One Of The First People Who May Be Deported By Trump's Order Is A Working Mother Of Two

One of the first people ordered to be deported by Trump’s ICE agents is a working mother of two

Guadalupe García de Rayos came to this country when she was 14 years old, 21 years ago.

Eight years ago, she was caught using a fake social security number during a raid at a water park where she worked. Since then, she’s religiously attended yearly immigration meetings and walked in and out of those meetings after a brief review of her case. But not this year.

“On Wednesday, immigration agents arrested Ms. Rayos, 35, and began procedures to send her back to Mexico, a country she has not seen since she left it 21 years ago,” the New York Times reports. After they arrested her and placed her in an ICE van, protestors attempted to block the van, and this heartbreaking image was captured:

Ms. Rayos has two children who were born here. This is her son, looking through the window at his mother. There were other detainees inside the van. By midnight Thursday of last week, the NYT reports her husband was still unsure where she was. Those trying to help Ms. Rayos have asked that her story be shared with the hashtag #FreeLupita.

“Lawyers from two of the nation’s leading civil rights’ groups said Ms. Rayos might be the first undocumented immigrant to be arrested during a scheduled meeting with immigration officials since Mr. Trump took office,” reports the NYT.

This is where we are now, that the Trump administration has broadened the definition of “criminal alien.”

When the Trump administration throws words like “criminal aliens” around, it’s obvious where people’s minds will go. They will think “drug dealer” or “rapist” or similar “criminal” profiles. But Trump’s definition of “criminal alien” could apply to a majority of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. “Mr. Trump’s order also includes anyone who has engaged in ‘fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency,’ a category that includes anyone who has used a false Social Security number to obtain a job, as many unauthorized immigrants do,” the NYT reports.

So Trump’s definition of “criminal” includes people working honest jobs, paying taxes. That’s right, if an undocumented immigrant has purchased a fake social security number and given it to an employer, they are paying taxes. Most of which they will never benefit from, especially social security. From The Atlantic:

“It works like this: Many immigrants who aren’t authorized to work in the United States buy fake Social Security cards and present them to their employers, who either don’t know they are fake or don’t look too closely. When the employer submits a W-2 form and a tax payment on those workers’ behalf to the Social Security Administration, the federal government holds onto those payroll taxes, even if the Social Security number isn’t linked to anyone on file. And then, a large chunk of that money ends up in the Social Security trust funds, from which retirement benefits are doled out to aging Americans.”

“Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, estimates that about 1.8 million immigrants were working with fake or stolen Social Security cards in 2010, and he expects that number to reach 3.4 million by 2040,” reports The Atlantic. “He calculates that undocumented immigrants paid $13 billion into the retirement trust fund that year, and only got about $1 billion in benefits.”

So we have a president who admittedly doesn’t pay taxes, deporting honest workers who pay into a system he refuses to pay himself. Then we have him throwing words like “rapist,” “drug dealer,” and “wall” around — so he can continually stoke fear into the hearts of his followers who now support these deportations because they think they are being protected from the proverbial “boogey man.”

The boogey man is Trump. He’s taking money that could be spent on schools, the homeless, and hungry children and building a fucking wall. He’s separating families. He’s spreading “fake news” and hysteria.

And he’s doing it on our dime.