NLTownie - Respectfully, a sizable percentage of the illegals claim asylum when they do not qualify. According to TRAC immigration data about 53% of 2024 asylum claims were denied. YTD 2025 the number (not %) is on track to DOUBLE. Asylum claimers can make that claim at the border BEFORE they enter. Shouts of "I seek asylum" as you are being arrested months after you have been here is ridiculous. If you need to escape gang/govt death squads, fine, pick a neighboring country first, avoid the U.S. THEN follow our asylum rules to immigrate from the 1st country. Thats the message now and illegal border crossings have PLUMMETED now.
What do you say to the Poles and other eastern Europeans, the Somalis, the Vietnamese, the Afghans, the Indians, the Pakistanis and everyone else who paid the fees, completed the paperwork, waited, and basically followed ALL the rules to come here legally? Do you tell them they were fools?
I am for a special path to citizenship for Dreamers. I find them to be smart, energetic, motivated, entrepreneurial, family oriented and spiritual. GREAT people. And I have ALWAYS believed that legal immigration has been an economic engine for our country. Just don't trample our laws as you walk over our border the first time.
Everyone likes the Dreamers and almost all know they are law abiding, contributing members of American society. Even Trump in 2017 said so multiple times before he tried to take away their status to use as a bargaining chip for his wall. I'm not sure why there isn't widespread outrage now. Maybe the Trump/Miller/Noem/Homan machine is committing so many atrocities that going after Dreamers isn't high on the radar. But it should be.
Steve - to avoid any confusion over your use of the word “anchor” (“…used by their parents to anchor their ability to stay…”) can we please stipulate that DACA recipients don’t have the legal status required to petition for a family member to stay in USA? Thus they don’t remotely fit the term “anchor baby” that someone might think you’re implying. Personally I dislike that term; you didn’t exactly use it so I’m just clarifying to prevent misunderstanding of your Comment.
Regarding consequences for their parents’ actions, that seems irrelevant to DACA folks themselves. Under law, we generally don’t penalize children for their parents offenses (religion may involve the concept of “original sin” but that’s not a legal principle).
As a country of laws, a president exercised proper authority to create the DACA program. It is truly a different situation than an adult crossing the border without authorization.
Please remember too that when many of our ancestors entered into the US, there were no immigration regulations at all, or none specific to many nationalities. It’s a bit over generous to praise ancestors for following the law during the decades when there were no, or minimal, laws
Representative Ramirez represents my District in Congress.
She asks “Are you protecting those who dare to dream of a better life & have the courage to seek it out?” Well Dreamers were BROUGHT here illegally by their parents. Dreamers did not make a personally courageous decision to come here. They didn’t make a courageous decision to STAY here, they had no choice, their parents were here. They were pawns used by their parents to anchor their ability to stay in our country illegally.
She then asks “Or are you too much of a coward to remember the dreams that led your ancestors to these shores?” We do remember our ancestors dreams to come to America AND THEIR DECISION TO FOLLOW THE RULES.
There MUST be consequences for their parents’ actions. Coming here and working hard for a long time does not wash the slate clean. We are a nation of laws, and when they arrived at our border, their first action was to break our law on legal immigration.
Representative Ramirez’s wish to just hit the Reset Button, the “we get to get away with it button” is a non-starter.
Steve - Respectfully, if you were faced with the choice of staying in your country of birth when you knew that you or a family member had the “choice” between death by a gang or by your government, or illegally entering a country where you could claim refugee status, what would you do? Would you stay and accept death? It’s so easy to be a stickler for obeying the law when it applies to someone else.
As to the Dreamers themselves, the question is whether to accept them as citizens now when they did not choose to come. You say their parents should be held to the law even though they have been law-abiding tax payers for decades. Understood. But what about their children - the Dreamers?
