ICE in Your Life

This summer ICE is no longer famous for the ingredient to keep your drink cold. ICE is the name of the more famous cops these days  who find your friends, relatives and workers even if they pay taxes for their low paying jobs and deport them. We all want our laws enforced but with every new President some laws get enforced more than others. Trump hates Mexicans and won the election on his promise to deport as many as he can find in this country, no matter what. We had the draft in World War ll  but our government had rules before they sent our boys off to war. The single guys went first, then the married guys went to war finally the men with wives and kids went to war. Exceptions were made to keep families together. Trump’ s immigration policy could care less about the law abiding parent who has lived and worked, paid taxes legally for at times for thirty years.

The ironic part of all this is that America is a nation made up of illegal immigrants’   at one time in history. People put their lives in danger to come to this country because we represent justice, freedom and safety for all. We have a court system for criminals. In the Philippians if you are even suspected of selling drugs, you are shot in the street vigilantly   style by the cops. Prisons in other countries starve the prisoners and are slow to a trial. So, even if you are a criminal in this country you are treated better. Why doesn’t Trump go after Puerto Rico that still won’t vote to be a state but continues to reap all the welfare and benefits that this country provides and they don’t pay taxes? In America Obama looked the other way and did not enforce the federal drug laws and now there are more and more states selling pot in store front shops. Why doesn’t Trump enforce that law? The fact remains that with every new President in this country they get to pick and choose what they want to enforce vigorously.

So, the illegal immigrant usually waits it out and goes on with their lives in this country where they choose to live. The problem is that Trump is very aggressive on this issue and could care less about the plight of the families he is destroying.  America is fighting back on behalf of their friends, relatives and workers and are now offering sanctuary states and locations where the illegal immigrant can hide from the ICE cops. More than 800 houses of worship have offered to shelter illegal immigrants. More than 600 cities and counties have declared themselves as sanctuary locations. Never before has so much of this nation stood in defiance of its law. Humanity is more important than the will of one President in power.

The places of worship are enforcing their oath to take the power and the freedom that God gave them to resist evil and oppression in whatever form it shows themselves. They say, when human rights are denied and they can’t stay with their families, evil and oppression has taken over and must be stopped. Trump has alienated places of worship too. Many illegal immigrants have children who are born in America and the children are citizens. ICE can arrest people in churches, schools and hospitals but for decades enforcement has avoided these places. Trump has hired 13,000 ICE officers. Trump’s campaign promise was to deport all 11 million illegal people living in this country. About 11 thousand people with no criminal records have been detained so far. Sanctuary locations have doubled in the past year alone.

States and places of worship are in open defiance of Trump’s new immigration law. The immigration debate is never settled because the laws are always changing. Since 1790 Congress has changed the immigration law on average every four years. America imported Chinese labor to build the Transcontinental Railroad and when it was finished, Congress banned all Chinese. In World War l nearly 20% of the United States Military were not citizens. Then America begged nearly 4 million workers to come to America to do the jobs Americans didn’t want to do. Ronald Regan granted amnesty to illegal immigrants. Trump blames the murder rate in the U.S. on immigrants. Yet according to the Department of Justice, illegal immigrants are just 1/3^rd the prisoners in our jails.

The Mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, declared his city a sanctuary city. That means that his police do not ask about citizenship and do not hold illegal immigrants if the only reason is that ICE wants to deport them. It violates the Constitution to hold people without a warrant. So officials get to enforce whatever they want to? Now there are 600 cities in the country who consider themselves sanctuary cities. Two years ago there were half as many. Now President Trump is trying to cut off funds from these sanctuary cities. He has been stopped so far by the courts. Ellis Island opened in 1882 and the millions of people that came through those doors didn’t have papers either. In the 1840’s we opened our doors to undocumented immigrants. America was the place historically where people came to be saved.

The immigration problem lies in the changing policies of our Presidents. In 1985 if you came to America illegally you were ok because Ronald Regan gave out work permits. When George Bush was President your rights were revoked. The people did not come here to be on a vacation. They came to work and live a safe life far away from the oppression they were leaving in other countries or they were brought here as slaves to do our hard work. We don’t need walls. We need to welcome people, give them all papers, make sure they have a job to go to, even make them pay a higher tax rate. Deport criminals and the rest can strive to add substance and an energy to our country. Stop the hate! Stop the Presidents from signing executive orders that change everything all the time!