The Cold Hand of ICE

American immigration police lay in wait at courthouses and now even hospitals to snatch away people for deportation.  Read below of a father and mother arrested by ICE as they tried to obtain medical help for their baby.  The parents had to choose between their freedom and their infant son's surgery in the hospital.  These are underhanded and despicable ways to treat people who came to America to escape poverty, fear and hopelessness in their native lands.  Many are hard-working tax paying members of society.  The Justice department previously distinguished between people who were living peacefully and productively in America and those who committed violent crimes.  Now there is no reason and no heart, just a ruthless social cleansing.

The COLD hand of ICE

With these despicable acts, America now resembles a Nazi-like terrorist state.  Our ICE police have become akin to the Gestapo.  They do not act to protect us, but to cleanse our society of undesirables, those who do not fit America's primarily white english-speaking culture.

Xenophobia has created a chilling dehumanizing effect, caused by the hateful words of one man and his party.  There are horrifying similarities to past demagogues, leaders who have stirred up people's hate by making them distrust another segment of their society, their Jewish neighbor, the foreigner next door, the black man moving into your neighborhood, the other religion, race, nationality, etc.

For most of the last century American immigration policy has put strict numerical limits on immigration from lands that were considered undesirable, notably China and Japan.  This made it impossible for the country's demographics to change as a result of an influx from such people.  This was intentional.  This strategy and rationale has been America's way of staying predominantly white.

The immigration policy of America in the last decade or so hasn't become lax, it has become less prejudicial.  We no longer ban Chinese people or limit them to some ridiculous number like 200 a year.  That is offensive to us now, but nowadays some seek to ban any influx from strife-filled lands based on fear of terrorism.  That argument gives even progressive-minded people pause.  It is only a fear-based subterfuge, a fake reason to restrict entry to the US.  The real impetus is the dominant culture's increasing discomfort with a changing demographic.  We look around and see people who don't look like us, who speak in different tongues or with accents, who practice different religions, have different customs and modes of dress.  America is afraid of its new neighbors.  That is the reason America has become afraid of immigration and why there is so much focus now on both legal and illegal immigration.

This message of fear coming from some of our politicians resonates with the selfish greedy instincts of many.  The politicians and demagogues tell us 'they are taking your jobs, ruining your property value, bringing in crime', etc.  It sways the rich and the poor with our lowest common denominator, the twin primal motivations of greed and fear.  It befuddles the poor, and uneducated, and it benefits the rich and spoiled.  The ignorant believe they are economically disadvantaged by migrant workers unskilled laborers who work in fields or cleaning houses.  The rich seize political power by fanning the flames of fear and prejudice.

The rule of law is no longer tempered by reason and mercy.  America's heart is broken.

Today fathers and mothers are dragged away from hospital waiting rooms, teenagers are deported to dangerous unfamiliar lands.  Tomorrow may bring much more ugliness.  Will we revisit the genocides of the past, the internment camps or something much worse?  During WWII Japanese American CITIZENS were held in internment camps in America.  Don't think it can't happen here or that it cannot happen again.

It's time we understand the ways we are being played by American politics and who really gains by each change to our policy.  When news agencies are discredited by politicians we lose any ability to discern fear-based political rhetoric from legitimate national security issues.

Wake up America.  This is not the path to freedom.  Darkness and ignorance keeps no one safe.