September 12, 2018
While we gape in slack jawed horror at the demented antics of a racist moron who is dangerously unfit for office, his underlings are furiously erecting the edifice for genocide right in front of our faces. Almost 500 immigrant children remain in detention, separated from parents who may have already been deported, in blatant noncompliance with the court order for their unification and release issued almost two months ago, (Source: “Dems demand plan for reunifying 500 children still separated from families,” by Rafael Bernal, TheHill.com, 9/4/18). The lazy defiance of the federal government has the ACLU scrambling in remote Central American villages in an effort to locate these parents.
The DHS response has been to seek to tear up the 20 year old Flores settlement, which prohibits the long term detention of children, in order to incarcerate immigrant families indefinitely (Source: “Trump admin seeks to keep undocumented families in detention far longer,” by Tal Kopan, CNN.com, 9/6/18). Those who harbor any doubt about this administration’s goal need look no further than yesterday’s announcement that , DHS transferred $10 million dollars from the FEMA budget to ICE and CBP in order to build more detention centers for immigrants, at the height of hurricane season, (Source: “Dem Senator releases documents appearing to show DHS diverted $10M from FEMA to ICE,” by John Bowden, TheHill.com, 9/11/18). The echoes of Japanese internment are impossible to ignore.
Keep in mind that our government is doing this to people who are legally seeking asylum or guilty of a misdemeanor, at most. This exposes their true aim — to place insurmountable obstacles in the path of any non-white person seeking residence or citizenship in the United States. Lest we think that the government’s attack on people of color is limited to those seeking entry to the country, consider two insidious stories that show this administration’s determination to eject non-white people who are in this country legally.
Just yesterday, The United States Citizenship and Immigrations Services announced a new policy that would allow them to deny visa and green card applications on technicalities without giving applicants notice and a chance to correct errors. Nor can we overlook the recent report of the government denying passport renewals to American citizens of Latinx descent along the Texas/Mexico border, challenging their birthright citizenship. This dragnet has snared veterans and has resulted in some U.S. citizens being thrown into immigrant detention centers (Source: “U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question,” by Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post, 8/29/18).
This is why John Bolton threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions. He is not merely seeking to escape punishment for war crimes that we may have committed in Afghanistan, he is seeking carte blanche for the ones we are in the midst of committing. We must face it: November represents our last chance to keep our country from descending full throttle into authoritarian madness, but we won’t get there unless every one of us does everything we can to retake the House and even the Senate. Sign up with Swingleft.org to help flip a nearby district. Make phone calls for Beto O’Rourke and of course, VOTE. After all, if they get away with this coordinated assault on birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment, who do you think they’ll come after next?
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