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.
These measures will not make the U.S. safer. What
they will do is drastically militarize our society. The border itself will be
more heavily patrolled; the Trump administration wants to add 5,000 Border
Patrol agents .
With this many more agents, the Border
Patrol would be roughly 24,000 agents strong. These agents will be unleashed on
immigrant communities, where they will do tremendous harm. A 2014 study
of the Border Patrol called “No Action Taken,” written by the American
Immigration Council, found that 97 percent of complaints against agents
resulted in no punishment for the agent (Martinez, Cantor, and Ewing 2014).
These sorts of abuses will also happen in cities and communities away from the border
as the Republican administration demands
that 10,000 additional ICE officers be hired.
The demand
that local law enforcement be included in immigration enforcement is also
alarming. The administration proposes to
incentivize local governments to enter into immigration enforcement agreements
with the federal government. Texas and at
least twenty-three other Republican led states and numerous cities already have
cooperated to establish such a repressive environment. Their most worrying demand is
that local law enforcement be granted the same immunity from oversight and prosecution
afforded to federal law enforcement in immigration matters.
Past use of aggressive interior enforcement, then
called “Secure Communities,” was a failure. ICE agents conducted raids and
arrested people at work sites, schools, and on the streets. Often they
jailed complete families. The campaigns deported parents of U.S.
citizens, leaving the children behind, disrupting families, schools, and
workplaces. The raids and the incarceration were too often done without proper
warrants and normal procedural safeguards.
The proposed
major increase in enforcement efforts will shatter communities across this
country by making it too risky for many immigrants to engage with civil
society. If law enforcement is seen as collaborating with ICE, contact
with the police, already extremely dangerous, will be avoided by immigrants. When
local police cooperate with ICE it is difficult to establish trust between
immigrant communities and the law. To
prevent this loss of trust, California and more than 200 cities and counties
have declared themselves as sanctuaries from such aggressive enforcement
tactics.
The Trump
Administration proposes to withhold federal funds from sanctuary localities. If
the administration gains the right to cancel grants to sanctuary cities as part
of the budget negotiations, public safety in many communities will be severely
harmed.
Instead of following
the Republican administration’s framework, Congress should reform immigration
with the goal of making it possible for our immigrant communities to participate in wider
society. Hundreds of thousands of people received a precarious legal status based
upon Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Already, the Trump administration has
refused to renew TPS status for immigrants from Haiti and El Salvador. Those
who have some protection because of TPS should be granted permanent legal
status and ultimately a path to citizenship. Refugees and immigrants who came
to this country as minors must be granted permanent residence and a path to
citizenship.
A
clean DREAM act is needed. Such a bill would
grant legal status to people who immigrated to the United States as children without
adding the allocation of funding for agencies like ICE or a border
wall. Imigrants families must not be separated. What the Republican administration calls
“chain migration” is the current law on family preferences. Family-based immigration sponsorship should be
maintained. The Republican
administration claims it wants to maintain the nuclear family, but it plans to
tear families apart with its vicious changes to the family sponsorship laws. More
on family sponsored immigration can be found in this piece[M3] [CD4] .
Comprehensive
immigration reform should also include a radical change in how immigration laws
are enforced. ICE and the Border Patrol have
proven themselves incapable of fighting organized crime. The Border Patrol has
added 15,000 agents to its force since 1990 but has still failed to stop organized
crime along the border. Instead, they have primarily succeeded in terrorizing
peaceful immigrants, many who came to the U.S. to flee violent conditions in
their home country created or exacerbated by U.S. foreign policy. Allocating the proposed 25 billion dollars, 7 billion more than they demanded
last time, for a wall and an enlarged Border Patrol will only result in the
death of many innocent people. Rather
than wasting money on a wall, this same 25 billion dollars could pay for 960 new
schools, or 625 new hospitals and clinics in the border region and other low
income underserved communities or to rebuild homes, hospitals, and schools in
flooded areas of Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.
Immigration
reform is clearly needed. Dreamers and TPS recipients need their legal status
maintained and millions more need legal protection. Legalizing 1.8 million
people, while deporting 9.2 million others, is unacceptable. This barbarous act
will destroy countless lives, including the lives of those who stand to gain
legal status from this proposal. Some will be allowed to stay in the United
States and watch their neighbors and family members be deported. By combining policies
that increase deportations and restrict family sponsorships to a DACA fix, the
Trump administration is using the Dreamers
as pawns in their legislative attack on
immigrant communities. It should be possible for those millions of
immigrants working in this country to gain a route to legalization and
citizenship. The demands of the Trump White House must not be included
in any immigration reform bill.
The
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and unions must work with other
progressives to defeat the white nationalist agenda of the Trump
administration.
DSA Immigrants’
Rights Committee
Duane
Campbell
Brandon Rey
Ramirez, Co chairs.
dsa.immigration@gmail.com
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