[[{"fid":"112649","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_css_class[und]":"_none"},"type":"media","attributes":{"class":"media-element file-default _none"}}]]

Photo by Ben Moffat/The Republic

Shocker. Seems the Trumpster Fire isn't going to deport those millions of "rapists," "gang members," "violent criminals," and "drug dealers" he's always incoherently ranting about. Instead, his first victim is Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a 36-year-old Phoenix mother of two teenagers and American citizens who has lived peaceably in Arizona for 22 years. She was brought here from Mexico at 14, got caught working at a water park using a fake social security number during a 2008 raid by famed freedom lover, racial profiler and then-sheriff Joe Arpaio, has since regularly checked in every six months as required with Immigration and Customs officials, did so yesterday after praying at church, but was suddenly detained last night under Trump's deranged new rules. As her crying children and scores of protesters chanted "This Is Wrong" and "Set Her Free!", Garcia de Rayos was locked in a van, driven away, and detained. Today, officials said she had already been deported to Nogales, Mexico. Feel safer yet?

Some less-than-Christian patriots evidently do: The hashtags #FreeLupita and #GuadalupeGarcia are sprinkled with ugly comments about "entitled illegals" and "convicted felons" urging, "Out out get out!" and celebrating, "One down, 12 million to go." Mostly, though, the action has been denounced as a cruel, arbitrary and unrealistic "travesty" victimizing the wrong people and ripping apart families who have done nothing but try to make a better life. "Basically we are Americans," says de Rayos' husband, who like his wife arrived as a child and does still not have legal status. "This is our country." Critics include those in public life who cite earlier, erratic efforts at "rock-ribbed border enforcement" - invariably followed by boycotts, protests, mass disruption - that "did not end well." Above all, notes one editorial, with the ascendancy of Trump we have moved from an America that "once understood Garcia de Rayos' sins...(the) complexities of Latin-American immigration" to one that has "grown hard and resentful of outsiders." "Yes, they are getting tough with lowly, working-class immigrants," it says. "Would that they held the nation’s chief executive to such exacting standards."

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox.







[[{"fid":"112650","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_css_class[und]":"_none"},"type":"media","attributes":{"class":"media-element file-default _none"}}]]

Photo by David Wallace/The Republic

[[{"fid":"112653","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_css_class[und]":"_none"},"type":"media","attributes":{"class":"media-element file-default _none"}}]]

Photo by Rob Schumaker/The Republic