Over recent times it was reported that at least 3 to 4 immigrant families in the Latino-infested neighborhood of Washington received early morning home visits from ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. A grandmother in one family was reported to have stated that she and other family members were asked to give photographs, eye scans and fingerprint scans and they were not even asked for permission, she said. Another person reported that her family too received a sudden early morning visit from ICE agents.
Many immigrant families have complained of sudden, unexpected home visits from immigration authorities. Can these encounters be termed as “raids”? One wonders, as the entry into the apartments of these families is largely interventional and no permission is sought from any of the members, before a raid is made.
In March it was announced by Department of Homeland Security that it had arrested more than 2000 convicted immigrants in a week-long raid. Many residents also claimed that agents called themselves “police” and just entered their houses, carrying a folder of pictures belonging to “criminal” immigrants. Once the fingerprinting and eye scanning process was done a red folder was pulled out and everyone was asked whether the persons in the pictures could be recognized.
Such acts that are usually attributed to the police is slowly but steadily eroding the trust that the immigrants, till now placed in the hands of the immigration authorities.
Conservative groups from outside are pressurizing GOP leaders to go in for immigration reforms much ahead of the 2016 elections for the President of the United States of America.
The entire immigration issue has brought about a big divide amongst Republicans, and GOP leaders have moved away from it in recent years in order to avoid any internal discord, an issue that is heading into a drama-packed presidential election time.
Senior Conservative leaders from Capitol Hill warn that a failure of the Congress to handle any immigration head-on will help Democrats to attack the GOP for being idle and doing nothing to fix a system that both parties claim is broken. The Republicans are being called on by the conservatives to pass reforms in piecemeal, starting with strengthening the border security aspects that might stop attacks and enhance the GOP’s standing with Hispanic voters.
“It’s time for Republicans to lead,” said a Republican and who also heads a conservative policy group. “This Congress has a unique opportunity to show that Republicans can tackle the toughest issues of our time”, he added. “Make no mistake about it, this is a great crisis. And there’s absolutely no excuse for members of Congress to sit on their hands and do nothing,” he reaffirmed.
Another Republican who was a former immigration lawyer said he was also working on as many as a dozen separate immigration bills. The Republican, who was a part of the bipartisan House group that unsuccessfully sought a reform compromise, stated that he was hoping that his proposals would guide the GOP presidential contenders heading into 2016.
Two democrats from the state of California have protested with the Department of Homeland Security to end the practice of detaining families in detention centers which were, what they called “jail – like” places of great pain. The detained families in these centers had to wait for unimaginable lengths of time waiting for their cases to see the light of day.
A Republican even stated that even Syrians who had run away to neighboring Jordan to escape violence and torment in their country lived in far better conditions than the detained families in the detention centers of America.
“The Jordanians are treating the refugees from Syria a heck of a lot better than we’re treating immigrants from Honduras,” the Republican said. He was joined by many critics of the family detention centers at a news conference recently. Last week the DHS had ordered a review of the detention facilities with a view to address the broader problem, but many have rejected this, saying that these were only “cosmetic measures” and are doing nothing to address the one big problem of detention itself.
A volunteer lawyer stated that the detained families in the detention centers qualified for asylum; the volunteer said that the women and children who came away from other countries were indeed refugees and “have come here seeking protection from the horrific violence they have suffered.”
An amendment in the defense budget that was intended to open up the military to document-less immigrants who came to the US as minor children may have seen its death by a vote in the House last week, but an immigration attorney stated that legislation was unnecessary because the Defense Department already had that authority.
An Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel who was a teacher at West Point and was a MacArthur Foundation Fellow called the collapsed amendment a “symbolic effort”, stating that “the President already has statutory authority to let them enlist, or more precisely, his service secretaries have the authority”.
A Republican helped to draft the amendment which would have in turn led the Defense Secretary to go through the military readiness of opening up of enlistments to unlawful immigrants staying in the United States of America under the executive orders of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
These immigrants are called DREAMERs – from Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, a legislation that is proposed to give the alien native but raised in America people a way to citizenship.
Amongst the committee lawmaker was one who stated – “”There is no higher expression of citizenship than serving your nation in uniform. I am fighting every day to give DREAMERS the same chance I had to serve this country”.
