Trump's mass deportation scheme is an insult to all of us
Trump's mass deportation scheme is an insult to all of us | Opinion This is not the America immigrants who actually contribute to society, have the right documentation, show character and continue to play by the rules of the nation's immigration process deserve.
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Trump administration detains Vietnamese who came as refugees after war
After the Vietnam War ended 50 years ago, Republican and Democratic administrations shielded refugees from deportation. Donald Trump is changing that.
As a nation, we shouldn't have to worry about a young man like Esro Garcia Mendez, the son of immigrants and a first-generation high school graduate in Florida's Palm Beach County. Mendez' character is evident. Instead of celebrating with friends after receiving his diploma, he rushed to HCA Palms West Hospital to be with his ailing father.
Imagine a father's joy in sharing such a special moment.
Esro kept a 4.0 grade-point average on the way to finishing high school, a goal he and his family shared as they clearly understood the importance of a high school degree. He doesn't want to stop there. He wants to enlist in the U.S. armed forces, another first that he believes will also make his family and community proud.
Although his future seems bright, there's cause for concern.
Trump's mass deportation scheme targets good people
Specifically, there simply may be too many good folk like Mendez who will get needlessly ensnared in President Donald Trump's administration's mass deportation scheme that touts making numbers.
Trump wants to deport 1 million immigrants a year, according to The Washington Post.
According to NBC News, Trump officials have pushed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to pick up the pace by arresting 3,000 immigrants a day, an unpractical rate that will most likely include legal residents and U.S. citizens.
Opinion: Manufacturing down, food expensive and ICE is deporting moms. Happy now, MAGA?
Like those old Florida speed traps that coincidently popped up when some local official decides to make easy marks out of unsuspecting motorists, arrests, detainment and deportation seem more of a numbers game than sound public policy.
Rule of law? Habeas corpus? How quaint. This White House is more ready to fend off pesky news coverage than to ensure anybody nabbed as a suspected illegal immigrant gets their day in court before deportation.
This rush to meet numbers at the expense of decency, fair play, even legality, hurts ... us.
How do you even prepare to talk about deportation?
As a teenager taking the family car out on a Friday night, I can remember my dad telling me to obey local traffic laws and how to act if I were stupid enough to get pulled over by the police. There was no Black Lives Matter back then, cops weren't routinely shooting Black motorists at traffic stops, and the conversation didn't have a convenient "The Talk" label. Still, my parents did their job in trying to protect their wayward son.
I did the same for mine, in far harsher times.
Opinion: Dems can make all the demands they want on ICE arrests. They won't get answers.
I can't imagine what the equivalent of The Talk is right now for anyone who can be considered a suspect for deportation. I mean, what steps can you take to prepare yourself when culture, dialect and skin color can make you a target, whether you're attending school, going to work or leaving church?
What do you do when so-called rights don't apply?
Keep your papers on you at all times? Don't make sudden moves in reaching for those papers?
Know a good lawyer, the deportation equivalent of Benjamin Crump? Prepare your family in advance for self-deportation, if necessary?
Could any of that have helped Maurilio Ambrocio, an evangelical pastor, father of five and landscaper living in the Tampa area? Outstanding member of the community. No criminal record. Arrested and detained.
Or Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, in Tallahassee, charged with illegally entering Florida as an "unauthorized alien" despite having a U.S. birth certificate? Arrested and detained.
It appears almost any "person of color" in the free state of Florida can get arrested, detained and possibly deported.
How do we explain to anyone, much less rationalize to ourselves, how people are being snatched up only to "disappear" before being sent to El Salvador, South Sudan or God knows where else?
This is not the America immigrants who actually contribute to society, have the right documentation, show character and continue to play by the rules of the nation's immigration process deserve. It's neither the type of country that befits its citizens who are quick to boast of freedom and liberty.
We can't keep addressing a complex problem of immigration by simply trying to meet unrealistic deportation numbers. That should be an affront to us all.
For the sake of Esro Garcia Mendez and so many like him, we must do better.
Douglas C. Lyons is an editorial writer and columnist for The Palm Beach Post, where this column originally published. He can be reached at dclyons@gannett.com
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LA Protests: National Guard Troops Have Detained Protesters (Live Updates)
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Similar protests have spread to other cities across the U.S., including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Seattle, Boston, Santa Ana, California, and parts of Texas, including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. At least 80 protesters were arrested in New York, while 15 were arrested in Philadelphia, more than a dozen were arrested in Austin and one was detained in Dallas. At least two police officers were injured during protests in Philadelphia. Los Angeles Metro Police officers stand on the road in front of city hall Tuesday night. People take part in an anti-ICE protest in New York City on Tuesday. Protesters walk by the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago on Tuesday. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday. 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'For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,' Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, told the Los Angeles Times. The legal issues raised by Trump sending the National Guard to L.A. (Los Angeles Times)
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It would also mean higher emissions of the greenhouse gases driving Earth's warming to deadlier levels. Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued last year. Then-EPA head Michael Regan said the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while supporting a reliable, long-term supply of electricity. The power sector is the nation's second-largest contributor to climate change, after transportation. In its proposed regulation, the Trump EPA argues that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants 'do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution' or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired plants 'are a small and decreasing part of global emissions,' the EPA said, adding: 'this Administration's priority is to promote the public health or welfare through energy dominance and independence secured by using fossil fuels to generate power.' The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to limit emissions from power plants and other industrial sources if those emissions significantly contribute to air pollution that endangers public health. If fossil fuel plants no longer meet the EPA's threshold, the Trump administration may later argue that other pollutants from other industrial sectors don't either and therefore shouldn't be regulated, said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Justice Department lawyer now in private practice. The EPA proposal 'has the potential to have much, much broader implications,' she said. Zeldin, a former New York congressman, said the Biden-era rules were designed to 'suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment,' with the intent to regulate the coal industry 'out of existence' and make it 'disappear.' National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan applauded the new rules, saying they remove 'deliberately unattainable standards' for clean air while 'leveling the playing field for reliable power sources, instead of stacking the deck against them.' But Dr. Howard Frumkin, a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health and professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said Zeldin and Trump were trying to deny reality. 'The world is round, the sun rises in the east, coal-and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change, and climate change increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms and many other health threats,' Frumkin said. 'These are indisputable facts. If you torpedo regulations on power plant greenhouse gas emissions, you torpedo the health and well-being of the American public and contribute to leaving a world of risk and suffering to our children and grandchildren.' A paper published earlier this year in the journal Science found the Biden-era rules could reduce U.S. power sector carbon emissions by 73% to 86% below 2005 levels by 2040, compared with a reduction of 60% to 83% without the rules. 'Carbon emissions in the power sector drop at a faster rate with the (Biden-era) rules in place than without them,' said Aaron Bergman, a fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research institution and a co-author of the Science paper. The Biden rule also would result in 'significant reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, pollutants that harm human health,' he said.
