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family separation
On Immigration, the Democrats Must Propose a True Alternative to Trumpism
Agreeing with Trump that immigrants are the enemy to be detained at the border, and then only disagreeing on the numbers and methods, contradicts any commitment to a fact-based policy, while making immigrant communities scapegoats.
Aug 19, 2024
On August 17, a group of committed migrant activists set forth on a three-day march from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, highlighting the choices for progressive candidates in the coming November election. Should their campaigns amplify the hysteria about an immigration “crisis,” or should they speak the truth to the American people about the border and the roots of migration? Even more important, these marchers are providing a practical way for activists and political leaders to advocate for rights as they work to defeat the threat of MAGA racism.
The question at hand is whether to support the compromise immigration enforcement bill negotiated between centrist Democrats and Republicans last year, and to campaign against former U.S. President Donald Trump from the right, attacking him for undermining Republican support for the enforcement measures it contained.
In that bill, President Joe Biden agreed that he would close the border to asylum applicants if their number rose beyond 5,000 per day, while making it much harder to gain legal status for those even allowed to apply. Biden said he would cut short the time for screening asylum applicants by asylum officers, which would make winning permission to stay much more difficult.
Winning public understanding of immigration is the only way to decisively defeat this anti-immigrant hysteria, rather than caving into its illogic, and to the media frenzy and the onslaught of Republicans and MAGA acolytes.
To keep people imprisoned while their cases are in process, instead of releasing them, Biden proposed an additional $3 billion for more detention centers, a euphemism for immigrant prisons. There are already over 200, according to the group Freedom for Immigrants. Under a law signed by former President Barack Obama, Congress required that 34,000 detention beds be filled every night. At the end of 2023, those beds held 36,263 people, and another 194,427 were in “Alternatives to Detention,” which required wearing the hated ankle bracelets that bar travel for more than a few blocks. Over 90% of these jails are run for profit by private companies like the Geo Group, (formerly the Pinkerton Detective Agency).
These proposals respond to a media-driven frenzy that constantly refers to an immigration “crisis” and calls the border “broken.” That media coverage, and the response by centrist Democrats and Republicans, treats migrants as criminals, as an enemy. Political operatives in Washington then take polls, announce that the public wants draconian enforcement, and advise candidates that going against this tide will lead to election losses.
Yet this accepted political “wisdom” in Washington is not actually based on facts.
Let’s Look at the Numbers
Department of Homeland Security statistics show that over the decades the number of people crossing the border, and subject to deportation, rises and falls, while displacement and forced migration remain constant. In 2022, about 1.1 million people were expelled after trying to cross, and another 350,000 deported. In 1992, about 1.2 million were stopped at the border and 1.1 million deported. Over a million people were deported in 1954 during the infamous “Operation Wetback.” Arrests at the border have totaled over a million in 29 of the last 46 years.
Last year the number arrested at the border was higher: about 2.5 million. But the reality is that the migration flow has not stopped and will not stop anytime soon. What, then, is the “crisis”? New York Times reporter Miriam Jordan says, “In December alone, more than 300,000 people crossed the southern border, a record number.” They all believe, she says, that “once they make it into the United States they will be able to stay. Forever. And by and large, they are not wrong.”
In fact, the number of refugee admissions in 2022 was 60,000. In 1992, it was 132,000. According to Jordan, applicants are simply released to live normal lives until their date before an immigration judge. That will certainly be news to families facing separation and the constant threat of deportation. But this is what Republicans and anti-immigrant Democrats call an “invasion” and threaten to “shut the border.”
Criminalizing the Undocumented
Should Trump win election in November, he promises to reinstitute the notorious family separation policy. Children who survive the crossing might easily be lost, as so many were, in the huge detention system. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) wants to reintroduce the “Remain in Mexico” policy, under which people wanting asylum were not allowed to enter the United States at all, to file their applications. The Mexican government was forced to set up detention centers just south of the border to house them while they waited.
