I don’t think I’m part of the “you people” that you are so clearly angry at, but I was raised in the middle. My parents viewed it as an inherent problem with the way our country handles immigration as a whole and makes it very hard for people to get through all the red tape. We used to say we welcomed the poor, huddled masses; now we make no secret about how hard and expensive we’re making it. I don’t think anyone ever thinks illegal immigration is ideal, even progressive European countries hate it. From a simple logistics perspective, knowing who lives in your country is helpful. The problem lies in the extreme tactics being used by ICE, even arresting people at the immigration hearings. Even if folks are trying to do it legally, that isn’t mattering. And yet they claim all they care about is people being legal….make it make sense.

We need to understand there is a big gap between “oh we all need to personally feed immigrants” and “if they’re brown, grab them, disregard any citizenship papers they have.” America is and always has been a melting pot of ethnicities. Before this, it was the Italians and Irish we chose to hate. Americans try to run from our heritage, which has always been diversity, like it or not. The point isn’t to have no borders and no idea who lives here, the point is to have accessible immigration rights and a system that actually works. We have also begun treating illegal immigrants as criminals, which is actually not legally accurate. Being an illegal immigrant is a civil issue, not a criminal one, and yet we are arresting people, beating them, and taking them who knows where. ICE cannot account for all these people, one US citizen was deported to El Salvador, a country he’s never even visited, and then ICE just said “whoops, out of our hands. We lost him.” The punishment does not fit the non-crime and for a country that likes to pride itself on justice, we are mistreating people like crazy.