj , Mexicans owned this land before the Asians, Africans or Europeans came here.
@kj
They already have that choice.
They can leave any time --
straight back to their home countries.
The NYT and the rest of the MSM and others in the pro-open-borders crowd, including those in the Academy such as the supposedly erudite Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, always dodge and weave to obfuscate that basic elementary fact.
4
Professor Hernandez is persuasive. He doesn't argue against deportation where appropriate, just against imprisoning people who shouldn't be imprisoned. He is right too to call them prisons rather than detention centers. They are prisons. They are a blight upon our country and on us. Those in these prisons are human beings every bit as much as you or I. Lets treat them that way.
11
@Benjamin Ochshorn --They may be human beings, but most of them are also illegal aliens, and releasing them into the US gives them what they broke the law to get--access to jobs, benefits, and life in the US. Something that would-be legal immigrants often wait years to get.
3
Wow. A lot of commenters here are either triggered or trolls --but many definitely exhibit symptoms of the disease of ignorance--and it seems to be contagious.
1. Arms from the US flood across the Southern border while drugs, driven by our demand, pour over the border in the other direction. Both these activities cause chaos and violence, driving law abiding citizens to flee. If the US controlled the sale of arms and stemmed the demand for drugs, these countries would be much more stable. Instead they can thank the US for turning a bad situation into an overwhelming one.
2. The US has meddled in Central American elections for decades, planting false stories in the media and training military leaders at Fort Benning who later led death squads and carried out political assassinations. All in support of wealthy owners of multinational companies. This is still going on.
3. After NAFTA, large agro-businesses from the US flooded Mexican markets with cheap, low quality corn, putting small Mexican farmers out of business, destroying crop diversity and lowering nutrition.
I could go on.
Stop acting like the US is an innocent bystander. Ethically and morally, if not legally, we have an obligation to be part of the solution.
I bet some commenters here consider themselves Christians. Would they have locked up Mary and Joseph and ripped baby Jesus from Mary's arms when they fled to Egypt out of a credible fear? I guess so.
17
@ehr --The "demand" for drugs is addiction--and drug dealers work very hard to get people hooked. And don't kid yourself--the cartels won't evaporate if the "demand" disappears. They're part and parcel of corruption in Latin America. They're active in other criminal activities, such as human trafficking, people smuggling, document fraud, and extortion. The latter includes extorting avocado growers. When we cut our demand for marijuana with legalization, it cut into the cartels' profits and they switched to other drugs, other crimes.
As for our "interference", if we're responsible for what our gov't does, then these 'migrants' are every bit as responsible for what their gov'ts do or don't do.
You might also realize that Mexico got good paying factory jobs that were moved there from the Rust Belt. You know--the kind of jobs displaced farm workers could do. And of course, illegal immigration to the US provides American farmers with subsidies that enable them to undercut Mexican farmers all the more.
15
@ehr you are right on point, we should not approve the new NAFTA 'till more guarantees are given on security and livable working wages, a mechanical engineer with an MBA working for GM factory in Mexico earns about $1,200 USD/Month. That is the problem of Latin America dire poverty.
4
@ehr Your view is abstract and academic. Are you saying the US population of regular Joes should rightfully bear the brunt of past policies it had no voice in? Kind of like tit-for-tat or vengeance? Hmmm.
1
Opposing things remain true. 1. Witnessing human suffering is difficult. We should do as much as possible to alleviate it. And treat people humanely, even if we must turn them away. 2. Those that continue to adopt the position that anyone that self identifies as an "immigrant" should be able to walk across the boarder and enjoy full legal rights of citizens, and the border is imaginary and means nothing, will re-elect Trump. Life is very harsh in a majority of the world. It is going to increase as climate related drought, disaster, crop failures mobilize 10s of millions of refugees. There were 1.7 billion people on the planet when the Statue of Liberty was erected; about 3 billion in 1970; 7.5 billion now; 10-12 billion in 2050. No nation can remain stable without controlling it's border. But, beyond that, we need some immigration, and we should mobilize our foreign policy and foreign aid, and do everything we can to ensure the life others can life in their own countries is tolerable.
34
America is with you Mr. Garcia Hernandez. Returning all these migrants to their country of origin will end the suffering prisons cause and will redirect the money.
I assume that you are also advocating for a modification to the asylum laws so that "asylum" can no longer be requested at a border crossing.
52
Professor Hernandez,
Instead of criticism of our immigration enforcement policies, why not critique the Catholic Church that refuses to provide and encourage women to use contraception. Then critique the people whose faith? is so uppermost in their lives that they cannot make the logical leap that having children in impoverished circumstances is dangerous and "inhumane" for that child.
So many very caring people that I know say that it is mind boggling to understand how anyone, poor or not, could choose to bring children into the world in a poor and supposedly dangerous place. ...And since they cannot imagine doing this themselves, they question whether the circumstances in these countries are as desperate as we're led to believe.
One person even said to me that "the migrant parents want us to care more about their children than they do". I thought this was an interesting way to look at it but, on reflection, I think what she said was accurate.
So, let's look at one of the sources of the problems and start there instead of trying to condemn the right of countries to choose who is allowed to enter.
47
@Blanche White In Western Europe, Catholic women use contraception, as do middle class women in Latin America. The poor don’t have that luxury. Trump ended a family planning aid program to Central American, for instance, at the behest of the Evangelicals. Which brings us back to the logic you present that parallels a situation where rape is blamed on the woman because she was asking for it. Don’t blame the victim. Provide the aid to prevent the problem.