Trump and other Republicans would imprison all migrants who face a court proceeding that allows them to apply to stay or stop a deportation. Pending cases now number in the millions, because the immigration court system is starved for the resources for processing them.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pushed through a law that makes being undocumented a state crime. Republicans in Congress last year proposed to build more border walls, create barriers to asylum, force the firing of millions of undocumented workers, and permit children to be held in detention prisons with their parents. Centrist Democrats are very willing to agree to modified proposals like these.
No money, running from something or someone, trying to keep a family together and give it a future, or just needing a job at whatever wage—these are the commonalities of the thousands who arrive at the U.S. border every year. Winning public understanding of immigration is the only way to decisively defeat this anti-immigrant hysteria, rather than caving into its illogic, and to the media frenzy and the onslaught of Republicans and MAGA acolytes.
Roots of Migration
President Obama made some acknowledgement of the poverty and violence that impels people to come but drew the line at recognizing this migration’s historical roots, much less any culpability on the part of the U.S. government. President Biden sent Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic candidate for president, to Central America in his first year in office with a similar message—don’t come.
So far, the new presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has not taken a different direction. In Arizona she gave a speech recommitting to the Biden-brokered compromise and criticizing Trump for killing it. In a new TV ad, she promised to hire thousands of additional border patrol agents. The three enforcement arms of the Department of Homeland Security—the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement today account for 52,300 officers, making it the largest law enforcement agency in the country. The numbers mushroomed by 22,000 in the past 20 years; the Border Patrol alone tripled from 2,700 to 8,200.
The rationale for this huge increase is that immigrants must be met with deterrence and enforcement to stop them from coming. Today an unwillingness to look at U.S. responsibility for producing displacement and migration is starkest in relation to Haitians and Venezuelans, who have made up a large percentage of the migrants arriving at the Rio Grande in the last two years.
No matter how many walls and migrant prisons the government builds, people will come.
After Haitians finally rid themselves of the U.S.-supported Duvalier regime and elected Jean Bertrand Aristide president, the United States put him on an outbound plane in 2004, as it did with Miguel Zelaya in Honduras. A string of U.S.-backed corrupt but business-friendly governments followed, which pocketed millions while Haitians went hungry and homeless by the tens of thousands after earthquakes and other disasters. The treatment of Haitian migrants is a form of institutionalized racism.
Survival in Venezuela became impossible for many as its economy suffered body blows from U.S. political intervention and economic sanctions. If the United States moves further to increase sanctions in response to the recent elections, it will produce even more migration.
These interventions produce migrants and then criminalize them. In 2023, the Border Patrol took 334,914 Venezuelans into custody, along with 163,701 Haitians. And while promoting military intervention in Haiti and regime change in Venezuela, the Biden administration put people on deportation flights back home, in the hope that this would discourage others from starting the journey north.
The disconnect is obvious to anyone born south of the Mexican border. Sergio Sosa, a Guatemalan exile who heads the Heartland Workers Center in Omaha, observes: “People from Europe and the U.S. crossed borders to come to us, and took over our land and economy. Migration is a form of fighting back. We’re in our situation, not because we decided to be, but because we’re in the U.S.’s backyard.” While former President Bill Clinton was the author of many anti-immigrant measures, he did recognize this historic truth, and apologized to the Guatemalan people for the U.S. support of the military dictatorships that massacred thousands.
The Democrats have to tell people the truth, and political campaigns are the times when this is most important. Agreeing with Trump that immigrants are the enemy to be detained at the border, and then only disagreeing on the numbers and methods, contradicts any commitment to a fact-based policy, while making immigrant communities scapegoats.
As they march from Silicon Valley, immigrant rights campaigners are reminding the Democratic Party of this truth and are calling for a commitment to the welfare of the 11 million people already in the United States who lack legal immigration status. That commitment has been all but lost in the border “crisis” hype.
