Sinister Security

The Latest Nonsense About Immigration—a Quick Guide

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https://mronline.org/2018/02/07/the-latest-nonsense-about-immigration-a-quick-guide/

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

February 7, 2018

We’ve seen and heard a lot about immigration in the past few weeks, and a good deal of it has been out-and-out nonsense. Many journalists and politicians simply don’t understand U.S. immigration policy, some consciously lie about it, and a few, like Donald Trump, manage not to understand and at the same time consciously lie.

Here’s a list of some of the immigration absurdities now circulating in the media and in the political class.

1. We have a big problem called “chain immigration.” People who say this are actually talking about the family-based visa system established by the 1965 immigration reform. The term “chain migration” refers to an age-old process of people settling in a new country and then sending for friends and relatives. Many or most European Americans got here through this kind of migration. So why do conservatives call family-based immigration “chain migration”? Simple: they claim to support family values, so they don’t want us to notice that they’re opposing a program that favors family reunification.

2. Family-based immigration means “a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.” Most people don’t live long enough to create anything like the migration “chain” we find in President Trump’s rants and rightwing TV ads. It’s true that a naturalized U.S. citizen can sponsor green cards for a spouse, for parents, and for minor children, but the process involves many bureaucratic hurdles and delays. To sponsor other close relatives, such as siblings and adult children, the citizen confronts a labyrinth of quotas and restrictions, with delays stretching into decades for people of certain nationalities. Green card holders face even stricter limitations and greater hurdles.

In January Trump claimed that terrorism suspect Sayfullo Saipov brought in “22 people through the chain.” PolitiFact calculates that the 29-year-old Saipov, a green card holder since 2010, could only have done this by somehow “fathering more than 20 kids before he left Uzbekistan.”

3. We also have a good visa program called “merit-based immigration.” Currently the U.S. government makes immigration visas available for some people with special skills or employment opportunities; these visas are capped at 140,000 a year, including the applicants’ spouses and minor children. Conservatives generally like this program, but after years of charging that immigrants are “taking our jobs,” they’re naturally uncomfortable with the program’s usual name, “employment-based immigration.” So in the past decade they’ve been trying to rebrand it as “merit-based immigration.”

4. This program brings us people who “will contribute to our society and who will love and respect our country.” Republicans are trying to reorientthe employment-based visa program towards admitting immigrants with advanced degrees in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. This probably does contribute to our society, but the Republicans’ real interest is the new workers’ ability to benefit U.S. corporations. Recruiting these immigrants gives U.S. companies a technological edge; creates a “brain drain” for the immigrants’ home countries, often U.S. economic rivals like China and South Korea; and compensates for the shortage of qualified U.S.-born workers caused by the failures of our own underfunded education system.

5. Current immigration laws have “deadly loopholes” which allow “criminals to break into our country.” This is a reference to the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which George W. Bush signed into law in 2008. The act was intended to protect unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S. border; instead of turning the children back, Border Patrol agents are required to hand them over to Health and Human Services while their asylum claims are considered. Most of these minors are Central Americans fleeing violence in their own countries—violence largely created by the U.S. demand for drugs and U.S. support for rightwing regimes.

There really is a loophole, though—for the Border Patrol. The law excludes “contiguous countries,” giving the agents freedom to ship Mexican kids back across the border to face whatever the drug cartels may have in store for them.

6. The only important immigration issue now is the legal status of immigrants known as “Dreamers.” The main media and political focus has been on the nearly 700,000 younger immigrants currently losing work authorizations and the protection from deportation they had under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), but more than 300,000 other immigrants, including Salvadorans and Haitians, are losing protections they had under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. And of course there are another 10 million out-of-status immigrants who never had any protections to lose; at least two-thirds of them have lived here for a decade or more.

7. But of course we can’t give all these people legal status. For much of the twentieth century—through 1986—Congress periodically provided an avenue to legalization for unauthorized immigrants with long-term residence. A 1938 report for the Roosevelt administration explained the reasoning: “It is not in the best interests of the United States that there should be a considerable number of aliens here who have resided in this country for many years and who are otherwise eligible for naturalization and anxious to become citizens, but who are prevented from doing so” because of a lack of status.

