Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
June is Immigrant Heritage Month and this year it is celebrated in the middle of the most virulent attacks on immigrants who enrich this country through their work, their tax contributions, their labor in industries vital to our economy, their culture, their ingenuity, and their entrepreneurship.
But Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade ignores those contributions and paints all immigrants, with or without documents, as “criminals” who have to be removed from the country.
Time and time again it is confirmed that Trump’s net is cast beyond immigrants with criminal records. Last weekend, one of the people detained was an 18-year-old high school student from Milford, Massachusetts, Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, who was on his way to volleyball practice. The agents stopped the car, driven by the young man because their original target was Marcelo’s father, who was not traveling with him.
His detention has unleashed criticism and protests in the community and is one of the clearest examples that the north star of Trump’s immigration policy is cruelty. There is no distinction in who becomes a priority for deportation between a criminal and a high school student without a criminal record. He is a young man who came to the United States from Brazil as a child, he is an athlete and honors student in his high school, where he is also a member of the band.
Ximena Arias-Cristóbal, a 19-year-old Dreamer, was detained by ICE in Georgia, an experience that changed her forever, she said. In a virtual press conference organized by America’s Voice, the young woman related, “This isn’t just an immigration issue, it’s a human rights issue. People are being stripped of their dignity and basic freedoms, and it is something we cannot ignore.”
Similar cases repeat around the country, of immigrants who do not represent a danger to society, being detained and deported. Like the case of a waitress in Kennett, Missouri, a locality that supported Trump but now questions it. Carol, originally from Hong Kong, who has been living and working in this community for 20 years and has two sons and one daughter who are citizens, was detained and could be deported.
The community has turned out to defend Carol, signing petitions to stop her deportation and raising funds for the family. Carol told the journalist Greg Sargent on his podcast, The Daily Blast, “It surprised me a lot. I didn’t know that so many people loved me.”
In San Diego, immigration agents descended upon a restaurant to detain employees as if it were a military operation. The community intervened and the agents responded, throwing smoke bombs.
Agents also appear in immigration courts to detain immigrants who attend routine appointments, in large part people without criminal records who do not represent a threat to national security. They are easy targets, at a time when Trump wants to increase the number of detained and deported people.
Although many communities have raised their voices and the judicial branch has put the brakes on many of the president’s actions, we are dealing with an executive branch that openly defies judicial orders, has an alliance with the legislative branch, and is employing the very tactics of an autocracy.
The avalanche of actions of this administration, on immigration and other matters, tries to overwhelm and stun the public, activists, and groups that want to stop many of these unconstitutional and damaging initiatives that respect neither due process nor the rule of law.
To top it off, the reconciliation bill that the House of Representatives approved and now moves on to the Senate dramatically increases the budget of the immigration agencies, to expand the deportation machine and continue sowing terror in the community.
Not to mention the draconian measures that dramatically restrict funds to Medicaid, medical insurance for poor people, and food stamps, among other programs, to finance a juicy tax cut for multi-millionaires.
The inherent danger is that all of this is normalized, the same way that the falsehoods and lies that emanate from Trump and his subjects have been.
This Immigrant Heritage Month, the call to action is urgent.
The original Spanish version is here.
