Lily Benavides: ICE Attacks Giving Rise to True United Front
by Lily Benavides
Talking about immigration is not an easy task, especially if you don’t know what you are talking about. Immigration is one of the most racist, corrupt systems in the United States since the beginning of its creation.
Every administration, Democrats and Republicans alike, have added more obstacles for people to achieve a legal immigration status either because of new procedures or because of the prices going up. It is common to hear people saying “wait in line” but the wait could be 10-20 years depending on the case and the amount of money spent is humongous. Imagine a low income family of four having to pay thousands of dollars to become green card holders for years while living in limbo and then paying the same to become citizens. That is impossible for many.
Immigration is a business. The dire need for people to get a status means more money for them like it’s the case with TPS holders who have been here for decades paying every 18 months an amount of money that has increased with the years, and that has not given them a permanent status. DACA on the other hand was used as a last minute recourse by the Obama’s administration to be reelected. DACA recipients also have to pay to renew their permit and have not been able to obtain a permanent status. Both DACA and TPS are constantly threatened with being dismantled.
Many factors have contributed to the chaos the immigration system is now such as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE under George W. Bush, and the legislation known as a “bed mandate” or “bed quota:” which required the detention centers to have certain amount of detainees for which the federal branch would pay for each individual for every day they are detained. This combined with prisons becoming private have made it what it is today. “Secure Communities” was another contributing factor. State and local law enforcement departments would collaborate with ICE by letting them know when an undocumented immigrant was freed from jail so ICE would pick them up and arrest them. That was an agreement between ICE and police departments known as 287g and for which those (police depts) were receiving federal funds.
TRUMP’S FIRST ADMINISTRATION
Then came the 1st Trump administration who tried to use federal funds to continue building a wall at the border which it ended up just replacing outdated or dilapidated parts of the wall. He also banned refugees from several Muslim countries and applied the separation of families to immigrants that were crossing the border and even to those who were applying for asylum. Children were taken away from parents and put in foster homes and many disappeared and were not found. It’s said that the separation of families really started under the Obama administration but the truth is, it was under the first Trump administration. However, Obama has been named the “deporter-in-Chief” for having the higher number of people deported, more than any other president in the history of the USA.
BIDEN SOLVES NOTHING
Biden tried to reverse some of the Trump administration rules and signed an executive order to protect DACA recipients. He also created a parole program for immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela, one last decision used to try to save the Democratic Party for the upcoming elections. At the end of his administration he sided with private ICE detention centers like the one in Elizabeth, the last one in NJ, that immigrant rights groups and advocates were trying to close down.
TRUMP II LIKE GESTAPO
Now we have another Trump administration which is acting like the Gestapo detaining people of color in every corner, breaking into houses and taking people from cars while using the very violent ICE officers combined with other DHS derivatives and even hiring mercenaries to do the job. Trump is using politics as well to detain foreign students and green card holders, like Mahmoud Khalil, that support the fight of Palestine against the genocide committed by Israel.
This area of Trump’s policy – the attack on foreign students and others who politically dissent from US pro-Israel doctrine and policy is for the most part being blindly supported by the preponderance of the Democratic Party led “Hands Off” anti-Trump rallies. Democrats are at the forefront in promoting state level codification of IHRA fraudulent definition of pro-Palestine advocacy as anti-Semitism. This is certainly the case in NJ where the overwhelming majority of NJ’s Democratic Party elected legislators are in lock step with their Trump supporting Republican legislative counterparts pushing IHRA into NJ state law. All of the state level IHRA laws that have been passed and are proposed in states across the US are based on an executive order calling for such IHRA codification from Trump’s first term.
US CITIZENS TO BE DEPORTED?
Trump is currently talking about a plan to even detain and deport US citizens which might have started already when Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, of Mayan descent, was held by ICE for 24 hours even after the judge had proof of his citizenship. On another case, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was taken, more like kidnapped, by ICE and sent to El Salvador “supposedly” for being part of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that hasn’t been proven, same as other innocent men that were sent there. Dems trying to show up as the saviors have traveled to El Salvador to see if they can bring him back to US but Bukele said “absolutely not” and who would after being paid so much money? Bukele, a fascist of Palestinian descent, has made a deal with Trump, for six million dollars, to hold deported immigrants in his hellhole prison where there’s a possibility of never seeing the light of the day again. The six million was never authorized by US congress suggesting that the payment, which Trump is offering to increase, itself is illegal.
There is also a detention facility in Panama near the Darien jungle in the border with Colombia where more than a 100 Asian immigrants from different countries are detained without any hope of getting out anytime soon. Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama are complicit in this attack on the integrity of immigrants and asylum seekers. For the moment federal judges have been able to stop Trump’s draconic immigration measures for some time while all the agents of the current administration want to continue going above the law to ransack the little democracy that is left in this country.
This is all happening while many US citizens, including elected officials, do not recognize how the USA is at fault for the massive migration in the last years from South and Central America due to the foreign policies and “fair trades” that have left Latin American countries without economic stability and even without natural resources. It has also contributed to the fact that the United States have intervened in the governments of such countries, have carried out coups and placed corrupt governments that agree with their colonizing policies.
The ICE attacks continue to increase in intensity as under the guise of the crackdown ICE is being politicized further with attacks on visiting students, permanent residents and visa holders and others ostensibly over the views of students who have challenged US support for genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza. The political roundups are similar in M.O. to the intensified attack on the entire immigrant community in that targets are being arrested without charge, often disappeared temporarily – their whereabouts unknown often for days, shipped 1000s of miles to states that are more hostile legally toward immigrants and the attempt is being made to remove them all expeditiously without due process.
ICE REPRESSION GIVES RISE TO A TRUE UNITED FRONT OF PALESTINE ADVOCATES AND SEASONED PRO-IMMIGRANT ACTIVISTS
The silver lining is that two oppressed and repressed sectors of our communities – both having seasoned street activist fighters – are being forced into unity from similar circumstances. Both of these sectors are familiar and wary of how Democratic Party will try to use their challenges as an electoral springboard but never deliver improvement.
Immigrant reform has been promised for decades and many believed it was actually going to occur under Obama whose true legacy was to be widely known as the Deporter In Chief. The Democrats at their Hands Off rallies are not focused upon the politically pro-Israel supporting aspect of the attacks on dissenters – they neglect to mention it as did Cory Booker neglect to mention their plight during his performative 24 plus speaking stunt.
While the Hands Off and other Democratic Party fronting groups want to limit opposition and channel into voting – and away from action to stop the repression now as it occurs – the Palestine support sectors and the families and supporters of the victims of the Trump ICE attack on communities across the nation will lead to a true unified front that recognizes the common struggle of the Palestinian people and humanitarians that support them and oppressed immigrant workers now being rounded up and sent to death camps in other nations 1000s of miles away . These sectors are not served by future elections – only by action to stop the repression immediately – something the Democrats do not offer at all, or Republicans for that matter
They are bringing us together like never before!
