The Statue of Liberty states, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The statue and its inscription are a symbol for our country, saying that the United States will accept those who want to create a better life for themselves and their families. However, due to recent changes in immigration laws, we’re now turning away the people we once said we’d help, forcing them to return to the lives they were trying so hard to get away from. More restrictions should be placed on what ICE can do; an option would be returning to the previous guidelines from the Biden or Obama administration.
According to the Washington Post, officers have referred more than 400 children nationwide to shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement since Trump took office in 2024. According to Sulma Martinez, a mother who has been separated from her two girls after years of living in the States, officers have deported parents, including the ones who allegedly have “a work permit, a pending asylum claim, and a pathway to a visa for crime victims. But none of that mattered.” Ever since the beginning of the Trump Administration, rules for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, have become much more lenient, allowing them to enter places that used to be off limits, such as hospitals, schools, and places of worship.
On Thursday, November 6, 2025, a woman named Diana Galeano was detained by ICE in front of the Rayito Del Sol Daycare in Chicago. She was confirmed to have a valid work permit, along with a pending asylum case, and informed the ICE officers of her permit as she was forced against a car into handcuffs in front of the children and parents in the daycare center. Officers, along with spectators, said that she was chased into the daycare center and the ICE officers weren’t targeting the daycare. However, a woman in the school during the incident claimed that they weren’t just chasing Galeano into the school; they went into different rooms and were asking for different teachers. Another witness outside of the school building at the time stated that while he saw two cars coming into the parking lot, neither was going noticeably fast; this goes against the claims of the officers, who said that they were chasing her car down after she ran from a previous location.
Currently, ICE can stop people at minor places, like traffic lights, and ask for their papers; if they don’t have them, they can be detained. ICE is also commonly located around schools, though not necessarily raiding the inside of schools. According to the American Immigration Council, parents are scared for their children, leading them to take their children out of school for fear that they would be taken at the bus stop, or even just walking home.
According to NEA Today, children are more often seeing “loved ones – family, friends, and neighbors – being detained during everyday routines.” This is not a good environment for children to grow up in, and it will take a large toll on their mental health if they’re constantly worried about whether or not they’ll be taken, or if their parents will still be there when they get home.
During Trump’s presidential campaign rally on December 16, 2023, in Durham, New Hampshire, he stated that immigrants (allegedly illegal, however not confirmed) are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He put all immigrants under one category, claiming that they’re dangerous and are infecting our country. This is not only an inaccurate portrayal of the motives of all immigrants, but a dangerous one, as it leads Americans to believe that all immigrants have malicious intentions, while many immigrants are searching for a better life.
As of early 2025, there are over 1.4 million pending asylum applications with the U.S. government, and still, thousands are being turned away. If an immigrant achieves refugee status, they can apply for asylum; however, if the US doesn’t believe the immigrant qualifies as a refugee, they’re unable to apply for asylum, which eliminates their ability to enter the US at all. According to the American Immigration Council ,a person can qualify as a refugee if they are a person who cannot return home or get protection in their home country due to past or feared persecution based on race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion. Additionally, even if an immigrant qualifies as a refugee, the United States may still deny them asylum.
Families are constantly being separated from each other at the border, and even babies, only a few months old, are being separated from their parents, without families knowing when they’ll be reunited again. Unaccompanied children are only allowed to stay in federal custody for three weeks, so officials try to deport families quickly to avoid spending money to keep the children longer. The desire of the US to save money on keeping track of illegal immigrants is part of the problem; in past years, ankle monitors would be administered to undocumented immigrant families to track them. However, they now detain immigrants to cut the costs of ankle monitors. This seems like a shortcut, and is a significant reason for the rise in families that are separated.
The idea of the American dream is that people can seek help in our country and have a chance to build a life they never had — or couldn’t have — in their home country. Now, with the rise of deportations and more lenient rules for ICE, coming to the US could be more difficult for immigrants than staying in their home countries. Turning away immigrant families who want a new life in the US goes against the founding principles of our country; we were a country of opportunity, freedom, and a better future for those who wanted to make their own future.
The Obama administration limited its refusals to immigrants who had been known to be dangerous or had committed serious felonies, not misdemeanors. Immigrants who had deep family ties, or who had been in the country for years, even if they had entered illegally, were less likely to be detained because the administration believed they would be less of a threat to society. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Trump Administration changed these priorities, which now include those “whom ICE can practically and easily apprehend [or] low hanging fruit.” In other words, anyone here illegally is a priority regardless of family ties and positive community status.
While the goal is always that people enter the country through legal means, those who are fleeing (or have) violence in their home country should be welcome in the United States and be given time to become a citizen, instead of being rejected before they even have a chance. In order to achieve this change, people can create petitions in their communities to make the problem heard and get the laws to change; without the people, no action can be taken.
