Liberty and Justice for All

SCOTUS Grants Dreamers Temporary Reprieve

POSTED 2/26/2018

The Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions that maintained major pieces of the Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.  DACA was to expire March 5.  The Dreamers' uncertainty will continue for several more months unless the deadlocked Congress acts to make their status permanent.  For an appalling look at America's immigrant detention centers and anti-immigrant sentiment, see the short Atlantic documentary below.   It "stars" the Trump-pardoned-now-running-for-Senator(!) "Sheriff Joe" Arpaio. - RJC, 2/26/2018

NYTimes, Feb 26: "The Supreme Court on Monday declined to clear the way for the Trump administration to end the Obama-era program that protects about 700,000 young immigrants from deportation, meaning that the so-called “Dreamers” could remain in legal limbo for months unless Congress acts to make their status permanent.  President Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program last September, calling it an unconstitutional use of executive power by his predecessor and reviving the threat of deportation for immigrants who had been brought to the United States illegally as young children. But two federal judges have ordered the administration to maintain major pieces of the program while legal challenges move forward, notably by requiring the administration to allow people enrolled in it to renew their protected status. The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday not to hear the government’s appeal will keep the program alive for months."

Pence’s Exclusion of Syrian Refugees Permanently Struck Down by Court

POSTED 3/2/2018

"A federal judge has dealt a final blow to former Gov. Mike Pence's ban on aid to Syrian refugees.  The decision ends a years-long legal battle between immigration activists and Indiana on the issue. U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt issued a permanent injunction Tuesday against Gov. Eric Holcomb and Jennifer Walthall, the secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. The officials are barred from withholding federal grant money to Exodus Refugee Immigration Inc., a non-profit that aids refugees, according to the order." (USA Today, Mar 2)

"Pence’s stunt, one shared in by some 16 governors, all but one Republicans, was always obviously unconstitutional and discriminatory. Once refugees are in the United States they can settle where they like. The reason for the stunt was not fear of terrorism. Syrian refugees are fleeing terrorism,...2/3's are women and children, and most terrorism in the United States is committed by white nationalists." (Informed Comment, Mar 2)

Stephon Clark is laid to rest

POSTED MARCH 29, 2018

As another unarmed black man killed by police is laid to rest today, mass protests continue in Sacramento.  Eleven days ago, police fired 20 rounds at Clark, a 22 year-old father of two, who was holding a cell phone at the time.  

In Louisiana, on Tuesday, officials decided not to press charges against the officers who killed Sterling Alton in 2016.  "The decision drew condemnation from civil rights activists who note that, more than three years after the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. brought national attention to police killings, the number of officers prosecuted for fatal shootings remains vanishingly small." (Washington Post, Mar 27)

Update 3/30/2018:  "A Louisiana police chief said Friday he has fired the white officer who fatally shot a black man during a struggle outside a convenience store nearly two years ago, a killing that set off widespread protests.  Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul announced officer Blane Salamoni's firing less than a week after Louisiana's attorney general ruled out criminal charges in Alton Sterling's July 2016 shooting death." (Associated Press, 3/30)

Police killings are the tragic consequence of many causes - from the widespread availability of guns in the US to the lack of adequate de-escalation training to the racial component.  Police killed 1146 people in 2017 - 25% of them black despite being 13% of the population; 30% of the black people killed were unarmed compared to 21% of the white victims.  

Colin Kapernick, LeBron James and other athletes have been maligned for their political statements.   Last year, Trump called for the firing of NFL players who silently protest the killing of unarmed African-Americans.  In February, a conservative commentator told LeBron to "shut up and dribble,"  implying that James was making "ignorant comments" (and how ironic is that statement coming from Fox News!) and setting a bad example for young people who look up to him. 

Rather than telling people to be quiet when they point out systemic disparities and injustices, the "silencers" should either convince us that protests are not justified or work to correct the injustices or perhaps shut up themselves. - RJC, 3/29/2018

Immigration Judges Begin Processing Central American Asylum Seekers

POSTED 5/2/2018

After their month-long journey of hundreds of miles, about 140 asylum seekers from Central American countries reached the US-Mexico border in Tijuana.  The caravan gained prominence this year after it drew the wrath of the Trump Administration.  "U.S. border inspectors have allowed some Central American asylum-seekers to enter the country for processing...Eight people started the asylum process on Monday night, according to organizers."   The asylum process takes months.  These refugees from gang and drug violence have a long legal road ahead of them with only a modest chance (20%-25%) of gaining admittance to the US.

From Slate: Jury Convicts White Man Who Viciously Beat Black Man at Unite the Right Rally

POSTED 5/3/2018

Remember Charlottesville's "Unite the Right" rally and the counter-demonstrations and Trump's asinine comments.  Well, one of Trump's "very fine people" has just been convicted of malicious wounding.  He could face 10 years in prison and a fine of $20,000.

New York Daily News Aug 16, 2017:  "President Trump calls white supremacists ‘very fine people,’ blames Charlottesville on ‘both sides’ in bizarre Trump Tower tirade"

Huffington Post, Sep 23, 2017: Trump Called White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People’ But An Athlete Who Protests Is A ‘Son Of A Bitch’

Confusion, calculation and fear keeping DACA recipients from renewing their status

POSTED 5/14/2018

In spite of continuing rulings in their favor by Federal judges and the February ruling by the Supreme Court, many DACA recipients are not renewing their status.  Citing figures from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the LA Times reports that applications for renewal have been slow coming in.  "The decisions to wait could collectively add up to trouble later this year, assuming the program remains in effect. Of the 165,210 people whose DACA protections expire from June to December, only about 12% have applied for renewal, according to figures through March 31, suggesting that a surge is coming, along with possible bottlenecks in an already slow system."

Federal Judge, Citing Alito, Strikes Down Trump’s Anti–Sanctuary City Policy

Slate, June 6: "The Trump administration’s attack on sanctuary cities has failed. Again.  On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson ruled that Attorney General Jeff Sessions may not withhold federal funds from Philadelphia due to the city’s “sanctuary” policies, which bar local law enforcement from sharing residents’ immigration status with the federal government. Baylson’s sharply worded decision marks yet another blow to Sessions’ failed quest to penalize sanctuary jurisdictions by stripping them of cash. And, in case there was any ambiguity before, it confirms that a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court should render this particular Trump administration crusade obviously illegal."

Senator Feinstein introduces bill to stop family separations at the border

POSTED JUNE 10, 2018

How can this happen in the United States of America? Migrant children are being taken from their parents at the US-Mexican border at a rate of 50 per day.  Chris Hayes at MSNBC rightly calls this Trump-Sessions policy barbaric and a national shame.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has introduced legislation that would make it illegal to separate family members entering the US.  Speaking to CNN Sunday, Feinstein called the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy of separating adults and children “inhumane” and “callous.”  

Under the new policy, the Trump administration has prosecuted all people, including those seeking asylum, who attempt to cross the border into the United States without documentation. The consequence of the policy is that children are separated from their families, while their parents are prosecuted.

The practice has drawn heated criticism from Democrats, immigration experts, and human rights advocates who claim that it will do nothing to deter border crossings and is unnecessarily cruel.

Many have pointed to a recent case, first reported by The Washington Post, in which a Honduran father who was arrested and forcibly separated from his wife and child after trying to enter the United States, killed himself while in jail. The father, Marco Antonio Muñoz, his wife, and three-year-old son were seeking to apply for asylum. (Think Progress, June 10)

Related story: Border Patrol failed to count hundreds of migrant deaths on US soil (CNN, May 15)

Update: Family Separations at Border 

POSTED 6/16/2018

Happy Father's Day. 

The Trump Administration's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy has resulted in the separation of hundreds of children from their parents.  The total number is unknown but DHS has estimated that 1,995 children have been separated from their parents in the six week period from April 19 to May 31 .  As Jeff Sessions quotes the Bible and as Trump lies through his teeth blaming Democrats, legal efforts are underway and opposition to this cruel and barbaric disgrace of a policy is rising.

Legal challenges are underway.  

The American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of a Congolese mother detained in San Diego and a Brazilian mother who was charged in El Paso while their children were sent to shelters in Chicago.

Last month, the Texas Civil Rights Project, Women’s Refugee Commission, University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic and Garcia & Garcia Attorneys also filed an Emergency Request for Precautionary Measures with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of separated families. The American Immigration Lawyers Assn. and other groups had already complained last fall to the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Inspector General challenging the separations.

On June 8, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and 31 of her colleagues introduced legislation to keep immigrant families together by preventing the Department of Homeland Security from taking children from their parents at the border. 

The Keep Families Together Act was developed in consultation with child welfare experts to ensure the federal government is acting in the best interest of children. The bill is supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Kids In Need of Defense (KIND), Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Children’s Law Center, Young Center for Immigrant Rights and the Women's Refugee Commission.  

On June 14. more than 300 Catholic bishops blasted the Trump administration’s immigration policies, calling for an end to the separation of migrant children from their parents and condemning Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s policy of ending the right of domestic violence survivors to seek asylum in the United States. 

