Washington, DC – The Trump administration continues to intensify its attacks on immigrants and refugees, aiming to stoke fears and make the lives of immigrant families so unbearable that they “self deport;” purging long-settled immigrants through unsparing detentions and deportations and laying groundwork for broader random mass deportations; and turning America’s back on our proud tradition as a place of refuge by blocking predominantly Muslims from entry into the U.S.
Further, through the chilling arrest and detention of Palestinian activist and Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration also is widening the net, seeking to chill dissenting speech and “use immigration enforcement as a tool to suppress” free speech, as Khalil’s attorney stated. As Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute, told Politico: “the ‘political deportation’ hearkens back to ‘repressive moments in America’s history,’ such as the McCarthy era.”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The Trump administration is trying to redefine who gets to be an American and remake the nation in MAGA’s preferred image. Their escalating and extreme actions include their relentless effort to purge immigrants, block refugees, and sow fear, but also include the use of the unchecked executive power of the state to wield immigration law and related threats as a weapon to chill dissent and free speech. This ever widening net of who might be targeted is by design. Fear and cruelty, as always, are the point.”
Among the many recent developments underscoring their escalating attacks on immigration and broader democratic principles include:
- Trumpeting the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and implications for legal residents – see Tom Homan’s alarming comments that ICE will ‘absolutely’ deport legal Immigrants”
- Targeting law-abiding immigrants for detention and deportation – as AV has been pointing out, the Trump team isn’t going after the “worst of the worst.” As NBC news reports, “of the people deported in February, roughly half did not have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, the data showed.”
- Resurrecting family detention – and reopening the wounds of family separation in process, including by restarting family detention at the Dilley and Karnes family detention centers.
- Stripping healthcare access from DACA recipients
- Restarting a travel ban, predominantly targeting non-white refugees and immigrants
- Replacing the CBP One app that facilitated legal immigration and reduced border pressures with a CBP Home ‘Self-Deportation’ app that will only compound chaos and cruelty
