Director, Immigration Impact Lab
CAIR Coalition
PHOTO: “30 Under 30” from Forbes
https://www.facebook.com/CAIRCoalitionDC
Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition – CAIR Coalition
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Last week, Mayor Bowser made a request for National Guard troops to be deployed to DC to help with the thousands of migrants arriving on charter buses from Texas and Arizona.
CAIR Coalition condemns this militarized response and calls for our government leaders to support and listen to the local groups that have consistently done the work on the ground to support the immigrant community in DC. There are other alternatives like providing additional funding to community groups to help with temporary lodging and other basic needs.
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Bowser’s semi-nonsensical “emergency request” seems to be nothing more than a “cheap publicity stunt” at the expense of vulnerable asylum applicants and those in the community who are assisting them! And, it worked! She got lots of “play” in the news media.
But, just how would the National Guard actually assist in this largely “manufactured” and unnecessary humanitarian “crisis?”
Will they be transporting migrants from DC to their final destinations? Helping them find lawyers? Explaining their reporting obligations to DHS and EOIR? Finding them shelter in the area? Providing meals and caring for children?
Gimmie a break! Misusing the National Guard like this would also make them less available for real crises where they could help — like the flooding disaster in Kentucky!
What’s needed, as pointed out by CAIR, is sensible supplemental funding for community organizations and others who have been helping migrants resettle and process their cases. Also, shame on the Biden Administration for not getting “ahead of the curve” to provide Federal Government support to counter this entirely predictable and wholly avoidable publicity stunt created by Texas’s White Nationalist, scofflaw Governor Greg Abbott and mindlessly advanced by Mayor Browser’s misguided request!
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
08-02-22