(#2) UNDOCUMENTED & AFRAID President Donald Trump is taking a h.docx

(#2) UNDOCUMENTED & AFRAID: President Donald Trump
is taking a hard line on people living in the U.S. illegally. What
does this mean for millions of undocumented immigrants and
their families?
Works Cited
ROSS, BROOKE. “UNDOCUMENTED & AFRAID: President
Donald Trump Is Taking a Hard Line on People Living in the
U.S. Illegally. What Does This Mean for Millions of
Undocumented Immigrants and Their Families?” Junior
Scholastic, vol. 119, no. 12, Apr. 2017, p.
6. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.mc3.edu/login?url=https://search.ebsco
host.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=122766727&site
=eds-live&scope=site.
(#3) The Problem With U.S. Immigration Policy
Works Cited
Vargas Llosa, Alvaro. “The Problem With U.S. Immigration
Policy. (Cover Story).” U.S. News - The Report, Feb. 2018, p.
(#4) The Family Separation Crisis Reveals How Far We Are
From a Just Immigration Policy
Works Cited
“The Family Separation Crisis Reveals How Far We Are From a
Just Immigration Policy.” America, vol. 219, no. 1, July 2018,
p.
(#5) HOW TRUMP'S ASSAULT ON IMMIGRANTS WILL

DAMAGE THE ECONOMY
Works Cited
SCHWARTZ, HERMAN. “How Trump’s Assault on Immigrants
Will Damage the Economy.” Nation, vol. 304, no. 11, Apr.
2017, pp. 16–
18. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.mc3.edu/login?url=https://search.ebsc
ohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=voh&AN=121883956&sit
e=eds-live&scope=site.

Bradley Family Episode 7
Program Transcript
MALE SPEAKER: I have some great news. They've dropped the
charges against
you. Tiffany, that's wonderful!
TIFFANY: Yeah, it is. Why did they? Drop the charges, I mean.
MALE SPEAKER: The state just passed a new law that's like
New York's Safe
Harbor for Exploited Children Act. That means that the courts
here no longer see
you as a criminal. They see you as a victim, just like we've been
trying to tell
them. Because you're under age, they agree with us that you
were forced against
your will to do what you did.
TIFFANY: Prostitution.
MALE SPEAKER: Right. It means that the law understands that
young people
like you, girls, boys, you don't deserve jail time or retention.
You need help and
services. So that'll get you off the street.
OK. Before you were upset that they were treating you like a
criminal. But they're
not anymore. You're free. What's wrong?

TIFFANY: John T.
MALE SPEAKER: The man who used to be your pimp?
TIFFANY: I just found out that he got busted.
MALE SPEAKER: Ah.
TIFFANY: He's going to be suspicious that he got arrested the
same time that I
got let out. He's going to think that I snitched on him, but I
didn't.
MALE SPEAKER: We should think about getting you some
police protection. No
sense taking any chances.
Additional Content Attribution
MUSIC:
Music by Clean Cuts
©2013 Laureate Education, Inc. 1

Original Art and Photography Provided By:
Brian Kline and Nico Danks
©2013 Laureate Education, Inc. 2
The Nation.16 April 3, 2017
HOW TRUMP’S
ASSAULT ON
IMMIGRANTS
WILL DAMAGE
THE ECONOMY
The key sectors in which we can expect
growth are dependent on immigrant labor.
by HERMAN SCHWARTZ
The Nation. 17April 3, 2017
Deporting millions of undocumented immigrants will
only make things worse. Economic growth requires a large
workforce and increasing productivity. But the American
population is aging, so we need more young workers. The
number of Americans over 60 is expected to increase by
more than 22 percent during the current decade, reducing
our annual growth by 1.2 percent. And productivity has
slowed down markedly in the past 15 years.

Aging has cut our birth rate as well. In 2015, the
United States saw its lowest population growth since
the Great Depression—and whatever growth we did
have was from immigrants. In 2014, immigrant women
accounted for about 900,000 US births, more than tri-
pling the 1970 number, while births to US-born wom-
en fell by 11 percent. The foreign-born accounted for
23 percent of all babies during that period.
Trump’s harsh assault on undocumented immigrants
will damage us in many key areas. Much of our recent
growth has been in service occupations like retail, hospi-
tality, home care, and health care; the Labor Department
expects demand for home health-care aides in particular
to rise by 40 percent in the next decade. Over 40 percent
of undocumented immigrants are in these occupations.
These immigrants also comprise most of the laborers
in agriculture and related industries, like dairy farming.
Agriculture Department surveys in 2007 and 2009 found
that almost half of these workers were undocumented,
and the fi gure is higher in other sectors. “If you only
have legal labor, certain parts of this industry and this re-
gion [California’s Central Valley] would not exist,” says
fruit farmer Harold McClarty. Many local businesses
in these areas—restaurants, clothing stores, insurance
agencies—would close. As one Washington, DC, restau-
rant owner put it, “Honestly, without immigrants, the
restaurant industry wouldn’t exist.”
To spur growth, Trump plans to spend many billions
on roads, sewers, and other infrastructure; housing is also
recovering. This will require many construction workers,
and there aren’t enough now—about 200,000 construc-

tion jobs are unfi lled today, a rise of 81 percent in just the
last two years. This has slowed the revival of the housing
market as well as the overall economy. The shortage of
construction workers will get worse because of Trump’s
immigration policies—which, ironically, could even frus-
trate the construction of his “beautiful wall.”
Trump’s policies have also dismayed many in the tech
sector and in science, medicine, and academia, all of
which depend heavily on highly educated and skilled im-
migrants. For example, 42 percent of doctor’s-offi ce visits
in rural America are with foreign-born doctors, because
immigrants must work in medically underserved areas like
small towns, poor cities, and rural regions in order to stay
here after their residencies or internships expire. Trump’s
revised travel ban could immediately degrade patient care:
Currently, more than 12,000 doctors in these communi-
ties are from two of the countries covered by the ban—al-
most 9,000 from Iran and 3,500 from Syria.
American universities and students will also suffer
from Trump’s exclusionary policies. We now have about
1 million foreign students, 5 percent of our total enroll-
ment; Iran alone accounts for more than 12,000. Apart
from academic contributions, foreign students pay full
tuition and other fees. Loss of this income would prob-
ably force a tuition increase for American students, since
most universities, especially the public ones, are already
fi nancially strapped. A ban on foreign faculty and stu-
dents will also undermine our educational and research
capacities, threatening our leadership in these areas.
O
pponents of immigration claim that immi-
grants take jobs from Americans and drive
down wages. There is some truth to this, but

not much. American citizens simply don’t want
many of the jobs now held by immigrants. “No
feasible increase in wages or change in conditions would
be enough to draw native-born Americans back into the
fields,” says Jeff Marchini, a fourth-generation radicchio
farmer in California, and farmers in Florida and else-
where agree. This also holds true for our construction-
worker shortage. These jobs pay an average of $27 an
hour, but American workers don’t want them—they are
hard, unpleasant, and not steady.
Trump’s deep cuts in refugee-acceptance programs also
undermine his rosy promises of economic growth. Refugees
have helped revitalize cities like Buffalo, New York, which
have struggled with obsolete industries and dwindling popu-
lations for decades. Nonetheless, Trump insists that he will
deport millions of undocumented residents, and in early
February, immigration agents began by arresting 678 people
in 12 states. Although the DHS insists this was “routine,”
many of those arrested were minor offenders or even people
P
resident trump has promised to add millions of “good jobs”
to the US economy and to raise the gross domestic product by
more than 4 percent annually, at one point asserting: “I think we
can do better than that”—as much as 6 percent. “This is the
most
pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-family plan put forth in the history of
our country,” he proclaimed.
At the same time, the president has vowed to deport up to 3 mil-
lion undocumented immigrants and to curtail future entries,
branding immi-
grants as “gang members,” “drug dealers,” and “bad hombres.”
After his January

