Sometimes, racial profiling is an issue - as in the case, recently revealed, of a January 2007 raid on a 7-Eleven in Baltimore. Officers detained 24 Latino men, few of them with criminal records, in an apparent effort to meet a quota for arrests.
The future for families like my 8-year-old patient's looks grim. My patient's suffering will probably have no influence on his father's deportation proceedings, given the high legal standards of "extreme hardship" that must be met in order for his father to stay with his family. The boy will most likely be forced to start a new life in a country he has never even visited.
Immigration policy is complicated and emotionally charged, but punishing citizen children should be at the bottom of ICE's priorities. It is time to once again consider a fair and comprehensive approach to immigration reform. One promising proposal is the "Child Citizenship Protection Act" (introduced this year by Rep. Jose Serrano of New York), which would authorize an immigration judge to prevent deportation of an immigrant when it is in the best interest of his or her citizen children.
