M Shch Getty
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We
just spent January in the Dominican Republic. The state of Dominican immigrants
in the United States was featured every day in every newspaper! As a matter of
fact, every day we read all about President Trump’s latest actions. Maybe you
too might be interested in a Third World/Majority Culture’s views on
immigration? The newspaper views were quite consistent. The general perspective
is summarized by the president of the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader,
who explained that deporting undocumented persons is “natural and constant”
between the nations. “In our case, we repatriate Haitians who are irregular,
thus, this same right is practiced by other countries.”[1]
No one wants genuine criminals around. However, many are wondering if President
Trump has gone overboard and created a police state as opposed to a country of
justice for all.
When
Aída was young and living in the Dominican Republic under dictator Rafael
Trujillo, every adult had to have all his or her papers with them at all times.
She was terrified whenever one of Trujillo’s police looked in her direction,
and they stood at every corner! Is it the same with immigrants in the US as
well? In one article, the author wrote that the difference between Presidents
Biden and Trump was that “with Trump, the [federal] agents can arrest persons
without permission of residence if they come in touch with them while they are looking
for immigrants under orders of expulsion. With Joe Biden, those ‘collateral
arrests’ were prohibited.”[2] The same issue of Diario
Libre had the account of a Dominican living in Puerto Rico who had been chatting
with his friends when ICE (United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents
entered the business. Despite his protests that he was a legal immigrant, Fermin
Diaz was arrested with everyone else. He was given no opportunity to obtain his
residency papers but sent anyway to a detention center at another city and kept
incarcerated even though he begged to go home to get his residency papers. When
released he exclaimed, “I felt very bad, very bad. I felt very maltreated.”[3]
Ironically,
despite all the claims of conservative social media of the past, President Trump
did not have such an extreme social policy in his first presidential term. In
the last 15 years, Barack Obama exported 20,906 Dominicans versus 10,493 by Joe
Biden, and 8,081 by Donald Trump.[4]
But in one week federal authorities have detained about 4000 immigrants in an
attempt to deport the most immigrants ever from the United States.[5]
President Trump’s dramatic current repatriation process is phenomenally
expensive and inefficient. According to Diario Libre, one military plane
(C-17) costs $28,500 US to operate, bringing 64 immigrants to Guatemala,
costing $4675 per migrant passenger, whereas American Airlines would have cost
ca. $853 each person. A chartered flight would have been even cheaper. The
entire military voyage took 10 ½ hours in the air.[6]
The
question in everyone’s mind is, is this justice? Aída is reminded of Isaiah
58:5-9 when the Lord asks for a just fasting: “Is not this the kind of fasting
I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the
yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your
food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see
the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly
appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord
will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will
cry for help, and he will say Here am I” (TNIV).
The
question in the Dominican Republic is not whether illegal immigrants with
criminal records should be sent back to their countries. Rather, it is whether a
sweep of this present magnitude is wrong since it terrorizes all immigrants
(legal, illegal, and not yet legal) as well. The Statue of Liberty reflects
God’s intentions in Isaiah not to terrorize the needy but to provide the “poor
wanderer with shelter” (Isa 58:7). The wanderer is “poor, oppressed, wretched,
and helpless” roving about seeking a “dwelling-place.”[7]
Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty is a similar message: “Give me your tired,
your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of
your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my
lamp beside the golden door!” (The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation,
Inc.)
What
about US immigrants who are hardworking but have not had the funds or legal
abilities or connections to normalize their residency papers? Legalization is
not a simple process. It took Aída two years to get her Dominican identification
papers, even though she was born there. Suddenly organizations would no longer
accept her passport as identification because she was born in the Dominican Republic,
but she could not get any Dominican identification (or “cedula”) because the
hospital where she was born had discarded all its records over 50 years old.
Eventually, she was given the name of a government official who sympathized
with her dilemma, and he referred her to another part of Santo Domingo where
the center still had paper records of over 70 years old. Those who struggle to become normalized
should be respected and those who should be normalized should be helped.
Some of the police authorities are urging immigrants in New York City not to go to work but rather to hide in their “bathrooms” until this “danger passes on.” As a result, the stores and streets in some New York communities are deserted, as in the pandemic.[8] Thus, this sweep is hurting all our economy and the non-criminal immigrants who really are our “flesh and blood” (Isa 58:7). The US will become “great” or its light “will break forth like the dawn” (Isa 58:8) if indeed it follows the Lord’s precepts. How many of us in the US are first generation immigrants or children of immigrants? Bill’s grandparents were from Greece and Czechoslovakia. And, as we mentioned, Aída was born in the DR and is now considered part of the “diaspora Dominicans,” but she holds dual citizenship since birth. As Aída affirms: “I love the US and as well I love the DR. And, most of all, I am a threefold citizen of the kingdom of God.”
Aída
and Bill
[1] “La postura del Gobierno,” Diario
Libre, Jan. 30, 2025, p. 4.
[2] “Los agentes de inmigración
de EE.UU. dicen que ‘los peores van primero,” Diario Libre Jan. 29,
2025: p. 8.
[3] “Yo, de ahí, me he sentido
muy mal, muy mal. Eso, para mí, fue un maltrato.” La gobernadora de Puerto Rico
respalda redadas migratorias,” Diario Libre Jan. 29, 2025, p. 6.
[4] G. Meencia/K. Veras, “Barack
Obama, el presidente que más dominicanos ha deportado en 15 años,” Diario
Libre Jan. 31, 2025, pp. 1, 5.
[5] Genesis Mencia, “1629
dominicanos tienen orden final de deportación,” Diario Libre, Jan. 29,
2025: 8. In 2024, Dominicans were the seventh most deported
nationality, after Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, Indians, Salvadoreans, and
Colombians.
[6] “Las expatriaciones en vuelos
militares son más caras,” Diario Libre, Jan. 3, 2025, p. 5.
[7]
Karl Feyerabend, Langenscheidt Pocket Hebrew Dictionary to the Old Testament
(Berlin: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 39-40, 253.
[8] Veronica Rosario, “Negocios de
dominicanos desiertos tras redada en NY,” Diario Libre, Jan. 31, 2025, pp.
1, 4. Even though Massachusetts law guarantees education to all students
despite their immigration status, Jennifer Almonte, a Dominican resident in
Massachusetts, expresses a “majority view” that she and her compatriots are
“afraid to go out on the streets, despite declarations from officials that only
criminal immigrants will be pursued.” Karina Jiménez, “Más de 40 dominicanos dejaron EE.UU. por política de
Trump,” Diario Libre, Feb. 3, 2025, p. 15.
