The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has returned to Durango (Herald, May 15), this time arresting five people they suspected of being undocumented immigrants. According to Enrique Orozco-Perez, co-Executive Director of Companeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center, this is the first U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Durango since president Trump started his second term.
We know it will likely be far from the last, but this type of ICE action the Herald’s editorial board does not support, and it is not what Trump supporters voted for.
Jake Morrow, Rock Solid Granite Manager, described the five men who were taken as “good guys that don’t even drink, that show up for work every day.” His workforce is now down to four workers from nine, considerably hamstringing an important business at the onset of the busy building season.
Readers will remember Edin Ramos, a 15-year resident of Bayfield, small business owner of two businesses that employed 13 people, who ICE arrested and deported to Honduras during Trump’s first term (Herald, May 9, 2018). Ramos initially came to the U.S. fleeing violence and political unrest. He left behind an American wife and three children.
The New York Times on Wednesday, published an article, “A Missouri town was solidly behind Trump, then Carol was detained.” The article quoted farmer Chuck Earnest as he described Carol Hui, a mom of three and 20-year resident of Kennett, Missouri, a conservative rural farming town of 10,000 people, 80% of whom voted for Trump. Earnest said Hui is “exactly the sort of person you’d want to come to the country. I don’t know how this fits into the deportation problem with Trump.”
Hui, who is undocumented, had waitressed at a local waffle house, cleaned houses on the side, had converted to Catholicism and was loved in Kennet. ICE detaining Hui on April 30 and her pending deportation to Hong Kong has shocked and saddened the community.
Vanessa Cowart, a friend of Hui’s, said, “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here. But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs.”
In 2024, Trump campaigned on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records and those deemed national security threats. That is not what is happening. Instead, Trump has unleashed a shock and awe campaign that is traumatizing and tearing apart families, businesses and communities often cruelly and illegally.
As were the Rock Solid employees, Ramos and Hui were contributing members of their communities. Undocumented immigrants pay taxes and pay into Medicaid, Medicare, Unemployment and Social Security and few, if any, draw benefits.
Undocumented immigrants are not stealing jobs. They are doing the hard labor of cleaning hotel rooms and houses, working in the construction industry, in agriculture, and doing the important work of caring for children and seniors. They are doing jobs that many Americans do not want.
Everyone would like to see a legal pathway through the front door, but our immigration system has been broken forever and no reform has come forward for 40 years. In October 2024, Republicans killed the latest bipartisan attempt at immigration reform yielding to Trump’s objections to the bill and interest in keeping the issue alive and a win from Biden in advance of the election.
This serves no one. Trump is taking a hard line and acting with a fervor to get all non-Americans out of the country. This is not what he pledged.
Unless you are Native American, we are all immigrants. Immigration is good for southwest Colorado and the country. Without immigrants, our workforce, communities and economies and, most of all, our children, suffer.
“I think it’s going to be very destructive to our society, to our community over the long-term if we continue to separate families, separate children from their parents,” said Thalia Ramos, Edin Ramos’s wife.
Trump needs to focus on the real criminals and those posing real national security threats, as he said, and start from the drawing board to create a legal pathway to citizenship. So far, what we’re seeing is not that.