On June 14, House Republicans introduced their "compromise plan" that they say will prevent Trump from separating families.  As Vox reports, 

"They’re lying.  The Republican bill doesn’t outlaw family separation. It doesn’t stop the Trump administration from choosing to prosecute asylum seekers who enter the US between ports of entry (official border crossings) for illegal entry, which results in parents being sent into criminal custody without their children. And it doesn’t even force the government not to separate parents who do present themselves legally for asylum from their children — something that has also been happening, though isn’t as widespread.  What the House bill does is get rid of the extra legal protections that children and families have in immigration detention: a requirement that children be kept in the “least restrictive” conditions possible, and that they not be detained any longer than necessary. This means that if the family is kept together, their parents must be released with them."

Feinstein immediately slammed the Republican "compromise" in a press statement that says, in part, 

“We’re not going to make a Sophie’s Choice between the welfare of different groups of children. The United States should not have to choose between keeping nursing babies with their mothers and ensuring minors aren’t incarcerated for months on end.  We can provide all immigrants who arrive at our border seeking asylum with humane, respectful treatment and return them to their country when necessary. Our country is better than this.”

Trump signs order stopping his policy of separating families at border

POSTED 6/20/2018/LATEST UPDATE 6/25/2018

President Donald Trump, under mounting political pressure from angry members of his own party, signed on Wednesday an executive order that would reverse his administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border and detaining families together instead...The executive order won't stop the detention of children — or Trump's "zero tolerance" policy of charging people with a misdemeanor for entering illegally — but will allow them to be held with their parents "during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members."

The order directs the agency to "prioritize" hearings for families in detention to speed up processing and also directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to file a request in federal court to modify a longstanding federal court decree — known as the "Flores settlement" — that prohibits the government from holding children in detention for longer than 20 days.  Such a modification would allow DHS "to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings," according to the order. (NBC News, June 20)

RELATED STORIES/UPDATES

Massive protests continued Tuesday.  Mike Pence gets an earful. (Slate) (6/21)

Report: Nearly Half of Funding for Child Migrant Care Went to Shelters With Histories of Abuse (Slate) (6/21)

Inside the Noisy, Spontaneous, Airport Protest to Greet Separated Children in NYC (Mother Jones) (6/22): "Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at New York City’s Laguardia Airport late Wednesday night to greet inbound flights from Texas carrying displaced migrant children. They held signs offering words of love and support, and criticism of controversial family separation policies at the US-Mexico border."

Trump administration stops prosecuting most immigrant parents, but refuses to say when families will be reunified (LATimes) (6/25): "Advocates for immigrants say that in some cases, parents separated from their children and detained while awaiting a hearing on a claim for asylum are being given a choice: If they want to see their children, they must withdraw their asylum claims and agree to be deported. 'They went in and told the parents if you sign this, you can get your kids back,' said Jodi Goodwin, an attorney coordinating a “rapid response team” of about 10 volunteer lawyers aiding immigrants at Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

Trump administration won't return children to immigrant parents in custody

Federal judge: "Oh yes, you will"

POSTED JUNE 26, 2018/UPDATED JUNE 27

The stage is now set for a high profile legal battle between the Trump Administration and immigrant advocates.

(LATimes, June 26) "The Trump administration will not reunite any migrant children with parents still held in immigrant detention facilities unless federal law is changed, a top administration official told Congress on Tuesday, adding a new level of confusion and fear in the family separation crisis created by the White House.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, testifying on Capitol Hill, provided the clearest statement to date of administration policy and confirmed what immigrant advocates have feared: The only way parents can quickly be reunited with their children is to drop their claims for asylum in the United States and agree to be deported."

(New York Times, June 27) Update:  "A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction late Tuesday temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border and ordered that all families already separated be reunited within 30 days.  Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the Federal District Court in San Diego said children under 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days, and he ordered that all children must be allowed to talk to their parents within 10 days.  'The unfortunate reality is that under the present system, migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property,' the judge wrote."

Mother Jones, July 6: "A federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it shouldn’t have to reunite children with parents who have been deported. During a court hearing Friday afternoon, Judge Dana Sabraw ruled that parents who had already been removed from the country prior to his injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s family separation policy must still be reunited with their children. 

The court hearing—part of a dramatic legal battle between the American Civil Liberties Union and the administration—followed Sabraw’s order last week requiring the government to quickly reunite separated families. Sabraw also ordered the government to produce a list of children under five who may still be separated from their parents by Saturday."

"Zero Compassion" child separation - the ongoing nightmare

POSTED OCTOBER 2, 2018

More than 3 months after Trump ended his zero-tolerance border policy that led to the forced separation of 1,995 children from their parents and 67 days after the court ordered deadline to reunite the separated families, more than 100 child victims of the Trump Administration policy remain separated from their families.  An article in the New York Times and another in the Washington Post give an indication of the incompetence and cruelty of this twisted policy.  

Shane Ryan writing at pastemagazine.com sums it up well: "In short, one of the ugliest chapters in American history was marked not just by cruelty, but also by rank bureaucratic incompetence. The effects on the detained children will last a lifetime, and the unbelievable truth is that some of those children have still not been reunited with their families—long after the dispiriting saga was meant to be 'over.'  "

New York Times, Sep 30: "In shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas. Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases. But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited."

Washington Post, Oct 1: "The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown at the border this spring was troubled from the outset by planning shortfalls, widespread communication failures and administrative indifference to the separation of small children from their parents, according to an unpublished report by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog."  Some of the findings:

• The DHS Office of Inspector General’s review found at least 860 migrant children were left in Border Patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit mandated by U.S. courts, with one minor confined for 12 days and another for 25.  

• Many of those children were put in chain-link holding pens in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas. The facilities were designed as short-term way stations, lacking beds and showers, while the children awaited transfer to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.  

• U.S. border officials in the Rio Grande Valley sector, the busiest for illegal crossings along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, held at least 564 children longer than they were supposed to, according to the report. Officials in the El Paso sector held 297 children over the legal limit.

• Based on observations conducted by DHS inspectors at multiple facilities along the border in late June, agents separated children too young to talk from their parents in a way that courted disaster, the report says. “Border Patrol does not provide pre-verbal children with wrist bracelets or other means of identification, nor does Border Patrol fingerprint or photograph most children during processing to ensure that they can be easily linked with the proper file,” the report said. 

Can you say "xenophobic nationalism"?

POSTED OCTOBER 4, 2018

Trump rode to his electoral college victory largely by appealing to our fears and our worst instincts.  Since his election, Trump hasn't let up - playing to his base, antagonizing allies as well as rival nations, and, all the while, undoing (or trying to undo) much of Obama's legacy.  His performance last month at the UN was typical - claiming he didn't believe in globalism (international cooperation?) but in "patriotism"  - which Trump seems to confuse with a selfish nationalism that allows the US to abandon international agreements and places us above international law. 

In recent weeks, we've been treated to more of the xenophobia and gratuitous nastiness of this administration:

ThisIsInsider.com, Sep 22: "The Trump administration announced [that] it intends to make it harder for immigrants to obtain visas or green cards if they've used public benefits like Medicare, housing assistance, or food stamps.  The Department of Homeland Security released the text of a proposed rule that would essentially broaden current limitations on green cards for immigrants who have been deemed a "public charge," meaning an immigrant the government deems are a burden to taxpayers without contributing to the economy.  The new proposal singles out particular non-cash benefits — such as food stamps, the Medicare Part D Low Income Subsidy and Section 8 housing vouchers — as ones that immigrants could be denied visas or green cards for using...."If this proposal is finalized, it could force families to forego needed healthcare or go hungry or become homeless in exchange for the opportunity of becoming a green card holder in the future," SEIU International president Mary Kay Henry said in a statement. "Parents will have to choose between taking their children to the doctor or being able to watch their children grow and remain together as a family." 

The stringent immigration policies of the Trump administration has led to a rapidly growing detainee population, which has put a strain on the existing facilities. There are more than 40,000 immigrants in detention in the U.S.  

Slate, Oct 3: "Guards at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center, the country’s largest privately run immigration detention facility, have allowed immigrants detained there to regularly hang “nooses” of braided bedsheets in their cells, despite multiple suicide attempts over the past year, according to a report made public Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General. The finding comes from a scathing “alert” based on an unannounced visit in May to the California detention center. During that visit, federal inspectors found guards improperly putting immigrants in disciplinary segregation without first going through a formal disciplinary hearing, guards improperly shackling detainees, doctors checking off medical forms without actually visiting detainees, detainees going so long without dental care they lost teeth, and some detainees waiting dangerously long for medical care, which was so insufficient in the facility that it could be blamed for three deaths. The immigrants at the facility had been detained for illegally crossing the border or living in the U.S. illegally, and most were accused of no other crimes."

