Why I think legality is the wrong thing to focus on when we're talking about immigration

Last week’s post sparked a conversation with someone I’ve known and respected for a long time. Somewhere along the line, I realized that my responses had become a whole other post.

Conversations around immigration seem, these days, to diverge: either we talk about human dignity, or we talk about legality and respect for law and order, and by extension, members of law enforcement.

So those are the things I want to address today.

My friend expressed concerns about law enforcement feeling they have to wear protective gear in order to be safe, and masks in order to protect the safety of their families.

I will admit that this caught me off guard. I’ve heard about the masks worn by ICE, but only as a critique of lack of transparency. It was a good conscience check for me to think, well of course there’s some justification, they aren’t just doing it to be scary and intimidating.

That being said, there are some nuances that I think deserve scrutiny.

First: law enforcement of every kind has to wear protective gear, because it’s the nature of their job. If law enforcement is going after the possibility of criminal activity—by which I mean activity that is inherently threatening at heart (which I note, immigration is NOT), then of course, there is a need to wear protective armor. While it would be nice to think that a world could exist where this isn’t necessary, it doesn’t seem realistic.

Now, a question worth asking is: does the militarization of ICE, itself, lead to the kind of threat that requires such protective gear?

This summer my daughter spent 6 weeks working with the security team at a large local company. This team makes a point of being exactly the opposite—of handling security issues in a person-to-person, non-intimidation-focused way. I don’t even know if they’re armed. (I don’t know that they’re not, either.) What I can tell you is that they’re not wearing Kevlar. They don’t lead with fear.

ICE coming in with heavy weaponry and armor demonstrates a belief that immigrants are inherently dangerous—inherently a threat. But there’s no basis for that belief. Even the Republican-controlled House of Representatives (2024) published this report, showing that crime is lower among immigrants (documented AND undocumented) than it is among US-born citizens.

The cases of violence against immigrants by immigration enforcement officers have devolved into a he said-she said, where you choose who you want to believe based on your pre-existing world views and biases. The problem I see is that when churches are no longer safe, when people can’t go grocery shopping or to work, when American-born citizens with autism can’t go to a doctor appointment without being dragged into custody and mistreated, and when ICE is being deployed by an administration who has used “othering” and violent rhetoric to justify the operations—the problem is, I have doubts about the official party line, to put it mildly.

(Note: I wrote this post nearly a week ago. It is only tragic “coincidence” that yet another killing happened in the last 24 hours.)

I’m including this video to illustrate my claim above about an American-born citizen with autism. It is incredibly damning, because it’s not filtered through anybody’s interpretive lens. This is literally just a woman telling what happened to her.

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Now, about those masks. Yeah, it really is terrible that law enforcement feels a need (or at least, someone in the chain of command is telling them there is a need) to wear a mask to protect one’s family from backlash.

On the other hand, what the world sees when law enforcement wears masks is an appearance of plausible deniability: I don’t have to worry so much about crossing the line, because if I’m masked, no one can prove it was me. Masking hearkens back to images of the KKK. That may not be fair, but that is how it is perceived. I can say that because of the comments I’ve seen online.

On another topic, I hear this fear of reprisal and I think of the people who wouldn’t sign an initiative petition this past winter and spring, even though they believed in the cause, specifically because they were afraid to have their name on a public record in opposition to the current people in power. Because we now live in a time when using the law to go after one’s political enemies is par for the course.

What I’m saying is that masking out of fear for the safety of oneself and one’s loved ones comes in literal and figurative forms, and it’s hardly a one-sided phenomenon.

People who argue legality in the area of immigration often object to the accusation of profiling. Law enforcement’s JOB is to profile; they’re looking for a suspect who fits a, b, and c descriptors.

But there’s a huge difference between “we have a particular single suspect who did harm to another human being, and this person fits this description,” versus “we’re going to do door to door raids to see who might be there who doesn’t have permission, and we’ll stop anyone with a particular skin color just to see if they might be undocumented.”

But most of all, the thing that disturbs me in current immigration conversation is when Christians lead with and focus exclusively on legality, as if legality automatically equals virtue. 50 years of work against abortion should surely have sensitized the Church to recognize that legality does not necessarily equal virtue/justice. I keep coming back to what I’ve said over and over: decades’ worth of Congresses and executive branches on both sides of the aisle have been saying immigration law is broken and needs reform, yet nothing ever happens because one side wants to deny the win to the other side.

So often, I’ve heard: “I support LEGAL immigration, just not ILLEGAL immigration.” And yes, lots of people do come here legally. But that does not negate the experience of the populations who are being targeted right now.

“Why don’t they just go through the process and get legal?” people say. “They’re choosing to live illegally in the shadows.”

But let’s look at that claim a little more closely. Let’s draw a profile of a small child—baby, two, three, four years old—who was brought to the States by their parents without permission, twenty or thirty years ago. The US is the only home that person has any memory of. That person is an American in every way except the paperwork.

And yet if that person wants to “get legal,” the only way they can do so is if an employer sponsors their green card or they get married, etc. Becoming a citizen can take decades—literally decades. And the current crackdown on immigration has caught people who did do it legally (AKA DACA). There are complexities around Dreamers that I had no idea about and which are far too detailed for this writeup, but this was very illuminating to me.

For other people here without permission, getting legal “usually” means they have to leave the country to apply for legal reentry. BUT. If they’ve been here undocumented for longer than 180 days, they can’t come back for three years. If they’ve lived here for over a year without permission, they’re barred for TEN years.

TEN. YEARS.

Explain to me: what possible motivation does that person have to try to “get legal”?

For people who want to come in legally in the first place, there are quotas, and the backlog of immigration cases is in the millions, and the current administration has cut funding to the services that helped people seeking legal entry navigate a complex system; it has fired or forced out judges who know immigration law and is replacing them with just whoever… I mean, when someone starts saying “just follow the law, the law is just,” it’s really not hard to call B.S. From where I’m standing, the law is very clearly NOT just.

And I will beat the dead horse and remind everyone yet again that the 2024 attempt to start addressing the problems in the legal system around immigration was torpedoed specifically and overtly so that Trump could continue to whip up anti-immigrant fervor and ride it into a second term. Which he did.

For all these reasons, I think when Christians try to talk about immigration from the perspective of law and order, they’re barking up the wrong tree entirely.

Shouldn’t we, as witnesses to and representatives of Jesus, be leading with human dignity? Shouldn’t we be the ones to say, “You know what? There are terrible conditions in other parts of the world and that’s why people come here. And you know what? Our Cold War policies had a heck of a lot to do with creating those conditions. Maybe we actually have a responsibility here”?

This post is far too long, so I’ll stop there.

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On a lighter note: in my “other” writing world, I am gearing up for the launch of a novel this fall. Take a peek below, or just check out the (still-under-construction) book listing on Amazon or Bookshop.org. (Affiliate links.)