16
I have been visiting i individual women and men in immigration detention since 2010. The anguish they suffer is heartbreaking. For many, their worst suffering comes from being separated from their families, especially their children. This is true whether they were separated at the border or were plucked from their famlies in their communities. The second greatest source of suffering is helplessness at being locked up and caught in arbitrary and capricious "court proceedings" they can't compehend. Immigration detention is cruel and gratuitous punishment. It is also a senseless waste of taxpayers' money. It must end.
10
@michaelene loughlin
I agree with you that is heartless
but what is your proposed solution to alleviate
the suffering and the ongoing question of what
should happen to those who enter the country
without permission ?
3
@michaelene loughlin While immigration law is notoriously complex and its bureaucracy here in the states notoriously impenetrable and labyrinthine, so suggest that the immigrants "can't comprehend" what is happening is gratuitously false. They know they came here illegally, they know they are unwelcome and that the proceedings are designed to deport them. If you don't want to spend time in immigration detention, don't migrate illegally. It's so weird the number of people who seem to think ICE goes to CEntral America to vaccum up people and imprison them in cages in the United States. The migrants are effectively incarcerating themselves.
2
@michaelene loughlin -- Deportation is a civil remedy that sets things back to what they were before the illegal alien broke the law. We should avoid putting people in detention by deporting them more quickly.
2
Civil law governs contracts and disputes between individuals. Immigration laws are civil laws, not criminal laws. Imprisoning immigrants for violating civil laws is a crime. The concentration camp industry extracts taxpayer dollars and transfers them to wealthy corporations. It's a total scam on taxpayers. But the real victims are the incarcerated immigrants, most of whom are hard-working Christians fleeing gang violence and persecution. The American people expressed overwhelming opposition to caging children separate from their parents, so the incumbent signed an Executive Order last year promising to end family separation. Instead, family separations have increased.
9
@Dee -- Deportation is a CIVIL REMEDY, not a punishment. We should kick out illegal aliens more quickly.
Most of them are "fleeing" gang violence and poverty--neither of which usually rises to the level of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion, or membership in a social group.
1
@Dee
What does their Christianity have to do with anything?
1
@Dee
The "hard-working Christians fleeing gang violence and persecution" are the ones heading the news, but this is not "most" of the incarcerated immigrants. You are ignoring the many Muslims fleeing persecution, such as the Uighurs, or even those in increasingly nationalistic Hindu first India, in addition to the Coptic Christians persecuted by the Egyptian government under El Sisi, our putative ally, not to mention the increasing numbers making it over here from Afghanistan (including those linguists working for our military denied visas), Iraq, etc. Many from further away do not have the support groups that La Raza has rightfully encouraged for the Latin Americans who come here.
; nor the family, which means much longer detention times. They are also separated from their families, for years, because they hope to send for their wives and children if and when they win their case.
Put those folks to work on our infrastructure, pay them with “wall” money. After a predetermined period they return to their country of origin with learned skills to fix their infrastructure and some forced savings from their labor. It’s a win win!
9
We can eliminate these prisons if smart solutions are applied:1) developed a work permit program for agricultural seasonal workers, there wouldn’t be a need for prisons. 2) Add judges to adjudicate refugee petitions 3) process illegals and those who overstay visas under US law. No detainees, however, should be placed in “private” jails, since, by definition, they need a spigot of new clients.
More practical than demonizing immigrants is to search and apply workable solutions to allow people to stay in their countries of origin. In Central America, climate change has taken a toll on agriculture. We know that micro lending is non existent. We also know that smart technologies can assist farmers determine what products to plant to success. In addition, let’s reinstate family planning in this communities, which Trump eliminated on counsel from Evangelicals. The same Evangelicals who blame immigrants for depressing American wages -not true. Wages have been mostly stagnant since 1970. Had unions been allowed to remain in place, the median salary would be $90K instead of the $50K. Wall Street, destroyed unions and shipped jobs and industries abroad for personal profit - these are the billionaires.
20
@Ted
The same forces which destroyed unions and shipped jobs abroad are the very same forces which are glad to have this endless pool of desperate workers coming into the US, because it DOES depress wages here. Just look up some of Krugman's columns from 10 years ago. The laws of supply and demand have not been suspended.
Everyone is hurt by this current situation, starting with the illegal worker himself. The ones who benefit are the wealthy.
39
@Livonian Depress which kinds of wages? For cleaning staff, workers in slaughter houses? Tomato pickers? There’s no manufacturing anymore in this country. And for white collar jobs, companies are hiring consultants or perm-temp workers who get paid on an hourly basis and get no benefits. 60% of the US labor force are hourly workers. Blame Wall Street, not Mexicans And yes, immigration laws have to be updated.
9
@Ted
Yes, they did depress slaughterhouse wages, and safety standards worsened as well. Illegal immigrants were hired in order to break the unions that once upheld these things.
17
I fully agree that we need to close the holding facilities that have been built for illegal immigrants. Over the last 30 years, I have lived and worked in 8 other countries. None of these countries had similar facilities. In every case, illegal immigrants were immediately deported back to their home country. This worked very well and I strongly believe that we should also adopt this practice.
42
@David - What countries are these that are able to immediately deport illegal immigrants back to their home countries? A number of European leaders would be interested to know how this is accomplished.
11
@S Sm
They do not go to Canada
because they prefer to come to the USA.
Canada has the luxury of a 1500-mile buffer
between itself and Mexico.
What will Canada do
when the USA tips Latino?
