On Wednesday, the Trump administration dealt a multitude of various hurdles, roadblocks and signals for increased spending in order to fulfill its agenda of militarizing our southern border regions.
We stand against these initiatives and encourage the public to exercise their voice at the ballot box in the upcoming election.
Administration uses Migrants to cause public confusion
A mass release of families in Arizona and claims of being overwhelmed by Central American immigrants before Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today is not a coincidence, but another manufactured crisis to incite fears and drive forth further spending initiatives that will further militarize our borders and dehumanize mixed status families.
Nielsen’s articulated concerns were part of what she termed as the “Resilience Agenda” whichis purportedly designed to address security threats such as money launderers and drug/human traffickers. Nielsen specifically noted the Flores Settlement, stating that in order to be in compliance of court mandates, there was a dramatic large scale release of undocumented families in Arizona.
Nielsen lamented the length of the Flores Settlement, requesting clearance“to keep families together” longer in detention. We reject the need to keep families indefinitely in detention and maintain that the mass release before the committee hearing was strategically planned to drive forth fear and manufactured perceived threats to the American people.
New barriers to paths to citizenship
Additionally, today marks the first day for public comment in the acceptance of changesin “public charge” policy that would greatly impact mixed status families and discourage themfrom seeking out housing, food and medical assistance if they seek pathways towards legalization.
It is clear that changes in public charge would prohibit accepting basic housing, nutritional and health services for families, which is discriminatory and cruel punishment to mixed-status immigrant communities. We are opposed to this cruel policy change proposed by the Trump administration and renounce any defense of said policy on the basis of the basic values of our nation.
Border Wall construction
Lastly, the subsequent DHS environmental waiver to install border wall gates in the RGV was inevitable with the manner in which DHS positioned policy issues to create an imminent threat where none actually existed.
We would like to reiterate that the activities carried out by the Trump administration in tandem with the Department of Homeland Security have been orchestrated to remove local autonomy of our own communities. It is a known tactic in public policy to identify “threats” and suspend the rights of the people in order to ram through unpopular policy initiatives such as the border wall.
We are skeptical that today’s activities did not have shared correlation to ram throughpolicy protections and were coordinated to create a specter of fear for the people of the United States prior to addressing a spending budget that includes building a $1.6 billion border wall/levee system in what would otherwise be known as a lame duck session before the primaries. If you are as appalled as we are regarding the course of events today and would like to do something to protect our communities, please remember to make your voice heard and vote in our upcoming elections.
I’m a naturalized US citizen who arrived as a child refugee. We were thankful to the US for accepting us. Michelle Seranno apparently does not know the difference between immigrants and migrants. Immigrants go through an immigration process and migrants don’t, they just violate US immigration laws.