27 travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries
was blocked by
the courts, Trump devised a toned-down version applied to six
of them—even
though his own Department of Homeland Security has
concluded that “country
of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential
terrorism.”
Trump’s economic promises verge on the delusional. Most
economists think
even his 4 percent boast is unrealistic, and any hopes for
economic growth will
be undercut by his deportation plans. In 2016, GDP grew by
only 1.6 percent;
since 2009, capital growth has increased by only 1.1 percent.
We may get a tem-
porary surge from tax cuts and infrastructure spending, but the
Congressional
Budget Offi ce estimates in its January 2017 Budget and
Economic Outlook
report that from 2017 to 2027, GDP will grow at an average
annual rate of only
1.9 percent. New York Times economics reporter Nelson
Schwartz describes
Trump’s 4 percent target as “audacious at best and fanciful at
worst.”
Trump’s promise to restore good manufacturing jobs to the Rust
Belt is also
dubious. Because of globalization and automation, few such
jobs will return.
For example, Trump boasts that he saved 1,000 (actually, fewer
than 800) jobs at
the Carrier air- conditioning plant in Indiana, but in a few years
automation will

kill many of those jobs anyway. By 2011, the auto industry was
producing just
as many cars as before the Great Recession, but with 30 percent
fewer workers
because of the increased use of robots and computers. As the
Times’s Eduardo
Porter concludes, “No matter what [ Trump] does, he cannot
bring back the
coal jobs of yore or the old labor-intensive manufacturing
economy.”
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“Honestly, without
immigrants,
the

restaurant
industry
wouldn’t
exist.”— Washington, DC, restaurant owner
Herman Schwartz,Herman Schwartz,
a professor of law a professor of law
at the American at the American
University, is University, is
the author of the author of
Right Wing Right Wing
Justice: The Justice: The
Conservative Conservative
Campaign to Campaign to
Take Over the Take Over the
CourtsCourts (2004). (2004).
The Nation.18 April 3, 2017
But on its own, that movement will not dismantle a struc-
ture that demands such an oversupply of MRAPs (mine-
resistant, ambush-protected vehicles) that they end up
parked in the lots of over 500 police departments.
Such an effort will require that some of the younger
leaders coming up in contemporary justice movements
make the struggle against militarism central to their
program, not just their analysis. Those organizers who
make this their life’s labor will fi nd ways of exposing the
cost and waste of imperialism, organizing against those
who profi t from it, and offering a clear choice between
global military expansion and a democracy that serves its
citizens. Perhaps their work will be framed by the prof-
it made from killing, or by the costs of our globalized

military, or by the disastrous consequences of foreign en-
tanglements. Perhaps it will target particular institutions
that benefi t from the corrosive connections between
racism, militarism, and oil; perhaps it will expose how a
culture of violence abroad is manifested in a culture of
violence at home. Perhaps it will be led by veterans, or by
refugees, or by women, who bear the brunt of so much
American violence. All of these directions, and more, will
have to be attempted, tested, grown—and supported by
funders, many of whom, after Obama’s election, turned
away from a focus on war and militarism. (For its part,
the Colombe Foundation is launching a new fund to sup-
port such organizing.)
Whatever shape this organizing takes, it will run into
the question that faces all oppositional politics: What al-
ternative is on offer? This dilemma is particularly acute
when it comes to American empire, opposition to which
can easily devolve into a nativist isolationism. There is
a long history to that trend—many leaders in the Anti-
Imperialist League of the late 19th century were as rac-
ist as the imperialists, arguing that the browner popula-
tions of the Philippines and Puerto Rico didn’t have the
racial composition required for liberty.
There are two possible alternatives to American
global hegemony, whose decline has perhaps been pre-
maturely declared but is nonetheless on the wane. In
one, the nativist impulse prevails and we have an even
larger military, contained in a nation surrounded by
walls and protected by travel bans. In the other, the
United States embraces a true internationalism, working
to build institutions to which it will also be accountable.
At the moment, it may be diffi cult to imagine this latter
path. But these past months have given us a glimpse of
the consequences that await us if we fail to capture the

anger that so many harbor toward an American empire
that exacts such terrible costs and benefi ts so few.
Nothing is promised in politics. Movements rise
and fall, truth-tellers often lose, xenophobic nationalists
sometimes gain power, cowards frequently prevail. There
is no determined arc to our history; no guaranteed results
have been foretold. But at no moment over the past half-
century has there been such an opportunity to ask wheth-
er our empire serves our democracy or undermines it.
The question is whether those committed to a less brutal,
less violent, more just, more equal country can muster the
imagination, anger, courage, and energy to seize it. ■
whose only offense was being undocumented: 26 percent had no
criminal re-
cord other than their illegal entry, which under US law is a
misdemeanor unless
repeated. None of them would have been deported under
President Obama’s
“serious crimes” policy.
In fact, immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native- born:
Only
820,000 of the 11 million undocumented have any criminal
record, and only
690,000 have committed serious crimes. The Obama
administration relied
heavily on local cooperation to apprehend the latter, but many
of these
communities are now in sanctuary cities. They will certainly not
cooperate,
which poses what one Immigration and Customs Enforcement
supervisor
calls “perhaps [ the] biggest challenge” for the agency.

The difference between the Trump program and Obama’s is
illustrated
by Guadalupe García de Rayos, a 35-year-old Phoenix wife and
mother of
two American-born teenagers. Rayos, who has lived here for 21
years, was
convicted of using a fake Social Security number eight years
ago—a com-
mon offense among the undocumented—in order to become a
janitor at
an amusement park. Obama’s DHS allowed her to stay despite a
deporta-
tion order, but required her to check in annually with ICE,
which she did.
When Rayos showed up at ICE’s offi ces in early February,
however, she
was arrested and promptly deported to Mexico. Her family is
now without
a wife and mother. And according to DHS Secretary John
Kelly’s February
directives on deportation, all undocumented immigrants are
deportable [see
Julianne Hing, “ICE Amps Up,” March 20].
One group not intended to be affected by the directives so far
are the
Dreamers, 750,000 young people who were brought here as
children and are
currently in school or in the military. Under Obama’s Deferred
Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, they have temporary but
renewable
permission to stay and work. That can easily change, however:
The new
directives state that deportation relief must be determined on a
case-by-case

rather than class basis. Also, the Dreamers provided the federal
government
with personal information under a promise of privacy, but
Trump’s DHS
directives abolish privacy rights for all undocumented
immigrants.
Among the directives’ most frightening provisions is an
expansion of the
“expedited removal” procedure—quick deportation without a
judicial hear-
ing. Under Obama, this procedure was used only for those here
less than two
weeks and found within 100 miles of the border. Kelly’s new
orders extend it
to people anywhere in the country who have been here for up to
two years.
Over 10 million immigrant families have at least one
undocumented
member, and as a result of these directives, the immigrant
community is ter-
rifi ed. In New York, Florida, New Jersey, Arizona, and
elsewhere, immigrants are staying off the streets and out
of the stores and shopping malls, which is already dam-
aging local economies. Children are being kept home
from schools; exploited workers have become even
more vulnerable; and law-enforcement offi cials worry
that the immigrant community will no longer cooperate
with them.
However, it’s unlikely that Trump will be able to
deport several million immigrants, at least in the fore-
seeable future, given the dire shortage of immigration
agents, judges, and courts. Kelly does plan to hire thou-
sands of new ICE and Border Patrol agents, but that will

take time and many billions of dollars. And congressional
Republicans may balk at the latter, especially since Trump
hasn’t indicated where the money will come from.
Trump’s economic and immigration policies are dis-
honest, stupid, and cruel. His deportation and exclusion
orders violate a principle fundamental to every civilized
society and honored until now by both Democrats and
Republicans: keeping families together. If stone and met-
al could cry, the Statue of Liberty would be weeping. ■
(continued from page 15)
Among
the most
frightening
of Trump’s
new
deportation
directives
is the
expansion of
“expedited
removal.”
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OUR TAKE
8 | AMERICAMAGAZINE.ORG
The Family Separation Crisis Reveals How Far We Are From a
Just Immigration Policy
How much suffering and outrage
will it take to change the terms of
the immigration debate? The recent
tragic stories of family separations
at our border—an inhumane and
unnecessary method of deterrence
freely chosen by the Trump
administration—has begun to provide
an answer.
How much pain, cruelty and cha-
os is the administration willing to in-
flict in order to appeal to President
Trump’s base? At least as much pain
as children wailing when they are tak-
en from their parents. At least as much
cruelty as parents being told their
children are going to be bathed when
they in fact are being taken away. At
least as much chaos as 2,300 chil-
dren taken from their families with no
credible plan or apparent concern for
reuniting them.

