Trump Seeks to Use Dreamers as Bargaining Chips Against Immigrant Communities

Response to a Truth Challenged President

In the State of the Union, President Trump claims to offer a “down the middle compromise” on immigration.   It is not.  Instead  Trump  continues his attack on immigrants in the United States with his administration’s latest immigration plan. Rather than dealing humanely with the current crisis of immigration, the Trump Administration proposes to waste some 25 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to further militarize border communities by building walls and deploying more federal agents to immigrant communities across the nation. The changes in immigration law proposed by the Trump administration will not benefit  our people. They will only devastate communities while pleasing a few white nationalists.  

In his speech he repeats his proposed framework  as a compromise for revising immigration law. They demand 25 billion dollars for the border wall, more personnel for ICE, and an increased authority to deport immigrants. This proposal differs from prior plans released by the White House because the Republican administration included a provision that would grant legal status to 1.8 million immigrants, including DACA recipients. In exchange, the Republican White House expects to gain the resources and authorization to terrorize the 9.2 million immigrants who will not receive legal status.  The Trump administration’s immigration agenda is deplorable and unacceptable.

The White House framework is  another version of the list of demands they released October 2017. Those demands include deporting children seeking asylum, easing the requirements for deportations, expanding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) authority, allowing state governments to enforce immigration laws and protecting those state governments from being sued after deporting and detaining immigrants.   Republican Congressmen justify these brutal proposals by saying that they are necessary for national security, including the need to fight gangs like MS-13. They further justify their proposals for mass deportations by saying that those who became refugees in this country did so by abusing loopholes.

"Ojalá nos mire como americanos": Dreamer que asistirá al discurso del E...

A Progressive Reformist Is Leading Mexico’s Presidential Polls—and Washington Is Freaking Out | The Nation

A Progressive Reformist Is Leading Mexico’s Presidential Polls—and Washington Is Freaking Out | The Nation



AMLO

Trump immigration Proposals : Whte Nationalism

The Trump Proposals. January 26, 2018.

For the Anglo community, this is an advance of the Nativist Wing of the Republican Party.

For Latinos and immigrants, this is fascism.

Our Coalition Partner United We Dream called the proposal . “ a white supremacist ransom note.”

Congress refused  to pass the DREAM act on Monday, leaving 800,000 immigrants vulnerable to deportation in the near future. For 16 years, those hundreds of thousands of DREAMERs have waited for congress to pass the DREAM act. In that time, the DREAMERs gained a fragile legal status thanks to DACA in 2012. Now they lack even that, with only a temporary injunction against Trump’s cancellation of DACA protecting them from losing their right to live and work in the U.S.

We condemn the Republican Party and President Trump for their assault on immigrants, their militarization of the border, their assault on sanctuary cities, their efforts to end family unification and for their termination of DACA and TPS. 

We must unite with others to oppose the Administration proposals.

The Democratic Socialists of America will stand with immigrant communities to fight for a just immigration reform bill. Congress must not pass the Trump administration’s version of immigration reform, which would destroy the lives of millions. Any bill that passes needs to protect the rights of immigrants by granting them citizenship. Anything else is unacceptable. The upcoming weeks will be critical. The next deadline is February 8^th. Now is the time to organize.

For a more detailed description, see our post of January 22.

http://www.dsausa.org/the_republican_shut_down_of_the_u_s_government

For daily coverage follow this blog. 

Immigrants’ Rights Committee. DSA.

DSA.immigration@gmail.com

Border Patrol agents were filmed dumping water left for migrants. Then came a ‘suspicious’ arrest. - The Washington Post

Border Patrol agents were filmed dumping water left for migrants. Then came a ‘suspicious’ arrest. - The Washington Post

Fiscal de California sobre presuntas redadas de ICE: “Solo podemos recor...

TPS Assistance

Free DACA Assistance - Woodland

Support for Dreamers

The Republican/Trump Shutdown of the U.S. Government

_{by DSA’s Immigrants’ Rights Committee}

 Let us be clear.  The shut down of the U.S. government on January 19  was due to a dispute over spending because Donald Trump ordered the end of the DACA program ( Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The proposed spending bill assumes the end of DACA and demands a vast increase in spending on the border, including a wall.  At present the  critical issue  is restoring DACA.  Note: restoring.  We had a DACA program that protected the lives of some 800,000 young people who came to the U.S. as children.  Trump created this crisis and the Republicans are using the crisis to promote their anti immigrant agenda.

As the Southern Border Communities Coalition says, “The Administration’s  misguided and outlandish proposal would waste $33 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to further militarize border communities, by building walls and deploying more federal agents. This funding request is an affront to the 15 million people who call the borderlands home . The funding proposal  further  fails to address border residents’ true needs including oversight and accountability for abusive Customs and Border Protection personnel.  Increasing the number of agents would have little to no impact on security and would be fiscally irresponsible and unwarranted.”