Why can’t we apply that logic now? Or was amnesty all right in 1938 because back then the undocumented immigrants were mostly white?

8. Still, we need to be realistic and compromiseon immigration. The White House talking points from January 25 laid out a hardline restrictionist agenda as the government’s bargaining position. Why shouldn’t immigrants and their supporters negotiate from an equally firm position? For example, polls show as much as 86 percent of the U.S. population supporting legal status for the Dreamers. Why in the world should we have to compromise on that? (The rest of Trump’s immigration agenda is also generally unpopular.)

9. At least we could compromise on Trump’s wall. There’s a widespread sense that it will do no harm to humor Trump by giving him $25 billion for increased border security. But even the existing border security is far from harmless. It disrupts border communities and causes environmental damage, and its main result has been driving migrants into inhospitable and dangerous terrain. More than 7,209 people have died trying to cross the Mexico-U.S. border in the last twenty years; for comparison, official estimates for deaths at the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989 are in the low hundreds.

What we actually need is a rollback of the border security regime, along with an investigation of corruption in the awarding of border security contracts. For example, how did we end up paying Boeing $1 billionfor a barely functional 53-mile “virtual fence”?

10. We can count on Democrats to do the right thing for the Dreamers. The first version of the DREAM Actwas introduced in 2001, before some of the current Dreamers were born. In 2009 and 2010 the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House. For two years the party leadership refused to put the bill up for a vote; when they finally allowed a roll call, in December 2010, the votes of five Democratic senators killed the legislation. Some Democratic politicians sincerely support immigrant rights; others are just trying to get reelected. We can only count on them when we’ve instilled a fear in their hearts that they may be looking for a new job after November.

11. Still, it’s up to the people in Washington; all we can do is make phone calls. Any progress that’s ever been made in this country has been driven by popular movements. Advances in immigrant rights will only come about when millions of people are backing immigrant activists in their struggles. We need to accompany them to immigration hearings; turn out for protests to defend their rights; reportand—if we can do it without endangering others—recordabuses by immigration agents; and consider risking arrest to prevent these abuses. We also need to do something seemingly less radical but no less difficult: educate ourselves on the realities of immigration policy and get this knowledge out to others, in personal conversations, through social media, at community meetings, at forums, screenings, and teach-ins—in any milieu where we can be heard.

“Knowledge is power,” according to an old adage. Rightwingers understand this; sometimes they even use the phrase as a motto. That’s why they’re working so hard to keep us in ignorance.

Racist Immigration Policies Didn’t Start With Trump

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/opinion/trumps-anti-immigrant-racism-represents-an-american-tradition.html

These two articles detail the ways in which racism has always been a crucial element in U.S. immigration policy. Paul A. Kramer’s New York Times op-ed is especially noteworthy for asking “to what extent are the countries of the global north implicated in forces that prevent people in the global south from surviving and thriving where they are” and “[i]n what ways do restrictive immigration policies heighten the exploitation of workers”—questions rarely brought up in the corporate media. And he emphasizes that ruling elites exploit racial divisioins in the population to maintain their own power.—TPOI editor

Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Racism Represents an American Tradition

By Paul A. Kramer, New York Times

January 22, 2018

President Trump has inspired widespread outrage and disgust with his crude, racist disparagement of Haiti, El Salvador and African nations and the predominantly black and brown immigrants from these places.

