Pass immigration reform before Trump’s deportation campaign gets worse | Opinion
More evidence is coming to light that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is not the right solution and, frankly, unconstitutional.
As InvestigateWest’s Rachel Spacek reported this week, Idaho immigrants who were detained in a raid in November at a horse racetrack in Wilder have been moved far from their homes and, more importantly, their lawyers.
Many immigrants arrested in the raid are being detained in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, making it harder for attorneys and family to find them, InvestigateWest found.
This raises an important constitutional question about whether the practice violates detainees’ right to due process, which requires that the procedures by which laws are applied are evenhanded so that individuals are not subjected to the arbitrary exercise of government power.
All people — not just U.S. citizens — have certain inalienable rights under the U.S. Constitution, including due process.
Keep in mind that the legal status of many of those detained has not yet been established.
And the treatment of immigrants should outrage every American.
The New York Times reported the deplorable conditions at one of the prisons where the U.S. is sending deportees.
The New York Times interviewed 40 men who were imprisoned at a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. The men described being beaten, sexually assaulted by guards and driven to the brink of suicide. A team of independent forensic analysts examined their testimony, and experts called it consistent and credible, saying most of the acts described met the United Nations’ definition of torture.
Even if you don’t care about undocumented immigrants being rounded up, detained, deported and sent to torture camps, the idea of masked government agents rounding up and detaining U.S. citizens should frighten you. A recent report from ProPublica’s Nicole Foy found that more than 170 American citizens were detained against their will in Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
The situation promises to only get worse.
The One Big Beautiful Bill passed by congressional Republicans includes billions of new dollars for immigration enforcement and detentions, meaning Americans can expect to see thousands more masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents roaming the streets and detaining people with brown skin.
Despite the Trump administration’s promises to go after criminals first, it’s becoming clear that many of those being detained and deported are not criminals, but are productive, contributing members of our communities.
InvestigateWest’s review of the 40 people transported to immigration detention facilities by Idaho State Police between August and October shows six people were charged but not yet convicted of any crimes, and at least two of those men had charges dismissed. Criminal background checks conducted by the Idaho Statesman found that most of the men transported to detention centers had no history of violent convictions.
Consider the recent story about the 19-year-old Babson College business student who was detained, shackled and deported to Honduras, despite the fact that her family has lived in the United States for more than 10 years, since she was 7 years old.
ICE agents nabbed her at Logan International Airport in Boston as she was flying home to Austin, Texas, to surprise her family for Thanksgiving.
Hardly a dangerous criminal.
We acknowledge and agree that open borders and unrestricted immigration is not a solution, but neither is mass deportation.
Everyone acknowledges that our immigration system is broken, with waiting lists as long as 24 years for some countries. Our immigration system incentivizes illegal border crossings.
Trump, while he was still a candidate for president in 2024, pressured Republicans in Congress to kill a bipartisan immigration reform bill so that immigration would remain a campaign issue that he could win on.
Well, he won, so it should be safe now to bring back that comprehensive immigration reform package.
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, whose district includes a lot of farmers, ranchers and food industry companies that employ undocumented immigrants, recognizes it as a problem that needs to be solved, and his Farm Workforce Modernization Act could serve as a model for immigration reform.
Congress can stop Trump’s increasingly brutal and misguided deportation campaign.
They should do so before it gets any worse.
Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, assistant editor Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.