Staff Editorial: Deportation and the Separation of Families

Immigration policy is one of the most controversial political issues of our time. Democrats and Republicans continuously argue about the best way to improve border control and about the threat that illegal immigration could possibly pose to national security, while others debate the role that the labor of immigrants plays in the maintenance of the economy.

However, while the political and economic aspects surrounding the issue have been making headlines, in many ways the human aspect has not. One very important group has been especially affected by the United States government's efforts to deport immigrants who have entered the country illegally—children.

According to Colorlines, which has been conducting a study on the issue for the last year, approximately 5,100 children are now in the foster care system due to the detainment or deportation of their parents. In Los Angeles alone, one in every 16 children in foster care has a parent who was either detained or deported.

For all of the talk about the Republicans' tough stance on immigration, it is President Obama's tenure and policies that have been the harshest on the immigrant population. His administration, with the help of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has deported nearly 400,000 people in 2011 alone.

Many people feel that immigrants who enter, live and work in the United States illegally are breaking the law and should be arrested and deported as a result. They worry that people use children as pawns to give themselves reasons to remain in the United States.

Republicans even proposed changes to the citizenship requirements in the 14th Amendment after reports circulated about pregnant immigrants who entered the country illegally in order to give birth so that their children would be American citizens.

In this instance, undocumented immigrants benefit from their illegal actions.

Some argue that having their American-born children separated from them if and when they are discovered is simply an unfortunate consequence of their choices, but it is not fair to children who did nothing wrong and who did not decide the circumstances under which they were born.

Legally, people who are arrested and detained are supposed to be reunited with their families, but more often than not, this does not happen. The Colorlines report explains that detained parents are often not informed about or provided with a means to attend the court hearings to regain custody of their children.

As a result, they appear to be negligent parents and many of them end up losing custody of their children permanently. Legal experts also usually argue that the child would be better off in the United States than in their original countries. So, instead of returning to the people that they know and love, many children are separated from their parents. Even more children are separated from their siblings when they are placed in different foster homes.

So, due to events which are beyond the children's control, their parents' attempts to obtain the ‘American Dream' often turns into an American nightmare for the entire family.

Our View: Children should not have to suffer the consequences of the politics of immigration policy.