This past month, the issue of families being separated and held in detention centers has become much of the buzz in our day to day news. However, even though Trump has been cracking down with his zero-tolerance policy for "illegals" in our country, he is not the first president to do so. In fact, under former President Obama's administration, as early as in 2014, Obama had many children detained, sometimes even without their families after a sudden surge of immigrates came racing across our borders four years ago. However, it seems all of these deportations and detainments under Obama's administration just go unnoticed now that Trump is reinforcing a similar policy. I recently spoke to a native Mexican middle-aged man who had four children who were all raised in a town over from me from birth. He and his family were dirt poor and after a terrible divorce between his parents, he was left to fend for his family and be the breadwinner. However, after marrying and having children in America and living in our country for over 20 years, he was almost deported under the Obama administration for being "illegal". While he had no criminal record and a family to provide for and bills to pay, just like us all, he was shown no symphony and was held in prison for over two years.

During that time his family had no income besides from his wife who worked at a local hotel. Furthermore, two of his children were almost ready to start college and he missed many important milestones in their lives. Understandably so, he did break the law many years ago as a young boy trying to provide for his broken family, but why should he endure this much pain and suffering? Luckily for him, he was released but he suffers from PTSD to this day from the trauma. Knowing that kind and hard-working men, women, and even children like him are still suffering under the harsh laws and policies of our country makes me sick. While I am conservative Republican, I cannot say I support the dehumanizing way we rally up the illegal immigrants of our country and throw them into cages. I also can't understand why people still think you're automatically a Democrat if you are against detention centers for illegals, when Obama was a Democrat who, just like Trump tore families apart and left people alone in their native country after not being there for in (some cases) decades. Ultimately, I hope that our country can become more compassionate towards our neighbor's struggles and work to not despise and or complain about those who came here illegally. At the end of the day, who are we to judge? We all came to America looking for a second chance and for an opportunity to succeed, whether it was in 1710 or 2010. So with this being said, I hope all of those who hold hostile feelings towards our country's illegals can find some compassion in their hearts to help make our country strong from the bottom-up instead of tearing it apart in the same backward fashion.

Sources: https://www.vox.com/2018/6/21/17488458/obama-immig...

https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/did-the-obama-ad...

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-k...