Pirate's Cove

This has the Associated Press’ Matt Sedensky Very Concerned, and this is yet another attempt to elicit Feelings for all those poor illegal aliens who never did anything wrong and were just looking for a better life and why are we so mean and think of the children and stuff

She voted for Trump but now: “I’m ashamed.” A Missouri woman feels the anguish after her daughter-in-law gets deported, leaving behind a husband, child and life in America. https://t.co/NV3DDUNpPk

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 23, 2018

What, exactly, did she think was going to happen? Trump was pretty clear about his intentions for illegal aliens. From the article

It’s almost as if Letty Stegall is there, back home in the United States, beside her daughter to prod her awake for school. When her husband goes to the grocery store, she fusses over the list with him. At the bar she helped run, she still gives regulars a warm welcome, and around the dinner table at night, she beams when she sees what her family managed to cook.

But Stegall’s face only appears on a screen, and her words come in unreliable cell connections and a barrage of texts. Lives once lived together are divided by some 1,600 miles. A woman who married an American and gave birth to an American and who came to think of herself as American, too, is now deported to her native Mexico.

“I wish I was there. That’s all that I want,” she says of her life in Kansas City, Missouri. “I want my family back.”

As the United States takes a harder line on immigration, thousands who called the country home are being forced to go. Often, they leave behind spouses and children with American citizenship and must figure out how to go on with families fractured apart. Studies have found an estimated 8 million to 9 million Americans — the majority of them children — live with at least one relative who is in the country illegally, and so each action to deport an immigrant is just as likely to entangle a citizen or legal U.S. resident.

Sniffle. She’s now “living in a foreign world”, a place she hasn’t lived for decades, and Skyping and stuff with her family. Sniffle. And

“I lost everything,” she says. “It’s just me.”

I wonder who’s fault that is?

Stegall grew up two hours from here in Cosamaloapan, a flat, crop-dotted part of Veracruz, the state that hugs a broad chunk of Mexico’s eastern coast. Her parents’ furniture business afforded a comfortable existence, but drawn by the stories of a cousin who settled in Overland Park, Kansas, Stegall was convinced there was greater opportunity for her in the U.S. She paid a smuggler $3,000 to lead her across the Rio Grande.

She was caught and returned to Mexico but crossed successfully a day later. When she made it to the Kansas City area, she found a job busing tables, working her way up through a string of restaurants to become a server and bartender and manager.

She got married and had Jennifer, but later divorced. Then she fell in love with Steve, who came to see Jennifer as his own. Stegall mastered the language and watched her paychecks grow. She and Steve bought a home, and soon Stegall became the heart of The Blue Line , the bar they ran together. When the Olympics aired, she’d drape herself in red, white and blue, and when the national anthem sounded, she’d nudge her husband to remove his hat as she stood solemnly, goose bumps covering her body.

So, right there, she’s committed at least one felony, recrossing into the United States after being deported. How was she working? She obtained a work permit and social security number via what appears to be a sham marriage, but, that conveyed no right to stay. She was busted for DUI six years ago, putting her on the radar of immigration authorities. But, she’s bummed

She wonders why the government’s crackdown efforts seem to focus on her and other low-level criminals instead of the “bad hombres” that Trump said he’d banish. Don’t her daughter and husband have a right to keep their family intact? Don’t her years of paying taxes, of learning English, of living an otherwise pristine life count for anything?

It’s simple: they’re going after all of the illegals. The priority is still on the serious criminals, but, people are penalized and even go to prison all the time for minor crimes, because they were dumb enough to get caught. This is the line that illegals and their supporters are taking “well, we know we committed a crime, but, you should not bother with us.”

It goes on and on and on, but, the central point is missed: this is all her fault. She made choices. The blame rests on her shoulders. She could have done the right thing, the legal thing, and chose not to.

But, we should thank her, Matt Sedensky, and the AP for making this article available, because these types of stories help decrease the amount of people who would come illegally.