"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
This is the “reward” that both parties have in mind for migrants who have helped our economy thrive through difficult times. Doesn’t seem right, smart, or rational! PHOTO: Public Realm
Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economicrebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.
That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. And even before that, by the middle of 2022, the foreign-born labor force had grown so fast that it closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Immigrant workers also recovered much faster than native-born workers from the pandemic’s disruptions, and many saw some of the largest wage gains in industries eager to hire. Economists and labor experts say the surge in employment was ultimately key to solving unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.
“Immigration has not slowed. It has just been absolutely astronomical,” said Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “And that’s been instrumental. You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible.”
Yet immigration remains an intensely polarizing issue in American politics. Fresh survey data from Gallup showed Americans now cite immigration as the country’s top problem, surpassing inflation, the economy and issues with government. A record number of migrants have crossed the southern border since President Biden took office, with apprehensions topping 2 million for the second straight year in fiscal 2023, among the highest in U.S. history. Cities like New York, Chicago and Denver have struggled to keep up with busloads of immigrants sent from Texas who are overwhelming local shelters.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
There are also lots of practical ideas out here for fixing the asylum processing system and other helpful, humane border initiatives that don’t invest exclusively in expensive, cruel, and proven to ultimately fail “uber-enforcement only!” See, e.g.,https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/solutions-humane-border-policy.
Still, politicos of both parties and most media are on a completely different page, unhappily!
William Samuel is an accomplished citizen writer publishing with a specific focus on current affairs and military history.
De Spretter writes on Linkedin:
When asked in 1922 what his priorities would be if elected chancellor of Germany, then up-and-coming National Socialist leader, Adolf Hitler, answered candidly:
“Once I’m really in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.”
Proclaiming with vitriolic zeal, they’d be “hanged indiscriminately… until all of Germany has been completely cleansed of Jewry”, German Jews, understandably, had no desire to remain when he assumed the chancellorship in 1933…
In desperate hopes of securing safe passage to their ancestral homeland – Eretz Israel – tens of thousands flocked to the British embassy; only to be told on arrival there, “strict limits” had been imposed on the quota of Jews who’d be granted entry.
Although, sadly, the fate of most was thus sealed, countless more would have suffered the same had it not been for the defiant courage of Britain’s Vice-Consul, then-Captain Francis “Frank” Foley.
As a man who, in reality, was using his position as a cover for his long-serving role as an MI6 spymaster, Frank’s intelligence gathering had long confirmed that Hitler’s threats against the Jewish people were far from “empty rhetoric”.
For that reason, Frank was “quite unwilling to toe the line with London…”
Instead, he didn’t just “tear up the rulebook” that dictated whom he could issue lifesaving visas to but, when the “Kristallnacht” pogrom of 1938 was unleashed, he even transformed his place of residence into a safe haven for Jewish families.
From the “Night of Broken Glass” onwards, the number of Jews filing for immigration visas increased dramatically; but still, Frank’s superiors refused to ease the stringent requirements that prevented him from granting them.
Once again, therefore, he not only decided to “bend the rules” by easing them himself but, when he then received an official reprimand for his brave “contravention”, Frank doubled down on his rescue efforts by forging passports for Germany’s beleaguered Jewish citizens.
Despite being fully aware that no level of diplomatic immunity would protect him if the Gestapo had uncovered his clandestine activities, Frank persevered regardless, with no fear or concern for his personal safety.
In so doing, he enabled no fewer than 10,000 Jews to flee Hitler’s Reich; and yet, humble man that he was, Frank never spoke of his selfless deeds during his lifetime…
Incredibly, it was only after his passing, in May 1958, that his heroic exploits were revealed by his beloved wife, Katherine; and, it wasn’t until over four decades later, on this day in 1999, that he was deservedly recognized for having saved so many Jewish lives.
Honored as a posthumous Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, the latter paid tribute to Frank – “the British Schindler” – by describing him as “a man of great faith and conviction…”
Indeed, “as a deeply devout Christian, Frank did nothing more than act upon his sense of justice and compassion.”
#WeRemember
Captain Francis “Frank” Foley SOURCE: Linkedin
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Inspiring and timely piece of history. Thanks to Samuel for posting this on LinkedIn!
What if 600 bureaucrats had each made it their business to save 10,000 lives? The course of history would have been changed.
This is worth keeping in mind as our leaders of both parties and the immigration bureaucracy make “bullying the most vulnerable” and dehumanizing asylum seekers their daily mission. And, they brag about their cruelty and intention to violate laws in even more deadly ways! What if the same amount of effort were devoted to addressing humanitarian crises and saving lives?
“I went through dozens of reports, scores of articles, on the discussion of this migration bill, and the reporters talked to zero migrants and zero migrant rights groups.”
In recent weeks, longtime media analyst Adam Johnson has been looking through scores of articles and analyzing Democrats’ rhetoric to see how the border was being framed. One of the texts he looked at was the emergency national security supplemental bill that emerged for a vote on the Senate floor. This bipartisan border bill had been at the negotiation table for months, and it included provisions for military aid for Ukraine and Israel. The bill was ultimately voted down, after Donald Trump rejected it and the Republican Party followed suit. In our conversation, Johnson talks about his deep dive into the coverage surrounding the deal, and he speculates on what that means in this election year: that Democrats have entered new political terrain around the border and immigration enforcement. This interview is based on articles Johnson wrote for The Real News (“Media ‘Border Deal’ Coverage Erases Actual Human Stakes”) and The Nation (“The Democrats’ Hard-Right Turn on Immigration Is a Disaster In Every Way”), both places that he contributes to regularly. He also wrote “Top 10 Media Euphemisms for Violent Bipartisan Anti-immigrant Policies,” at his Substack, The Column. Johnson cohosts the popular podcast Citations Needed, where they discussed the border on their February 21 edition. Johnson’s media analysis spans back nearly a decade, much of it for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
Adam Johnson
Let’s start with the “border deal.” In The Real News you write that it dehumanizes migrants. Can you tell us a little bit about what the border deal is, and some key points about the coverage?
It’s a Republican border deal by framing and admission. Senators Chris Murphy, Tina Smith, and Mark Warner have framed it as a Republican border deal. Almost entirely. It is a 90 to 95 percent Republican deal in nature. They’ve repeatedly said that Republicans demanded XYZ and they gave them XYZ. This is how they’re framing it, because otherwise the hypocrisy gotcha doesn’t really work.
Can you clarify what you mean by “hypocrisy gotcha”?
If it’s not an overwhelming Republican bill, then the idea that they’re abandoning their won bill in service of Trump—which has been their primary gotcha—doesn’t make sense.
But let’s look at the substance of what the bill is.
Among other things, it has $8 billion in emergency funding for ICE, which more than doubles ICE’s enforcement budget. Do you remember “abolish ICE,” back five years ago or so?
It includes $3 billion in increased detention, a mechanism to shut down the border, and $7 billion to Customs and Border Protection, including the continuation of Trump’s wall. And so this is both objectively and how the Democrats describe a far-right Republican bill. That’s the appeal of it.
And the clever idea behind this is that a typical triangulation, that is, if you take a right-wing policy and adopt it as your own, you therefore take away that issue a little quicker come election time. It is for those who view politics as merely a game to be won rather than a moral terrain to advance the greatest good of all people. If you were to take this logic to its extreme, Democrats could also support an abortion ban or decertify the 2020 election. I mean, where does it end? President Biden could get that face-off surgery and become Trump himself.
. . . .
All this is laundered through euphemism, which I wrote about on my Substack and in The Real News, where I talk about the various ways in which the human costs are obscured. According to the International Organization for Migration, the U.S.-Mexico border is the deadliest land crossing in the world. And so if you double the enforcement, and triple the broader security apparatus, bring in more surveillance drones, more weapons, invariably more people will die. There is a real human cost to this type of militarization.
. . . .
Keep in mind, too, that Biden in 2020 mobilized a lot of the immigration activists who opposed Trump’s policies. He rode that wave to pick up a lot of young votes, a lot of progressive voters, a lot of people who are sympathetic to or adjacent to immigrant communities. And this cruel policy shift has really moved them to the right. In the days after Democrats embrace this hard-right bill, Trump began to double down on things like internment camps, shipping off immigrants, because he has to differentiate himself from the Democrats, at least rhetorically.
We’re gonna have this fortress America mentality. No one wants to deal with any of the underlying issues. And we have to deal with global inequality. No one wants to deal with climate change. That’s too egg heady and academic and difficult. We’re just going to do what we always do, which is cops and cages. And cops and cages are the solution to every social ill, whether it’s homelessness, crime, or whatever. That’s the order of the day. The bipartisan consensus. Democrats and Republicans both want it. The worst place for a vulnerable group to be is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus.
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Many Border Chronicle readers are interested in shifting the narrative. But how do you shift the narrative? Is it just too entrenched?
Some members of Congress have pushed back on this. But I think they’ve been pretty quiet. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushed back in an interview, but I don’t think she’s really tweeted about it. Once you have this “we have to defeat Trump in 2024 above all else,” then everybody shuts up and goes along with it.
And I think that’s absolutely wrong. I think now is the time to stand up to this demagoguery. Adopting a Republican bill is not the solution. And, hopefully, if enough people stand up to this, then it can become politically costly for Democrats to continue doing this.
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Read the full report at the link.
The worst place for a vulnerable group to be is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus.
These days, on immigration issues the term “bipartisan consensus” is actually a euphemism for “Dem giveaway of others’ rights to GOP nativists.” And, of course, even after the giveaway, the GOP shows absolutely no interest is such one-sided “bipartisanship” because Der Fuhrer tells them they must vote it down.
