In a political era defined by its partisan divides, nothing else exemplifies the deep polarization animating our civic life quite like immigration. The issue is entrapped by two opposing sides unwilling to compromise on their rigid positions.
Admittedly, this page has made no qualms on where we stand. We are, full stop, against this xenophobic apparatus to deport Latino immigrants from this country and our community at a mass scale. The justification for what amounts to ethnic cleansing is rooted in obvious misinformation and lies surrounding supposed immigrant criminality.
Our methods of immigration enforcement, no matter how embedded into state and federal law, are a part of a larger system of migrant detention, an unjust institution operating outside the bounds of criminal law.
While imperfect, the criminal justice system at least affords certain inalienable rights to those it accuses of violating the law. For undocumented immigrants caught in ICE’s dragnet, however, there is no such due process.
This gets at the crux of what divides the left and the right on immigration. The fundamental flaw plaguing anti-immigrant thinking among the ranks of the Republican Party is this notion that violating civil immigration law justifies the application of a different set of rules from one class of people to another.