Arbitrary Deportation Frenzy

Vice News offers a few short videos regarding immigration trends in the U.S., but this segment in particular, entitled, “Immigrant America: The High Cost of Deporting Parents,” focuses on the gravity of extraditing the breadwinner of a family, begging the question: what role do the majority of immigrants play in our socio-economic welfare? Need we reconsider the process by which we systematically weed out and obliterate thousands of illegal immigrants on a daily basis?

In the twenty-five minute video, viewers are acquainted with the story of Ray Jesus, an illegal Guatemalan immigrant who came to the U.S. at a young age, and settled in Cedar City, Utah, where he met, married, and had five children with an American born woman. Shortly thereafter, Ray launched his own construction business, and the happy couple were able to maintain a comfortable, middle-class life in a respectable suburban neighborhood. Fast forward ten years, and Ray is accosted by immigration customs right at his doorstep; he is immediately plucked from his property, forced to leave all his belongings and his wife and children, before being ushered out of the country. Ray is sent back to his hometown in Guatemala, where he settles in a tiny mud-brick hut his parents had constructed from the money he sent them whilst living in America. The camera shows shots of Ray chopping wood, a task he must endure every morning to ensure food in the evening, and we later see him clinging to the sides of a large precipice with a pick-ax, scuffing away at the mountain-side for the meager wage of five dollars a day. Back at home, his wife is struggling to put food on the table, as she’s now forced to rely upon government assistance to survive.

When Ray first immigrated to America, he issued a court appeal. However, immigration court appeals can take years to process, allowing immigrants ample time to establish a life for themselves, as Ray succeeded in doing. Ten years down the line, when Ray had to update his license in accordance with a new state act, Utah discovered his old deportation order, and he was immediately prosecuted.

As quoted in the video, it costs around $12,500 to deport one person, and since Obama stepped into office in 2009, about 1,000 immigrants are deported daily, which amounts to about $25,000,000,000 of tax-payer money dedicated to funding immigrant deportation in the last five years.

And on what basis are we dishing out these compensatory funds? Ray was a hard-working citizen and a regular consumer, as are the majority of U.S. born citizens. The cost of Ray’s arrest, plus tax revenue from his business, plus all the government assistance his family had to rely on after his dismissal amounts to far more than $12,500 out of tax payers’ pockets—and for what arbitrary reasons? Instead of blind, widespread deportation of immigrants, many of which serve as the breadwinners of the family and contributors to our economic growth, shouldn’t there be some sort of evaluative process? We undermine the extent to which illegal immigrants feed and support our nation when we shovel billions of dollars towards their extradition.