1
I fully agree that we need to close the holding facilities that have been built for illegal immigrants. Over the last 30 years, I have lived and worked in 8 other countries. None of these countries had similar facilities. In every case, illegal immigrants were immediately deported back to their home country. This worked very well and I strongly believe that we should also adopt this practice.
23
So American taxpayers are supposed to pay billions to help the people who illegally came into the country figure out a way to stay here instead of locking them up and potentially sending them back? It's that sort of thinking that will keep Trump in office.
69
@Chris You can spend unending billions to house the poor in hotels, or you can build affordable housing. The point being that there are logical and practical solutions, demagogic arguments are not it!
3
@Ted
Spending billions of our dollars to help our own citizens is one thing.
Totally different is spending billions of our dollars to help/encourage/allow 7 billion people in the rest of the world come here.
29
@Chris
It is a crime to lock up someone for no reason, in this case civil cases.
Someone seeking asylum for whatever reason is not a criminal.
The lack of compassion in these comments is sickening .
I never knew my fellow Americans were this hateful.
By the way, the largest immigrant groups in the USA are Canadians and Irish.
I don’t see anyone deporting them.
All the endless advocacy articles on immigration are not going to change the facts on the ground. ..what people see with their own eyes. Those facts are that they see their wages being depressed and jobs taken by immigrants that would be done by unemployed here.
...and, if this were not so, why do you think there is not universal acceptance of E-verify? If employers really wanted to hire local, they would use this program which currently, in most places, is voluntary. Instead, they want to claim labor shortages, etc. and invent all sorts of legal ways to bring in more labor.
54
@Blanche White The article is not an advocacy on illegal immigration, but smart planning and spending. Not sure what mythological jobs are being negated to the unemployed in favor of immigrants. As far as been reported, not many people want to pick up letters or work on slaughter houses, or clean hotel rooms, or wash dishes. Indeed, conditions in slaughter houses (60 Minutes program) are said to be so unhealthy that deaths and other illnesses are being adjudicated in court. One profession that has grown exponentially since the 1990s is security guards, used in “private jails”, to guard properties of the super rich and so on.
3
@Ted
The conditions in slaughterhouses are so bad precisely because illegal labor has broken the unions that once upheld safety standards.
18
I share your concerns about the effects of immigration on labor. There’s some evidence of wage depression, caused by a labor force that can be easily exploited. Not only does business exploitation of undocumented migrants lower wages in some places, it lowers compliance with workplace safety and other rules, and creates a general atmosphere of noncompliance with labor laws. Someone who fears deportation is way less likely to unionize, so this makes unions weaker as well. This is what the rich want.
It seems the answer is to ensure that immigrant labor can’t be exploited. The best way to do this is to remove the threat of deportation from undocumented workers so that employers can’t hold that over their heads when those workers want to unionize sud for unpaid wages, or simply have the freedom to move on to another job. By ensuring that every human in the United States who works has the same rights in the workplace, and the ability to enforce them in court, you would make life better for everyone and eliminate the incentive to import labor. Employer sanctions, e-verify, none of that nonsense has made a difference: corporations will go on exploiting labor until people can stand up to them.
4
So it's OK to break the law if you're one of these migrants? So we should simply let them stay in this country and get free medical care, education, housing. etc?
This does not sit well with law-abiding, hard working Americans.
80
Wouldn't have to lock them up if we stopped allowing them to cross the border to begin with. So let them all out tomorrow if you want, just as long as they are released in the countries they came from. Not willing to do that, build more prisons.
56
How many people will the learned professor keep at his home, and be responsible for feeding them, taking care of them, and agreeing to be sued if something untoward were to happen to them?
54
@Albela Shaitan
Yes, the writer of this piece should definitely take in a family or two before he chastises the rest of the country!
2
Mr. Hernández argues we should shut down immigrant prisons, and where do the inmates go? The other issue he simply does not delineate between ILLEGAL immigrants and LEGAL immigrants; instead, falling back on a cover-all word 'migrants.' This is classic NYT.
These are migrants, mostly economic migrants despite what Trump says, but they are breaking the United State's law. As such, we should have prisons for them. Americans like legal immigration. Even legal immigrants from other countries do not like illegal immigrants. The rule of law is a blunt hammer, and when Democrats raise their hands for free healthcare for illegals or argue differently, they're setting us up for a Trump 2020.
Oddly, it's like they all know the gig: pay for a coyote to transport them, apply for asylum (with a 2% approval rate), hope to get into a log-jammed judicial system, sap American resources and stay. Luckily, Trump has decided to keep them in Mexico while they wait.
Sorry, no remorse.
56
I agree with the headline. All undocumented people should be immediately deported. PaulN (came legally over 40 years ago)
52
The fact that 11 million people who are here illegally commit crimes at the same rate as citizens is a perfected example of poor use of statistics. Why would I want 4 percent more murders or rapes to happen in my country to accommodate these people? The real problem is that we are unable to efficiently find and deport these people. In some cases it's because they have a legitimate claim (about 10 percent) for refugee treatment, the other 90 percent are just here to make money.
42
"Dwight Eisenhower’s attorney general, Herbert Brownell Jr., announced a decision to shut down major immigration detention centers along both coasts, including Ellis Island.”
I question your depiction of Eisenhower and his attorney general.
Truman’s attorney general, Herbert Brownell, implemented an immigration enforcement program in which more than 127,000 illegal Mexican migrants were formally deported to Mexico and another 3.2 million were induced to leave voluntarily rather than face deportation.
In 1951, Truman signed legislation which allowed farmers to employ Mexicans on a temporary basis, in the Bracero Program, as long as they returned to their families, in Mexico, at the end of the season. But he did not want Mexicans or other foreigners coming here to live permanently, without our permission.
