I have written several pieces about how my experience as a Mexican American from an immigrant family has shaped my beliefs. I’ve shared how this background has given me a deep understanding of how identity fundamentally shapes a person’s beliefs and what matters most to them. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, news and social media have been flooded with persistent violence and attacks against immigrants. But I often hear the issue framed around legality instead of the blatant dehumanization at play. I fear that many people have lost their empathy, ignoring the harsh treatment immigrants are enduring.

Trump has repurposed several jails and prisons that were previously closed due to criminal justice reforms. In his “Big Beautiful Bill,” he allocated $45 billion for detention centers — more than double ICE’s current spending on them. These centers are heavily packed, with people sleeping on the floor, not receiving proper meals or getting to shower. He has undermined the Flores Settlement, which set base standards for the treatment of immigrant children and the time they spend in detention centers. Several detained immigrants have received little to no medical care, which has at times put their lives at risk. And earlier this year, immigrants spelled out “S.O.S.,” in a detention center in Miami — highlighting the inhumane conditions many are subjected to. The names used for detention centers, like “Alligator Alcatraz,” “Speedway Slammer” and “Cornhusker Clink,” make them sound like amusement park rides instead of brutal places.

For most of my life, I have heard multiple arguments for and against immigration and deportations, especially because I grew up in Calexico, California, situated right next to the Mexican border. I’ve heard them back home and some on campus. I understand that for many people, the subject carries a lot of nuance and doesn’t feel as simple for them as it does for me. Personally, I condemn the heavy criminalization of immigrants or people crossing the border. Last year, I wrote about how I believed Latinos voted against each other in the presidential election when there was an increase in Latino and Hispanic voters for now-President Donald Trump. I was appalled that so many would vote for a person who clearly stands against immigrants. But this past year, I am more surprised by how people are using the argument of legality to justify the mistreatment of undocumented immigrants by Trump’s administration — from reports of abuse of pregnant women and children and of sexual abuse. 

Two months ago, I had a discussion with a family member from California about the ongoing deportations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country. They quickly defended Trump’s actions, arguing he was within his executive authority to take whatever actions were needed to deport undocumented immigrants. They said Trump had “warned” all undocumented immigrants that he would boost deportation efforts and offered them the chance to self-deport. At the crux of this argument was the idea that the immigrants who had crossed the border without the proper documentation were knowingly breaking the law and therefore deserved to have the law come down on them with full force.

Many of the people who cross the border and come into the U.S. willingly take the chance because they’re hoping for a better life because that is how utterly horrible their situation was in their homeland. So, I was a little speechless at the immediate lack of empathy from my family member. Immigration seems to have been criminalized to the level where people in the U.S. feel immigrants are undeserving of empathy. For anyone who crosses into the U.S. without a visa for the first time, their actions are considered a misdemeanor — just like petty theft or trespassing are misdemeanors, and while it might result in going to jail, it doesn’t result in detention centers that have had up to 510 reports of human rights abuses. 

This discourse or manner of thinking in the US isn’t new. People often argue that there is nothing wrong with wanting to come to the U.S. but that immigrants should do it the “legal way” — despite the fact that the process can take up to 20 years. Everyone is entitled to their own views of how immigration policies should work, but no human being, regardless of their visa status or where they’re from, deserves to be dehumanized. 

There is no excuse for pregnant women not receiving medical care or treatment to the point of miscarrying because they are stuck in a detention center. There is no excuse to deport people to countries that are not even their home nation without due process. There is no excuse for a leader of a country saying that “illegal immigrants” are “animals” or are “poisoning the blood” of the country — very similar to the rhetoric Adolf Hitler used. Thinking that someone crossing a border without a visa warrants their degradation is anti-humanitarian. 

Martin Luther King Jr. put it best when he said, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Whether someone believes immigration policies should be stricter or if that immigrant is “illegal” is besides the point because the entire country is witnessing, almost every day, a group of people being taken away from their families and their workplace, wrestled to the ground and put in inhumane detention centers where their food has worms and floors are flooded with fecal waste. 

After arguing with my family member about their defense of Trump’s deportations, they agreed that many immigrants were being mistreated by the U.S. government and didn’t approve of that. But my point still persists — by focusing on the fact that undocumented immigrants broke the rules by crossing the border over the dehumanizing treatment they’re receiving is, in effect, saying that crossing the border is more heinous than being treated without dignity. King clearly presented the point of legality versus morality decades ago, and morality should be at the forefront of our minds, especially during a time when Trump is saying he is exploring deporting U.S. citizens to El Salvador and has already taken birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court. If Trump starts mass deportations of documented immigrants and puts them through the same degrading process, what then? Will people still preach about legality? What excuse will there be left to be used if that starts happening?

Crossing the border was not always criminalized. The United States began criminalizing it in the 1920s to lower the number of people crossing the Mexican border. But I don’t think we are criminalizing the right thing — it’s those in our federal government who perpetuate this dehumanization, as well as those who comply with it, who should be criminalized. It reminds me of what author Colson Whitehead said in his book, “The Underground Railroad,” when talking about slave patrollers: “In another country, they would have been criminals, but this is America.” As I see and hear people from my life and even online claiming a person’s immigration status is more crucial than their very humanity, I fear we are losing our own humanity.

Andrea Mendoza-Melchor, a senior majoring in journalism and mass communication, is the opinions editor.