What is happening is terrifying for the people involved, and is an exceedingly stupid move on the part of your Federal Government. (I’m Canadian; &thankful every day for it.) To seek to remove about a million good, law-abiding, young-adults out of the U.S.Economy, is to shoot the country in its own feet!! These are literally a part of the Future of the Country, they’re called “Human Resources” (ever since we stopped saying “Manpower”), and by whichever name, they are golden… to give them away, to SEND them away, is stupid. Where are you going to get the young adults your country needs, from??
All the world’s young-adults, have already been born —so, any wishful-thinking about inducing (or, forcing) more U.S.-born-women to have more babies is quite beside-the-point (even if you could do that, it’s not a solution for this coming decade, but for 30 yrs hence.)
This week’s “The Economist” news-magazine devotes 5 dense pages to “Peak Human; Falling Fertility”, and the pressures likely to occur in countries, as their populations fall. Yet, USA is deporting productive adults. It will prove to be as profound a mistake, as the long, oppressively-enforced social-engineering project of the Chinese CCP, the “One-Child Policy” —which is now a defunct policy, but “The Party” has little power to increase child-bearing in their present 30-yr-old women (all, whose only experience of “family” was of 1-child households.)
In 20 years, all these countries will be *competing* over access to the —by then —only available source of working-age-adult immigrants, which will be SubSaharan Africa (Yes, American xenophobes, they do speak English there; over 1/2 of Africa teaches English in elementary school). But, of course, the available people will be Black. I do hope I live long enough to see Stephen Miller’s head explode.
Anything, anything at all, that has Obama’s name on it is doomed, in tRumpf’s view. Revenge is his only true purpose, ever since he was lambasted at the journalist roast. Everything else is just icing.
Son of a bitch!!! That’s my furious reaction to this total injustice! Unbelievable that after all these years these poor people STILL have to be afraid of being deported---to god knows where. Yes indeed, why didn’t Democrats take care of this when they were in power?
Why didn’t Dems take care of it when they were in power? I don’t know. But I do know that opposition to all these migrants is fierce with MAGA. It’s one of their most important issues and the R politicians listen to them.
Thank you Adrian for bringing this case to light. I suggest a donation to the ACLU of New Mexico which filed a habeas corpus petition to free Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira (his full name), the DACA recipient who was yanked out of his car by masked government agents in front of his children. Also a phone call to your representative and senator. Outrageous.
Thank you so much for posting this. I was so stunned to read that NewMexico had a detention center. Obviously, given that we are probably the bluest state in the US, calling my representative, isn’t going to do anything. But I will definitely send a donation to the ACLU.
We who support Dreamers need to contact our Reps in Congress and the Senate to express our support for Dreamers and condemn
ICE’s disregard for their protection….DAILY!!! These neighbors are often the nurses, police and firefighters who serve to help us all! Reps and Senators in DC need to know how we feel. Stop criticizing them for not doing enough when one doesn’t speak up to show support! Take some action, people!
Brilliant reporting, as always Adrian. The majority of us, unless Native, are all immigrants. I just 🙏 people wake up and start defending those who deserve to be acknowledged as the true Americans they are.
According to the basic tenents of criminal law, intent is always the key element. Most crimes are require only general intent, that is intending to do the alleged criminal act. Not knowing the act is unlawful does not matter. Specific intent crimes require specific acts intending to bring about another act or result which is criminal. What was the intent of Dreamers? Seems to me that they are completely innocent of even performing the act of entering the USA without permission. Can you envision the alternative; infants and adolescents crying and wailing to their parents ohhh nohh!!!! don't make me enter the USA. Almost as absurd as suggesting self-deporting. Asking their parents where they came from.
"Past time for Dreamers to have a pathway to citizenship." That says it all. A majority of Dreamers came here as young children. The United States is the only home they have known. The cruelty and lack of empathy of the Trump regime and Congressional Republicans who support them is appalling. Meanwhile, the employment rate has continued to drop, and has since January. Jason Furman, Economics Professor at Harvard, states that the employment slowdown is due to a lack of worker⁹s. It doesn't make sense to deport workers at a time when we need them. Ah yes, we'll bring them in from the Scandinavian countries!
