Donald Trump and his incoming team have confirmed they’re moving forward with costly and “bloody” mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants as their signature policy of the second term. They are also getting the green light from the Republican-controlled Congress, as Sen. Lindsey Graham put it in a Senate Judiciary hearing about the mass deportation plan this week: “That’s going to be our top priority. I want to cut taxes, we will cut taxes, but as to the Senate, transformational border security goes first.”
But despite Trump’s allies and Republicans at the Senate hearing insisting that his administration will target so-called “criminals,” he’s promising to make us less safe by throwing out common sense enforcement priorities that currently target immigrants who have committed violent crimes (though we should remember that immigrants commit crime at lower rates than U.S.-born Americans), in turn making anyone vulnerable to arrest, even if they have no criminal record, have American families, and have paid their taxes for years. In fact, Trump remains the only president since 1992 to not prioritize threats to public safety.
Trump’s first term offered a preview of this dangerous and incoherent agenda. Far from solely targeting threats to public safety, the arrest of immigrants with no criminal record more than doubled during his first year in office, targeting Dreamers, the parents of U.S. citizen kids, spouses of U.S. military service members, and immigrants simply following the rules by regularly checking in with ICE as they were instructed to do by the federal government. His lack of priorities perversely but predictably allowed more criminals to elude accountability while otherwise law-abiding immigrants were swept up.
Below are just some of the faces of unjust detention and mass deportation from Trump’s first term in office.
JESUS LARA LOPEZ
Jesus Lara Lopez, an Ohio father of four U.S. citizens and a worker at a Pepperidge Farms plant, was deported to Mexico in July 2017 after nearly two decades in the U.S. He had no criminal record, was a diligent taxpayer, and followed ICE’s rules by checking in regularly for years. None of that mattered to Trump, who made the hardworking, law-abiding dad one of the first, high-profile examples of his administration’s failure on public safety.
In heart-wrenching footage shot at Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport on the day of his deportation, Lara Lopez’s U.S. citizen children – one of them wearing a U.S.-flag style hoodie – tearfully clutched at their dad as he whispered to them. His deportation was also an example of the negative impacts that deporting a breadwinner has on U.S. citizen children. The family had taken out a $62,000 mortgage to purchase a home just one year prior. However, concerned community members were able to raise thousands of dollars to help the family keep their home, while an anonymous donor helped secure new school clothes and supplies for the children. But none of that can replace the loss of a dad. Among the advocates at the airport to say goodbye to Lara Lopez were David Leopold, America’s Voice legal advisory and attorney for the family. “These are the darkest times I’ve ever seen as an attorney,” he said at the time. “When the best and the brightest that we have to offer are taken from their homes and sent away. The law is so broken.” Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s Lynn Tramonte noted that Lara Lopez’s ankle bracelet wasn’t removed until he arrived to the gate, to ensure he was removed from the U.S. He carried with him no possessions. “I came to this country with nothing, and that’s how I’m going to leave,” he said.
PEDRO HERNANDEZ-RAMIREZ
In the fall of 2017, Pedro Hernandez-Ramirez was separated from his U.S.-born wife, U.S. citizen son and three stepchildren, including a disabled adult stepson, for whom he was a primary caretaker and lovingly dressed, washed, fed, and assisted to and from his wheelchair on a daily basis. Ramirez had been granted multiple stays of deportation, owing to the extreme hardship his deportation would place on his stepson and entire family. The family feared that without Hernandez-Ramirez’s dedicated caretaking, they would need to place Juan, their disabled adult son, in a residential facility. But while the Trump administration renewed Pedro’s work permit in 2017, ICE agents appeared at his door without notice and demanded that he show up early to his scheduled ICE check-in. “His American-born wife, Seleste Wisniewski, said when she asked what had changed to cause the sudden reversal, she said the immigration agent told her, ‘New president. New administration,’” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported at the time. Despite pleas from advocates including Cleveland Catholic Diocese Bishop Nelson Perez, ICE denied Hernandez-Ramirez’s deportation stay in September and separated him from his loved ones that month. The deportation made no sense, Judy Mark, president and CEO of Disability Voices United, penned in a Plain Dealer op-ed. “Our government should value the involvement of parents in the lives of their disabled children. When a mother cares for her daughter with epilepsy, the daughter is less likely to be hospitalized. When a father cares for his son with cerebral palsy, it keeps the son in the community and out of costly institutions.”
