The Real Immigration Crisis: Lawlessness in the Name of Law
There are few issues in American politics as misunderstood—and deliberately misrepresented—as immigration. The “hot takes” from both the Right and the Left are often not just wrong, but dangerously misleading. In their race to weaponize the issue for political clout, pundits and influencers reduce real human lives to talking points.
Immigration is one of those rare issues where both sides are equally guilty of erasing nuance, rewriting history, and dehumanizing people based solely on their legal status. This serves the agendas of politicians, media outlets, and ideologues alike. On the left, dehumanization often takes the form of reducing people to their economic utility—liberals repeating the line that “we need them to do the backbreaking jobs no American will do,” implicitly justifying a system that relies on paying them near-slave wages. On the right, it looks like labeling every non-citizen as “illegal,” conflating all immigrants with criminals, and ignoring the many ways a person can enter legally, then fall out of status without committing a single crime.
The immigration crisis we’re in right now is the direct result of policies under Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and now Trump again. But the system has been broken for far longer than that. There is still no real path to citizenship for people who entered the U.S. legally but later lost status—often through no fault of their own, and not because of any criminal conduct. Student and work visas expire, marriages end, asylum claims are denied after years of delays, or people age out of DACA eligibility. The law simply doesn’t provide many avenues for these people, many of whom have lived here for decades. The few avenues that are available to them to correct their status, require a competent immigration attorney and the ability to afford one.
One of the most troubling dynamics I’ve observed is the selective memory people seem to have about what their preferred political party or president actually did in office. There’s a kind of collective amnesia that sets in when “your guy” is in charge. People excuse or minimize egregious policies because they came from their side, while hyper-fixating on the same actions as evil when the other side does it.
President Barack Obama, who was first elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, oversaw the highest number of deportations of any U.S. president. From 2009 to 2016, his administration deported over 3 million people, earning him the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief” from immigrant rights groups and immigration attorneys. During his second term, particularly in 2014, news broke of children in immigration detention centers—photos of kids in cages and at detention centers that would later resurface under Trump, despite originating under Obama.
When Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he shifted the focus. His administration poured billions into border security and wall construction, rather than continuing Obama’s emphasis on internal deportations. For many immigration attorneys and advocates, this shift seemed like an improvement. Trump campaigned on cracking down on illegal entries, not rounding up the undocumented population already here. Although ICE enforcement remained active under Trump, his emphasis was the southern border and deterring illegal crossings. Between 2017 and 2020, more than 450 miles of the border wall were constructed or reinforced, and a grand total of 720,000 deportations took place, of people who were properly deported according to due process in immigration proceedings.
Then in January 2021, Biden entered office, promptly reversing many of Trump’s policies. He signed executive orders halting border wall construction, rolled back the “Remain in Mexico” policy (officially called “Migrant Protection Protocols”), and drastically reduced interior immigration enforcement. The Biden administration also placed a 100-day moratorium on deportations, and expanded parole programs for certain nationalities. But the unintended result of these shifts was a record-breaking number of border crossings—over 2.7 million encounters in fiscal year 2022, and more than 3 million in 2023. Just take a moment to digest those numbers.
I just told you that throughout his entire Presidency, meaning both terms, President Obama deported just over 3 million people. In his first term, President Trump deported 720,000. In just 2022, there were 2.7 million border crossings, with another 3 million in 2023. That is letting back in all the people who were deported over the previous 12 years combined, plus another 2 million-ish. The problem with these crossings, beyond the sheer number, is that many of the individuals being allowed in were completely unvetted. There were no criminal background checks, no medical screenings, and no verification of vaccination status.
At the same time, American citizens were being subjected to strict COVID-19 mandates, unable to work, travel, or enter public spaces without proof of vaccination, while thousands of migrants were being processed without any such requirements. Many were granted entry through the CBP One app, a mobile application that allowed migrants to schedule appointments at ports of entry to seek parole or asylum. In practice, it functioned as a fast-track system with little oversight. After brief processing, they were bussed from overcrowded detention centers and dropped off in cities across the country, often with no resources, no shelter, and no plan. Cities like New York, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles were completely overwhelmed, with people being bussed or flown in by both Republican and Democratic governors and, eventually, even by federal contractors.
