IMPORTANT: This article is the opinion of the author, and the views expressed in the article do not pertain to the editorial stance of the Carolina Courier as a whole. The Carolina Courier’s mission is to inform students about issues that affect their lives, and immigration policy is one such issue for many.
Leave everything behind, follow your passions, and find success in the land of the free, home of the brave. That has been, is, and always will be the American Dream. That is, unless you’re brown. That’s a different story.
Donald J. Trump has forever changed the way Americans view immigrants. Sure, nativist ideologies and policies have existed throughout the history of the United States with laws such as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the Japanese Interment during WWII; while America, and the world, has made enormous leaps in combating racism since these were passed, it seems these nativist sentiments are returning once again in a new form: deportations.
Nativism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is a policy favoring native inhabitants over immigrants. While nativism is a deeply flawed ideology from a moral standpoint, it can initially seem logical from the perspective of a government: they are meant to serve their people… right? However, nativism is not only completely immoral, but it also harms the economy and goes against the founding principles of this country. More on that later.
Today, nativism has taken shape in deportations. Forcefully sending immigrants to another country. I would say their home country, but that’s no longer required as of a Supreme Court decision on June 23 (there have been dozens of cases of people being deported to third-world, war-torn countries, nowhere near their home country). I would say illegal immigrants, but we don’t even know that because, according to Trump in an NBC interview, “I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it”—the Trump administration has little care for due process for undocumented immigrants. For those who argue undocumented immigrants should not be given due process, it should be noted that the Fifth Amendment states, “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,”—no statement alludes to the idea that it applies to citizens only. Additionally, there is no way of knowing if they are undocumented in the first place without due process.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, via Reuters
The failure to uphold the Fifth Amendment leads to cases such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man deported without a hearing to the infamous El Salvador prison meant for terrorists, known for torture and starvation. The Trump Administration claimed it to be an “error” according to FactCheck.org, leaving him wrongfully incarcerated for 83 days, experiencing “severe beatings” and “psychological torture” according to Politico. While this is one of the worst cases, they are horrifyingly common and must come to an end.
But it’s not just Trump who has failed to give due process. During Obama’s presidency, 75% of deportations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, were carried out without appearing before a judge, with the ruling instead being made by an immigration officer.
Deportations are not the answer, but providing a proper hearing should be the bare minimum. Uprooting innocent lives along with actual criminals because it “takes too much time” is entirely immoral and illegal. We are putting the well-being of hundreds of thousands of people on the line: there is zero room for error.