I.C.E. Splitting Up Families

by Stuart Shapiro

Few policy areas produce perverse results with the regularity of immigration policy.  In my own community, a group of Indonesians came into the country legally and missed a deadline for filing for asylum.  Most have been in the country for at least a decade and have American-born children, steady jobs and no criminal records. But their stay of deportation is now threatened.

In recent weeks, most of the Indonesians, many of whom fled persecution of Christians in Indonesia years ago, have received letters from the Department of Homeland Security ordering them to appear at the agency’s Newark office, a one-way ticket to Indonesia in hand.

These orders would lead to horrendous choices for parents who face deportation but have children that would face a questionable future in Indonesia.  Legislation to grant this small group of immigrants asylum has just been introduced in Congress.   Either ICE or Congress should act to produce the clearly humanitarian outcome.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.