Excellent. One more proofreading pass was needed to pick up the few errors that spell-checking (that digital border instrument) didn't catch. Your natural rhetoric, with its factual low key, suits you entirely, because it is yours. Wherever you lose simplicity you lose directness, and your hold over your reader.

We need to talk more about this practice, to discuss how it can be made sustainable for you. Then law school will really have helped you beat your path.

Hostility to migrants and asylum seekers is woven into our politics. My prior experience volunteering as a witness reporter with, immigration non-profit, El Refugio, affirmed my deepest concerns regarding the treatment of human beings.

El Refugio offers support for individuals being detained in Stewart Detention Center by placing them in contact with their families.

Stewart is a private prison operated by Correction of America under contract with ICE. Testimony from those inside the Stewart Detention highlights accusations of abusive conditions and unsafe conditions, which increased drastically during the height of COVID-19 pandemic.

Inside the walls of Stewart are human beings that U.S. Immigration Law refuses to grant protection to. Our group would be tasked with verifying whether the detainee we were placed in contact with was in a stable condition.

Despite this, I don’t find either the inaction of Congress or the stagnant nature of the law to be a compelling reason to forfeit the mission of helping others; especially when the stakes are as high as they are.

Governing immigration policy is shifting to conducting asylum applications through a government run apps. This is only one part of the effort to digitize our border zone. DHS received $780 million in 2021 for technology and surveillance at the border. Proposals of a virtual border are currently being made. Drones, cameras, and everything we already have on our smart phone are being used as a tool to transform immigration policing.

Privacy is at now at the heart of protecting immigrant rights. While the border is exempted from the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the methods our immigration system uses to regulate the border are not immune from criticism. Due process violations, infringements on the right to privacy, violation of notice, and the implications of freedom in the globalized world are now stake.

My practice is essentially counseling asylum seekers, with a focus on offering legal counsel to individuals fleeing persecution based on sexual orientation. This inherently involves proximity to chaos and tension.

My practice will find a viable solution on how to protect vulnerable individualize from government surveillance. Many LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, individuals persecuted on religious grounds, and those fleeing duress, simply cannot afford to have their identities fall into the hands of the wrong person. While waging a battle with government surveillance places the practice at a grave disadvantage, my theory of action takes a utilitarian approach. I would rather try to make an impact than none.

The challenge of counteracting the obstacles of a standstill legislative branch and the inevitable digitization of the border is the current condition. But the law being a suborn bull doesn't diminish what my practice stands for. United States Immigration policing will not alter course. I still believe despite the current challenge, what Bentham provides is basis for the possibility for change.

A lawyer is never far from danger. Now that I am in law school, I have recognized my practice and my law degree will lead me to witness loss. But, knowing that, I can at least start to brainstorm other reasons why my mom did what she did. Danger was inevitably going to find me as a law student. So, maybe my mom wasn’t trying to protect me, but rather, give me the opportunity to go and protect others.

I only understand one thing in property:

Never Far from Danger –Protecting Liberty at the Southern Border

I Don’t Know My Parents

Current Conditions Preventing a Legislative Solution

What is at Stake? Privacy, Freedom– A Digital Border

A Theory of Action

I do not have the enitre solution but:

Not much of a conclusion, which signals us that the best route to improvement is to surface the central idea whose full development would provide the resonant conclusion that this draft doesn't reach.

The title's question, like the "we must" tone adopted in the body's rhetoric, seems directed to a "net of politics" analysis. Of course we can change both the substance and the administration of our border policing arrangements, including our unacceptable asylum system. But to do so requires federal legislation that we cannot possibly pass. Like every other major democracy, even Canada's, US society is now internally destabilized in ways that have strengthened familiar forces of nativism and xenophobia. Hostility to migrants and especially asylum seekers is being magnified in our politics. There is no prospect of sixty votes in the US Senate for any significant change to an impossible and morally unacceptable system that the Republican Party benefits existentially by perpetually running against in the interest of something even worse. So there's no way to make policy net of politics, or even—under current conditions—constitutional civil rights law. Under these conditions, as someone setting out to do this work—seeking to build a practice counseling and assisting clients who are for the foreseeable future trapped in our larger political dysfunction— how can you best prepare? It seems to me that's the central question around which the next draft should be built.

Can We Reform ICE? – Reconsidering America’s Immigration System

Interacting with the System

My introduction to the law was never by choice. As a naturalized citizen of the United States of America, I have grown increasingly aware that my presence in this country hinges greatly on the Citizenship Clause found within the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

A careful reading is required: “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside."