The “Fertility Rate” in ALL “majority white” countries (and also East Asian countries) has been falling *for decades*, and has been below replacement-rate, and not just Scandinavian countries. No countries, except SubSaharan Africa, has a surplus of young-adult, working-age people willing to emigrate from their home countries. I know that Trump and his anti-immigrant team are self-congratulating over the stoppage of Hispanic immigration, but it was going to stop pretty soon anyway —all of LatinAmerica ALSO has a lowered birthrate, for over 15-20 years, and a new Administration in Mexico is making a northbound-migrant more likely to stop there.
And, you know, I’m looking at the ICE-tactics, all their new prisons (calling a spade a spade, here), and the just amplification of vile xenophobia in general (clambering that foreigners, or even some US-citizens “Should Not Get Due Process” —So, can be held?chained? detained?, imprisoned? For indefinite periods? —on no further “grounds” than a “suspicion that they’re foreigners, not U.S. citizens”. The get NO Due-Process where they show they have the right, at that moment, to be free. There have been *over 155 Canadians*, *in detention*, and surely ALL would have gone directly home, paying for their own flight, if you just took them to an airport & not to these horrid prisons.
I know the U.S. wants fewer Immigrants (though, that’s demographically, a very stupid move; Trump and Miller are trying to engineer the same disastrous population-collapse that the Chinese One-Child Policy is (still, after being cancelled) doing to China, but with faster effect, by removing working-age people not just new babies, and you’re already having very few babies)… it is still the country’s right to have fewer immigrants.
And, you want NO undocumented immigrants. Trump’s also going to charge $100,000 to even “needed high-skill immigrants”. So, there will be almost no immigrants.
I’d have thought a “Lower Immigration Plan” for the USA, would’ve been more sophisticated, than simply turning it into a Country which Nobody even wants to visit, let alone move into!!!
"I have a dream". "The Dreamers Act". American asperation at its finest.
And what did the unfortunately expired Charlie Kirk say about Rev. King and other prominent persons of color? According to an opinion piece by Jamelle Bouie in the NYT on 13.9.2025, "Kirk told his listeners that ... the Rev. Dr. Martin Kuther King Jr. "was awful". And he also said "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s". Both the Feckless Felon and his salivating-to-take-his-place VP, Jettison Donald Vain, will attend Kirk's memorial service.
If the FF and his cohorts can overturn the promises made to, and the efforts made by, the Dreamers, none of whom CAN have a criminal record, as pointed out above, then why stop with people who have been here for "only" twenty years? White Nationalists own Great Replacement goal, kick out all persons of color, regardless when or where they were born, what they have done for the country and what they can continue to do. They want a Nightmare.
Immigrants are us. All of us, unless you are Native American. Due to lack of effective policies over the decades, here we are. Most Americans agree and want a better system at the border. Really no debate is there? Also little debate on removing Immigrants with criminal backgrounds with Due Process (some do think Immigrants shouldn't get due process-someday someone may decide you shouldn't have Due Process). And that doesn't mean traffic tickets, etc. We can find money for so many other things, but never could see to find a way to revamp the court system, huh? So now the backlogged court system is used as an excuse or Due Process is just ignored.
DEFUND ICE and the CRUELTY. ICE is the beginning of a Police State. Terror on our streets. Protect and support our Immigrants who are here some with their Children and some Children came alone. Most were told if they went thru the system, they would be safe and could even eventually gain Citizenship. What is happening is not the America I grew up in and loved. My grandparents came thru Ellis Island. Have you read the engraving on the Statue of Liberty? That is who we are. A Nation of Immigrants.
Protest, Stand Up, Talk Up.
We can bring respect and decency back to our country, I believe. Too many took for granted our Democracy and all that it means. Americans are slowly waking up.
