Annie Ramos’s story had, so far, a happy ending. On Tuesday she was released by ICE after five days of detention, she reported. The Fresh York Times.
The 22-year-old, newly married to 23-year-old U.S. military officer Matthew Blank, went to Castle Polk, Louisiana, to register as a military spouse. But she was detained by ICE because she had a deportation order issued when she was just 22 months old.
Ramos has been living in the United States for 20 years. He is a biochemistry student and has no criminal record. She is going to begin her immigration adjustment process through her husband.
The media attention to the case prompted Note Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona, where Blank’s family is from, to intervene with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
“This experience has been incredibly difficult, but it has also reminded me of the power of faith, love and community. I have hope for what is to come,” Ramos declared upon being released.
Ramos should not have been a priority for detention and deportation if the government really wants to focus on removing criminals. But for the administration it is about adding another number to its quota of 3,000 daily arrests.
Ramos’s case is encouraging, but it is more the exception than the rule. The majority culminates in the deportation of people who should not have been a priority for removal.
And when it comes to immigration, the Trump administration’s setbacks in the courts are multiple and that seems to intensify the viciousness with which the White House, and especially advisor Stephen Miller, respond by showing a cruelty reflected in how they dehumanize those affected.
The immigration policies of this administration cause deaths, family separation, and physical and mental damage that may be irreparable and that could have been avoided because they were people who did not have to be detained as they were not criminals.
But in their eagerness to fill quotas, people without criminal records become “collateral damage” of Trump’s deportation campaign.
The press reported on the horrendous case of a three-year-old girl detained with her mother when she crossed the border through El Paso, Texas. She was then separated from her mother who was accused of making false statements. Children continue to be separated from their mothers and fathers despite the human tragedy caused by the immoral practice of zero tolerance during Trump’s first presidency. They do it differently, but they continue doing it because indiscriminate arrests and deportations mean family separation.
And the new rules imposed by the administration to return these minors to their authorized relatives in the United States mean that months will pass before reunification.
In the case of the girl, her father, who is an authorized resident, indicated that bureaucratic obstacles prevented him from delivering his daughter who had been placed in a temporary home where she was allegedly sexually abused by another minor. The girl was in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) “who told the father that an “accident” had occurred and that they were going to examine his daughter,” the AP reported.
The girl is with her father and grandparents, but she is already suffering from totally unjustified traumas.
As in so many other issues where the Trump administration intends to govern by decree, trampling on the Constitution and civil rights, in immigration the constant action of the community, activists, legislators, immigration lawyers and ultimately the courts have stopped many of these policies. This is proven by the Ramos case.
Unfortunately, even if many cases do not progress, the damage has been done. According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), “although the steadiness of victories and defeats of the government’s immigration agenda is still being decided in the courts, these regulatory changes have had drastic repercussions on countless people, including in litigation in which the government has ended up losing. The prolonged and unjustified detentions, the interruption of education, the threat of deportation to a distant country, and the uncertainty that has extended even to green card holders and other non-citizens who legally residing in the country have contributed to a climate of fear that has been felt in immigrant homes and communities. It seems likely that stoking this fear is a goal of the administration in itself, as an effort to encourage people to leave on their own.
It is the Trump-Miller immigration policy at its finest: causing as much damage as possible even if in the end the cases do not progress.
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