Mexican farmworker leader Danilo Lopez has scored two high-profile supporters in his campaign to fight deportation and stay in Vermont.
On Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders sent a letter on Lopez’s behalf to the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Morton, asking the agency to reconsider its decision to send Lopez home to Chiapas on July 6.
“Mr. Lopez has been a farmworker in Vermont for five years,” Sanders wrote. “He has an excellent reputation as a worker and has been involved in organizing efforts for a group of approximately 1500 farmworkers in our state who do not have legal status. … I respectfully request that you look into this matter at your earliest convenience…”
Congressman Peter Welch is drafting a similar letter to ICE on Lopez’s behalf, says spokesman Ryan Nickel, and will send it by the end of today.
On Monday, Lopez (pictured) made a last-ditch attempt to halt the deportation, sending ICE a petition signed by 1000 supporters along with 20 personal letters asking the feds to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in the case. The letters from Sanders and Welch add weight to Lopez’s appeal but he still lacks the one signature that might matter most: that of Sen. Patrick Leahy.
As debate over federal immigration reform raged in Washington Monday, Leahy spokesman David Carle said Vermont’s senior senator had not decided whether to go to bat for Vermont’s best-known undocumented immigrant.
“Senator Leahy’s staff in Vermont and on the Judiciary Committee have been exploring for the best way that Senator Leahy could help,” Carle said via email.
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I don’t see how it is fair to others facing deportation to grant him “prosecutorial descretion”. We seem to have entered a period with the Shumlin administration where we “look the other way” and enforce laws only selectively – not how the system should work. If it’s a law enforcemit, or get rid of it … to only enforce it at times or only with some people makes it totally unfair.
Fairness is not treating every case exactly the same, regardless of the circumstances. That’s why prosecutorial discretion is written into our criminal justice laws. In fact, it is rare for two violations of the same law to result in exactly the same conviction or the same punishment. This is how a measure of fairness is introduced into a rigid framework of laws. Globally, the American tendency to conflate “fairness” with “equality” is considered to be unsophisticated and simplistic.
You have explained prosecutorial discretion. What you have NOT done is explain why it should apply to this particular individual, why it is is right not to allow the law to take its course with him. In fact, there is no good explanation as to why he should be treated differently from others similarly situated. But we all know the reason: he’s an “activist” and therefore a favorite with certain bleeding heart liberals.
What part of ‘illegal’ do you people not understand? Pack ’em up and ship them out and let them go through the immigration process like the law abiding legal immigrants who are here in this country did. If I was a legal immigrant, I’d be furious about this.
Why hasn’t he been detained? Arrest his butt and deport him!
Of course Sanders and Welch are pushing this, illegal aliens (I will not use the euphemistic term ‘undocumented worker’) represent a potential liberal voting block.
As far as drivers licenses being issued to these criminals (yes, being here illegally is breaking the law! Who’d a thunk it?), are they required to carry auto liability insurance like everyone else?