While Western Kentucky has many problems, ICE is not one of them, yet.
Or maybe it is. Who knows? Getting to the bottom of an alleged ICE raid that sparked widespread rumors in Muhlenberg County last week was difficult to investigate, as information regarding anyone caught up in the operation was more obscured than is readily available for those white defendants arrested for much worse.
This lack of transparency and fear-mongering, and the growing strangle hold on due process by a federal agency, does little to keep any of us safer. It takes little more effort than a Google search to see that the immigrants being scooped up by unidentified masked agents, like a seven year-old student recently arrested in New York, are not the dangerous criminals the White House would have us believe. Instead, such raids only serve to divide us further, at our own peril.
We cannot hope to be a safe, prosperous community if there is a void of distrust and secrecy between our police force and our citizens. Yet this divide is exactly what ICE agents create each time unmarked government vehicles appear in our neighborhoods.
Much of what was eventually uncovered about the rumored local ICE raid cannot be reported as it puts those parties involved at risk. Those with the most to gain by speaking out against masked ICE officers terrorizing our immigrant neighbors cannot do so publicly for fear of deportation. Those citizens with knowledge of the local incident in which one person was reportedly taken into ICE custody are rightfully fearful to speak to anyone should it cause harm to the detainee or further imperil the immigrant community.
At the Hopkins County Jail, which recently became an ICE detention facility, the names, ages, and faces of those being held by ICE are listed publicly. However, while viewers are privy to the why, when, and how of regular local adult arrests — such as someone’s criminal charges, the arresting officer’s name, a case number, and a court date — those same fields are empty for the dozens of Hispanic detainees there listed only as “Inmate Class: ICE.”
Under their mug shots, no criminal charges are posted. The race of most ICE detainees is listed as “UNKNOWN” despite all evidence to the contrary. Their ages are listed, but their arrest date, arresting officer, case number, and next court date are all blank. Everyone associated with ICE arrests seems to have been protected by obscurity except the immigrants themselves.
It’s almost as if ICE agents are trying to hide their actions in order to disappear our neighbors, employees, and fellow faithful without the public being able to serve as citizen watchdogs. This is blatantly against not only the Constitution but the very fabric of our democracy.
Despite the Founding Fathers’ clear stance on due process, despite all established precedent in the courts, despite the very rationale behind our Revolutionary War, unconvicted immigrant detainees are being held in custody on American soil in obscurity and denied due process because they lack the proper paperwork.
Given migrants’ robust economic contributions to our country’s bottom line — billions of dollars annually — the question remains why the president would rather keep them undocumented and in expensive private detention centers than create an easy immigration registration platform that benefits us all.
Undocumented migrants do not live in an economic void in their communities. The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy estimated that migrant workers and business owners contribute $14 billion of economic output in our commonwealth. These same business owners stand to lose their livelihoods when an entire swath of a community’s workforce is afraid to show up to their jobs following the mere mention of ICE in their area.
You cannot claim to be a small business advocate, yet strip those same companies of a crucial part of their workforce while ignoring migrants’ vast economic contributions.
Furthermore, the American Immigration Council notes that undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $233 million in taxes in Kentucky. Yet they cannot, and do not, draw Social Security or Medicare. Such immigrants are akin to the state winning the lottery each month without purchasing a ticket or paying taxes on the winnings.
One would think a commonwealth that fell $250 million short of the expected sales tax revenue last fiscal year would be more interested in protecting those workers who both live in and spend their income in its communities.
Even as federal inmates in local jails, undocumented immigrants still find a way to contribute to our community’s fiscal wellbeing. As reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader last month, “The federal government can pay as much as $73 a day per inmate, nearly twice what the Kentucky Department of Corrections pays county jails to house state inmates, which is roughly $35 a day, according to federal and state data.”
When local Hispanic children are too afraid to attend their own soccer games due to fears of ICE raids, we have utterly failed as a small town reputed to care for our neighbors and fellow human beings.
When able-bodied workers who directly contribute millions to Kentucky’s economy are instead driven into hiding by federal agents over a misdemeanor paperwork infraction, then it is no longer an immigration issue. It is racially motivated scapegoating that will kill our commonwealth’s economic growth while abusing due process and sowing the bitter fruits of fear.
And frankly, here in Kentucky, aren’t we better neighbors than that?
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