At a time when people fleeing to other countries exceeds 25 million, the United States admitted 22,491 refugees in the last fiscal year - one of the lowest amounts on record:

CNN, Oct 2: "The admissions count for the 2018 fiscal year, which ended on September 30, was less than half the number of refugees admitted in FY 2017 (53,716) and about one-quarter of the number of people admitted in FY 2016 (84,994). According to State Department records going back to 1975, the only year that the US admitted fewer refugees was 1977....The 22,491 refugees admitted to the country in FY 2018 falls well below the Trump administration's cap for the year of 45,000. The administration proposed to lower this cap for FY 2019 by 33% to 30,000...."The United States is not only abdicating humanitarian leadership and responsibility-sharing in response to the worst global displacement and refugee crisis since World War II, but compromising critical strategic interests and reneging on commitments to allies and vulnerable populations," the International Rescue Committee said. 

Family Separation 2.0: Trump is at it again

POSTED OCTOBER 18, 2018

Trump and his anti-immigrant administration are considering a new family separation policy at the Mexican border. "The proposal would give detained immigrant families two options: remain detained together while their case works its way through the system, or allow children to be released from custody after 20 days while their parents stay behind bars...Known as 'binary choice,' the proposal drew...sharp condemnation from advocacy groups." (CNN, Oct 16)  

Raul Reyes at The Hill warns that it "would be forcing a potentially life-altering decision on Central American parents who have already been traumatized by gangs, violence, and persecution in their home countries. It is likely that some parents would agree to give up their children out of desperation, without fully understanding the consequences of their actions, or that they would be coerced into doing so." And he reminds us that the "Trump administration already has a terrible record of caring for immigrant children in their custody, with credible reports of abuse and inhumane conditions at migrant shelters."

Two weeks to the mid-terms: Trump rousing his base with anti-asylum-seeker rhetoric

POSTED OCTOBER 22, 2018

As a caravan of asylum seekers from Central America makes its way towards the US-Mexico border, Trump has increased his xenophobic ranting in an attempt to rouse his base for the midterms.  It appears to be working - Republican Congressional candidates are rebounding in the polls.  

Rather than repeating his heinous jabbering*, here are some excerpts from the website of Nobel-Peace-Prize-recipient Amnesty International on America's treatment of immigrants and refugees:

"You Don't Have Any Rights Here"

"In 2017 and 2018, President Trump’s administration has implemented immigration policies that have caused catastrophic irreparable harm to thousands of people, have spurned and manifestly violated both US and international law, and appeared to be aimed at the full dismantling of the US asylum system.

Those policies and practices have included, among others: (1) mass illegal pushbacks of asylum-seekers at the US–Mexico border; (2) thousands of illegal family separations, through which the Trump administration has deliberately and purposefully inflicted extreme suffering on families, ill-treatment which rose to the level of torture in some cases; and (3) increasingly arbitrary and indefinite detention of asylum-seekers, without parole, constituting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (ill-treatment) which is absolutely prohibited in international law.

Based on public statements by US government officials, those policies and practices were indisputably intended to deter asylum-seekers from requesting protection in the United States, as well as to punish and compel those who did seek protection to give up their asylum claims."

Catastrophic immigration policies resulted in more family separations than previously disclosed

“The Trump administration is waging a deliberate campaign of widespread human rights violations in order to punish and deter people seeking safety at the US–Mexico border,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International. 

“The intensity, scale and scope of the abuses against people seeking asylum are truly sickening. Congress and US law enforcement agencies must conduct prompt, thorough and impartial investigations to hold the government accountable and ensure this never happens again.”

Approximately 8,000 family units separated in 2017 and 2018

Last month, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) disclosed to Amnesty International that it forcibly separated over 6,000 family units (a term that US authorities have used inconsistently to refer to whole families or individual family members) from 19 April to 15 August 2018 alone – more than US authorities had previously admitted. CBP confirmed that this figure still excluded an undisclosed number of families whose separations were not properly recorded, such as grandparents or other non-immediate family members, whose relationships authorities categorize as “fraudulent” and do not count in their statistics. In total, the Trump administration has now admitted to separating approximately 8,000 family units since 2017.

“These shocking new numbers suggest that US authorities have either misinformed the public about how many families they had forcibly separated, or they continued this unlawful practice unabated, despite their own claims and court orders to halt family separations,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas.

Apparently "widespread human rights violations" and the "truly sickening" intensity, scale and scope of the abuses are not understood by MAGA-land.  But what would you expect in the atmosphere created by an administration that withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council and threatens sanctions against the International Criminal Court?

*If you are interested in a sampling of Trump's comments, you can find those of Monday Oct 22 under the Liars and Hypocrites section, which is where they belong.

Trump's Dangerously Inflammatory Border Politics

POSTED OCTOBER 29, 2018

Last week we saw an outbreak of violence from two far-right extremists.  One is a huge Trump fan and the other  re-posts another user's comment that the filthy Jews are the ones bringing filthy Muslim immigrants into the country.*  Now comes news that the President is sending up to 14,000 armed troops to the border with Mexico.  It's an obvious attempt to fire up his base for the midterms.  It may work politically for the xenophobes in the Republican base but it also sends a dangerous signal to the more unhinged portion of MAGA-land.

The asylum seekers are not a threat to the United States.  They are fleeing violence** in their home countries through normal channels.  Juan Cole at Informed Comment writes, "A few thousand refuge-seekers coming up through Mexico are not actually that newsworthy nor are they a significant security threat, since they say they intend to apply for asylum. Over a million legal immigrants come into the US every year, and even in these days of sympathy deficit, 45,000 asylum seekers will be admitted this year."  

Win Without War adds: "Donald Trump is creating a crisis out of vulnerable asylum seekers roughly 1,000 miles away from the U.S. border and using our military to seed and stoke fear to score political points....Trump’s plan to terrorize migrants with military force goes hand in hand with his fear-mongering and rising authoritarianism."

Trump is also threatening to cut off humanitarian aid to countries the immigrants are fleeing.  How stupid, counter-productive and cruel is that? 

Will this move help turnout the vote for Republicans in November?  Probably.  Will it inspire anti-immigrant hatred and violence? Let's pray not.

*Trump asserted that Muslims are sneaking into the US from Central America (this is not true). The Pittsburgh synagogue killer takes this outrageous lie a step further into lunacy.

**El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—sometimes dubbed the Northern Triangle—have been plagued by high homicide rates and difficult economic conditions. In the 1980s and beyond, the U.S. military used Honduras as a base to support anti-communist actions in neighboring El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, in part fueling civil wars that destabilized Central America.

Immigrant Harassment

POSTED NOVEMBER 20, 2018/UPDATED NOV 22

"What comes after the tear gas?" 

POSTED NOVEMBER 29, 2018

The tear-gassing of migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border immediately drew criticism from human and civil rights organizations around the world.  

"The San Diego chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement from its deputy political director, Lorella Praeli, who refuted the US Customs and Border Protection's (CBP)  claims of an appropriate response, calling the move "outrageous and inhumane....Under no circumstances should CBP be using tear gas on children," Praeli wrote. "This show of violence is outrageous and inhumane. The migrants at our southern border are human beings, including mothers and small children, who are exercising their legal, human right to seek asylum." (Business Insider, Nov 26)

Amnesty International issued a statement that said in part, "The danger posed to desperate families patiently waiting their turn for asylum at the border is an emergency of the US government’s own making...Using teargas in a situation where families, children and their parents were present was not only horrific, it was also a new low for this administration in its contempt for our shared human dignity and human rights.” (Amnesty International, Nov 26) 

Targeting Humanitarian Aid Groups 

Another arrow in the administration's quiver in the war on refugees

POSTED JANUARY 15, 2019

According to some recent polls, support for Trump's border wall has risen to 43 percent, the highest it's ever been. Over the past few weeks, he's managed to convince more Americans of this ineffective, costly, and racist project with his fear-mongering and demonization of asylum seekers and other migrants.  I would like to think that those recently convinced are unaware of all the harm that Trump's immigration policy is doing.  Are they aware of the family separations?, the "kids in cages"? the processing slow down at recognized ports of entry?, the tear-gassing at the border?, the threat to use lethal force against rock throwers?, the attempt to violate US and international law with a reinterpretation of asylum rules?  

This morning I learned of another wrinkle in the war on refugees.   Border agents are targeting members of humanitarian aid groups for arrest and have been disrupting the aid pipeline.  Democracy Now! reports:

"In Tucson, Arizona, activists with the humanitarian group No More Deaths go on trial today, facing charges for a slew of federal crimes, all because of their efforts to leave water and food in the harsh Sonoran Desert to help refugees survive the deadly journey across the U.S. border. The charges were filed last year, January 2018, just a week after No More Deaths published a report accusing U.S. Border Patrol agents of routinely vandalizing or confiscating food, water and other humanitarian aid, condemning refugees to die of exposure or dehydration.

"Just hours after the report was released, No More Deaths volunteer Scott Daniel Warren was arrested and charged with felony counts of harboring and conspiracy, after he was observed providing migrants with food, water and shelter over the course of three days. Warren faces two decades, 20 years in prison, if convicted.  No More Deaths found, between 2012 and 2016, Border Patrol agents emptied nearly 4,000 gallons of water left for migrants in the desert, also confiscating food, emergency medical blankets and other aid."

