To clarify for those who might think, wrongly, that this is new.
Kids have been detained - incarcerated- for years. Family detention is a blight on our national consciousness.
What's new is separating children from parents.
But both are evil and we must do better.
I will not give Obama a pass for letting this happen even while he did DACA and provisional waivers.
He bought the xenophobic narrative of the parasitic immigrant.
They're refugees. He blew it. Hard.
Trump has added a new level of cruelty.
I want to thank @SenJeffMerkley for helping bring this to national attention.
The picture of kids in cages is iconically representative of the nativist nonsense peddled by the anti-immigrant movement (FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA) for decades.
This picture is iconic too. The parents. Shackled, charged with a mere misdemeanor, subjected to mass trials that mock norms of due process.
When they plead for lenience, their words often qualify them for asylum.
Asylum. That's LEGAL IMMIGRATION.
Take a good look. Burn it into your mind.
Remember the officials voted in who allowed this to happen.
This is mass incarceration, immigration style. Different laws, same result.
Hard not to notice all the brown faces.
Every black leader and influencer I listen to sees this going on and immediately calls it for what it is: legislated white supremacy.
We could learn a few things from our black brothers and sisters.
As I told @julito77 earlier today, so many of these policies are easily explained (even predicted) if we just assume white supremacy is driving it.
School to prison pipeline?
Debtor prison?
Felon disenfranchisement?
@FAIRImmigration, founded by Dr. John Tanton, is a mouthpiece of white nationalist rhetoric. But it's more than that: it injects its foul ideology into actual policy.
One (latest) example: Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. Read what a federal judge found:
On p29 of the decision, the Court gives yet another example of Acting Secy Elaine Duke, who is supposed to make a dispassionate assessment of conditions on the ground in determining TPS eligibility, said "this conclusion [to end TPS] is the result of an America first view..."
Curious, because America was founded on ideals of welcoming the forcibly displaced. I'm not sure what "American first" has to do with terminating TPS.
If the White House is influencing the decision, we have a problem, because the White House has made A LOT of racist statements.
Feeling drained after the #KavanaughHearings? I've been thinking about why. Objectively, there are far worse injustices going on even as Kavanaugh spoke.
Sure, there's the out of sight out of mind factor. Most injustice goes unreported; yesterday's hearing was not that.
But there was something distinctive about the hearing. It was a rare exposure of several different vectors of underreported injustice, concentrated into one episode.
We hear stories of sexual assault all the time. Or oppression. Abuser protection. Entitlement. Privilege. Character assassination. Lip service to the oppressed. Trauma. Legalized discrimination.
Rarely do we get to see it all in one day, before hundreds of millions of people
This administration continues to target aspiring American communities, one by one. DACA revocation, TPS de-designation, changing asylum laws, the Muslim Ban...
Once again, the administration regurgitates rhetoric spewed by nativists, and with H-4 work permit revocation, they get an added "bonus" - getting to undo something Obama put in place. Yes, this is what they base their policies on.
But I also wanted to say something about the new public charge rule that greatly expands ineligibility grounds for green cards, which will also play into this attack on the Indian-American community.
This is an attempt to backdoor the RAISE Act into law.
Well this is curious. Apparently @FAIRImmigration believes I am a paid operative of "state-owned propaganda outlet" @ajplus to meddle in 2018 midterm elections.
Why? For this video I did calling FAIR out as driven by white nationalism:
They accuse me of "spreading malicious disinformation in what is a clear attempt to influence the upcoming midterm election." I'm flattered they think so highly of me.
Entirely different, of course, from FAIR's statements influencing lawmakers here:
More effective than any physical barrier on the southern border. Keeps people out before they can even begin their journey.
You can't fly over it or tunnel underneath it. You can't sneak around it, either. And it's much, much harder to tear down.
It's the combined bureaucracy of several different agencies that keeps people out. Physical barriers are a small slice of the pie of exclusion.
But with due process, there is sometimes a way through. Perfectly legal, not unlike carving out a nice little door for yourself.
Today, a green card for our North African client was approved after a 4 year delay. He had been apart from his US citizen wife since 2013, and even though they followed the law to the T, repeatedly told they just needed "one more thing," the visa remained stuck.