An Alternative Approach
The goal of these marchers is to win support for a bill that could make a profound difference in the lives of millions of people. Today, anyone who entered the United States without a visa before January 1, 1972 can apply for legal permanent residence. From 2015 to 2019, however, only 305 people received legal status this way because over 90% of undocumented immigrants came after that date. As the years go by, ever fewer numbers qualify.
Known as the Registry Bill, HR 1511 would allow anyone in the country for seven years to apply for legal status. Emma Delgado, a leader of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (United and Active Women) in San Francisco says, “I haven’t seen my children in many years because there is currently no way for me to apply for legal residency.” She called the family separation produced by current immigration law “immoral.”
Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Reform in Los Angeles, challenges the idea that Democrats can’t campaign for it during an election year, and that a Republican majority in the House dooms it. “Think of all the millions of U.S. citizens who have immigrant parents,” she urges, “and how many have had their fathers or mothers deported. All over the country. Immigrant workers are a big part of the workforce. They’re all part of a base that can force change. We can’t depend on political winds or what people tell us is possible.”
No matter how many walls and migrant prisons the government builds, people will come. Over the years they will become part of communities here, and with progressive immigration policies, eventually voting citizens. Democrats need a long-term vision that sees the future in organizing and defending them, in turning those old anti-immigrant arguments around, rather than reinforcing them.
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The Government Won’t Let My Wife and Me Raise Our Family in the United States
As it considers Department of State v. Muñoz, I hope the Supreme Court listens to our stories and ensures that U.S. citizens will have access to a fairer process when seeking to live with their non-citizen spouses.
Apr 23, 2024
When my first wife passed away more than a decade ago, it was one of the hardest times in my life. I became a single father, and while it’s been my life’s joy to raise my kids, it has been lonely. That changed when Deborah came into my life.
We met on a Christian website and immediately fell in love. Despite me living in Missouri and Deborah in Kenya, we had an instant connection. She is beautiful, caring, and smart as a whip. We started talking every day and quickly realized we wanted to spend our lives together.
We are both preachers, and our faith has given us strength as we navigate life’s challenges. In 2018, I flew to Kenya and we got married at a big church wedding in her parent’s village. I adopted Deborah’s daughter from a previous marriage, and in 2020, we had our own beautiful baby girl.
As an American citizen, I never thought I would be forced to choose between love and country. I am an Army and Navy veteran, and it feels like a betrayal of my service that I can’t live with my family in my own country.
Our family has a near-perfect life except for one thing: A consular officer in the U.S. Embassy in Kenya will not grant Deborah’s visa to live in the United States. To complicate things further, my stepdaughter’s visa was approved. She now lives with me and my eldest daughter outside Kansas City while our toddler lives in Kenya with her mother.
My desires are simple: I want to live with my wife and our children. I trust God has a plan, but that doesn’t make living apart less difficult. We spend hours on the phone every day, and I go to Kenya twice a year, but it’s not the same as living together. I have a good union job on a Ford assembly line in a community I love, and if I moved to Kenya I wouldn’t be able to provide for my family the way they deserve.
As an American citizen, I never thought I would be forced to choose between love and country. I am an Army and Navy veteran, and it feels like a betrayal of my service that I can’t live with my family in my own country.
Never once have Deborah and I doubted our commitment to each other, but it isn’t easy to function as a family spread across two continents. Thankfully, my wife and I are both stubborn as an ox. It’s part of what makes us a good match, and it means we’re never going to stop fighting for our family. We know we’re meant to be together; it’s just a matter of when and how.
That’s why I am helping challenge these unjust family separations. With the support of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and American Families United, I contributed my story to a friend of the court brief in the Supreme Court case Department of State v. Muñoz. Like my family, the husband and wife at the center of this case have been separated for years because of a decision of a single consular officer. The Supreme Court is considering whether U.S. citizens have a constitutionally protected interest in a visa for their spouse.
