‘Trump claims we’re experiencing an invasion on the scale of millions and that violent gangs of immigrants have taken over entire cities. The facts simply do not bear this out’
Press conference for ex-Cincinnati Children’s chaplain detained by ICE
A press conference was held after Imam Ayman Soliman, a former Cincinnati Children’s hospital chaplain, was detained by ICE Wednesday.
In early May, my wife delivered our first child, who immediately struggled to breathe on his own. We were rushed to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where we would spend the next three weeks by his side.
As first-time parents, we were disoriented and terrified. The day after our son was admitted, Ayman Soliman came to visit us. He compassionately asked us about our faith and how best he could support us. Several days later, he returned unprompted and stood silently with us as the doctors performed a risky trial extubation on our son. The chaplain was a soothing, unintrusive, and welcome presence who intuitively understood what we needed.
I don’t even remember him greeting us. I think he was just there because he cared.
Trump’s harsh immigration rhetoric doesn’t match reality
Soliman’s detention by ICE during a routine check-in exposes the collision between Donald Trump’s hyperbolic rhetoric about illegal immigration and reality. His stated goal of making our communities safer by deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes is not an unreasonable one. In fact, it has broad support across the political spectrum.
The problem is Trump claims we’re experiencing an invasion on the scale of millions and that violent gangs of immigrants have taken over entire cities. The facts simply do not bear this out. Not only does the data consistently show that undocumented people commit crimes at far lower rates than citizens, but more immigrants become undocumented by overstaying their legal visas than entering the country without authorization, and the majority of undocumented immigrants have been in the U.S. for over a decade.
This was precisely the case with Soliman. According to reporting, he was granted political asylum in the U.S. in 2017 and then applied for a green card. Just recently, the federal government cancelled his green card application, and his asylum was revoked. Going through legal avenues to challenge the revocation of his asylum status, he had a hearing scheduled for July 3 that was postponed. Several days later, he went to his scheduled check-in with ICE, where he was detained because he is now technically here illegally, even though he was following all the legal processes.
Soliman isn’t an anomaly. Our immigration system is broken.
I want to pause here to emphasize what is truly broken about our immigration system: We invest billions of dollars in border security rather than the infrastructure necessary to process legal applications for residency and citizenship. If it takes thousands of dollars and half a decade to navigate our byzantine immigration system and your application is still pending, then this is an engineered crisis that creates perverse incentives (avoiding legal routes) and unavoidable pitfalls (devolving to an illegal status despite your best efforts).
But the case of Soliman wasn’t an accident or even an aberration. There are already hundreds of stories like his. Trump ran on deporting violent criminals, but it was always about targeting immigrants regardless of their status.
Stephen Miller recently gave up the game when he directed ICE to meet a quota of 3,000 arrests per day by conducting raids on hotels, farms, and restaurants where undocumented immigrants work, pay taxes, and spend money in their communities. Such an imperative only becomes necessary because violent criminals are not actually overrunning our communities. Instead, these quotas will make our communities less safe by leading to the detention of innocent people, including legal immigrants and U.S. citizens.
This is only the beginning. Trump also wants to end birthright citizenship (in explicit violation of the 14th Amendment), denaturalize citizens, and continue to deport migrants to countries other than their country of origin as a sadistic form of deterrence. Moreover, his deficit-ballooning One Big Beautiful Bill Act just increased ICE’s budget to $150 billion − more than the entire military of most countries.
My thoughts and prayers are with Soliman, and wherever he may be, I hope someone is there for him the way he has been there for countless families, including my own.
RJ Boutelle is associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati.
