Making crossing the US border a capital offence undermines the very basis of the US legal system

The fundamental issue at the bottom of all this nonsense over immigration in the US currently is that, in order to control immigration, it is necessary to treat all immigrants as if they were serial killers guilty of the most heinous crimes possible, because, otherwise, the force necessary to actually remove most of them simply is not justifiable. And, under these circumstances, the cure becomes much worse than the disease. We don't consider it appropriate to shoot people for jaywalking, and, of course, that makes jaywalking rather common. One is unlikely to be ticketed for it, because it generally isn't much of a problem, so, people tend to ignore this particular law all the time. To some extent, that has been traditionally the way we dealt with undocumented immigrants, as well. If they stayed in the country a while, and weren't a problem, there was no reason to deport them. They became part of the community, sometimes much valued members of the community. Now, it is often quite difficult to remove much valued members of the community, from their communities. People will protect them, and sometimes use force to do it. Forces of "law and order" will be in direct conflict with their communities, and, this is very dangerous indeed for both the communities, and for law enfocement, as we are now seeing. Claiming all these much valued immigrants are "criminals", and treating them as very dangerous criminals, will, inevitably, lead to a serious breakdown of law and order for everyone. Justifying extra-legal procedures on the basis of the "emergency" of apprehending these "criminals", will result in the discreditation of both law enforcement, and the law itself, as we are now seeing.