For families in our situation, the decision in this case could be life-changing. The Court will hear the case April 23, with a decision expected in the summer. As they consider the case, I hope the Supreme Court justices listen to our stories and ensure that U.S. citizens will have access to a fairer process when seeking to live with their non-citizen spouses in the United States.
For now, my family and I continue to pray every day that we’ll be able to live together soon. We hope you’ll join us.
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Coalition Implores Biden to Act as Abbott's 'Campaign of Cruelty' Separates Families
"We urge the Biden administration to immediately reunite separated families and launch an investigation into Texas' Operation Lone Star," said #WelcomeWithDignity's campaign manager.
Aug 07, 2023
The #WelcomeWithDignity campaign for asylum rights on Monday condemned what it called Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's "unconscionable" decision to "repeat one of the most horrific and cruel practices of the Trump administration" by separating migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Houston Chroniclereported last week that officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) have separated at least 26 families by arresting fathers on trespassing charges and transferring relatives including small children to U.S. Border Patrol custody.
DPS spokesman Travis Considine confirmed that "there have been instances in which DPS has arrested male migrants" traveling with their families, but that "children and mothers were never separated" as they were turned over to Border Patrol agents.
"With Texas troopers separating families at the border, the world can now see that Governor Abbott's cruelty knows no bounds."
"We were already shocked and appalled by the razor wire and buoy barriers, denial of water, and pushbacks of children into the river," #WelcomeWithDignity campaign manager Melina Roche said in a statement, referring to the floating border barrier installed in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and reports that Texas state troopers have been ordered to push migrant children back into the river and deny asylum-seekers water amid a deadly heatwave.
"With Texas troopers separating families at the border, the world can now see that Governor Abbott's cruelty knows no bounds," Roche added. "The governor will continue to punish families for seeking safety unless the federal government intervenes. We urge the Biden administration to immediately reunite separated families and launch an investigation into Texas' Operation Lone Star."
The #WelcomeWithDignity coalition said its members are "appalled" that the Biden administration "hasn't put a stop to Gov. Abbott's campaign of cruelty."
While Biden has ended some of the more egregious human rights violations perpetrated against migrants during former President Donald Trump's tenure, his administration has come under fire for
continuing and expanding Trump-era policies like Title 42—a public health order that both presidents invoked to deport around two million asylum-seekers under the pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic—and new asylum restrictions to replace Title 42 after its expiration in May. Last month, a federal court blocked Biden's new policy.
Kristin Etter, an attorney and special project director at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, called Abbott's policy "nothing short of state-sanctioned family separation."
Danilo Zack, acting director of policy and advocacy at Church World Service, said that "child-parent separation has profound and devastating consequences, and these actions recall the appalling scenes of the Trump-era zero-tolerance policy."
Zack was referring to Trump's internationally condemned crackdown on undocumented migrants including people legally seeking asylum, during which around 4,000 children were seized from their families and sent to locations around the country. With recordkeeping of the minors' identities and locations "patchwork at best," according to the Department of Homeland Security, nearly 1 in 4 of the separated children were yet to be reunited with their relatives as of earlier this year.
As public outrage mounted in the face of stories like a breastfeeding baby being torn away from her mother and a father driven to suicide after being separated from his wife and child, the Trump administration reluctantly rolled back the policy in June 2018.
Experts said family separation deeply traumatized parents and children, who were often told by U.S. officials that they would never see each other again. Some may indeed never be reunited. Numerous children were given to U.S. families, who sometimes petition for permanent custody.
"During the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy, I witnessed how family separation inflicts lasting trauma on the parents and children who were cruelly torn apart," Katharina Obser, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission, said in a
statement Monday.
"It is unconscionable that this horrific practice is added onto a long list of cruel practices already taking place under Gov. Abbott's Operation Lone Star—including using razor wire and large buoys to block the Rio Grande shore," Obser added. "When people are fleeing to save their lives, attempts at deterrence only place vulnerable people in more danger and anguish, rather than stop their need to seek safety."
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