In 2010, during the Obama administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested one of our foundry managers. At the time, we didn’t blame the ICE agents who arrived at our family foundry unannounced. We were just devastated.

Unbeknownst to us, one of our employees was an illegal immigrant. We were about to embark on an unsuccessful journey to prevent his deportation. It haunts us to this day, but I don’t blame former President Barack Obama for following the law.

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In 2010, people respected the law. It was before the defund the police movement and before radical elected officials such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made social media posts defending law-breakers as long as people breaking the law were doing so to “survive.” Regardless, what happened that day shook our company. I wasn’t working at the shop at the time. I had departed to start a family. I’ll never forget the phone call from my father. He called me in a panic to tell me ICE raided the shop and took “Juan,” our foundry manager.

When you have a small company, everyone who works there is like family. One of our company’s family members was just taken without even a goodbye. We had no idea he was not a legal citizen. After all, he had been working at the company for several years when my father bought it in 2002.

It turns out that the real Juan lived in Oregon, and our “Juan” had stolen his identity more than a decade before the raid. The IRS went after Juan in Oregon for not paying income tax on his Michigan income. That’s when the stolen identity was discovered and ICE was brought in on the case.

Our Juan had six children. They were young, making his wife a young mother. She and the children were hysterical. None of them had ever lived in another country, and now their father was being sent back to Mexico.

Juan was one of the stories you hear sensationalized today. He had been in the country for over a decade. He had never been in trouble, was a hard worker, and loved America. He was also a great employee and crucial to our operation. No one worked harder and no one kept the place moving like he did. People say no one is irreplaceable, but losing Juan was the beginning of the end of our shop.

No Democrats cried for him. No one threatened to impeach Obama. No agitators stood outside the ICE facility fighting for him. This was federal law, and back then, it was not politically advantageous to make a big deal about families being “separated.”

My father, however, was heartbroken. He couldn’t stand the fact that he had been ripped from his family without even a goodbye. My father was the ultimate family guy. Nothing was more important to him, and he immediately got to work to fight Juan’s deportation.

He hired an immigration attorney. They reviewed his case and came back with bad news. Juan owed nearly $30,000 in back taxes to the state of Oregon. My father, ever the optimist, asked how the taxes could be paid. That’s when the really bad news came. It wasn’t about paying the taxes. Juan had broken the law and had to be deported. The attorney told my father there was nothing more that he could do. The case was pretty clear-cut. Juan would be deported and would not be allowed to reenter the country.

Today, things may be changing. President Donald Trump has stopped a large number of illegal border crossings. A growing group of House Republican lawmakers is fighting for immigration reform. It would grant qualifying immigrants temporary legal status to allow them to continue working.

Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, told the Wall Street Journal that “the excuse that we’ve had for not taking steps to pass measures ensuring certainty and availability of workforce has been that the border hasn’t been under control. That excuse is gone.”

I know plenty of Republicans disagree, but I would argue they haven’t met the illegal immigrants who love America. The folks who want to work hard here, live here, and give their children the opportunities that can only be realized in this country. These aren’t the bad guys — the rapists, the terrorists, the traffickers, or the murderers. These are men and women who want to be Americans.

Too often these days, we are politically black and white. Some of us don’t have the life experience or grace to see the gray areas.

The last significant immigration reform bill was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. This administration could pass something new. A truly closed border would allow for immigration reform that truly puts America first. A closed border would allow for legal workforce immigration. If the government could ensure we are only letting in vetted workers without the confusion of criminal illegal immigrants pouring across the border, the humanitarian argument of the left would be null and void.

Reagan’s 1986 bill created a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who had been living in the country prior to 1982. If the border had closed back then, Juan wouldn’t have been ripped away from his family in 2010 for breaking the law.

I think about Juan’s story often and wonder what happened to his children. We were told the rest of the family moved out of state to be closer to extended family and get back on their feet financially. But the effect back at the shop was rough. When ICE raids your facility, they go to the human resources department and ask for the suspect. The human resources manager has to walk them out to the person’s work station.

ICE raided our shop three or four times while we owned it. Everyone would freeze as they watched the agents in all their gear stomping through the shop. We all stared in shock, wondering who would be taken.

MEASURING WHAT AMERICANS THINK ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Juan had been there longer than almost any other employee. He was beloved. He was a mentor, an interpreter, and he was truly skilled. When they took Juan, they took a big chunk of morale with him.

Our foundry closed in 2013. We lost a significant amount of business to China during the 2008 recession. We were trying to recover, but I think if my father were here today, he would say losing Juan was a real hit. I hope Trump’s bold move to close the border will lead to true and safe immigration for the good people like Juan.

Tudor Dixon is a former Republican gubernatorial nominee, executive in Michigan’s steel industry, and currently the host of The Tudor Dixon Podcast.