Communities on U.S. borders are being attacked by their own government. Immigrants are living under a reign of terror with deportation to a foreign country being a constantly present danger.  Even those in immigrant communities who are under no legal threat of deportation are threatened. Their neighbors, spouses, family members,  coworkers, and friends are being taken  from their homes and dropped across the border with no hope of return.

Dreamers Live A Nightmare While Congress Runs Down The Clock | HuffPost

Dreamers Live A Nightmare While Congress Runs Down The Clock | HuffPost

The Trump administration’s reckless and inhumane

termination of DACA last September has catapulted Dreamers into deep uncertainty and toxic trauma.

With the help of the anti-immigrant Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House aide Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump has upended the lives of young
aspiring Americans who, just like myself, want a shot at going to school,
getting a job and pursuing the American dream.

Despite calls from Dreamers and their allies to codify DACA into
law, anti-immigrant hawks in Congress and the White House have stalled a proposed
agreement that paired government funding with protecting Dreamers.

Juan Escalante.  Huffington Post

The Trump Government Shut Down

Duane E. Campbell

Let us be clear.  The shut down of the U.S. government was due to a dispute over spending because Donald Trump ordered the end of the DACA program ( Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The spending bill assumes the end of DACA and demands a vast increase in spending on the border, including a wall.  At present the  critical issue  is restoring DACA.  Note: restoring.  We had a DACA program that protected the lives of some 800,000 young people who came to the U.S. as children.  Trump created this crisis and the Republicans are using the crisis to promote their anti immigrant agenda.

Since his campaign, Trump has doubled down on racism, sexism and bigotry, to the delight of David Duke, the American Nazi Party, and others like them. The control of the Republican Party by hard core anti immigration forces emboldens hard-core racists, Islamophobes, misogynists, and anti-immigrant groups, while promising an assault on workers' rights.

The White House has demanded that an increase of 33 billion dollars in funding for anti-immigrant measures be included as a part of the DREAM act. 18 Billion dollars of this funding increase would be spent on the border wall and the rest on terrorizing immigrant communities in this country. 

 As the Southern Border Communities Coalition says, “The Administration’s  misguided and outlandish proposal would waste $33 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to further militarize border communities, by building walls and deploying more federal agents. This funding request is an affront to the 15 million people who call the borderlands home . The funding proposal  further  fails to address border residents’ true needs including oversight and accountability for abusive Customs and Border Protection personnel.  Increasing the number of agents would have little to no impact on security and would be fiscally irresponsible and unwarranted.”

DACA Renewals Workshop

The Dreamers and the Border

The White House has demanded that an increase of 33 billion dollars in funding for anti-immigrant measures be included as a part of the DREAM act. 18 Billion dollars of this funding increase would be spent on the border wall and the rest on terrorizing immigrant communities in this country. 

 As the Southern Border Communities Coalition says, “The Administration’s  misguided and outlandish proposal would waste $33 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to further militarize border communities, by building walls and deploying more federal agents. This funding request is an affront to the 15 million people who call the borderlands home . The funding proposal  further  fails to address border residents’ true needs including oversight and accountability for abusive Customs and Border Protection personnel.  Increasing the number of agents would have little to no impact on security and would be fiscally irresponsible and unwarranted.”

The Administration’s   demands include more deportations, punishments for cities that protect their immigrants with sanctuary laws, and an increase in  ICE’s budget. 

These demands are unacceptable. If the White House’s version of the DREAM act passes, immigrants in this country will face arbitrary harassment by hostile federal agencies. The White House claims that this violence is necessary in order to fight terrorism and drug cartels. These threats used to justify their draconian demands are either imaginary or exacerbated by our deportation policy.

The Administration also claim that they want additional measures to punish those who use what the administration calls loopholes in our immigration laws including the preferences  for family unification.  Removing these “loopholes” would uproot thousands of people who know no other home, many of whom are children. Congress must instead pass a clean DREAM act. Anything else will wreck countless lives on both sides of the border."

Duane Campbell 
Immigrants' Rights Committee
Brandon Rey Ramirez
Immigrants Rights Committee  Co-Chairs

News story: ICE Planning Major Northern California Sweep

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Feds-planning-massive-Northern-California-12502689.php

U.S. immigration officials have begun preparing for a major sweep in San Francisco and other Northern California cities in which federal officers would look to arrest more than 1,500 undocumented people while sending a message that immigration policy will be enforced in the sanctuary state, according to a source familiar with the operation.

Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, declined to comment Tuesday on plans for the operation.