According to a 7/9/10 post on Factcheck titled “Hoover, Truman, & Ike: Mass Deporters?", Truman said, "These people are coming to our country in phenomenal numbers – and at an increasing rate," Truman said. "Everyone suffers from the presence of these illegal immigrants in the community.”
The article also said, "Truman actually wanted to do more than he was able to stem illegal immigration.”
24
While it is horrific that we imprison these individuals in such horrible conditions, and especially ones seeking asylum to escape dangerous situations, what adds insult to injury is the economic divide between undocumented immigrants where millions are living here with no repercussions because they were able to afford to enter our country on vacation visas:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/01/us/undocumented-visa-overstays.html
“ Nearly half of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the country did not trek through the desert or wade across the Rio Grande to enter the country; they flew in with a visa, passed inspection at the airport — and stayed.”
11
@Bronx Jon
The article you refer to told about an industrial engineer who overstayed his vacation visa. It also referred to foreigners who had not returned to their home countries after graduating from U.S. universities. These educated people are not given preference by our immigration system. Unlike Canada which accepts about two-thirds of its non-refugee immigrants on a merit-based point system, we, in the U.S., ignore merit for about two-thirds of our immigrants - to look only at kinship.
Canada gives points for having an education/ skill that would benefit the Canadian economy. It also gives points for fluency in English and/or French, and for an overall ability to assimilate into Canadian culture. All the United States Immigration system cares about is whether the applicant has a relative, such as a brother or sister-in-law, who is already living here.
We need to drastically change our immigration system to resemble Canada’s. This would allow us to accept industrial engineers and more graduates of our own universities.
28
@ann Agreed.
My point was that it is hypocritical of us to discriminate against individuals who break our immigration laws just because they climbed over a fence rather than arrived by plane.
9
@Bronx Jon
Half of all visa overstays are Latin Americans --
that's on top of the border jumpers -- nearly all Latins.
Result -- 3/4 of all illegals are Latin Americans.
Illegal immigration is overwhelming Latin American.
1
Ending enforcement of immigration laws eventually would lead to a solution of the whole problem of illegal entry into the U.S. After a few hundred million more migrants take up residence in the country there will no longer be a reason for anyone else to come.
32
If Democrats would get onboard with Mr. Trump's plans to end unwanted illegal immigration we could close immigration prisons as they would then be unneeded.
35
But what do you do with the immigrants while their cases are being adjudicated? The article doesn't focus on that, but the left's goal is clear: they want immigrants to come here unrestricted, and then released into the interior of the U.S., with a court date at some point down the line, say two or three years. (Reason enough to try to enter illegally, if you're guaranteed a 3 year stay and get work in the meantime.) And of course, if the immigrant does not show up for the court date, there is no enforcement mechanism, because of course people like the authors will object to 'rounding them up.' (And cue all the "studies" from liberal think tanks which will claim that immigrants show up for court dates more often than citizens!) Combine all of this with the Dems' desire to decriminalize illegal entries, and you basically have open borders. Remember that the next time the media tells you that "open borders" is a myth.
42
Immigration detention is cruel and immoral. Immigrants we detain in horrific conditions include: (a) lawful permanent residents who are being stripped of their status because of some minor crime; (b) asylum applicants; (c) families with children; (d) working immigrants stopped by local police and turned into ICE. No one deserves to be shackled and frozen, given rotten food, subject to solitary confinement and extreme medical neglect, all without a definitive date for release. This evil system thrives in order to put money in the pockets of private prison contractors and local jails who want to make an extra buck on the suffering of black and brown families. The cost falls entirely on the poorest and most vulnerable people. We should be ashamed.
6
I agree lets abolish immigration prisons and simply quickly and efficiently repatriate people who have no legal right to live in this country, along with those whose asylum claims have a low likelihood of success to their country of origin. In the low likely hood the courts decide in their favor they can come back and enter legally.
Or were y'all actually just trying to argue for an open borders policy without actually writing the words?
43
I assume César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández has never been to Texas.
I invite him to come and see the problems in person.
I expect he will then agree that immigration enforcement needs to be increased, not lessened.
34
Trump's argument for these intentionally cruel detentions is that it deters more people from coming. He and his racist minions have no clue of the horrors that Central Americans and others are fleeing from. I am ashamed and angry about what is being done in my name as an American. This has to stop.
6
@Suzanne Wheat -- Who's creating those "horrors"? Maybe, CENTRAL AMERICANS? And they're doing the same thing here--MS-13 is on the rise here again, and the recent death of an Hispanic teen in Maryland is attributed to gangs.
2
@Suzanne Wheat
I just read, today, that the city of Baltimore has a higher murder rate than any of these Central American Countries.
2
They have the jailhouse keys in their own hands --
they can leave --
anytime they want --
straight back to their home country.
America will not stop them.
They are not citizens.
They have no right whatsoever to be here at all --
except as provided by our laws,
enacted by our Senators and Representatives in Congress.
Unless and until they prove their right to be here --
under our laws --
they can --
and ought to be --
detained --
24/7.
23
@sam finn
They do not deserve to be imprisoned and have their families broken up.
They are not criminals, they are suffering humans trying to survive.
3
@Carla
They have the jailhouse keys in their own hands.
They can leave anytime --
straight back to their home countries.
The USA will not stop them.
2
@Carla -- If they enter the US illegally, that's a federal crime, punishable by six months in prison, and followed by deportation.