As horrifying as this remark was, his groundbreaking transparency provides an opportunity. Racism has long fueled United States immigration exclusions and restrictions, but these days it’s rare to hear rhetoric that openly reflects this reality, providing us a chance to delve into its roots and implications.[…]

Read the full article:

In 1920, Jews, Italians, Irish and Greeks Were the People From ‘Shithole’ Countries

By Alan Singer, HuffPost

January 15, 2018

Last week Donald Trump called for blocking immigrants from “shithole” countries, setting off a

wave of domestic and international condemnation. Despite reports by eyewitnesses including Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican, Trump denied insulting Haitians, Central Americans, and Africans. He also repeatedly denies that he is a racist. Representative Mia Love, a Republican and the only Haitian American in Congress, accepted the truth of the reports, called Trump’s behavior unacceptable, and demanded an apology.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/in-1920-jews-italians-irish-and-greeks-were-the_us_5a5c8d06e4b01ccdd48b5e1b

DACA and TPS: Trump Plans to Push 1 Million More Into the Shadows

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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/8/16862898/trump-tps-salvador-ms13-immigrants

Trump rants about Salvadoran gangs. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

On January 9 the administration announced that it was terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some quarter million Salvadorans. Along with the termination of DACA and most other TPS programs, this will end protection from deportation for a total of about 1 million immigrants. Few of them will be able or willing to return to their countries of origin. The undocumented population in the U.S. has remained stable at around 11 million for a decade; now the White House, which regularly denounces “illegals,” actually seems to be working to increase the number. Maybe we should ask why.—TPOI editor

Trump’s attacks on humanitarian immigration just became a full-blown war

He’s trying to force 260,000 immigrants to return to El Salvador after decades in the United States.

By Dara Lind, Vox

January 9, 2018

On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it was stripping approximately 260,500 Salvadoran immigrants — who’ve been in the US for at least 17 years, since a 2001 earthquake — of temporary legal status as of July 2019.

It’s the latest, and most significant, blow in the administration’s fight against Temporary Protected Status, an immigration program that lets the government allow immigrants to stay in the US and work legally after their home countries are struck by natural disasters or war.[…]

Read the full article:

Ending Salvadorans' protected immigration status will exacerbate problems Trump aimed to fix

[T]he termination of TPS for Salvadorans likely will cause a significant humanitarian and economic impact for cities such as Washington, D.C., Miami and Los Angeles.

By Geoff Thale and Elyssa Pachico, The Hill

January 8, 2018

It is no secret that protection offered by the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program to Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans lasted beyond “temporary,” extending over many years. Under TPS, migrants unable to return to their home countries because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions can live and work in the United States. The U.S. government granted TPS to Salvadorans in 2001, following two devastating earthquakes in the Central American country, and because of violence and instability in subsequent years, continued to approve extensions to the program.[…]

Read the full article:

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/367982-ending-protected-immigration-status-for-salvadorans-will-exacerbate

Save the Salvadorans

So long as our immigration system is built on contortions of logic like these, it will be vulnerable to Trump-style cruelty that’s then justified on the basis of common-sense law enforcement.

David Leonhardt, New York Times

January 9, 2018

The roughly 200,000 Salvadorans whom the Trump administration is subjecting to deportation are deeply ensconced in American society.

They have lived here for at least 17 years. Together, they have about 190,000 children who were born in the United States. The immigrants “work in a wide array of jobs, from defense contractors to school cafeteria workers, commercial office cleaners and restaurant owners,” Maria Sacchetti of The Washington Post writes.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/salvadorans-tps.html

More Trump News: The Raids, the Hotline, the Parole Denial Policy

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https://theintercept.com/2017/10/04/ice-raids-trump-immigration-deportation/

Border art: image from JR, the artist

For the moment media coverage of immigration policy is mostly focused on the whether Trump and the Democrats can make a deal on a new DREAM Act, but some outlets have been reporting on the little-noticed results of Trump policies from earlier in the year.

Below are links to The Intercept covering internal ICE emails about the nationwide raids last February, the American-Statesmanreporting on the murder of a Mexican immigrant detained in March, Splinter News giving examples of the calls received by Trump’s Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline, and a report from Human Rights First showing how the administration has increased the detention of asylum seekers—and that as of April an average of 40,000 immigrants (both asylum seekers and others) were being held in detention each night.—TPOI editor

Internal Emails Show ICE Agents Struggling to Substantiate Trump’s Lies About Immigrants

UPDATE, October 17, 2017: The Intercept now reports that then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, currently Trump’s chief of staff, personally directed ICE agents to hype up the “criminality” of the people detained in the February raids.

