Isn't "freed and flown home" the same thing as "deported"? These were routine professionals doing a job they took in good faith under rules and norms that have held for a century or more.
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Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty. We're punishing people who are part of the workforce contributing to our country's economic output.
Seems like the real question is, what do we get out of this? Because it doesn't appear to be aligned with security or prosperity. It's just needless suffering, bureaucracy, and wasted resources.
That's because Congress has been promising "measured enforcement" for 60 years, but in that time the foreign-born population has ballooned from 4.7% in 1970 to 15.6% in 2024--higher than it ever was in the 20th century. The goal is big, visible enforcement actions that will disincentivize people from immigrating above the limits set forth in the law.
I'm a foreigner myself. Even though I grew up in the U.S. since age 5, the cultural difference between me and my wife (whose family immigrated here from Britain before the American Revolution) are stark. I think most Americans have a hard time understanding just how foreign their foreign-born acquaintances are, because many of the differences are below the surface: https://opengecko.com/geckoview/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/C....
