In a climate where many Utah politicians avoid engaging with left-leaning constituents (we promise, we do not bite!), it is admirable that Utah Sen. John Curtis hosted a few of us to answer questions about immigration enforcement and its impact on Utah families and communities.
Questions around Trump’s immigration policies are all the more pressing given recent events. At the same time that we were meeting with Sen. Curtis, Utah resident John Shin was abducted by ICE. His wife received a quick, 30-second phone call from Shin, where he informed her he was being sent to a federal detention facility.
According to his attorney, Shin came to the United States on his father’s visa when he was 10. He earned a master’s in music from the University of Utah and has been working his way through the labyrinthine immigration system for years. When people talk about how immigrants “should come here the right way” this is presumably what they mean. By all accounts, Shin is in the process of obtaining permanent status, and yet until recently he sat in a detention facility in Aurora, Colorado.
But Shin’s detention is not a tragedy because of who he is, nor because he has performed for the Utah Symphony and Ballet West. ICE is tearing up families and detaining individuals who contribute to our society in myriad ways — taking care of our children, cleaning our hospitals and picking our crops. The public response to Shin’s detention suggests that due process is a popularity contest. It’s not. Everyone in the United States, whether here legally or not, and certainly regardless of musical talent, deserves due process. The Supreme Court has made that clear. We do not forfeit our rights to due process when we are charged with crimes; indeed, this is when they are most necessary under the U.S. Constitution.
Our Founding Fathers understood that the need for due process is at its peak when people are at their most vulnerable. Due process is not reserved for the best and the brightest. It is not just for the church-going, the sympathetic, the friendly neighbors who look and act like us. Due process serves as a critical check on the government’s power — to ensure it does not do the very things we see ICE doing.
When Sen. Curtis hosted us, he said that he would uphold the Constitution. He expressed a commitment to balancing compassion and the rule of law and acknowledged the important role immigrants play in our economy. However, there is one question that Sen. Curtis, and all of our elected members of Congress, will not answer. And that question is: “At what point will you part ways with Trump and stop supporting his policies?”
The Utah delegation has rubber-stamped nearly all of Trump’s appointees and bills. We believe they have excused his abuses of power. This complicity has enabled Trump to rob from the poor to give to the rich, to ignore court orders, to stop funding critical federal research, to send troops into cities as a dictatorial stunt, to suggest taking over local elections and to detain people without due process.
If you had asked any one of our representatives a couple of years ago, under a different administration, if they would have supported any of these authoritarian moves, the answer would have been a resounding “no.” And yet, here we are.
Alexander Hamilton said, “Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.” That is why it’s important for our representatives to answer these critical questions: What do you stand for? Will you support anything President Trump does going forward, or do you have a principled limit as to how far you will let him go in disrespecting due process? Utahns of all political persuasions who respect democracy and the rule of law deserve an answer.