How much moral and political
opposition needs to be mounted until
the administration finally admits—as
it apparently has begun to with the
signing of an executive order—that
it has gone too far? At least as much
as both the Catholic bishops and the
Southern Baptist Convention de-
nouncing family separations as im-
moral and unbiblical. At least as much
as lawmakers from both parties call-
ing clearly for a change in course.
And for all this, not yet enough.
Officials from the administration,
with Mr. Trump personally leading
the charge, have continued to describe
their actions as mandated by law—a
bald lie—in order to use the tragedy
they have manufactured as leverage
for their legislative demands.
Moral and political pressure on
the Trump administration must be
maintained. Since launching his pres-
idential campaign with racist slurs
against Mexican immigrants, Mr.
Trump has masterfully manipulated
fear of immigrants to build his own
power while eroding respect for their
human dignity. Appealing to nativist
sentiments seems to be his primary
goal, even more than a border wall,
which likely will not work.

The executive order merely re-
places the cruelty of family separa-
tion with the cruelty of family deten-
tion. The cause of both policies is the
Trump administration’s “zero-toler-
ance” policy to prosecute every per-
son crossing into the United States
without authorization. The fact is,
there is no humane or just way to
enforce unjust laws. If the American
people will not abide using children to
threaten immigrants—or if even that
threat proves insufficient balanced
against the violence and poverty im-
migrants face in their home coun-
tries—what assault on human dignity
will be next? It will not be enough to
reject and repent of these extraordi-
nary assaults on the integrity of the
family unless the United States also
reckons with the fact that its immigra-
tion policy needs radical change.
While three fifths of the country
disapproves of Mr. Trump’s handling
of immigration overall, and even
greater numbers reject his family
separation policy, a small majority of
Republican voters support both. The
United States is being held hostage to
the immoral and unachievable polit-
ical goals of immigration extremists
who have rejected attempts at com-
promise. As a senator, Attorney Gen-
eral Jeff Sessions led the opposition

that doomed the last serious congres-
sional attempt at immigration reform,
assisted by his communications direc-
tor, Stephen Miller, who is now Mr.
Trump’s domestic policy advisor and
the chief architect of his immigration
strategy. No progress on immigration
can be achieved if the administration
requires that the majority of the coun-
try simply capitulates to their demands.
Border security, while necessary,
is not an absolute good, as Catholic
social teaching recognizes. Its pursuit
must be balanced with the need for
just methods of enforcement and even
more with the basic right of people to
migrate in order to sustain their own
lives and those of their families. It is
both a moral and a practical impos-
sibility to seal our southern border,
when life in the United States is so
much safer than in the violence- and
poverty-plagued countries immi-
grants are fleeing.
Any realizable proposal to secure
the border must start by expanding,
rather than reducing, the flow of le-
gal, regulated immigration from Latin
America to something commensu-
rate with the actual demand. It must
recognize the need to offer asylum to
those fleeing not only political perse-
cution but domestic abuse and gang
violence. It must be the kind of com-

prehensive approach pursued by the
Reagan administration during the
last major successful reform in 1986,
including a path to citizenship for the
11 million undocumented immigrants
already peacefully living and working
in the United States. Otherwise, the
country will simply be priming the
pump for the next crisis.
The U.S. bishops have already
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JULY 9, 2018 | 9
President and Editor in Chief Matt Malone, S.J.
Executive Editors Maurice Timothy Reidy
Sam Sawyer, S.J.
Kerry Weber
Editor at Large James Martin, S.J.
Production Editor Robert C. Collins, S.J.
Senior Editors Kevin Clarke
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criticized the new immigration bill
proposed by the House Republican
leadership along these lines. But in
order to achieve anything better, the
energy of opposition to the Trump
administration’s family separation
policy must be maintained past this
immediate moment of crisis.
The searing images of children
being removed from their parents
and held in cages in immigration de-
tention centers have roused the con-
science of the country. The consistent

and explicit witness given by many
religious leaders seems to have fi nal-
ly made it clear to the public that the
God of the Bible stands unambigu-
ously on the side of the “stranger in
the land.”
Catholics and all Americans
should continue to press political
leaders to make a stand there as well
and should evaluate what direct ac-
tions they might be able to take, con-
sidering their unique circumstances
and abilities, to aid those suff ering
because of these policies. The bishops
should continue their prophetic lead-
ership on this issue, including trips
to the border and detention facilities.
Offi cials working in the Trump ad-
ministration and those responsible
for carrying out policies designed to
stoke fear of immigrants should care-
fully examine their consciences and
discern whether their resignations
would achieve more good than their
continued work within the system.
How much prayer and protest will
it take to achieve a more just immigra-
tion policy for the United States? At
least this much. For the sake of our
brothers and sisters on our borders,
we can do no less.

© America Press Inc. 2018. All rights reserved.
www.americamagazine.org
The Problem With U.S. Immigration Policy
America is better than it's absurdly contradictory immigration
policy.
By Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Contributor | Feb. 2, 2018, at 6:00
a.m.
The Trump administration's decision to end Temporary
Protected Status for natural-disaster refugees from El Salvador,
first granted in
the wake of two devastating earthquakes in 2001 and routinely
extended since then, is a perfect example of what is wrong with
U.S.
immigration policy.
[READ: DHS: 1 in 7 DACA Recipients Did Not Apply to Renew
Status]
It comes at a time when everybody is talking about immigration.
The Democrats are demanding action on DACA, the Deferred
Action for
Childhood Arrivals program initiated by President Obama.
President Trump says he's okay with DACA, so long as
Congress funds his
border wall and agrees to end "chain migration" and lottery
visas. The Senate's "Gang of Eight" continues to push for
comprehensive
reform.
Meanwhile, the 200,000 Salvadoran refugees who were granted

U.S. Temporary Protected Status – some of whom have been
living in
the U.S. for nearly a generation – are being thrown under the
bus.
The federal government is stumbling over a problem of its own
creation, having made it almost impossible for the Salvadorans
who
lawfully have lived, worked, paid taxes and raised children
under TPS to acquire permanent status. The absence of
meaningful
immigration reform and the resulting inability to provide a path
toward permanent residence for such immigrants has meant that
this
temporary humanitarian program has had to be renewed so often
that it has become permanent "de facto" but not "de jure."
THE REPORT: OPINION
Demonstrators rally at Boston City Hall to protest the Trump
administration's decision to end a federal humanitarian
immigration program known as Temporary Protected Status for
an estimated
200,000 Salvadorans. (Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe/Getty
Images)
https://www.usnews.com/topics/author/alvaro-vargas-llosa
https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status
http://www.recoveryplatform.org/countries_and_disasters/disast
er/30/el_salvador_earthquake_2001
http://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-10-
19/dhs-1-in-7-daca-recipients-did-not-apply-to-renew-status
The absurdity of the situation is now apparent with the decision
to expel the Salvadorans, who in most cases by now have

stronger
connections with the United States than with their country of
origin, where – despite post-earthquake reconstruction –
economic and
social problems, especially gang-related violence, continue to
make everyday life unsafe.
[SEE: Immigration Cartoons]
President Trump didn't create the TSP-limbo problem. But he
has decided to put an end to the absurdity in the worst possible
way:
without even beginning to address the larger issue of
undocumented immigration.
Fewer than 200,000 Salvadorans, and less than 300,000 people
in all if we count other nationalities, currently reside in the
United States
under the TPS program, a tiny percentage of the nearly 44
million immigrants currently living in the United States. In
what way does
targeting these people even begin to address the issue of
undocumented immigration?
The administration knows, or should know, that its decision will
devastate many lives. It's chosen to pick on an immigrant group
that fits
many people's idea of undesirable immigration: poorly
educated, low-skilled foreigners. President Trump is aware that
even Americans
who are not ill-disposed towards immigration are inclined, after
years of being told that only high-skilled, technologically
sophisticated
immigrants contribute to the country, to see low-skilled
foreigners as a burden, rather than a resource.

