ICE: Meeting the numbers

Focusing on the bottom line can be profitable in business. Yet “meeting the numbers” can leave other considerations behind, such as ethics, morality, employee well-being, as well as the impact on society and our environment. The raw pursuit of profits or numbers can blind one to considerations that could lead to more meaningful and equitable outcomes.

Such a numbers-driven approach is currently seen amid the ICE raids, resulting in the detention and deportation of people who appear to be immigrants. This program was sold to the public as being a deportation of immigrants who had a violent criminal history, the “worst of the worst.” But when the resulting numbers were not enough, people were detained and taken who appeared to match the physical characteristics of an immigrant. Many have been deported or imprisoned in remote facilities without being allowed legal counsel, or the opportunity to present to a court their citizenship status in the U.S., or having any due process to determine whether or not they have a criminal past. All that seems to matter is “reaching the numbers.” What type of society are we becoming when all that matters is “meeting the numbers,” and we don’t look at the people anymore?

We need to remember that congressional legislation to help address immigration issues was held back by Republican congressmen at the behest of now-President Donald Trump so that then-President Joseph Biden would not have the bill passage to campaign on. Perhaps that legislation, if enacted, would have provided a more humanitarian approach to the issue. Or was a humanitarian approach ever a consideration for the administration we have now?

ERNEST WARNER

Coeur d’Alene