DACA Renewals Available

On January 13, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services (USCIS) announced that it is once again accepting DACA renewal applications, because of an order issued by a U.S. district court in San Francisco. A frequently-asked-questions document authored by NILC and United We Dream and based on the Jan. 13 announcement will be available soon.

The court order was issued in a case challenging the Trump administration’s termination of the DACA program. The termination was announced on September 5, 2017. Our statement about that announcement is here.

In accordance with the administration’s Sept. 5 announcement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stopped accepting initial DACA applications (i.e., from people who didn’t already have DACA) after October 5, 2017. People who already had DACA and whose work permits would expire between Sept. 5, 2017, and March 5, 2018, were eligible to apply for a two-year renewal if they applied by October 5, 2017. The recent court order and USCIS’s announcement of Jan. 13 have made it possible, once again, for people to submit DACA renewal applications, at least for a limited time.

If you want to apply to renew your DACA under the latest policy (based on USCIS’s Jan. 13 announcement), we encourage you to speak first with an immigration attorney or a Board of Immigration Appeals–accredited representative. If you decide to proceed with an application, we urge that you be represented by an attorney or accredited representative (a Form G-28 should be filed with your application).

DACA Fees assistance: https://missionassetfund.org/daca-grant/

In Celebration of Contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The New Poor People’s Campaign:

In Celebration of the Life and Contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The new Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is an outgrowth of Rev. William J. Barber II’s “Forward Together, Not One Step Back”/ Moral Monday campaigns that confronted the conservative North Carolina legislature during 2013- 2016 and became a model for similar campaigns in several other states.   The new Poor People’s campaign was organized nationally in 2017.  The campaign website provides a good description of the progressive principles on which it is based.  The following history of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign is from their website – edited for length. -  Duane Campbell

Dr. King’s Vision: The Poor People’s Campaign of 1967-68

Why a Poor People’s Campaign?

Just a year before his assassination, at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in May 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights…[W]hen we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution…In short, we have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.

Later that year, in December 1967, Rev. Dr. King announced the plan to bring together poor people from across the country for a new march on Washington. This march was to demand better jobs, better homes, better education—better lives than the ones they were living. Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy explained that the intention of the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 was to “dramatize the plight of America’s poor of all races and make very clear that they are sick and tired of waiting for a better life.” Rev. Dr. King proposed;

If you are, let’s say, from rural Mississippi, and have never had medical attention, and your children are undernourished and unhealthy, you can take those little children into the Washington hospitals and stay with them there until the medical workers cope with their needs, and in showing it your children you will have shown this country a sight that will make it stop in its busy tracks and think hard about what it has done.

Democratic leaders face internal mutiny over Dreamers deal - POLITICO

Democratic leaders face internal mutiny over Dreamers deal - POLITICO

Fiscal General de California en conferencia de prensa habla sobre DACA

Trump Must Keep DACA Protections for Now, Judge Says - The New York Times

Trump Must Keep DACA Protections for Now, Judge Says - The New York Times

JUDGES ORDERS DACA RENEWALS TO RESUME: A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday night to resume enrollment renewals in the DACA program, POLITICO's Josh Gerstein reports. San Francisco-based U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup's order temporarily blocks the Justice Department's September rescission of the Obama-era program - a legal development that, unless halted by a higher court, will allow young undocumented immigrants to renew their DACA status. The Homeland Security Department declined to comment, but the administration will surely appeal the decision to the 9th Circuit. 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in September that the DACA program "was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch," but Alsup said that finding appeared to be "based on a flawed legal premise," Gerstein reports. Alsup's order wielded some of President Donald Trump's words against him. On the question of whether DACA's continuation would be in the public interest, Alsup cited a Trump tweet a little more than one week after he ended the program. "Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?" Trump wrote. "Really!....."

Alsup's order scrambles negotiations between Congress and the White House over codifying DACA. Trump's partly televised meeting Tuesday with members of Congress focused largely on four items: finding a permanent solution for DACA participants, known as Dreamers; border security; family ("chain") immigration; and the diversity visa lottery program. Several attendees left the meeting with the impression that all four policy areas would be covered in a DACA deal. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the attendees and a principal negotiator in the Senate, said, "we all agreed." The White House said the group ""reached an agreement to negotiate" a bill to deal with the quartet of policy areas.

Trump: Let’s Tackle Comprehensive Immigration Reform After DACA Fix – Talking Points Memo

Trump: Let’s Tackle Comprehensive Immigration Reform After DACA Fix – Talking Points Memo



Today's debate on immigration.

