Trump's fascist actions continue

The list of cruelties that the Trump administration is inventing in its zeal to punish migrants and their children keeps getting longer and more extreme.

This week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that, beginning on Oct. 29, U.S. government employees and members of the armed services who are overseas will no longer be considered to be “residing” in the United States.

Shockingly, that means that, for some service members, if their children are born overseas, those children are not automatically granted citizenship. They would have to apply for it.

The announcement, which came a week after President Trump mused about ending birthright citizenship, caused widespread confusion and consternation among military and diplomatic groups.

“Forcing [members] to go through bureaucratic hurdles for no apparent reason, just to get their children naturalized as American citizens, does a great disservice to people who have dedicated their lives to serving their country,” tweeted American Foreign Service Association President Eric Rubin. “Frankly, it is hard to explain and deeply worrying.”

CNN quoted a Navy officer who said the policy was causing anxiety among military spouses. “You should go onto a spouse Facebook page and see the freakouts,” the officer said.

It wasn’t the only new policy that came to light this week, in a major departure from longstanding policy, critically ill children who have been granted special status to get medical treatment in the United States are being told to leave the country within 33 days.

Bess Levin wrote in Vanity Fair: “When you’ve already separated families, thrown children in cages, and held them in conditions that “could be compared to torture facilities,” it’s a bit of a challenge to come up with your next act. Evil takes creativity, and once you’ve forced migrant kids to go weeks without a shower or change of clothes and fed them expired food, it’s tough to continue nailing those Hitler comparisons. Somehow, though, the Trump administration always rises to the occasion.”

This policy was also hatched by the USCIS, the same agency that came up with the new idea for the children of diplomats and members of the armed services. The agency is now headed by Ken Cuccinelli, who has been dubbed the “new Stephen Miller” by The Atlantic. Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general, is a longtime anti-immigrant, anti-LBGTQ ideologue and “birther” who once proposed legislation to make speaking Spanish on the job a fireable offense and defended a state law prohibiting sodomy.

Lately, he’s been a reliable Trump cheerleader on cable TV.

“Cuccinelli may well have been created in a Trump-branded petri dish,” wrote Elaina Plott for The Atlantic. “He’s spent decades advocating for far-right positions on a variety of social issues, and the 50-year-old practicing Catholic enjoys widespread support among conservative evangelicals.”

Thousands of children, including those with leukemia, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, could be affected by this new USCIS rule. Some of them will likely die as a result.

Mariela Sanchez, a native of Honduras, told The Associated Press that her 16-year-old son “would be dead” if he had not gotten permission to be treated in Boston for cystic fibrosis. His sister already died of the disease. Now, he is being told to leave.

“Can anyone imagine the government ordering you to disconnect your child from life-saving care – to pull them from a hospital bed – knowing that it will cost them their lives?” said Anthony Marino, who is representing immigrant families at the Irish International Immigrant Center in Boston. Yes, we can imagine.

We’re battling the administration in the courts on numerous immigration policies.

Last week, we filed a class action suit on behalf of migrants who are being denied health care and disability accommodations while being held in inhumane detention centers. Through our Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, we’re providing free representation to migrants held at some of the largest detention facilities in the South.

We’re also representing migrants in administrative complaints against the federal government to help them receive compensation for the physical, mental and emotional harm caused by the administration’s family separation policy.

We don’t know what the Trump administration will do next.

But, over these last two years and seven months, if there is one thing we’ve learned, it’s to expect the worst.

The Editors

P.S. Here are some other pieces we think are valuable this week:

Donald Trump shares campaign video featuring image used by white supremacist group from Newsweek

Tanya Gersh was the target of a neo-nazi ‘troll storm.’ Then she fought back—and was awarded $14 million from Esquire

A child bumps her head. What happens next depends on race from The New York Times

How Online Hate Speech Spreads Around the Globe from US News & World Report

What do students learn about slavery? It depends where they live from The Washington Post

Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Public to demand that All Elected Officials Address Issues of War, Militarism and U.S. Intervention

https://blackallianceforpeace.com/bapstatements

Immediate Release

Contact: 856 219-0203 or

Info@blackallianceforpeace.com

Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Public to demand that All Elected Officials Address Issues of War, Militarism and U.S. Intervention

August 22, 2019, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) believes that along with the issue of climate change, the interlocking issues of war, militarism and normalized, illegal U.S. interventionism represent the main existential threats to global humanity. However, both mainstream elite political parties and the corporate media continue to minimize the impacts of morally indefensible and lawless interventions by the U.S. state, as well as the militarization of police forces nationwide and the obscene theft of public resources in the form of the Pentagon’s annual budget.  

During the series of Democrat party “debates,” a mere 22 minutes were devoted to these issues under the rubric of foreign policy.