1
As we sit in our comfy homes snacking on the bounty of our land we truly are no different than the Germans who once swallowed the prejudice toward those declared to be a blight and unworthy of societal compassion. That Concentration Camps now spread from sea to shining sea in a country that once fought to save the world from inhumanity and oppression is a stain on this land of immigrants.
My father, husband and sons all fought in America’s wars against tyranny and now are governed by the “haves” who can rationalize keeping these Prisons filled with the “haves nots.” Billions of dollars can surely be redirected to solve this crime against humanity. If we could once win a war against tyranny then surely we can win a war against this abomination.
6
@ManaOne
Inflammatory comparisons to Germany are not helpful or accurate. Germany, in wanting to purify the Aryan race, preyed on its citizens.
The U.S. policy on immigration has nothing to do with Germany's past.
3
Professor Hernandez has written a brief for not upholding US immigration laws, and for open borders. What a terrible idea!
Here’s a better one: let’s make immigration law and set immigration levels to further the common good. And whatever those levels are, let’s enforce them.
Whatever we do, let’s not import Latin American ideas about flouting and ignoring laws. That a law professor would make such a suggestion is a sign of the times.
42
The comments broadly suggest a clear rejection of the author's views. Given the liberal bias of NYT readers the current Democratic presidential candidates might pay attention. Open borders, decriminalizing illegal immigration, and abolishing immigration prisons are incredibly unpopular ideas across the spectrum of voters. A recent piece in the Atlantic by never-Trumper David Frum is titled If Liberals Won't Enforce Borders, Fascists Will". Something to think about.
48
@Todd : You're absolutely right. I'm a lifelong Democrat and I despise Trump, but my party has gone way too far left on immigration for me. Trump won on immigration the first time and it looks like he might again. God help us!
35
When the Mayflower arrived, the Pilgrims did not obtain a valid Visa stamp from the local Pautuxet Nation. This makes every white person in America illegal.
What part of illegal do you not understand, Trump voters?
4
@MoneyRules
The Mayflower was then.
This is now.
Then world population was 500 million.
Now it is nearly 8 billion -- more than 10 times as large.
3
@MoneyRules
Why are those born here, illegal.
When the ancestors of the Pautuxet arrived in
North America did they apply for a Visa,
when they arrived on the Eastern Seaboard did they
ask the local tribes if they could move in ?
What is your address in New Jersey, there are
a busload of non-illegal, by your standards,
undocumented immigrants that will now be living
with you.
And by the way, your job, well its gone, we gave it
to an immigrant, he works harder and demands less
in pay.
2
@MoneyRules -- Do you understand that the Patuxent nation would have been better off if they'd had laws against immigrating here--and enforced them?
Do you understand that for something to be "illegal", there must be a law against it?
1
You're right - they should deport these folk immediately.
No more prisons, just a quick bus ride and we're done.
I do not see why I should be taxed so much so that others can have a free lawyer like you suggest. Trust me, if I needed a lawyer, no one would happily gift me one, I would pay for that, but seems that providing free lawyers for people who should not even be here is what you Liberals want.
So, no.
34
24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/24-immigrants-have-died-ice-custody-during-trump-administration-n1015291
Deaths we know of. There is a serious lack of transparency with ICE, CPB and all things involving the detention of people for political gain.
5
@Mathias -- Which compares to deaths in the general population how? People die. And many of those who died in custody had pre-existing conditions--and would have died under worse conditions if they'd not been taken into custody. The little Guatemalan girl, for example, who, with her father and 160 others, entered the US illegally at the back of beyond, 90 miles from a CBP station. She quickly showed symptoms while waiting with her father for transportation to the station and was airlifted from the station to a hospital in El Paso, where she eventually died. Then, there's the man who entered the US with congestive heart failure--and died in hospital shortly after entering.
5
If they do not want to go to American prisons, they should obey American laws.
34
@Maureen
They have not broken any laws: they are asking for asylum.
Newsflash: that is not a crime.
I’ll be asking for asylum myself to another country if we don’t get rid of trump.
We need to stop conflating turn of the century immigration "Ellis Island" with the chaos occurring at the southern border.. It's not the same! There are too many to process and the "immigrants" end up crossing illegally .. That is a violation of Federal Law. For that they should be punished.. not rewarded. Letting them loose to work and enroll their kids in public school- while they wait for a court date is not fair to the thousands of people who are abiding by our immigration laws and waiting for their chance to enter legally.
It's funny .. cut in front of a liberal [with a service dog] at the Whole Foods check out line and they go ballistic .. but for some reason it's perfectly fine for thousands of illegal immigrants to cut in front of people who have honored our system and playing by the rules.
You are all a bunch of Hypocrites!
42
Those wishing to have open borders, aka no borders, should just say so. Virtually all asylum seekers do not qualify for asylum. Do we let them into the interior of the US to disappear? Do we expand ICE to round them up? Or do we just wink wink let them disappear but we're still in favor of having borders?
"Progressives" are either schizophrenic on this subject or willfully deceptive.
36
Okay. I want open borders! Just like John Lennon.
America is lucky that the Mexican economy is holding up as well as it is.
If if craters, get ready for a '3rd wave' of illegal Mexican immigration.
But things would be different the 3rd time.....right?
Or am i missing something here?
9
Dwight Eisenhower also rounded up 1 million illegal immigrants and bussed them back to Mexico. Let's not be too selective with our memory.
19
@Dave --He didn't round up a million. He rounded up much fewer--and when the rest saw he was serious about enforcing the law, the others went on their own.