NLTownie - Respectfully, a sizable percentage of the illegals claim asylum when they do not qualify. According to TRAC immigration data about 53% of 2024 asylum claims were denied. YTD 2025 the number (not %) is on track to DOUBLE. Asylum claimers can make that claim at the border BEFORE they enter. Shouts of "I seek asylum" as you are being arrested months after you have been here is ridiculous. If you need to escape gang/govt death squads, fine, pick a neighboring country first, avoid the U.S. THEN follow our asylum rules to immigrate from the 1st country. Thats the message now and illegal border crossings have PLUMMETED now.
What do you say to the Poles and other eastern Europeans, the Somalis, the Vietnamese, the Afghans, the Indians, the Pakistanis and everyone else who paid the fees, completed the paperwork, waited, and basically followed ALL the rules to come here legally? Do you tell them they were fools?
I am for a special path to citizenship for Dreamers. I find them to be smart, energetic, motivated, entrepreneurial, family oriented and spiritual. GREAT people. And I have ALWAYS believed that legal immigration has been an economic engine for our country. Just don't trample our laws as you walk over our border the first time.
Everyone likes the Dreamers and almost all know they are law abiding, contributing members of American society. Even Trump in 2017 said so multiple times before he tried to take away their status to use as a bargaining chip for his wall. I'm not sure why there isn't widespread outrage now. Maybe the Trump/Miller/Noem/Homan machine is committing so many atrocities that going after Dreamers isn't high on the radar. But it should be.
Steve - to avoid any confusion over your use of the word “anchor” (“…used by their parents to anchor their ability to stay…”) can we please stipulate that DACA recipients don’t have the legal status required to petition for a family member to stay in USA? Thus they don’t remotely fit the term “anchor baby” that someone might think you’re implying. Personally I dislike that term; you didn’t exactly use it so I’m just clarifying to prevent misunderstanding of your Comment.
Regarding consequences for their parents’ actions, that seems irrelevant to DACA folks themselves. Under law, we generally don’t penalize children for their parents offenses (religion may involve the concept of “original sin” but that’s not a legal principle).
As a country of laws, a president exercised proper authority to create the DACA program. It is truly a different situation than an adult crossing the border without authorization.
Please remember too that when many of our ancestors entered into the US, there were no immigration regulations at all, or none specific to many nationalities. It’s a bit over generous to praise ancestors for following the law during the decades when there were no, or minimal, laws
Representative Ramirez represents my District in Congress.
She asks “Are you protecting those who dare to dream of a better life & have the courage to seek it out?” Well Dreamers were BROUGHT here illegally by their parents. Dreamers did not make a personally courageous decision to come here. They didn’t make a courageous decision to STAY here, they had no choice, their parents were here. They were pawns used by their parents to anchor their ability to stay in our country illegally.
She then asks “Or are you too much of a coward to remember the dreams that led your ancestors to these shores?” We do remember our ancestors dreams to come to America AND THEIR DECISION TO FOLLOW THE RULES.
There MUST be consequences for their parents’ actions. Coming here and working hard for a long time does not wash the slate clean. We are a nation of laws, and when they arrived at our border, their first action was to break our law on legal immigration.
Representative Ramirez’s wish to just hit the Reset Button, the “we get to get away with it button” is a non-starter.
Steve - Respectfully, if you were faced with the choice of staying in your country of birth when you knew that you or a family member had the “choice” between death by a gang or by your government, or illegally entering a country where you could claim refugee status, what would you do? Would you stay and accept death? It’s so easy to be a stickler for obeying the law when it applies to someone else.
As to the Dreamers themselves, the question is whether to accept them as citizens now when they did not choose to come. You say their parents should be held to the law even though they have been law-abiding tax payers for decades. Understood. But what about their children - the Dreamers?
What is happening is terrifying for the people involved, and is an exceedingly stupid move on the part of your Federal Government. (I’m Canadian; &thankful every day for it.) To seek to remove about a million good, law-abiding, young-adults out of the U.S.Economy, is to shoot the country in its own feet!! These are literally a part of the Future of the Country, they’re called “Human Resources” (ever since we stopped saying “Manpower”), and by whichever name, they are golden… to give them away, to SEND them away, is stupid. Where are you going to get the young adults your country needs, from??
