EDITORIAL: Let’s renew our promise
A travesty of justice is the only way to describe the continued persecution of law-abiding immigrants at the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
In cities across the country and right here at home in Southwestern Pennsylvania, immigrants are being plucked from their families – some with young children – and locked away. Others live in fear that they will be next.
Since last year, as many as 18 members of Our Miraculous Medal Church in Meadow Lands have been detained and released or deported – voluntarily or involuntarily.
One church member, Aroldo Alvarado Garcia, 40, has been held in detention since Dec. 5, and
his brother, Julio, 43, a father of four, was arrested by ICE agents in March.
Erenia Karamcheti, a social worker at the church, told the newspaper’s Karen Mansfield last week that Julio remains in Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County while he awaits a deportation hearing. On Thursday, his family received word that he was being granted permanent residency status and will be released.
His brother, Aroldo, who was transferred from Moshannon to Cambria County Prison in Ebensburg after being hospitalized for a stomach ailment, has stopped eating. His attorney filed a habeas corpus petition for his release due to health concerns.
“He is depressed, and we are worried about how he is doing,” Karamcheti said in an interview with the newspaper.
As the roundups continue, detainees and their families and advocates contend that the facilities have deteriorated, claiming they are living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and being served rotten food. In protest, about 100 of the detainees being held in Moshannon have staged a hunger strike that started April 16, demanding better food and medical care.
The warden at Moshannon has disputed their claims.
Sadly, the situation will only worsen with plans in place to increase immigration detention sites over the next four years. Already, 72,000 immigrants are being held at about 225 detention centers.
To be clear, we are not advocating for the release of dangerous criminals who managed to slip into the country without detection. We are referring to the law-abiding immigrants who have become productive members in our communities and are paying taxes. They are working at jobs that many of our own citizens have refused to take, volunteering for community service projects and regularly attending church.
Rather than taking a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach, wouldn’t it be more beneficial – and cost-effective, too – to check their backgrounds before snatching people from the streets and carting them off?
According to Transactional Records Access Clearing House, a nonpartisan, nonprofit data gathering organization at Syracuse University, roughly 70% of immigrants in ICE custody have no criminal convictions. And many have only minor offenses, such as traffic violations.
“We immigrants are not criminals,” said Karamcheti. “Rather, we are honest people striving for a better future for our families, a future where we do not have to live in the shadows and in fear.”
Let’s take to heart the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
It’s time we renew and embrace that promise of hope, freedom and opportunity.