Newly-elected president Donald Trump has, in one week in office, signed two crucial executive orders regarding immigration. These actions come to be the fulfillment of promises made by Trump during a presidential campaign which strongly popularized anti-immigrant sentiments. He was elected and now his actions are laws.

As of now, these actions could affect the status of more than 11 million estimated illegal immigrants living in the United States. More importantly almost four percent of the population in Kansas, made up by an estimation of the number of illegal immigrants in the state, could be at risk of deportation following the carrying-out of the now ruling anti-immigrant agenda. Among providing information that there will be 10,000 new positions for deportation officers, the president has reinstated his promise to build an “impassable’ wall along the southern border.

A 90-day “Muslim ban” barring people from seven different countries in the Middle East with populations of largely muslim faith was also put into action this past week. Finalizing the week came a shooting in a mosque in Quebec, Canada, shortly after the “Muslim ban” was instituted.

The Mentor editorial board overwhelmingly agreed that acts such as Trump’s divide the American population by instituting racial profiling back into American culture and furthermore into society.

Senseless actions focusing on religion, on race, have come back with force. That force has now become the state. To reject a human being because of what God they believe in is both misguided theoretically and in practice. There are more than 1.5 billion Muslims in the world and to generalize many of them as potential threats is not only statistically irrational, but built and capitalized on ignorance, fear mongering and an aggressive personal brand of nationalism.         

To say there is any value in these actions, in this type of misguided so-called patriotism, pushed and calculated to create hate and gain political power would be an overstatement. There is no value in actions based on the intent to divide humans using ethnicity or race. This is an unacceptable reality which we have to face for the multitude of Americans being defined because of their religion or the color of their skin. A clearer proof of systematic racism simply does not exist.  

Americans also have a responsibility to stand up for people who have lived with them for decades, to children born with the unalienable rights which the constitution promises. The Trump administration will look to override the rights of people, many of them refugees, in order to keep pushing his power. Americans should stand up for their own, and that is everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, who shares this land. It is unacceptable for racist beliefs such as this to separate us, now is the time to belong together.