Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco came to the U.S. when he was three years old. His parents brought him illegally into the country, and they soon settled in Iowa. When he was a teenager, he was granted temporary protection and a work visa through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. In November 2017, he was arrested and, several weeks later, he was convicted of two misdemeanor drug offenses, which meant he would lose his DACA status. On April 24, at the age of 19, Cano Pacheco was sent back to Mexico, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents escorting him to the Laredo border. He was killed in Zacatecas 3 1/2 weeks later on May 18.
Cano Pacheco isn’t faultless — he clearly had a record that threatened his legal status. Still, his story perfectly illustrates the fault in the “send them back to where they came from” mentality. For many of these immigrants, especially those who have been protected under DACA, America is their home, not their country of origin.
Cano Pacheco had spent slightly more than three years total in Mexico and 16 years in the United States. When he moved to Zacatecas, he had a limited understanding of the culture and how to stay safe. According to a friend, Cano Pacheco was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” when he was killed. His family, who still lives in Iowa, were unable to attend their son’s funeral.
For many conservatives, it feels wrong to say people like Cano Pacheco should stay in our country permanently. But does it feel right to send them back to such dangerous places where, in some cases, going back is an effective death sentence?
That doesn’t seem proportional or humane (or Christian, which many conservatives claim to be).
The most hard-hearted conservatives would say this is nothing but a liberal sob story, designed to evoke sympathy while eroding rule of law. But Cano Pacheco wasn’t a violent criminal, or even that bad of a criminal in the first place — some news reports allege he was driving under the influence and the official Polk County, Iowa, records say he was eluding an officer while in possession of a controlled substance. It’s hard to tell exactly what the problem was, but some accounts say he had a burgeoning drinking problem and that he chose to drive under the influence of something, whether that be alcohol or some other drug.
Clearly, that’s a bad thing to do. But it doesn’t exactly support the “dangerous, criminal illegal immigrant” myth that is all too common.
A Dallas Morning News report from 2017 talks about how gangs in certain parts of Mexico are preying on deportees: “Kidnapping is an increasingly common occurrence along the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly the Texas-Tamaulipas region, immigrants rights groups say.”
Over a six-month period in 2017, more than 30,000 people were deported to the dangerous border region between Tamaulipas and Coahuila, so “immigrants deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have become easy prey for violent criminal groups desperate for money. The gangs hold the deportees until their relatives in the U.S. pay thousands of dollars for their release.”
Mass graves have been found in the region, and the U.S. government delivers regular travel warnings to citizens looking to go into border states. There’s got to be a more compassionate approach than to take care of our own, but send people who’ve lived in our country for nearly two decades to gang-ridden lands where they’re bound to be kidnapped or shot.
Liz Wolfe (@lizzywol) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is managing editor at Young Voices.