By Alice Speri, The Intercept

October 4, 2017

As hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up across the country last February in the first mass raids of the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials went out of their way to portray the people they detained as hardened criminals, instructing field offices to highlight the worst cases for the media and attempting to distract attention from the dozens of individuals who were apprehended despite having no criminal background at all.[…]

Read the full article:

Immigrant taken by ICE from Austin courthouse was killed in Mexico

By Ryan Autullo and Taylor Goldenstein, American-Statesman

September 19, 2016

Juan Coronilla-Guerrero’s wife warned a federal judge this spring that her husband would be killed if the U.S. government followed through with his deportation.

Her prediction came true last week. Three months after the former Austin resident was taken back to central Mexico by federal authorities, his body was found on the side of a road in San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato, near where he had been living with his wife’s family.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/immigrant-taken-ice-from-austin-courthouse-was-killed-mexico/bfntga0HYA378iitM4VT8J/

This Is What It Looks Like When the President Asks People to Snitch on Their Neighbors

By Daniel Rivero and Brendan O'Connor, Splinter

October 3, 2017

In April, the Trump Administration launched what it called the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline, with a stated mission to “provide proactive, timely, adequate, and prfessional services to victims of crimes committed by removable aliens.” But internal logs of calls to VOICE obtained by Splinter show that hundreds of Americans seized on the hotline to lodge secret accusations against acquaintances, neighbors, or even their own family members, often to advance petty personal grievances.[…]

Read the full article:

https://splinternews.com/this-is-what-it-looks-like-when-the-president-asks-peop-1819077393

Judge and Jailer: Asylum Seekers Denied Parole in Wake of Trump Executive Order

By Human Rights First

September 29, 2017

On January 25, 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to allocate “all legally available resources” to construct and operate immigration detention facilities and hold immigrants there for the duration of their court proceedings. In the eight months since, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has largely refused to release asylum seekers from detention on parole, leaving many locked up in immigration detention facilities and jails.[…]

Download the report:

https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/judge-and-jailer-asylum-seekers-denied-parole-wake-trump-executive-order

Trump Announces His DACA “Deal”: The Full Hard-Right Immigration Agenda

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https://www.vox.com/2017/10/8/16445472/trump-immigration-principles

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

White House to Congress: we'll legalize DACA recipients if you crack down on most other immigrants

Trump’s “priorities”: restrict asylum, limit family-based legal migration, and build the wall — in exchange for giving legal status, but not citizenship, to 700,000 people.

By Dara Lind, Vox

October 8, 2017

When President Donald Trump announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in September, he said he was giving Congress six months to find a legislative solution that would allow the 690,000 young unauthorized immigrants currently protected from deportation under DACA to stay in the country legally.

It turns out his White House has very specific ideas about what they want that solution to be.[…]

Read the full article:

Trump Hands Democrats an Opportunity on Immigration

By Laura Litvan and Toluse Olorunnipa, Bloomberg News

October 9, 2017

President Donald Trump’s renewed demands for a border wall and dramatic changes to immigration laws in exchange for deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants may help Democrats by keeping the issue alive in the 2018 election year.

Polls show voters side with Democrats on shielding the immigrants, known as Dreamers. By adopting a hard line, Trump is setting the stage for a prolonged fight in Congress that could help Democrats gain seats in the House and Senate.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-09/trump-s-new-immigration-demands-hand-democrats-an-opportunity

NAACP Responds to Trump’s Immigration Principles

NAACP Press Release

October 9, 2017

BALTIMORE (October 9, 2017) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America’s oldest social justice organization, released the following statement in response to the immigration principles proposed by the Trump Administration yesterday.

