If you confined judgement on the Trump administration's immigration policy to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website you would likely be cheering.
The website features a veritable rogues gallery of "criminal aliens" who have been detained and in some cases deported. The photos make the FBI's most wanted list look like a beauty pageant lineup.
Few would object to the apprehension of serious criminals who have entered the United States illegally and have continued their criminal activities in our midst.
The initial understanding of ICE's enhanced role in going after people illegally in the country was that it would be primarily focused on serious criminals and gang members.
But, as we all have seen, it has gone well beyond this.
The young woman in the photograph is 19-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloza.
She is from Honduras but had lived in the U.S. since the age of seven. She was about to board a flight at Boston's Logan Airport heading for Austin, Texas where her parents live. She would surprise them for Thanksgiving. Lopez Belloza, however, was pulled aside and would end up in shackles and handcuffs.
She is a student at Babson College outside Boston. Babson's business school is one of the top rated in the country. This young woman had a bright future and would in all likelihood have contributed significantly to the only country she knew as home, the United States.
She was deported to Honduras despite her attorney securing a court order preventing her removal from the U.S. Some courts matter more than others these times.
In the past couple of days the Boston Globe reported that immigration agents had appeared at Lopez Belloza's family home in Austin. Once it gets its teeth into something ICE's appetite is seemingly insatiable.
Lopez Belloza is Honduran. She could just as easily have been Irish.
Few would argue that the United States has a right to control its borders and to properly run its immigration system. And few would argue that individuals in the country deserve a more minimal legal consideration if they commit serious crimes.
But we have witnessed the forceful detention of legal residents and even citizens. We have witnessed families being torn apart and thousands of people being confined in detention centers, often in horrific conditions.
This newspaper is aware of one particular horror story from a detention center that would sound as if it took place in a Russian Gulag.
ICE would argue that it is carrying out the job that it is mandated to do. It's likely the case that many ICE agents feel uncomfortable with some aspects of that job. It's hard to judge feelings when your face is hidden by a mask. Some agents, the more zealous, likely relish their tasks.
It's hard to know where all this will end. We are coming up to Christmas and it's certain that more families will experience a holiday they will want to forget.
America wears its christianity, the various forms of it, very loudly on its sleeve. But said christianity is being drowned out amid the cries of people whose only crime is to reach for a chance at pursuing the American Dream.
It all comes down to politics in the end; as it always does. Congress has been a miserable failure for all too many years in the matter of comprehensive immigration reform. With an aging population you would think that an ordered immigration system would be a priority on Capitol Hill.
But of course Capitol Hill is lately very much a second tier legislative entity behind an administration that grows in power, and the desire to wield power, with every passing day.
The Statue of Liberty still stands tall in New York Harbor. But Lady Liberty is in the unemployment line. And not to forget, she is French. Hopefully she has the correct papers.
