America is a nation of blended cultures, ethnicities, and religions – Black, brown, and white, Latino and Asian, African and Middle Eastern, European and South American, Jew, Christian, Muslim, and so much more. We are a country defined as much by our differences as our similarities. It is the beauty of this country and the source of our greatest tensions. But what makes us all Americans?
Only those descended from Indigenous populations can claim direct links to this land of ours. For the rest of us, all our families at some point in time, even those who came over on The Mayflower, arrived in this country from somewhere else. What makes all of us American, the one thing that distinguishes us from everyone else, is our commitment to the U.S. Constitution and rule of law. The Constitution is the rulebook that guides and governs our daily life, and it is the document to which every person who becomes a U.S. citizen must swear an oath. And that—not values, morality, ethnicity, or personal history—is the only thing we all share, the one common denominator that makes us American.
Carlos Lozado of The Washington Post has explained that, to be an American, is a choice we must make every day:
We aren’t the land of opportunity or a
nation of immigrants or equal before the law just because we say that’s what we
are. Our leaders don’t respect our rights or derive their powers from our
consent just because that’s how it is supposed to be. We become those things —
we remain those things — only if we strive for them, without ceasing, and even
then nothing is guaranteed. After all, the Declaration did not win
independence; it only gave it a purpose.
It took a bloody and violent revolution and years of war and internal debate before the nation’s Founders agreed on the language in our Constitution and the rights enumerated in it. We rejected monarchy and created a governing system that consists of an elected Congress, an elected president, an appointed judicial system based on the rule of law, and a Bill of Rights limiting the power of government to restrict our speech, infringe on our religious freedoms, enter our homes without a judicial warrant, or deprive us of life, liberty, or property without due process. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “It is a republic, if you can keep it.”
Except for native Americans and African American families whose ancestors were brought here forcibly against their will, we are indeed a nation of immigrants, a land of destiny for millions of Americans who fled their homelands and landed on American shores in search of a better life. Although the darker forces of history, isolationism, and nativism have frequently thrown cold water on the idealized American myth that we are a land of refuge, since our founding and through the long arc of history we have in fact welcomed people from all over the world and provided them a chance to make it in America.
Americans have long prided themselves on the belief that we are a beacon of liberty, a light unto the nations, and that people from all over the world go to extreme lengths to arrive at our shores in search of freedom, liberty, and justice. At our best moments, we are a generous nation, a land of opportunity and new beginnings for anyone willing to work hard, play fair, and commit to the rule of law. It is, of course, essential that we protect our borders and enforce laws that regulate admission into the country. But for those seeking asylum from persecution in foreign lands, or those desiring to work in jobs most Americans refuse to do, the United States historically has offered an avenue to citizenship.
Sadly, as we celebrate the 249th year since we declared independence from the British monarchy, the American ideal of a nation that symbolizes freedom from tyranny, and where the rule of law prevails, is proving to be more myth than reality. Under the Trump administration, we are no longer a welcoming nation. Immigrants and refugees are treated as less than human. Even the millions of immigrants who are here legally and are following all the rules, those who attend college or work and pay taxes and dream of one day becoming fully American, are at risk of being snatched on the street by masked ICE agents and put into a detention camp or whisked away on a plane to an unfamiliar foreign land. Although the administration claims that ICE is targeting only the worst-of-the-worst, the hardened criminals, this is a bald-faced lie, for the facts prove entirely to the contrary.
To placate the sadistic Stephen Miller, Trump’s man in charge of the mass deportation efforts, and to achieve his arbitrarily imposed quota of 3,000 detentions per day, ICE is now raiding construction sites, farms, and other workplaces that employ large numbers of immigrants, arresting and detaining the undocumented and fast-tracking deportation. These are people simply trying to live the American dream, who are working and providing for their families. They are not hardened criminals; most have no criminal record.
They are people like 19-year-old college student Arias Cristobal, whose family brought her here from Mexico without documentation when she was four years old. In May, Arias was mistakenly pulled over by a police officer in Dalton, Georgia, and arrested over her protestations. “I cannot go to jail,” she said, “I have my finals next week. My family depends on this.” Despite having committed no crime, not even a traffic violation, she spent exam week behind bars. Fortunately, a judge recently released Arias on bail and the officer who wrongfully arrested her has resigned from the police department. But the administration still intends to deport Arias and her father.
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| Arias Cristobal |
They are people like the Tufts University PhD student from Turkey, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was physically grabbed by four masked ICE agents in plain clothes from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, while she was walking to meet friends for dinner. Ozturk, who was legally in the United States on a student visa, spent six weeks in a Louisiana detention center, housed in a mouse-infested cell with twenty-three other women. A federal judge ordered her released after determining that the government arrested her as retaliation for exercising her right to free speech – co-authoring a student editorial critical of the human toll of Israel’s war in Gaza.
