I Don't Care What You Think About Illegal Immigration...

...but everybody needs to read this. It is the personal account of Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor of interpretation and a court interpreter. He participated in the largest ICE raid in U.S. history. It is rather Kafkaesque.

A friend of mine posted a link to this essay on her Facebook profile. She had the following to say:

It's amazing how many proceedings used with illegal immigrants are "legal" but not ethical. Somehow we think that because they are here illegally they have no civil or human rights. People tend to confuse civil rights with human rights and forget that regardless of their legal status in this country, everyone has the right to be treated humanely. Furthermore, many people ignore the fact that illegal immigrants DO have civil rights, including the right to a fair trial.

It seems that some people also confuse being anti-illegal immigration with being anti-illegal immigrant. It's one thing to be opposed to the process; it's another thing entirely to treat immigrants as somehow sub-human or as the worst kind of criminals just because they were looking for a better life and doing it by working harder than I, for one, will probably ever work in my whole life. [...]

I do have a problem with illegal immigration. My problem is that people are exploited and taken advantage of, that they constantly live in fear and in inhumane conditions. The system is broken and something needs to be done. But criminalizing, dehumanizing, and imprisoning immigrants is not the solution.