All the world’s young-adults, have already been born —so, any wishful-thinking about inducing (or, forcing) more U.S.-born-women to have more babies is quite beside-the-point (even if you could do that, it’s not a solution for this coming decade, but for 30 yrs hence.)
This week’s “The Economist” news-magazine devotes 5 dense pages to “Peak Human; Falling Fertility”, and the pressures likely to occur in countries, as their populations fall. Yet, USA is deporting productive adults. It will prove to be as profound a mistake, as the long, oppressively-enforced social-engineering project of the Chinese CCP, the “One-Child Policy” —which is now a defunct policy, but “The Party” has little power to increase child-bearing in their present 30-yr-old women (all, whose only experience of “family” was of 1-child households.)
In 20 years, all these countries will be *competing* over access to the —by then —only available source of working-age-adult immigrants, which will be SubSaharan Africa (Yes, American xenophobes, they do speak English there; over 1/2 of Africa teaches English in elementary school). But, of course, the available people will be Black. I do hope I live long enough to see Stephen Miller’s head explode.
Anything, anything at all, that has Obama’s name on it is doomed, in tRumpf’s view. Revenge is his only true purpose, ever since he was lambasted at the journalist roast. Everything else is just icing.
Son of a bitch!!! That’s my furious reaction to this total injustice! Unbelievable that after all these years these poor people STILL have to be afraid of being deported---to god knows where. Yes indeed, why didn’t Democrats take care of this when they were in power?
Why didn’t Dems take care of it when they were in power? I don’t know. But I do know that opposition to all these migrants is fierce with MAGA. It’s one of their most important issues and the R politicians listen to them.
Keep losing in court 🍊 A$$ . 🤞.
Thank you Adrian for bringing this case to light. I suggest a donation to the ACLU of New Mexico which filed a habeas corpus petition to free Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira (his full name), the DACA recipient who was yanked out of his car by masked government agents in front of his children. Also a phone call to your representative and senator. Outrageous.
Thank you so much for posting this. I was so stunned to read that NewMexico had a detention center. Obviously, given that we are probably the bluest state in the US, calling my representative, isn’t going to do anything. But I will definitely send a donation to the ACLU.
We who support Dreamers need to contact our Reps in Congress and the Senate to express our support for Dreamers and condemn
ICE’s disregard for their protection….DAILY!!! These neighbors are often the nurses, police and firefighters who serve to help us all! Reps and Senators in DC need to know how we feel. Stop criticizing them for not doing enough when one doesn’t speak up to show support! Take some action, people!
Thank you, Adrian. Time to use our First Amendment rights (while we still have them) to make as much noise as we can and speak out!
Brilliant reporting, as always Adrian. The majority of us, unless Native, are all immigrants. I just 🙏 people wake up and start defending those who deserve to be acknowledged as the true Americans they are.
According to the basic tenents of criminal law, intent is always the key element. Most crimes are require only general intent, that is intending to do the alleged criminal act. Not knowing the act is unlawful does not matter. Specific intent crimes require specific acts intending to bring about another act or result which is criminal. What was the intent of Dreamers? Seems to me that they are completely innocent of even performing the act of entering the USA without permission. Can you envision the alternative; infants and adolescents crying and wailing to their parents ohhh nohh!!!! don't make me enter the USA. Almost as absurd as suggesting self-deporting. Asking their parents where they came from.
"Past time for Dreamers to have a pathway to citizenship." That says it all. A majority of Dreamers came here as young children. The United States is the only home they have known. The cruelty and lack of empathy of the Trump regime and Congressional Republicans who support them is appalling. Meanwhile, the employment rate has continued to drop, and has since January. Jason Furman, Economics Professor at Harvard, states that the employment slowdown is due to a lack of worker⁹s. It doesn't make sense to deport workers at a time when we need them. Ah yes, we'll bring them in from the Scandinavian countries!
