1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

ICE has terrorized the whole state, and country, for far too long. I’m an 8th grader Californian, meaning that I don’t have much of a voice in politics, so I’m hoping this letter can help share mine, and thousands of other Californian Students perspectives. My parents immigrated here long before I was born, so all I’ve known my whole life is the small city in California where I grew up. However, even I, at the age of 13, am able to see that what ICE is doing is blatantly unconstitutional. Residents are being deported to areas which aren’t even the country they immigrated to, without their due process in court. Any citizens who are immigrants, or children of immigrants live in terror, simply because of the color of their skin. Protestors are being killed everyday, simply for exercising their right to protest. ICE started with the promise to deport only criminals, but there is nothing criminal about a child trying to go to school, or a struggling mom who fled from war to pursue a better life. This country was founded on immigrants, and yet immigrants are treated as less than those with white skin. They’re deporting Native Americans, those who were here before the Europeans who immigrated here, something unfathomable. People held in ICE camps are brutally beaten, and women in specific are often raped, and those unrightfully detained come out with trauma which would last a century. As a nation, it’s alarming the rate at which the value of human lives are declining. Statistics prove that immigrants are significantly less likely to commit a crime, and that as the number of immigrants have increased, crime rates have significantly decreased. I urge you, use your voice to speak up against this violation of human rights. Represent those in California, and use your power to help those of us who are powerless to change the world around us. MAGA can claim that immigrants are what’s “preventing America from becoming great again.”, but the truth is simple. Immigrants are what make America great.