20 years in prison for trying to prevent deaths in the desert!  But this is not the first time the US has interrupted humanitarian aid for migrants. As Intercept reporter Ryan Devereux relates in his interview with Amy Goodman, this is a repeat of actions taken against religious leaders and humanitarian volunteers in the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980's by the Reagan administration:

"In the 1980s here in southern Arizona, a collection of religious leaders, priests, nuns, etc., basically came together, using the Underground Railroad as a blueprint to move asylum seekers from Central America, who were fleeing U.S.-backed dirty wars there, into the United States, when they sort of discovered that the Reagan administration was illegally blocking access to asylum for those folks. The sort of reverberations of that can be felt today.

"A massive government investigation, undercover investigation, was launched into the movement. The churches were infiltrated. Secret recordings were made of sermons. Religious leaders were indicted, charged, prosecuted, with some of the same charges that Scott Warren faces today—harboring, smuggling types of charges. It was a huge, sort of galvanizing moment that sort of gave birth to the humanitarian aid community that exists in southern Arizona today. So we’re seeing history repeat itself in many ways here in Tucson."

The emergency at the southern border

POSTED FEB 23, 2019

While walking around a local pond, I overheard this from two fellow strollers: 

"It's hard to imagine one person doing so much harm."

"Yes, and first off, he's damaging our democracy."

I gave them a thumbs up, "You got that right."  

Trump's attempted circumvention of the Constitution's separation of powers to build his wall is one more step towards authoritarianism.

Having failed to get his hateful, racist wall fully funded by Congress, Trump decided to bypass the legislative branch and its "power of the purse" and  declare a national emergency.  The constitutionality of his emergency declaration will be tested in the courts, and it will end up eventually at the Supreme Court.  How will it fare there? It all depends on John Roberts' vote, as the other SCOTUS Republicans will vote for the president.  The most recently appointed Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, will certainly be a strong vote for Trump.  An ACLU analysis of his national security cases found that he has "extreme deference to presidential claims of unchecked authority in the name of war and national security"  

There is an emergency at the border but it is not the national security one Trump is talking about.  It is the humanitarian one he caused.  

His militarization of the border - including sending troops there- is an attempt to intimidate the migrants.  ICE's terrorizing of the immigrant communities here and the corruption* of some Customs and Border Patrol agents are hallmarks of a totalitarian regime, not a democracy.  The full extent of the harm done by his family separation policy will never be known.  One thing for sure, though, it is greater than we have imagined.  A government report released in January said the Trump administration probably separated thousands more migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border than has previously been made public, but federal efforts to track those children have been so poor that the precise number is unknown.  

The Wall has become Trump's signature domestic issue.  He will not give up on it until he is defeated, whether it be in 2020 or 2024.

It is a rallying cry for the haters, the dividers, and the fearful in his base.    His xenophobic nationalism won him the Presidency.  He is betting that it will give him a second term.  Changing the tenor of the immigration rhetoric and changing the hearts and minds of wall supporters will be difficult.  AFSC provides two excellent guides [links below left and center] - "How to talk about immigration in your classroom (or anywhere!)" and a more specific "How to talk about the migrant caravan".  

And the ever-insightful crew at SNL treats Trump's wall with some well-deserved satire [link below right].

*Records show that between February 2017 and mid-March 2018, CBP employees racked up charges including embezzlement, human smuggling, theft, bribery, breaking and entering, money laundering, providing false statements, and using firearms during drug-related crimes. (Mother Jones, 4/24/18)

The immigration crisis: a century of US intervention in Central America

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

POSTED APRIL 5, 2019

Trump declared he was going to cut off aid to the three Central American countries - Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador  - that are the home countries of the majority of asylum seekers.  Whether he can do that without the consent of the Congress that appropriated the monies is debatable.  What is not debatable is the utterly counter-productive nature of this action.  The number of people fleeing violence and poverty will increase when the aid meant to lessen those problems is taken away. 

As posted earlier, US policy towards Latin America is a prime cause of the problems those countries are experiencing today. It's time we admitted this in the conversation on immigration:"You break it, you fix it." 

Mark Tseng-Putterman has an excellent article from June 2018 at medium.com tracing the history of our interventions in these three Central American countries since the early 20th century.  He notes:

"At the margins of the mainstream discursive stalemate over immigration lies over a century of historical U.S. intervention that politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle seem determined to silence. Since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 declared the U.S.’s right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America, the U.S. has cut deep wounds throughout the region, leaving scars that will last for generations to come. This history of intervention is inextricable from the contemporary Central American crisis of internal and international displacement and migration."

And from the archives at Harper's Magazine, Mexican writer and diplomat Carlos Fuentes in a 1981 article titled "Goodbye, Monroe Doctrine" considers three critical dates of change in US-Latin America history:

The 1954 invasion of Guatemala which overthrew the democratically-elected government there. The invasion and coup were

"carefully planned by the American ambassador... [and then] armed, launched, and consolidated in power by the United States Central Intelligence Agency...a 'glorious victory' against democracy in the name of democracy.  The victory of that extraordinary mixture of malice and innocence, of arrogance an ignorance that has, as a rule, characterized Washington's policy towards Latin America."

The 1961 isolation of Cuba after Castro had overthrown the American-friendly Batista dictatorship in 1959

"At the beginning of the 1960's the Cuban revolutionaries were experimenting with self-government.  Instead of respecting them...the Eisenhower administration slammed the door in Cuba's face, countered every internal revolutionary reform with US sanctions and propaganda, and prepared the invasion plans, again conceived by the CIA, which the Kennedy Administration inherited and sent to defeat at the Bay of Pigs."

1981 - the beginning of the Salvadoran civil war and the time of Fuentes' article in Harper's.  Archbishop Romero had already been assassinated and the Reagan Administration was beginning to bleat about communist influences.

"When the US ambassador to the United Nations, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, says that violence in El Salvador is created by outside intervention, not by social injustice, 'which has existed for decades', she forgets that violence has  also existed for decades; that it has,in fact, coexisted with social injustice for centuries. And when Secretary of State Alexander Haig says that '...the problems will be dealt with at the source of the difficulty', it is to be hoped that he understands that the 'source of difficulty' in El Salvador is military and paramilitary repression, the prevention of political evolution by the army."

Of course, those hopes were crushed. The Reagan administration, under its Cold War containment policy, offered significant military assistance to the authoritarian Salvadoran government, essentially running the war by 1983. 

"The U.S. military trained key components of the Salvadoran forces, including the Atlacatl Battalion, the 'pride of the United States military team in San Salvador.' The Atlacatl Battalion would go on to commit a civilian massacre in the village of El Mozote in 1981, killing at least 733 and as many as 1,000 unarmed civilians, including women and children."  The Salvadoran Civil War continued until 1992. An estimated 80,000 were killed during the war, with the U.N. estimating that 85 percent of civilian deaths were committed by the Salvadoran military and death squads." (Medium.com)

Related Article: Blase Bonpane, Presente! (Democracy Now!, April 11)

The effort to challenge Trump’s policies got a bit harder this week with the death at age 89 of Blase Bonpane, a lifelong peace activist. Based in Los Angeles, Bonpane devoted his life to social justice, and had a deep and hard-earned understanding of Central America, its people and its problems.

Meanwhile, down at the border...

POSTED MAY 31, 2019/UPDATED JUNE 12

Trump's nativist, anti-immigrant policy continues to disastrously affect the lives and well-being of asylum seekers and other refugees.  Now, his threat to impose new tariffs on Mexico because of the immigration issue has sent the stock market plunging.  Don't expect to see any let-up on his assault on human dignity.  It was what won him the election, and he is playing it for all its worth.

Much of the chaos in Central America that is causing migrations north is a result of US policy over the past few decades.  And in a new twist, Trump's removal of the US from an international arms trade treaty threatens to make a bad situation even worse.  Interestingly he made the announcement at the NRA convention.  The NRA's opposition to U.N. Arms Trade Treaty has been long-standing, and their work and influence on the gun trade and the ensuing violence has a global reach. In the latest episode of his Peabody-winning Netflix series, "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj", Minhaj manages to cycle through myriad ways the organization is not only an effective spin machine here in the U.S., but also a shockingly large player on the global stage.

“The NRA hates the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty because they think it will lead to gun control in the U.S.,” Minhaj explains. And we can’t have that, now can we?

But the most damning section of Minhaj’s well-organized rant focuses on an upsetting ouroboros that is the international arms trade between the U.S. and nations in Central and South America, leading directly to another hot-button topic: migration. Minhaj outlines:

"As it stands, the NRA’s push for looser gun laws is helping weapons flow to Central America, which is contributing to violence, which is causing people to flee that violence and seek asylum in the U.S., which the NRA is using to sell looser gun laws. And this cycle shows no signs of stopping." (Paste Magazine, May 20)

Here's a summary of some of the things going on down at the southern border over the last couple of weeks:

Trump administration is sending thousand of immigrants into communities across the US without any means of support.  

