My parents are immigrants who came to the U.S. when they were children. They have built their lives from scratch and have worked here ever since.
Now, President Donald Trump’s new deportation policies are affecting lives and millions of others by tearing families apart and hurting the economy. Due to this, many people are living in fear and protests are rising because immigrant rights are being violated. Trump believes he’s protecting the country but all he’s doing is dividing instead of uniting.
Immigrant rights are being violated because ICE is detaining people without warrants. In Newark, New Jersey, a business was raided, detaining several people, including a U.S. military veteran without providing any type of warrant according to the article “Newark mayor condemns ICE raid as ‘egregious act’” by New Jersey Monitor. Many immigrants aren’t aware of the rights they have in this country and are being taken advantage of. However, many organizations are handing out red cards, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, to let immigrants know of their 4th and 5th Amendment rights.Therefore, it isn’t as easy for ICE officials to take them without following the law.
Around 5.1 million U.S. citizen children live with an undocumented family member. These new policies allowing immigrants to get deported don’t take into consideration what will happen to these children if their guardian gets deported. In 2019, Immigration agents raided a workplace in Mississippi, arresting almost 700 undocumented workers. The next day, about 150 children were absent from school, many left scared and some left without help. The community rose up to help the children. School staff checked up on kids and went door to door with food, while a local gym owner made a temporary shelter for those that had nowhere to go.
However, families weren’t the only thing disrupted but so was the entire community and the learning environment. “Academics were on hold for weeks,” according to “Trump’s deportation plan could separate millions of families, leaving schools to pick up the pieces” by ChalkBeat. This shows how deportation doesn’t only affect those being deported but their family and those around them as well.
What people don’t see is that not only will these mass deportations affect immigrants and their families, but the American economy as well. These deportations will cost a lot of money, specifically around $315 billion. The government will have to find a way to cover these expenses, possibly increasing taxes, cutting funds and shifting resources. Mass deportations will worsen labor shortages and trigger job losses for American workers. Some examples by the American Immigration Council say “if a shortage of construction workers prevents a house from getting built, the businesses that would be furnishing that house—from kitchen appliances to bedframes—lose business, too. Without field workers to pick crops, truckers have no goods to transport, and farmers have no need to buy new farm equipment.” Showing that the business industry is all just a chain of dominoes.
Some Americans think that undocumented immigrants should be deported because they believe that immigrants are criminals and because immigrants take jobs from U.S. citizens. They think that deporting immigrants will reduce crime but they don’t think about the other things they are affecting as well.
Behind every deportation, families are torn apart and society feels the impact. Dreams and opportunities are being taken away just because Americans believe that jobs are being taken, but truthfully, the jobs most immigrants have are ones that Americans are unwilling or unable to do.
