"Sometimes the fear is worse than the reality," he answered. People panic when being caught means deportation, and losing whatever lives people have built here.
I hear that if children are left alone after ICE arrests, it is often because parents lie to agents. Sometimes parents lie, Trasvina answered, because "they are so afraid that if they disclose where they live, their children are going to get deported, too."
Trasvina does not support ICE's targeting of scofflaw employers because the workers, more than the employers, pay the price. Instead, ICE should concentrate on illegal immigrants with serious criminal records: "That would keep them very, very busy."
But when ICE targeted "immigration fugitives" -- illegal immigrants who had violated deportation orders -- in northern California last year, critics like San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom railed against ICE "raids."
No matter who the target is, they'll cry foul. You see, even if agents are looking for the worst offenders, they have no choice but to arrest every illegal immigrant they encounter.
And for that they get called every name in the book -- even by men who help write the laws. |