The clause is subject to multiple interpretations, but the Supreme Court understood the clause to mean every person born in the United States is a citizen of the United States, no matter the citizenship of their parents. Given my interactions with the law, I am seeking a legal education to equip me with the skills necessary to assist individuals in my home country of Guatemala to obtain access to their legally recognized right to obtain asylum and lawfully apply for citizenship. We must protect naturalized citizenship while advocating for an expansion of immigration rights.

The Issue Arises

However, the law may fail to provide justice at the moment it is required. Despite my best efforts to provide the extent of my knowledge to the Guatemalan community and provide people from Central America with legal recourse, too many people cannot wait for the law to grant them the solace they are seeking. For exactly 13,978 people from Guatemala fled in 2021. While not all individuals fled to the United States, the destination need not be a material concern. The violence, corruption, prosecution, and danger of many families, children, and persecuted groups flea leave them with a dismal cost-benefit analysis: attempt to seek asylum through a system that is backlogged or find some semblance of safety as quickly as possible. For many immigrants, a semblance of safety is granted through the means of asylum. Displacement has grown and the United States has historically contributed to the alarming rise in the turbulence we see in Central America today.

Reasonable Authority? Or An Overexertion of Power?

Our government’s best effort to rectify our contribution to mass migration from Central America may have been unintentional. The Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) was granted by Congress a combination of both civil and criminal authority in the wake of 9/11 to protect national security. This arguably has been a sound solution to a domestic security threat. Our law has long held that Congress has the authority to exclude in times of national crisis. (See Korematsu v. United States) The Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In 2003, DHS sought its mission to prevent terrorism and enhance security. DHS stepped into the role of managing U.S. borders, enforcing & administering immigration law, and safeguarding cyberspace. However, what has flowed from the Homeland Security Act was the assumption of responsibility by the Detention and Removal Operations sector of DHS to program a Criminal Alien Apprehension Program.

Congress may have acted within its authority when it enacted The Homeland Security Act. However, this does not preclude the question of whether how ICE has implemented its Criminal Alien Apprehension Program violates the constitution. Policy under ICE has conflicted with Due Process, the Right of Notice, and whether the practice of detention violates the Constitution. Such issues have been considered by the various Courts. In 2013, the ACLU filed a complaint against the government challenging ICE’s practice of issuing immigration holds of individuals in the custody of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies without probable cause. Gonzalez v. ICE held that ICE and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department unlawfully detained thousands of suspect immigrants based on unconstitutional requests from ICE.

ICE detention practices are the starting point. ICE holds allow for the apprehension and detention of individuals who have not been accused of a crime and for whom no judicial warrants have been issued. The conditions and treatment of those detained almost become secondary but are relevant to the constitutional inquiry. My prior experience volunteering as a witness reporter with the immigration non-profit El Refugio affirmed my deepest concerns regarding the treatment of human beings. El Refugio offers support for people detained at Stewart Detention Center and their families. The Center is a private prison operated by Correction of America under contract with ICE. Testimony from those inside the Stewart Detention highlights accusations of abusive conditions, and racist and increased unsafe conditions during the height of COVID-19 that steam from our government’s contracts with Correction of America. Inside the walls of Stewart are people that the law refuses to treat on a circumstantial basis.

Where We Are Today

Total United States ICE arrests jumped thirty percent nationwide from 2016 to 2017. Moreover, the ICE Atlanta Regional Field Office, which covers Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carlina accounted for more than one-tenth of all arrests across the country. The government has given overwhelming authority to an entity that has questionably exerted its power at the least. At worst, ICE has represented values that are antithetical to the United States Constitution. Due process, protection against cruel & unusual punishment, and protection against unreasonable search and seizure are all negatively implicated under current ICE policy. We arrive at the heart of the question: can such a federally implemented agency be fundamentally remedied? It is a possibility. But it must be changed fundamentally, and justice must be re-conceptualized.

An approach to change must consider the power Congress can exert concerning immigration. Congress must consider potential reforms to the United States immigration system. We can start by providing pathways to citizenship that enable our country to exert sovereignty while also diminishing the harmful effects of the demonstrative state. Next, we must move to abolish privately owned, federally contracted detention facilities. What follows from enabling the constitutionality of privately owned detention facilities is an exertion of power to privately owned entities that finds no basis in our constitution.

I do not have the sole solution but:

I once again find myself interacting with the law.