Many studies have shown this to be false. Low-skilled
immigrants free up native workers to do other types of jobs and
eventually
contribute to the economy both as producers and consumers.
Some two million Salvadorans currently live in the United
States, half of whom were born here. According to the
Migration Policy
Institute, Salvadorans have the lowest educational achievement
after Mexicans – less than 48 percent have high school diplomas
and
only 8 percent a bachelor's degree. And, yes, many of them
work, mostly in California, Texas, New York and the
Washington, D.C., area,
in jobs requiring little education.
Those who hold temporary protected status are part of that
community and work primarily in the construction, landscaping
and restaurant
industries. The demand for their labor is strong. Workforce
participation among Salvadorans who are here under TPS is 88
percent, 25
points above the rate of the general U.S. population.
The combination of low educational attainment and strong work
ethic is an enduring theme in the story of U.S. immigration
history. The
Salvadoran community is following the same assimilation cycle
followed by other immigrant groups since the nineteenth
century. That's
why, for instance, the children of Salvadoran immigrants
complete high school at a rate five times higher than their
parents.
[PHOTOS: The Big Picture – January 2018]

In a book on immigration that I wrote some years ago, I offered
statistics showing that there is little difference between the way
Italians
and other immigrant groups rose through the ranks in the United
States and the way Latin American immigrants are doing so
today. The
assimilation cycle takes place over three generations, and that
includes Salvadorans.
The plight of the Salvadorans who have been working and
raising their children here for two decades under a periodically
renewed TPS
– a consequence of the failure to pass immigration reform and
create a legal mechanism for immigrants to come out of the
shadows
permanently – is further proof that U.S. immigration policy is
absurdly contradictory, lacks a comprehensive view of how the
moving parts
of the economy fit together, and shows little historical
awareness of how immigrant groups assimilate and help make
the United States
the dynamic economic and cultural powerhouse it is today.
America is better than this.
http://www.usnews.com/cartoons/immigration-cartoons
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/
http://cmsny.org/publications/jmhs-tps-elsalvador-honduras-
haiti/
http://www.usnews.com/news/the-
report/photos/2017/01/16/photos-the-big-picture-january-2018
Copyright 2018 the U.S. News & World Report, L.P. All rights
reserved.

P r e s id e n t D o n a ld T r u m p is ta k in g a h a rd lin e o
n p e o p le liv in g in th e
U.S. ille g a lly . W h a t d o e s th is m e a n f o r m illio n s
o f u n d o c u m e n te
im m ig r a n ts a n d t h e ir fa m ilie s ? b y b r o o k e r o
s s
N A R E C E N T E V E N IN G in
Phoenix, Arizona, protesters
surrounded a van as it was pulling
away from a U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.
The activists were demanding the
release of the woman inside the van,
who, they feared, was about to be
sen t o u t of the U nited States.
G uadalupe Garcfa de Rayos, an
u n d o c u m e n t e d imm igrant from
Mexico, had been detained earlier
th at day after reporting for her
annual meeting with immigration
officials. She’d been required to
attend the meetings since a 2008
a rre st for using a fake S o c i a l
S e c u rity n u m b e r, which is a crime.
Rayos, a custodian, says she was
just trying to get a job to support her
two kids, who were both born in the
U.S. (and therefore are citizens).
Despite the dem onstrators’ efforts,

the van departed. Rayos’s family
didn’t know where she’d been taken
until she called the next morning—
from Nogales, Mexico. She had
been deported.
Rayos was one of the first immi-
grants to be rem oved from the
country since President Donald
Trump announced new policies on
illegal immigration. On January 25,
he issued an executive order that
gives immigration officials greater
authority to carry out deportations:
Any undocumented immigrant who
has com m itted any crime, even a
minor offense such as a traffic viola-
tion, can now be deported.
This is a sharp contrast from for-
m er P resident Barack O bam a’s
policy, which prioritized deporting
dangerous criminals, such as m ur-
derers. T h a t’s why Rayos—who
w asn’t considered a th reat—had
been allowed to stay in the U.S.
“This goes fu rth e r than any o th er
p re s id e n t.. . . If som eone is here illeg ally,
th e y are targ ets fo r rem oval.”
6 A P R IL 2 4, 2017 GO TO JUNIOR.SCHOLASTIC.COM TO:

W atch a V id e o / / ( ^ D o w n l o a d Skills Sheets
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From le f t to righ t: Im m i g r a t i o n o lf i c e r s a r r e s t
a s u s p e c t e d u n d o c u m e n t e d i m m ig r a n t ; P r e
s id e n t T r u m p h o ld s a n
e x e c u t iv e o r d e r o n i m m ig r a t io n ; s is te rs in L
os A n g e le s p r o t e s t t h e a r r e s t o f t h e i r f a t h e
r , w h o is u n d o c u m e n t e d .
Because undocum ented immi-
grants technically break the law just
by living in the country illegally,
experts say th a t T ru m p ’s order
could easily be applied to the esti-
mated 11 million of them who are
currently in the U.S.
“Every administration has to pri
oritize who they will go after,” says
Steve Yale-Loehr, an immigration
law professor at Cornell Univeisity
in New York. “This goes further than
any other president. To make it sim-
ple: If someone is here illegally, they
are targets for removal.”
TOUGHER RULES
The m ajority of un d o cu m en ted
immigrants in the U.S. come from
Mexico and Central America. (See
box, p. 8.) However, their numbers
haven’t increased since 2009, thanks
to tougher border security and an

improving Mexican economy.
The Trump administration says
that u ndocum ented im m igrants
YOU? ACTIVITIES
arcuse. s u s p ic io n .
I NEEP TO <EL
Yo u r im m ig r a t io n
PAPERS...
b e f o r e . o r
AFT ER I FINISH
Yo u r l a w n ?
S o m e p e o p l e v i e w u n d o c u m e n t e d im m ig r a n
t s as c rim in a ls ; o th e r s c o n s id e r
t h e m t o b e h a r d w o r k e r s w h o d o m a n y o f t h
e jo b s A m e r ic a n s d o n ’t w a n t t o d o .
“victimize Americans” and disre
gard the “rule of law.” Trump says
the new deportation policy fulfills
part of his campaign prom ise to
crack down on illegal immigration,
a plan that also includes building a
wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
(See JS, March 13,2017.)
In addition to expanding who can
be ta r g e te d for d e p o rta tio n ,
Trum p’s executive order calls for
hiring 10,000 m ore im m igration
enforcement agents. He also wants

to enlist police officers throughout
the U.S. to help the agents identify
the undocumented.
People in favor of Trum p’s plan
say undocumented immigrants take
jobs from Americans, drain the
country’s resources, and commit
crimes. Others point out that the
deportation policy simply strength-
ens laws that already exist but have
not been consistently enforced.
“The message is, the immigration
law is back in business,” says Mark
Krikorian, director of the Center for
Imm igration Studies, which su p -
ports immigration restrictions.
But others are alarmed by Trump’s
stance on deportations. They say
undocumented immigrants improve
the economy and often take — ►
JUNIOR.SCHOLASTIC.COM 7
N A TIO NAL
low-paying jobs that few Americans
want. Many experts also disagree
with T rum p’s claims that those
here illegally frequently commit
crimes. According to the Migration
Policy Institute, only about 820,000

undocumented U.S. immigrants—
less than 8 percent of them—have
been convicted of a crime.
“We’re living in a new era now,”
says Phoenix immigration lawyer
Ray Ybarra Maldonado, “an era of
war on immigrants.”
A N EXCEPTION?
One group that may be exempt from
Trum p’s executive order is people
covered un d er the
Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) program. In
2012, Obama issued
an executive order
temporarily protect-
ing from deportation
young people who’d
been brought to the
country illegally as
children. Those who
qualify for DACA
have renewable two-
year permits to work
legally in the U.S.
On the campaign
tra il, T rum p said
DACA was unconsti-
tu tio n a l, a n d he
vowed to abolish the
program. But he seems to have soft-
ened his tone since taking office,

