July ICE arrests mount 1,400 per day

Areader sent a text to The Advance last week: “My yard guy of 20 years was picked up by ICE. Horrid, horrible conditions.

Where are our lawmakers?”

Out raising campaign money, where else.

Or if you are Texas AG Ken Paxton, now running for the U.S.Senate on the GOP ticket against Democrat challenger James Talarico, you might be headed to Iceland as he did late last month with his alleged mistress and Christian influencer/author, Tracy Duhon.

The trip, of course, gave Talarico some campaign ammo to launch on his X account: “Ken Paxton was impeached for taking bribes from donors. He became a multi-millionaire on a government salary. He takes lavish vacations in Iceland while Texans can’t afford the basics. Ken Paxton doesn’t serve us — he serves himself.”

According to a story published by The Washington Post last Friday, local yard guys in the RGV aren’t the only ones disappearing down the ICE rabbit hole.

“Through the first 12 days of July, ICE is on pace to arrest the most people in a single month during the second Trump administration, according to agency detainment data shared to Congress and reviewed by The Post.”

According to The Post story, ICE arrests have surged since the start of July, with the daily average rising to more than 1,400 people. This, according to the same story, amid a renewed push from the White House (currently under renovation) to increase arrests across the country.

Apparently, the president wants to import 1 million undocumented immigrants per year, the vast majority of whom have no criminal record, not counting minor traffic or civil immigration violations (Source: Cato Institut.).

Among the million deported, only approximately 5 to 8 percent have been convicted of a violent crime (Same source).

The 1986 Exception

The rest are like the local yard guy mentioned at the top of this story — working in the 100-degree heat, mowing Valley lawns without proper documentation.

In fact, in a column published in this newspaper this spring, our very own lawn guy also went missing, apparently picked up by ICE since there is no sign of him to be had.

Gone in a blink of an eye. Some lawn guys have proper documentation, of course, and they pay taxes. But so many others came over here with their parents as young kids and were never given a route to citizenship.

No matter which political party has been in power, a route to citizenship never became permanent.

The only exception took place 40 years ago when Ronald Reagan signed the bipartisan Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which granted amnesty and a direct pathway to citizenship to approximately 3 million illegal immigrants who had resided in the U.S. continuously since 1982.

The IRCA never expired, but it essentially died from a practical standpoint in May 1988 when the one-year window to apply for permanent legal residency closed. The amnesty window for farmworkers closed in November of the same year.

Since then, 38 years later, Republicans and Democrats have never been able to hammer out a solution in any sort of meaningful bipartisan fashion.

Meanwhile, decent hard-working undocumented immigrants with something as simple as a traffic violation are detained by ICE and taken off the job, the street, and then removed from the U.S altogether.

“Where did my yard guy of 20 years go?”

The housekeeper of 25 years who helped raise our kids?

America — land of the free; home of the now deported.