Yet, the disingenuous media and pundits keep misusing the term “bipartisanship” as if it had real meaning! And, although holding power in two of the three political branches, while the GOP struggles mightily to cling to its narrow margin in one, Biden and the Dems “wimp out” time after time on immigration, human rights, and racial justice.
The GOP proudly advertises that it has no values beyond whatever Trump wants on any particular day.
By contrast, Dems claim to have values. But a campaign being run against those professed values and their own core voters suggests that they too have become a “transactional party of no enduring values.”
Does America really need two political parties that stand for nothing beyond gratuitous cruelty to others and getting elected?
“Go along to get along.” Unhappily, that’s what today’s Dems appear to stand for.
Frankly, that has been at the heart of many of the problems at EOIR, particularly in Dem Administrations that were afraid of taking the bold and sometimes controversial actions necessary to change culture, institutionalize due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices. Current AG Merrick Garland is a classic example of this failed Dem model. As a result, EOIR is a dramatically dysfunctional and unjust agency.
Will the Democratic Party keep mindlessly following in EOIR’s footsteps? What’s it going to take for the next generation of Democrats to halt the slide into moral vapidity and political irrelevance?
“The Dems’ wrong-headed “Miller Lite” approach to immigration and the border would leave Casey scratching his head. With “major league talent” available, they have put an “amateur night at the Bijou” team on the field for what is perhaps the most important season in modern American history! PHOTO: Rudi Reit Creative Commons
As a former president of the United States excoriates immigrants for “poisoning the blood” of our country, as the governors of Texas and my current home state of Florida bus and fly migrants to points north — including my hometown, Chicago — my thoughts turn to baseball.
. . . .
While that inhospitable bunch has been villainizing migrants and refugees as a strain on U.S. resources, I have been marveling at how much foreign-born players have enlivened (and enriched) baseball in recent decades. Far from being poisoned, the sport has been rejuvenated by infusions of immigrants from Ohtani to Soto to Ronald Acuña Jr., Yordan Álvarez, Ha-Seong Kim, the Cubs’ Seiya Suzuki and so many others.
As these non-White non-Americans wow — and earn — millions with their transcendent talents, in a sport still emerging from its startlingly racist past, bigoted fictions about the “blood of our country” are being exposed. It’s true that baseball is still struggling with exploitative international recruiting practices, decreasing numbers of U.S.-born Black players and a lack of diversity among its executive ranks. Yet the increasing number of foreign-born major leaguers now counted among the best in the game’s long history dispels the self-aggrandizing myth that the United States possesses any monopoly on excellence.
The Republican presidential front-runner might argue that undocumented migrants and refugees aren’t elite athletes and are instead “animals” arriving from “s—hole countries.” But such dehumanizing insults are not only guilty of offensive fixation on national origin, ethnicity and race. They also mistake a person’s predicament for a person’s potential.
This is made plain by the origin stories of some of baseball’s biggest stars. Those same players who fashioned makeshift mitts out of milk cartons and cardboard, who rose to the game’s highest levels through arduous, harrowing and near-tragic journeys, might have languished on the other side of a barbed and militarized wall if this country’s right wing had its way.
The politicians who would build those walls, who attack immigrants for supposedly burdening our national resources, need only consider baseball’s explosive growth into a $10 billion industry and the financial value of Ohtani alone to the Dodgers — some estimate the team could make more than $1 billion off his deal over the course of a decade — to see that industries and economies thrive by inclusion, not exclusion.
Even so, ideologues seek to end inclusive practices in private industry and public education. They guarantee endless winning and new revolutions by promising to slash resources and wall off our country — all while whiffing on the most rudimentary of winning principles understood by most every baseball fan in America:
Great teams are made great by deep, diversified rosters. They are built on investment in both homegrown and international talent. And there are no curses except those that are self-inflicted by cheap, regressive thinking.
As the Republican presidential primary churns toward that party’s national convention, coincidingthis July with baseball’s annual All-Star Game, all of this will be evident to anyone ready to take a break from the campaign, take a seat in the bleachers and take in the world’s greatest ballplayers thriving at America’s game.
Jaswinder Bolina is a poet and essayist. His latest book is “English as a Second Language and Other Poems.”
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Read the full op-ed at the above link!
“Mistaking a person’s predicament for a person’s potential!” That’s exactly what Biden’s new-found attacks on asylum seekers and their advocates (his 2020 supporters!) are doing!
It’s painful to watch the errors pile up and the game slipping away from the Dems! 😣 Meanwhile, rather than being out there helping unify and re-elect Biden and Harris, advocates are marshaling their resources and considerable energy to fight tooth and nail in courts against the Administration’s apparent bone-headed intention to violate asylum law and human rights with illegal asylum bars! Energizing former core supporters to fight against your inane and immoral actions during an election year: A “strategy” that only inept, tone-deaf Dem politicos could love!
To no one’s surprise, this past week the bipartisan border bill, creatively named “The National Security Act, 2024” and introduced by an all white cast of Senators, failed to pass the chamber. Many Democratic Senators who once stood beside immigration advocates at rallies to push back against the proposal fell in line with their president and voted in favor of a flawed and dangerous bill that would fall short of mitigating migration. None but the beltway nerds and press were paying attention to C-SPAN as the proposal died, triggering Democratic political operatives to salivate over the “gotcha” vote that’ll be used against Republicans on the campaign trail.
Beatriz Lopez Deputy Director Immigration Hub PHOTO: Immigration Hub
For many of us battle-tested, seasoned advocates, there was no true satisfaction at seeing Republicans implode or an undesirable proposal fall apart. Hanging above our heads like a Florida cockroach threatening to fly into our faces was the fact that the Biden administration, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Chris Murphy, and Democrats who voted for the bill had officially moved the goalpost on immigration.
‘Tis a slippery slope to empower the nation’s president to shut the border down to block asylum seekers and codify measures to make it nearly impossible to claim asylum and easier and faster to deport people back to dangerous conditions while hoping a developing nation with its own set of serious problems cracks down on vulnerable children and families seeking safety and refuge. To be okay with all of this means you’ve – as Isabel Wilkerson so aptly wrote – gone through a “process, a programming” to dehumanize both the issue and those at our doors, begging for shelter and freedom.
And look I get it. I’ve heard the rhetorical, exasperated questions: what else are Democrats supposed to do when migrants keep coming to the border? When Republicans keep hammering us on the border? And Chicago and New York are struggling to manage those bussed into the cities? And in a pivotal election year, these questions carry an extra ounce of GTFO.
And to them I say – I hear you. I’m listening. I’m worried, too. But I’m not concerned about the tenacity and brilliance of local leaders and NGOs on the ground working to help newly-arrived immigrants to settle in this powerful and abundant country. Or least of all anxious over visionary funders and creative mayors and governors seeking ways to welcome new settlers into regions eager for consumers and workers. I’m not even worried about Trump and Republicans relentlessly attacking Democrats on the campaign trail – it’s nothing new.
What I am truly troubled by is Democrats choosing flight over fight.
The current conundrum that President Biden and Democrats find themselves in goes beyond the challenges of global migration. Since 2017, Democratic messaging has been devoid of pro-immigrant messaging. Were it not because of the loud cries of a toddler separated from her mother and the incredible journalistic accounting that shook the soul of America did it spring even moderate Democrats into action. But, when it came to political advertising and a constant drumbeat of both values-based immigration messaging and Republican accountability on the issue, you had to search far and wide to find solid examples. Thanks to the David Shor’s of the political class, most Democrats chose to avoid the issue, leaving a vacuum gladly filled by Stephen Miller types.
The Democratic choice to neither proudly display their position on immigration or celebrate the immigration wins has left the American people believing they’re for “open borders” or wondering where they stand on the issue and have they done anything on it? What’s worse, they consistently fail to counter their opponent’s radical, Trumpian rhetoric and anti-immigrant ideas. While racist and radical media and online influencers, such as Tucker Carlson, yell anti-immigrant obscenities and the GOP spend millions upon millions trying to convince Americans that immigrants are bad people who are trying to replace them, infiltrate their communities with drugs and crime, and steal their jobs and social security, Democrats have responded by pivoting to other kitchen table issues.
The gradual damage of this messaging to America’s psyche and perception of the other – immigrants – has created the current moment. Now, even reporters from major news outlets are asking me why and how Trump dismantled our immigration system and what actions President Biden had taken to restore the system. The first question often leaves me baffled, for how quick we forget the heinous wrongs of the past, and the second is no surprise, just sad.
It’s really disappointing that not many people, reporters included, don’t know that the Biden administration has taken over 500 actions that have had such a positive impact on women, families, children and workers in the U.S.
No Democrat should be afraid of their immigration shadow. It’s time to stop running away or running to the right of the issue. You can be sensible without spite. Until Republicans can treat the cancer that is Trump, Democrats have to go to bat for the issue with gutsy resolve, bold solutions and radical empathy. They have to be in it for the short and long game. Like investing in an index fund or supporting reproductive rights or gay marriage, it’ll pay off to tell Americans and Republicans that Democrats stand for an immigration system that lives up to our values and meets our nation’s economic demands, that we’ll secure our border with smart and humane solutions – not band-aids that create chaos and jeopardize lives – that we’ll do whatever it takes to deliver a path to citizenship for Dreamers and hard-working immigrants who have waited too long for our government to act, and that we’ll fight like hell against Trump and anyone who threatens to separate families, deport our neighbors en masse, and divide our communities.
