The Trump administration has been
ignoring the Flores Agreement for a very long time now, which had stipulated
that migrant children were to be provided with humane living conditions and not
held more than 20 days in de facto concentration camps. But while there have
been many “outcries” in response, nothing has changed; Trump, Stephen Miller
and Ken Cuccinelli continue to defy the “law” they claim to be upholding. It
wasn’t until March 27 that the ICE—in response to a letter of complaint from
Rep. Jerry Nadler—even bothered to distribute adequate hand sanitizers and just
plain soap to the nearly 40,000 immigrants held in its detention centers. Oh
and by the way, in William Barr’s new
policy of releasing prisoners who pass an “algorithm” test that can be “gamed”
to release only white white-color criminals, only inmates convicted of violent
and sexual crimes, and those who are detained for immigration-related offenses,
are not eligible for early release. That’s right: undocumented workers
rounded-up at a poultry plant or in a strawberry field are just as “dangerous”
as native-born murderers and rapists, according to the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, to add on to the Trump
administration’s continuing record of law-breaking—which includes the “remain
in Mexico” policy and the outrageously disingenuous “safe third-party” policy
which makes it impossible for Central American migrants to make asylum claims
in this country—border agents are now using the coronavirus as an excuse to
implement a new policy: to detain all migrants on their way to a border station
to apply for asylum before they actually reach them to do so, and on an average
of 96 minutes have them back across the border after insuring that they are
duly noted as “criminals” for just crossing the border. It is a matter of
little question that the Trump administration will continue this policy as long
as they are allowed to get away with it long after the virus danger recedes.
Reports are that 15 percent of border crossers are allowed to remain in the U.S. to apply for asylum. Who are they? Mostly Indian (nearly 10,000 were detained crossing the southern border in 2018) and Chinese. For them, because they are the “favored” ones it is back to “catch and release.” One-in-six persons from Asia and India are in the country illegally, but according to ICE’s website, they claim not to have sufficient “resources" to spend their time tracking down non-Hispanic illegal immigrants, particularly "low priority" Asian immigrants with expired visas--such as the illegal immigrant who raped and murdered a 92-year-old Hispanic woman recently.
Reports are that 15 percent of border crossers are allowed to remain in the U.S. to apply for asylum. Who are they? Mostly Indian (nearly 10,000 were detained crossing the southern border in 2018) and Chinese. For them, because they are the “favored” ones it is back to “catch and release.” One-in-six persons from Asia and India are in the country illegally, but according to ICE’s website, they claim not to have sufficient “resources" to spend their time tracking down non-Hispanic illegal immigrants, particularly "low priority" Asian immigrants with expired visas--such as the illegal immigrant who raped and murdered a 92-year-old Hispanic woman recently.
Some people may still cling to
the idea of the “letter” of the law, but there is also the law of simple human
decency. We all know that Trump and Stephen Miller are racists, and that they
simply hate Hispanics. We know all about the Miller emails (and he still has a
job), and Trump jumpstarted his presidential campaign by claiming that except for
a “few” who maybe might be “good people,” Hispanic immigrants were all rapists
and murderers. The ICE, which has devolved into a thug organization, recently
released its 2019 report of the crimes allegedly committed by immigrants it
detained, or had been arrested for by local authorities but not convicted for;
the report did not breakdown by “ethnicity” or race (so that people would
assume that they were all Hispanic; one-quarter of illegal immigrants are non-Hispanic), but it did breakdown by type
of crime—and only 10 percent of those arrested by the ICE who had committed actual
crimes had engaged in what could legitimately be called violent crimes, and most
of those for various forms of “assault.” Even the numbers provided were subject
to question, since the people the ICE arrested were those who had been released
after serving prison terms; they did not refer to crimes that had actually been
committed in 2019, but anti-Hispanic immigrant types “interpreted” them for
that purpose anyways.
But in the Trump administration,
crime starts at the top, and “trickles-down” from there. A month ago U.S. District
Judge Randolph Moss issued a ruling stating that the Trump administration
violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act when Cuccinelli was installed as head
of the ICE. Moss found that the administration had invented a phony position
for Cuccinelli, and that the then “acting” head of the DHS, Kevin McAleenan, followed
orders (most likely from Miller) to illegally “appoint” Cuccinelli as his “first
assistant” ahead of the deputy DHS director, who was actually the “first
assistant” by law. Because he was unlawfully in his position, Moss invalidated
two of Cuccinelli’s directives. One of them allowed only a maximum of “one calendar
day” for an asylum seeker to have a “credible fear” interview; thus if an
asylum seeker showed up at 6 PM at a border station, they just had 6 hours to “prove”
their case, if border agents even bothered to allow them the opportunity. The
second directive denied asylum officers from granting extensions for that time
period “except in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” which of course is
subject to “interpretation.” Both directives remain in effect.
These outrageous, unlawful
directives have been denounced by immigrant advocates, but the media, lawmakers
and the public in general don’t really see these migrants as human beings, just
numbers and figures; they are from “shithole” countries anyways, “right”? 800
million Indians live in “shithole” conditions, more than in Latin America and
sub-Sahara Africa combined, but in this country it is assumed that they are all
“high-skill” workers, ignoring the impact of caste and “ethnic” prejudice and
discrimination there—and here. According to the Wall Street Journal, contrary to racist myth, 4.4 million
illegal immigrants pay federal taxes according to the IRS, and they are
not eligible for any federal benefits derived from it, including the
stimulus check--and the $500 per child even if their children are U.S.
citizens. Nor has
anyone called into question the way the judge’s ruling has been ignored not
just in the Cuccinelli case but in the way the Trump administration has ignored the rulings of many others. Cuccinelli, of course, is not going
anywhere, which only underlines the lawlessness of this administration.
No comments:
Post a Comment