The U.S. is six months into a stepped-up, militarized approach to immigration enforcement, one that tramples on the rule of law and lacks any sense of proportionality.
The majority of those being detained and deported have not been convicted of any crime. Enforcement is aimed indiscriminately at any undocumented immigrant U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can round up, regardless of their contributions to our communities and our economy or their rights under law.
This overreach has led to racial profiling of U.S. citizens as well as lawfully present noncitizens and persecution for constitutionally protected speech.
President Donald Trump’s immigration actions are becoming increasingly unpopular, as the electorate realizes this policy product is not what was advertised and is far more disruptive and destructive than most Americans bargained for.
Worryingly, the administration now appears intent on stripping citizenship from some naturalized Americans, a slippery slope that should raise universal alarm bells.
There are glimmers of an alternative approach — even from the president himself. In June, Trump briefly changed course, ordering a halt to the deportation of agricultural and hospitality workers. That move was soon reversed, but Trump has since returned to musing about shielding agricultural workers from deportation.
This impulse is well-grounded. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the contributions of essential workers to our economy’s survival, even if many such workers are present without legal status.
Real solutions will come not from demonizing and persecuting immigrants or carving out enforcement exceptions for politically connected industries, but through changing the laws to secure the workforce needs of employers and regularize the status of immigrants — while enforcing the rights of all workers.
Not so long ago, a bipartisan group of business and civic leaders proclaimed, clearly and unequivocally, the value and necessity of immigrants and immigration to the economy and local communities. And this was not some collection of coastal elites but a task force drawn from cities and towns across the Midwest.
In 2011, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs launched the Midwest Immigration Task Force with financial support from the MacArthur and McCormick Tribune foundations.
The diverse 53-member task force included former governors, mayors, corporate executives, academics, faith leaders and community advocates (former Mayor Richard M. Daley was among the co-chairs). Task force members understood immigration is essential for the region’s economic future.
Their findings were captured in a 2013 report titled “U.S. Economic Competitiveness at Risk: A Midwest Call to Action on Immigration Reform.”
The report argued that immigrants have been a crucial source of growth and vitality for the Midwest, playing a critical role at every level of the economy — from driving innovation in high-tech industries to sustaining agricultural production and reversing population decline in struggling communities.
The report showed immigrants do not displace native-born workers but rather enhance productivity, create jobs and bolster industries, contributing significantly to the region’s economic resilience and competitiveness.
For decades, immigrants have been blamed for myriad problems not of their making, and this trend has accelerated in recent years. But while the winds of political rhetoric have shifted since 2013, the fundamentals have not changed. Immigrants add value to the nation, and immigration, properly managed, is by and large a win-win situation.
In the Midwest Call to Action, task force members supplemented their economic arguments with a moral case for immigration. They spoke to human rights, the Golden Rule, the sanctity of families and the dignity of work. And they spoke directly to the pervasive, morally corrosive hypocrisy that underlies our country’s current approach to immigration: Namely, that although we collectively scapegoat immigrants, we absolutely rely on them.
It is long past time to shed this hypocrisy. Continuing on our current path risks sacrificing everyone’s liberty — and the future vitality of our economy — to an authoritarian-like system of abductions and disappearances, accompanied by the slashing of mutually beneficial ties between the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Sure, let’s secure the border, but not by violating the human rights of asylum-seekers. And let’s enforce immigration law, but not through lawless abductions by masked ICE agents, throwing millions of people into an archipelago of American gulags and deporting them without due process to places where many will find their lives in danger.
We must move away from the “shock and awe” of the last six months and toward an immigration system that reflects the best of America.
Many business, faith and community leaders have been vocal in their opposition to Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant agenda and have called for a better approach. But many others have yet to speak out. The time to do so is now.
John Slocum is the executive director of Refugee Council USA and a former program director at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.