No one is immune to mistakes or bad votes. For Democrats, this is a moment to reflect and admit you fucked up. Now do better. Yes, use the vote to hold Trump and Republicans accountable – but don’t you dare use that bill as a model for legislation or campaign rhetoric.
You can’t out-Trump Trump.
Humanize the issue. Show courage and compassion. Talk solutions. Remind voters what and who you stand for and what’s at stake if Trump and anti-immigrant Republicans have it their way. Be disciplined and keep repeating. Throw some money behind that messaging. And I promise you, you’ll win.
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Thanks, Beatriz!
This should be required reading for every Dem politico!
Case in point: A very recent Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) study reaffirmed what those who work with migrants have always known: Directly contrary to the GOP and media myths, migrants of all types — regardless of status — are a huge source of economic growth for America. They will help fuel a $7 trillion boost in the U.S. economy over the next decade!See, e.g., https://time.com/6692645/immigration-economy-us-gdp-growth-cbo-report/.
But, you sure wouldn’t know this from the one-sided “debate” about migration going on today. The GOP spreads (and the media promotes, largely without critical analysis) blatant lies and myths about the largely fabricated and often self-created “burdens” of migration (see, Abbott, DeSantis). Yet rather than rebutting them and embracing truth, Dems basically look the other way and try to change the conversation.
This has caused them to “run away from” and “downplay” one of the Biden Administration’s most important positive achievements — functioning parole programs that move migrant flows from the “irregular” to the “regular!” Moreover, that processing takes place in advance, outside the United States, rather than adding to the border pressure or becoming part of the overhyped asylum backlog resulting from poor performance by Administrations of both parties and Congress over decades (but hugely aggravated by the Trump kakistocracy). Even the immediate work authorization problem is solved by the advance parole programs.
Are these programs perfect? No, they are far too limited both in terms of numbers and scope of eligible nationalities. They also don’t answer questions about the long-term fate of those paroled. But, they are certainly a step in the right direction that could be built upon and “model” the case for more durable long-term legislative expansions of visa programs.
The GOP’s irrational attacks on what is working and helps our country and the world shows just how little they care about solving problems or the long-term prosperity, stability, and strength of our nation. Yet, the largely indisputable benefits of parole and the willingness of the Administration to engage in creative and successful problem-solving gets scant mention from either the Biden campaign or Congressional Dems.
And, the media is no better. Given the current high-profile of immigration on the national scene, one might reasonably have expected “front page coverage” of the CBO report and findings, particularly since it directly contradicts many of the false claims raised by both parties during the recent failed “Senate compromise” proposal. Instead, even I had to do some “digging” to come up with articles featuring the CBO report.
Curiously, the GOP plays to the most extreme, dangerous, and unreasonable elements of its far right base.
Conversely, Dems run against the values and views of some of the most reasonable, dedicated, and energizing elements of their progressive base.
Blitzer’s villains include “[n]umerous U.S. institutions, bureaucrats, and presidents” who supported and enabled “savage governments responsible for vast numbers of people killed — many of them poor and Indigenous.”
Blitzer has particular contempt for “one of the most ineptly titled American officials ever — the State Department’s assistant secretary for human rights, Elliott Abrams — [who] tried to suppress information about the massacre of 978 people, including 477 children, in the Salvadoran village of Mozote.” Abrams, later was convicted of misdemeanors for withholding information from Congress in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal, but was pardoned by Bush I.
Among Blitzer’s unsung heroes are “relentless US. immigration advocates,” the late Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA) who “grasped all the nuances of U.S.-manufactured border crises,” and of course, an “array of migrants” who bravely persevered in the face of treacherous, dishonest, ill-informed, and often deadly U.S. immigration policies intended to “break them” and destroy their humanity. That disgraceful process continues today — on steroids!
The review ends on a perhaps unexpectedly optimistic note:
And yet, after reading Blitzer’s book, one can’t help but think that the impossible might be possible — that maybe, just maybe, this could be fixed. He’s not trying to lay out a set of policy solutions. He’s making a more nuanced plea, a rejection of the “selective amnesia” of politics in favor of a deeper understanding of how we — as a nation and as a region — got here.
It is a book with a “mission,” he writes, a nudge for U.S. decision-makers and a platform for voices on the other side of the border, a “kind of go-between: to tell each side’s story to the other; to find a way to bring the Homeland Security officials into the housing-complex basement; and to allow the migrants in the basement to participate, for once, in the privileged backroom conversations that decide their fate.”
Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen.
Manuel Roig-Franzia is a Washington Post features writer and formerly served as The Post’s bureau chief in Miami and Mexico.
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Following up on the last point — the “seldom-heard and never-heeded by our politicos and media” voices of those whose lives and humanity are threatened by our failed policies, this Thursday, Feb. 15, @ 3 PM EST, Immigration Law & Justice Network & The Hope Border Institute will present a free webinar, “Stop The War On The Border: Migrants Speak:
Stop the War on the Border: Migrants Speak – Detengan la Guerra en la Frontera: Migrantes Hablan
Date & Time
Feb 15, 2024 03:00 PM in
Description
ILJ Network and our partners invite you to participate in this webinar and hear directly from migrants in the northern Mexican border and the U.S. interior on how restrictions to asylum and humanitarian parole impact their lives.
ILJ Network y compañeros de coaliciones los invita a participar en este evento virtual para escuchar directamente de migrantes, ubicados entre la parte Norte de México y el interior de los Estados Unidos, acerca de cómo dichas restricciones al derecho de asilo y de parole humanitario impactan sus vidas.
Information you provide when registering will be shared with the account owner and host and can be used and shared by them in accordance with their Terms and Privacy Policy.
This is very timely! Rarely do we hear from those whose lives, dignity, and safety are being bargained away and devalued as if they were “commodities” at the disposal of disingenuous politicos and interests who have turned their misery and desperation into “profit centers” and political rallying cries.
🏈🏆Finally, on another topic, congrats to Coach Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, the rest of the Kansas City Chiefs, and “Chiefs’ Superfan” Taylor Swift on their second consecutive Lombardi Trophy and third in five seasons.As almost everyone in sleep-deprived America knows by now, KC outlasted the SF 49ers in yesterday’s Super Bowl ending with a thrilling overtime finish 25-22!
For everyone else, including my Green Bay Packers, it’s “wait till next season!”😎
People close to Mr. Biden said he had always supported enforcing the law. Some of his top aides, such as Susan E. Rice, who served as his domestic policy adviser until last summer, and Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, embodied that tough-minded approach.
“Migrants and asylum seekers absolutely should not believe those in the region peddling the idea that the border will suddenly be fully open to process everyone on Day 1,” Ms. Rice had said early on in Mr. Biden’s presidency.
Contrary to these border myths, which the NYT article does not really adequately take on, “the law” requires that individuals be given a chance to apply for asylum regardless of “status” and “entry point.” Congress provided a “quick screening” process called “credible fear” to deal with “mass migration” situations.
Assuming for the sake of argument that “the law” also requires that individuals be “detained” while credible fear screening and adjudication of claims by those who pass takes place, four elements are necessary for the legal system to work in a fair and timely manner.
Humane, NGO-operated reception centers, with on-site representation available, in locations preferably removed from the immediate border for screening to take place;
A huge corps of true expert Asylum Officers to do credible fear screening and outright grant clearly valid cases wherever possible;
A large corps of true expert Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges to guide Asylum Officers, review their work, and, where the case can’t be granted at first instance, conduct timely full adjudication of claims for those who pass credible fear, prioritizing those claims most likely to succeed;
A functional resettlement program for those granted asylum and those whose cases require more in-depth process.
These four steps are the core of what real law enforcement at the border is all about! Prioritize them, accomplish them, and the other pieces will fall in place.
Contrary to Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, and what the NYT article suggests, a plan to accomplish this 1) isn’t rocket science; 2) does not require legislation; and 3) needed to be “ready to go” with dynamic, courageous, due-process-focused leadership on Day 1 of the Administration or very shortly thereafter.
As always in Government, it’s a question of priorities, courage, and leadership. Despite the “overabundance” of proven, creative legal and administrative talent then in the private sector, most of whom were available to assist Biden, the Administration was not “ready to roll” with this program on Day 1 (as Steven Miller was with his vile “kill asylum and asylum seekers” agenda).
Sadly, even today, the Administration has not come close to putting in place any of these four critical requirements for success. It was highly predictable to any informed expert that forced migrants would continue to arrive at the border in large numbers and that GOP White Nationalists would “leverage” the Administration’s failure to achieve order at the border.
There is something else that’s completely predicable: That, if passed (a big if), the “nativist-driven compromise” now being “debated” by Congress and the Administration will NOT solve the humanitarian issue of forced migration BUT WILL create more death, trauma, and failure at the border and beyond.
Until America elects humanitarian-focused, problem-solving leaders with the vision to regularize fair asylum processing and the courage and skills to implement it, our border will continue to be a godawful mess: Just as GOP White Nationalists want! And, the great opportunity presented by talented asylum seekers who want only to save their and their families’ lives while helping us succeed will be squandered.
The long-awaited bipartisan Senate deal on immigration contains no real reforms, such as a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It’s all about “securing” the border.
Biden and Senate Democrats have caved to Senate Republican hardliners. Among other restrictions, the bill would make it much harder for people to apply for asylum.
On Friday evening Biden called the bill “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.”
Then Biden went further — endorsing a full border shutdown. He said the bill “would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”
I very much doubt Biden would shut the border if he signs this bill into law.
