Anti-Immigration hysteria in Kent County: Part II

Within the last week there has been a great deal of hysteria over the murder of Ruby Garcia, a young woman who was murdered by a man who was in a relationship with the victim. The death of Ruby Garcia is a tragedy, but her death has nothing to do with the killer’s immigration status. 

In Part I, I looked at how the immigration hysteria has played out in Kent County regarding the issue of whether or not Kent County is a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants. Several Republican members of the Kent County Commission, along with the Kent County Sheriff and a Kent County Administrator made it clear that this county in not a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants. It is true that Kent County is ideologically opposed to undocumented immigrants and that they continue to fully cooperate with ICE in the arrest and detention of those immigrants. Today, I want to address what Michigan members of Congress are saying on this matter, specifically on the matter of the recent death of Ruby Garcia.

Knee jerk reactions from West MI members of Congress 

On Friday, March 29th, MLive ran another piece with the headline, Michigan Republicans blast immigration policies after man in U.S. illegally accused of murder. 

 The article begins with a jingoistic comment from the Chair of the Michigan GOP Pete Hoekstra saying: “West Michigan is not going to accept the open southern border causing murders in our backyard.”

The MLive article continues with details on how the man that killed Ruby Garcia had been deported under President Trump, but then re-entered the country without documentation. The MLive reporter knowingly or unknowingly was setting up their story to provide responses by elected officials to engage in anti-immigrant rhetoric that was never challenged. The MLive piece then says, “Former U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Grand Rapids, wrote Wednesday on social media that the federal government failed Garcia. “Ruby Garcia was shot and killed, her body dumped on the side of US-131,” wrote Meijer, who is running this fall for an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan. “The man who confessed to her murder was deported in 2020, and came back into the US illegally.” 

The jingoistic trope was allowed to stand and was never challenged by the MLive reporter. During the Obama Administration 3 million undocumented immigrants were deported, while the number of deportations under the Trump Administration decreased, according to the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Annual Reports, which you can see in the graphic below. 

In addition, numerous people who have been deported will often re-enter, primarily out of desperation because it is either too dangerous to remain in their country of origin or the economic conditions are so grave that they would rather risk being arrested, detained and deported again if it means they can earn money to send home to family members. In fact the majority of undocumented immigrants that come to the US work their butts off – often two jobs – doing difficult work that doesn’t pay well, so they can support their families, a point that is well documented in books like Aviva Chomsky’s, “They Take Our Jobs!”: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration. 

So, the MLive reporter doesn’t question the claims of the Republicans they cited in the story, instead, they would rather just provide a response from the Democrats, thinking this balances out the reporting. The article then quotes Rep. Hillary Scholten who says: 

“My heart breaks for Ruby Garcia and her family as they grapple with this unspeakable tragedy,” Scholten said. “The individual who committed this heinous crime should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I’m continuing to push for bipartisan immigration reform that both secures our border and makes sure that individuals who come to our country are fully vetted to keep our communities safe.”

The bipartisan immigration legislation that Rep. Scholten is referring to is the Dignity Act, which GRIID has previously critiqued. The Dignity has some positive elements to it, but it also has an emphasis on enforcement, which Scholten spoke to. She said, “Crossings have increased, but so has enforcement. Border agents do have adequate technology resources, which means more enforcement.” Rep. Scholten discussed the need to enforce the existing US immigration laws, but failed to bring up the issue of why so many people are fleeing Mexico and Central American, to come to the US. 

Scholten also talked about having bipartisan support for the Dignity Act, specifically with Rep; Salas from Florida. However, the Dignity Act is not Comprehensive Immigration Reform, nor does it address more structural elements of root causes of immigration, such as the US role in supporting military and trade policies in Latin America that have destabilized most of the region, along with the fact that more and more people are being displaced and forced to flee their homelands because of Climate Change. (See Todd Miller’s excellent book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration and Homeland Security.) 

The MLive reporter then gives space to Rep. Huizenga, who states: “President Biden can act right now using the same executive action to improve border security that he used to open the border.” Again, this comment is not verified, even though it is completely not factual. The reality is that the primary difference between the Trump Administration’s immigration policy and the Biden Administration’s is rhetorical. In a post from last year, I methodically documented that the Biden Administration was detaining immigrant children and holding them in awful conditions, increasing funding for US Border Patrol, continuing to build the wall that Trump set out to build, along with many other policies that have been similar. Even during President Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address he referred to undocumented people as illegals, which is the same rhetoric coming out of the Trump camp.

Still no independent perspectives

The rest of the MLive article then continues to support the GOP claims by discussing at length one other case where an immigrant who had been deported came back to the US again and murdered someone in Georgia, along with more details on the Ruby Garcia murder. As I said earlier, there is no real correlation between undocumented immigrants and homicides in the US. Hell, even the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, which was founded by the Koch brothers, recently posted a study entitled, Illegal Immigrants Have a Low Homicide Conviction Rate: Setting the Record Straight on Illegal Immigrant Crime.

This is exactly why we need to have journalism that not only verifies the claims of those with political and economic power, we need journalism that investigates critical issues like US immigration policy.

Unfortunately, the MLive article does neither of what I am suggesting, instead they finished the article by including comments from a GOP candidate who is running against Rep. Scholten in the 2024 Election. GOP candidate Michael Markey, Jr stated: 

“Inaction by Joe Biden and Hillary Scholten have left another innocent American dead at the hands of an illegal immigrant,” Markey wrote Monday on social media. “Washington is failing the American people and it’s time to disrupt the status quo. Under Joe Biden, every state is a border state.”

Once again, the MLive reporter doesn’t question or verify the rhetorical claims by the GOP candidate, thus leaving the public in the dark about what the actual record is of the Biden Administration or previous US administrations on the matter of immigration policy. Equally important is the fact that rarely does mainstream commercial media ever talk about the root causes of immigrants entering through the US/Mexican border. Those root causes have been because of the longstanding US commitment to support military dictatorships in Latin America, which has cause people to flee their own countries, US initiated trade policies like NAFTA and CAFTA, which has increase poverty in Mexico and Central America, and the serious issue of Climate Change, which has displaced thousands of people, making them climate refugees. These root causes and the history of US policy are addressed in a GRIID popular education document, which is based on an 8 week course on the history of US immigration policy that I offer.