This reminds me of the situation of a young Mexican-American man I know, whose case is far from unique.

He arrived in the United States, brought by his single mother when he was a toddler, undocumented. He grew up in Detroit and the Detroit public school system. His mother and the man she married died when he was five or six in a car crash. His stepfather’s sister who raised him with her own children does not speak Spanish, so his own Spanish is extremely limited.

Somehow when he was in community college at the age of 18, the system caught up with him. He was deported to Mexico, where he has no remaining family he knows of, and where he barely speaks the language. Unable to support himself, he smuggled himself across the border and slowly made his way back to Detroit to the only family he knows.

He was caught again and deported again. The next time he came back, he was sent to federal prison for a couple years before being deported yet another time.

Like those Peruvian Japanese immigrants forced to live in Japan, this guy’s life has been overturned and destroyed, probably permanently, because U.S. immigration policy and enforcement are so heartless and cruel. When people are Other here, we often treat them like animals, literally like animals.

Sending someone to live in a nation where they have no ties is inhuman, unspeakably inhuman, yet we do it every day and justify it as a matter of law or patriotism.