Ethics, Morality, and Disruption of U.S. Immigration Laws

Abstract

In this essay, I review Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement tools and what I feel is the unnecessary havoc that they wreak on immigrant communities. In the process, I describe the resistance to these policies by immigrants and their supporters who have attempted to disrupt the enforcement tools. Immigrants and their supporters are attempting to raise awareness of better strategies to resolve whatever problems are perceived to exist. I also argue that the disruptive tactics by immigrants and their supporters have actually helped to push the Obama administration into engaging in disruptive innovation of its own with respect to how to approach certain classes of removable immigrants.

Administrations and officials who engage in these enforcement approaches need to be held accountable to fair-minded, humanistic-thinking Americans. These actions have occurred on our watch, and we should not stand by idly. Thus, I also submit that we should devise methods of holding officials accountable, perhaps by creating a public oversight group along the lines of citizen oversight panels of police departments that would focus on the anti-humanitarian effects of immigration enforcement.

Keywords: immigration law, Department of Homeland Security, immigration enforcement