“Despite his insistence on preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the immigration reforms proposed by President Trump last night prove once again that we cannot trust his hollow assertions.”[…]

Read the full press release:

http://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-responds-trumps-immigration-principles/

Miscellaneous News: Detention Center Lawsuit, Suppressed Refugee Report, World Citizenship Poll

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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42028-victory-for-immigrant-hunger-strikers-lawsuit-challenges-slave-wages-at-private-jail

Victory for Immigrant Hunger Strikers: Lawsuit Challenges Slave Wages at Private Jail

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout
NWDC protest. Photo: Thomas Soerenes/The News Tribune/AP

September 22, 2017

For three years now, incarcerated immigrants have staged hunger strikes and work stoppages to protest conditions at the Northwest Detention Center, an immigration jail in Tacoma, Washington, run by a private prison company that pays detainees as little as $1 a day to work in the jail.

"This week folks were offered chips or a soup for several nights of waxing the floors, so not even $1 [per] day," one person incarcerated in the jail recently reported to NWDC Resistance, an immigrant-led group fighting to end the deportation and detention of immigrants.

Five hunger strikes have been held so far this year, with participants and whistleblowers facing solitary confinement, threats of forced feeding and other forms of retaliation from prison authorities, according to NWDC Resistance.

Their efforts paid off on Wednesday when Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced a lawsuit against GEO Group, a massive private prison firm that runs the Northwest Detention Center under a federal contract.[…]

Read the full article:

For earlier coverage of the Northwest Detention Center, go to:

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2017/08/new-trouble-at-geo-groups-northwest.html

Trump Administration Rejects Study Showing Positive Impact of Refugees

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Somini Sengupta, New York Times

September 18, 2017

WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials, under pressure from the White House to provide a rationale for reducing the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year, rejected a study by the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.

Photo: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

The draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times, contradicts a central argument made by advocates of deep cuts in refugee totals as President Trump faces an Oct. 1 deadline to decide on an allowable number. The issue has sparked intense debate within his administration as opponents of the program, led by Mr. Trump’s chief policy adviser, Stephen Miller, assert that continuing to welcome refugees is too costly and raises concerns about terrorism.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/refugees-revenue-cost-report-trump.html

World Citizenship Is More Popular Than You Might Think

A poll of more than 20,000 people in 18 countries, conducted by GlobeScan for the BBC World Service from December 2015 through April 2016, found that 51 percent of respondents saw themselves more as global citizens than as citizens of their own countries.

By Lawrence Wittner, History News Network

September 17, 2017

Has nationalism captured the hearts and minds of the world’s people?

It certainly seems to have emerged as a powerful force in recent years. Trumpeting their alleged national superiority and hatred of foreigners, political parties on the far right have made their biggest political advances since the 1930s. After the far right’s startling success, in June 2016, in getting a majority of British voters to endorse Brexit―British withdrawal from the European Union (EU)―even mainstream conservative parties began to adopt a chauvinist approach. Using her Conservative Party conference to rally support for leaving the EU, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared contemptuously: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.”[…]

Read the full article:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/166809

Trump Guts Obama’s Program for Central American Kids

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http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/sd-me-refugee-children-20170815-story.html

The White House is now cutting out part of the Central American Minors (CAM) program that the Obama administration set up in 2014 to admit some underage refugees fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

We wrote two years ago that the CAM program seemed to be less about saving kids than “about giving the impression that the U.S. government is finally addressing the root causes of immigration—causes which to a large extent are the result of past and present U.S. policies.” In fact, as of earlier this year, the program had only led to the admission of some 2,400 refugees and parolees, with about 2,700 others granted conditional parole but still waiting to come to the U.S. But the program has at least saved some children from danger, and now Trump is eliminating the parole option, leaving the conditional parolees stranded in Central America.

Presumably this will gratify the rightwing politicians and journalists who targeted the CAM program back in 2015. Then-senator Jeff Sessions claimed the program had “created a dangerous situation" and the fact-challenged Daily Callerwarned about “potentially millions of current and former illegal immigrants” bringing their children into the country.—TPOI editor

Jeff Sessions' "dangerous situation." Photo: Jennifer Whitney/NY Times

Program allowing some minors from Central America into U.S. halted

By Greg Moran, San Diego Union Tribune

August 15, 2017

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday it plans to shut down a program that offered some children and young adults from three Central Amercian countries a chance to lawfully immigrate to the U.S. to join their parents.

