For the academy,
it is more than just the DREAMERs. The
DREAMERs belong to a much larger community that has suffered under recent
federal immigration policies. Much needed attention has already focused on the
DREAMERS, individuals who were brought to this nation at a young age who were
unable to become Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR) or citizens. The Obama administration established the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that enabled eligible youth the
opportunity to remain in the United States under color of law until Congress considered
opportunities for citizenship. The
Department of Justice recently announced it will rescind DACA eliminating the
status that allowed such young adults to pursue education and employment. Our institutions welcomed DREAMERS and have
graduated many since its inception.
Many, such as the President of DePaul University, have issued statements
opposing rescission and offering support to the DREAMERS as members of our
communities.
In previous issues
of Update, Gary Miller and Mariella
Palacios discussed the importance of building a productive workplace community
based on collaboration and dedication to a mission that reflects the values of
the institution built through a recognition of the dignity of each
individual. They noted that Catholic
Social Thought (CST), while sustaining their point, merged the workplace and
the greater community. Miller cited Centesimus Annus highlighting that each
of us works for the needs of our families, community, nation, and “ultimately
all humanity.” (Section 43). If we seek
to build ethical and productive workplaces, consistent with our mission, we
cannot ignore the greater community.
As we gather for
another academic year, we must address the tragedies of the greater community
that will be brought to our campuses. As
the DREAMERS return to our campuses fearing loss of work authorization and
facing deportation, our academic community confronts even greater challenges
given new immigration enforcement policies.
Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, Chair of the USCCB Committee on Migration, warned
last February that two new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies threatened
our communities. Although almost ten
million persons reside here without authorized immigration status, most experts
agree that DHS has the infrastructure to deport about 400,000 persons each
year. Thus, as a matter of effective law
enforcement, the Obama administration established enforcement priorities that
focused on persons previously deported or those with criminal convictions. DHS eliminated those previous priorities
placing anyone out of status at risk of deportation. Bishop Vásquez also challenged the policy
that expanded the relationship between federal immigration authorities and
local law enforcement. Bishop Vásquez
wrote that these new policies “will harm public safety rather than enhance it” and will “needlessly separate families, upend
peaceful communities, endanger the lives and safety of the most vulnerable
among us, breakdown the trust that currently exists between many police
departments and immigrant communities, and sow great fear in those
communities.”
Those sown seeds
of fear have now germinated. One news
story of a deported person may cause a moment of sympathy, but one needs to
view the cumulative impact of the many ways Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE)’s tactics disrupt our communities by infiltrating our homes, cars, parishes
and community places where we gather. This
new enforcement regime has threatened not just unauthorized persons, but the
many citizens and LPRs that constitute their families, parishes, and
communities. Our students, staff, and
faculty live within complex family relationships of citizens, LPRs,
unauthorized persons, asylum applicants, and others seeking diverse immigration
remedies. Most Catholic institutions
proclaim their mission of welcoming immigrants and educating first generation
children as they have built their campuses in immigrant neighborhoods. The
tension and fear produced by enhanced enforcement policies leaves no one
untouched.
ICE’s
abandonment of enforcement priorities targets not just the ten million, but all
those connected by bonds of family and neighbors. When ICE enters homes or approaches churches
and seizes unauthorized persons and citizens suspected of being unauthorized,
it casts a blanket of fear throughout our communities. When some of those family and community
members attend our institutions, they bring that fear and heartache with them.
In
the name of law and order, ICE’s tactics spread disorder and dis-ease. Pastors and lay leaders are seized and
removed from parishes. Mothers and
children are detained in private for-profit prisons, enriching corporations by limiting
health care and proper nutrition for detainees. Excessively high bonds generate vacancies in
our communities and parishes as loved ones remain detained. Private detention
facilities, often built far from legal resources, exacerbate the ability of
detainees to obtain legal representation.
At
the height of the Cold War, we heard stories that communist countries often
turned children against their parents which led to prison for parents who
refused to conform. We were taught that
the United States was different. Today,
ICE detains arriving minors to lure their parents to detention and
deportation. Technology developed to
counter international terrorism has now been turned to domestic surveillance.
As Bishop Vásquez
warned, police departments that cooperate with ICE construct barriers to
victims of crime who believe local police will detain them or other family
members. Judges have requested ICE to
refrain from detaining people at courthouses.
The bonds of our democracy demand that not just litigants, but
witnesses, jury members, and interested parties freely gather at our
courthouses, but if ICE agents detain persons near courthouses, many will
refrain from attending, abdicating important rights or precluding diverse juries
of our peers. In California, ICE has
tainted labor law proceedings designed to vindicate worker rights to wages or
other benefits when agents arrived at proceedings to investigate workers and
their families. Famous summer events such as racing at
Saratoga Springs finds some workers, even those with proper authorization,
deciding to forgo employment if ICE targets backstretch areas.
Many states have
also legislated anti-immigrant laws that focus on driver licenses, rental
properties, or health care. Some studies
have revealed the cascading negative impact of these laws, initially intended
against the unauthorized have increased discrimination of LPRs and citizens. These state laws combined with enhanced ICE
enforcement spills beyond the intended targets exacerbating health problems
that spread far beyond the unauthorized, weakening our communities.
Some
will argue that the unauthorized have a right to a legal proceeding to
determine their status or remedy, alleging that our system of laws will protect
them from overzealous enforcement. Yet,
the enhanced detention and enforcement has overwhelmed the immigration court
system. One critic has suggested that
“the deportation system verges on lawlessness” with its excessive backlogs and
the “state of chaos negatively impacts all involved.” Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks bemoaned the
lack of resources in court proceedings stating, “we do death penalty cases in a
traffic court setting.” Moreover, new border inspection procedures
have barred bona fide asylum applicants from even getting to present their
cases in court.
