Deporting longtime residents to ‘origin’ countries where they have few ties

Photo: Gerald Farinas.

How does it help the American people to deport someone who’s lived here for decades—someone who came as a child, who grew up here, went to school here, started a family, worked hard, and paid taxes just like anyone else?

It doesn’t help us.

It hurts us.

It tears families apart.

It removes people from the only country they truly know and sends them to a place they may not even remember, where they might not speak the language and have no family or support system.

What good does that do?

How does that make America stronger?

This isn’t about safety.

It’s not about fairness.

It’s about cruelty.

It’s about using people’s lives to make a political point.

Some say it’s about “law and order.” But laws without compassion are cold. And order without justice is just control.

These are people who’ve proven themselves as neighbors, coworkers, parents, and friends. Many of them have been here longer than they’ve lived anywhere else.

They belong here.

To deport them now is not only wrong—it’s un-American.

We should be building communities, not tearing them apart.

Cruelty is not a policy.

It’s a failure of who we claim to be.