After sweeping ICE raids, can we still call ourselves a nation of immigrants?
The administration argues deportations are necessary because undocumented immigrants pose a threat to, or a strain on, our society. Nothing could be further from the truth.
President Donald Trump’s escalation of deportations (on the heels of embarrassing internal discord in his administration) has been met with protests and protests around the nation. Meanwhile, another arbitrary travel ban has been enacted, and hate crimes are at an all-time high.
These events beg the question: Can we still call ourselves a nation of, by, and for immigrants?
Immigrants are essential to our most vital industries. In the hospital where I work, most of my coresidents and I are immigrants or children of immigrants.
In fact, immigrants make up 28% of all U.S. doctors and 38% of all home health aides. Undocumented immigrants, like the ones Trump is deporting en masse, account for some 346,000 workers in healthcare and adjacent industries.
They form a large percentage of nursing assistants and home healthcare workers, jobs that are currently facing severe shortages.
Countless numbers of my patients are stuck in the hospital, or failing to care for themselves at home, because they simply can no longer find home health aides. Several have even reported that their home aides just stopped coming one day, and when they called their companies, they learned their aides had been deported.
A doctor colleague of mine is now immigrating back to her country after several of her extended family members were deported, and her government medical research grants were canceled. Patients say they fear coming to the emergency room in case they, or their family members, get asked about their legal status.
The administration argues that deportations are necessary to keep Americans safe, that undocumented immigrants pose a threat to, or a strain on, our society. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Undocumented immigrants are statistically less likely to commit a crime than U.S. citizens. Immigrants are a boost to, not a drain on, the U.S. economy and tax revenue. Undocumented immigrants, by and large, have no connection to the American opioid epidemic, and, in fact, fentanyl deaths were coming down as of 2024 (before Trump’s deportation frenzy).
The true purpose of the escalation against immigrants is simple: We are a scapegoat for the administration’s failures.
It comes as no surprise that Trump would want to escalate raids and provoke protests to change the media coverage from his embarrassing bout with Elon Musk, or the concerns about the impact of his tariffs on the economy. We face worsening inflation, and nameless “hordes” of undocumented immigrants make for the perfect boogeyman.
These xenophobic tactics are as tired and unoriginal as they are unfortunately effective.
My ancestors lived in the Pale of Settlement — a predominantly Jewish enclave that once sat on the western edge of the Russian empire. Jews there were routinely blamed for high crop prices.
In turn, pogroms were instigated by the empire during times of economic hardship to provide starving masses with an outlet for their frustrations.
The Third Reich likewise blamed the Jews for economic instability and rode those sentiments to win democratic elections, and then seize absolute power.
Today, I see the same tired tropes being applied to undocumented immigrants, most of whom are cast as non-English speaking, Black or brown outsiders.
The United States has for centuries prided itself as the nation of immigrants. In the face of deportations, protests, and violence, many immigrants are now turning elsewhere.
My family, which has its roots in modern-day Ukraine, was offered refuge here from Soviet antisemitism, and we have, in turn, paid back that investment to the U.S. economy many times over.
The immigrants I know, documented or not, are not criminals; they are doctors, health aides, cancer researchers, and hard workers.
We seek the same things as “long-standing” Americans: a better economy and affordable healthcare.
Unfortunately, increased deportations of desperately needed workers will only accomplish the opposite.
Adam Barsouk is a resident physician and oncology researcher at Penn Medicine and author of the upcoming book “Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention.”