Monday, December 19, 2016

Trump’s Deportation Machine


If his transition team is any indication, Trump will pursue a policy of mass deportation to drive a wedge between workers.

By David L. Wilson, Jacobin
December 19, 2016

Like so much about the incoming administration, president-elect Donald Trump’s intentions for undocumented immigrants remain unclear. But he seems likely to go forward with a substantial program of “getting them out of our country.”

In his first major post-election interview, Trump announced that he plans to deport two or even three million immigrants “here illegally,” “people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers.” In reality, as Vox’s Dara Lind explains, there simply aren’t two or three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records, much less gang members and drug dealers.

The people Trump would expel would mostly be residents with green cards who arrived as children and ended up with criminal convictions, immigrants who returned here to reunite with loved ones despite a prior deportation, and, more likely than not, thousands of undocumented workers swept up in raids, like the restaurant employees arrested recently in Buffalo.[...]

Read the full article:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/trump-undocumented-immigration-ice-sessions/

Correction: The article states that “[t]he last general to head the immigration enforcement apparatus was Joseph Swing.” The last general in this position was Leonard Chapman, who was Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization from 1973 to 1977.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Hundreds of Students Report Bullying, Threats and Attacks in Weeks After the Election

In the three days after the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) received more than 200 reports of hate-based harassment and intimidation.

By Victoria Law, Truthout
December 1, 2016

Tayz Enriquez, a senior at a high school in Greeley, Colorado, convinced herself that the day after the 2016 election would be a normal one. But that morning, as she walked through the school's hallways, she heard students asking others, "You're still here?"

"To be fair, I'm not sure if they were joking," she told Truthout. "But it's still not OK to say." None of the comments were directed at Enriquez, whose parents are originally from Mexico, but she felt the tension in the air. Then came the last class of the day. Enriquez was already in her seat when another student, a white boy, walked in and loudly said, "Trump 2016! Build the wall!"[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38561-hundreds-of-students-report-bullying-threats-and-attacks-in-weeks-after-the-election

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Cities Vow to Fight Trump on Immigration, Even if They Lose Millions

By Jennifer Median and Jess Bigwood, New York Times
November 27, 2016

LOS ANGELES — Here in Los Angeles, where nearly half of the city’s residents are Latino, Mayor Eric Garcetti has vowed to do everything he can to fight widespread deportations of illegal immigrants.

In New York, with a large and diverse Latino population, Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged not to cooperate with immigration agents. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has declared that it “will always be a sanctuary city.”

Across the nation, officials in sanctuary cities are gearing up to oppose President-elect Donald J. Trump if he follows through on a campaign promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants. They are promising to maintain their policies of limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents.

In doing so, municipal officials risk losing millions of dollars in federal assistance for their cities that helps pay for services like fighting crime and running homeless shelters.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/us/cities-vow-to-fight-trump-on-immigration-even-if-they-lose-millions.html

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Resisting Donald Trump: Getting prepared to fight immigration raids and deportations

Organizers say now is the time to prepare for resistance

Sarah Lazare, Alternet via Salon.com
November 27, 2016

After the election, we’ve been asking folks to prepare,” Armando Carmona, spokesperson for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told AlterNet over the phone from Los Angeles. “We don’t want to get stuck in fear, but we need to be prepared, and be prepared for the worst.”

Carmona is one of many organizers across the country reeling from the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, following his campaign of racist incitement against immigrants, refugees, Muslims and the Black Lives Matter movement. Already, Trump has appointed white nationalist Steve Bannon as chief White House strategist. Jeff Sessions, who was determined too racist to serve as a federal judge under the Reagan administration, is Trump’s choice for attorney general. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a war hawk who says he is “open” to torture, is Trump’s designate for national security adviser. The anti-immigrant hardliner Kris Kobach is just one of Trump’s alarming picks to lead his transition team.

While it is difficult to predict what this bevy of right appointees will do once they take the White House in January, undocumented people — or people merely perceived to be undocumented — have reason to be concerned.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/27/resisting-donald-trump-getting-prepared-to-fight-immigration-raids-and-deportations_partner/

Friday, December 2, 2016

The Limits of Sanctuary Cities

By Alex Kotlowitz,  The New Yorker
November 23, 2016

At a news conference last week, Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, tried to reassure undocumented immigrants living in the city. “To all those who are, after Tuesday’s election, very nervous and filled with anxiety, you are safe in Chicago,” he said. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had consistently promised to deport immigrants living in this country illegally, but Emanuel, along with other big-city mayors, including Bill de Blasio, in New York, asserted that their cities—so-called sanctuary cities—would remain safe havens against federal deportation actions. As Emanuel went on to declare, “Chicago has in the past been a sanctuary city.... It always will be a sanctuary city.”

What these mayors didn’t say, however, was how their municipalities would be able to prevent the federal government from exerting its authority—and what they mean by the term “sanctuary city.”

The American movement to provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants dates back thirty-four years, to the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, where the Reverend John Fife announced that his church would protect refugees fleeing the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-limits-of-sanctuary-cities

Thursday, December 1, 2016

To resist a Trump presidency, ask: “What would the abolitionists do?”

Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.... What would the abolitionists do? They would gather in huge numbers every time federal agents came for a Hispanic honors student. They would compel those agents to use force if they wanted to proceed.

By Linda Hirshman, Washington Post
November 18, 2016

In the days since the election, there have been many calls for anti-Trump forces to remain resolute in their resistance. “If the presidency of Donald Trump inspires anything, it should be a fierce spirit of opposition,” Leon Wieseltier wrote last weekend in these pages. “The proper response is steely resolve to wage the fight of our lives,” Jonathan Chait wrote in New York magazine.

But what can anti-Trump liberals and progressives actually do? With his party in control of the White House and Congress, and with Trump about to tip the balance of the Supreme Court, it’s easy to despair over how little leverage the Democrats seem to have.

One episode from history reveals reasons to hope.[...]

Read the full op-ed:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/to-resist-a-trump-presidency-ask-what-would-the-abolitionists-do/2016/11/18/2615a136-a767-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html