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| Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts University PhD Student |
They are people like 17-year-old Jose Adalberto Herrara, who was arrested on his way to work with his uncle when a Maine state trooper stopped the minivan they were in. Herrara had arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor at the age of twelve and, with the government’s assistance, eventually reunited with his family in Lewiston, Maine. He had no criminal record and currently sits alone in a New York detention facility, once again separated from his family.
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| Jose Adalberto Herrara |
They are people like Andry Hernandez Romero, 32, a gay makeup artist who entered the United States last year in search of asylum after facing threats and harassment in his home country due to his sexual orientation. Romero has no criminal record and was one of 238 Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), notorious for its cruel and inhumane treatment, where prisoners are beaten and physically and psychologically abused in violation of international human rights standards. Once there, the prisoners have almost no hope of ever being released. Like everyone sent to CECOT, the government provided Romero with no hearing, no due process, and no opportunity to establish that he is not the “terrorist” and “gang member” the administration claims (without evidence) that he is.
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| Andrey Hernandez Romero |
And they are people like Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 36-year-old professional soccer player and coach from Venezuela. Berrios has no criminal record, and he followed the rules in seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border after fleeing from violence in his home country. The government has tried to claim that Barrios is a Tren de Aragua gang member based on his tattoos, which consist of a soccer ball topped with a crown to represent his favorite team, Spanish club Real Madrid. His other tattoos include the names of his daughters, Isabela and Carla Antonella, a map of Venezuela, a star, and a goalkeeper, his soccer position. Like Romero, ICE sent Berrios to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, where he has almost no hope of ever getting out. The United States Government charged Berrios with no crime and provided him with no due process, and now he has no ability or means to reverse the injustice that occurred.
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| Jerce Reyes Barrios and daughter |
These are only five examples of the human lives impacted by Trump’s mass deportation efforts. There are thousands more just like them, as the government continues to round up seemingly everyone but the murderers and rapists, terrorists and gang members, promised by Team Trump. The problem for Miller and company is that, as explained by Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The U.S. population of undocumented immigrants doesn’t have huge numbers of hardened criminals – not surprising since study after study has shown migrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.” (See, e.g., American Immigration Council, “Debunking the Myth of Immigrants and Crime”)
The recently passed Big Ugly Bill – the cruelest and most immoral legislatively enacted budget in American history – commits almost $170 billion to unprecedented levels of immigration enforcement and border-related operations. The administration intends to hire thousands of new ICE agents and more than double the number of ICE detention centers (which financially benefits the companies that contributed large money to Trump and his inauguration). Another $46 billion will be spent on a major expansion of Trump’s border wall that is specifically designed to keep out the brave, the poor, and the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
And then there is “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new ICE detention center in the Everglades, which can only be described as an American concentration camp. With a projected capacity of 5,000 beds, the camp will forcibly detain immigrants in improvised tents and chain-link cages that will put them on display. The migrants will endure south Florida’s extreme heat, disease-infested mosquitoes, and harsh swamp conditions. Expedited “hearings” will be overseen by National Guard members playing the role of immigration judge. As described by Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (Little Brown and Company, 2017): “This facility’s purpose fits the classic model: mass civilian detention without real trials targeting vulnerable groups for political gain based on ethnicity, race, religion or political affiliation rather than for crimes committed.”
Shame on Trump. Shame on America. The Statue of Liberty is but a lonely and forgotten symbol of a once honorable past. One day I hope Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and the president will be held to account, although I have for the first time in my life begun to lose hope that accountability is even possible in America today. Is it apathy? Are people simply exhausted by the sheer magnitude of this administration’s disregard for the rule of law, the norms of civil society, any respect for truth and facts? Or has America simply turned inward and given up on morality and compassion?
All my life I have loved America and have been proud to be an American. But pride is quickly giving way to mortification, for what is happening in our country today is enough to make one ashamed of being American. What I am witnessing – what all of us are witnessing – is a nation that has lost its way.
For at least the past 25 years, Congress, due mostly to Republican opposition, has rejected all attempts at enacting comprehensive immigration reform that addresses border security while providing a pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Shamefully, early in 2024, Trump insisted that House Republicans reject a bipartisan solution passed by the Senate (and favored by conservatives) because he cynically wished to politically exploit anti-immigrant sentiment to help him win the election. And it worked.
“Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened American life,” wrote John F. Kennedy in his 1958 book entitled A Nation of Immigrants. Demonizing immigrants may be good politics, but it ignores America’s historic dependence on immigrants and devalues the very essence of what it is to be an American. Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts represent the worst elements of our character. “The American Dream may be slipping away,” according to Jon Meacham. “To recover the Dream requires knowing where it came from, how it lasted so long and why it matters so much.”
For the sake of America and the world, I hope that we will find a way to heal our divisions, respect the beauty of our rich cultural diversity, and demonstrate to the world that we are indeed a welcoming nation, and a kind one. I hope that one day soon we will regain confidence in our democratic heritage and the strength of our Constitution to allow us, in the words of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, to “believe in a government strong enough to use words like ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.” Changing times have always demanded that we embrace new values and viewpoints. The health and very existence of our democracy and the country depend on it.
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