Biden Follows Trump Immigration Policies…
https://socialistaction.org/2021/03/22/biden-follows-trump-immigration-policies/
March 22, 2021
Activists Demand Immediate End To Deportations! Reunite Families!
By Ann Montague
President Biden has been signing numerous Executive Orders. But a closer
look shows they contain no immediate solutions. Instead they merely
refer issues to a governmental body or create a task force for further
study. Meanwhile, Trump’s reactionary policies remain in force.
A March 15 New York Times article entitled “Migrant Cascade Worsen Near
U.S. Border” was explicit:
“Over the past week, Mexican officials and shelter operators like the
International Organization of Migration said they had been surprised by
the Department of Homeland Security’s new practice of detaining migrants
at one point of the sprawling border only to fly them hundreds of miles
away to be expelled at a different border town.”
The Times continued: “The United States is doing this under a federal
order known as Title 42. The order, introduced by Mr. Trump but embraced
by Mr. Biden, justifies rapid expulsions as a health measure amid the
pandemic.”
Times reporter Maria Abi-Habib disagreed stating. “But cramming migrants
into airplanes and overcrowded detention facilities without any
coronavirus testing defeats the purpose of [Trump’s] Title 42, observers
say.”
Abi-Habib added, “Stephanie Malin, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border
Protection, said that the American authorities had seen ‘an increase in
encounters’ but that to adhere to [Trump’s] federal guidelines for
Covid-19, border officials were ‘expeditiously’ transferring migrants
out of their custody,” that is far away from the Mexican border.
Similarly, the Biden administration has made little or no progress
regarding the separation of children from their parents with some
thousands of near terrified children remaining in squalid U.S. detention
centers. U.S. immigration rights activists continue to demand immediate
government action on this most critical issues as well as the closure of
the private prisons used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Biden’s promises for “review and planning” notwithstanding, hundreds are
deported daily, in continuity with the egregious practices of Trump and
Obama before him.
Aura Bogado from the Center For Investigative Reporting, notes that
President Biden has called only for a “Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) Task Force” on family separation. She points out, “This is the
same agency that separated children from their parents in the first
place. Now they are the ones tasked with figuring out where these
families are when they never had a reunification plan in the first
place? Biden campaigned on opposing family separations. The idea that we
need a task force, when Biden has the House and the Senate rings hollow
to a lot of people. If you compare Obama and Trump just on the numbers
alone, one President deported far more than the other, and that was
Obama [who deported three million immigrants, Editor]. So we will see
what Biden does.”
Erika Pinheiro the Litigation Director of Al Otro Lado is assisting
families on both sides of the border. She responds to media statements
that there are 600 families who are separated. “There are well-over 600
if you count children who have been put in foster care and parents who
were forcibly deported. There could easily be over a thousand families.
I was disappointed to see that the task force has 120 days until their
first report. That is four months of study! We are in touch with
families now! They have been vetted; they are ready to return. We have
no indication that they will bring back the families who were deported
without their children.” There is great concern among those already
working to reunite families that the Task Force is more than a delay; it
is just political posturing.
Bogado also points out that the Executive Order to end all new contracts
with for profit private prison companies applies only to the Department
Of Justice not ICE.
Operation Streamline
Immigration detention should never mean imprisonment because it was
technically never a crime. Immigrants were being held on civil charges.
But in 2005 through a joint initiative of the DHS and Department of
Justice a program called Operation Streamline was formed. This set up
fast tracked immigration offenses by providing for mass proceedings
against unlawful border crossings. As many as 80 persons were tried
together, generally pleading guilty en masse. The first entry was a
misdemeanor punished by six months in prison. Reentry became a felony
punished by up to 20 years. Prior to Operation Streamline they would
have been returned to their home country unless they had committed a
felony. Today they are among the ever-increasing racist U.S. mass
incarcerated population of 2.2 million people – the largest number and
percentage of the population in the world!
The Tucson, Arizona-based immigrant rights organization, Derechos
Humanos, has for years encouraged supporters to sit in courtrooms en
masse to observe Operation Streamline’s inhumane processing of
immigrants, often among Latin America’s most poor and oppressed and all
essentially victims of U.S. imperialism’s neo-colonial policies that
foster underdevelopment, poverty and exploitation. These “legal”
courtroom proceedings are indeed shocking to observe. Large groups of
men, 80-90 at a time, are shackled to each other to appear before a
judge without a lawyer or due process after having been compelled to
sign “plea bargain” agreements presented to them in English prior to
walking into the courtroom. They are then convicted, officially
designated as persons with a U.S. prison record, sentenced and quickly
ushered to private prisons. Operation Streamline and the criminalization
of immigrants has made record profits for corporations like the GEO
Group and Corrections Corporation of America. Without doubt no Biden
executive order will end either Operation Streamline, the
criminalization of immigrants or the private prison system.
Call to action
More than 160 immigration and criminal justice groups across the country
are calling for an end to Operation Streamline, mass sentencing and for
a suspension of unauthorized entry and reentry prosecution. They demand
the termination of DHS contracts with private prisons. Ten of thousands
of activists have protested the inhumane treatment of immigrants over
the last four years. They increasingly understand that yet another
government “task force” to study the “problem” is no remedy at all. The
capitalist system requires cheap labor, immigrant labor, prison labor
and non-union labor to survive and prosper. Immigrants and the poor are
tragically among those most likely to be infected with the COVID-19
virus, to be without heath care, to be forced back to work with the
least protection and to be constantly at the mercy of racist police and
the spectrum of border police, ICE and Homeland Security officials who
exist to keep them compliant, passive and subordinate. The vast
anti-racist and democratic rights protests of last summer inform us that
major fightback struggles are on the agenda today.
Join the fight for immigrant rights!
End all deportations! No human being is illegal!
Reunite families!
End Operation Streamline!
Abolish ICE!
Close all private profit prisons!
Open the borders! Empty the prisons filled with capitalism’s victims.
Join us!
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--
Charles Bukowski “For those who believe in God, most of the big
questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the
God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a
command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the
teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here
to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds
and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ―
Charles Bukowski