Your point does not engage with the question raised in the comment you're replying to. Would you like to live in a society where criminal justice is secondary to immigration enforcement? One where we deport people with acute conditions without treatment because they are not authorized to live in this country? Dealing with the "root cause" does not require inflicting unnecessary cruelty upon other human beings.
> it has now rendered the fate of all of those people subject to the whims of whomever is in power.
Who is in power? What does our Constitution say? The executive branch is not granted absolute authority over immigration policy and the treatment of humans—citizens or otherwise. That is a Constitutional crisis.
Not every case of reframing in a debate is "whataboutism". Whataboutism is where you bring up unrelated topics. In this case, looking at how we got into a messy situation in the first place is entirely legitimate.
> it has now rendered the fate of all of those people subject to the whims of whomever is in power.
Who is in power? What does our Constitution say? The executive branch is not granted absolute authority over immigration policy and the treatment of humans—citizens or otherwise. That is a Constitutional crisis.