Shared from the 6/20/2019 Houston Chronicle eEdition

EDITORIAL

Protect immigrants

Houston must stand up to oppressive federal tactics as Trump, ICE threaten deportations.

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Federal agents raid a tortilla factory in the Heights in Houston in 2015. A message from the president this week promising millions of deportations has unnerved immigrants.

Staff file photo

A year after President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending his own administration’s policy on family separation at the border, officials are gearing up for mass arrests of families in the country illegally.

It’s a move that, if carried out, will probably lead to children being separated from their parents all over again.

Many families are in Houston, making the city a likely setting for any immigration enforcement effort. There is not much legally that local officials can do when it comes to federal immigration law, but the community should be ready to step in if the president’s latest threat of cruelty becomes a reality.

“Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” the president tweeted on Monday. “They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

Trump’s claims that “millions” will be deported is just another exaggeration, but the apparent reality is bad enough. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been preparing a plan to target thousands of families — mainly new arrivals from Central America — who have pending deportation orders.

Most of those recent immigrants have relatives in the U.S., which means ICE will also likely encounter mixed-status families, where a parent may be undocumented, but his or her children are U.S. citizens. Even if those longtime migrants weren’t the initial focus, anyone in the country illegally is subject to arrest, with a single target leading to a daisy chain of detentions.

In an immigrant community such as Houston, this could prove devastating.

There are an estimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants in the region. Most of them are law-abiding, productive members of our society. These are the people who tend to our yards, cook our food, build our houses and take care of our children. They and their families are an integral part of Houston, and we must do what we can to help if they are threatened.

Officials can start by organizing a network of immigration attorneys, prepare shelter space, coordinate groups that can provide financial assistance if the breadwinner of the family is detained, work with consulates to keep communities informed and develop a plan in case families are separated.

The saddest part is all that effort — from cleaning up the fallout to the hundreds of agents who will be enlisted to carry out the president’s plan — is for nothing. It won’t make us safer: Trump seems to be making no effort to target criminals over peaceful families. The return on this investment is suffering, not a solution to illegal immigration nor to the influx of hundreds of thousands of desperate immigrants seeking asylum at our southern border.

Of course, doing nothing is not an answer, either. If a judge has determined in a fair process that an immigrant has no case to remain in the country, then the law should be enforced. To ignore it, to let the status quo remain and allow these families to set down roots, as prior administrations have done, is irresponsible, too.

That’s what has led to the creation of a millions-strong shadow class, which while benefiting from an improved situation from their home country, is ripe for exploitation and seen as disposable cheap labor. That abdication is what’s given politicians such as Trump the fodder they need to turn fear into political power.

So, what do we do? We need immigrants and yet we reject them. We want to be humane and yet we must enforce laws that cause pain.

Whatever the solution, it doesn’t begin or end with deportation. We must work with other countries, not by militarizing their borders, but to improve the economic and public safety issues that push people to leave. Our economy demands workers, so the U.S. needs immigrants, but coming here should be a choice, not an escape plan. It should be done in an orderly, lawful process, not through a broken system that’s so backlogged and under-resourced that honest people are driven to enter illegally.

Trump has proven incapable of facing this complex issue. His actions have been superficial and callous, and this latest is even worse: nothing more than a cynical ploy to rally his base for his reelection bid. Any hope for real, comprehensive solutions must wait for him to leave office.

Until then, it is up to communities such as Houston, which value and understand the importance of immigrants, to do their best to mitigate Trump’s recklessness. It’s up to us to demonstrate the humanity that our president lacks.

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