The sloppy policy was opening the floodgates to Venezuelan and Colombian gangs and millions of others with little to no meaningful verification. That was dangerous and just plain stupid. It's weird taking lectures from the let's open the borders up and see what happens crowd. Pretending there was some neat administrative cleanup on the back end, especially in sanctuary cities, was always wishful thinking. We saw the impact when cities were overwhelmed, and we’ve all watched crime statistics get massaged to downplay what people are experiencing on the ground.
I don't think any reasonable person is gonna disagree with you here, but is the border not shut down pretty air tight at this point? Sure, some illegal aliens already here could become part of crime rings, but the vast majority here - many for asylum reasons - are hard-working, law-abiding individuals, especially because they know that if they stick out and do something wrong, it all ends and they are deported.
Clean up of current illegal bad elements and criminals should be targeted. I mean doesn't the admin and ICE/CBP have all kinds of technologies behind them to know who they're going after and where these targets reside, but instead they choose to mine for criminal illegals like their mining for gold, drilling, blasting, and removing large amounts of rock to create a massive pit to find where the gold resides.
This approach is like going into bars, universities, and even homes to go after Gen Z folks because we believe that youths are the ones driving drunk and killing people (some are even drinking illegally). If you're not in agreement with complete canvassing of entire neighborhoods and cities to find the youth responsible for drunk-driving deaths, then you don't care about those poor dead victims of drunk-driving fatalities. Obey the forces coming into your homes and places you frequent and work, laws and directed enforcement that could do a better job addressing this issue be damned!
I live in what is probably the most affluent zip code in the state, and we’re dealing with organized South American crews targeting homes. That didn’t come out of nowhere. We’ve also seen enforcement priorities flip in ways that pushed trafficking and criminal activity inland instead of stopping it at the border. Calling concerns about this “feelings based” is projection. What people are reacting to is reality, not cable news narratives. Creating martyrs in Minneapolis to turn immigration policy is feelings based.
I mean come on. There will always be crime. I too live in an affluent area of Orange County CA and there is still crime, but we see that the local police department is on the job and regularly post on social media about the criminal rings they have apprehended and yes, many times they are part of a group of immigrants guided by bad elements into committing these crimes. But we see the police are on the job and they drive awareness and watching out for your neighbors and crime being committed.
I don’t want to live in a country where repeated, preventable failures in immigration enforcement, deaths from people who should not be here, people burning in subways, truckers who should not be licensed plowing into teenagers, and whatever else that keep leading to innocent people being killed. Wanting functional borders and competent enforcement shouldn’t be controversial.
"... People who should not be here..." Well, that is the debate isn't it? This argument has been around since time immemorial (you know the recent examples of this). "Outsiders are bad and are the cause of all of our problems, get them out now!" America is a unique experiment and whether we like it or not, we're all descendants of immigrants, and you know the rest, etc. So, do we just not want brown-colored, foreign-speaking people to be in the country at all because they are criminals, don't want to assimilate, and are just exploited, taking low-paying jobs? If we remove all of them, our problems go away, and we experience a "Golden Age?" That's what this admin is telling the country and their ideal state is a white, Christian-Nationalist state where state and (Christian) religion are one and the same. We all wouldn't exist here today if the U.S. had become such a country and state.
Hey, immigration and path to citizenship policies, border control policies, what should be required of immigrants to become assimilated U.S. Citizens, levels of support for immigrants, are all valid debates, but this admin wants to bypass the debate and simply state how it's gonna be: White, Christian-Nationalist, no colors allowed, and if you are in disagreement, you're not a patriot and don't wish America to be great again. And by the way, if you have a different opinion, you have no say in this debate (by voting), because we're gonna do away with that thing called free and fair elections.
