The real solution to the many people petitioning to become American citizens would be to exponentially increase the number of judges assigned to review asylum and immigration claims; to set a maximum time frame for review whereby a failure to review would be result in an automatic permission to enter. Asylum claims by those in fear of violence would be fast tracked. The whole bureaucracy supporting green cards, visas and citizenship would be revamped and made easier, faster, and cheaper. Biden and Trump chose vastly different "solutions".
President Biden chose to effectively ignore the problem. While it's true that a lasting solution needs Congress to get involved — and they didn't — the Biden administration made no effort to unclog the backlog of asylum claims and allowed claimants to remain in the country while their applications were pending, essentially placing them in legal limbo — here technically legally, but with no legal status. Trump did the opposite, refusing all asylum claims and immediately deporting anyone that was caught crossing the border. Trump's approach was effective if all you were trying to do was prevent immigration, but it also cut off legal entry, i.e. asylum seekers. He has also declared that a zone adjacent to the southern border is a "military base", turning illegal entry, a civil offense, or possibly a misdemeanor, into a felony, turning the people who do manage to cross into the U.S. de jure felons.
Trump campaigned on ridding the country of "the worst of the worst", the violent criminals who were here illegally. If he had stuck to that plan I don't think I could have opposed it. Who could be against that? It was obvious, however, that doing the hard work of rooting out criminal gangs who surely were operating off the grid was not what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was doing. Confronting violent drug dealers who were armed with military grade weaponry was dangerous. So much easier to lurk around school pick up zones or wait at the courthouse for someone to pay their speeding ticket.
What is often lost in the discussion regarding ICE's mission is that many of the people being targeted for deportation were here legally. Immigrants from certain countries, such as Venezuela and Haiti, were given Temporary Protected Status. Many of those who arrived during the Biden administration had applied for asylum and were awaiting their day in court. Green Card holders (Permanent Legal Residents) were being deported because they had a DUI twenty years ago. At least one person was detained and presumably deported on their way to the final step in the citizenship process. These were all people who "did it the right way" and were still caught in the net. Even some people who initially arrived here illegally were allowed to stay as long as they checked in with ICE every year and stayed out of trouble. They were being detained when they showed up for their annual appointment.
As if the wholesale roundup of people who have lived her peaceably for decades, contributing to their communities, raising their children here, holding down jobs, paying taxes (and Social Security, which they will never collect) wasn't enough, ICE isn't limiting themselves to following leads and detaining and deporting people who have been investigated and determined to have overstayed their welcome. No, they quickly escalated to stopping and detaining people who look like they might be illegal. They have picked up, not only legal immigrants, but United States citizens, often refusing to accept their identification or their assertion that they were citizens. They're no longer merely doing their jobs, enforcing immigration laws, they are rampaging through our cities, terrorizing us.
And they've been shooting and killing people.
- Silverio Villegas González (killed)
- Marimar Martinez (shot 5 times, survived)
- Carlitos Ricardo Parias (shot, wounded)
- Jose Garcia-Sorto (shot, wounded)
- Carlos Jimenez - U.S. Citizen (shot, wounded)
- Isaias Sanchez Barboza (killed)
- Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins (shot, wounded)
- Renee Good - U.S. Citizen (killed)
- Luis David Nino Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras (both shot, wounded)
- Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis (shot, wounded)
- Alex Pretti - U.S. Citizen (killed)
- Patrick Gary Schlegel - U.S. Citizen (shot, wounded)
- Keith Porter - U.S. Citizen (killed) - Mr. Porter doesn't appear on many of these lists. There are accusations that it is because he is Black, in my opinion it's more likely it's because although he was killed by an ICE officer, the agent was off duty and the shooting was unrelated to an ICE immigration operation
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