Immigration and Customs Enforcement has increased its operations throughout the United States. This, combined with the existing difficulty of gaining citizenship, is having far reaching impacts on families and communities.

A student at Millard South is affected directly. Their mom was born in the United States, but their dad was not. The recent increase in immigration enforcement has impacted how the student and their family go about life. 

“We used to be very tight, and we used to travel all together. I recently had a [competition] out of state that my dad was extremely scared to go on and he almost didn’t go,” the student said. Even around Omaha, the student’s dad is afraid to be outside. 

“…he’s terrified to go outside just because of the color of his skin and our last name,” the student said. 

The student’s dad came to the U.S. as a teenager and is still working on getting citizenship. The process is long and difficult. 

“It takes a long time… he’s been here since he was 17 and now he’s 41. We’re still working on getting [citizenship],” the student said. 

The process of gaining citizenship is different for every individual, according to Anne Wurth, the Associate Legal Director at the Center For Immigrant and Refugee Advancement (CIRA). 

“There are many different pathways that can get you to certain steps along the way to citizenship. There are some pathways that won’t even get you to citizenship but will get you to some permanency in the meantime,” Wurth said.  

Immigration law can be broken up into categories: humanitarian, family-based, and employment based immigration law. CIRA deals with humanitarian and family-based immigration law. Family-based law is for people who have a family member who is already a legal permanent resident or a U.S. citizen. 

“If you have a U.S. citizen family member who is your parent or your spouse then you… [can get a visa], but you have to go through the visa process,” Wurth said. 

A visa is a general term for how you can be in the United States, but it is not the same as citizenship. The visa process starts with filing an application. Applications often take a long time to process. 

“Often it takes months, if not over a year, and that’s just the first step,” Wurth said. 

After that, you have to go through ‘adjusting status’ which requires another application and another fee. That can take months as well, depending on the situation.  

The process of getting a visa could require someone to leave the U.S. and return to their home country. They would have to get a medical exam, then go to a consulate and complete an interview. 

“At that interview you could either be denied or accepted for a visa,” Wurth said. 

That whole process could take months or years. 

“…If one small thing goes wrong and you are rejected, there is no way to get back into the United States…,” Wurth said. 

Visa applications for siblings of U.S. citizens are still being processed from decades ago. 

“If you are coming from Mexico, they’re still processing applications that were submitted in April of 2001. If you were to submit an application for a sibling in 2026 it’s going to be decades before the government even looks at that application, let alone before you can see your sibling come into the United States,” Wurth said. 

For spouses or children of permanent residents, they are still processing applications from 2024, leaving people with a multi-year wait before being able to gain a visa.

In addition to the long wait times, money is a significant barrier to gaining citizenship.

“There are so many ways in which money plays into this system and that’s one of the reasons [that] it’s so important for [CIRA] to provide our services free of charge,” Wurth said. 

The Millard South student said, 

“Most [people] want their citizenship, [but] it costs a lot of money. We’ve probably put tens of thousands of dollars into trying to get it with our lawyer. It’s not a very easy process at all.” 

“If you have all of the money, and all of the access to a lawyer, and have the ability to wait, and your family member is in a safe space outside of the United States to wait, then you’re still looking at many years before… you have ‘done it the right way’ under immigration law,” Wurth said. 

If a family member is in the United States during this waiting period they are considered undocumented, as is the case with the student’s dad. 

“Right now there is so much added stress and worry about getting picked up by ICE that you are constantly under stress and are still ‘trying to do it the right way,’” Wurth said. 

Wurth added that, when people claim that others should immigrate to the United States the ‘right way,’ they are often missing the context of just how complex and difficult the immigration system is. 

The Immigration system in the United States is particularly difficult when compared to other countries, she stated. 

“… It’s a house of cards built on a very rocky platform… It’s dysfunction building on top of dysfunction…,” Wurth said. “It creates these really difficult pathways and then you add the animus and the anger with which this administration is trying to dismantle the immigrant population and it just becomes such a difficult conversation… [about how] difficult the system is and how hard it is to navigate.”  

According to Wurth, the increased ICE enforcement adds to the issues already present with the immigration system. 

“It compounds all of the brokenness into really just cruelty and impossible situations for many individuals… some [of which] have been here for decades,” Wurth said. 

The reasons someone may come to the United States are as varied as the individuals. Immigrants may face difficult, dangerous conditions, an arduous journey and often don’t speak the language of the country they are entering. They have to set up a new life and get a new job, as well as face the potential to be taken advantage of, Wurth stated. 

Wurth said that people don’t take the decision to immigrate lightly. People go through the work of immigrating to the U.S., not to take advantage of the country, but because they have a desire to provide for their children and live in a place that is safe. 

Undocumented Immigrants are not able to access public benefits.

“The vast majority of immigrants who are undocumented pay more in taxes to our system than they ever receive in benefits… [they] cannot receive benefits because they don’t have social security numbers and they don’t have an ability to apply for something like Medicaid…,” Wurth said. 

In addition, immigrants often fill difficult and impactful jobs in agriculture and meatpacking. They are important to the Nebraska economy, as well to the economy in the United States as a whole. 

“Our [immigration] system as it is, is broken and it’s not serving immigrants, it’s also not serving the United States,” Wurth said. “It’s not serving employers, it’s not serving the people who eat the food that immigrants pick for us, and [the food that comes] out of the packing plants that immigrants work in. It’s not serving the people who like to go to restaurants because the restaurant industry is built on the backbone of immigrants as well,” she said. 

The immigration system cannot be fixed by creating fear and chaos, Wurth stated.

“… focusing on compounding misery for immigrants that are currently in the United States by creating an atmosphere of chaos and fear with ICE in the community is not the way that we fix [the system],” Wurth said. 

When discussing immigration, people often forget about the real people involved. 

“…What is missing the most from these conversations is thinking about the actual individuals involved…,” Wurth said. “If you need to look at statistics [about] these individuals, we know that… [they] are far less likely to commit crimes in the United States than a U.S. citizen is. We know that these individuals are contributing members of society…” 

The Millard South student said, 

“Not all of them are criminals just because they came here. A lot of them were brought here because of their family… [with] my dad, his dad had passed away and his family was already here so he had to come…”