From RefuseFascism.org

The Trump/Pence Regime on Immigrants

Poster Six in a series of seven posters

Updated August 26, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Immigrants are full human beings, not “illegals” or criminals, to be demonized, terrorized, hunted down, locked up, and thrown out.

The Trump/Pence Regime on Immigrants:

What they have done

• One of Trump’s first acts in office was an executive order targeting all 11 million undocumented immigrants for deportation, regardless of any supposed criminal record.
• Arrests of immigrants are up almost 40 percent from the record highs under Obama.
• Every day since Trump/Pence came into office, over 400 people have been ripped away from their lives, families, and jobs by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In June alone, ICE agents arrested 13,914 people.
• Trump officials claim the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gave temporary deportation relief to 750,000 mostly young immigrants (“DREAMers”) brought to the U.S. without documents when they were children is “under review”—but ICE agents have already arrested some DREAMers, like 22-year-old Daniela Vargas in Jackson, Mississippi.  A White House official said: “It’s enforcement first. Then we can get to all these other things.”
• In prepared remarks for an appearance at the U.S.-Mexico border, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote: “It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.... This is a new era. This is the Trump era.”
• Over the June 10 weekend, at least 114 Iraqi immigrants—nearly all Christians who face extreme persecution and threat of death if deported—were rounded up in SWAT-team type raids by ICE agents in Detroit.
• Trump’s Department of Homeland Security appointed the former director of the virulently xenophobic group FAIR as an “ombudsman” whose role is supposedly to advocate for immigrants whose citizenship or visa applications have run into problems.
• In late July, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced new policies depriving state and local law enforcement of federal funds unless they cooperate with federal immigration crackdowns, including allowing ICE agents access to local jails and notifying ICE at least 48 hours before incarcerated undocumented immigrants are set to be released.
• In front of hundreds of police in Long Island, Trump declared that he was getting rid of immigrant “animals” who were causing gang violence in their communities. “They’re going to jails,” Trump yelled, “and then they’re going back to their country. Or they’re going back to their country, period.”
• Trump pardoned ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio, infamous for mass torture and humiliation of immigrants in his jails and racial profiling of anyone suspected of being undocumented.

What they said they will do

• To step up anti-immigrant operations, the Trump/Pence regime plans to hire 5,000 more Border Patrol cops and 10,000 more ICE agents.
• Plans for Trump’s wall for the border with Mexico are going ahead, with the regime calling for the allocation of $1.6 billion to start construction, $23 billion for more boots on the ground, and other funds to build new detention prisons.
• Trump/Pence announced at end of June they will begin arresting parents and other relatives who hire “coyotes” to help their children cross the border into the U.S.
• Trump’s Pentagon is considering reneging on enlistment contracts for 1,000 foreign-born recruits without legal immigration status, who had been promised a path to citizenship for serving in the military—making them targets for deportation.
• Trump enthusiastically backed a Congressional bill that would cut the total numbers of legal immigrants and refugees admitted into the U.S. by half, effectively limited to well-educated English-speakers.
• The Department of Homeland Security extended the Temporary Protected Status for 58,000 Haitians—who had been driven out of their country because of devastating hurricanes and earthquakes—only to January 2018, at which time they may be forced back to a country that is wracked with a cholera epidemic on top of deep poverty.

What they have unleashed nationally

• Among the barrage of Republican anti-immigrant bills now in Congress is the Davis-Oliver Act which, among other things, would turn civil immigration infractions into criminal violations punishable by prison, expand immigration prisons, require local law enforcement to hand over to Department of Homeland Security a wide range of data on all immigrants who are arrested and suspected to be undocumented, and other draconian measures.
• States are also passing anti-immigrant laws; for example, the SB4 law signed by the Christian fascist Texas governor Abbott, requiring that local law enforcement detain a person they suspect of being undocumented until their immigration status is checked—the law effectively bans sanctuary cites and campuses in the state.
• Trump created a new government office under Homeland Security, called VOICE, which will “publicize” supposed crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. This anti-immigrant propaganda office is part of whipping up a climate of hatred and terror against immigrants.
• Republicans in Congress are introducing laws which would impose mandatory five-year minimum prison sentences for deportees caught re-entering the country.
• Tens of thousands of Central Americans, many of them children traveling alone, have entered the country over the last few years escaping brutality and death in their home countries and seeking asylum. The fascists are introducing bills to make asylum even more difficult to obtain.

• Among the victims of Trump-era anti-immigrant violence: Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an immigrant from India, who was murdered in February in Kansas by a white man shouting “Get out of my country” as he fired his gun; a Latino man in Lansing, Michigan, whose attackers yelled “Trump doesn’t like you” and stapled a note on his stomach saying “Go back to Mexico, wetback.”
• Nine immigrants were found dead and 17 in critical condition in a tractor trailer in San Antonio that had been turned into an oven because of the Texas heat.
• The attorney generals of 10 states and one governor wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding that if DACA program for “Dreamers” is not ended by September 5, they will sue.
• In the first seven months of 2017, 239 people died trying to cross the Mexico-U.S. border, a 17 percent increase from the same period last year—even as there are significantly fewer people trying to cross. The further militarization of the border is forcing immigrants to cross the border at more remote and dangerous areas like the Arizona desert.

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