This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It's how dictators operate.

Pick a relatively small, politically powerless group of people and portray them as objects of fear and derision. Then swoop in with the power of the state to arrest members of that disfavored group and reap the political benefits of protecting the state from the threat that you invented.

This is why the current administration's move to arrest and deport more people who are in the United States without proper documentation, but who have committed no other crime, is so troubling and so counter to what America should stand for.

Whether by design or default, this is a policy of divide and conquer, one that re-enforces irrational fears of The Other among many citizens while pushing members of immigrant communities further into a parallel world where contact with all government services — including legitimate law enforcement — comes to be feared and shunned.

This does not make anyone safer. It makes us all less safe, less able to move freely and do our business without looking over our shoulder.

Numbers released recently by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – known by the properly chilly nickname ICE – show that arresting and detaining people who were here illegally but had committed no other crime was not unknown in the Obama years. That was something that both the last administration's supporters and its critics seemed to have little to say about.

But, over the 100 days since the new policy of increasing enforcement was announced, the number of "noncriminal" persons detained in the four-state region that includes Utah more than tripled, from 75 to 225, while the number of criminals detained by ICE was flat.

Local cases that have attracted attention include two totally inoffensive women who were torn from their families by ICE agents who, one might expect, would have better things to do with their time. One was deported to Colombia. Another was given a last-minute reprieve from deportation but still faces the possibility of being taken from her citizen family.

The argument that the law is the law and must be enforced in all cases is the philosophy of a soulless automaton. No law is, or can be, enforced in each and every case. Prosecutors and law enforcement agencies do, and must, make choices about where to put their emphasis and their limited resources.

And the situation only arises because Congress, over many years and under control of both parties, has been unable to reform the system in a way that is both enforceable and humane.

Taking a mother away from her family when all she did was be here without government imprimatur is not conservative, not American and not a reasonable use of our law enforcement resources.