President's executive order won't stop extreme family separation

ICIE founder Ralph Isenberg believes President Barack Obama's recent executive order may end up having the opposite effect as intended. He believes the order, which is supposed to defer deportations to keep families together, would in fact make separating families easier. That's because the President's executive order includes an enforcement directive that gives ICE the ability to expedite deportation, causing more extreme family separation, a term used when deportation breaks apart a traditional family unit. "Raids on homes in the night will continue, guns drawn on parents in front of their children will continue, handcuffs will continue, and deportations will continue," he said.


When this executive order is coupled with a system built towards deportation over inclusion, immigrant families are the ones who end up suffering the most. Extreme family separation continues, in large part, to immigration regulations that deny due process and ICE agents who are eager to deport. Isenberg points to the use of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) to separate families. "When Clinton enacted IIRAIRA, it added more crimes to the list that triggers deportation. Now, Class C misdemeanors are included. It blew out common sense as to who was deported."

As the Morton Memo (a directive issued by then-ICE director John Morton that limited deportations under certain circumstances) and DACA (the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program) placed limits on the deportation of certain individuals, Isenberg pointed out that ICE merely expanded the groups it targeted for deportation, and goes after easy targets to fill their detention quota. "If ICE gets the chance to pick between a family or a criminal to pick up, who do you think is easier to find," he asks.

Isenberg also points out that deporting a family member can be devastating to those left behind. In most cases, the person being deported is a parent or bread winner, often leaving U.S. citizen children behind. He believes the deportation of five million could have severe effects on as many as 30 million family members left behind in America. "When you separate a family, it doesn't matter where you are from; the pain is the same," he said.    

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The Isenberg Center for Immigration Empowerment (ICIE) is "a resort of last hope” for foreign nationals. People come to ICIE because the system has failed, and as a result, someone is facing a wrongful deportation. Since their founding in 2011, ICIE has helped hundreds of deserving families, and provides all services pro-bono. The organization deals with the entire family unit, from teaching the basic fundamentals behind community service, to English education, to individualized counseling to build positive mental health. ICIE has established a fund to underwrite the legal fees incurred by foreign nationals in the immigration court process. To support this fund, click here to make a donation by PayPal.