And
now, an additional 800,000 DREAMERS face the end of DACA. Almost half of the DREAMERS attend
universities. Many more are attending high schools or community colleges or GRE
classes preparing for college. DREAMERs
throughout the land live with thousands of family members within parishes or
communities that will be hurt by their detention and deportation.
Our
nation has known times when anti-immigrant hysteria has led to similar attacks
that the foreign-born did not belong in this nation. In the
mid-nineteenth century, the Know Nothing movement fostered anti-immigrant and
anti-Roman Catholic fever. Abraham
Lincoln, however, observed that by 1858 immigrants constituted almost half of
the nation’s population. Though these
newcomers knew not the Founders who had observed the self-evident truth that
all are created equal, Lincoln argued it was not birth here or even ability to
trace one’s genealogy back to the Founders, but rather the link to “the
electric cord in the Declaration” of equality that binds us in community.
The
DREAMERS and their families have demonstrated a belief in that cord of
democracy by following our laws, participating in our communities, and seeking
education to enhance themselves and improve their communities. Almost all participants across the political
spectrum acknowledge that our immigration laws are broken. It strains credibility to defend DACA
rescission as upholding our laws when the broken immigration system improperly detains
and deports people. Enhanced enforcement
with its random disruption of communities, fractures neighborhoods, weakens
parishes, and further eviscerates a claim that DREAMERS must be deported to
maintain law and order.
Our nation still
struggles with its goal of equality.
Lincoln’s moral sentiment of equality provides a civic language comparable
to CST’s human dignity. Equality’s
self-evidence is revealed through human dignity. It is not just the DREAMERS, but many of our
staff and faculty come from communities that deal with the daily consequences of
these new policies that deny equality. Rescission
and enhanced enforcement hurt all of us.
To continue to build the academic community of equality and dignity, we
must support not just DREAMERS, but their families and neighbors—for they are
our families and neighbors. They
constitute our community. We who believe
that community enables us to fulfill our mission must oppose these policies
that break the bonds of community.[1]
[1]
Gary Miller’s Update column, “Community
as the Foundation of a Healthy Workplace Culture,” Association of Catholic
Colleges and Universities Update Newsletter, Fall 2016, can be found at: http://www.accunet.org/Portals/70/UpdateNewsletter/Update-Fall2016.pdf?ver=2017-06-15-110726-317; See also, Gary Miller and Mariella Palacios,
“Building an Intentional Workplace Culture on the Identity of Community,”
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities Update Newsletter, Summer
2017, can be found at: http://www.accunet.org/Portals/70/UpdateNewsletter/Update-Summer-2017.pdf#page=11
Bishop Vásquez’ letter can be found at:
https://justiceforimmigrants.org/statements/u-s-bishops-chair-migration-responds-dhs-memoranda-immigration-enforcement-border-security/
For a more thorough discussion of the complexity of immigrant status in
family relationships, see generally, Marie Friedmann Marquardt et al, Living
“Illegal,” The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration, (The New Press, 2011). For
additional information on the consequences of linking federal immigration
enforcement to local law enforcement, see Craig B. Mousin, A Clear
View from the Prairie: Harold Washington and the People of Illinois Respond to
Federal Encroachment of Human Rights,29 S. Ill. L. J. 285 (Fall,
2004/Winter, 2005) at
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2997657
President of DePaul
University, Dr. A. Gabriel Esteban’s statement on DACA can be found at: https://resources.depaul.edu/newsroom/news/press-releases/Pages/statement-from-university-president-on-DACA.aspx . Over
600 college and university presidents have shown support for DACA students https://www.pomona.edu/news/2016/11/21-college-university-presidents-call-us-uphold-and-continue-daca See also Shireen Korkzan, “Despite Catholic Campus
Support, DACA Students Fear Deportation,” National Catholic Reporter, Feb. 23,
2017, https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/despite-catholic-campus-support-daca-students-fear-deportation
For more information
on private detention, see
September 1, 2017 #1736 - The Strange Death of José de Jesús (Parts 1
& 2), Podcasts 1736 and 1737, at http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510016/latino-usa Information on the targeting of children can
be found at: The Young Center,
“DHS Targeting Parents and Relatives of Newly-Arrived Children,” at http://theyoungcenter.org/stories/dhs-targeting-parents-and-relatives-of-newly-arrived-children/
Two studies that discuss some of the health
consequences of the current immigration climate are: Joanna Almeida, et al., “The
Association Between Anti-Immigrant Policies and Perceived Discrimination Among
Latinos in the US: A Multilevel Analysis,” SSM Population Health Journal, Vol
2, December 2016, pages 897-903, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2016.11.003 and Morgan
Philbin, et al., “State-Level Immigration and Immigrant-Focused Policies as
Drivers of Latino Health Disparities in the United States,” Social Science
& Medicine, April 7, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.04.007
For
information on ICE activity in Saratoga Springs, see Corey Kilgannon, “Far from
the Winner’s Circle, Saratoga Track Workers Fear Deportation,” New York Times.
August 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/nyregion/far-from-winners-circle-saratoga-track-workers-fear-deportation.html?emc=eta1
University of Texas Clinical Law Professor Denise Gilman claimed, “The
deportation system verges on lawlessness.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/23/immigration-crisis-us-deportation-system-lawlessness-trump-administration
Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks, the President of the National
Association of Immigration Judges quote can be heard at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/23/immigration-crisis-us-deportation-system-lawlessness-trump-administration
The Abraham Lincoln quote can be found in his “July 10, 1858 speech at
Chicago”. The Speeches of Abraham
Lincoln, Including Inaugurals and Proclamations, (Lincoln Centenary
Association, N.Y., 1908), pp.72-4.
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