The “Fertility Rate” in ALL “majority white” countries (and also East Asian countries) has been falling *for decades*, and has been below replacement-rate, and not just Scandinavian countries. No countries, except SubSaharan Africa, has a surplus of young-adult, working-age people willing to emigrate from their home countries. I know that Trump and his anti-immigrant team are self-congratulating over the stoppage of Hispanic immigration, but it was going to stop pretty soon anyway —all of LatinAmerica ALSO has a lowered birthrate, for over 15-20 years, and a new Administration in Mexico is making a northbound-migrant more likely to stop there.
And, you know, I’m looking at the ICE-tactics, all their new prisons (calling a spade a spade, here), and the just amplification of vile xenophobia in general (clambering that foreigners, or even some US-citizens “Should Not Get Due Process” —So, can be held?chained? detained?, imprisoned? For indefinite periods? —on no further “grounds” than a “suspicion that they’re foreigners, not U.S. citizens”. The get NO Due-Process where they show they have the right, at that moment, to be free. There have been *over 155 Canadians*, *in detention*, and surely ALL would have gone directly home, paying for their own flight, if you just took them to an airport & not to these horrid prisons.
I know the U.S. wants fewer Immigrants (though, that’s demographically, a very stupid move; Trump and Miller are trying to engineer the same disastrous population-collapse that the Chinese One-Child Policy is (still, after being cancelled) doing to China, but with faster effect, by removing working-age people not just new babies, and you’re already having very few babies)… it is still the country’s right to have fewer immigrants.
And, you want NO undocumented immigrants. Trump’s also going to charge $100,000 to even “needed high-skill immigrants”. So, there will be almost no immigrants.
I’d have thought a “Lower Immigration Plan” for the USA, would’ve been more sophisticated, than simply turning it into a Country which Nobody even wants to visit, let alone move into!!!
Interesting commentary. Thank you, Susan.
"I have a dream". "The Dreamers Act". American asperation at its finest.
And what did the unfortunately expired Charlie Kirk say about Rev. King and other prominent persons of color? According to an opinion piece by Jamelle Bouie in the NYT on 13.9.2025, "Kirk told his listeners that ... the Rev. Dr. Martin Kuther King Jr. "was awful". And he also said "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s". Both the Feckless Felon and his salivating-to-take-his-place VP, Jettison Donald Vain, will attend Kirk's memorial service.
If the FF and his cohorts can overturn the promises made to, and the efforts made by, the Dreamers, none of whom CAN have a criminal record, as pointed out above, then why stop with people who have been here for "only" twenty years? White Nationalists own Great Replacement goal, kick out all persons of color, regardless when or where they were born, what they have done for the country and what they can continue to do. They want a Nightmare.
They want a predominantly white country, how it was during slavery. Elections have consequences. I hope Americans make better choices next elections.
I hope there is a next election and that it is fair and free. Right now, I don’t think it will be if it happens at all.
That’s why they’re opposed to immigration. Remember Trump brought in some white immigrants from South Africa? MAGA didn’t object to them at all.
Immigrants are us. All of us, unless you are Native American. Due to lack of effective policies over the decades, here we are. Most Americans agree and want a better system at the border. Really no debate is there? Also little debate on removing Immigrants with criminal backgrounds with Due Process (some do think Immigrants shouldn't get due process-someday someone may decide you shouldn't have Due Process). And that doesn't mean traffic tickets, etc. We can find money for so many other things, but never could see to find a way to revamp the court system, huh? So now the backlogged court system is used as an excuse or Due Process is just ignored.
DEFUND ICE and the CRUELTY. ICE is the beginning of a Police State. Terror on our streets. Protect and support our Immigrants who are here some with their Children and some Children came alone. Most were told if they went thru the system, they would be safe and could even eventually gain Citizenship. What is happening is not the America I grew up in and loved. My grandparents came thru Ellis Island. Have you read the engraving on the Statue of Liberty? That is who we are. A Nation of Immigrants.
Protest, Stand Up, Talk Up.
We can bring respect and decency back to our country, I believe. Too many took for granted our Democracy and all that it means. Americans are slowly waking up.
Americans deserve better.