MARIA MENDOZA-SANCHEZ AND EUSEBIO SANCHEZ
Maria Mendoza-Sanchez, an oncology nurse at Oakland’s Highland Hospital, and her husband Eusebio, a truck driver, were targeted for deportation in August 2017 after two decades in the U.S. Neither had criminal records. ICE didn’t care, ordering the couple to leave during their regular ICE check-in. Despite support from hundreds of members of the Alameda Health System and personal pleas and rebukes from lawmakers including late-Senator Dianne Feinstein, then-Senator Kamala Harris, and Rep. Barbara Lee, ICE tore the couple from their home and community. “We are an organization of caregivers,” Alameda Health System’s chief executive said at the time. “So, witnessing this situation befall a member of our community has been extremely difficult for many of her co-workers, managers and executives,” describing her dedication to her hospital and patients as “stellar.” In one example of the cruel separations likely to occur under a second Trump administration, the couple took their 12-year-old American citizen son with them while their elder children stayed behind. “I’m not leaving this country defeated, because I graduated from the university and that was not in my plans when I came here, or when I was a kid,” Mendoza-Sanchez said at the airport. Images caught the family in tearful embraces. But in a remarkable development just over a year later, Mendoza-Sanchez was able to return to the U.S. after continuing to appeal her case. “It was difficult to take on that motherly role,” one of her daughters said following her return, “because at the same time I’m their kid, too and I lost my parents too.” Tragically, the family’s dad remains in Mexico.
PASTOR BETTY RENDÓN AND CARLOS HINCAPIE
In 2004, Pastor Betty Rendón and family fled Colombia after she was threatened by guerrillas for opposing the recruitment of her students. But their nightmare was far from over even after arriving in the U.S. Under the Trump administration in June 2019, ICE agents detained their daughter, who is a DACA recipient, while she was driving her own daughter to school. “They told her they were looking for her, but they wouldn’t explain why, she said,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported at the time. “She said eight armed ICE agents then drove her to her home, where her mother and father were arrested.” Both Pastor Betty and her husband, Carlos, were taken into custody even though they had no criminal record. Despite pleas from the faith community, 13,000 petition signatures in her support, and the backing of 65 organizations, ICE deported the couple back to Colombia. ICE refused to allow their daughter and granddaughter to visit them in detention to say goodbye before deporting them. “This is our immigration policy at its very worst: separating families, denying asylum to those seeking refuge from violence, and deporting contributing members of our communities with spotless criminal records,” said the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. “What have we become?”
DANIEL RAMIREZ MEDINA
Despite having DACA, Daniel Ramirez Medina spent more than six weeks in federal immigration custody after he was arrested during an ICE raid targeting his dad in April 2018, one of the nearly 10 percent of “collateral arrests” in 2017. “We’re going to arrest them either way,” then-acting ICE Director (and incoming “border czar”) Tom Homan said at the time regarding the arrests of immigrants who weren’t the target of a raid. “Chances are when we go to their homes, or place of business, we’re going to find other illegal aliens that weren’t even on our radar to begin with.” In the weeks after Ramirez Medina’s arrest, ICE attempted to criminalize him by falsely claiming he had gang affiliations. “They don’t even need to take my word for it — the government already knows that I’m not a gang member,” he later wrote. “Like all ‘dreamers,’ I gave all of my personal information and fingerprints to the government to qualify for DACA. I’ve been checked against every state and federal database. They verified twice that I have no criminal history, was never affiliated with any gang and was not a threat to public safety. Despite that, I was treated as though my DACA status and my work authorization meant nothing.” His attorney alleged officials even doctored a document in an attempt to frame him, calling it “one of the most serious examples of governmental misconduct that I have come across in my 40 years of practice.” But while he was eventually released, his DACA was revoked. In a subsequent settlement, Ramirez Medina won a four-year stay of deportation.
