The People Yelling "Come Here Legally" Usually Have No Idea How Immigration Works Public debates about immigration often collapse into a single sentence. "They should have come here legally." It sounds tidy and decisive, but it also reveals how few Americans have ever interacted with the immigration system beyond repeating what they have heard from politicians, television pundits, or the loudest far-right influencer on social media. Most U.S. citizens never file an immigratio

A post on Threads has gone viral: immigration is paperwork law, and nobody should die over paperwork. No caveats can soften that sentence, and none are needed. It sets a moral floor that predates any statute. The floor has needed restating all year, in different states, under different agencies. An ICE officer fatally shot a man on Canal Street in a predominantly Latino neighborhood of Houston in July, prompting LULAC to demand release of all body cam, dash cam, and bystander

Somebody's mother taught her children to keep their hands where officers could see them, to speak slowly, to do exactly what the badge said and nothing more. That lesson used to buy safety. Renee Good followed it. Alex Pretti followed it. Ruben Ray Martinez followed it, brake lights lit, car barely moving, hands where anyone could see them. All three ended up dead anyway, and the country owes their families more than a press release calling it self-defense. "Comply or die" is

For more than a decade, immigration agents largely avoided entering places of worship to make arrests, under a "sensitive locations" policy formalized by ICE Director John Morton in October 2011. The Department of Homeland Security rescinded that policy on January 21, 2025, removing the restriction entirely. Sister Letty Ugboaja's detention this past Sunday, while walking to morning Mass in McAllen, shows what enforcement looks like without it. Sister Letty Ugboaja returned h