So what’s going on here? The underlying politics here has nothing to do with funding Ukraine. It doesn’t have to do with reforming immigration. It doesn’t even have much to do with the practical challenge of securing the border.
It has everything to do with the 2024 election, in which border security has become a big issue.
The nation does have to take reasonable action to stem the illegal flow of immigrants. But Trump has stoked American’s fears with lies (see below).
Trump and Biden are engaged in a giant pre-election kabuki fight over the border.
Biden wants to take the border issue away from Trump and figures this bill will do it. Which is exactly why Trump doesn’t want the bill enacted. “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible, open-borders betrayal of America,” Trump said on Saturday. “It’s not going to happen, and I’ll fight it all the way.”
Trump says he welcomes criticism from GOP senators. “Please, blame it on me. Please, because they were getting ready to pass a very bad bill.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump’s lapdog-in-chief, says the bill is “dead on arrival” in the House. Besides, he now says, it isn’t needed because Biden already has all the authority he needs to close the border.
Um … just last year, Johnson argued that Congress must tighten immigration laws to strengthen the president’s hand. When he was president, Trump sought similar additional authority from Congress.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are about to begin impeachment proceedings against Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary, for allegedly being too soft on border security — even though Mayorkas worked with Senate Republicans to come up with this hardline border deal.
We need to deal with the border, but Republicans are now the ones sitting on their hands because they’re beholden to Trump. We also need to deal with immigration in a humane way by offering a broad and reasonable path to citizenship, but Democrats seem to have forgotten this basic goal.
The public, meanwhile, is utterly confused by Trump’s demagoguing. Here are Trump’s biggest lies, followed by the truth.
Trump claims Biden doesn’t want to stem illegal immigration and has created an “open border.”
Rubbish. Since he took office, Biden has consistently asked for additional funding for border control.
Republicans have just as consistently refused. They’ve voted to cut Customs and Border Protection funding in spending bills and blocked passage of Biden’s $106 billion national security supplemental that includes border funding.
Trump blames the drug crisis on illegal immigration.
Trump claims that undocumented immigrants are terrorists.
Baloney. America’s southern border has not been an entry point for terrorists. For almost a half-century, no American has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the United States that involved someone who crossed the border illegally.
Trump says undocumented immigrants are stealing American jobs.
Nonsense. Evidence shows immigrants are not taking jobs that American workers want. The surge across the border is not increasing unemployment. Far from it: Unemployment has been below 4 percent for roughly two years, far lower than the long-term average rate of 5.71 percent. It’s now 3.7 percent.
Trump claims undocumented immigrants are responsible for more crime in America.
More BS. In fact, a 2020 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, cited by the Department of Justice, showed that undocumented immigrants have “substantially” lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants. Despite the recent surge in illegal immigration, America’s homicide rate has fallen nearly 13 percent since 2022 — the largest decrease on record. Local law enforcement agencies are also reporting drops in violent crime.
Since he entered politics, Donald Trump has fanned nativist fears and bigotry.
Now he’s moving into full-throttled neofascism, using the actual language of Hitler to attack immigrants — charging that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and saying they’re “like a military invasion. Drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.” He promises to use the U.S. military to round up undocumented immigrants and put them into “camps.”
The parallels with Nazi Germany are chilling. In 1932, the canny Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels called for “a thick wall around Germany,” to protect against immigrants. “Certainly we want to build a wall, a protective wall.”
Trump and his enablers want us to forget that almost all of us are the descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to America under duress, or simply sought better lives for themselves and their descendants.
Immigration has been good for America. As the median age of Americans continues to rise, we’ll need more young people from around the world.
The central question shouldn’t be how to secure our borders. It should be how to create an orderly and humane path to citizenship.
“Kabuki Theater” with human lives! The REAL “national security threats” — Trump, Abbott, DeSantis, and their MAGA toadies like MAGAMike — subvert our democracy in plain view! ATTRIBUTION: Creative Commons 2.0
Lost in the overheated and too often misleading media hype of this issue is a simple truth: Congress and Administrations of both parties have failed to fulfill our Government’s duties under international and domestic laws (which are based on international requirements) to establish a fair, generous, expert, timely asylum adjudication system — one that complies with due process and actually gives asylum applicants the required “benefit of the doubt.”
Now, in a show of supreme political cowardice, egged on by the White Nationalist right and their lies, politicos of both parties and in all three branches of Government seek to cover up their failure by punishing and endangering the lives of their victims! The latter are legal asylum seekers — human beings — who overwhelmingly present themselves to authorities at the border in an orderly fashion to get a fair adjudication of their claims. Our Government routinely denies them that fundamental right through ridiculous delays, bad precedents, poor quality adjudications, underfunding, deficient leadership, and coercive gimmicks like bogus prosecutions, imprisonment, denial of access to counsel, and illegal and immoral family separation.
Meanwhile, Dems are failing to stand up for the human and legal right to seek asylum, which is being violated right and left and which the “Senate compromise” promises even more scofflaw violations of human rights and basic human dignity.
We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration — particularly forced migration!
On Friday, President Biden put out a statement that had President Ronald Reagan rolling in his grave and Lady Liberty weeping on the New York harbor. He led not with the values of an Irish Catholic whose ancestors emigrated to Seneca Falls, but rather a tyrant who he defeated in 2020: “[The bipartisan bill] would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut the border down when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”
Biden’s close cadre of advisors, just like the emperor’s tailors, convinced him he should not drape his posture with the ethos and promise of a nation of immigrants, but rather nakedly and shamelessly attempt to scare people with a “tough act.”
As an unwavering Democrat, I have never felt more ashamed to call President Biden my president. That statement was absolutely heart-breaking and goes against everything we stand as a party and country. I refuse to be a bystander in the crowd watching the naked emperor as his tailors wager this deal and statement a political win.
First, let’s start with the so-called bipartisan deal. Let’s call it for what it is: a concession of Trump-era policies in exchange for foreign aid. Yes, Ukraine is important. And yes, addressing the U.S. southern border is equally as important. But none of these two issues should have ever been tied together. But here we are. And since we’re here, what we know through reports and statements by President Biden and Senator Lankford is that the new expulsion authority and other measures in the bill would not only exacerbate the situation at the border – not actually stop people from fleeing dangerous conditions and coming to the border – but also jeopardize the lives of vulnerable children and families while setting a point-of-no-return precedent that will give Trump the keys to Pandora’s box should he be re-elected.
So who is Biden winning over with the promise of shutting the border down? Independents? Democrats? This logic is based on the theory that being equally as “tough” as Republicans is a winning strategy. Trying to out-Republican the Republican on immigration is the most asinine tactic that does nothing to galvanize the base or win over swing voters. And I get it – many pollsters and Democratic operatives are quick to show that their tough messages resonate with swing or moderate voters. It’s easy to come to that conclusion when you’ve probably gone head to head with weak “progressive” messages and dismiss how it demoralizes the base. Here’s a real life example of what happens when you actually try it on for size: check out the muted reaction Biden received when he reiterated he would shut the border down in a speech to Democrats and others.
We’ve got two major problems that Biden’s close advisors are ignoring: bad policies and bad messaging. But I’m going to focus on messaging solutions as it will take big electoral wins and a public narrative shift to deliver a major immigration overhaul in Congress, which is what we really need to address the issue in the 21st century.
Follow the formula: (1) tap into voters’ nostalgia and shared values reminding them what immigration means to them personally and the country (think Reagan’s last speech); (2) pivot to galvanizing, simple and sensible solutions (path to citizenship, orderly and humane border security, smart technology and resources, lawful pathways for those seeking refuge and to meet America’s economic demands, etc.); and (3) directly contrast against Trump and Republicans (define them on the issue as cruel (family separation), impractical (wasteful border wall) and/or unwilling to deal in bipartisan fashion).
Use Trump and Gov. Abbott as your foils. They are gifts to President Biden, his campaign and Democrats in general. These two maniacs, one of whom is openly defying the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, are standing on the wrong side of history, willing to have blood on their hands and soil the values and image of America. This is Biden’s JFK moment who with dignity and courage challenged Governor Wallace even when public sentiment was divided. Bottom line – when you honor our founding principles of freedom, opportunity and the pursuit of happiness and stand up to tyrants, you always end up on the right side of history.
Saturate: repeat, repeat, and repeat the formula in remarks, online, ads and other forms of paid communications. Trump and the GOP are outspending and out-talking Democrats on this issue and it’s why we’re starting at a deficit on the issue.
The promise and action to deliver boldly and big. Immigration will always be a challenge if Biden doesn’t start laying the groundwork and ensure creative and courageous solutions such as (1) offering a path to legal status, within his authority, to Dreamers and long-settled immigrant families in the U.S. and (2) publicly working with willing governors and mayors across the country who either need the federal government’s help or are eager to welcome new immigrants who will invigorate their towns and cities and fill labor shortages. The Biden administration needs to go on offense, publicly and loudly.
Latinos and other mixed-status families are getting a bit exasperated with waiting for a path to citizenship. Biden needs to remind them that he hasn’t forgotten them. And instead of avoiding what’s happening in Democratic-led cities, Biden should embrace it as an opportunity for more bipartisanship and creative problem-solving that’ll meet the demands of cities and states in need of workers and consumers, such as Erie, PA and Utah. It’s a chance to talk “economy” and solutions – Americans love solutions!
It’s never too late to rectify the course. Biden and his tailors need to begin sewing back the fabric that’ll bring together his coalition of progressives, moderates and all those who do not want Trump and MAGA Republicans to return to office.
