Yesterday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tried to hype the false narrative that the “border is out of control” in order to justify the Trump Administration’s radical agenda. This despite the fact that unauthorized border crossings are at an historic, 46-year low.
In fact, what’s out of control are CBP and ICE. A series of disturbing reminders this week make clear why these agencies need enhanced accountability and oversight, not a blank check.
- A medical student with DACA is fighting her father’s deportation. Read this powerful Huffington Post piece by Belsy Garcia about her Dad, entitled, “My Dad Helped Put Me Through Med School. He May Be Deported Before I Graduate.”
- The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a Bay Area man named Carlos Alfredo Rueda Cruz was roughed up by ICE agents in Sacramento and then, suffering from related injuries, was denied prescribed pain medication while in an ICE detention facility.
- In Texas, a CBP agent has been arrested and charged with the murder of a woman and small child found near the Rio Grande.
- NBC News has the disturbing video of border patrol agents trying to dump an injured man on the Mexican side of the border, because he “looks” Mexican.
- Part one of a new deeply-reported joint investigation published by the Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica details how the Philadelphia regional office of ICE is arresting, detaining, and deporting indiscriminately and is driving up its enforcement numbers by focusing on immigrants with no criminal record.
- The libertarian Cato Institute has launched a new online initiative called, “Checkpoint: America,” detailing how CBP agents operating at internal checkpoints within 100 miles of the border “routinely violate the constitutional rights of citizens and others who are forced to pass through them to get to work, go to the store, or make it to a vacation destination in the American Southwest.”
According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
Trump’s war on immigrants is being carried out by the likes of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Attorney General Jeff Sessions with little regard for our tradition of welcoming newcomers and no regard for the fate of immigrant families, including those with U.S. citizen children. This all-out assault is not normal. This is not who we are. This is not what the American people want. The day of reckoning will come. History will not be kind to those who order and carry out these attacks. Let us work towards a new Congress that will do what this Congress refuses to do: exercise meaningful oversight in order to hold these officials accountable for their actions.
