It’s safe to say Trump voters aren’t generally renowned for their intelligence. Stubbornness, self-interest, and unfocused rage, sure, but smarts? Let’s face it, even Trump himself notoriously exclaimed, “I love the poorly educated!”
But among that crowd, the Trump voters who either are immigrants or have immigrants in their immediate family have to be some of the most wilfully self-destructive people in the history of humanity, and it’s usually only after their families are directly affected that they realize how badly they’ve been duped.
Such is the misery of the Brown family in Missouri. Jim Brown is a 20-year Navy veteran and Trump voter, and is married to the 58-year-old Donna Hughes Brown. Donna was born in the United Kingdom to Irish parents, arrived in the United States at age 11, and is a legal resident and green card holder.
That should be enough to protect her from ICE, but they zeroed in on a misdemeanor charge of passing two bad checks for a total of $60 a decade ago that were quickly repaid, which ICE deems “moral turpitude”. So, when Jim and Donna returned to St. Louis on a flight from Dublin, ICE was lying in wait for them at the airport. As Brown explained:
“ICE refused me to accompany my wife, and I was told she ‘had to sign some paperwork and would be on the next flight home to St Louis’. I patiently waited for Donna to call me to pick her up after her flight but ICE decided to detain her and put her in a prisoner transport van for a six-hour drive to Kentucky, with no seat belts and no food or water for 12 hours. Since being detained there, she has been degraded and subjected to absolutely awful conditions.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen
Donna remains in custody in Kentucky and her husband Jim is trying every available avenue to free her, including traveling to Washington to plead with officials. It’s safe to say he’s also seen the light when it comes to Trump:
“I was very right-wing Christian conservative until this happened. You are taught that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is wrong. That’s ingrained in you from when you are an itty bitty kid. There is no disparity.”
And as for the man he helped put in the White House?
“The fomentation of what has happened in the last 12 years is crazy in this country. When Trump went to the podium, his rhetoric says: I’m going to hate anybody who opposes me. But he has taught the other side the same thing. And that’s what we need to get away from.
He has caused such rhetoric on both sides that they hate each other and that is what is so wrong with this situation. You can’t call yourself a Christian and be okay with what they are doing in the streets. The ICE deal is wrong. It is absolutely wrong to treat another human being as though they are less than human.”
Donna’s deportation hearing is scheduled for Dec. 19 and there’s a very real possibility she’ll be deported to a country she hasn’t lived in since she was a pre-teen. Brown is busily doing everything he can to ensure that doesn’t happen, and politicians are apparently listening. Congressman Seth Magaziner told him: “Your country owes you an apology – and much more than that.”
But you have to wonder, would they be listening if this were a Hispanic family? This exact situation is tearing apart thousands of families around the country, but this case has only attracted publicity because it’s an Irish woman being deported. If she weren’t Irish, Donna would just be another ICE statistic.
