BOOMERPDX ON ICE

Finding The Right People To Deport?
(via www.ice.gov & huffingtonpost.com)

One Man’s Chilling Journey

ICE stand for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Who knew? (It also stands for an In Case of Emergency number on your cell phone, but that’s another post.)

A ICE story landed on the BoomerPDX desk, a story of concern.

ICE is a hard time for hard core people who need to leave and never come back.

What happens when the wrong guy gets the ICE treatment?

A local stay-at-home dad with immigration history got a letter scheduling a twenty minute interview. It was a minor status update.

The day came. His wife went to work. He dropped his young child at day care.

Then things went wrong, Gilligan’s Island-style wrong.

• Raise your hand if you’ve heard Bruce Springsteen’s Hungry Heart and thought, “That is so me in a second.”

The song always ends but the first lines travel back in time.

“Got a wife and kid in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and never came back.”

Boomer sings it out loud. It still means something more to us, a haunting confession to enjoy in a badass way without doing it.

Then your wife or husband sings along and you’re off in the way back machine. Wives know every break-up you’ve had. You told her to show how much she means to you.

Maybe you said too much.

Husbands think they’ve got the same edge because their wives told them ‘everything.’

“You love that song.”
“Never gets old.”
“It reminds you of who you’ve abandoned, and who dumped you.”
“Does abandoning you count?”
“Come on, who’s first on that Abandon List?”
“Top ten?”
“Ten? You’ve got ten?”
“Don’t you? You should.”

• When a man got shoveled into the ICE machine, he abandoned all hope.

Twenty minutes turned into six weeks.

He traveled the circuit from Oregon with stops between there and Pennsylvania where the ICE people collected others from his country, all headed out of America.

Except this man wasn’t on the list for his country.

He interviewed, learned his possible fate, then sent back home to his wife and family after six weeks.

He said it was a traumatic time for everyone.

Walking through airports in shackles, riding on beater airplanes with cuffs on. After staying in ICE facilities, he got back home.

Was he shocked at the ICE treatment? Yes.

Did he help others during his time away? Yes, some didn’t speak or write English.

Was it unfair? He said he was with some very bad people who deserved to be locked up and deported.

Was if unfair to him? Once you get into the system, he said, fair or unfair isn’t a question. Surviving it, both physically and emotionally, is all that matters.

What will happen now? If the country of origin won’t take you, neighboring countries might.

What do you want to do? He said he wants to be the best husband and father he can to his family.

While he was away he learned people from India spend $50K to travel to South America, up through Mexico, then enter the U.S. for political asylum.

Your faithful boomer blogger checked his sources and learned Chinese nationals travel to Canada, then later come to the U.S. as Canadians.

For more immigration information, check migrationinformation.org.

With news about closing the borders, granting amnesty of illegal aliens, and the contributions immigrants make to America, meeting someone with personal experience in the field makes a big difference.

If you have an immigration story, or point of view, please leave a comment.

There’s no telling how this will end up, but the man I met deserves a better chance here.

ICE agents do great work uncovering the latest Nazis, mafia members, and Wall Street swindlers, finding immigrants wanted for massacres back home. Those people deserve a one way ticket out.

How does a married man, a dad who made a mistake and paid the price, come up on the same radar as those guys? Does an argument in a bar, a poke in the leg, and eighteen months in prison translate to crimes against humanity?

He made his wrong right and wants the same returned.

That’s the American way.