By Holly Sample

Pikes Peak Courier Editor Doug Fitzgerald’s December 10 commentary regarding the rule of law and rhetoric concerning immigration enforcement may simply be an attempt to gin up some public controversy now that the RE 2 School Board election is over and Letters to the Editor have dried up. Or it may reflect his actual beliefs about Immigration and the Rule of Law. Either way, he misses several important points about why so many Americans are unhappy with the way this administration is enforcing immigration policy.

Statements about the need to enforce immigration policy that he claims could have been quoted from Donald Trump instead of Clinton and Obama are cherry picked and disingenuous. I, for one, don’t object to strong statements about enforcing laws regarding illegal immigration. I object to an actual sitting president calling immigrants and a congresswoman from Somalia “garbage” and railing about America taking people from what he calls “sh!*thole” countries.

As far as simply enforcing immigration law, Mr. Fitzgerald’s comparison to a contractual requirement to make car payments is wildly understated. Who would expect to be arrested by masked government agents with automatic weapons for not making your car payments? Or for a college student passing through Colorado to be thrown in jail for a minor traffic violation? Or that a Salvadoran citizen who was allowed by ICE to live and work in the U.S. would be taken into custody when he reported for his mandatory check-in and then deported to a brutal El Salvadoran prison?

Here’s a true story shared by a relative in Chicago at the end of October: “Our biggest fear is for my granddaughter (I’ll call her Ella). She takes the special needs bus. The bus company is compensating for not having enough special ed buses by hiring private cars and drivers. Ella’s car is driven by a lovely Guatemalan woman. She drives Ella and another boy from her class. Both are non-verbal autistic. Ella has a strong need for her normal routine so for now she is being driven. But ICE has been stopping cars around the city and suburbs, ripping “brown” drivers out, with children left in cars. So now Ella wears a tracker so that everyone in the family has access and gets alerts of her location… just in case. It’s terrifying.” (Her words – I find it infuriating).

Contrary to Mr. Fitzgerald’s statements, we are protesting to demand that our government UPHOLD the rule of law. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides all people in the U.S. with due process (fair treatment through the judicial system). The behavior described above is Un-American and more like what one would expect to see in Russia (or maybe Haiti or Somalia?).

While it’s true that our immigration system is badly broken and politicians from both parties have failed for decades to fix it, this is not the answer.