You could call this Immigration Ban Part II, but that’d be wrong. This is also more than just enforcing existing law. The fact is both sides are wrong.
There are three important parts to what’s going on here. Trump is saying we can deport even if no one is convicted, he’s saying you have to be here for two years to be safe, and he’s sending everyone back where they crossed over regardless of their passport.
Let’s take this one at a time.
President Obama (so glad to even say that name) said if you were here for two weeks as an illegal immigrant before ICE or another relevant agency caught you, then you’d be afforded due process. Trump says he has empowered ICE to deport anyone here less than two years. Now, I support the law, and I support a punishment that fits the crime. I don’t know how Mexico or another country would treat someone with a record or even suspicion of illegal immigration, but I hope, wherever they go, punishment, if any, is fair.
Now, Trump also wants to deport someone who is suspected of a crime, even if not convicted. That’s just ridiculous. Suspected? Who gets to decide whether someone is a suspect? I mean, anyone, right? So, there ya go. Everyone is a suspect. I mean, that’s mass deportation without any due process or anything. That supports the punishment that, if you’re here illegally, just get out. Again, no detail, just get out.
Last, Trump has said he’ll deport someone back to Mexico even if they’re not a citizen of Mexico. I assume he also will deport someone back to the country from which they directly arrived rather than their country of citizenship because a Cleveland Clinic doctor was sent back to Saudi Arabia in the first days of the Immigration Ban even though she had a Sudanese passport. I don’t disagree with this. It is not our business to send them back to their country of citizenship, it also could be dangerous to support a safe passage through any country because you won’t be sent back there to face punishment for using it as a passageway, and we can’t be sure their country of citizenship is safe for them because they were obviously leaving conditions that, in terms of their pursuit of happiness, are worse for them than that of where they were going. I also think Trump wants to punish Mexico for not stopping people from immigrating through Mexico from Central America and anywhere else. In fact, it’s not uncommon to come to Canada first and then try to come to America since it’s so much harder to come directly to America. The same might be the case for Mexico even in instances where the country of citizenship is not contiguous with Mexico. Frankly, Trump is just trying to support enforcement of laws against illegal immigration in each country by ensuring that no country becomes a pathway to America for illegal immigration. It’s certainly okay to go through Mexico if you want to eventually arrive here legally, but to leave your home country with a plan to illegally immigrate through Mexico across the border, through the Caribbean by boat, or across the Canadian border, is something that I would certainly try to stop by leveraging those countries through which this could be done. All this considered, I’m not sure sending an illegal immigrant back to the country through which they illegally immigrated is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if they chose to go through that country, they must have felt at this temporarily safe so we may not be sending them back to conditions that are unduly harmful to them. Sending a Honduran back to Honduras would certainly be worse, and sending a Syrian back to Syria but who flew from Turkey is certainly worse, as well.
Given that there are no details on punishment for illegal immigration, I feel it’s necessary to discuss it further. The rest of this post is about that.
Here’s why I can’t necessarily support deportation after two years. Do they have some place to return to? I mean, it’s not really our business, and it’s debatable whether the Constitution protects them since the only reason it could is because they’re on U.S. soil and afforded rights of those on U.S. soil but stepped foot on U.S. soil illegally and of their own volition unless as a dependent and with the person that takes care of them, but still we should check to see whether we’re sending them to a place that is going to be bad for them.
We need to assess the appropriate punishment for illegal immigration, and I don’t think we’ve done that. For every crime, there’s extensive study on how many years someone should get in jail, for murder, for robbery, and other crimes, or probation as well as the manner in which the crime was committed, the defendant’s intent, etc. There are studies in law schools across this country and several countries that debate topics of intent, premeditation, mental state, severity of the crime, and other issues and probation, time served, minimum security versus maximum security, level of remorse, how one pleads, etc.
However, there seems to be none of that when assessing punishment for illegal immigration.
You can’t claim someone should be tried in your courts because the crime happened here and also claim the defendant doesn’t get the rights afforded by the Constitution.
There’s literally nothing more than stay or go when it comes to illegal immigration. Where’s all the detail? How come each individual doesn’t get a different punishment. It’s the same crime, I know, but the same crime has different punishments when the crime is murder or robbery or something else. A murderer gets 20 years or life or something else. A bank robber gets a different sentence when he/she is just driving the getaway car and not even going into the bank.
There are a million different sentences for rape because, as courts have stated, the situation matters. I’m not stating an opinion on that, but when someone can get 90 days if both people were drunk, when a husband can get a different sentence for spousal rape than a high school student can get for statutory rape, then how come there’s only one punishment for illegal immigration?
I’m not saying I know the best punishment, but there’s only one crime that supports the same punishment for all, and that’s conspiracy, and illegal immigration is not a conspiracy. Moreover, a conspiracy to commit a crime holds the same punishment of the crime, and we don’t have any deliberation as to what that punishment should be. We just have stay or go.
I support not a legislative process for illegal immigration but a judicial process. I support due process, trial-by-jury, and so on. Now, there are so many people. Therefore, it may be untenable. We might not be able to do it. Therefore, let’s get some details in there. We have some already. We have DACA, and we have laws or at least precedents that treat illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes differently that they treat those whose only crime is illegal immigration, not whose only crime to seek a better life or give their kids what they didn’t have, but whose only crime was illegal immigration. They were doing the best they could, and that’s great, but if we conflate the pursuit of happiness with the law, then why not say you can rob a grocery store to feed your kid and there’s no punishment because your kids were hungry or you can rob a bank because you know they’ll be hungry again so you need the money for the long-term? The law is the law, and we need punishments for crimes committed. However, I’ve never seen any crime in my life for which the punishment is so sparsely detailed.
Honestly, we have variations in sentencing for rape and murder and armed robbery and depraved indifference for which you can get any number of years in any level of security any distance from your loved ones and/or dependents and so on, but for illegal immigration, it’s one size fits all. Why?
There’s a reason law school is so boring and law textbooks are so dry. Where’s all the dry, boring details on illegal immigration?
Maybe there should be an international body that decrees how individual countries within its international jurisdiction handle illegal immigration. If a crime occurs across state lines, it’s a federal issue and the Constitution, in the U.S anyway, says the federal government decides. So why not have an international body decide when it’s international? We have other issues that are decided by international bodies. Maybe there should be some rule that the US must follow when considering sending someone across a national border. If we want to keep him or her, not that international body’s problem. If we want to deport or otherwise transit them across national lines, that international body could be in control of the laws on that, the manner in which it’s done, etc.