What Exactly Is An Immigrant?

[El Mimbreno]

A column by Pete Riva; a couple of excerpts:

If you look at precedent (legal eagles always use precedent to prove court cases) as well as US law history, immigration has varied from wide open (give us your huddled masses), to “we can throw you out if you’re not born here,”

Is a woman and child watching from across the Rio Grande breaking the law? Not yet on US soil, no law broken even if you could say the intent is clear. If she sees a Border Patrol agent and deliberately crosses asking for protection and refuge, is she breaking the law? Up until 2017 she was not, now she is and can get separated from her child and thrown across the border with or without her child. You read that right with or without, usually without, her child. Why do we do this? Ostensibly as a deterrent. Does that work? Possibly, but it certainly works to deter the rest of the civilized world from having any respect for our pontification as being “the land of the free.” To quote one French commentator, “Land of the Free” has come to mean “free to mistreat humans and deny human rights.”

On the subject of ICE:

It may sound fair to say you are protecting innocent children from unscrupulous traffickers by taking them into custody but you discard any credibility when they are kept in filth and locked in chain-link cages.

The whole column.