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Great analysis, Beatriz! Sad, that nobody in power is paying attention. The “race to the bottom” on human rights and equal justice in America appears to be accelerating!🤮
🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎 THERE’S STILL SOME INSPIRING NEWS TO REPORT: 1) CHICAGO PASTORS WELCOME BUSSES; 2) GW LAW CLINIC STUDENTS HELP NEW ARRIVALS; 3) W&M LAW CLINIC WINS 27 CASES; 4) NDPA STAR KIM WILLIAMS, ESQ, TRIUMPHS OVER GARLAND DOJ’S “NEXUS NONSENSE” IN 1ST CIR; 5) HRF’S ROBYN BARNARD CALLS OUT BIDEN’S THREAT TO TRASH ASYLUM; 6) CEO BILL PENZY LIKES & APPRECIATES IMMIGRANTS!
Locals and migrants attend a banquet at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago on Nov. 30, 2023. (Photo by Max Li)
(RNS) — Chicago was already facing a homelessness crisis before Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, began directing thousands of migrants entering his state to Democratic bastions that had declared themselves migrant-friendly sanctuary cities.
Since the transfers began in April 2022, more than 20,000 migrants, many of them destitute Venezuelans, have arrived, and many Chicagoans have expressed concerns that the city’s resources are being drained and have accused government officials of failing to communicate about the migrants’ cost and their fates.
At the same time, advocates for the migrants, especially community organizers in more vulnerable neighborhoods, have pushed back against attempts to pit two marginalized groups against each other. These groups have stepped up to support the new arrivals and in many cases have found allies in local faith leaders.
. . . .
Black said the majority of community residents want to find a way to both support the migrants and build support for a part of Chicago that has been historically underserved and underresourced. At the banquet at First Presbyterian, a speaker from Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community organizing group, talked about what it means to have Black and brown unity.
“It’s basically founded on this idea that there’s no scarcity,” Black said. “Not only is there enough for everybody — for the asylum-seekers, and the historically disenfranchised populations of South Side Chicago.”
He added, “We have so much more to gain from our unity than from the division which is being manufactured and orchestrated by interests that don’t want these communities to get the resources they need.”
Newcomer Fair at Langdon Elementary for families who have recently arrived from Texas and Arkansas via bus
I report that today Immigration Clinic student-attorneys Raisa Shah, Jennifer Juang-Korol, and I participated in the Newcomer Fair that the District of Columbia Public Schools sponsored at Langdon Elementary for families who have recently arrived from Texas and Arkansas via bus, primarily Venezuelans living in DC shelters. We shared immigration and social services information, GW swag, and met lots of cute kids. We were the only law school that participated. Please see the attached.
Professor Alberto Benítez & GW Immigration Clinic Student-Attorneys Raisa Shah & Jennifer Juang-Korol Staff The Table @ Newcomer Fair!
3) W&M Law Clinic Wins 27 Cases
Professor J. Nicole Medved reports on LinkedIn:
Over the holidays, the Immigration Clinic received approval notices in TWENTY-SEVEN applications that we’ve filed in the last calendar year. 🎉Among those 27 approvals were approvals for #asylum, #lawfulpermanentresidency, #DACA, #TPS, and #workpermits. It has been so exciting to see–and share–the fantastic news with our clients, students, and alumni who worked on these cases!
Clinic students prepare Temporary Protected Status and work permit applications. (Spring 2023)
4) NDPA Superstar Kim Williams Triumphs Over Garland DOJ’s “Nexus Nonsense” In 1st Cir
“Ricardo Jose Pineda-Maldonado (“Pineda-Maldonado”) is a native and citizen of El Salvador. He petitions for review of the decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) that denied his application for asylum and claims for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We grant the petition, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision.”
[Please read the entire 31-page decision. It is a solid beat-down for the IJ and the BIA. Hats way off to Kim Williams and team! Listen to the oral argument here.]
Kim Williams, Esquire Rubin Pomerleau PC PHOTO: LinkedIn
5) HRF’s Robyn Barnard Calls Out Biden’s Threat To Trash Asylum
Robyn Barnard Associate Director of Refugee Advocacy Human Rights First PHOTO: Linkedin
Robyn writes on LinkedIn:
Have been thinking a lot about this statement & questioning how we got here. Anyone who works in this space knows just how complicated our laws & system are, the challenges global crises present, all compounded by recent attempts to totally destroy our immigration system. We know this is hard. However, the President has had at his service very smart ppl, experts, not to mention those in NGO space w decades of experience who have provided him reams of recommendation papers from before he was elected President, all wanting to help him to succeed at making the immigration system more efficient, more fair, but I’d guess most also came out of 4 yrs of Trump wanting to ensure we treat ppl w dignity & respect their basic human rights. If only he would listen.
How did the President go from vowing to “restore asylum” & “stop kids in cages” to essentially trying to out-Trump Trump? I wish we had a President who had the political courage to stand by immigrants, to stand in public & declare why detention, border walls, & summary deportations don’t work, & to invest in humane & smart solutions. The truly enraging thing about this is he will never win in his gross political posturing despite throwing migrants under the bus, or more aptly–literally to the cartels–the Right will never be satisfied & now he has put himself on record as in favor of Trump’s policies.
Shame. Shame on whoever had a hand in this hateful declaration and shame on the leader who put his name to it.
6) CEO Bill Penzy Likes & Appreciates Immigrants
Penzys Logo FROM: Facebook
Penzy, CEO of Penzy’s Spices in Wauwatosa, WI (my home town — graduated from Tosa East in ‘66) writes:
And despite all the Republican anger, it really is okay to say you like what immigrants do and have always done for this country. So much hard work. So much tasty food. What’s not to like? They need somewhere their hard work can amount to something, and we have plenty of space, and more work to do than we can do ourselves..
Immigrants give us the chance to be kind, decent humans. Let’s be kind, decent humans.
Thanks for caring enough to cook and caring about so much more.
Even in a time of “politicos’ bipartisan national fear-mongering, irresponsibility, and trashing of human rights,” courageous NDPA “freedom fighters” still stand up for human dignity and the right to asylum!
Artem Marchuk needed to escape Ukraine or die. He didn’t see any other options.
He and his wife and children had been living in Bakhmut, the site of the war’s deadliest battle. Even when they made it out of the city, nothing in Ukraine felt safe.
“My kids were very hungry,” Artem’s wife, Yana, said in an interview from the family’s home in Baltimore, where the U.S. government resettled them in 2022. “There was darkness everywhere.”
The Marchuks are among more than a million people whom the Biden administration has allowed into the United States over the past three years under an authority called humanitarian parole, which allows people without visas to live and work in the United States temporarily. Parole has been extended to Ukrainians, Afghans and thousands of people south of the U.S.-Mexico border fleeing poverty and war.
Now the program is at the heart of a battle in Congress over legislation that would unlock billions of dollars in military aid for some of President Biden’s top foreign policy priorities, such as Ukraine and Israel.
Republicans want to see a severe crackdown on immigration in exchange for their votes to approve the military aid — and restricting the number of people granted parole is one of their demands.
For Mr. Marchuk, the fact that a program that saved his family has become a bargaining chip on Capitol Hill feels wrong. Although the latest version of the deal would mostly spare Ukrainians seeking parole, he feels a deep sense of solidarity with other people — regardless of their nationality — who may be left behind if Congress imposes limits on the program.
Americans, he said, should welcome people like his family. Mr. Marchuk, a former technology in Ukraine, said he has found work helping other refugees with the advocacy organization Global Refuge, as well as driving for DoorDash, UPS and Amazon since he arrived in Baltimore.
“Refugees deliver these packages,” said Mr. Marchuk, 36. “American citizens who have an education,” he said, very often don’t want to work as drivers.
. . . .
The particulars of the deal in Congress are still being negotiated. A deal that is being discussed in the Senate seeks to reduce parole numbers by tightening immigration enforcement at the southern border.
That would not have a direct impact on the route that many Ukrainians took to America, since they generally do not arrive by the southern border. (Some Ukrainians do make it to the United States that way, however.)
But there is still deep uncertainty about whether the program will survive without changes.
Even some congressional Democrats who oppose substantially changing the parole program have acknowledged they may need to give in to some Republican demands to limit the program if they have any chance of passing the military aid package.
. . . .
As lawmakers debate the merits of the parole program, some immigrants in the United States say all the political talk glosses over the calamities in their home countries.
“People are dying left and right, being kidnapped and it’s just impossible,” said Valerie Laveus, who came to America from Haiti nearly 20 years ago and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008. “I am concerned because I feel like a lot of times these people are having these conversations and they’re forgetting the human factor. They’re forgetting that they’re talking about lives.”
. . . .
Mr. Biden’s allies say restricting use of parole would very likely backfire.
“It means that people in desperate circumstances, who need protection, who need to leave, who need to flee, their options will be more limited, which increases the likelihood they choose the dangerous option of coming to the border,” said Cecilia Muñoz, one of Mr. Biden’s top immigration officials during the transition and co-chair of Welcome.US, an organization that helps Americans sponsor the resettlement of refugees to the United States.
Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.
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Notably, according to this article, Congress appears ready to carve out a “White Guy Exception” for Ukrainians arriving from Europe. So much for the idea that current immigration policy by both parties isn’t “race driven” — with Hispanics and Blacks generally on the short end of the stick.
By contrast, high level politicos of the Biden Administration and Congressional Dems avoid the border like the plague, except for the few who represent border districts. They are not that much different from GOP nativists. They refuse to engage with border experts, those who have devoted their lives to assisting forced migrants at the border, and the migrants themselves, who certainly will face severe harm, even death, due to the cowardly “sellout” by Congressional Dems and the Administration.
