EDITORIAL: Trump’s constant immigration abuses call for public outrage

What kind of country is America right now?

This is a country where a 26-year-old mother who’s done nothing wrong gets trailed by immigration agents who are after her undocumented mother and father. They did nothing wrong either, except to overstay their visa so they wouldn’t have to go back to the violence they fled in Colombia.

This is a country where immigrant detainees — many of them disabled or with mental health issues — are traumatized by being put in solitary confinement for days or weeks at a time. Some try to commit suicide when the isolation becomes too much.

This is a country whose president ousted a cabinet member because she dared to say no to his secret plan for mass arrests and deportation of undocumented parents and children in 10 cities, including Chicago.

This is a country where five migrant children have died in detention centers since last December.

America right now is a country without a moral compass on immigration. Desperate people, guilty of nothing more than being here illegally, or fleeing violence and poverty to find a better life, are treated like hardened criminals.

Yes, America needs immigration reform. Our country needs a policy that respects the integrity of our borders and sets rules for treating refugees humanely.

We need better immigration policies, but we also need moral outrage to end the abuses.

Consider the details of these shameful stories.

In early May, Paula Hincapie-Rendon was trailed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as she was driving her 5-year-old daughter to school. The agents arrested her, ignoring her protected status under the DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — program. At Hincapie-Rendon’s home, the agents arrested her mother, a Lutheran minister, and father, a construction worker.

“I feel they used me as an excuse to get my family,” Hincapie-Rendon told the Sun-Times. We think so too.

Hincapie-Rendon later was released, but her parents remain in a Wisconsin detention center and face deportation for overstaying their visa. Their bid for asylum was denied.

For years, ICE rightly didn’t make it a priority to track down undocumented immigrants without criminal records, such as the Rendons. Now, 36.5% of detainees arrested by ICE have no criminal record, compared to 17% during President Barack Obama’s last month in office.

Then there’s the recent, exhaustive NBC News investigation that reveals how ICE routinely consigns asylum-seekers and migrants in detention centers to solitary confinement for 22 hours a day or more, with little or no access to books or personal mementos.

Half the time, the detainees’ only offense was breaking some petty rule. The other half, they did nothing at all, NBC found.

Perhaps harsh detention is justified with dangerous inmates. Reasonable people might go along with it in cases like that of the white supremacist Thomas Silverstein, who died last week while undergoing heart surgery. He was placed in solitary for years on end for killing two fellow inmates and a guard.

But there’s no justification in the case of Dulce Rivera, a transgender woman who ended up in solitary because of false allegations that she kissed and touched other detainees. Or in the case of the mentally ill detainee who concealed half a green pepper in one of his socks.

Or in any of the 8,488 cases in which detainees were placed in solitary between 2012 and 2017, the investigation found. ICE claims it uses solitary confinement to keep detainees safe, and only as a last resort. A former ICE official flatly contradicted that excuse.

Finally, there’s the recent, mind-boggling Washington Post report that President Trump ousted former Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen because she objected to his plan for mass arrests and deportation of undocumented families.

When Trump pushed for the mass arrests as a bullying “show of force” to deter would-be immigrants, Nielsen and a top ICE official mustered up enough courage to kill the idea.

They were motivated largely by concerns over logistics, not principles. But at least they succeeded. For now.

The mass arrest plan is still on the table, the Post reported. What happens when there’s no one left in Trump’s inner circle, mostly filled with spineless enablers, who has the guts to tell him no?

Former ICE official Ellen Gallagher, who went public to criticize the abuse of solitary, said it won’t stop without “public action.”

Americans took action back in 2017, when they flooded airports to protest Trump’s first attempt at a Muslim travel ban. Americans have protested other Trump policies since then.

Dramatic public action, pure outrage, is demanded once again.

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