Florida pushed back on Trump's plan to send immigrant families to two heavily Democratic counties and the Administration reversed itself.  

In San Antonio, Trump dumped thousands of immigrants into the city. "The city’s response was a lesson in kindness".  Most of these families are Central American asylum seekers who have been given a court date months from now. They’re scheduled to appear in front of a judge in the city they listed as their final destination, often located in a place where a friend or relative will take them in. Many are confused about where they are and how to get where they’re going. They often have no money or cellphone. With the federal government essentially wiping its hands of these immigrants, local governments have had to pick up the slack: In March alone, 11,000 “non-criminal families” were released in US cities after being in DHS custody. (Mother Jones, May 23) 

Vigilantes hold immigrants at gun point, a "go fund me" starts building the Wall in New Mexico, and an aid worker faces 20 years in prison for saving lives in the desert.

Scott Warren, a geographer and educator who volunteers with the humanitarian aid groups No More Deaths and Ajo Samaritans, is on trial now in federal court in Tucson, Arizona. If convicted, he could spend 20 years in prison for giving migrants in need, according to his indictment, “food, water, beds and clean clothes.” (Democracy Now!, May 30)

UPDATE JUNE 12: The case against Scott Warren, a humanitarian aid volunteer who provided food, water and shelter to undocumented migrants ended in a mistrial Tuesday after a deadlocked jury was unable to deliver a verdict. Prosecutors declined to say if they would seek another trial. (Democracy Now!, June 12)

Construction of a privately-funded border wall must be halted immediately, according to a cease and desist letter issued by the city of Sunland Park, New Mexico. Mayor Javier Perea said Tuesday that the property owner did not have the necessary permits to erect the fencing, which was funded by "We Build the Wall", a national group that created a GoFundMe account to pay for border barriers. (USA Today, May 29)

Children are dying from a lack of medical care while in U.S. Custody. Government admits to a sixth death - 8 months after the fact.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed that a 10-year-old girl from Guatemala died while in U.S. custody last year, bringing the total number of known migrant child deaths to six in the last eight months. Democrats are calling for an investigation into the case, and because the agency had kept her death quiet since September of last year, some members are alleging a cover-up. (The Root, May 23)

For many, this is in the category of "duh." Still, it's the smoking gun that puts to rest the Republican lies for the reason for the citizenship question for the 2020 census.  Apparently the architect of the GOP's nationwide gerrymandering scheme was behind the question, saying it would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites."  The case has already been heard by the Supreme Court.  Whether the newly discovered documents will sway any of the conservatives on the court is open to question.

While the government has maintained that adding the question was intended to improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, the driving force was actually a desire to get more Republicans elected to state legislatures and the House of Representatives, the ACLU said in new court filings. ..Trump administration witnesses were deliberately misleading when they testified about the origins of a plan to include a citizenship question on the coming census, opponents of the idea said Thursday, citing recently discovered evidence. ...The ACLU told a federal judge in New York that the new evidence suggests [Justice official John] Gore and an adviser to the Commerce Department "falsely testified about the genesis of DOJ's request." They wrote to Judge Jesse Furman, who in January ordered the government not to include the question. Though Furman's decision is now on appeal, he retains authority to discipline witnesses who did not testify truthfully, the ACLU said. (NBC News, May 30)

Immigration policy, preserving white privilege, and the census citizenship question

POSTED JUNE 27, 2019

The human toll of the Trump Administration's immigration and asylum policies continues to rise.  Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen the immigrant community terrorized by the threat of mass deportation, appalling conditions at child detention centers exposed, 100 children sent back to an overcrowded detention center, a father and daughter drowning while trying to cross the border, and a warning from U.S. asylum officers that Trump's "stay in Mexico" policy is endangering lives.

Immigration facilities at the border are long past their breaking point.  The House and Senate have passed competing bills to provide $4.5 billion in emergency aid.  The Senate bill includes funding for the Department of Defense and additional money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is not included in the House bill.  The bills will need to be reconciled very soon with the Department of Health and Human Services warning that existing funding will not last through the end of the month. 

Trump's rabble-rousing demonization of migrants and asylum seekers is a bone thrown to the racists in his base with the fear-mongering having the added benefit of frightening more moderate supporters.  The flip side of this is the long-term Republican project to ensure white privilege (and more specifically white male privilege) in the face of the country's changing demographics.  If current trends continue, America will become a "majority minority" nation by 2043.  Since the election of Barack Obama, Republicans have mounted a nationwide assault on the voting rights of Democratic constituencies.  Their tools to date have included: discriminatory voter ID laws, congressional district gerrymandering, reduced early voting, and, more recently, penalizing and hampering voter registration efforts.  

The Republicans placed another arrow in their vote suppression quiver by inserting a citizenship question in the proposed 2020 census questionnaire.  Taken together with the Trumpian rhetoric on migrant deportation, the intent of the question is to frighten non-citizens into not returning the questionnaire. Government experts predicted that asking the question would cause many immigrants to refuse to participate in the census, leading to an undercount of about 6.5 million people. That could reduce Democratic representation when congressional districts are allocated in 2021 and affect how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending are distributed. 

The Supreme Court heard arguments in April about the census question, which Administration officials claimed was to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.  When you get up from the floor after laughing your ass off at this obvious lie, you should know that documents found after the April arguments clearly indicate the true intent:

The ACLU said the new evidence reveals that the idea originated with Thomas Hofeller, a Republican redistricting specialist, who wrote in letters and memos that the question would create an electoral advantage for "Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites." He helped ghostwrite a draft of the Justice Department letter, which adopted his rationale and some of the actual wording, the ACLU said.  Getting better citizenship data, Hofeller argued in newly disclosed documents, would help Republican legislatures create legislative and congressional district maps with fewer Latinos, who tend to vote for Democrats. (NBC News, May 30)

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's liberals today to temporarily block the question from getting on the census questionnaire until the government can prove an adequate reason.  The question has been sent back to the lower courts.  In response, Trump has threatened to delay the census.

The War on Immigrants

POSTED AUG 12, 2019

AUG 22 UPDATES: 

"The Trump administration said Wednesday it was taking steps that would allow it to indefinitely detain undocumented children with their families while their immigration cases are pending.  The move, which Department of Homeland Security officials expect to be challenged in federal court, would end a 20-day limit on detaining children and families. The deadline grew out of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit in 1997." (USA Today, 8/21)

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration was again seriously looking at ending the right of citizenship for U.S.-born children of noncitizens and people who immigrated to the United States illegally.  The Constitution’s 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War to ensure that black Americans had full citizenship rights, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” (Reuters, 8/21)

The Trump Administration is continuing its war on immigrants.  Make no mistake - the xenophobic administration is winning.  On Monday morning, August 12, the administration announced that "rules that could deny green cards to immigrants who use Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers or other forms of public assistance are going into effect, potentially making it more difficult for some to become U.S. citizens." (HuffPost/AP, Aug 12).   It is the most aggressive policy yet aimed at restricting documented immigrants, and is perfectly in accord with the long-standing effort on the part of the GOP to maintain white privilege in a country that is on track to be "majority minority" in about 25 years.

The action comes:  

4 days after ICE agents detained 680 undocumented immigrants in Mississippi chicken processing plants.  The ICE raid was on the first day of school and resulted in children being separated from their parents.

The scene was wrenching. In Morton, Mississippi, detained workers, with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, were bussed from a Koch Foods plant to a nearby military hangar to be processed for immigration violations. The Associated Press reports that people congregated outside, waving goodbye and shouting “let them go.” As school got out, children of the arrested were put up in a local gym, where they were picked up by neighbors and strangers. (NewFoodEconomy.org, Aug 8)

5 days after El Paso police arrested a Trump supporter as he sat outside an organizing space for immigrant activists, wearing blue latex gloves and brandishing a knife. 

Organizers with Casa Carmelita say police also recovered a loaded gun, ammunition and a bag of white powder from the man’s truck, which sported a large banner portraying Donald Trump as Rambo and bumper stickers for the far-right conspiracy website InfoWars. 

6 days after a mentally ill 41-year-old man from Detroit, Michigan, was found dead in Baghdad, just two months after U.S. authorities deported him to Iraq.  Jimmy Aldaoud, an Iraqi national who was brought to the U.S. as an infant, was deported in June as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. A friend said Aldaoud’s death was likely due to his inability to obtain insulin to treat his diabetes. 

He was born in Greece and came to the U.S. when he was 6 months old. In a video posted to Facebook from Baghdad before his death, Aldaoud said he pleaded with ICE agents not to deport him, “I begged them. I said, 'Please, I've never seen that country. I’ve never been there.’ However, they forced me. I’m here now. And I don’t understand the language, anything. I’ve been sleeping in the street. I’m diabetic; I take insulin shots. I’ve been throwing up, throwing up, sleeping in the street, trying to find something to eat.”

