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:
This week, the Donald Trump administration offered yet another example of the cruelty and cynicism of its immigration policy by detaining—with the intent to deport—the father of a U.S. sailor who has been serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln for nine months as part of the war with Iran.
“This is heartbreaking for me. I don’t know how I can mentally continue working 12+ hour days knowing that my dad is somewhere, possibly treated like a criminal,” wrote sailor Joshua Avilés on social media.
His father, Luis Manuel Avilés Roa of Nicaragua, was detained as he was about to take his car to a mechanic in Key West, Florida. The man has lived and worked in the United States for 19 years; he has a work permit and a pending application to adjust status through his son’s military service.
But none of that prevented his detention, just as it has not prevented the detention of other family members of service members. As part of its campaign to increase the number of detainees and deportees, the Trump administration no longer considers military service a mitigating factor when detaining and deporting family members of service members.
Media outlets later reported that ICE released Avilés Roa.
But an investigation by the Associated Press news agency (AP) found that the Trump administration has detained more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members and, so far, has deported at least six of them.
This campaign, spearheaded by presidential adviser Stephen Miller, has many tentacles, and the attacks on immigrants are diverse and simultaneous.
For example, the AP itself reported that “The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States.” “If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges,” the news agency wrote.
Furthermore, in yet another sign that it will not back down, the Trump administration published a regulation to set a fee of $103,265 for H-1B visas for specialized workers in technology, research, and education.
A similar plan was blocked in court last year, but that was a temporary order set to expire in September, which Trump now wants to make permanent.
Trump and his administration argue that companies hiring foreign nationals on H-1B visas do not want to hire Americans. Still, the companies insist that they cannot find workers here with specific skills and that the visas allow them to bring the best talent to the United States.
But that matters little to Trump. His interest lies in meeting daily arrest and deportation quotas to fulfill his promise of carrying out the largest mass deportation in history. Unable to achieve this through raids alone, he has set out to strip millions of people of their work permits and protections, whether by canceling Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or by undermining asylum laws and other protections, such as humanitarian parole.
In fact, on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Trump a victory in his fight to restrict mail-in voting, arguing—without evidence—that widespread fraud involves non-citizens voting in elections. Another link to immigration.
The ruling, however, is not an endorsement of Trump’s proposal, as it does not address whether it is legal or not.
Instead, it blocks the decision by Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who prevented Trump’s executive order from taking effect after a coalition of 23 states—most of them governed by Democrats—and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to stop its implementation.
The Supreme Court concluded that the states’ challenge was premature and clarified that future lawsuits may arise.
The Brennan Center for Justice has explained that Trump’s plan “orders the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in every state, using incomplete and unreliable federal data sources.” “If implemented, the executive order would inject chaos into our elections, block eligible American citizens from voting, undermine voter privacy, and expose election officials and others to criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs,” states an analysis by the organization.
The fact is that Trump’s attacks on immigrants come from all sides.
The original Spanish version is here.
