Last month Daniel Cruz, a fourteen year resident of the U.S. from Ciudad Reynosa, Mexico, was stopped while driving with a broken tail light in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, Kansas. Daniel paid the $300 fine for the violation and fixed the tail light. Ten days later he was met by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) in the parking lot of his apartment complex. Unable to produce documents of legal residence in the U.S., the uniformed officers immediately took him to a county jail one hundred miles away to await a hearing. His car was impounded.

Never previously arrested or detained, Daniel has worked in a variety of jobs in the U.S., most recently in construction. The money he sends weekly to his wife and two teen age children supports them and has enabled the building of a new house. Daniel’s retired school teacher father lives close by and also helps the family.

Within a week Daniel’s construction crew’s boss paid the $3000 bail for his release from detention. Kate and I drove the two hours to meet him at the jail and take him home. We felt amply repaid by the broad smile on Daniel’s face as we wished him well while friends in the Olathe apartment complex shouted their greetings.

Hard working immigrants of solid character like Daniel feel threatened across the U.S. as the Trump era’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detain and deport non-criminals. Despite candidate Trump’s campaign promise to go after “rapists and criminals”, ICE is deporting non criminals at a far greater rate than the Obama administration. Shortly after the Trump inauguration, 200 foreign nationals were detained by ICE whose press release noted more than half were classified as “criminals”. However, Kansas-based journalist Oliver Morrison reported in February 2017 that a Wichita woman had been arrested two weeks earlier for driving without insurance. By the end of 2017, ICE had detained over 37,000 “non-criminal” immigrants, more than twice as many as in the previous year.

Contradicting its own statistics, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Office (ERO) continues to claim that the focus is on deportation of criminals. A March 20, 2018 press release from its Chicago office was headlined,
“ICE arrests 20 in Kansas City during 4-day operation targeting criminal aliens and immigration fugitives”
The ERO Chicago commented on the arrests, “As part of this operation, we continue focus on the arrest of individuals who are criminal aliens and public safety threats.”

Collaboration of law enforcement officers with ICE agents helps blur the line between “criminal” and “non criminal” resident aliens. The U.S. Congress’ thirty years of failing to legislate reform of immigration policies also sets the stage for the Trump administration and anti- immigrant “nativists” characterization of all undocumented immigrants as “criminals”. With a few notable exceptions, among whom former Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County (Phoenix) stands out, most high ranking law officers recognize collaboration with ICE discourages immigrant communities from reporting crimes or cooperating with authorities in fighting crime.

Over 500 protested at his office Rep. Kevin Yoder’s flip flops on immigration issues, including the ICE separation of children from parents

There is also widespread recognition among law enforcement leaders that helping ICE detain immigrants risks encouraging “racial profiling” and the “targeting” of persons of color, non-citizens and citizens alike. The detention of non-criminals like Daniel adds to the fear among immigrants created by Trump’s election. In early 2017 the Olathe Latino Coalition was formed in response to the fear among the growing Olathe Latino community, now 10 per cent of the city’s population. Chair of the Olathe Coalition, Jim Terrones, told the Kansas City Star shortly after the Trump inauguration, “the fear is real”. Some Latinos in Olathe now fear going out even to church or the bank Terrones noted. Local leader Irene Caudillo, also a member of the Latino Coalition, told the Star reporter, “Our community shouldn’t look at the police and sheriff as ICE enforcers but as providing the safety and protection of everyone in the community”.

With continuing anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the White House and increasing ICE detention of undocumented residents, more and more U.S. citizens wonder when they will become targeted for reprisals by this administration. Opposition to Trump and to the U.S. Republican Party’s obsession with holding on to power has led to a growing realization that much more is at stake than who wins in the November mid-term elections. There is growing realization that those now setting the agenda in Washington are a threat to U.S. democracy and all persons who resist their rule. There is growing realization that the day might come when we are all Daniel, targets of lies and repression coming from the executive branch and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. There is growing realization that the country now faces a crisis akin to the Civil War era that inspired James Russell Lowell’s lines in the hymn “Once to Every Man and Nation”,

“Once to ev’ry man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
‘Twixt that darkness and that light.”