On immigration, a plea for humanity

The common thread that weaves together multiple outrages in America today — mistreatment of migrants at the border, children separated from their families and kept in cages, longtime residents far from the border facing threats of deportation — stems from theWhite House and President Donald Trump’s apparently overwhelming disdain for the nation’s growing diversity.

From the beginning of his candidacy for president, Trump has made immigration his signature issue, and he has used it to inflame his supporters. Since taking office, he has missed no opportunity to scapegoat, vilify or otherwise demean people who come to this country in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

This manifests itself in a variety of ways, all of which have salience in Connecticut, thousands of miles from the Southern border. On Friday, it led Gov. Ned Lamont to encourage families in Connecticut worried about promised raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to utilize a stateprepared toolkit designed “for parents who seek to have a plan in place for the safe care of their children in the event that they are detained or deported.”

We can acknowledge here that people who are unauthorized to be in the country and have committed crimes should face consequences. No one is calling for a blanket amnesty on every undocumented immigrant.

But we also need priorities. The powers and resources of the federal government are limited, and dedicating those resources to the forced removal of people quietly living their lives decades after entering the country, many of whom have jobs, families and an otherwise secure place in the community, is so far down the list of priorities as to be nonexistent. ICE raids, in threat or in reality, are cruel and counterproductive.

Meanwhile, closer to the border, a humanitarian crisis is only growing worse. Observers, including lawmakers, have reported desperate conditions as migrants seeking asylum are held in unsanitary, unsafe facilities that defy their rights and deny them their dignity. Those who would fulminate about socalled “illegal immigrants” need to remember that seeking asylum at the border is not illegal, and that only our broken immigration system has created a situation where people wait months or years for their status to be settled.

Rosa DeLauro, the longtime Connecticut congresswoman, planned a trip Monday to see for herself the conditions at a Florida facility that houses migrant children who have traveled to the United States on their own. Previous visitors have said it is overcrowded and lacks the capacity to properly care for children being forced to stay there.

No part of this is necessary. Immigration has been a part of America since its founding, and is essential to our continued vibrancy. Even if the president doesn’t understand that, the rest of us must stand for people who are most threatened by the tides of anger washing over our nation. And all of us must work toward a better, more humane future for everyone in America, no matter their immigration status.

Those who would fulminate about socalled “illegal immigrants” need to remember that seeking asylum at the border is not illegal.