It appears persecution is who we are becoming

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump said he would deport “the worst of the worst” criminals to keep the country safe. I’m sure that some people took him at his word and voted for him for that reason. What we’re seeing now, however, is wholesale roundups of innocent people and deportations to countries with known human rights violations.

People are arrested at Home Depot stores while looking for work and at immigration centers while taking steps toward citizenship. A family, including a child with leukemia, was arrested by ICE in an immigration court and held in a detention center in Texas for several days. A gay man fleeing persecution in Venezuela, was arrested and deported to a brutal prison in El Salvador because his “mom” and “dad” tattoos were mistaken for gang symbols. He was eventually released after protests, but there was no basis for his arrest in the first place.

Indiscriminately arresting and detaining or deporting people without due process has become standard procedure for ICE. The Trump Administration is now saying that they will have weekly or monthly arrest quotas. Quotas will lead to more indiscriminate arrests, as we know from statistics on meeting quotas for traffic violations.

This is not law enforcement, this is persecution of people primarily based on race. Brown and Black people seeking asylum are arrested and deported while white South Africans are officially invited to relocate here. The racism of this administration is blatant. Just look at Trump’s insistence that the Washington Commanders must change their name back to one that is universally understood to be racially insensitive.

We frequently hear the phrase “this is not who we are as a nation,” but, unfortunately, it seems to be who we are becoming.

Richard J Quigley

Huntley