By City Councilor Emily Norton
Newton resident Rigoberto Mendez recently was escorted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to a one-way flight to Guatemala, the country he was born in but had not lived in for 27 years. Over the years Mr. Mendez had applied for asylum and been granted stays of removal numerous times. He leaves behind his wife Imelda who is battling brain cancer, and two sons: a freshman at UMass-Boston, and a fourth-grader at Horace Mann Elementary School in Newtonville.
Under the Obama Administration, ICE officers were instructed to focus immigration enforcement actions on criminals and those deemed a public safety threat, and to exercise discretion toward “longtime lawful permanent residents.” A 2014 memo stated, “In general, our enforcement and removal policies should continue to prioritize threats to national security, public safety, and border security.”
Under President Trump, the focus is no longer on those individuals that represent a threat to public safety. As a 2017 memo put it, “prosecutorial discretion shall not be exercised in a manner that exempts or excludes a specified class or category of [noncitizens] from enforcement of the immigration laws.” In other words, all undocumented immigrants are now targets.
That’s why Rigoberto Mendez – a husband, father, and taxpayer with no criminal record who worked seven days a week at two jobs – has now been sent away from his wife and children, possibly forever.
Deporting Mr. Mendez does not make Newton safer, and it does not make America safer. It just makes us crueler.