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:
The swearing in of Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States was a Category 5 hurricane, as was to be expected — and I say that with personal knowledge, having lived through various cyclones. That anxiety and certainness of knowing that the devastation will be immense, especially for immigrants and their citizen and permanent resident relatives. But also for the country’s economy, for our moral fiber, and for our democracy.
Trump wasted no time in activating his reign of terror against immigrants and, like any good, self-aspiring autocrat, he wants to govern by decree and abuse his powers. For example, he declared a “national emergency” at the border with Mexico in order to deploy soldiers to stop the “invasion” of undocumented people, despite the sustained reduction of arrests at the southern border in recent months.
He also initiated the process to deny birthright citizenship to babies born in the United States to undocumented parents. More than twenty states, cities, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to stop the implementation of the order, calling it unconstitutional.
Standing out among the immigration executive orders includes re-establishing the “Remain in Mexico” program that requires people seeking asylum to remain in this neighboring country while waiting for their appointment before the United States immigration courts. He took other measures to undermine the asylum system: he suspended the resettlement of refugees for at least four months. He eliminated the application of CBP One, which permitted people seeking asylum to request appointments through a virtual process, expressly to avoid chaos at the border. The application was instrumental in reducing border crossings under the outgoing administration of the Democrat, Joe Biden.
“Remain in Mexico” made the crisis at the border worse, since thousands of immigrants, from individuals to entire families, were sleeping outdoors in inhumane conditions due to the lack of shelters. Many were victims of crime upon being at the mercy of drug trafficking cartels.
Trump will also put an end to the policy of “catch and release,” which permits immigrants to be freed into the United States while awaiting their hearings in the immigration courts.
As part of his plan to end birthright citizenship, he is putting obstacles in the way, for example, so that the pertinent agencies don’t issue passports or Social Security cards unless at least one of the young person’s parents is a citizen or permanent resident. Trump knows that he cannot eliminate the 14th Amendment with the stroke of a pen, which requires a constitutional amendment, and that his plan will be challenged before the courts. But he wants to show the MAGA movement that he is “complying” with his campaign promises.
Trump invoked the Foreign Enemies Act to designate the cartels and certain gangs as terrorist organizations. The 1798 law, which has only been applied three times and only in times of war, permits the detention, relocation, or deportation of nationals of countries who are enemies of the United States for national security reasons.
About deportations, Trump declared that “all illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” He cancelled a memo that prohibits operations in “sensitive” locations like churches, schools, courts, and shelters.
Trump eliminated the humanitarian parole program for migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti.
The executive orders reflect the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which provided Trump and his team with a roadmap for a highly extremist agenda, not only on immigration but on matters like energy, education, labor rights, civil rights, and other areas.
What’s terrible is not just that Republicans control the executive and legislative branches, and that they have the balance of the judiciary leaning in their favor. They also had the first Trump administration as a practice session, and this time these measures are written to try to survive court appeals.
The immigration extremism is the tip of the iceberg in this administration, as the outgoing president, Biden, issued preventative pardons to his relatives and public officials in the face of fear that they could be prosecuted and accused of “something” because Trump considers them political enemies. And while Trump labels immigrants as “criminals,” ironically he pardoned 1,500 of the people accused and convicted in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Like a major Category 5 Hurricane, Trump and his extremist policies promise severe damage that will test our resilience, our humanity, our Constitution, and the neutrality of our judicial system.
The original Spanish version is here.