With few resources and little planning, many were dumped in shelters, left homeless, or packed into neighborhoods that couldn’t sustain the influx. And yes—some of those allowed in had criminal backgrounds. The Right has latched onto those stories to justify sweeping enforcement, but the truth is that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants have not committed crimes and did not enter illegally.
Part of the confusion, which is understandable from people who’ve never had to navigate immigration law themselves, is that few understand how a person becomes “undocumented” in the first place. The Right wants you to believe that every undocumented person broke into this country illegally, climbing fences in the dark of night. The Left, on the other hand, often pushes the idea that there’s no such thing as “illegal immigration,” and that everyone here should simply be granted citizenship by virtue of being physically present.
Like most things, the truth lives somewhere in between.
The word “undocumented” is misleading. The only people who are truly undocumented—meaning, unknown to the U.S. government—are those who manage to enter the country completely undetected. This is an extremely small and statistically insignificant group. The overwhelming majority of people without legal status today were, in fact, documented. They either came here legally and overstayed a visa, or they were apprehended at the border, processed, detained, and then released into the care of a sponsor while awaiting a court date. We know their names, we have their photos, and we have addresses for them. You cannot “round up all the illegals” if you don’t even know who or where they are. But the people being targeted in these mass raids are known. They are known because they entered within the confines of our legal system.
There are many legal ways to enter this country that do not confer citizenship. Consider the case of a seasonal agricultural worker who enters on a valid work visa. The employer often promises to handle the legal side—visa renewals, path to permanent residency, etc.—as part of the job offer. The worker, grateful for the opportunity and unfamiliar with the legal bureaucracy, trusts the employer to do what they say. But the employer, motivated by cost-cutting and complacency, fails to follow through. Maybe they never file the renewal paperwork. Maybe they submit it late or incorrectly. Maybe they never intended to help the worker adjust status in the first place. Yet, the worker fulfills their part of the deal. They toil in brutal conditions, for low wages, with the understanding that they are here legally. Years later, they find out they were never properly renewed and are now “illegal.” Whose fault is that?
Or take the case of a student on an F-1 visa. They’ve been granted a 4-year visa to attend a university, and they’re here on a scholarship. If something happens, say, they lose funding, their family can’t continue to support them, or they experience a medical crisis; they may need to withdraw. Logically, they might assume that the visa lasts until the expiration date stamped on it. After all, most things in life work that way. But immigration law doesn’t. Once you’re no longer enrolled at the institution that issued your visa, your status starts to lapse—fast. Unless you enroll in another qualifying institution and get the visa transferred, you fall out of status, often without realizing it until it’s too late. This is not a crime. It’s a bureaucratic misstep that happens all the time.
Now, we’re witnessing a draconian pendulum swing in the opposite direction of Biden’s overly lax policies in the form of a surge in domestic ICE enforcement under Trump’s second administration. What’s most alarming about this round of ICE raids and deportations is how indiscriminate and lawless it has become. ICE agents are now conducting raids without arrest warrants, wearing masks, using unmarked vehicles, and refusing to identify themselves—raiding homes, job sites, and even elementary schools and churches. This should make the hair on every American’s body stand on end. We cannot allow this.
President Trump ran on a promise to prioritize deporting violent criminals and individuals with existing deportation orders. This means people who have lost their asylum cases after being given due process and a trial, or those who have committed serious crimes that constitute deportable offenses. Reasonable people, I think, can agree that this is a valid enforcement priority. But, that is not what’s happening now.
What we’re seeing instead are ICE agents showing up masked, in unmarked vans, without warrants or proper identification, staking out people’s homes and workplaces, and detaining them not because they’re criminals who’ve been ordered deported—but simply because they do not hold U.S. citizenship. This is being done completely devoid of transparency, due process, or oversight.
