According to the Washington Post, “noncriminal” arrests of immigrants have doubled in 2017.
Since Donald Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have increased by 40 percent. In 2017, ICE detained nearly 38,000 “noncriminal” immigrants. The Washington Post said the number of detained immigrants that have been convicted of crimes has also raised a little and is at almost 106,000.
This is no surprise, considering that Jeff Sessions, the attorney general of the United States, told Justice Department prosecutors to be tough on immigrants that have committed crimes. He even went as far as saying that if an immigrant enters the United States undocumented after being previously removed, then the immigrant will be “referred for felony prosecution.”
This makes sense considering that Trump’s 2016 election campaign promise was one filled with anti-immigrant rhetoric and a closed-door ideology of the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security has used the Alien Incarceration Report as what they believe is evidence that shows the need for Trump’s wall being built on the Mexican border. But, these reports hardly seem fair.
The majority of immigrants come to America in search of a better life. Putting up a wall on the border takes the idea of the “American Dream” and completely diminishes it. The Statue of Liberty is a sign of ‘welcome,’ signifying hope and promise of a future. A wall does the opposite. Using undocumented immigrants that are incarcerated as a way of explaining a need for a wall that will do so much more than simply hinder undocumented immigration, which it probably would not even successfully do.
Here at the Hacking Immigration Law, we are not ready now and will NEVER be ready to live in a country that denies its roots in immigration and forgets that the Statue of Liberty “glows [with] world-wide welcome.”
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