1
We currently have over 20 MILLION foreign nationals...aka the citizens of other countries...residing in our country illegally. They are ‘illegal aliens’, i.e.lawbreakers.
They brazenly exploit our schools, hospitals, labor market, and public welfare programs intended for the benefit of our own citizens, costing American workers $Billions year after year after year. It’s unconscionable and must be stopped.
As for imprisonment, it’s not that complicated: If you don’t want to risk detention, don’t break into our country illegally.
41
A 2018 Yale/MIT study estimates that there are at least 22 million illegals in the US. They cost the middle class billions every year in health care, education, welfare and food stamps (as soon as they give birth to many anchors), social services, incarceration...
Legal immigration, yes. Illegal, no.
Every nation has a right to borders and sovereignty. Including the US.
36
This is not the America you thought it was.
1
The USA in no way has "immigration prisons". This is a leftist, open borders fantasy distortion.
We do however have prisons for people who break federal law, including illegal alien invaders who sneak into our country unwanted, to steal our jobs and wealth.
Let's keep them locked up until deported, and perhaps they will get the message that they're better off in Mexico.
23
@BearBoy
It’s not breaking federal law to seek asylum in another country.
Trump has broken several federal laws and no one has locked him up yet.
3
@Carla --It's breaking federal law to enter the US illegally, a federal crime punishable by six months in prison and followed by deportation. That doesn't go away because you ask for asylum after entering illegally. Heck, illegal aliens who have been here for years, and who have even been ordered deported, but didn't go, play the "asylum" card when caught to draw out the process.
1
yes please - this is the kind of treatment we are outlawing for animals!!! we MUST do better. Aren’t we all human beings????? And don’t even try to tell me they earned it by crossing illegally... Desperate people do desperate things, and if anyone can’t feel empathy - just go away.
5
@Michelle Neumann An awful lot of hatred in these comments. Either that or they all lawyers.
Illegal immigration is the issue. The head feint to distract from this to immigration fools no one
26
These camps are lawless, unprotected, largely unknown, concentration camps. My congressional representatives show no interest. Friends stopped protesting.
I believe this is how Nazi Germany began - the horrors there once had me wonder "how did that happen?" This is how that happens. Quietly, under cover of secrecy, affecting outliers first.
Even IF current immigrants "took your jobs" (I don't know anyone whose job was taken by an illegal non-English speaking immigrant, but it might happen), aside from Native Americans, and slaves brought here cruelly against their will, all of us are immigrants. Our varying cultural and religious backgrounds are potentially under threat. The KKK is once again emboldened. Muslims, Jews and Christians, gays, other individuals, are being terrifyingly targeted. Tolerance has back-slid.
Every American should be afraid of what is happening with these camps and with people being 'disappeared' by ICE in the middle of the night. It It shines a dark light on our country. Only a dangerous hate-fueled culture, where good people are overwhelmed, allows this.
Children separated from their families disturbs me. A lot. All of it disturbs me. A lot.
I was disappointed when Corey Booker was the only democratic hopeful in the most recent debate who even mentioned this situation.
Thank you, Dian Larkin Yudelove
3
@Din Larkin Yudelove "I believe this is how Nazi Germany began"
Then you believe wrong. Very wrong.
3
No, no, no, no! This is lunacy. Illegal immigration is illegal for a reason. Being an illegal shouldn't be decriminalized; it should be made a major felony. These people are a phenomenal drain on society. There are border towns in Texas and Arizona that are being destroyed by illegal immigration. I pay high taxes and do everything I can to follow the rules, because I know if I don't I'll be criminally charged or sued. These people are not my problem. We have scores of profoundly mentally ill homeless citizens using our city streets as their toilets. I saw a homeless man defecating on a subway car last week. I'm helping pay for a good friend's wife's chemo because we have such a poor healthcare system. If we can't take care of our own, surely everyone would agree, that we can't take care of other countries' hard luck cases. End illegal immigration by locking these criminals up, giving them a perfunctory hearing within 30 days, and then deport them. No appeals and do it fast. Enough already. And for all the bleeding hearts in liberal-land, sponsor a family or two for a year, have them live with you, and then I'll take notice of your crocodile tears for lawbreakers, while you blindly ignore the suffering of your fellow citizens.
39
Stop coming here illegally and you won’t be locked up. Pretty simple.
38
Illegals should be imprisoned. Every nation has a right to borders and sovereignty.
36
Close the prisons, but deport all illegal aliens and spend the money on American citizens.
30
s García Hernández points out, “In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower’s attorney general, Herbert Brownell Jr., announced a decision to shut down major immigration detention centers along both coasts, including Ellis Island.” But García Hernández doesn’t explain why the seaport detention facilities were shutdown.
Until 1954, the United States conducted admissibility inspections at seaports of entry. Those denied entry at the seaports were sent to detention facilities. But in 1954, the United States inaugurated a new procedure. Admissibility inspections were no longer conducted at seaport of entry; they were conducted at portions of departure or on ships enroute to the United States. The Department of Justice then discontinued its six seaport detention facilities at New York, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco,San Pedro and Honolulu.
The tsunami of illegal border crossers that has surged across the Southwest Border since 1954 is not remotely comparable to the situation at seaports of entry.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/09/12/11-11-1954.pdf
15
Immigrants don't have any of the rights that Americans have upon arrest. None of those essentials, like phone calls, a speedy arraignment, no court appointed lawyer.
Prisons are places of human abuse even when there are laws protecting inmates. Without those protections, cruelty becomes the routine.
