Just as every cop is a criminal (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)
And all the sinners saints (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)
The Rolling Stones –Sympathy for the Devil
Criminals
Let’s look at the definition of a criminal. My Mother’s ultimate source, the Oxford English Dictionary, defines a “crime” as: “An act or omission constituting an offence (usually a grave one) against an individual or state and punishable by law.” So a “criminal” is one who commits such an “offence”. (Mom was British, and so was her spelling, much to my demise in elementary school spelling tests. “That’s the way my MOM spells it!!!”).
To split hairs just a bit, the key element in the definition is the undefined nature, “usually a grave one”, of crime. Going 40 in a 35 MPH zone is an “offence”, but not necessarily a “crime”. It’s not “grave”. In legal terms they are called “civil” offenses; violation of regulation (like traffic laws) but not “criminal” law. The difference: if I was driving 40 MPH in a 35 zone AND I was drunk was an alcohol level of .15, I’ve committed the civil offense of speeding, but the criminal offense of driving while intoxicated.
Crossing the United States border illegally can be both a civil offense, and a criminal offense. That’s a problem when the leaders of the Executive Branch of the United States say: “We are only going to deport criminals.” Is the single act of crossing the US Border “without papers” (see the essay from earlier this week) criminal? Is it still criminal if you’re in a canoe in the border waters along the Minnesota/Canada border? How about if you walk across the Rio Grande River (it’s pretty shallow in mid-summer) in Big Bend National Park in Texas? Or finally, what about the Canadian border from Point Roberts, Washington? Point Roberts is in the US, but its 1200 residents can only be accessed by land from Canada.
ICE Raids
So when the new “Immigration Czar”, Tom Homan, claims that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are “only designed to round-up criminals”, what does he really mean? Look, pretty much all Americans are in favor of sending “murdering gang members” out of the country. It’s an easy out: instead of long trials and paying for prison sentences, just send them back to “where they come from”. But Homan has made his definition clear: if someone is undocumented, therefore in the US “illegally”, he considers them a criminal.
The ICE raids of the last weekend show what he means. Fully half of the immigrants rounded up were actual criminals, accused or convicted of committing felonies. But that means that the other half were, in fact, only guilty of the civil offense of crossing the border “without papers”. But those folks didn’t get a pass. They too were loaded up on military air transports, and flown out of the country. It makes the “numbers” look better on TV.
And that’s caused panic in the migrant community. Many families live in “mixed status” households: some US citizens, some legal migrants, some without papers. What happens when a child goes to school, and Mom and Dad are picked up in an “ICE Raid” for being undocumented. Who will pick the child up? What if the child is a US citizen, is it still “OK” to deport the parents?
Jobs
And what about all of the job categories where the undocumented are employed? Who will pick the “truck crops” in Florida and California, who will roof the houses damaged by hurricanes or fires, who will clean the hotel rooms, or butcher the chickens? It’s easy for the Administration to say: “That’s more jobs for Americans”. But, to be brutally honest, Americans don’t want those jobs. Undocumented workers are doing what the newest entries in American life have always done: the tough work, the brutal work in the sun, the bloody work at the processor. It’s the work that longer term Americans found a way to get out of.
To put it bluntly (as my wife would say) “What about the eggs?”. Egg prices went up during the post-covid inflation, and became a battle cry for the Trump forces in the 2024 election. What about the eggs, when the cost of agriculture shoots up because we no longer have the migrant workers? Forget about who gets sent back to Guatemala – what about the eggs?
It’s not just a problem for the undocumented. It’s a problem for all Americans.