9 days after over 100 immigrants were tear-gassed after they launched a hunger strike at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center. (Buzzfeed News)

An ICE spokesman said no one had been injured.  But the advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants, said 115 immigrants who had been hunger striking for more than five days at the detention center "were tear gassed, shot at with rubber bullets, beaten, placed in solitary confinement, and blocked from contacting their families or attorneys."

12 days after a Latino-hating white nationalist killed 20 in El Paso (see below)

17 days after the Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to transfer billions of dollars of military funding in order to construct hundreds of miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, California and New Mexico. 

28 days after Trump tried to bar nearly all migrants from seeking asylum in the United States. The order has been temporarily blocked:

A federal judge in San Francisco has temporarily blocked President Trump’s plan to bar nearly all migrants from seeking asylum in the United States. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of California ordered Trump to continue accepting asylum claims, issuing a preliminary injunction against a rule that would block anyone who passes through a third country before arriving in the U.S. from applying for asylum. The rule would effectively stop people from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala from seeking refuge in the United States. The preliminary injunction came just hours after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., let the new asylum rule stand in a separate challenge. (Democracy Now! and link below left)

41 days after Federal prosecutors in Tucson, Arizona, said that they will seek to retry humanitarian aid worker Scott Warren on two charges of "harboring illegal aliens" after eight of the twelve jurors voted to acquit on all three of the original counts.  Warren was facing 20 years in prison for saving lives in the desert.  The Intercept has an analysis of the trial (link below right).

Even when immigrant advocates win in court, the effects of Trump's abhorrent policies linger on.  "More than 900 children, including babies and toddlers, were separated from their parents at the border in the year after a judge ordered the practice be sharply curtailed, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a legal attack that will invite more scrutiny of the Trump administration’s widely criticized tactics....The ACLU said the administration is separating families over dubious allegations and minor transgressions including traffic offenses. It asked a judge to rule on whether the 911 separations from June 28, 2018, to June 29 of this year were justified."

The heavy lifting on this is being done by immigrant aid groups and organizations like ACLU and AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) - the former by bringing lawsuits to challenge the practices; the latter by working to close the child detention centers and by advocating for abolishing ICE.  Until Trump is voted from office*, supporting these groups will help slow the damage done to immigrant families.

*It is not clear that this will happen in 2020 unless we go into a recession.  Trump's job approval is at 45 percent, the highest since he took office.

Scott Warren acquitted in humanitarian aid trial

POSTED DECEMBER 22, 2019

The irony could not be greater - Trump issuing war crime pardons while his Justice Department prosecutes a humanitarian aid worker. 

For nearly two years, the Federal government hounded Scott Warren, threatening him with up to 20 years in prison for "providing water, food and a place to sleep to two young men who had crossed one of the deadliest stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization."  It took just two hours for a jury in Tucson to find him not guilty.  It was the second trial for Warren this year.  The first ended in a mistrial when 8 of the 12 jurors voted to acquit.  

The Intercept [link below left] reports on the extent of the government's attempt to punish Warren for a simple act of kindness:

"The government's "second attempt collapsed entirely on Wednesday [Nov 20], when after just two hours of deliberations a jury of Warren’s peers returned a verdict of not guilty...Warren understood and appreciated the outpouring of support and solidarity, but as he left the courthouse, he felt unsure about how he, personally, should feel. The uncertainty lingered when he woke up the next morning and it was still there when we met that night...That Scott Warren still feels shaken by what he’s been through should not come as a surprise. His acquittal does not erase the fact that, for nearly two years, the U.S. Department of Justice tried to send him to prison for his efforts to end death and suffering in the Sonoran Desert. Not only did the federal government choose to retry him after a hung jury split eight to four in his favor, but it assigned the No. 2 prosecutor in Arizona, Glenn McCormick, to the case. On Wednesday, as the two sides laid out their closing arguments, U.S. Attorney for Arizona Michael Bailey, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, made a surprise appearance in the courtroom. Hands clasped behind his back, Bailey stood in the back of the room as Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Walters made the case for incarcerating Warren."

The administration's reprehensible and inhumane immigration policies were on full display during this sad episode.  "Not only will we prosecute those who cross the border without authorization," they seemed to be saying, "but we will also prosecute those who try to assist them to prevent their deaths and suffering."  

In a year with very little good news, the Arizona jury sent a message that all Americans should be happy about.

A hero for the ages

POSTED JANUARY 17, 2020

In 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination using civil disobedience and other non-violent methods.  At 35, he was the youngest person ever to receive the Peace Prize.  His efforts culminated in Congress passing and President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  His opposition to the Vietnam War is less widely known.   As he became more outspoken against the war, he lost the support of some former allies in the struggle for civil rights, and his popularity among the American populace began to drop.  Still, he was as right on Vietnam as he was on civil rights.  

January 15 would have been his 91st birthday.  As we prepare to celebrate his life this coming Monday, perhaps we can find some inspiration and hope to confront the current dark days of untruth, racist rhetoric, and deliberately stoked divisiveness.  For MLK always spoke truth to power with a message of brotherhood and love literally to the day he died - gunned down by an assassin at the age of 39 in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.

Below left: the History Channel puts Martin Luther King's most famous speech into its political and social context plus excerpts from the text of the speech

Racism, Police Violence, and the Death of George Floyd

POSTED JUNE 3, 2020

On Memorial Day, a white police officer killed George Floyd, a 46 year old black man, by keeping a knee on the side of his neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down.  Floyd's alleged crime: passing a forged $20 bill.  In the ensuing days peaceful demonstrations against Floyd's death and in honor of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT shot by police in her apartment in Louisville in March, escalated into turmoil.  This comes in the midst of a pandemic which has disproportionately killed people of color and during which 40% of people earning under $40,000 per year have lost their jobs.  The death of George Floyd could have been a learning moment on "race, inequality and police violence" in America.  Instead the conversation, inflamed by a divisive president given to racist and violent rhetoric, has shifted to "riots and looting."  

There is no single narrative that fits all the demonstrations.  

Mother Jones (link below left): "As the protests spread, demonstrators demanded an end to the unjust system and the systemic police brutality that led to Floyd’s death. The police responded with more brutality against protesters, bystanders, and journalists.  In...countless viral videos, police officers in cities around the country responded to protesters with egregious tactics, from unprovoked violent shoving to indiscriminate pepper spraying."

CNN: "In Atlanta, Georgia, a line of police officers holding shields during a protest Monday near Centennial Olympic park kneeled in front of demonstrators.  In another image, an officer wearing a gas mask, helmet and vest was seen embracing a demonstrator in a hug on the fourth day of protests in the southern city."

In New York City, as a march with several thousand peaceful protesters worked its way toward midtown, a group of several hundred, mostly younger people, broke away and started running downtown to begin looting stores.    

A white bar owner who shot and killed a young black protester in Lincoln Nebraska will not be charged

A man drove a tractor-trailer onto a Minneapolis bridge crowded with protesters, attempting to incite a crowd of peaceful demonstrators

While conservative commentators are asserting with little evidence that antifa, the antifascism activist movement, coordinated the riots and looting that sprang from the protests. left-leaning news sites are noting that far-right extremists have been showing up at the protests as well as urging violence against blacks online.

Things may be calming down as leaders across the United States try to stem the mounting unrest, from extending curfews to engaging protesters.

WBTV, Charlotte (link below right): "Thousands of people filled the streets of uptown Charlotte to attend an NAACP protest against injustice, racism and police brutality.  With a huge crowd including supporters, public officials, community leaders, organizers and public figures, the group united to stand against injustice in their community and all over the country. Kidz Fed Up and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Branch of the NAACP hosted the peaceful protest....CMPD officers could be seen heading down East 5th Street, towards the direction of the government center. The police department says their goal in all of this is to engage in constructive, progressive and forward-moving conversations with the community as protests continue.  At one point during the march, protesters stopping at CMPD headquarters in uptown, which was the beginning of a powerful scene."

Meanwhile, Trump continues to prove himself as unfit to lead and heal the country in this moment as he was to confront the pandemic.  From his early threat to have protesters in Minneapolis shot by the military to his recent order to disperse a peaceful protest in D.C. so he could enjoy a photo op with a Bible, he has shown an utter lack of understanding of the reasons for the protests while playing to his base.  But I guess this is what we have come to expect from a man who called the peaceful silent protest of Colin Kaepernick and others disrespect for the flag by "sons of bitches."  

Police killings did not start with Donald Trump but his rhetoric and actions have "emboldened police forces across the country. In addition to aligning himself rhetorically with police who commit brutality, Trump methodically dismantled the already limited federal checks on abusive police departments in the years before the Floyd uprising. If it feels like police officers across the country are acting with virtually total impunity, it’s because they have been granted that impunity by federal officials."  (Slate, June 2)

America's racism, its original sin, did not start with Donald Trump, but it made him possible.  His appeal to the basest instincts of the electorate was rewarded by election to the highest office in the land.  More than 50 years after the civil and voting rights movements, racism is alive and well in the United States.  The question that should trouble us most is: "Why?"