referring to the young immigrants
as “incredible kids." Trump’s depor
tation order does not affect DACA.
Still, m any of the m ore than
750,000 people protected under
DACA are uneasy about their futures
in the U.S. (See "My Parents Were
Deported, ’’ right.)
SAFE SPACES
In response to Trump's order, dozens
of cities have designated themselves
as sanctuary cities that vow to protect
the undocumented. From New York
City to Seattle, Washington, cities are
providing safe zones where such
immigrants can seek refuge, includ-
ing churches and schools.
Also, m any local governm ents
have ordered their police officers
not to assist immigration officials
in rounding up immigrants. They
say it will make people afraid to
report crimes and takes officers
away from their primary duty of
protecting people.
Trump has threat-
ened to w ith h o ld
federal funds from
sanctuary cities in
response. U.S. law
gives the president
th e pow er to set

immigration policy,
so Trump says he has
th e a u t h o r i t y to
decide who should be
deported.
But many cities are
p rep a re d to fight.
“We will not give in to
th r e a ts ,” Ed Lee,
mayor of San Fran-
cisco, said in a recent
statem ent he issued
with two other Cali-
fornia mayors. “[We]
will stay... united against any and all
efforts to divide our residents, our
cities, and our country.” ♦
W ith re p o rtin g b y The New York Times
CORE QUESTION w h a t
a r e s o m e a r g u m e n t s f o r a n d
a g a i n s t a l l o w i n g i m m i g r a n t s
i n t h e U .S . i l l e g a l l y t o s t a y ?
M y
P aren ts
W e re
D e p o rte d
Paola Benefo (rig h t) is a
student a t Berea College
in Berea, K entucky, w ho is
p ro te c te d by DACA. She

explains w h a t it’s like to
be living in th e U.S. w ith o u t
her m o th er and fath e r.
In D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 , I w a s h e a d i n g t o t h e l i b
r a r y h e r e
a t s c h o o l t o s t u d y w h e n I
g o t a c a l l f r o m m y m o t h e r ’ s
l a w y e r . H e s a id s h e w a s
f i g h t i n g h e r d e p o r t a t i o n
t o G h a n a , W e s t A f r i c a , a n d
I w o u l d n e e d t o w r i t e a
s t a t e m e n t e x p l a i n i n g w h y s h e
s h o u l d b e a l l o w e d t o s t a y in
t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s .
T h e p h o n e c a l l s e n t m e ,
z o m b i e l i k e , a c r o s s t h e
q u a d t o m y d o r m . I s a t a t
m y c o m p u t e r in a d a z e
o f a n g e r a n d s a d n e s s . I
c o u l d n ’ t b e l i e v e t h a t t h i s w a s

h a p p e n i n g — a g a in .
M y f a t h e r h a d b e e n
d e p o r t e d a b r u p t l y t h r e e y e a r s
e a r l i e r , w h e n I w a s s t i l l in h i g h
s c h o o l . H e w a s e x p e l l e d a f t e r
o v e r s t a y i n g h is t o u r i s t visa,
t h e s a m e r e a s o n m y m o t h e r
w a s f a c i n g d e p o r t a t i o n . H is
a b s e n c e w a s u n b e a r a b l e ,
Top Countries
of Origin for
Undocumented
Immigrants
in the U.S.
MEXICO
6,200,000
GUATEMALA
723.000
EL SALVADOR
465.000
HONDURAS
337.000
CHINA

268.000
SOURCE: Migration Policy Institute
8 A P R IL 2 4 , 2017
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THE DEADLIEST CROSSING
On the front lines of the border crisis as migrants take their
chances with Arizona's perilous Sonoran Desert to avoid
Trump's crackdown
JOSE FELT EXHILARATION AND DREAD as he trailed the
coyote. He had just reached the United States, but in the
blacked-out night he had to double-time his footsteps to keep up
with his guide, navigating cactus spines that sliced his arms and
ankles. They were at the beginning of an 80-mile journey
through Arizona's Sonoran Desert, a vast and unrelenting
wilderness, and it would take at least a week of hard trekking
before they walked out. ➣ Shortly after they ducked under the
post-and-rail barrier at the border, one of the most desolate
stretches of the U.S.'s 2,000-mile southern frontier, the coyote
stopped and turned back, promising Jose that another guide
would be waiting for him on the far side of the valley ahead.
The pair had struck a deal to make the entire journey together,
but now Jose walked alone in the darkness. The provisions the
coyote had given him were pitiful: two gallons of water, some

beans, and a sleeve of saltine crackers. His adrenaline surged;
he was determined to cover a lot of open ground before
daybreak, when the desert became a furnace. ➣ In his wildest
dreams, Donald Trump could not build a wall more effective
than the Sonoran Desert — 100,000 square miles of rugged
mountain ranges and wide, bone-dry valleys straddling the
Mexico border from southeastern California to eastern Arizona.
Summer temperatures can exceed 120 degrees, and surface heat
on the rocky floor soars a third higher. Committed to reaching
the U.S. at any cost — and fearful of the increasingly hostile
U.S. authorities at the border — migrants who have given up on
the asylum process are detouring into this remote, scarcely
policed stretch of desert, gambling their lives on a journey
through hellfire. Nearly 9,000 people are believed to have
perished crossing here since the 1990s, but the number is likely
much higher than that, as only a fraction of the dead are found
due to the vastness of the terrain and scant government
resources for search-and-rescue operations. It's a microcosm of
migration at its most brutal extreme, and the ranks of the
missing continue to multiply.
Jose, a stocky 22-year-old with wide brown eyes and a faint
mustache, had come a long way from the poor and violent
highlands of Guatemala. Gang members extorted half of his
store-clerk salary each week, making it almost impossible to
raise his two children. "It didn't matter how hard I worked," he
says. "There was no future." He saved what he could, took out a
loan, and headed north for the U.S. At the border, he considered
crossing alone. But the killer heat and harrowing stories about
what could happen if he entered the desert without the cartels'
permission made him think twice. He paid a Mexican smuggler
everything he had left to take him across, almost $4,000.
Over the next three days and nights, Jose scrambled up and
down mountain ridges searching for help. The second coyote
who was supposed to meet him never showed up. "Everything
looked the same," Jose says. After four days of wandering, he
ran out of water, which he'd stored in matte black jugs to avoid

giving off a reflection that could betray his location to border
agents. By day five, his feet bled through his shredded sneakers.
Vultures began to circle overhead "waiting for me to die," he
says. "I was totally lost, losing my mind." The next day, he
drank his urine.
At some point on day six, Jose staggered into an irrigation
pipeline and wrenched the valve open. He drank himself full
and then cut the water off completely, hoping someone would
come to turn it back on and find him. A man in a pickup truck
finally arrived to check on the water and offered, in Spanish, to
drive Jose to the nearest town. He had walked in a circle. He
was back in Mexico.
TEN DAYS AFTER being rescued from the desert, Jose sits
with his left foot in a bucket, seeping blood and pus at a
migrant shelter in Sonoyta, Mexico, a lawless Sonoran border
town across from the Lukeville, Arizona, port of entry. Run on
donations, the Casa del Migrante is a half-built compound of
cinder-block and canvas tents ringed by metal fencing and razor
wire.
When I first turned up, in June, the atmosphere was tense and
insular; the shelter's founder had been arrested the week before
by Mexican authorities on charges of illegally transporting
migrants (a move activists say was aimed at appeasing the
Trump administration). Wincing in pain, Jose nonetheless plans
to make a second attempt to cross the border as soon as the peak
summer heat subsides. For the rest of the 60-odd migrants at the
shelter — most of them men from Honduras, El Salvador, and
Guatemala — his near-death experience is a warning, but not a
deterrent.
Despite all the risks of crossing, the hopefuls keep coming.
More than 144,000 undocumented immigrants were encountered
by Border Patrol officers along the Southwest frontier in May,
the largest monthly total in 13 years and the third month in a
row that more than 100,000 were taken into custody at the
border. Alone or with family in tow, they took flight north as a
last-ditch effort to escape dire poverty, climate-crisis-driven

