The systemic injustice of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies is affecting more people than voters had originally anticipated. The crackdown on undocumented immigrants has expanded to those who thought they were safe from the risk of deportation.
Immigrants who are pursuing the legal pathway to U.S. citizenship could be sent out of the country for reasons that should be verified on a case-by-case basis. There is a difference between immigrants who are violent criminals and those who arrived as children or have worked lawfully to be here.
A couple from Wisconsin Dells experienced the mass deportation effort firsthand. Camila Muñoz was detained on her way back home from her honeymoon in Puerto Rico. Muñoz is from Peru and is not an American citizen, but she and her husband, Bradley Bartell, had taken the legal steps so that she could hopefully gain U.S. citizenship.
Muñoz came to the U.S. as college student with a visa on a work-study program in 2019 and worked at a Wisconsin Dells waterpark. She ended up overstaying her visa because flights were cancelled and borders closed when COVID-19 hit, but that was something out of her control. The argument that she violated the U.S. immigration law by overstaying her visa is not fair.
Her husband, Bartell, voted for Trump for his “criminal illegal immigrant” campaign but never thought his wife would be considered one of them. Now, she is in a detention center in Louisiana with about 80 other women in her dormitory. Muñoz keeps contact with her husband and 12-year-old son through 20-cents-a-minute phone calls.
Trump’s mass deportation efforts include immigrants whose applications for legal status are under review and those who are married or engaged to U.S. citizens. Muñoz’s immigration attorney, David Rozas, said, “Anyone who isn’t a legal permanent resident or U.S. citizen is at risk – period.”
Trump’s campaign promise has become a terrifying reality that many were not expecting when they voted for him. Immigration and Customs Enforcement faces extreme pressure from the White House to increase enforcement, casting a wider net that catches innocent victims.
Similar to Muñoz, ICE has detained three other woman who are either married or engaged to a U.S. citizen. None of them have a criminal record. They all felt comfortable boarding a domestic flight where immigration agents took them aside at airport checkpoints.
Nora Ahmed, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, warns immigrants to take serious precautions.
“If you are not a citizen of the United States,” Ahmed said. “And you are going through an immigration process, your first thought needs to be: ‘How can this process be weaponized against me?’”
These new immigration policies pose a political test and threaten the futures of countless immigrants and their families. This systemic injustice misrepresents our country and treats innocent people as criminals.
This story was written by Rachel Lopera. She can be reached at rachel.lopera@marquette.edu
