The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics presents its latest Ethics Spotlight on the Ethics of Immigration Enforcement. The collection of essays is authored by prominent SCU faculty, scholars, and ethicists, and explores the ethical dimensions of immigration enforcement and detention in the United States—particularly the role of ICE under the current administration.
Although much of the public discourse on immigration is framed in binary terms (one is either for or against immigration), immigration ethics, and detention in particular, encompasses many issues beyond the question of whether states should limit immigrant admissions. Several of these issues are reviewed in this collection.
Ethics Center Executive Director, Don Heider, looks at civil rights ethics and the weaponization of immigration law, and addresses from an ethical standpoint how the law should be applied consistently and fairly, not selectively based on ideology.
Davina Hurt, director of government ethics, addresses belonging and the shattering of social contracts. In her essay, Hurt explores how agencies such as ICE identify their targets based on identity rather than conduct, and in doing so Hurt says they violate fundamental principles of governmental ethics that law enforcement must serve all persons equally, and that government power must be exercised impartially under the law.
In “Can't our Leaders Craft Laws Allowing us to Realize Immigration as a Net Benefit?," Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, looks at the issues from her experience in leadership and business ethics and writes about the current state of immigration in the United States as a reflection of a systemic failure. Skeet affirms that only giving attention to addressing these long-term failures will set the country on its correct path.
In his essay, "Third Country Removal," David L Sloss, the John A. and Elizabeth H. Sutro Professor of Law at the Santa Clara University School of Law, addresses the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. and raises the question whether the United States is violating both international law and fundamental ethical norms.
While reasonable people may disagree about the best practical strategies to manage immigration and deportation, Thomas Plante, Augustin Cardinal Bea, SJ University Professor, asserts the premise that core ethical principles should be considered and followed at all times, and asks, "Who are we and how do we want to be in the world?"
And lastly, in his recent essay, “Unguarded Eyes”: The Doorway to a Politics of Conscience, Director of Religious and Catholic Ethics, David E. DeCosse highlights the need to develop a shared sense of conscience that binds people together across divides and becomes the basis of a story that leads to the renewal of our political world.
Explore all the perspectives in our Spotlight on The Ethics of Immigration Enforcement. The Ethics Spotlight series provides analysis of society’s most pressing issues. Previous Spotlights have addressed topics including compassion in governing, generative AI ethics, mass shootings, and many others.