There was a day in this country—a very real, very documented day—when the United States of America opened its doors wider than ever before. And no, this isn’t poetic license. This isn’t a metaphor. This is math.
April 17, 1907.
On that one day, Ellis Island processed 11,747 immigrants. Let that sink in for a second. Nearly twelve thousand people. One day. One building. One country saying:
Yes.
You can come in.
You matter.
We’ve got room.
They came in waves—fathers gripping the hands of their sons, mothers cradling infants in blankets worn thin from the journey. Many had never seen a building taller than a church. Now they were staring up at the Statue of Liberty, a woman holding a torch, lighting the way toward something better.
They were Italians fleeing poverty. Russian Jews escaping pogroms. Irish families trying to survive in the wake of famine and colonial rule. People who were desperate, yes—but people who also had dreams. They arrived with names that American bureaucrats couldn’t pronounce and with papers so crinkled they were practically unreadable. They were coughing, exhausted, terrified—and hopeful.
And Ellis Island, that iconic checkpoint, was chaos that day. The inspectors couldn’t keep up. Translators were shouting over one another in Polish, Yiddish, German. A sea of steamer trunks and wide eyes. Babies crying. Clerks scribbling (there were no computers!). The smell of sweat and seawater and anticipation.
But somehow—somehow—it worked.
Because the national posture then, imperfect though it was, was tilted toward compassion. America believed in its capacity to absorb. To include. To expand the idea of who belonged.
And now—
Let’s talk about now.
In April 2025, the United States government is not processing immigrants in droves. It’s deporting them in droves.
Hundreds per day.
Tens of thousands per month.
People who’ve lived here for decades. People who have jobs, families, homes, roots. Legal protections in many cases. Court orders in some. None of it seems to matter.
Just last month, a man named Kilmar Abrego García—a Maryland father who’d been granted withholding of removal status because deportation would almost certainly get him killed—was taken and deported anyway. Illegally. Against a judge’s order.
When the court found out, they said, “Bring him back.”
The administration said: “No.”
Let me repeat that. The executive branch of the U.S. government was told by a federal judge to undo a deportation. And they refused. And when SCOTUS followed up with the same instruction? They refused again.
Meanwhile, students are being pulled from their campuses. Nurses from their clinics. Grandparents from their living rooms. ICE is no longer constrained to avoid sensitive areas like schools or hospitals. Those protections? Gone.
What we’re doing now isn’t Ellis Island.
It’s El Salvador flights under cover of darkness.
It’s unannounced raids and court orders tossed aside like junk mail.
And here’s the part that should keep you up at night:
We’re not overwhelmed like we were in 1907.
We’re not logistically unable to handle immigration.
We’re not doing this because we can’t do better.
We’re doing this because the people in power don’t want to.
They’ve decided that compassion is weakness.
That diversity is a threat.
That the law is optional if it conflicts with ideology.
So today, as we remember April 17, 1907—the most welcoming day in American immigration history—we have to ask:
What happened to us?
Because this isn’t just policy. It’s identity.
It’s legacy.
It’s character.
We are either the nation of Ellis Island or we are the nation of ICE raids and contempt of court.
But we cannot be both.
And history will remember which one we chose.
