On Tuesday, as blow back from his newly minted “zero tolerance” policy reached a critical mass President Donald Trump delivered a speech on immigration to a small Washington DC business forum in his usual “shoot from the lip” style. And as usual, his speech contained several factual inaccuracies.
The President has become notorious, the world over, for manufacturing “fake facts” to create “fake news.” President Trump is a man given to what he calls, “useful hyperbole.” It seems like lying to me, but he would call it harmless exaggeration. The president is gambling that we will blindly accept his new enforcement policy without making him justify his assertions. In other words we should implicitly believe him because he is the President of the United States and in fact many Republicans do. In a recent poll 55% support the President’s separation policy. For me there is only one question to ask—is he lying? If so do his lies comport to the goals of American ethical behavior or is he merely manipulating American voters for his own purposes?
As citizens, there is a civic responsibility we are required to discharge. According to Professor Roxane Gay, “all too often, when we see injustices, both great and small, we think, that’s terrible, but we do nothing. We say nothing. We let other people fight their own battles. We remain silent because silence is easier.” I agree. When we say nothing, when we do nothing, we are consenting to these transgressions against other human beings. Let’s take the words of Albert Einstein to heart, “If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.” So let’s set the record straight on the Trump “zero tolerance” policy.
President Trump wants us to believe family separations at the border are a result of Democratic supported loopholes in our federal laws that Congress could easily change. This statement has some fictitious elements but it leads us away from the core problem. The law in question or loophole as the president calls it has been in place for more than 10 years. However, the problem of family separation didn’t rear its ugly head until the zero tolerance policy was instituted. Let’s put those Democratic-supported loopholes into historical context.
During the waning days of President George W. Bush’s administration he signed legislation into law which required immigration judges to hold full immigration hearings for all unaccompanied children arrivals instead of turning them away at the border as was the case then. The Supreme Court had already held that all immigrants had a constitutional right to a full immigration hearing prior to removal.
Because we are a nation of laws, in Reno v. Flores (1993), the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that even illegal aliens are guaranteed due process by the Fifth Amendment. There was nothing in the law or the court decision which mandated destruction of families. The problem is not the law. The problem is the arbitrary and capricious policy shift to “zero tolerance.” The new policy removes discretion from the hands of ICE officers and it forces them to detain, for federal prosecution, everyone.
The Trump administration wants to roll back a law unanimously passed under President George W. Bush and a Supreme Court settlement dating back decades but most recently affirmed under the Obama administration. The president casually refers to them as Democratic-supported loopholes. Both were designed to protect immigrant children from dangers like human trafficking and to provide minimum standards for their care. This includes turning them over to the Department of Health and Human Services for resettlement within three days of detention, as opposed to detaining them indefinitely. The law also dictated that children with their families could not be held in detention or jail-like conditions longer than three weeks. Remember we are not talking about criminal incarceration. We are talking about civil detention.
President Trump has complained the laws make it harder to immediately deport or reject immigrants at the border, and that they are not able to detain families indefinitely. It sounds very much like a chapter from the “Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.” He wants to set himself up as sole arbiter of American law.
Prior to “zero tolerance” when ICE officers encountered individuals and families without an immigration status they interviewed the individuals, as they are trained to do, to determine if they represented any type of security or flight risk. If no risks were discernable individuals were routinely released either on their own recognizance or they were released after posting an immigration bond to wait for their immigration hearings. The relatively few who represented a risk were then detained. This is what the Trump administration refers to as the “catch and release” program.
Prior to the “zero tolerance” policy, immigrants released from detention showed up for their immigration hearings 99% of the time. When they were issued deportation orders, they departed 88% of the time. Under the new policy it costs US taxpayers $170 per day per person to be held in civil detention. Under the old policy, those released from detention could be monitored for less than $5 a day. Before zero tolerance, taxpayers were spending more than 8 million dollars daily for unnecessary detention. By the end of the year, under the new policy, we will be spending billions of dollars yearly for unwarranted detention. Add to this, 25 billion dollars requested to build a wall on our southern border when more Mexicans are leaving than arriving and it makes you wonder how much Trump security we can afford. The citizens are being sold snake oil solutions and apparently Republicans are eating it up.
Finally, Congress has nothing to do with President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. Congress creates legislation which the President can sign into law. Once the law has been enacted the affected agencies develop operating instruction, regulations and policies which govern implementation of the laws. Until DHS implemented the new policy, ICE officers had discretion on who would be detained and who would be released. They only split families up when familial relationships could not be determined. This human calamity could be stopped in minutes by rescinding the new policy.
Normally, when you are told, “we come bearing gifts”, visions of gold, frankincense and myrrh are conjured up. In this instance a vision of a Trojan horse comes to mind. Beware.
Ricardo Inzunza, a native of San Diego, California, was appointed Deputy Commissioner of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) by President Ronald Reagan. During his 8-year tenure, his office was the central source for the development, implementation and oversight of all immigration service policies and practices. Now as CEO of RIA International, Ltd, Ricardo is often asked to serve as a business consultant to clients such as the World Bank and the Peoples Republic of China. He can be reached at 662 418 0913 (O), 202 664 3274 (M), or riatria@aol.com