She Came in Peace They Put Her In Chains - Instant Grace with Jim Babka IG47

I'm really tired of some of you people.

I mean, I've been hearing for years.

You know, I'm for immigration so long as they get in line.

They've got to follow a legal process,

but you don't really mean it.

I'm Jim Babka, this is instant grace,

a mini version of Grace Arkey with Jim Babka.

Have you heard the phrase, let the punishment fit the crime?

This is one of the oldest legal concepts we have.

You can find it in the book of Exodus,

you can find it in the works of Cicero,

or you can understand it in an observable way.

We call it the natural principle of human respect

and it says that any time violence

is initiated against someone,

their happiness, their harmony,

and their prosperity will decline, always.

Violence initiated against them

diminishes happiness, harmony and prosperity.

That is a natural cause and effect principle

like holding up this pen and letting it go.

We all know where it's going to go.

It's going to go down.

That's the principle of gravity.

This is the principle, the natural principle of human respect.

So I want you to keep that natural principle in mind

as I tell you the story of Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez.

Maria is 42 years old.

She lives in Sacramento and works as a regional manager

for Motel Six.

She oversees locations across California and Oregon.

This is someone with a lot of responsibility.

She came to the United States from Mexico

when she was 15.

She's been here for 27 years.

Maria has a 22 year old daughter named Amaris

who was born here and is herself a U.S. citizen.

Maria for her part is a DACA recipient.

DACA means that the government knows she is here

and DACA is not some loophole.

It means discretion.

It means that person is here with permission

and the government has promised not to pursue removal.

In fact, Maria's had her DACA status updated five times.

Five times.

Now, our immigration law allows people to become U.S. citizens

if they have a sponsor who is a citizen

who is 21 years of age or older and an immediate family member.

Remember, Damaris?

Now 22.

So when Damaris turned 21 last year,

she and Maria started the process

and had a green card appointment last week.

Maria, get her hair and her makeup

and she brought a white binder with her.

The binder included tax returns,

her high school diploma, vaccination records.

Every document she thought of

that the government could possibly need 27 years of her life.

Documentation showing every major milestone

of her time in the United States.

She was doing everything right.

During the application interview,

a federal agent walked up to her,

told her to stand up and put coughs on her.

This is the moment I want to focus in on.

Maria described it as humiliating.

By the next morning, she was in Mexico.

Did the punishment fit the crime?

Maria voluntarily walked into that building.

When agent's approach or she didn't run, she didn't resist.

But she said, I never felt so humiliated in my life.

I felt like the most wanted criminal in the United States.

I want you to think about the last time

a parking meter ran out while your car was sitting at the curb.

You weren't doing anything dangerous.

You weren't a threat to anyone.

You were simply somewhere.

You weren't supposed to be anymore.

The officer didn't wait for you to come back.

He didn't restrain you.

He left a piece of paper on your windshield and he moved on

because that was the response that the situation called for.

So what happened to Maria wasn't proportionate

and proportionality matters.

Not just as a matter of decency,

but as a matter of principle.

If we go back to that natural principle of human respect,

we can say with confidence that force

and exceeds what a situation requires is an enforcement.

It's a violent message that destroys happiness.

Now, the government has an answer for their behavior.

The people that work for the government

always conjure such things.

DHS says that Maria had a removal order from 1998

issued when she was a 15 year old crossing the border.

They say she received full due process

and they also claim she illegally re-entered the country

after that order.

For Maria's part, she says she was never before a judge.

She never heard about any removal order.

Not when she applied for DACA, not when she renewed it,

not through any of the years she spent building her American life.

And here's the detail that makes the government's argument

so particularly difficult to sustain.

In 2014, the federal government granted Maria advance parole

to visit her sick mother in Mexico.

Advanced parole, this is an official permission slip

to leave the country and lawfully re-enter.

So you cannot simultaneously claim

that someone is subject to a decades old removal order

and grant their permission to re-enter the country.

You can't say that.

These two things can't simultaneously be true.

Now, a lot of people are going to think

that Maria got what she had coming to her.

If she had just come the right way, whatever that is,

none of this would have happened

that were a nation of laws.

Maria did use the legal process.

She applied for DACA.

She obtained advanced parole before coming back.

And her daughter, DeMaris, had turned 21.

She was applying for permanent residency

through proper channels.

She showed up to the appointment they scheduled for her

and they building they told her to go to

with every document they asked her to bring

and more in a white binder.

If that's not coming here legally, then what is?

Maria got in line and when she finally got to the front

it turns out she was being led into a trap.

But we can go one step further here

since we know this natural principle of human respect.

And we could say that she shouldn't have even been subject

to such a thing.

She shouldn't have been subject to it.

I mean, if you're pursuing your happiness in life

how many of you would put an appointment

at a federal government building

where you had to file a bunch of forms,

bring a bunch of documents?

How many of you would consider that a good time?

Something that is enhancing and making you

more prosperous, more happy.

You wouldn't.

Such a process wouldn't exist.

Motel Six has employed this woman

to oversee locations in California and Oregon.

I don't know if she's got a loan or for a mortgage

on her home or she's renting, but she's living somewhere

and they agreed to let her have that.

We don't have any evidence here that she's any kind of threat

at all to society, but handcuffs were put on her

and worse, she shouldn't even have to go through this process.

It's an indignity against a real human being

and we should want to do better.

We should want to do a whole lot better.

We should want to practice human, human respect.