drought, and a plague of criminal gangs that have made life
back home unbearable. While intensified anti-migrant measures
by the Trump administration and the Mexican government have
since led to a drop in arrivals, the flow has not been stopped.
Local volunteers have long tried to ease migrants' passage by
leaving bottles of water, food, and medical aid in the so-called
Ajo corridor, a zone running north from the border astride state
highway 85 through the small, unincorporated town of Ajo, 40
miles north of Mexico, where migrant deaths and
disappearances have been a grim fact of life for decades,
instilling a strong humanitarian ethos in the community. But
federal authorities are even cracking down on that lifeline,
arresting volunteers on charges of littering, trespassing, and
human smuggling. Human- rights advocates say the Trump
administration is "criminalizing solidarity" while enforcing
harsh policies that compel migrants to risk their lives in the
desert. "They don't do a damn thing to help these [migrants],"
says Gerardo Campos of the San Diego-based volunteer aid
group Aguilas del Desierto. "This is legalized genocide, and the
Trump administration wants this to happen."
Migrant advocacy groups say the roots of the crisis go back to a
Clinton-era Border Patrol strategy called Prevention Through
Deterrence. By cutting off easy land crossings between the U.S.
and Mexico through stepped-up surveillance and policing,
authorities effectively forced people to follow more lethal
routes. Trump has doubled down on that strategy, weapon-izing
his nativist rhetoric with ruthless policies such as "zero
tolerance," which separated thousands of children from their
parents. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been
conducting sweeps around the country, locking up
undocumented migrants en masse in grossly overcrowded
detention centers alongside asylum seekers rounded up by
Customs and Border Protection. Adults are crammed into
standing-room-only cells, and families with young children
sleep in caged areas on concrete floors. At least seven children
have died in CBP custody since last year, after nearly a decade

of the agency reporting no child fatalities.
"It's tantamount to institutional torture, and it's very
purposeful," says Margo Cowan, a Pima County, Arizona,
public defender and manager of a community immigration
clinic. The facilities are "designed to hurt people so they break
and say, 'I can't stand it anymore.' "
"We're all scared to get caught," says Adolfo, a Salvadoran
migrant staying at the Sonoyta shelter who was previously
detained in the U.S. "I know how crazy it is — the cells, the
way they treat you. It's a total lie that they respect human
rights."
"The government seems to have completely lost its moral
compass," says Ana Adlerstein, a migrant-aid volunteer who
was arrested by a CBP officer in May after escorting an asylum
seeker to the Lukeville port of entry. "Targeting people who
help migrants navigate the asylum process, leave out water, or
provide medical care literally can be the difference between life
or death. Outlawing such vital acts of kindness is contributing
to the deaths of thousands of people."
AJO APPEARS TO BE a sleepy desert oasis, with low-slung
homes and a whitewashed Spanish Colonial Revival-style plaza
ringed by towering palm trees. In its heyday, Ajo boasted one of
the largest copper mines in Arizona; today it's a final pit stop
for tourists heading down to beaches on the Sea of Cortez in
Mexico.
Last January, Ajo made national news when four volunteers
with the migrant-aid group No More Deaths faced criminal
charges for entering the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge
without a permit and leaving water. All visitors to the federally
protected wilderness, which extends west of town, are required
to get a permit; mine was issued for free in just minutes online.
But authorities have resolutely denied them to NMD volunteers.
The government dropped the charges, but prosecutors
aggressively pursued felony counts of smuggling and conspiracy
against another volunteer, Scott Warren, a 36-yearold geologist
living in Ajo. They accused him of harboring undocumented

migrants last year and sought a 20-year prison sentence.
The day after I arrived in Ajo, many in town breathed a sigh of
relief: News broke that a jury in Tucson was unable to reach a
verdict in Warren's case (although federal prosecutors have
since announced they'll retry Warren in November). "I hope
Scott gets off for good, otherwise I'll have to ask dying people
for ID before I give them water," says Jose Castillo, the town's
unofficial historian. The grandson of a Mexican immigrant,
Castillo, 80, worked in Ajo's copper mine until it shut down in
the early 1980s. He became a member of the Ajo Samaritans, a
loose-knit volunteer group created to help migrants passing
through the area.
Castillo took me up to the local museum he manages and dug up
a story from the July 10th, 1980, edition of the Ajo Copper
News: "Grueling desert search finds 13 alive, 13 dead." A group
of Salvadoran migrants fleeing the country's civil war had lost
their way in the Growler Valley, the same death trap where
Warren was charged for leaving water. The migrants were saved
by law enforcement and residents who searched to the point of
exhaustion in planes, helicopters, and on foot, then demanded
survivors receive asylum. "People in Ajo," they wrote in a letter
to their Congress members, "are willing to house them."
Castillo says that spirit endures, though the 2012 construction
of a new Border Patrol station and an influx of agents have
sown a quiet tension in the area. The Border Patrol is the "only
job that pays real money," Castillo says, lamenting the hard-line
mindset that has accompanied its growth. "Before, we were
human," he says. "Now we're becoming more robotic."
By some accounts, Trump is following a playbook that was
written in Arizona, a Republican- led state that spawned some
of the most draconian anti-immigrant policies in the country.
From the infamous "tent cities" — outdoor jails composed
largely of migrants — to SB1070 (a.k.a. the "show me your
papers" provision), a law that allows police to racially profile
and determine the legal status of anyone they suspect to be
undocumented.

A coalition of grassroots activists, galvanized by young
Mexican Americans and civil- rights groups (the state's
Hispanic population is 30 percent and growing), has fought to
change the state's trajectory. The architect behind SB1070 was
recalled, and disgraced Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is
gone, his Phoenix tent city closed after 24 years in operation.
But the expansion of CBP operations and frustrations over
immigration reform have strained sympathies along the border,
putting activists and migrants in peril.
The government's readiness to punish humanitarians has left
their ranks uneasy, but locals say they are not cowed.
Volunteers continue to make regular water drop-offs in Cabeza
Prieta and other off-limits areas, and the Ajo Samaritans
recently opened a migrant- aid station at the southern end of
town. "If anything, this crackdown has made us more resolved
to make sure work continues," says one. "People of conscience
must act."
At dawn one morning, I accompany Cheryl Opalski, a
Samaritan, who was taking a new volunteer out on a water drop-
off. The women start the five-mile circuit at a white cross
honoring deceased migrants, then hike through a bank of
scrubby hills to place gallon jugs at three locations. On each jug
Opalski had scrawled in marker, Agua pura, vaya con dios —
"Pure water, go with God." The final stop is just shy of the
Cabeza Prieta boundary. "It's important that we stay visible and
get our message out that this is right," says Opalski.
In January 2018, No More Deaths released a video reel that
shows Border Patrol agents dumping out water left for migrants
in the desert. (Warren was arrested the next day; some
volunteers believe it was in retaliation for the video.) A CBP
agent who asks not to use his name for fear of losing his job
tells me he's stopped co-workers from destroying water supplies
in the past and adds, "Some activists are good people trying to
help." But he argues that water drop-offs in restricted areas are
incentivizing illicit activity and leading to more deaths. In such
extreme heat, people rapidly sweat out salt and electrolytes and

can't replace them fast enough, he says. Once a person drops to
a critically low level of sodium, drinking more water depletes
the electrolytes that remain and causes cells to swell, increasing
the likelihood of heat-related death. The border agent says
there's evidence that migrants who have picked up water from
volunteer groups have died anyway.
But activists in Ajo believe it is safer to provide water than to
withhold it. "People are going to move regardless — they're not
moving because they believe there are water drops ahead of
them," says John Orlowski, an NMD volunteer. "When we drop
water, it's in the moment. Someone's life is at risk, and if they
can find a gallon of water it's gonna help save their life. What
they do from that point on, I have no idea."
MAURICIO STUDIES a hand-drawn map of the borderlands
posted at the Sonoyta shelter. Above it is a picture of a Mexican
man who went missing in April; a second map shows
mushrooming clusters of red dots denoting where bodies have
been found, with a plea: "Don't go! There's not enough water!
It's not worth it!"
But Mauricio says there's no going back to Honduras. He says
he tried to steer clear of the gangs that overran his barrio in San
Pedro Sula, one of the most violent cities on Earth, but they
caught up with him. Ten years ago, his fruit-delivery truck was
ambushed by members of MS-13, who hauled him out at
gunpoint when he tried to drive away. He ran for it, and they
hacked his head with a machete, leaving an eight-inch scar that
carves into his forehead.
Still, Mauricio says he didn't get serious about leaving until the
gang started courting his 14-year-old son. He told them to back
off. Death threats ensued. He left Honduras alone with a plan to
send for his son later, and spent a month on the road evading
Mexican authorities, who have intensified their crackdown on
migrant traffic to head off Trump's threat of tariffs on Mexican
products.
Mauricio's goal is to reach Arizona's Interstate 8, which runs
roughly parallel to the border, a seven-to- 12-day trek. He's

