The treatment of immigrants coming to the US from South America has been vile and disturbing for a very long time in America. However, with this most recent presidency, I feel it has reached a peak with how terrible it has been.
While I was attending Lincoln Land Community College, in one of my classes there was a debate occurring and the topic was illegal immigration. This discussion/ debate began because this was right around the time that two children died within ICE custody, and it was a big news topic. One of the students in my class stated that it was not “our” (I’m assuming he meant the country’s or maybe ICE’s) job to keep these children alive, and that if their parents really wanted a better life for their children, they wouldn’t have crossed the border illegally. To know that this individual thought this way, and believed in this logic so strongly that he was willing to say it aloud, absolutely astonished me. He was discussing human life, a child’s life, that was taken because of our country’s negligence, and truly believed that the child’s death was within reason.
To further this astonishment, I watched on TV as a Justice Department Lawyer argued that the children in ICE detention centers should not be entitled to soap, toothbrushes, or blankets while in their custody. The federal government was arguing to not give these human beings such important necessities including soap. This presidential administration has completely dehumanized these immigrants and this thought process obviously has spread to some of the American people, such as the boy in my LLCC class.
In 2019, the US held a record number of migrant children in its custody. Nearly 70,000 children of immigrants were kept within US custody in 2019, which is more than any other country in the world. (AP News). It is an embarrassment to this country that we are so wealthy yet refuse to treat immigrants like human beings, because we disapprove of how they got here. To further the embarrassment, the president continues to go on live TV spewing hateful rhetoric towards those in South America, most famously claiming that Mexicans are rapists and criminals.
We have to do better for our Latinx brothers and sisters, which includes making a lot of policy change. I believe one of the most important policy changes that needs to happen is making the process of becoming a US citizen more accessible, faster, and easier to navigate. I also believe enabling an easier process of renewing visas would help with those who become undocumented because of expired visas. These processes would allow immigrants who would like to come to America to easily become documented, lessening the need for ICE presence and detaining/ separating families.
Link for Undocumented Children Statistics: https://apnews.com/article/015702afdb4d4fbf85cf5070cd2c6824
I hoped the professor at Lincoln Land informed your class that the state does have a responsibility to keep persons who are in custody alive. In fact, the government does not have a duty to save the lives of citizens, unless the government has taken custody of citizens or foreigners (e.g., into state custody as children removed from parents or prisoners or detained undocumented immigrants). See the cases decided by the Supreme Court such as DeShaney vs. Winnebago and Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales, for the opinions. Children apprehended and put in custody because they are undocumented foreigners absolutely are the responsibility of our government and ICE.
We should always be concerned when we see dehumanization. When people dehumanize others, that is a step toward genocide. All humans are born equal in dignity and rights. Dehumanization undermines our recognition of this fact. When people start to describe others as vermin or cockroaches or rats, they are moving toward a call for the extermination of those others. When people say that persons in detention do not deserve soap or blankets while is custody, they are moving toward the rejection of the humanity of those persons.
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