The decision will close down a portion of the Central American Minors program, established in 2014 under President Obama as a way to slow the stream of minors from strife-torn Central American countries.

The program allows unmarried youths under 21 years old from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala who had one parent who had lawful status in the U.S. to apply for refugee status, from their home country.

If the refugee status was denied. they could still be allowed into the U.S. under humanitarian parole, a way to legally be in the country that is not permanent but must be renewed periodically.

In an announcement to be published in the Federal Register today DHS said that it was terminating the humanitarian parole part of the CAM program.[…]

Read the full article:

The Dark History of Defining ‘Family’

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‘Clear Victory’ for President Trump on Muslim Ban 2.0? Hardly.

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Ossining HS student arrested by immigration agents

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Detention Roundup: Deaths in California, Cruel Conditions in Atlanta, “Worse Than Death” in Texas

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/adelanto-death-immigration-detention-geo

In 3 Months, 3 Immigrants Have Died at a Private Detention Center in California

Members of Congress have cited the Adelanto Detention Facility for "egregious" medical errors.

By Madison Pauly, Mother Jones

June 2, 2017

A Honduran immigrant held at a troubled detention center in California's high desert died Wednesday night while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Vincente Caceres-Maradiaga, 46, was receiving treatment for multiple medical conditions while waiting for an immigration court to decide whether to deport him, according an ICE statement. He collapsed as he was playing soccer at the detention facility and died while en route to a local hospital.

Caceres-Maradiaga's death is the latest in a string of fatalities among detainees held at the Adelanto Detention Facility, which is operated by the GEO Group, the country's largest private prison company.[....]

Read the full article:

The cruel but usual conditions inside two Georgia immigration detention centers

Also worrisome are recent reports about the administration’s plan to erode the already deficient detention standards and further expand the immigration detention industry.

By Azadeh Shahshahani and Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, The Hill

May 18, 2017

Paul is a Nigerian asylum-seeker who was until recently detained at the Irwin County Detention

Center in Georgia (“Paul” is a pseudonym to protect his safety).

Paul is thirty-six-years-old and was healthy before being taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. During the summer of 2016, Paul had experienced tooth pain and ultimately was brought to the dentist on August 10.[...]

Read the full article:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/crime/334076-the-cruel-but-usual-conditions-inside-two-georgia-immigration

Immigration Detention: Worse Than Death?

“I would rather die than spend one more day in detention.”

Martin Méndez Pineda

By B. Shaw Drake, Huffington Post

May 24, 2017

Martin Méndez Pineda was held in U.S. immigration detention for over 100 days. As a journalist, Martin reported on federal police violence in one of Mexico’s most violent states. He received multiple death threats and was beaten by police, eventually forcing him to flee to the United States to seek asylum.

Asylum seekers have a right to seek protection at the border, but some U.S. border agents are blatantly disregarding the law. Some Customs and Border Protection officials have systematically turned away asylum seekers from U.S. ports of entry. Those who are processed for protection consideration are sent to immigration detention facilities, where some officers are intentionally exacerbating punitive detention conditions in order to pressure asylum seekers to drop their cases, and limiting due process protections.

I first learned of Martin’s case while documenting instances of U.S. border agents illegally turning away asylum seekers for Human Rights First’s report, “Crossing the Line.”[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/immigration-detention-worse-than-death_us_59250720e4b0dfb1ca3a0fa3

Haitian TPS redesignation: Is it being held hostage to discrimination and xenophobia within the Trump administration?

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Action Kit for Haitian TPS – May 19

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White House Seeks Pretext for Deporting Haitians

Read

https://apnews.com/740ed5b40ce84bb398c82c48884be616

The 2010 earthquake. Photo: Tequila Minsky/NY Times

Some 50,000 Haitians have been able to live legally in the United States since 2010 under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a special immigration status granted after a massive earthquake struck southern Haiti that year. The Trump administration plans to end TPS for Haitians starting in 2018, and now it’s looking for an excuse. Since there’s no evidence that conditions have improved in Haiti—which would provide a rationale for terminating TPS—the Department of Homeland Security is turning to classic racist and xenophobic stereotypes. Department employees have been instructed to look for evidence that Haitians covered by TPS are committing crimes and/or living on welfare.