Let’s be very clear about the documented consequences of eliminating asylum at the border:
NEW YORK – With Congress considering codifying additional policies that will trap asylum seekers in Mexico, Human Rights First today reports that it has tracked over 1,300 reports of torture, kidnapping, rape, extortion, and other violent attacks on asylum seekers and migrants stranded in Mexico since the administration’s asylum ban was enacted in May.
Basically, those pushing to appease the GOP White Nationalist restrictionists at the border are knowingly and intentionally advocating for deadly human rights violations! How is that acceptable?
Foreign-born workers consistently have a higher labor market participation rate than native-born workers. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-immigrants-are-in-the-american-workforce/. Consequently, there is little reason to doubt that new waves of migration ultimately will benefit the U.S., particularly the many U.S. cities, large and small, in danger of depopulation and “death.” Ironically, many of the localities with the most to gain from robust migration are in “red” states.https://apple.news/AQkO0JQjKS9aXF-V-RD9-_Q
Instead of planning to avoid these “ghost towns,” using the influx of individuals who seek to help us as an opportunity, we’re “strategizing” and spending huge amounts of money expelling, “deterring,” imprisoning, rejecting, dehumanizing, and even killing those who seek refuge!
There are legitimate issues as to how to “front” services for asylum seekers until they can obtain work authorization and find jobs. THIS, is where bipartisan cooperation, creative solutions, and resources could be focused, rather than exclusively on counterproductive and expensive gimmicks to punish, deter, and deny. But, there’s no chance of that!
Instead, in an example of how far the one-sided debate has departed from reality and human decency, Biden now vows to “shut the border” if Congress will only give him the authority! https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/26/biden-vows-shut-down-an-overwhelmed-border-if-senate-deal-passes/. But, that’s apparently not enough cruelty and xenophobia for MAGAMike and his White Nationalist insurrectionists! They seek eradication of the lives and humanity of anybody with the temerity to seek refuge in the U.S.
And so it goes, ever onward and downward. The media has developed amnesia on the well-documented unmitigated disaster and cascade of human suffering that our nation’s most recent border shutdown generated. As stated by expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on “X:”
Will the DC press (not those on the immigration beat) continue to ignore the fact that the last time we “shut down the border” under Title 42, it did not work and in fact led to 15 out of 20 of the highest months for border apprehensions in the 21st century?
We don’t know yet who the “winners” of the 2024 election will be, other than traffickers, cartels, exploiters, private prison corporations, undertakers, and body bag makers! But, we already know the “losers:” asylum seekers, Dreamers, human rights, persons of color, and those brave souls who continue to stand up for truth and equal justice for all!
Dem politicos and the Administration seem to be counting on the view that the Trump GOP is so horrible and antithetic to democracy that Dems can afford to dehumanize migrants, ignore their supporters, and break campaign promises without consequences. Just what they are getting in return isn’t obvious. From an immigrants rights’ and humanitarian standpoint, it’s “zilch.”
With Dems supposedly in charge of the Presidency and the the Senate, why are they ready to gift GOP restrictionists with what many have characterized as a “generational chance” to destroy asylum, hamstring legal immigration avenues, and squander even more money on hyper-cruel, race-driven, “sure to fail” border militarization and human rights violations?
Talk about “selling your soul!” That appears to have become the Democrats’ mantra in 2024. Whether it will prove a successful political strategy, remains to be seen!
This guy’s ugly presence and vile racist views hang over the 2024 election campaign and Congressional negotiations. Why? Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) says he has transported 95,000 migrants from the Texas border to New York, Washington, DC, and other cities. On New Year’s Eve, Abbott flew hundreds of migrants — including many children — to the Rockford airport in Illinois, 30 miles outside of Chicago. It was snowing upon their arrival, and some of the migrants had no coats or shoes. Others were wearing flip-flops. The migrants were then loaded onto buses chartered by Abbott and dropped off in various suburbs.
Abbott says that he is transporting migrants to “sanctuary cities” as punishment for the cities’ permissive policies. A “sanctuary city” is a derisive term used by the right to describe a city that chooses not to volunteer local law enforcement resources to assist federal immigration agents. But in this case, the issue is largely irrelevant. The overwhelming majority of people being used as pawns by Abbott are in the United States legally.
One approach to deterring migrants is ignoring human rights and making the ordeal as traumatic as possible. That appears to be Abbott’s strategy. But it is not the law.
The Refugee Act of 1980, which passed Congress unanimously, gives migrants inside the United States the right to claim asylum based on “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” It was enacted “in part to make amends for the country’s shameful refusal to accept Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.”
Previously, most people seeking to cross the southern border of the United States came from Mexico. They were generally seeking seasonal work inside the United States and, therefore, sought to evade detection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But beginning in 2010, there was an influx of migrants from Central America fleeing gang violence, racial discrimination, and extreme poverty. More recently, political and economic disruption has prompted an increase in migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti. These new migrants are seeking legal asylum and want to present themselves to border agents — not evade them.
Migrants are being transported by Abbott to places where housing is expensive and in short supply. Most asylum-seekers would like to work to support their families, but the law does not allow them to receive a work permit for 180 days. Because of bureaucratic delays, asylum-seekers often wait a year or more before they are able to work legally.
Abbott also says his efforts are in protest of President Joe Biden’s “open border policies.” Biden has not opened the border. He did recently repeal Title 42, the Trump-era program that denied migrants the right to seek asylum, citing the public health emergency created by the COVID pandemic. Title 42 was legally questionable from the outset, but its continued use after other pandemic-related restrictions were lifted was indefensible. Title 42 also encouraged repeated border crossings. After Title 42 was imposed, “migrant encounters reported by CBP increased every month for 15 straight months.” Under Title 42, many migrants were deported immediately, and no record was created. This meant there was an incentive for migrants to attempt to cross the border again and again until they were successful.
Despite the rhetoric of Abbott and other prominent Republican officials, Biden has taken a hard line against migrants. Some advocates believe that Biden’s efforts to deter migrants from crossing the southern border have exceeded his legal authority.
The truth about Biden’s immigration policy
During his campaign for president in 2020, Biden vowed to undo Trump-era immigration policies. His promises included not building “another foot of wall” on the border and a pledge to stop using private prisons as immigration detention centers. On day one of his presidency, Biden proposed legislation “to restore humanity and American values to our immigration system.” His plan, known as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, would have created pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, increased assistance to Central America, and strengthened oversight and accountability of border operations.
The bill, however, died in Congress. Since then, Biden has only managed to make modest changes to immigration — like overruling Trump’s Muslim Ban and creating a task force to reunify separated migrant families. For the most part, experts say, Biden has continued many of Trump’s policy decisions.
Earlier this year, for example, Biden imposed new restrictive rules for asylum seekers who are not from Mexico. Dubbed by critics as the “Asylum Ban,” the rule assumes most migrants are ineligible for asylum and were similar to ones previously proposed (but never implemented) by Trump. In most cases, migrants will only be considered for asylum if they make an appointment in advance through a smart phone app, CBP One. There are far more people seeking asylum each day than appointments available through the app. In October 2023, the Biden administration announced that it was waiving 26 federal laws to construct up to 20 miles of the border wall in Texas.
A Washington Post analysis found that “nearly 18,000” family members were deported in fiscal year 2023 – about 3,000 more than were deported under Trump in fiscal year 2020. Since Biden took office, the number of migrants detained by ICE has also more than doubled. The majority of these people, the ACLU says, are held in private detention facilities. According to the group, the share of migrants detained in facilities “owned or operated by private prison corporations” has increased under Biden. In some instances, the administration has even kept open detention facilities “that its own oversight agencies have recommended for closure in light of abusive conditions and safety risks.”
Last month, immigration advocacy groups alleged in a federal complaint that officials have “forced asylum seekers to remain in CBP custody in open-air detention sites along the U.S.-Mexico border in California.” The group accuses CBP agents of forcing migrants to wait in “dangerous, exposed conditions” and “failing to provide the adequate food, water, sanitation, shelter, and medical care required under the law.” So far, at least one migrant has died while waiting outside.
Texas passes its own immigration law
On December 18, Abbott signed a law, Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), that will allow state law enforcement to arrest migrants in Texas. The new state law would make it illegal to cross into Texas from Mexico without using an official port of entry. This practice is already illegal under federal law. But now state law enforcement officers will be permitted to arrest individuals based on their suspected immigration status.
SB 4 includes exceptions for migrants in “public or private schools; churches and other places of worship; health care facilities; and facilities that provide forensic medical examinations to sexual assault survivors,” but does not protect those on college or university campuses. The law does not require that law enforcement officers complete any additional training on immigration law, “despite the fact it would authorize them to quickly make decisions about a person’s immigration status.”
Opponents argue that SB 4 is unconstitutional because the federal government, not Texas, is responsible for enforcing immigration laws. On December 28, the Justice Department sent a letter to Abbott stating that SB 4 “violates the United States Constitution.” Yesterday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas and Abbott. The lawsuit states that “Texas cannot run its own immigration system” and that SB 4 “intrude[s] on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate the entry and removal of noncitizens, frustrate[s] the United States’ immigration operations and proceedings, and interfere[s] with U.S. foreign relations.”