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A hero for the ages

Photo above is from an article in the Vail Daily.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric and fear-mongering directed towards Hispanics and others were lynch-pins of Trump's 2016 campaign and have been a hallmark of his administration. Here are some recent court rulings, headlines, and Trump Administration actions on immigration.

June 16 - Supreme Court justices rejected Trump’s challenge to California’s state sanctuary law, in a major victory for immigrant rights advocates (Democracy Now!)

June 18 - The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the administration's plan to dismantle an Obama-era program (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals - DACA)  that has protected 700,000 so-called DREAMers from deportation. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion. (NPR)

June 25 - The Supreme Court ruled that certain asylum seekers cannot seek a federal review of expedited deportations. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Samuel Alito delivered the Supreme Court’s opinion in a case of a Tamil man, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, who fled Sri Lanka to avoid torture and likely death; stating that certain asylum seekers cannot make court petitions after already exhausting their credible fear screening. (The Monitor)

July 1 - In Arizona, a letter signed by over 100 immigrant prisoners held at the La Palma Correctional Center near Phoenix details inhumane conditions at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail — and a negligent response to the coronavirus outbreak.  Prisoners say they’re being coerced into cleaning the jail without protective gear, under the threat of solitary confinement. (Democracy Now!)

July 14 - As the U.S. leads the world in COVID-19 infections, infection rates are also soaring in immigrant jails.  Nearly a thousand employees of the private companies that run the jails for ICE have now tested positive. ICE also reports more than 3,000 immigrants in ICE custody have tested positive, and at least three have died.  A third of the prisoners who tested positive remain detained, while other have been deported, some while still infected. (Democracy Now!)

July 27 -  A federal judge has denied a Trump request to delay today’s deadline for releasing immigrant children from “family detention centers” run by ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — in Texas and Pennsylvania. The release was ordered due to concerns over rising coronavirus infections. “There will be no family separation without parental consent,” Judge Dolly Gee specified in her order.  (Democracy Now!)

July 28 - The Trump administration defied U.S. District Court Judge Paul Grimm’s order when Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf announced that DHS would not process new applications as the agency engages in a “comprehensive review” of the program. “I have concluded that the DACA policy, at a minimum, presents serious policy concerns that may warrant its full rescission,” Wolf wrote in a memo, despite an opposing conclusion from a federal judge. According to the memo, the administration will renew DACA recipients’ protections for only 12 months, instead of the two years written into the policy.  (New York Magazine)

July 31 - In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said today that President Trump can move ahead with building his U.S.-Mexico border wall, using $2.5 billion in military funds, while the legal battle to stop the construction continues.  

Immigration: undoing Trump and addressing root causes

POSTED MAR 16, 2021

In his campaign for the presidency, Joe Biden pledged a return to a humane immigration policy.   Since he has taken office, he has seen how difficult it may be to fulfill that pledge.  For decades, the US immigration system has been inadequate for the task.  The pandemic, an increasing number of migrants at the southern border, and the challenge of dismantling Trump’s policies have added to the difficulty. 

In recent weeks, unaccompanied minors in increasing numbers have been arriving at the US-Mexico border and the Biden Administration appears to have been caught off-guard.  "The situation is increasingly dire: As of Sunday morning (Mar 14), more than 4,200 children were reportedly being detained in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) temporary holding facilities designed for adults, most of whom for longer than legally permitted — a record high."   [link below]  

The Administration has instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help process the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving in the U.S. while the Democrat-controlled House is moving ahead with two major immigration bills this week which could create a pathway to citizenship for millions: the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. [6]

Undoing Trump

Biden also faces a nation divided by four years of hate- and fear-mongering from the highest office in the land, a nation which saw hate crimes spike to their highest level in 28 years during Trump's time in office.  In the Trumpian gift that keeps on giving, hate crimes against Asian-Americans  have increased since Trump scapegoated China for his own failings in the confronting the pandemic last year.   Can Biden slow or reverse the hate crime trend?  It would certainly improve the lives and safety of the targeted nationalities.  But it would have no effect on Congressional Republican opposition to comprehensive immigration reform.  Like other presidents since the time of LBJ, Biden will have to effect change in immigration policies by executive actions.  

The last time Congress took up comprehensive immigration reform, in 2013, the Republican-controlled House did not allow a vote on Senate-passed legislation that would have addressed many of the issues.   What we have in place now and for the foreseeable future is the 55-year-old US Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965.  Passed at the height of the civil rights movement, that legislation abolished the nativist-driven national quotas that had determined US immigration policy since the 1920's.   

The 1920's were a time of increased "nativism," the belief that native-born Americans, especially those of Anglo-Saxon extraction, have superior rights to the "foreign-born."  The "Red Scare" of 1919-1920, the association of immigrants with anarchists, Socialists and Communists, the notorious 1920s trial of the foreign-born Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti - all played a role in increasing nativist sentiment.  Also during the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan reappeared as a force in the United States for the first time since Reconstruction, targeting Catholics and Jews -- who were among the largest groups of ethnic immigrants -- as well as blacks. [1]

Trump's embrace of nativism and his xenophobic fear-mongering played a significant role in his 2016 victory.  He launched his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals and promising a wall along the southern border.  He linked immigration to terrorism, calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and, after his inauguration, promising to give immigration preference to “persecuted” Christian refugees.  In his first week in office, Trump signed executive orders to crack down on undocumented immigration, to restrict travel from Muslim-majority nations and cut the US refugee admissions program.  The Trump vision for American greatness was a nativist one.  "In this nativist vision, the time period to which we return is one in which immigration is sharply restricted by national, ethnic, and religious criteria.  Trump’s MAGA-vision for America was a return to 1920's America." [2]

President Biden has made an excellent start on undoing many of Trump's policies.  The contrast between his first weeks in office and those of Donald Trump could not be more stark.  In the period between his inauguration and February 2 , President Biden [3]:

• mandated a review of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a controversial program that pushed 65,000 asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait for U.S. court hearings. 

• called for a review of a Trump-era rule (the so-called "public charge" order) that made it harder for poorer immigrants to obtain permanent residency in the United States. 

• created a task force to reunite migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by Trump’s 2018 “zero tolerance” border strategy. 

• sent an immigration reform bill to key lawmakers that would provide an eight-year pathway to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million people living in the country unlawfully and offer permanent protection for young migrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

• rescinded Trump’s controversial travel ban blocking travelers from 13 mostly Muslim-majority and African countries. 

• repealed a 2017 Trump executive order that intensified U.S. immigration enforcement within the country.  The DHS secretary then issued a memo that outlined new priorities for enforcement - prioritizing national security threats, people who arrived in the United States on or after Nov. 1, 2020, and people with certain criminal convictions determined to be a public safety threat.

• ordered a 100-day pause on many deportations so that DHS could focus its resources on border management amid the coronavirus pandemic.  The state of Texas challenged the deportation moratorium in court days later and a federal judge temporarily blocked it.

• paused construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, with some exceptions, and ended an emergency declaration that helped authorize funding for it.

• directed a review of the legality of the funding and contracting methods used for wall construction and supported plans to redirect funding.

Correcting root causes

With little likelihood for a successful congressional effort on immigration reform, the Biden Administration - the executive branch - will have to address the inadequacy of the current resources devoted to the processing of immigrants as well as the fundamental reasons people are fleeing their Central American homelands in such numbers. 

Processing immigrants

The first step President Biden should take in addressing root causes is to reapportion the $8 billion in the ICE budget to focus less on "enforcement" (i.e., arresting and deporting) and more on "control" (i.e., processing).  He's already taken some action By emphasizing national security and public safety threats, he has set a higher bar for arrests and deportations.  He should now redirect the funding to the processing of immigrants at the southern border so that all who wish to come to America get a hearing.  At the turn of the twentieth century, before telephones had become commonplace and before anyone had an inkling that there were computers in our future, New York City's Ellis Island processed an average of 5,000 immigrants a day - a rate that is 15 times greater than Biden's promise to process 125,000 refugees per year.  

Even achieving Biden's promised amount of refugee admissions will be a challenge.  "Trump’s anti-immigrant legacy has left completely gutted systems in its wake, which will take time to restore. The United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is but one example. Understaffed and in complete disrepair, USRAP will need to be rebuilt before it can begin accepting 125,000 refugees per year." [4]

Addressing local root causes

The reasons people are fleeing Central America are many-fold, some of which date back to the Cold War and even earlier.  "The forces driving ordinary people to leave their homes and put their lives at risk crossing deserts with smugglers to get to the US border are deeply rooted in Central America’s history of inequality and violence, in which the US has long played a defining role." [The Guardian, link below]

The immigration crisis: a century of US intervention in Central America (WITW, Apr 5, 2019)

President Biden has wisely chosen to focus on the root causes for the migrations, committing "to boost spending to $4 billion to address the underlying causes of immigration in Central America.  Those root causes have only worsened in the past few years, thanks largely to nefarious nonstate actors and corrupt and exclusionary states. Economic problems, ongoing violence, worsening corruption, and challenges to democracy have been aggravated by the devastating impact of the coronavirus" and the hurricanes that ravaged the region late last year. [5]

The countries of the "Northern Tier" - Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador - have a panoply of issues that need to be dealt with - drug trafficking, gang violence, poverty, human rights abuses including femicides,  and political corruption.  These are the issues driving immigration.  