Immigrant detainees can go years without knowing where a family member has been detained, or, as we have seen, ever finding their own child again. It becomes routine to deny them the most common anxiety relieving information, for instance, why they have been detained and what they might expect in terms of time for their circumstances to change. Many detainees have been shipped far from where they were arrested and have no idea where they are, and their jailers can't be bothered to impart something so normalizing as to help them place themselves on a map.
Its a careless and sadistic system and its all ours.
3
@Eric -- They have the right to a lawyer--they just have to pay for him themselves. Immigration is a CIVIL matter, and taxpayers don't pay for lawyers for Americans who are involved in civil suits. Make illegal immigration a crime with criminal penalties, and they'll get taxpayer-provided lawyers.
Deportation, by the way, is not a "punishment" but a civil remedy that sets things back to what they were before the illegal alien broke the law. "Migrants" are generally detained because if we release them, we're giving them what they broke the law to get--access to the US, and, especially, jobs.
4
A growing economy can accommodate unfettered immigration.
The US economy is NOT growing and cannot employ its own citizens lacking in education. Adding MORE people to that labor pool only drives wages down.
I recall an article in the WSJ a decade back about a black tilesetter in Florida who had built up his business over 20 years only to see it put out of business by immigrants working for minimal wages. Electricians, plumbers and such now employ immigrants to do the work while licensed US owners sign off on the work. The once union jobs in construction are now filled with illegals making a fraction of what those union workers once made.
The US has exported millions of jobs overseas. How are we supposed to accommodate millions of immigrant workers? Or is the point to drive down wages?
If the argument is made that immigrants do work that Americans would not do then we should ask Why? If the answer is that wages are too low or conditions too bad, then perhaps the answer is to raise wages and improve conditions.
35
@cynicalskeptic
I totally agree with your post and would add that these savings on low wages being paid by the construction companies are not being passed on to the consumer but instead are being passed into their bottom line.
25
@cynicalskeptic
Who does the hiring?
The United States embodies a culture of punishment, particularly against the poor, the weak, the stranger. The culture of punishment cuts across political lines. Witness the “law and order” women Senators now running for the Democratic nomination for President. All made their original political bones as state prosecutors, and proud of it too.
4
@William Colgan Law and order is a good thing.
16
The US has a history of cruelty to certain classes of people. Does anyone remember the inhumane treatment of the Japanese, even those who were born here and were citizens, during WWII?
My mother was a British war bride and the US held war brides and their children in internment camps before we could come to the US. To add insult to injury German POWs were put in charge of the internment camps. British women and their children were at the mercy of the same people who had bombed their country and killed many of their relatives and neighbors. The Germans kept most of the food for themselves and my mother gave most of our tiny allotment to me. By the time we got out of there she was skin and bones.
The imprisonment of the migrants has to stop, especially the separation of children from their parents. That kind of cruelty does not belong in a so-called civilized country. Plenty of people are making money from this perverted form of the rule of law and it has to stop.
I agree that people should follow the rules and wait their turn, but that is no excuse for what is being done to these people. We have a lot to answer for. American policies in Central America for the sake of the United Fruit Company, among others, caused the chaos that is happening there now. Is there no shame?
14
Here is another problem not addressed in these comments. Every paycheck handed out in this country there are deduction made for Social security and Medicare. The higher skilled the job the greater the amount that goes into supporting Medicare.
SO the smart thing for this country to do is to start getting legal immigrants to fill those higher productivity jobs first. Yes there is a need for lower skill jobs as well and the solution is still not indiscriminately allowing people crossing the border, here is where temporary visas, job matching and strict enforcement of requiring people to leave the country once the temporary work is no longer needed.
This low wage indiscriminate immigration is going to be a burden on our future. What this country needs is smart people who can help develop products that we can sell to the rest of world to keep funding our benefits.
14
So Mr. Hernandez advocates allowing an unlimited number of migrants to come into the country without penalty, to eventually get their day in court (if they show up) and then to "let slide" any denial of approval.
Knowing that open borders are opposed by nearly all Americans, he tries to make the case for them without actually using the term.
No.
If detention is as terrible as Mr. Hernandez says, and which I don't doubt, all illegal migrants should be immediately returned to their country of origin without any right to stay in the US pending their immigration review. Knowing that there was no chance that they would be released on their own recognizance, perhaps fewer migrants would try to break in to the US.
Migrants know that they are breaking the law coming here illegally, and they know that they are subject to imprisonment and deportation. They become an enormous drain on taxpayers, have little realistic chance of asylum yet survive on the hope that they will be allowed to "let slide" into permanent illegal residency.
As long as illegal migrants seek to squeeze their way illegally into the country, the country must defend itself. Detention is bad, but open borders are worse.
We need to abolish birthright citizenship, fine employers and landlords who exploit those here illegally and speed up the immigration review process so that people do not suffer in detention.
107
This person is exactly right in their response to the irresponsible point of view espoused in the article .
The United States cannot have open borders to what are overwhelmingly economic migrants .
There must be rules , safeguards , and a proper method of screening . Breaking the law then after the fact , trying to stay should not be tolerated .
It’s funny how these “ asylum seekers “ supposedly fleeing danger don’t go to closer countries like Belize , Costa Rica , etc but head through various countries directly to the United States . Why ? Because they really are in actuality , economic migrants knowing the most social services are here. No , there must be immigration reform...... but the Democrats must be willing to go along with some restrictions and limits or they will be tagged as they were in 2016 that Democrats care more about Central American children then they do about your own American children..... and lose the election again in 2020.
66
We don't see enough articles in the media as to why immigrants are fleeing their home countries. We need more articles addressing this.