ALEJANDRA JUAREZ
Despite the fact that her husband served his country in the U.S. military, Trump deported Alejandra Juarez to Mexico in August 2018. Juarez first fell onto ICE’s radar during a traffic stop in 2013. Because she had no criminal record, she was allowed to remain in the U.S. to continue caring for her two U.S. citizen daughters. But Trump threw out enforcement priorities following his first inauguration in 2017, making her a target for deportation. Juarez’s husband, Temo, actually voted for Trump in 2016, apparently believing his claim that he would detain and deport just “bad hombres.” This only affirms Trump’s current pledge that he’ll target everyone for mass deportation, even the family members of his own voters. Despite the support of leaders like Florida Rep. Darren Soto, the Trump administration refused to budge and separated Soto from her family. “’My mom is a good person and she’s not a criminal,’ daughter Pamela, 16, told the media as she sobbed and covered her face,” NBC News reported at the time. “Instead of protecting us, you tore our world apart,” her younger daughter, Estella, told Trump in 2020. “Now, my mom is gone and she has been taken from us for no reason at all. Every day that passes you deport more moms and dads and taken them away from kids like me.” After taking office in 2021, President Biden announced a review of the Trump administration’s deportation of soldiers and family members. Among them at the time was Juarez. In May of that month, three years after her separation by the Trump administration, Juarez returned home to the U.S. through humanitarian parole. She has since used her voice to advocate for families like her own. “For more than 30 years, politicians have talked about immigration reform and we’ve done nothing about it,” she said. “It’s time to fix it.”
AMER ADI
Amer Adi, a successful Ohio businessman and a married father of four U.S. citizen children, was deported to Jordan in February 2018 after living in the U.S. for nearly 40 years and despite having a stay of deportation filed by then-Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH). Adi had been called a “pioneer for [Youngstown’s] downtown renaissance” and his small business was recognized for helping to revitalize the city’s downtown district. But despite his contributions as a businessman and a lack of a criminal record, Adi was targeted for detention and deportation by the Trump administration. ICE officials barely gave him time to say good-bye to his family over the phone before kicking him out. “They transferred him without telling anybody that he was leaving today,” said Fidaa Musleh, his wife. “With nothing but the clothes on his back and less than $300 in his pocket, Amer Adi was put on a plane and deported to Jordan, the country he left 39 years ago to pursue his American dream,” CNN reported at the time. Ryan noted that if this can happen to a community member with a federal lawmaker on their side, “imagine the tens of thousands of people who show up without a lawyer, without a congressman.” In Jordan, he said his reunion with relatives was bittersweet. He was happy to see his loved ones. But he missed home. “The American dream started 40 years ago for me,” he said. “I built this whole thing scratch from nothing. Even if anybody wants to stop that American dream, I won’t let them. I’m going to keep the fight going.” In 2021, Adi won his fight to return home.
ROSAMARIA HERNANDEZ
The unjust detention of Rosamaria Hernandez, a then-10-year old child with cerebral palsy, by CBP exemplified the sheer cruelty of Trump’s immoral and chaotic immigration agenda. In October 2017, the child was being taken by ambulance to Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Texas for emergency gallbladder surgery when the vehicle had to go through a Border Patrol checkpoint. According to the girl’s family, immigration agents allowed them to pass but followed the ambulance to the hospital, stalking the child outside her room as she recovered from the procedure. Hours later, agents took Rosamaria, who has cerebral palsy, into custody. According to her advocates, government officials repeatedly blocked Rosamaria from accessing post-operative care. Rosamaria was released after nearly two weeks in custody, following national blowback that featured outcry from “members of Congress and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the musical ‘Hamilton,’” The New York Times reported.
“The United States should not be a place where children seeking life-sustaining medical care are at risk of apprehension,” Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro said following the child’s release. “ICE doesn’t make arrests at sensitive locations like hospitals, schools, or churches except in the case of a serious public safety threat,” ICE claimed in a tweet the day after she was taken into custody. However, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has proposed eliminating this memo and making these spaces vulnerable to raids.
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