Why I Oppose What ICE Does While Still Supporting Certain Immigration Regulations
- Jan 25, 2020
- 3 min read
ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) is a United States law enforcement organization whose job it is to detain illegal immigrants pending a an investigation into whether or not they are to be deported. Below is a link to their website. While I do strongly believe we need to have some immigration regulations, are the things ICE does the way to do it? My stance is that it isn't and I will explain why below, in addition to why I believe in some regulations regarding immigration.
First off, as I have mentioned, I firmly believe in regulating immigration to a certain extent. For example, if an illegal immigrant commits a felony, I am for deporting them. We also should have some way of making sure that any new people coming into the country have not committed large amounts of felonies in their own country, particularly violent ones. This goes for anybody entering the country, regardless of race. Too often, people focused on non-white immigrants when the reality is that there are all types of illegal immigrants, including from predominantly white countries and Asian countries. In fact, according the the article below, a large portion of undocumented immigrants are from Asian countries, yet conservatives and liberals are more likely to assume that someone from Mexico is undocumented. Hence, immigration regulations need to be enforced equally among immigrants, regardless of race, if they are going to be enforced. As long as immigration regulations are enforced equally and do not make the immigration process too long or difficult, I have no problem with them.
With regards to why I oppose what ICE does, it should first be noted that one does not have to oppose President Trump in order to believe in abolishing or reforming ICE. It also should be noted that not all Democrats/liberals believe in totally abolishing ICE. As noted in the article linked below, Kamala Harris, a Democrat, is for ICE, but not the way it is operating under Trump. I myself am also not opposed to ICE, so long as they they enforce immigration regulations fairly and without abusing their power or anything like that.
One of the major problems I have with how ICE does things is that a small but dangerous minority of the staff have ties white supremacy. A captain of one of the ICE detention facilities was recently fired for his ties to neo-nazis, according to the first link below. Furthermore, and ICE officer recently drove into Jewish protesters, according to the second article linked below. These may be anecdotal, but still, ICE needs to be more responsible as far as making sure that they do not have any staff with ties to these extremist ideologies. People have the right to subscribe to any ideology they want, but they do not have the right to do any job they want, particularly if their ideology may affect their ability to do the job.
Another other large issue I have with how the current ICE facilities have been operating is that staff can and do abuse their power by coercively engaging in sexual activity with detainees. For example, in the link right below, it shows that at least one ICE facility has had staff sexually assaulting detainees and the detention center itself refuses to bear any responsibility for that. Also, according to the second article linked below, lots of detained immigrant children have alleged that they were abused sexually. For the ICE detention centers where this is happening to barely do anything to stop it is highly inappropriate on their part.
One more problem I have with today's ICE is their detaining of children, who I previously implied were some of the detainees. Treating children like criminals without them actually doing anything violent is not appropriate at all, from my perspective. Even if one feels that the parents already supposedly did some terrible thing by coming here illegally, it cannot be denied that the children are not responsible for their parents' actions. They may have chosen to come here with their parents, but pretty much any child would go wherever their parents go as they need their parents for their own well-being.
So should ICE be abolished, and should there be regulations of immigration? Yes, immigration should be regulated to a certain extent and therefore should not be totally abolished. However, it definitely needs reform and until it does reform, it would probably
be best to put the usage of ICE on temporary hold.
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