In response to the December letter, Abbott posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The Biden Admin. not only refuses to enforce current U.S. immigration laws, they now want to stop Texas from enforcing laws against illegal immigration,” Abbott said in the post. According to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, when signing SB 4 into law, Abbott said, “We think that Texas already has a constitutional [right] to do this but we also welcome a Supreme Court decision that would overturn the precedent set in the Arizona case.”
HISTORICAL NOTE: The article states that the Refugee Act of 1980 “passed Congress unanimously.” But, that isn’t completely accurate.
There was indeed very strong bipartisan support for that Act. It passed the Senate, 88-0.
A different version of the bill overwhelmingly passed the House, 328-47. Therefore, a Conference Committee was formed to resolve differences.
The Conference Committee report largely adopted the Senate version. The Conference bill unanimously passed the Senate again. But, the vote in the House was closer, 207-192, with 34 Representatives abstaining.
The above summary was reconstructed from the outstanding historical article by refugee guru Professors Deborah Anker and Michael Posner in the San Diego Law Review (1981) with an assist from my own recollection of events in which I long ago participated. https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1735&context=sdlr.
Another helpful resource that I consulted is Ballotpedia.
The Popular Informationarticle reprinted above does very accurately set forth the lies, misinformation, and invidious intent behind the GOP’s attack on and attempt to dehumanize legal asylum seekers!
When a party has no issues, no accomplishments, and no plans for governing in a responsible way, “ginning up” hate, resentment, and “revenge” with lies, misrepresentations, and myths becomes a “strategy.” And somehow, the mainstream media largely falls for it.
GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Professor Paulina Vera
Friends,
My colleague Paulina Vera and I report our 2023 recap and we wish everyone a safe, prosperous, and happy 2024:
Hearings in Immigration Court: 5
Lives saved with grants of asylum: 9
Green cards obtained: 5
New U.S. citizens: 1
Oral arguments before the 4th Circuit: 1
Petitions for writ of certiorari filed at the US Supreme Court: 1
Countries represented: 13
In the spring our student-attorneys and interns wrote a comment to a federal regulation relating to asylum and hosted a public forum at the law school in which they described their comment and in the fall they organized a period products collection and distribution.
Amy E. Pope Director General International Organization for Migration PHOTO: IOMFilippo Grandi United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees PHOTO: UNHCR
Pope is the Director General (DG) of the International Organization for Migration; Grandi is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
F
rom the sands of the Sahel to the waters of the Mediterranean, from the wilderness of the Darien in Central America to the Bay of Bengal, millions of refugees and migrants journey along routes that are synonymous with desperation, exploitation and lost lives. As the heads of the two U.N. agencies that protect and support people on the move, we believe this is one of the great global challenges of our time.
The loudest political response has been to claim that only tougher action can resolve it. Most recently, a number European states have announced plans to “offshore” or simply deport asylum seekers and/or make conditions around immigration and asylum more hostile.
Such plans are increasingly in vogue. They are also wrong. They overly concentrate on deterrence, control and law enforcement, and disregard the fundamental right to seek asylum. This approach is ineffective and irresponsible, leaving people stranded or compelling them to take even greater risks.
We do not want to understate the scale of the challenge created by today’s population movements. But to meet it, bigger thinking and bolder leadership are needed. The right strategy would tackle every stage of the journey, through a comprehensive and route-based approach of engagement. So, what should such a strategy look like?
First, we need to address the issues that compel people to leave home in the first place. Resolving conflicts, improving security, reinforcing human rights, providing sustained and reliable financial support to boost growth and resilience—all address the root causes of displacement and migration by investing in people’s futures. Failing to make these investments and cutting development aid are false economies.
Nonetheless, millions of people have no choice but to leave home—protracted conflicts, widescale rights abuses, intolerable poverty, and the devastating effects of climate change are just some of the causes. Yet the same point applies: offer hope and opportunity and people will take it.
. . . .
Two ingredients are essential for our proposals to succeed: cooperation and real responsibility-sharing between governments, even in these divisive times; and attention to every part of the journey. An approach focused mainly on deterrence will fail—indeed, it is already failing.
“Offer hope and opportunity and people will take it!” That’s essentially what the Supremes said 35 years ago in the landmark decision INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca requiring a suitably generous interpretation and application of the international “refugee” definition that also governs asylum.
Over the next several decades, slow but noticeable progress was made toward “realizing the full promise of Cardoza.” At one point, largely as a result of some Court of Appeals interventions, and a few positive BIA precedents granting asylum in the mid to late 1990’s, the “combined protection granted rate” for asylum, withholding, and CAT by EOIR, the primary precedent-setter and adjudicator of asylum law in the Executive Branch, exceeded 60% for those actually able to get to merits hearings in the somewhat haphazard system.
However, over the past several Administrations most of that progress has been reversed, sometimes intentionally, other times negligently. The dysfunction, mounting backlogs, poor precedents, lack of asylum expertise, endless “any reason to deny gimmicks,” and the dreaded “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” have made a mockery of justice for asylum seekers at EOIR. It has also generated a tidal wave of failure and mindless attempts by the USG to evade the rule of law and their responsibilities to fairly adjudicate asylum claims that goes far beyond our borders.
None of the nativist, restrictionist, proposals now being discussed in the Senate would help this situation! Indeed, they would undoubtedly make everything worse in the long run! They will also compromise our national security and enrich and embolden human smugglers and cartels. Nativist deterrence is definitely a “lose-lose proposition” even if many U.S. politicos are unwilling or unable to admit that!
In many ways, the “head in the sand” approach of prosperous nations to human migration reminds me of their past attempts to deny or ignore the effect of climate change — something that is directly related to forced migration and not adequately addressed by the post WW II refugee framework.
I was heartened to see among the recommendations in this article:
But this is not just about policies and strategies. It means engaging more closely with the people in mixed movements, such as offering practical and legal advice on accessing protection, to guidance on applying for third-country options. Such a chain of engagement might require new, bespoke models of collaboration but, if done strategically, would address a range of situations.\
Volunteer retired judges from various State and Federal systems could potentially assist the USG and NGOs by advance screening applicants, inside and outside the U.S., for asylum with an eye toward helping individuals make good choices and directing those unable to meet the current refugee and asylum criteria to humane alternatives. It’s exactly the type of new, creative, “model of collaboration” (and cost efficiency) that the authors recommend!
Given the current state of the world, with active wars on several fronts, and many corrupt and/or repressive governments, it’s highly likely that forced migration will continue to increase in the foreseeable future. That makes it essential that developed nations work with each other and humanitarian experts on viable, durable solutions that recognize the complexity, the opportunities, and the inevitability of human migration.
On Meet the Press today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spouted virtually every “border myth” in the book, without much effective pushback from moderator Kristen Welker. In particular, Welker continued her practice of not featuring any experts who actually work with forced migrants at the border. Meanwhile, Graham was unwilling to condemn Trump’s Hitlerian language about immigrants “poisoning the blood” despite numerous opportunities by Welker for him to do so.
What Graham didn’t do, and Welker didn’t press him on, was establish any connection between eliminating asylum and either reducing terrorist threats or fighting drug smuggling which has been shown time and again to have little or nothing to do with individuals struggling to get appointments through “CBP One” or turning themselves in to CBP upon entry to submit to asylum screening.
Additionally, Graham continued to repeat, without evidence (other than one lame anecdote), the nativist claim that almost nobody coming to the border has a legitimate fear of return. That contradicts almost all reports from those who actually work with forced migrants at the border and elsewhere. It’s also remarkable because the vast majority of those who have been allowed into the U.S. in the past year have not had an opportunity to document and present their claims in the fair merits hearing required by law. Yet the “border debate” remains largely one-sided and reality free!
That’s not to minimize the failure of the Biden Administration to heed expert advice and make major administrative, personnel, and expertise changes in the asylum adjudication system and the Immigration Courts on “Day One.” Nor does it excuse their failure to set up an organized, mutually beneficial, system for resettling those screened the into the country away from border points of entry.
Again, the absence of coherent rational discussion of asylum adjudication by experts by Meet the Press and other so-called “mainstream media” is both telling and disturbing. Certainly, internationally-recognized experts like Filippo Grande and Amy Pope must be available to Welker. Why don’t we ever hear from them?
Demand that Congress and the Biden Administration stop the toxic nonsense of “trading” the lives and rights of forced migrants for bombs and weapons to fight foreign wars. It’s time to get serious about developing immigration and refugee policies that operate in the “real world” of human migration, eschew expensive, cruel, proven to fail “deterrence only,” and give primacy to the humanity and rights of migrants and the opportunities they present for our world’s future!
This article is a collaboration between The Border Chronicle and TomDispatch, a great outlet which has been looking at U.S. foreign policy, the military industrial complex, the “forever wars,” climate change, and many other topics since 2001.
On September 23rd, at about 2:30 a.m., a Border Patrol surveillance camera captured two people crossing the international boundary between Mexico and the United States on the outskirts of Nogales, Arizona. A Border Patrol vehicle arrived quickly, but not before one of them had fled back into Mexico. When an armed agent stepped out, dressed in a forest-green uniform, he found a 16-year-old girl from Mexico softly crying, while holding her month-old baby swaddled in a blanket.
The agent commanded her to get in the vehicle. As they then drove to the Nogales Border Patrol station, the girl, he later reported, tried to speak to him in Spanish through the security partition that separated them. Her tiny daughter, she was telling him, was in distress. Cameras showed that the vehicle stopped for all of 10 seconds before continuing. The agent later claimed he couldn’t understand what she was saying and that he wanted to find a fluent Spanish speaker at the station. He didn’t realize, he insisted, that the infant was struggling to breathe, though the child soon died.
