EDITOR'S NOTE: Three Democratic candidates for Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District — Ryan Crosswell, Lamont McClure and Carol Obando-Derstine — visited the Univest Public Media Center for one-on-one policy interviews.
The conversations are the basis of a five-part "PA-7 Talks" series this week ahead of the May 19 primary election.
A fourth candidate, firefighter union boss Bob Brooks, initially agreed to participate but later canceled. His campaign did not respond to requests to reschedule.
The winner of the primary is expected to face U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh Valley, in November. Mackenzie is uncontested in the Republican primary.
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Since returning to the White House for a second term, President Donald Trump has followed up on his campaign promise of more aggressive enforcement of America's immigration laws.
But the significant expansion of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been met with protests as the agency's budget expanded and as law enforcement targeted migrants who had not committed criminal offenses.
The backlash peaked earlier this year after federal agents killed two American citizens in Minneapolis during crackdowns in the city.
Former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, former Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure and Carol Obando-Derstine took our questions on dealing with immigration problems and issues with ICE.
Abolish or reform?
The three Democrats called for serious changes in the country's immigration enforcement but expressed a desire to reform ICE rather than abolish it.
Each pointed to his or her background to show they're the candidate best up to the task.
Obando-Derstine, who immigrated to the United States at age 3 with her parents from Colombia, said the current system is failing to live up to the American dream.
Instead, communities are being terrorized as masked men grab people on the street, frequently based off the way they look, she said.
"What we need to do is to reform this ICE system that's completely out of control," Obando-Derstine said.
"What I see right now is cruelty — cruelty as the point."
McClure blamed Trump for taking a immigration enforcement, a critical function of government, to a dangerous extreme.
The nation needs to be able to stamp out dangerous criminal organizations and kick out bad actors who don't belong within its borders, he said, bBut Trump's reimagining of the agency has twisted his campaign promises and must be reined in.
"Violent criminals should be deported, let me be clear about that," he said. "But non-violent criminals being scooped up by a masked, heavily armed, quasi-paramilitary force?"
Crosswell reached a similar conclusion, saying the problem is less a result of ICE's existence and more a problem with Trump's governing philosophy.
What's needed is for Congress to step in and serve as a check on the administration, he said. Anything short of that could just see other agencies or groups tasked with the same heavy-handed assignments, he said.
"I wouldn't take it off the table," Crosswell said of abolishing ICE. "I just think it's kind of a non-solution. Because if it's not ICE, the administration's just going to use something else."
Long-term fix
While ICE has drawn intense public scrutiny in recent months, it's far from the only immigration issue that's confronted the nation.
For years, elected leaders in Washington have grappled with reforming the United States' immigration laws and policies and what to do with the millions of people living in the country who entered illegally.
McClure credited former President George W. Bush and the late U.S. Sen. John McCain with coming closest with passing meaningful immigration reform in the early 2000s, but blamed other Republicans with killing those negotiations.
That lack of progress has let Trump turn asylum on its head; immigration judges who issue rulings the administration doesn't like are being fired and defendants are too often in court with no attorney.
"Our immigration laws, which, as you know, go back a century, more than a century, they need to be rewritten," McClure said.
"And they might need to be rewritten from the bottom up because Trump has seriously broken them."
Obando-Derstine cited her familiarity with the system, saying that her experiences moving to the country and becoming a naturalized citizen gave her a personal understanding of where the system needs to be changed.
Immigration courts need to be modernized and the system needs more personal to handle the amount of asylum cases, she said.
The country also needs to do right by DACA recipients, people who illegally entered the country as children but have been allowed to remain in the United States, she said.
Delays in court hearings have led to people losing work and placed them at risk of deportation from the only home they have known, she said.
"Who better than an actual immigrant who understands the immigration system, who's lived it, whose parents have lived it, family members have lived it?" she said.
"Who better to work on a fix than me, who understands it?"
Crosswell said his priority would be creating a pathway to citizenship for the people who are in the country illegally but are otherwise law-abiding residents.
Spending resources to track down such individuals pulls attention away from dealing with criminals who make the United States a more dangerous place.
"There's been multiple efforts [for a pathway to citizenship]. They're bipartisan. We've come close, but the Trump administration, I think, has made that much, much worse," he said.
He sai he wants to make the nation's asylum system more efficient without making it harder for talented individuals to come to the United States for work or study.
The United States has benefited from attracting such skilled people, but many of them now are second-guessing their decision to come here as Trump ramps up its deportation process and even targeting dissidents who are here legally, he said.
Past episodes of the "PA-7 Talks" series can be found here:
PA-7 Talks: The Federal Government
