Ventura County Star by Ruben Navarette (Opinion- Cross Posted in The San Antonio Express): "We have to ask, 'Is removal the only remedy?' No. And it might not be the best remedy in all cases. ... When you start removing people who have been here for 25 years, it isn't so simple. There is a whole life wrapped up in this person, much of it lawful and positive, having kids born in the U.S. for instance. ... This is someone's parent, someone's grandparent."
Question: Who do you think said this to me during an interview in 2010?
Newt Gingrich? Not a bad guess. The GOP presidential hopeful has staked out a position that is to the left of the Obama administration on deporting illegal immigrants. Gingrich says that we should not divide families, something the White House does with ease.
The correct answer: John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is the person assigned the dirty job of carrying out record numbers of deportations to show that President Obama is tough on illegal immigration.
To prove it, since Obama's inauguration, ICE has deported more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants, more than any administration in six decades. It has done so by bending the rules, using local police as a force multiplier through a sinister program called Secure Communities and reportedly setting monthly quotas for the number of removals.
More and more Latinos are finally catching on to the idea that Obama is not their amigo. According to a recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos both citizens and noncitizens disapprove of how Obama is handing deportations by 59 percent to 27 percent.
Interestingly enough, Morton is currently trying to deport "someone's grandparent," someone with a whole bunch of lives "wrapped up" in him, someone who has "kids born in the U.S." and who has spent four decades in the United States "much of it lawful and positive."
ICE has targeted Jorge Aguilar. The 62-year-old California resident is not an illegal immigrant. In fact, he is a legal immigrant with a valid green card. He followed the rules to enter this country when he came as a young man to pick fruits and vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley. And he followed the rules to stay here by renewing his green card every 10 years as required by law. He and his wife raised four successful children and now they're doting on six grandchildren. Every member of the family is a U.S. citizen, except for Aguilar.
Yet, in April 2009, Aguilar was arrested by ICE agents at his home, shackled and flown to a holding facility. With all the fanfare, you'd have thought the G-men were transporting Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, international law enforcement's most wanted person.
Aguilar did two things wrong in the 40 years that he's lived on this side of the border: He was convicted of a felony drug charge in 1989, for which he served time, and he never became a U.S. citizen. Because of the conviction, which he voluntarily confirmed on his application to renew his green card, he is eligible to be deported. And because he is not a U.S. citizen, he can't fight the charge. He could soon be on a bus to Mexico, and a family devastated.
Those are the rules. The average American naively thinks in terms of "legal" and "illegal" immigrants, and assumes that one can stay and the other must go. But the federal government thinks in terms of "U.S. citizen" and everyone else. U.S. citizens have a full platter of rights in our legal system; "everyone else" doesn't.
Let me be clear. I don't condone drug offenses, and I think it was a mistake for Aguilar not to become a U.S. citizen when he had the chance. But we live in a country where people who commit crimes and pay their debt to society are allowed to start over, and where people can choose not to become citizens without being punished for it.
We get it: Obama is a tough guy on immigration. Now how about some decency and common sense?
Short of that, what if the administration simply lived up to its own public relations-generated smoke screen of supposedly not deporting people with roots in this country?
A 62-year-old father and grandfather who migrated legally, worked all his adult life, paid taxes and otherwise contributed for decades is not someone who should be forcibly removed from the United States especially in the name of preserving "homeland security."
Deporting someone like Jorge Aguilar does nothing to protect this country. But it does quite a bit to diminish it.
Question: Who do you think said this to me during an interview in 2010?
Newt Gingrich? Not a bad guess. The GOP presidential hopeful has staked out a position that is to the left of the Obama administration on deporting illegal immigrants. Gingrich says that we should not divide families, something the White House does with ease.
The correct answer: John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is the person assigned the dirty job of carrying out record numbers of deportations to show that President Obama is tough on illegal immigration.
To prove it, since Obama's inauguration, ICE has deported more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants, more than any administration in six decades. It has done so by bending the rules, using local police as a force multiplier through a sinister program called Secure Communities and reportedly setting monthly quotas for the number of removals.
More and more Latinos are finally catching on to the idea that Obama is not their amigo. According to a recent survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos both citizens and noncitizens disapprove of how Obama is handing deportations by 59 percent to 27 percent.
Interestingly enough, Morton is currently trying to deport "someone's grandparent," someone with a whole bunch of lives "wrapped up" in him, someone who has "kids born in the U.S." and who has spent four decades in the United States "much of it lawful and positive."
ICE has targeted Jorge Aguilar. The 62-year-old California resident is not an illegal immigrant. In fact, he is a legal immigrant with a valid green card. He followed the rules to enter this country when he came as a young man to pick fruits and vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley. And he followed the rules to stay here by renewing his green card every 10 years as required by law. He and his wife raised four successful children and now they're doting on six grandchildren. Every member of the family is a U.S. citizen, except for Aguilar.
Yet, in April 2009, Aguilar was arrested by ICE agents at his home, shackled and flown to a holding facility. With all the fanfare, you'd have thought the G-men were transporting Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, international law enforcement's most wanted person.
Aguilar did two things wrong in the 40 years that he's lived on this side of the border: He was convicted of a felony drug charge in 1989, for which he served time, and he never became a U.S. citizen. Because of the conviction, which he voluntarily confirmed on his application to renew his green card, he is eligible to be deported. And because he is not a U.S. citizen, he can't fight the charge. He could soon be on a bus to Mexico, and a family devastated.
Those are the rules. The average American naively thinks in terms of "legal" and "illegal" immigrants, and assumes that one can stay and the other must go. But the federal government thinks in terms of "U.S. citizen" and everyone else. U.S. citizens have a full platter of rights in our legal system; "everyone else" doesn't.
Let me be clear. I don't condone drug offenses, and I think it was a mistake for Aguilar not to become a U.S. citizen when he had the chance. But we live in a country where people who commit crimes and pay their debt to society are allowed to start over, and where people can choose not to become citizens without being punished for it.
We get it: Obama is a tough guy on immigration. Now how about some decency and common sense?
Short of that, what if the administration simply lived up to its own public relations-generated smoke screen of supposedly not deporting people with roots in this country?
A 62-year-old father and grandfather who migrated legally, worked all his adult life, paid taxes and otherwise contributed for decades is not someone who should be forcibly removed from the United States especially in the name of preserving "homeland security."
Deporting someone like Jorge Aguilar does nothing to protect this country. But it does quite a bit to diminish it.
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