We Are All Deportable, and Juan Ciscomani Thinks It’s a Good Idea

While all of us are paying close attention to the cost of living and healthcare affordability, the Trump administration seems to invent new ways of traumatizing immigrants, permanent residents, asylum seekers, and even citizens every month.

You’re Paying for One-Way Trips to Third-Party Countries

One way to do it is the deportation of an asylum seeker to a country the person has no connection to, ideally on another continent. Here is how it looks in practice: an Iranian female asylum seeker was recently deported to the Central African Republic, the country that is too unsafe for American citizens to visit, and a close ally of Russia. Deportation took place despite a court ruling that this woman had credible fears of persecution by Iran’s government based on politics and religion. This comes after the loss of deportation protections for Afghans, many of whom arrived in the United States after assisting the US armed forces in Afghanistan and face persecution, torture, and death in their home country.

The reason countries accept third-country deportees is money. The Central African Republic has received $85 million from the US government after entering into such an agreement with the United States. The best-known country is El Salvador, where President Bukele advertises the high-security Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) as a secure place where one gets in and never gets out – and at a low, low price of $5 million. You might remember CECOT from the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and another 180 or so Venezuelans who were accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, without proof. Third Country Deportation Watch, a site created and maintained by several human rights organizations, tracks third-country deportation agreements with 34 countries. Only one country on the list is a member of the European Union: Poland has received Ukrainian deportees who had sought refugee status in the United States; most of them traveled back to Ukraine, a country being attacked by Russia. Mexico, our neighbor to the South, is part of this group of countries as well. They have taken deportees from Cuba. We know of someone who lost a fiancée this way.

Forced Family Separations

The government is also bringing back the practice of separating children from their parents, as seen during Trump’s first term. Since January 2025, 145,000 children have lost their parents when ICE kidnapped the parents and quickly deported them, with no knowledge of what would happen to their children. For some, this was a second instance of separation; the first instance happened when the families were separated at the border during Trump’s first term. The children are often left in the care of neighbors or family members, which sometimes takes a tragic turn. Three-year-old Orlin Hernandez Meyes was murdered by his uncle after his mother was deported, and the boy was taken in by his family. Trump’s administration blamed the murder on the boy’s mother, stating in bad faith that she had abandoned her son.

There is a reason that the government wants to separate families: trauma from forceful separation from a parent affects a child throughout life, and this government likes creating trauma a lot. And there is a reason why it’s happening quietly: the administration saw the biggest wave of protests during Trump’s first term when the country learned about the screams of toddlers being forcefully separated from their mothers and immigration officers laughing at crying children. 

Government-sponsored DACA Fraud

The next invention involves DACA recipients, where the government is actively delaying processing of their cases. There are about 500,000 DACA recipients in the USA, including close to 19,000 in Arizona. DACA status is not automatically given: every person must apply for it and renew it every two years. The typical renewal process in the past took about 15 days. This year it grew to 122 days. The government is actively stopping the processing of those cases in hopes that more people’s status will expire, and those people will now be deportable.

Here is what Mo Goldman, an immigration attorney, says about this:

“The government is purposely dragging their feet on the processing of DACA renewals. They have tens of thousands of applications for new DACAs that they’re not processing. They’re taking people’s money, to the tune of about $500 per application, and not doing anything about it. They’re just sitting on these applications.” 

There is a word for taking the money and not providing the service. It’s called fraud. The administration is willingly defrauding people who have little power to fight for their rights.

One of those cases is Karla Toledo, the DACA recipient and a community advocate who was arrested by ICE on dubious charges. She was brought to the United States as a 1-year-old toddler. After spending two weeks in Eloy Detention Center, she was freed, and her deportation case was dropped. Adelita Grijalva, the Member of Congress representing AZ Congressional District 7, advocated for her release. But in the typical fashion of this regime, ICE refiled the deportation case against Karla Toledo in the immigration court as a part of a perverse policy to sue immigrants as many times as possible and hope they give up.

Report Aliens!

And finally, our government is trolling us with a new website, suggestively called aliens.gov. The idea behind its creation seems to be that everyone who immigrated to the United States after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 does not belong on this land. Site visitors learn that these “aliens” walk among us, send their kids to the same schools as us, and shop in the same stores, and this is a very bad, dangerous thing.

Cicomani’s favorite president and those who serve him want to go back to the time when most Americans were White, you could kill a non-white person without any consequences, there were no Chicken Tikka Masala or Peking Duck on any menu, the popular spices were salt and pepper, and cinnamon was used the right way: for the apple pie. And may God help you if you had the nerve to ask your grocer for cilantro.

Naturalized
Citizens at Risk (and that’s just the beginning)

The Trump regime is not hiding that it is working on the denaturalization of some citizens. With this push, it’s quite possible to lose citizenship, be kidnapped, and disappeared into the ICE concentration camp network, and then be deported to a country one has no connection to. You might be in luck and end up in Poland, which has laws against torture and no CECOT-type prisons, but then again, you might be trafficked to El Salvador, South Sudan, or Eswatini, where the governments are paid for ignoring the law.
The administration has initiated this process with naturalized citizens who have committed an offense, such as lying on their applications. But that is just their starting point. They have gone far beyond their campaign promise to go after immigrants with criminal records and will surely do the same with naturalized citizens.

Ciscomani Champions Government Terror

     Our representative’s response? Instead of advocating against government terror, he seems to say “Meh. So what?!” between bites of tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole. Here is one of his recent Facebook posts:

Juan Ciscomani tells everyone who will listen that he is an immigrant who has lived the American dream. That much is true: he was brought to this country from Mexico at the tender age of 2, just like Karla Toledo. If his parents didn’t ensure he received his US citizenship, he would be here illegally and would likely seek DACA status. He and his family arrived after 1965, and he might look like an alien to this government.

But, despite his success in being elected to Congress twice, he does not help the immigrant community or any vulnerable constituent. In the past, he attended naturalization ceremonies around our district and happily shared pics on social media. He no longer does it. Does he agree with President’s advisor Steven Miller’s agenda to close paths for citizenship and deport more than 100 million Americans?

Adelita Grijalva, Yassamin Ansari (AZ Congressional District 3), and Greg Stanton (AZ Congressional District 4) have reported on the rotten food, lack of drinking water, and inadequate health care in Eloy. Ciscomani wouldn’t know that since he doesn’t visit any immigrant detention centers. He does not advocate for anyone kidnapped and disappeared into the ICE concentration camp network, does not help any kids who lost their parents, and does not assist any defrauded DACA recipient with status renewal.  He seems to believe that his position as a naturalized citizen and Member of Congress who agrees with the President’s agenda, and his Oro Valley home address, will protect him from anything that happens to other immigrants.

Ciscomani at Risk – Electorally

There is one thing his status does not protect him from: losing the November election to JoAnna Mendoza. And, if you feel the same way about Ciscomani as we do, we have some great news.

The Votehub recently changed the status of Arizona Congressional District 6 from Tossup to Lean Democratic. Ciscomani’s votes on bills that have harmed our community and his strong support for all the illegal, immoral, questionable, and plain stupid actions of the Trump regime are starting to affect his reelection chances.  Mendoza has a plan to help constituents, including advocating for DACA recipients, and understands, as a veteran, the depravity of deporting Afghans who helped the US armed forces back into the Taliban’s hands.

Find out more about JoAnna Mendoza at https://www.joannamendoza.com/.