The sad fact is, Mexico and practically all of Central America with the possible exceptions of Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize, are failed states. They are failed states because the plutocrats who run these countries don't care about the poor working-class people of their own country.
The plutocrats of these countries, including Mexico, actively encourage migration, because they want their own citizens either to leave permanently or move to the U.S. in order to generate foreign exchange (money transfers from the U.S. to the home country) with remittances.
We in the U.S. need to stop focusing on foreign conflicts far away and direct our attention to Mexico and Central America. We need to pressure these countries to change policies such as raising the minimum wage and protecting workers there. We need to get tough with these countries. There are many tools at our disposal to do this.
Being nicer to immigrants who come here requesting asylum is not going to solve the long term problems of the situations in Mexico and Central America. In fact, it will only encourage more emigration and will let the plutocrats off the hook.
38
Very few comments are positive. We the tax payers are paying to hold/board these people long term. People who pass a credible fear test are being held until the final ruling in their court cases. That could take years, but that is the point, send a message that the only future they have is prison for the foreseeable future. Those who make it to the boarder, a 2 or 3 month or longer wait in Mexico just to present your case, then prison. We are such a nice country.
9
@Dave "We are such a nice country."
Please. We don't have any responsibility to let everyone from Latin America move into the United States. Our population is too big already. We need more measured immigration and no illegal crossings of the southern border, and VISA overstays need to be shipped out.
21
If you lose your case in immigration court then you should be deported. The US has a very generous legal asylum system that allows people their day in court. If you lose then you go back home, that’s fair. Otherwise it is essentially open borders. Illegal immigration causes a huge strain on hospitals, working class wages, public schools, and social services. These services should be for US citizens and not people here illegally. No one has a right to come to the US. If you want to come here, then follow the rules. If you do not qualify for asylum or lose your day in court then you need to go back home.
73
I believe that most Americans do not support a catch and release program for those who enter the country illegally. Because we have legal immigration and asylum laws we are going to have to shoulder the burden of processing them in a timely fashion if we wish to detain them. The world adds 80 million souls per year and we have decided that we will take about 1 million legal immigrants per year. Unless and until that number is legally changed we must deal with those who come here illegally. Detention is not necessarily cruel and unusual punishment if it is done properly.
What we must do is vastly increase the processing speed of our system and completely eliminate the backlog and insure that everyone who applies for asylum is detained and processed quickly.
This absolutely needs to be combined with a total crackdown on those who knowingly hire illegals with large fines, and perhaps having business licences pulled altogether, that could be used to pay for the additional processing resources. Employers should be afraid to hire illegal immigrants and asylum seeking immigrants should get a fair and timely hearing.
This is the price a civilized country must pay.
And for those who think this is a right wing solution, I am a lifetime democrat.
61
So libertarian immigration policy but not employment or social services policy. What could go wrong?
This may create larger claims on services - see M4A including people here illegally.
Or if you argue that people here illegally will not have access to services - a dubious claim without defining what services include - that further creates an underclass which may not be conducive to national unity and getting people to "pay their fair share" for expansive programs.
35
The money would be better used to hire more judges to address the gross backlog of asylum claims, visa tracking, and enforcement of deportation orders. Over 1 million currently being violated.
Make the system more efficient and enforced and detention is less necessary.
37
@CNNNNC
I was an immigration judge in california. 1 million isn’t even close. In California 1 in every 16 men women children is illegal. That is only California. No country in the world has such a Swiss cheese immigration system as has the USA. My daughter was born in Chinatown, in a hospital where bus loads of Chinese women straight from LAX arrived to have their anchor baby at Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park, California every other Saturday 8am. Go to the hospital cafeteria and see for yourself. Our borders are a joke.
20
So now we are supposed to have laws that may or may not be enforced, depending on the prosecutor's discretion??? Seriously. Prosecutors already have 1000 times too much power in this country as it is, along with cops, lawyers, and the courts in general.
31
The problem is that there are not enough negative consequences for illegal immigrants, not that are too many. The Democrats are welcome to run on closing these prisons and diverting the money to helping people here illegally with their legal things. They may even run up historic margins in New York and California, and win the popular vote by 5 millions, 7 million, or more. But they will still wake up the day after Election Day aghast at the result. The party would be better off creating a plan that does something more than guarantee 11-20 million more Democratic voters. We see right through it.
119
@Snowball
Democrats want to do free these people because it's the humane thing to do not for the votes!
That's the kind of thinking that separates the Republicans and Democrats! Disgusting!
2
@Snowball
Why not try winning people’s votes instead of suppressive it. There is no rational reason to say that all undocumented people in the US vote democratic. Most immigrants have more in line with republicans than democrats except out right bigotry at every level.
Prove that undocumented people only vote democrat. Could just as easily be republican.
2
@Protester
Then, why don't Democrats propose offering every person in refugee camps around the world the option to enter the US and stay forever? If we would get rid of pesky immigration laws, I'll bet charities could ship tens of millions of people here a year for a "more humane life" if thet were the real goal.
And, why do Democrats also so often oppose more legal immigration by skilled tech workers while supporting letting under-educated illegal immigrants remain undeterred? It suspect that Democrats fear that educated people can analyze issues and do math and reject more of their ideas and candidates.
12
Funny how quickly the right wing forgets about economics when it is an issue they care about. Why don’t we ever hear how are we going to pay for trailing everyone?
Why is cost never an issue for the right wing? Where are the fiscal conservative purple district leaders? Oh that’s right you are only fiscally conservative when it’s about liberal policy goals.
6