She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her

The problem with this is that many areas of the law, such as immigration, are very much gray areas by design, or to put it more nicely, gentlemen's agreements. The understanding is that someone is making a major personal investment in coming to this country and living and working here. It's up to both sides to be reasonable and stick to the plan. Here, one side is viciously and vocally breaking all the agreements because they aren't personally benefiting by the terms of their office.

This is why IMO the American system is even worse than the bribe method in a lot of countries.

DHS employees by and large cannot be bribed. It is a serious offense, and both the receiver and payer will be brutally punished. So immigration officers have literally no incentive to help you. Nothing good happens to them if they process your case or help you. Something good may happen to them if they brutalize you because prosecutions are good for their reviews for promotion.

Whenever things end up like this it is good to take a step back and realize people by and large are people. The guy in Honduras letting someone in for slipping a $20 isn't much different than the CBP guy in America who ships a guy off for CECOT for having a soccer tattoo.

You can't fix this system until there is something in it for the officer enforcing it. They need some mechanism for legal bribery, like a reward for letting in and keeping good people or to just straight up legalize people paying off immigration so that normal people get all the benefit drug traffickers already do.