This was not what anyone voted for. Even many Trump supporters are expressing discomfort, realizing this goes far beyond what was promised. It’s okay to say that. You can support someone and still criticize them when you think they’re wrong. You can even withdraw your support! You can vote for someone and still hold them accountable. If you’re a Trump voter who believed his promises were about safety and lawfulness, not sweeping people off the streets in secret raids, you should be allowed to say that too—because if his own supporters don’t demand accountability, who will he listen to?
I say all this as someone who voted for President Obama twice. There is no world in which I would go back and change my vote. Just because I ended up deeply disappointed in him, doesn’t mean I think John McCain or Mitt Romney would have been any better. On the contrary, I believe they would have been much, much worse. In 2008, Obama was the first president I was old enough to vote for, and I voted for him with so much enthusiasm and hope. I even campaigned for him! I believed he represented change. I truly thought he would lead America into a new, golden age of decency, liberty, and justice for all.
Then came the Big Bank Bailouts. Instead of helping struggling Americans, he bailed out Wall Street. He gave the banking industry a pass—with taxpayer dollars—and no one was held accountable for the massive fraud and theft that destroyed the American middle class. It was a gut punch like nothing I’d ever felt. Still, we all tried to justify it. Everyone said the economy would collapse if the banks weren’t saved. I told myself, McCain wouldn’t have done it better.
Then came the promises of universal healthcare. Again, I bought in, hook, line, and sinker. But the final version of the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, was far from universal. It was a compromise built on private insurance profits, that would eventually be ruled unconstitutional and overturned. I never forgot the lack of consequences for the banks, yet I still naively believed Obama’s second term would be different. He wouldn’t have to placate the right or cater to swing voters anymore, right?
So I voted for him again in 2012. But his second term is when I truly learned the lesson: you cannot put your faith in a politician. That was the term where the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) became his pet project. The TPP was massive corporate trade deal negotiated largely in secret, which would’ve empowered multinational corporations over sovereign governments. That’s when I stopped believing any politician could be trusted to fix a broken system, and stopped looking at individual politicians as the solution.
With the current raids and the escalating situation between Iran & Israel, I’m watching a lot of Trump voters go through the same thing I went through with Obama: feeling betrayed. Trump ran in 2016 and 2024 on bringing peace, avoiding war, and keeping the U.S. out of endless foreign entanglements. But now, under his second administration, the U.S. has backed Israel’s actions in Gaza, and just this week, supported Israel’s newest wave of strikes against Iran. On June 12, 2025, and continuing into June 13, Israel launched a major assault on Iranian military and nuclear sites, killing several top military officials and nuclear scientists. For the last two days (the 13th into the 14th of June), the world has watched in horror as Iran has struck back, with no end in sight and Israel now asking the U.S. for military support. Many believe this could be the spark that starts World War III.
I’ve heard so many Trump supporters say they don’t regret voting for him, because they believe Biden and Harris would’ve been worse. But they’re also saying they feel profoundly disappointed. They believed Trump when he said he’d only be deporting violent criminals and that his focus would be on preventing global war. Instead, they’re watching ICE sweep up their family and friends—hardworking people who pay taxes, have U.S. citizen spouses and children, and contribute to their communities. People who aren’t criminals, yet who are being treated like dangerous fugitives.
We must reframe this conversation. Stop calling people “illegal.” Start calling these raids illegal. Start calling these detainments what they are: lawless, unconstitutional abuses of power. When agents can come to a person’s work, wait by their car, show up at their children’s elementary school, enter their places of worship, all without a warrant while refusing to identify themselves, and take them away—what makes you think that power will only ever be used against immigrants?
This is about so much more than immigration. It’s about the erosion of civil liberties and the normalization of authoritarian tactics. We’ve all seen this movie before.
During COVID, I spoke out very publicly and strongly against vaccine mandates. I believed they were unconstitutional, unethical, and violated the ADA. My disapproval of them came from my liberal, progressive background in Disability Law. Despite critiquing the mandates from “the Left,” I was vilified by many of the very same people who now claim to care so dearly about civil rights. People I considered close friends told me the unvaccinated should be rounded up and put in camps. Parents told me they would never let their kids go to school with mine—hypothetical kids I don’t even have. Fear made them cruel, and the media told them it was justified.
