The single most corrupt thing so far about the current United States federal government under this president is the corruption of the immigration enforcement bureaucracy. There are many competitors for this sad award, but at the level of government policy, in my judgment, this is the worst.
Immigration enforcement is uniquely vulnerable to corruption in our system. That’s partly because immigration policy is so complicated and enforcement so uneven and shared among so many agencies. It also is because the making and implementation of immigration law has been a manifest failure over many decades. And because immigration law applies especially to visitors and noncitizens, it makes the rights of those upon whom the law is being enforced both less extensive and less clear than the rights of citizens.
David Gushee
The fact that immigration is clearly the responsibility of the executive branch of the federal government means there are relatively few checks on any administration’s powers — especially with a supine, divided Congress.
It pretty much comes down to lawsuits and the judiciary’s response to them, the reporting of a free press, and public protest. To the credit of each, these three avenues have indeed provided some checks on how federal immigration law is being enforced.
Here are the main ways this government has corrupted immigration enforcement. I will not try to be comprehensive. This list is at least a start.
Through sending poorly vetted and trained officers into the field, and through their (understanding of) their rules of engagement
This week, a major whistleblower complaint described the poor vetting of applicants to work at ICE and the negative consequences. If the allegations are true — and they do fit with some other reporting — it helps explain some of the terrible incidents that have taken place on the streets of U.S. cities, with loss of life.
I have seen less reporting related to loosened rules of engagement for these officers, especially pertaining to the use of deadly force. Whenever the rules of engagement for armed police or military are loosened, especially if the loosened rules have not received proper review and oversight, trouble follows. We learned this lesson quite painfully 20 years ago when the rules of engagement for interrogating detainees in the “war on terror” were loosened.
“Whenever the rules of engagement for armed police or military are loosened, trouble follows.”
Through the creation or expansion of detention centers either unready or unwilling to meet the human needs of its unfortunate prisoners
The New Yorker has been reporting on the troubling treatment of immigration detainees. The upshot is that the rapid expansion both of detention centers and the number of prisoners has taken place with disregard to the basic human needs of the prisoners. These articles have reported multiple allegations of willful refusal to provide medical care and other provisions for the basic needs of people detained there, along with abuse and suspicious deaths in these centers.
“Overcrowding, abuse and neglect have made conditions far worse, and basic agency oversight has been gutted. The government has also detained at least 4,000 children, sending many of them to a notoriously grim facility in South Texas called Dilley. A legal settlement in place since the late 1990s is supposed to bar the government from keeping minors in immigration custody for more than 20 days, but ICE has routinely flouted that rule.” — Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker
It is as if this government has decided those they are detaining are not worthy of treatment that conforms to basic human rights standards and they do not really care if people die of preventable causes in these detention facilities.
Through the deporting of people to third countries far, far, far away from anywhere they have ever lived or want to live
This strikes me as a sheer exercise of terror on the part of the federal government. It also reflects the vast power differential between the U.S. and these other countries, in which they become willing to aid and abet human rights violations for U.S. government favor and undoubtedly handsome per-prisoner fees.
Through arbitrary enforcement of immigration law, in part based on political pressure
I speak of numerous reported instances in which people were living in plain view and suddenly found themselves arrested and/or deported, apparently based on external pressure or publicity.
Here’s how it works under the real rule of law: If Person A is in violation of the law, Person A is subject to the enforcement of the law, just the same as Person L and Person R. Public pressure has nothing to do with whether Persons A, L and R are arrested, detained and prosecuted. But all too often, that is not how immigration law is currently being enforced.
Let us add here the arrests and deportations of Green Card holders and student visa holders because of their articles in newspapers or their public protest activities, forms of expression protected by the First Amendment. This has had a chilling effect on free speech in the United States, and not just among noncitizens.
“In a tyranny, the dictator or his minions just decides arbitrarily who will be free and who will be jailed.”
Even the release of arrested people because of special levels of public pressure in local communities represents a corruption of immigration law. Law is only law, rather than fiat, when the law is made by the people’s representatives, is fully public and is fairly enforced without reference to anything about the accused other than the relevant facts.
Political theorist Carl Schmitt helped provide justification for later Nazi tyranny when he wrote this famous dictum: “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception.” In a tyranny, the dictator or his minions just decides arbitrarily who will be free and who will be jailed, who will be tortured and who will be spared, even who will live and who will die.
But in a constitutional order with the rule of law, that is not how it works. People elect representatives who make laws that must cohere with the Constitution and must be enforced fairly, with justice “blind” to the connections or social power or stated views or anything else other than the facts and the law.
Through the apparent vendettas against detainees who become famous because through legal action they have resisted detention and deportation
I am speaking especially of the treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Mahmoud Kahlil, one a laborer, one an intellectual, both of whom have survived detention and deportation efforts but whom the administration continues to pursue. This more than a little bit takes on the whiff of personalized law enforcement, likely emerging from the very highest levels of the United States government.
The common thread is arbitrariness: Who gets targeted, how they are treated and sometimes whether they are released.
“We should want to be the kind of country whose government does not abuse its power by humiliating or harming individuals.”
Through the very public humiliation of those arrested and imprisoned
The public arrests, shackling, transport and detention of certain very visible prisoners positions the United States government as the persecutor and humiliator of individuals. One of the differences between a tyranny and a democracy is that democracies respect individual rights and constrain the exercise of government power, including the vast power to humiliate and harm individuals.
Recently, I flew into this country from England. As the holder of a U.S. passport, not to mention a Global Entry membership, I had reason to believe all those uniformed officers would treat me with common courtesy. If they decided to question me — as one did, actually — they would do so with respect and without intimidation or humiliation.
This was in fact my experience. I hope it continues to be.
But basic courtesy, physical safety and respect for human dignity need to be the experience of every person, citizen or noncitizen, documented or undocumented, who finds himself or herself in contact with representatives of the United States government.
Why? Because people have human rights, and because we should want to be the kind of country whose government does not abuse its power by humiliating or harming individuals. Period.
A massive national reckoning and repair needs to come. O God, may it come soon.
David P. Gushee serves as Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, chair in Christian social ethics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and senior research fellow at International Baptist Theological Study Centre. He is past president of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Christian Ethics. He also is author of 30 books, including Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust; Kingdom Ethics; Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies; Changing Our Mind; and The Moral Teachings of Jesus.
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