Reality Check:

No, the Trump/Pence Regime’s Fascist “Muslim Ban” Has NOT Been Stopped—
It Is Already Being Implemented

May 21, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Many people are under the dangerously mistaken impression that Trump’s “Muslim Ban”—his executive order to stop or sharply cut back the flow of immigrants and refugees from predominantly Muslim countries—has been defeated or at least is “hung up in the courts.” But the reality is the Trump/Pence regime has been actively implementing their plan.

People from Iraq and Syria are two of the main groups targeted by Trump. Millions have been desperately fleeing for their lives from these countries devastated by U.S. invasion or by the machinations of multiple imperialist powers and reactionary forces. So how many refugees has the U.S allowed in from Syria since the start of this year? 11! From Iraq? 36! Since October 2017, only about 2,100 Muslim refugees from all countries have been let in—about 10% of the rate before Trump.^*

The Trump/Pence regime has accomplished this by escalating the already extreme “vetting” of refugee applicants. All overseas refugees now have to provide addresses and phone numbers going back ten years, along with social media and email accounts, all of which is then “investigated” by U.S. law enforcement. Vetting for refugees from targeted Muslim countries is even harsher. This creates huge backlogs, slowing the refugee flow to a trickle.

It’s not just Muslims—only 13,051 refugees from all countries have been admitted since October, 2017; at that rate there will be about 24,000 total this year, compared to around 80,000 in the last year before Trump. Trump’s virulent racist hatred of Central and South American immigrants and refugees—who he has repeatedly referred to as “rapists,” “criminals,” and “animals”—is now unofficial U.S. policy.

Under international law, the U.S. is supposed to admit any asylum seekers who make it to the border and to grant them a hearing. But the Trump/Pence regime is openly turning these hearings into rubber stamps aimed at throwing people out quickly. And instead of releasing people into the community while awaiting their hearings, the regime is now striving to imprison as many people as possible… and taking away their children, with plans to hold these children on military bases.

Even before Trump, U.S. immigration and refugee policy was cruel and heartless, an indictment of the utter inhumanity and worthlessness of this whole capitalist-imperialist system. The U.S. empire has long been striding across the world unleashing wars and ripping off countries, and then acting like great “humanitarians” when they allowed a few of their victims to move here—where the immigrants and refugees continued to be exploited and oppressed. The openly white supremacist, Christian fascist, and rabidly “America First” Trump/Pence regime is taking things to a whole new level, with genocidal implications.

All this is a powerful reason, among many, that we need a revolution to overthrow this system. To all those outraged by what is happening: you need to support and work toward that revolution, and right now join with the Revolution Club in spreading the word of this revolution as we fight the power, and transform the people, FOR revolution. As a crucial part of working for that revolution as well as uniting millions to defeat the moves of the regime in power to bring down even worse horrors for the people around the world, everyone should join with Refuse Fascism to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime through mass, sustained non-violent protests.

* Figures from New York Times article “Apartments Are Stocked, Toys Donated. Only the Refugees Are Missing,” May 16, 2018.  [back]

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