almost broke, and local construction work pays only $5 a day,
so hiring a $5,000 coyote is out of the question. Which leaves
him a tough choice: Carry a backpack of marijuana for a cartel,
or pay a $500 "tax" for permission to cross on his own, the
riskiest option. With no knowledge of the terrain, no ability to
carry all the water he would need or find sources along the way,
that would be suicide.
And the Sinaloa cartel, the dominant drug mafia in the region,
knows this. Migrants who can't afford to hire a coyote will
sometimes mule for the narcos, whose well-worn routes and
high-tech smuggling tools (drones, encrypted radios, night-
vision goggles) up the odds of skirting Border Patrol and
surviving the treacherous desert crossing. Marijuana still
accounts for the brunt of smuggling operations, but legalization
in Colorado, California, and other key markets has cut deeply
into the cartel's margins, putting a greater premium on hard
drugs and migrant trafficking. By some estimates, the cartel
gets $3,000, or more than 60 percent of the fee, for every
migrant coyotes take across. "Better border enforcement in the
U.S.," says a Mexican government official, "has only increased
the narcos' profits."
"With very rare exceptions, the cartels have full control of
cross-border traffic," the CBP agent tells me. "If you can
coordinate it, it's still very easy to enter the U.S." He adds that
the cargo seized from migrant conscripts is evolving from pot to
more potent synthetics like meth and fentanyl that are
devastating American communities.
This, of course, adds fuel to the fire of Trump's narrative that
migrants bring drugs and crime. Humanitarians counter that
many drug mules are vulnerable people acting out of
desperation and being exploited. "If they're carrying a bag of
marijuana, I could never call it smuggling because that's the
only way they can get … I wanted to say 'safe passage,' but it's
nowhere near safe, whether you have a guide or not, across this
desert," says Orlowski. "These are people whose lives are
threatened, and the only way of saving their lives is providing

their labor. That's the classic definition of human trafficking."
Cartel scouts are known to rape migrant women and summarily
execute people who wander into their borderlands territory
without approval. One high mountain pass has a "rape tree"
draped with the trophy bras and panties of violated women, and
migrant bodies have been found decapitated.
Daniel, a deaf middle-aged barber from Honduras, shares a bunk
with Mauricio. He re-enacts how police officers robbed him and
two companions on a highway, then passed them off to the
Zetas, a cartel known for extreme brutality. In August 2010, the
Mexican military found a mass grave in Tamaulipas state with
the bodies of 72 migrants who were reportedly executed by the
cartel; the following April, the Zetas intercepted several buses
headed to the border and systematically murdered 193 migrants
on a ranch. Daniel says he and the others were brought to a
compound on the outskirts of Sonora's capital, Hermosillo, and
bound hand and foot with electrical cord. The narcos beheaded
one man when his ransom call went unanswered; they passed
around a joint and laughed. Daniel says he fought frantically to
loosen his hands, and as they tortured the second man, he broke
free and dashed out an open door, arriving at the shelter two
weeks later.
Eager as Daniel is to leave Mexico, an ill-timed departure could
be fatal. The June heat is relentless, and hostile police are
swarming around Sonoyta. A state commander and an agent
were kidnapped and executed by cartel hit men the week before
I showed up. More than 60 police units had swept in, trawling
dusty backstreets and kicking in doors while a chopper thumped
overhead.
One of the cartel's control points on the Mexico side is the
highway west of the Sonoyta-Lukeville border, just opposite the
Organ Pipe National Monument, where cartel gunmen shot and
killed a park ranger in 2002. Locals say the cartel monitors road
traffic around the clock; anyone who attempts to cross without
permission risks a beating, or worse. (One migrant at the shelter
tells me he got off easy the day he decided to walk the road

without permission: Enforcers with AK-47s soon pulled up and
ordered him to turn around.)
I drive out there one morning, past shuttered garages and food
stands. The road is dead quiet save for the occasional tractor-
trailers that whoosh past en route to Mexicali and Nogales. Less
than 40 yards separates the pavement from the border, nothing
more than a post-and-rail barrier meant to stop vehicles from
plowing through. On April 16th, buses pulled up here and nearly
400 migrants walked across, the largest single group ever
apprehended by CBP, mostly families with children. A Border
Patrol agent later explains that the cartel coordinates these mass
dumps to "tie up agents and create a gap in security so they can
move their stuff through uncontested down the line."
Out of nowhere, a pair of white CBP trucks speeds down the
frontage road on the U.S. side. A Sikh migrant from India who
had gone off to find water had left her six-year-old daughter and
three others in bad shape in the desert. Smugglers had dropped
them off along the Mexican highway and told them to walk
across the border on a day temperatures climbed to 108 degrees.
When agents found the girl, Gurupreet Singh, later that day, she
was dead from heatstroke.
THE AGUILAS del Desierto — Eagles of the Desert — search
for those who don't make it out alive. An all-volunteer group
composed largely of ex-migrants, they have come to southern
Arizona about once a month for the past seven years to search
for the missing. They usually act on tips from relatives, who
prefer to contact them by phone (the Aguilas say they receive
more than 20 calls a day) or on Facebook, rather than alert
authorities. Sometimes they track down migrants in detention
centers. More often, they find remains in the wilderness.
"I know what it means to lose your own blood in the desert,"
says Eli Ortiz, the leader of the Aguilas. In 2009, he found the
bodies of his brother and cousin near Cabeza Prieta. "The desert
is like a hungry lion that devours everything," he says.
On a Saturday in June, about 50 volunteers in fluorescent- green
shirts gather at a pass that runs into the Growler Valley. A

wildlife ranger wearing a bulletproof vest and a Stetson drives
up to inspect everyone's permits. To stay in the law's good
graces, the Aguilas play by the rules and report any encounter
with migrants, dead or alive. Everyone loads up on water bottles
and puts fresh batteries in their walk-ie- talkies before filing
down into the valley.
I tag along with Ricardo Esquivias, a crusty 56-year-old from
San Diego. Dark and sun-creased, he's been making search-and-
rescue trips since before the Aguilas were formed and has seen
"hundreds of bodies," giving him a deep respect for the fragility
of life in the desert. And he comes equipped: walking poles,
leather rattlesnake gaiters, first-aid kit, two large CamelBaks
full of water. "I could walk to the border and back, no
problem," he says.
Ricardo left his home in Mexico's Jalisco state at 14 and paid
$200 to cross illegally with coyotes near Tijuana. Today, he is
documented and owns a successful gardening business that will
allow him to send his son to college in the fall. He considers
himself a full beneficiary of the American dream, but he says
that living in the U.S. has left him feeling "like when you pull a
beautiful plant out of the ground and put it in a pot — I've never
been happy here." He plans to retire and return home in five
years. Until then, search-and- rescue work eases his depression.
Entering the valley, the Aguilas try to maintain a line with 25
yards between each person as they pick their way through cholla
cactus and brittlebush. Ricardo scans the ground for traces of
movement while noting its layers of history: ancient rock
drawings, shrapnel from the refuge's days as a bombing range,
an obsidian arrowhead. It isn't long before severe dehydration
sends three volunteers back to camp.
We press deeper into a Mars-like plateau of dark volcanic rock,
and another volunteer collapses from heatstroke, which brings
everything to a halt. Ricardo grumbles in frustration, and when
we resume searching he breaks away from the line to trawl a
dried-up creek bed. The tangles of mesquite and palo verde that
line its banks offer pathetic cover from the sun, but it's

