Understanding our immigration rhetoric
What’s at stake and what we can do
By Jennifer Tanner
This past Monday, the White House doubled down on President Trump’s rhetoric by issuing a press release entitled “What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13.” In it, the word “animal” appears a total of 10 times. You may say, “But he’s talking about MS-13 gang members. Of course they’re animals! Worse than animals! What’s wrong with our administration using that word to describe them?”
Let me explain.
First, a bit about my background. Professionally, I’ve worked closely with young gang recruits, as well as with law enforcement to protect vulnerable kids from violent gangs such as MS-13. I’m intimately aware of the tactics they’ll use to lure kids in. My husband is an immigration and family lawyer, frequently representing families fleeing the violence these gangs have brought to their communities. I have friends with family members who have been murdered by MS-13 members. To say I dislike MS-13 and similar gangs is a serious understatement.
MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s. We began deporting any immigrants associated with them decades ago, and they’ve since created strongholds in Central America. Thanks to them, Central America has some of the highest homicide rates in the world.
“MS-13 members are entering our country! We have to stop them!” you may say.
Well, here’s the thing. Most are not immigrating here. They’re already from here. The majority of gang members that MS-13 leaders send to cross our borders are those who can do so legally. In notable raids on MS-13 in 2015 and 2016, most of those caught turned out to be US citizens. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s gang unit data provided to CNN, out of 114,434 total immigration arrests in 2016, only 429 were MS-13 members, or just over 0.003 percent of all immigration arrests.
Still, sometimes individuals will be accused and apprehended without any evidence. What’s more, according to a June 2017 report by Customs and Border Patrol’s Acting Chief, Carla Provost, of the 45,400 unaccompanied minors detained at the border from fiscal years 2012 to 2017, there have only been 56 confirmed MS-13 gang members. That works out to just over 0.001 percent throughout that entire span.
Our President, unfortunately, seems to have conflated Central Americans attempting to flee MS-13 gang members with the bad guys themselves. Last week, in speaking of the MS-13 gang, he said the following:
“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”
While some may excuse these remarks as referring only to violent MS-13 members, stats show the vast majority of the “animals” his administration is taking out of the country are not MS-13. They’re parents of US citizen children. They’re desperate families seeking asylum. They’re terrified, loving human beings who just want a home where they can have a little safety, and would gladly get in whatever line they could to come here legally.
“If these Central American asylum seekers are good people, why don’t they come here the right way?”
They are coming the right way. Our asylum process requires applicants to first arrive in the United States. They are to show up at the border, request asylum, then be interviewed and scheduled a court hearing with an immigration judge. Under the previous administration, they would be given work permits and were allowed to live in the United States while awaiting their court dates. (They will typically have several court dates, and the process can take years.) Under the Trump administration, however, we now apprehend and jail these innocent families and children as they flee for their lives.
Once the immigrants are jailed, they’re often subjected to inhumane conditions and abuses within detention centers. These abuses are not new to the Trump administration and were rampant during the Obama years. New to the current administration, however, is the policy of separating parents and children to supposedly deter families from making the journey in the first place.
If our President conflates the majority of those we’re taking out of the country with “the violent animals of MS-13,” it becomes easier for the rest of us to do the same. It becomes easier for us to justify the inhumane conditions experienced in detention facilities, the tearing apart of families, and the deportations because those we’re doing this to must be subhuman anyway.
The White House press release details horrific, grisly acts of violence committed by MS-13. The piece is designed to instill shock and fear in you. It’s designed to make you think that the MS-13 members committing these heinous acts are undocumented immigrants.
They’re not.
Here’s what the press release doesn’t say. Most of these horrific MS-13 crimes in the US are likely committed by natural-born US citizens. MS-13 and other similar gangs target marginalized youth of Latino descent for recruitment, offering them promises of protection, money, and camaraderie.
We don’t like to acknowledge it, but we create the very marginalization that encourages kids to turn to these gangs in the first place. We deport parents for being in our country without a status, taking away a family’s wage earner, forcing citizen kids onto welfare, separating loving families, and sometimes throwing kids into the foster care system. It’s a perfect recipe, really, for gang recruiters.
We don’t want this. Our country doesn’t need to make the problem worse. If we really want to get serious about MS-13, the answer isn’t dehumanizing them or deporting Central Americans. It’s using our immigration system to keep families together rather than to tear them apart.
Jennifer Tanner is an educator turned stay-at-home mom, wife of an immigration attorney, and a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
