Criminalization of immigrants
Ever since the current United States’ administration ascended to power, immigrants have been its center of focus, thus the eruption of national and international uproar on immigrants’ treatment. Although such treatments date back to forty years ago as elaborated by Pérez, its eruption reminds me of my grandmother who immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 1992, a period where immigrants were treated like criminals. Associating immigrants to crime not only affects an individuals’ sociocultural beliefs but also impacts on the immigrants’ integrity. Although I knew little about the mandatory detention of immigrants, neither did I understand the reasons for my grandmother migrating from Mexico nor the ‘crimmigration’ concept.
While I was helping my grandmother prepare diner on a Friday evening, I decided to raise the immigration topic in our discussion. Her facial expression and the rattling of the spoons in her hands expressed her uncomfortability in engaging that topic. I asked her about her age when she immigrated to the United States and the reasons that made her migrate from Mexico. During our conversation in the kitchen, she told me that she left Mexico at the age of twenty-five a time when Mexico was experiencing economic constraints and the youths like her were left to fight for their space without adequate employment opportunities but rather engage in maize farming activities. She elaborated that, at the time of her immigration, the United States was experiencing rapid economic and job expansion boom that attracted most immigrants despite the adverse immigration policies that associated crime to immigration. And any immigrant was subjected to mandatory detention at different detention centers.
While the food to cool off the frying pan and air filled with mouth-watering aroma, I enquired about her immigration process after arriving in Miami. She elaborated that she was not cleared by the immigration department but rather directed to a bus that took them to Krome Detention Center. Krome is a detention center located approximately twenty miles from Miami that holds immigrants associated with illegal drug use, criminality, and race (Pérez). She elaborated that on arrival at Krome, everyone on board was booked for crime allegations without substantive evidence.
I asked her to elaborate on her life experience at the Krome detention center under the criminality allegations. As she serves both of us diner plates, she explained that everyone in the detention center was treated with equal measure irrespective of your origin portfolio. She explained that the manual farming works that she was running away from back in Mexico were exactly her punishment at the detention center. She elaborates that she could be woken up as early as 5.00 A.M to work in the Krome detention center’s farm. She also explained that she occasionally could be deployed to prepare some meals for her crimmigration inmates after which serve the whole detention unit. She added that the crimmigration detainees were subjected to psychological torture that left everyone speaking out all crimes they had committed at their countries of origin, which led to their deportation to their respective countries of origin.
Although I was quite sorry for her, I was inquisitive about the counts of criminal allegations that she faced while at the detention center. She explained that while at the detention, everyone was treated as criminal without a specific allegation of crime attributed to specific individuals (Pérez). She explained that as she was undertaking her usual punishment in the detention center she tried to inquire on which counts of crime allegations she was detained for, but unfortunately, one of the detention center guards who were at least friendly explained to her that at Krome detention center people are not detained on specific crime allegations but once you are an immigrant, you are put under detention on presumable counts of crime allegation. She explained that when she tried to question the decision, she was reminded that she is foreign with a criminal background who should not be allowed to settle in the United States according to the immigration policies (Pérez). Although immigration policies are essential to any particular country, they should not attribute crime allegations to all immigrants lest innocent individuals like my grandmother suffer.
At this time, I knew I have brought memories to my grandmother that she would have never wished to recall in her life. However, I wanted to learn how she eventually got cleared the crime allegations and how the subsequent administrations treated those who were detained on crime allegations. She explained that after serving the three months’ mandatory detention at Krome detention center (Pérez), she was cleared the crime allegations without formal documentation. On the subsequent administration treatment on crime allegations, she explains that since her clearance, she had never had any immigration issue with the subsequent administration until the current administration took office that she got frightened of the reviving of such crimmigration allegations.
With everyone protesting the eruption of crimmigration and deportation of foreign citizens without a clear basis, I am proud to be a United States citizen all thanks to my grandmothers’ efforts on her endurance at the detention center just to give her lineage the United States ‘citizenship dream. My grandmother served her detention sentence without acknowledging the criminal allegations that brought her to the detention center. However, she was committed to get into the United States and have a wonderful lineage attributing their success to her ‘criminal’ detention success.
Work Cited
Pérez, Melina Juárez. Analysis | Treating Immigrants like Criminals Has a Long History in the United States. 21 July 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/21/treating-immigrants-like-criminals-has-long-history-united-states/.