Ironically, some Haitian Americans supported Donald Trump during his 2016 election. Now they seem surprised that his rightwing administration wants to deport African-descended immigrants.—TPOI editor

AP Exclusive: US digs for evidence of Haiti immigrant crimes

Alicia A. Caldwell, Associated Press

May 9, 2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Trump administration weighs extending humanitarian protections for thousands of Haitian immigrants, officials are digging for unusual information: How many have been convicted of crimes.

Internal emails obtained by The Associated Press show a top immigration official wanted not only crime data on Haitians who are protected from deportation under the Temporary Protected Status program, but also how many were receiving public benefits. Such immigrants aren’t eligible for welfare benefits.

Roughly 50,000 Haitians have been allowed to live in the U.S. under the program in the aftermath of a 2010 earthquake, and the questions about misdeeds among them comes at a critical moment. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly must decide soon whether to continue protecting the group from deportation.[…]

Read the full article:

A Harrowing Turning Point for Haitian Immigrants

By Edwidge Danticat, New Yorker

May 12, 2017

D.—he asked that I not use his name—moved to the United States from Haiti with his parents in 2001, when he was nine years old. They travelled from Port-au-Prince on tourist visas, and then stayed beyond the authorized time period because of political instability in Haiti. D. attended school in Miami.

In high school he played football and had a 4.1 G.P.A. He completed all of his coursework, including all the Advanced Placement classes offered at his school, by the end of his junior year, and graduated in the top three per cent of his class. He applied and was accepted to Florida Memorial University in 2009, hoping to study engineering, but because he was undocumented he did not qualify for the full-ride scholarship he was offered. He tried other schools, including the local community college, but did not qualify for loans or in-state tuition. Instead, D. saved up for a paralegal-certificate course by working as a parking attendant at a Miami Beach hotel during the day, then at the hotel’s front desk at night. He studied and wrote papers during his night shifts. “It was like having two and a half jobs,” he told me recently. “I was only sleeping every other day. People kept telling me, ‘You’re so bright, why aren’t you in college?’ They didn’t realize that I wanted more than anything to go to college. I just didn’t have the opportunity.”[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-harrowing-turning-point-for-haitian-immigrants

Mother’s Day in an ICE Detention Center

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Deportation of African and Other Black Immigrants Is Quietly Increasing And No One Is Taking Note

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Now It’s Clear: Trump Isn’t Really After Terrorists and “Bad Hombres”

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http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/3/14801474/ice-detain-deport-immigrant

The following three reports make it hard to believe the Trump administration is sincerely interested in protecting U.S. citizens.

Trump claims ICE will just be deporting “the bad ones,” on the questionable assumption that deporting felons actually makes us safer. In reality, ICE agents are now free to meet their quotas by detaining just about any undocumented immigrant they run into, without having to spend time looking for actual felons.
Homeland Security head Kelly is considering plans to split up Central American families crossing the border. He claims—without evidence—that this would deter asylum seekers who are fleeing their countries to save their children’s lives.
The administration claims that the deportations, the Muslim ban and the useless border wall will guarantee our security. But Trump expects to pay for this costly expansion by cutting funds for the Coast Guard, the TSA, and FEMA—agencies that with all their faults actually do at least something to protect us.

So what are Trump, Bannon, and company really up to? Their deportation policy looks more and more like an effort to gratify the extremists in Trump’s base and to terrify the rest of us—who happen to be the majority of the population. Certainly separating immigrant children from their parents will accomplish nothing except pleasing the most sadistic racists in the “alt-right.’ And what could be the purpose of cutting back security procedures at airports while simultaneously inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment in the Muslim world? Is the White House hoping to provoke a major terrorist attack? After all, national emergencies are a proven opportunity for unstable regimes to expand their powers.—TPOI editor

ICE isn’t just detaining “bad hombres.” They’re scooping up anyone in their path.

