Dear Rebecca:

I’m so glad that Kishwer Vikaas shared her experience with us of being a DACA attorney and how that effort is rooted in her faith. I’ve got some additional immigration thoughts today, myself.

The folks at Splinter did an open-records request of President Trump’s Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline and found some ugly stuff: “Internal logs of calls to VOICE obtained by Splinter show that hundreds of Americans seized on the hotline to lodge secret accusations against acquaintances, neighbors, or even their own family members, often to advance petty personal grievances.”

Here are the kind of reports VOICE is getting:

Caller requested to report her mother-in law and sister-in law. Caller stated these individuals came to the U.S. as tourists and stayed in the U.S. in order to get legal status.

Caller stated the undocumented individual is destroying her family and is committing adultery.

Caller requested to report his ex wife that is undocumented as an overstayed on her visa.

Caller requested to report the illegal alien because the illegal alien will not let her see [her] granddaughter.

It gets worse. Splinter reports “there are also multiple calls from people hoping to turn ICE enforcement against the people who have accused them of domestic violence.” It would appear the hotline, then, is being used by abusers to rid themselves of battered women who stood up for themselves.

A few months ago, I asked if some kinds of immigration enforcement were more criminal, in a sense, than illegal immigration itself. “A key feature of any crime worthy of the name, it seems to me, is that the act of committing it is clearly and negatively disruptive, either to an individual life — a person may be injured, killed, deprived of property or merely their sense of well-being — or to the community at large.”

Governance under Donald Trump is more destructive than the ills it tries to solve. Not a surprise, but breathtaking to see it in action.

In anger,
Joel