As the Brookings Institute notes, "It is unrealistic to expect that even a well-managed $4 billion investment would transform the economies of the region sufficiently to stem incentives to migrate within a few years. However, these could have an impact on the territorial control of gangs, their extortion and violence, on the judiciary, and on the rule of law. It could also lay the groundwork for subsequent economic transformation." [5]

Two of the most important issues, corruption and poor governance, will not be solved by money alone: "Poor governance is what underlies violence, impunity, insecurity, and lack of economic investment. And all the region’s governments either abet or embody corruption." The Brookings Institute recommends the Biden Administration employ a "carrot and stick" effort with the governments of the region and suggests that regional commissions to investigate corruption and political malfeasance might be the answer.  These regional commissions could either be in association with organizations like the OAS or the Iner-American Development Bank or with a non-governmental commission to help investigate malfeasance in support of the region’s attorneys general, similar to the successful work of Honduras’ National Anti-Corruption Council. [5]  

A place to start

Although congressional action on comprehensive immigration reform legislation appears unlikely, there are several elements of our current policies and laws whose removal would do much to improve our treatment of immigrants.  One is that deportation is the only means for punishing the initial immigration violation.  Another is the standard of proving "exceptional and unusual hardship" to avoid that deportation.  That law was passed by Congress in 1996 along with a cap on the number of such "cancellations" at 4000 annually.  Douglas Ligor, a social scientist at Rand who formerly worked as a lawyer at DHS, proposed some first steps at reform: Congress should lift the cap, strike the "exceptional and extremely unusual" standard, and broaden the jurisdiction over these cases, allowing the majority of them to be decided by civil servants at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, rather than judges.  [7]

References: [1] Immigrants, Nativism, and Americanization  [2]  "Making America 1920 Again? Nativism and US Immigration, Past and Present", Julia G. Young, The Catholic University of America (2017)  [3] Reuters  [4] Lawfare  [5] Brookings Institute [6] Democracy Now! [7] Harpers, October 2020

DeSantis' cruel political stunt: understanding the roots of the immigration crisis

POSTED SEPTEMBER 23, 2022

As Trump's legal troubles begin to mount, his nomination as the Republican 2024 presidential candidate gets a little bit shakier.  Right now, he's still a lock for the nomination should he decide to run.  But just in case the Divider-in-Chief stumbles even more down the stretch...Ron DeSantis decided to fly dozens of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in an attempt to boost his own political profile ahead of the presidential primary season.  

As many pointed out, DeSantis' stunt was malicious, inhumane, cruel, and probably illegal. And yet, it gained praise from the right as a clever political ploy variously described as a prelude to the Republican 2024 campaign and as yet another demonstration of how to "own the libs". 

But consequences for his vile actions have begun to strike the would-be Republican 2024 presidential nominee.  Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, whose jurisdiction includes San Antonio, has launched a criminal investigation into the flights, and the migrants have filed a class action lawsuit against DeSantis, alleging that DeSantis and his accomplices "executed a premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme centered on exploiting [the migrants] for the sole purpose of advancing their own personal, financial, and political interests." 

Ron DeSantis isn’t the only Republican governor to have dispatched undocumented migrants from red states to blue states. Texas’s Greg Abbott and Arizona’s Doug Ducey have been sending busloads of migrants to Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. Last week, two buses dropped off about a hundred, mostly Venezuelan, migrants outside Vice-President Kamala Harris’s official residence. 

As Democracy Now! points out [link below], this is a throwback to the tactics used by racists in the segregated South sixty years ago as the civil rights movement began to make an impact.  

A comprehensive immigration reform bill is not in our country's immediate future as long as the right continues to use xenophobia and nativism as rallying calls to its faithful.  Trump's 2016 election victory was due in no small part to his "wall" to keep out migrants from Latin America and his promise of a travel ban on Muslims.  Republicans look ready to re-open his despicable playbook if it can gain them a few congressional seats and the presidency.

What's lost in all this is the role that the United States has historically played in creating the immigrant crisis.  There is little to no mention in the corporate media of our moral responsibility to clean up the mess we've helped produce.  Two earlier posts give some context.

The immigration crisis: a century of US intervention in Central America (Apr 5, 2019)

Dawn of a New Era of US Imperialism in Latin America (Nov 15, 2018) 

It's interesting, too, that the latest pawns in the Republican anti-immigrant game are Venezuelans, the most recent victims of our Latin American policies.  As President Biden continues many of the harsh policies of his predecessor towards Venezuela, he continues to undermine the well-being of the Venezuelan people.  Code Pink puts it bluntly:

In 2019 President Trump recognized a mostly unknown Venezuelan opposition politician, Juan Guaidó, as the “Interim President of Venezuela,” despite the fact that Nicolas Maduro had been democratically elected to a second term in office the previous year.  

Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation as interim president violated the Constitution of Venezuela, which clearly states when the president of the National Assembly can become president of Venezuela—and none of these conditions were met. Rather than recognizing this gross violation of the rule of law, you have continued the farce of recognizing Guaidó and continuing the financial, diplomatic and economic campaign of maximum pressure against Venezuelans.  

Even the European Union, which initially followed US leadership, recognized the folly and withdrew its recognition of Guaidó.

Links to a couple of earlier posts for those who've forgotten what went down in 2019:

Fueling a right-wing coup in Venezuela  (Jan 25, 2019)

US-supported Venezuela coup attempt falters: military intervention still "on the table" (May 15, 2019)

And here's a link to the Code Pink petition to President Biden asking for a return to normalcy with Venezuela and an end to the punishment of the Venezuelan people.

https://www.codepink.org/dumpguaido?recruiter_id=902504

Sources: Popular Information, Code Pink, New Yorker, New Republic

Tyre Nichols' death and the demand for police accountability

POSTED FEBRUARY 1, 2022

Like gun control legislation, policing reform is a never-ending case study of the obstructive do-nothing politics practiced by Republicans.  Under the yard-sign banner of "We Support Our Police" and fired up by the subtly racist "law-and-order" rhetoric of their politicians or energized by a demagogue seeking re-election, voters of that persuasion proudly declare their ignorance of the extent of police brutality and the existence of systemic racism. 

Policing reform is critical to the well-being of our country's soul.  The brutal beating death of an unarmed, unresisting Tyre Nichols by five Memphis police officers last month drove the point home to anyone with the slightest amount of humanity still flowing through their veins.  Protests demanding police accountability are once again sweeping the country.  

Related posts: 

Criminal Justice System Reform:  Part II Black Lives Matter, Guns, Police Accountability and Training - Nov 4, 2019

Policing Reform: one year after the death of George Floyd - May 27, 2021  

From The Brennan Center: 

Criminal Justice Reform Halfway Through the Biden Administration 

The continuing sad state of US immigration policy

POSTED MARCH 10, 2023  (UPDATED MARCH 11)

Immigration policy was one of the signature cruelties of the Trump years.  Unfortunately, more than two years into the Biden presidency, those policies and their effects endure.  Rulings by conservative justices, inaction and regression on the part of the Biden Administration, obstruction by Congressional Republicans, and the politics of xenophobia are perpetuating the trauma of those policies.  A comprehensive immigration reform bill that would put an end to such inhumane policies will remain a chimera for a long, long time.

"Remain in Mexico"

After working to end the Trump-era policy colloquially known as "Remain in Mexico", which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while awaiting their immigration court date, the Biden Administration is now regressing.  In anticipation of the end of Covid protocols, the Administration is proposing an alternate version.   In the words of one immigrant advocate, the new Biden asylum rule "resurrects one of the most harmful and illegal anti-asylum policies of the Trump administration."  

As reported in the Washington Post on February 21:

The Biden administration issued its most restrictive border control measure to date, announcing plans for a temporary rule that will penalize asylum seekers who cross the border illegally or do not apply for protection in other nations they pass through on their way to the United States.

Under U.S. immigration law, migrants fleeing persecution can request asylum regardless of how they arrive on U.S. soil. Biden’s rule, slated to take effect in May and expire after two years, would presume asylum ineligibility for those who enter illegally. The penalty would make it easier for the government to deport border-crossers who express a fear of harm, potentially reducing the number who are allowed into the United States pending a hearing in swamped U.S. immigration courts...

Regarding the new Biden policy, "Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said, “It defies decades of humanitarian protections enshrined in U.S. law and international agreements, and flagrantly violates President Biden’s own campaign promises to restore asylum,” she said. “Requiring persecuted people to first seek protection in countries with no functioning asylum systems themselves is a ludicrous and life-threatening proposal.”

Hang your head in shame, Joe.  This is not what we voted for, and, more to the point, this is not what any nation purporting to defend human rights should be doing.