Trump Terminates TPS for El Salvadorans

Termination of Temporary Protection Status for El Salvadorans is Inhumane, Says Immigrant Legal Resource Center 

https://www.ilrc.org/termination-temporary-protection-status-el-salvadorans-inhumane-says-immigrant-legal-resource-center

Termination of Temporary Protection Status for El Salvadorans is Inhumane, Says Immigrant Legal Resource Center   Today, the Department of Homeland Security terminated the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for El Salvador. In 18 months, approximately 200,000 Salvadoran TPS holders, the largest population living in the U.S. under this designation, will be out of status and subject to deportation.   Said Amanda Baran, Consultant to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and co-author of ILRC’s report “Economic Contributions by Salvadoran, Honduran and Haitian TPS Holders”:   “To disregard the contributions that El Salvadorans have made in communities across this country by stamping an expiration date on their lives here is inhumane. Salvadoran TPS holders are our colleagues and neighbors, and the economic engines of our construction and service sectors. El Salvador is one of the world’s most dangerous countries and will be unable to absorb the return of these thousands of people whose lives are inextricably intertwined with those of ours here in the United States.     “This Administration continues to make one reckless and heartless policy decision after another. Our economy and communities thrive because of the contributions of El Salvadoran TPS holders, and indeed all TPS holders. We are calling on Congress to immediately pass the American Promise Act of 2017 introduced by Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY), which will allow TPS beneficiaries from all thirteen participating countries who have lived in the United States for three years to continue to live and work here while they pursue a path to naturalization.”   Deporting current El Salvadoran TPS holders will cost our nation more than $1.8 billion; lead to a GDP reduction of $3.9 billion over a decade; and incur $4.8 billion in lost Social Security and Medicare contributions over a decade, according to findings from ILRC’s report “Economic Contributions by Salvadoran, Honduran and Haitian TPS Holders.”   Despite the termination of TPS for individuals from El Salvador, those living in certain parts of the U.S. (the jurisdictions covered by the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th and 6th Circuits) may be eligible to pursue options to adjust their status. ILRC urges legal practitioners to review its Practice Alert on Ramirez v. Brown for more 

information.                                  

Trump Demands Border Wall and More

Donald Trump 

California Republican Leader
Kevin Mc Carthy 

Trump demands Border Wall and much more as a trade for passing DACA.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015e-fe3d-dc15-a3fe-ff3d27fb0000

Dreamers To California Republicans: Help Us, Please | HuffPost

Dreamers To California Republicans: Help Us, Please | HuffPost

Trump to Waste Billions on Border Wall

The Southern Border Communities Coalition Statement on DHS' $33 Billion Budget Request 

Southern Border Region/Washington DC -  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is requesting a $33B budget for increased border security. $18B of the budget is allocated for more than 700 miles of new and replacement border wall that will roll out over a 10-year span.

According to sources, the outlandish request was laid out in a detailed document drafted by DHS for members of Congress.

Christian Ramirez, Director of the Southern Borders Communities Coalition, issued the following statement:

“The administration has released a misguided and outlandish proposal that seeks to waste $33 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to further militarize border communities, by building walls and deploying more federal agents. This funding request is an affront to the 15 million people who call the borderlands home.

The notion that border communities need more walls and more border agents is patently false, unjustified and detrimental to the civil rights of the millions of people who live, work and travel through the borderlands. Such proposal will devastate our environment, undermine public safety, trample on sacred land, and jeopardize the economic prosperity of our region. It’s time for the Trump Administration to get serious about governing and abandon hyperbolic rhetoric as a replacement for policymaking. It’s time for Congress to act on a bipartisan solution that protects Dreamers and approaches border policy based on reality and data and not on rhetoric and politics.

Congress should reject the expensive, extreme, and excessive proposals from the President and move forward with a bipartisan solution for the crisis created by the White House when DACA was unilaterally abolished.”

Chicano Mural In Process

Construction of a 30-foot mural paying tribute to Sacramento’s Chicano history has begun in advance of its March opening inside Golden 1 Center. 

The mural, titled “Flight,” prominently features an overhead view of a yellow-and-black Canadian swallowtail butterfly as well as several other critters flying around the circle’s exterior. It’s expected to be installed by February inside the K Street arena entrance, then unveiled at the Sacramento Kings’ Latino Heritage Night matchup versus the Brooklyn Nets on March 1.

Three Royal Chicano Air Force lead artists – Esteban Villa, Juanishi V. Orosco and Stan Padilla – are overseeing a group of 25 assistants working to assemble the mural, which Padilla described as “drawing on Mesoamerican mythology.” The three lead artists all began working in their studios in south Sacramento (Villa), Colfax (Padilla) and Los Angeles (Orosco) around Dec. 1 after more than two years of sketching and planning.

“Muralism is a social art,” Padilla said. “It’s not like one artist gets up and paints a big wall. It takes a whole team, culturally, the way we do it.”