Now, many of the same people who called me a danger to society for stating that prohibiting people from public spaces based on vaccine status and medical documentation was unconstitutional, are watching mass deportation raids unfold, suddenly expressing sentiment against masks and identification papers. Meanwhile, many of the right and moderate leaning voices who did stand up for civil liberties during COVID, are now celebrating these raids, gleefully sharing videos of families being ripped apart because “they’re illegals.” The irony is staggering.
When you’re only outraged by government overreach when it affects you, your principles are hollow. Civil liberties are meaningless if they only apply to people you agree with. That’s not how justice or democracy works.
Since these illegal raids began, we have been completely inundated with calls from family members whose loved ones have been detained. One was from a U.S. citizen woman, whose husband has been here 27 years with no arrests or contact with law enforcement at all. He is in the category of people who entered legally on an employment visa, with his employer promising him that his employment included a path to citizenship. He signed contracts where he agreed to work for a certain number of years at a certain wage (much less than minimum wage for American citizens), and in exchange he would be sponsored for full citizenship. It wasn’t until he worked the 5 years, fulfilling his conditions of the contract, that he discovered his employer had let his legal permit lapse without ever submitting the necessary renewals. Annually, they had falsely assured him these renewals had been completed.
At that point, he was married with children, a home he’d built in the U.S., and without the ability to afford an immigration attorney. If he had been able to, his status could have easily been fixed, likely via a waiver, to explain the extenuating circumstances under which he lost legal status, followed by an adjustment of status through marriage to a U.S. citizen. Because of the deceitfulness and negligence of his employer, combined with his own poverty, the lapsed status reached a number of years that becomes more and more difficult to correct. Sadly, my husband had to tell his sobbing, devastated wife, that there was no longer anything we can do for him. These are the people who deserve a path to citizenship, not to be rounded up and separated from their law-abiding, tax-paying, loving families.
Another phenomenon we are seeing is that people who have legally followed the process to become citizens through the USCIS or immigration court process, are being told to personally appear for hearings, at which time the government is summarily dismissing their case and allowing ICE agents to take them right there. These are not criminals, they are people doing exactly what they are supposed to do under our immigration laws, who are being denied the ability to see their case through to adjudication.
We have been overwhelmed, working 24/7 to help as many people as we can. Those who are having their cases dismissed at hearings, are up against a strict 30-day clock to file an appeal. The same is true for all removal or deportation orders, there is nothing we can do to help once 30 days have passed from the date either of those are issued. There is no firm in Los Angeles that can claim to do anywhere near as much pro-bono work as we do. I’m proud to say it accounts for nearly 50% of our work.
It’s a tenet of my faith that it is our obligation and privilege to help the poor and vulnerable in any and all ways that we can. However, even in cases of indigent clients where we donate our labor, there are still costs and fees to shoulder. Filing fees, translation fees, expedition fees, appeal fees—they are never-ending. We work with Catholic charities, immigrant rights groups, and several nonprofits for referrals and assistance with covering legal fees for the indigent. Still, it is never enough. Every year, we go into our own pockets to cover whatever we can afford for the most desperately in need. With these recent raids, the need and demand has become insurmountable on our own.
In that vein, we have launched a fundraiser to help us cover as many people’s appeals as possible, as quickly as possible, as those who we can help are against that 30-day limit. Any amount helps, and if you cannot afford to donate, please consider sharing the fundraiser. You can rest assured this isn’t some BS grift from some idiot influencer online—this is the best way you can truly help immigrants fight back! I know everyone wants to say or do something, and how powerless it can feel. But the harsh reality is that just rage-posting about what’s happening and hashtagging #F*CKICE or #F*CKTRUMP does not help these people.
What they need is an immigration attorney, and fast. Let’s come together and show the President and the rest of the world that we will not stand by and do nothing to help our neighbors. Help us show the forces that seek to divide us based on prejudices and nationality that we aren’t falling for it, and that this isn’t a Left-Right issues, it’s a human issue.
Donate Here To Help Immigrants Fight Back Against Illegal Detentions