This hellish story of suffering at our border is but one of hundreds of similar tales of horror from 2023. They illustrate a fundamental truth about that border: it neither is, nor ever was, an “open” one in the Biden years, nor does the president faintly have an open-border policy, though prepare yourself to hear otherwise — over and over again — in Trumpublican campaign ads next year. They’ll repeat what party officials are already saying all too repetitively: that “President Biden’s radical open borders policies” have created “the worst border crisis in American history.” (While those are the exact words of House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, similar sentiments are already being offered by countless members of the GOP.)
Comer’s claim is, of course, no less predictable than the hardships migrants like that girl are suffering as they try to reach this country. While such border narratives traffic in the unreal, what is real either isn’t effectively reported or gets lost amid all the politically motivated noise. Loud fantasies are expansively covered, while life-and-death stories, like those of that infant and her mother, are seldom reported and, if they are, quickly disappear.
Barely a week before that 16 year old was desperately trying to communicate to the agent in Spanish, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) labeled the U.S.-Mexico border the world’s “deadliest migration land route.” In 2022, a record 853 remains of dead border crossers were recovered (and this is the U.S. Border Patrol’s figure, which is even higher than the IOM’s), dwarfing the record of 568 set the previous year. Such numbers, the IOM stresses, are known to be distinct undercounts, leaving all too many families pining for lost loved ones.
But those border fatalities weren’t the only record breaker. Another was confirmed just a week after medical personnel at the Nogales station rushed to treat that girl’s baby. The number of border contracts issued to private industry also set a new record. Like those deaths, such contracts soared in fiscal year 2023 to $9.96 billion, instantly stripping the previous high, also set last year, of $7.5 billion.
And mind you, those gifts to industry were made from the highest budget ever (including in the Trump years) for border and immigration enforcement: $29.8 billion. So, don’t for a second think that the U.S. has an “open” border. In fact, it’s never been more fortified or — something few even bother to mention — more profitable, if you happen to be part of the border-industrial complex.
. . . .
*******************
Read the full article at the link.
Maybe it’s because the victims are “only migrants, mostly people of color” and therefore not considered to be “real human beings” by some in the media; maybe it’s because getting the real story about the border requires intensive digging, intellectual expertise, and perhaps some danger; maybe it’s because editors are in search of alarmist “sky is falling” myths about the “border apocalypse” to attract readers, viewers, and “online hits;” maybe it’s because of a false belief that truth is “boring” and “doesn’t sell!”
For whatever reason, the non-Fox networks (Fox is a primary purveyor of the “Big Lie” and the “Open Borders Fantasy”) and “mainstream media” do a really poor job on border reporting.
Those with even a passing familiarity with “talking heads” are no-doubt familiar with claims from nativist GOP politicos, righty reporters, and even some Dems about the mythical a “open borders!” None of these folks have recent experience helping asylum seekers trying to exercise their legal rights under domestic laws, international treaties, and ourConstitution in a border system specifically designed to “discourage and deter” them, rather than identify and promptly grant the many legally sufficient claims for protection.
By contrast, when is the last time you saw real experts — folks like Clinical Professor Steve Yale-Loehr, former Deputy UNHCR and Georgetown Law Dean Alex Aleinikoff, CGRS Director Karen Musalo, HRF Refugee Programs Director Eleanor Acer, UC Davis Law Dean Kevin Johnson, NIJC Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy, Immigrant Defenders Executive Director Lindsay Toczylowski, Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) or any of the other huge numbers of highly articulate, well-recognized, “hands on practical experts” on human rights and asylum appear on the “talking heads” to throw some truth and real light on this important, nearly totally misunderstood and intentionally misconstrued, issue that GOP nativists have thrust to the forefront of the 2024 campaign?
Meanwhile, Dems should NOT be “running away” from the realities and essential benefits provided by robust immigration and the cruel wastefulness and immorality of Trumps’s proposed neo-Nazi “crackdown” on all forms of migration (although, disgracefully, some Dems are doing exactly that, thus playing into the hands of GOP nativists for absolutely NO return).
Simon Rosenberg Veteran U.S. Political Analyst Hopium PHOTO: Substack
Here are some ideas from Simon Rosenberg at Hopium on Substack on how Dems can make immigration a centerpiece for success in 2024:
Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.
Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.
To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.
To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.
In a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”
The constellation of Mr. Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.
Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.
Despite being inhumane and jawdroppingly cruel, this plan is now a major political problem for an already struggling Republican Party for at least three main reasons:
Raids and Mass Deportations Are Deeply Unpopular – We have decades of polling on the forced removal of the 10m+ undocumented immigrants (almost all of whom are employed and pay taxes) in the US, and it is wildly unpopular, perhaps even more so than “abortion bans.” One example – in the 2016 exit polls, in the election that gave Trump the Presidency, the American people choose “offer legal status” to “deported to home country” 70%-25%. Republicans may have a slight advantage on immigration issue right now, but mass deportation is seen as an extreme position by the American people (rightly so). It was so unpopular that the anti-immigration movement dropped mass deportation as a goal, moving to the softer “attrition through enforcement,” or “self-deportation,” political strategy more than a decade ago.
Trump’s plan is another sign of how extremism and extremists have overtaken the party of Lincoln and Reagan.
As I document here, since 2005, when the national Republican Party began adopting a far harder line on immigration (Reagan, W. Bush and McCain were all immigration reformers), the 4 battleground states of the Southwest, AZ/CO/NM/NV, have drifted away from the Republican Party, becoming far bluer. In the last 2 elections we’ve seen the best Democratic performance in that region since the 1940s and 1950s, and a reminder that Biden got within 5 points of Trump in Texas in 2020. In the heavily Mexican-American parts of the country in particular raids and mass deportations are wildly unpopular.
It Was A Plan Like This That Caused The Big Hispanic Protests Across the US in 2006 – In 2005 the Republican House of Representatives bucked their President, George W. Bush, and passed a bill that called for the rounding up and mass deportation of the 11m undocumented immigrants in the country. It was the moment when the party of the Sun Belt and the West went from pro-immigration to deeply restrictionist. Over the next year huge protests against this bill and mass deportation erupted across the US, and Republicans became so spooked that we were able to pass a “comprehensive immigration reform” bill through a Republican Senate in 2006. That bill, like the 2013 immigration reform bill we passed through the Senate, was never taken up by the Republican House and it died.
But those protests did something important politically – after years of Republican gains with Hispanics under W. Bush, Hispanics ran back into the arms of Democrats in 2006 and they have essentially stayed there ever since. In the 2006 midterms Democrats won 69% of the Hispanic vote, among our best performances in recent decades.
In the four Presidential elections leading up to 2006 Democrats averaged 47% of the vote, and in 2004 we lost AZ/CO/NM/NV. In the four Presidential elections since 2006 Democrats have averaged 51% and in 2020 we won AZ/CO/NM/NV at the Presidential level for the first time since 1940. As the Hispanic population has grown across the US and in these states, our net vote margin with Hispanic voters keeps increasing, even if we lose a few points in vote share. As I show here, in 2004 the net Hispanic vote margin for Democrats was about 700,000 votes nationally, meaning we won 700,000 more Hispanic votes nationally than Republicans. In 2020 that number was at least 4.5m net votes across the US, with this same dynamic playing out in each state with large Hispanic populations (except Florida of course).
My instinct is that whatever advantage Republicans had on immigration, and whatever small gains they had made with Hispanic voters in recent years, is now gone.
This Plan Will Wreck The American Economy – In a time of existing wide scale worker shortages, removing 10-15m workers from the American economy in a short period of time would be national economic suicide, and will be seen that way by the business community in DC and in the battleground states. It’s just totally insane and extremist policy no matter how you look at it, and I think it could become as much of a drag on the GOP brand as abortion is now.
For a party which has lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections, lost the popular vote to Democrats 51%-46% over the past 4, lost the 2018/2019/2020/2022 and 2023 elections, has deep performance issues across the country even in red states since Dobbs, embracing mass deportations seems like a colossal political error.
It is another reason why I think our goal in 2024 should be not just to win, but to really go on offense, get to 55, and make this election an historic repudiation of the worst and most dangerous political party in our history. We can do this people!
Onward/Adelante – Simon
Thank you for reading Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg. This post is public so feel free to share it.
It’s critical to remember that migrants aren’t the ONLY target of Trump’s neo-Nazism — they might not even be the primary ones! You can guarantee that many US citizens and lawfully present non-citizens of color will be caught up in the dragnet and sent off to deportation concentration camps where due process is non-existent.
Others will simply avoid certain public places and activities for fear of being accosted. Still others will be forced underground because of fear of drawing attention to undocumented relatives or neighbors. Some U.S. citizens will fear voting, which indeed is a key part of the GOP plan to cement their “out of the mainstream” minority rule by suppressing suffrage! As those of us who adjudicated asylum claims know, many will fear reporting abuses or asserting rights to police who openly identify with their oppressors. Fear, despair, distrust, and resignation are key pillars of any authoritarian regime!
It’s attack on all people of color in America and those who might speak with an accent or dress differently from the GOP’s “White Christian Nationalist norms.”
How many of us carry around documentation proving that our parents were U.S. citizens? Notably, although occupational status is often menioned on U.S. birth certificates, citizenship status is NOT. It’s not hard to guess who will be “required” to “document” their parents’ citizenship by Trump’s internal security police!
Trump and the GOP are an existential threat to U.S. democracy, human progress, and American leadership on the world stage. Don’t let them destroy OUR country and take away YOUR rights!
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