Immigrants are being uprooted from communities every day. Here are their stories.

By Dara Lind, Vox

March 3, 2017

President Donald Trump has promised the only immigrants being deported now that he’s in office are “bad hombres”: convicted criminals, threats to American safety and the national interest.

News reports from across the country are making clear that’s not true.[...]

Read the full article:

Kelly confirms he's considering program to separate migrant children and parents

Migrant kids at the border. Jennifer Whitney/NY Times

By Madeline Conway, Politico

March 6, 2017

Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly confirmed Monday that the Trump administration is considering separating migrant parents from their children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border together illegally.

Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer late Monday afternoon, Kelly confirmed the gist of a recent Reuters report, saying that he is “considering exactly that” as a way to deter people from Central America from traveling up through Mexico with the goal of entering the U.S.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/kelly-migrant-chidren-travel-ban-235738

Trump plan pays for immigration crackdown with cuts to coastal, air security

The proposed budget cuts for the Coast Guard, TSA and FEMA would be 'devastating' and undermine the fight against terrorism, smuggling and illegal immigration, critics say.

By Jeremy Herb and Bryan Bender, Politico

March 7, 2017

The Trump administration wants to gut the Coast Guard and make deep cuts in airport and rail security to help pay for its crackdown on illegal immigration, according to internal budget documents reviewed by POLITICO — a move that lawmakers and security experts say defies logic if the White House is serious about defending against terrorism and keeping out undocumented foreigners.

The Office of Management and Budget is seeking a 14 percent cut to the Coast Guard's $9.1 billion budget, the draft documents show, even as it proposes major increases to other Department of Homeland Security agencies to hire more border agents and immigration officers and construct a physical barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The budget numbers mark the most detailed breakdown yet about how President Donald Trump envisions restructuring DHS to meet his pledge to halt illegal immigration and deport some of the millions already here.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-coast-guard-budget-235750

And They Ask Why Hondurans Flee Their Own Country…

Read

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/28/berta-caceres-honduras-military-intelligence-us-trained-special-forces

March 2 marked the anniversary of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres’ assassination. The suspects appear to be linked to the country's corrupt and violent military, which is trained and funded by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, the U.S. media and political class raise alarms about Hondurans fleeing to the United States to escape the violence. “Why don’t these people stay and fix their own country?” the politicians and pundits ask. A better question would be: “Why are we enabling the forces behind the violence?”—TPOI editor

Assassinated Honduran activist Berta Cáceres

Berta Cáceres court papers show murder suspects' links to US-trained elite troops

The Honduran environmental activist’s killing a year ago bears the hallmarks of a ‘well-planned operation designed by military intelligence’ says legal source

By Nina Lakhani, The Guardian

February 28, 2017

Leaked court documents raise concerns that the murder of the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres was an extrajudicial killing planned by military intelligence specialists linked to the country’s US–trained special forces, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

Cáceres was shot dead a year ago while supposedly under state protection after receiving death threats over her opposition to a hydroelectric dam.

The murder of Cáceres, winner of the prestigious Goldman environmental prize in 2015, prompted international outcry and calls for the US to revoke military aid to Honduras, a key ally in its war on drugs.[…]

Read the full article:

An Idealist’s Martyrdom Fails to Move Honduras

But our taxpayer dollars continue to flow to Honduras to support the government of Juan Orlando Hernández, thus enabling the climate of terror that is fed by his party’s corruption.

By Silvio Carrillo, New York Times

March 2, 2017

LA ESPERANZA, Honduras — Precisely a year ago, I awoke to a garbled text message from my mother. She was too distraught to write clearly, but I understood her immediately, and my heart dropped. Murderers had finally gotten to my aunt Berta Cáceres, who, as a child, had been young enough to be my playmate Bertita, and later, as a woman, was courageous enough to stand up to evil in Honduras.

As we mark this sad anniversary in the town where Berta died, there is no solace for my family. Neither Honduras nor the United States seems to have learned anything from this loss.[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/opinion/an-idealists-martyrdom-fails-to-move-honduras.html