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.
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.
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.
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