Immigrants should not live in fear of ICE

Graduation season is one of those unifying occasions when Americans from all walks of life gather to celebrate the accomplishments of successful graduates.

However, graduation for Diego Puma Macancela was none of those things. On the morning of his prom — just a few days before his graduation ceremony — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pounded on the door of the apartment where he was staying, threatening to break down the door if he did not come out.

Macanela did not end up celebrating that day — but the ICE officers did. Macancela’s cousin, who witnessed the house raid and arrest, heard the ICE agents laughing. He said, “They couldn’t feel our fear, how we were feeling inside.”

And rather than walk across the stage a few days later to graduate with his friends and classmates, Macancela spent the day at a detention facility in New Jersey awaiting his deportation.

{mosads}The saddest part of the situation is that Macancela’s case is far from rare. He is one of thousands of undocumented immigrants being trapped by an increasingly out of control ICE, acting with impunity and without regard for the rights of immigrants. Emboldening rogue behavior is DHS Secretary Kelly, whose response to criticism of ICE by legislators was “shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.”

Between January and April of this year, ICE arrested an estimated 41,300 undocumented immigrants, which represents a 40 percent increase from the prior year. Of those arrested, slightly over a quarter of them (10,845 immigrants) had no criminal history. The increase in these non-criminal arrests as compared to the prior year was an astonishing 156 percent.

As if the massive increase in arrests of immigrants were not enough, DHS has launched what appears to be a highly aggressive campaign aimed at demonizing and criminalizing immigrants.

Leading the charge is ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan, who believes that all undocumented immigrants are criminals who should live in fear. 

Let’s take a look at who is being detained by ICE. 

In addition to Macanela, other hard working people detained include Luis Barrios, a homeowner and father of four US citizen kids living a quiet and industrious life in Derby, CT, to support his family and pay for his daughter to attend college. 

Barrios was arrested by ICE in April of this year after living in the US for 25 years with nothing even remotely resembling a criminal record. Working mother Maribel Trujillo Diaz? She, too, was deemed a criminal by ICE despite having no criminal history.

She was detained in April and deported with such haste that she carried nothing other than the clothes on her back. Her four U.S. citizen children, including her 3 year old who suffers from epilepsy, live in Ohio and are now being raised without their mother.

Most recently, Carlos Humberto Cardona, a 9/11 recovery worker who has one drug related conviction dating back 30 years, is now at a Brooklyn detention center, fighting his deportation. For months, he worked on 9/11 clean up, and as a result suffers from related health problems, including a respiratory illness.

The truth is that ICE’s cruelty has not only unleashed great fear in immigrant communities and communities of color, it has created a climate that has emboldened hate groups to also terrorize immigrants.

So much so that impersonating an ICE agent seems to be one of the latest tactics adopted by anti-immigrants to extort and harass immigrants.

Cases like these will only escalate as the Trump administration seeks a staggering $4.4 billion in funding for the next fiscal year to hire more ICE officers, build a vanity wall between the U.S. and Mexico and support a massive deportation agenda.

If Congress approves this budget, it will result in the further destruction of immigrant families, including those made up of U.S. citizen kids with undocumented parents, of which there are millions.

The magnitude of what ICE is doing, and the tactics they are deploying have spurred community leaders and residents alike to speak up, including Bernard Marks, a Holocaust survivor who recently admonished Thomas Homan at a community forum, reminding him that “history is not on your side.”

Marks, who spent five years in concentration camps in both Auschwitz and Dachau, shared the following chilling statement: “When I was a little boy in Poland, for no other reason but for being Jewish, I was hauled off by the Nazis. And for no other reason I was picked up and separated from my family, who were exterminated in Auschwitz…I feel horrible when I see or hear that a father or a grandfather is being picked up, and just because they get a traffic ticket, according to ICE they’re criminal.”

May these words be heard by all who are complicit, for history will be their ultimate judge.

Kica Matos is the director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.