something: Scattered in the underbrush, we find water jugs, torn
shirts, empty tuna cans. "Somebody was just here," Ricardo
says.
It was in this part of the valley, in April, that the Aguilas found
a 50-year-old Salvadoran man who had died a few days before.
Ricardo shows me a picture on his cellphone; the man is
sprawled on his back in camo fatigues, his face pecked apart by
animals. Ricardo says an ID card was recovered, and the
remains were returned to his family "to give them some peace."
(In December, the teamrecovered eight more bodies several
miles to the north.)
A warning call crackles over the radio: "Clave siete! Clave
siete!" Code seven. "Someone has found drugs," Ricardo says,
"a backpack, probably filled with marijuana." I scan the empty
terrain for signs of life. "The alcones [scouts] are always
watching from up there," he says, pointing to a nearby ridge.
"This area is cartel land. They use radios and binoculars to
guide people at night, and they have long-range rifles. We don't
mess with their stuff, so they don't mess with us."
By 4 p.m., the volunteers are withering from exposure. The
search has been grinding on for eight hours and my footsteps
are leaden, hands swollen, thoughts muddled. Shortly after my
water runs out, another member of the group suffers heatstroke.
I take cover in the shadow of a giant saguaro cactus as we wait
for an Aguilas relief truck to come, a breach of park rules for
which the Aguilas are later summoned by authorities. Out here,
the rescuers sometimes need rescuing.
THE MIGRANTS killing time back at the Sonoyta shelter are
not unaware of the purgatory that awaits them. Between stories
from friends and relatives gone before, and the death maps on
the wall, they have an idea of what lies ahead. But with families
that depend on them, and so many threats at their back, some
say they will do what they must to complete the desert crossing.
According to Juan Carlos, an older resident at the shelter, "at
least 80 percent" of the men there will end up as drugmules to
improve their odds of survival. The buy-in to carry a pack is a

fraction of paying a coyote or going it alone. With hundreds of
thousands of dollars at stake, the cartels go to extreme lengths
to protect their routes from the Border Patrol.
"It's the safest way," Juan Carlos says. "I hate drugs — I don't
drink or smoke, but it's the safest way." Come September, he'll
hitch a ride east of town to Ejido del Desierto, the cartel's main
staging ground in the area. His contact at one of the ranches
will give him a backpack, and he'll set off at night. If all goes
well, he'll make it through and join his brother in California.
Mauricio can't wait that long. Though his son is staying with
grandparents in the countryside, he says it's just a matter of
time before the gangs get to him. "They are everywhere, like a
cancer," he says. We walk up a hill behind the shelter with a
view of the border, and I ask whether he'll run drugs or go his
own way. He's hesitant to say, but his gaze stays fixed on the
other side: "I know that God is protecting me." He has already
survived a near-fatal gang attack and a 2,500-mile journey, and
his faith is strong. But he's never set foot in the desert before.
PHOTO (COLOR): THE JOURNEY Adolfo, a Salvadoran
migrant, waits at a shelter in Sonoyta to cross the Sonoran
Desert,
PHOTO (COLOR): a bone-dry wilderness that's claimed
thousands of migrants' lives.
PHOTO (COLOR): DIGNITY FOR THE DEAD ◀ The volunteer
group Aguilas del Desierto, which searches for the remains of
dead migrants, marks a grave in the Sonoran. "The desert is like
a hungry lion that devours everything," say Aguilas founder Eli
Ortiz.
PHOTO (COLOR): NOWHERE TO GO ▲ Central American
migrants steal shade outside a shelter in Sonoyta. Migrants who
can't afford to hire a guide across the desert sometimes mule
drugs for the cartels, who control the border on the Mexican
side.
PHOTO (COLOR): WARNING SIGNS ▶ A map posted at a
migrant shelter in Sonoyta, across the border from Lukeville,
Arizona, shows key reference points in the desert.

PHOTO (COLOR): ALL THAT REMAINS ▼ It's estimated that
nearly 9,000 people have died trying to cross the Sonoran since
the 1990s, though the number is likely much higher, as only a
fraction of the bodies are recovered due to the vastness of the
terrain.
PHOTO (COLOR): CRIMINALIZING COMPASSION ▲ The
death and disappearance of migrants have been facts of life for
decades in the town of Ajo, Arizona, 40 miles north of the
border, where humanitarian groups have sprung up to aid
migrants by placing water in the desert. Ajo made news last
year when volunteer Scott Warren was accused of harboring
undocumented migrants and faced 20 years in prison. The
crackdown has only made volunteers more resolved to help.
"People of conscience must act," says one.
Works Cited
Motlagh, Jason. “The Deadliest Crossing.” Rolling Stone, no.
1332, Oct. 2019, p.
60. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.mc3.edu/login?url=https://search.ebsc
ohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=138721956&sit
e=eds-live&scope=site.

Argument
1. From our textbook, read Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making
Us Stupid,” Alex Weiss’s “Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for
Virtual Stealing,” Jeremy Adam Smith’s “Our Fear of
Immigrants,” or Grant Penrod’s :Anti:Intellectualism: Why We
Hate the Smart Kids.”
2. After each of these essays is a section from the text called

“Engaging with the text.” Read the “For Writing” question (#5)
for the essay you chose to read. That is the writing prompt.
3. Incorporate research into this essay. Use the library database
to find three sources that will help you in your claim about this
pattern/trend you observed. You may also reference the essay
from our textbook if it is relevant to your topic/thesis. Just be
sure to cite it.
4. Complete the checklist attached to the paper topic on the
discussion board to be sure you have fulfilled the assignment.
This checklist is aligned with the grading rubric.
6 pages plus works cited page
MLA format
5 sources from library database
no free internet sites
Use parenthetical citation
Complete an online tutoring session with the online tutors at
MCCC. Follow the link from our B-Board page to get set up
with a session. You will submit proof of your tutoring session
by attaching the tutor feedback when you submit the essay. 10
points will be deducted if that is not attached.

Checklist for Argument
Yes
No
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
Is the paper 6 pages long? (This means that the words will go
all the way to the bottom of the 6th page.)
Is it in MLA format? (12 pt font, double space, 1” margins,
page number and last name in corner header).
Is there a separate works cited page?
Is the works cited double spaced?
Are the 2nd and subsequent lines on the works cited entries
indented 0.5” from the 1st line?
Is the works cited page in ABC order?
Are all of the sources cited (book, database article, reference
books)? No free internet sites.
Are there at least 5 items total on the works cited? If there is

not, there is a problem.
Go through the essay and check the parenthetical citations. Do
you have at least one citation for each item on the works cited?
(If you did not use a source, it can’t be on the works cited).
Did you complete the mandatory tutoring?
THE STRUCTURE
Do you have an introduction that names the trend you chose?
Does it lead the reader into the essay and connect to the thesis
argument you make?
Do you have a thesis statement? (Remember: it can’t be a quote,
a fact, or an announcement).
Do your body paragraphs begin with a topic sentence that is
applicable to the paragraph as a whole?
Did you transition from one paragraph to the next?
Are there clear connections between each body paragraph and
your thesis?
Does your conclusion reiterate your thesis?

Does your conclusion close out the essay without introducing
any new topics?
OTHER
Did you check for grammar errors? Did you read aloud to
yourself- word by word?
Did you get stuck on anything with this assignment?
Did you email the teacher for help?
Did feel challenged by this assignment?
Name:____Roberi
Peralta___________________________________________
Complete this checklist before submitting textual analysis
essay. Post this as well as the essay document.
What is one new thing about writing that you learned from this
assignment?
Comments: Place any additional comments here.
Since the Jeremy Adam Smith article was removed from the
text, the writing prompt was a s well. Some of you expressed
wanted to do that topic anyway. If so, here is the prompt as it
appeared in a previous edition of the book:
Immigration also raises issues less sweeping than deporting
immigrants without legal status or giving them a path to
citizenship. For example, debates at the state and local level
have involved such issues as driver's licenses and in-state
college tuition for undocumented immigrants and "English

only" language policies in government agencies. Choose one
such issue, either in your state or locality, and write an essay
making an argument about it.

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