To address this dereliction of public responsibility, BAP is launching a petition campaign and candidate pledge process to demand that these issues receive the critical attention they deserve.  Going straight to the public, BAP is asking that the public demand that their representatives and all candidates for office address these issues by adopting a set of demands that we believe represents a commitment to a “people(s)-centered human right framework.”

The BAP petition is calling on the public and all endorsing and participating organizations to demand that every candidate running for elected office, at every level of government, sign candidate our pledge form that commits them to:  

Support efforts to cut the military budget by 50% as a first step in reducing military spending, and reallocate government expenditures to fully fund social programs to realize individual and collective human rights in the areas of housing, education, healthcare, green jobs and public transportation;

Oppose the militarization of the police and specifically the Department of Defense 1033 program that transfers millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to local police forces;

Promote the closure of the more than 800 U.S. foreign military bases and the ending of U.S. participation in the white supremacist NATO military structure;

Call for and work to close the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) and the withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from Africa;

Demand that the Department of Justice document and investigate all instances of the use of lethal force by domestic police officers and agencies against non-white populations as demanded by various United Nations human rights treaty monitoring bodies;

Commit to passing resolutions at every level of government that commit the U.S. to upholding international law and the United Nations Charter, and to opposing all military, economic (including sanctions and blockades that are acts of war) and political interventions in the internal affairs of sovereign nations regardless of the political party controlling the office of the presidency; and

Sponsor legislation and/or resolutions at every level of government calling on the U.S. to support the United Nations resolution on the complete global abolishment of nuclear weapons passed by 122 nations in July 2017.

BAP believes that candidates who refuse to sign the pledge reveal to their would-be constituents their complicity in upholding the U.S state as the premier interventionist of the global community, while also revealing their refusal to emancipate U.S. residents from militarized police states across the nation.

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Anti-imperialist Meeting of Solidarity, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism. Havana, November 1-3 / 2019

III Call Anti-imperialist Meeting of Solidarity, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism.
Havana, November 1-3/2019.

The Anti-imperialist Meeting of Solidarity, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism will take place in Havana from November 1 to 3 of this year, organized by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions (CTC), along with the Cuban Chapter of Social Movements and the Continental Conference for Democracy and against Neoliberalism.

The meeting in Havana expresses the Cuban Revolution´s decision to respond to the demand of the political, social left-wing and the Solidarity Movement with Cuba that our country continues to be a meeting point of the peoples struggles in our continent.

We have proposed the event to be a real contribution to confronting the current counterrevolutionary offensive of US imperialism, to the search for the widest possible unity of the leftist forces in the region and to strengthening militant solidarity with the just causes defended by the peoples. In the current political situation, marked by the aggressiveness of the Trump administration, new ways will be sought to reinforce solidarity with these causes in the world, mainly in our region.

In November, a heterogeneous representation of the United States and Canada will also be present in Havana, friends who have always been on the side of justice and who since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution have been in solidarity with us. We will also have important intellectuals, committed to the liberating struggles of the peoples.

The growing hostility against Cuba and other countries in the region, the judicial persecution of progressive leaders, the imposition of recycled neoliberalism, are distinctive features of the current North American policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean that awaken the fighting capacity of Latin American and Caribbean peoples.

In the same way, the mobilization for the occasion of hundreds of social fighters, political leaders, intellectuals, peasants, women, indigenous people, solidarity activists, among others; will constitute a formidable encouragement to the heroic resistance of the Cuban people, determined to defeat the Helms Burton Act, the blockade and to carry forward the updating of its economic and social development model.

Faced with pessimism and the claudication of some, the participants in the anti-imperialist solidarity meeting will respond with the strengthening of the struggle moral and the deep conviction that the Latin America and the Caribbean peoples will continue marching towards their second and definitive independence.

The Organizing Committee of the Anti-imperialist Meeting of Solidarity, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism, calls for an event that highlights the Cubans´ best traditions of hospitality and their commitment to independence, justice, peace and fraternity among the peoples.

Those interested should send their attendance confirmation to the email address enc.jornada2019@gmail.com with a copy to AMISTUR emails direccion@amistur.cu and comercial@amistur.cu

Anti-imperialist Conference of Solidarity for Democracy and against Neoliberalism.

Havana, Cuba, November 1-3, 2019.

 

                                                             Program

1st day: November 1^st

9.00-09: 30: Opening of the event. Tribute to Fidel.
09.30-09: 45: Words from comrade Fernando González LLort, ICAP President and the Coordinating Committee of the event.
09.45-10: 15: Audiovisual projection about Cuba, its foreign policy and solidarity.
10: 15-12: 45: MINREX speech: Cuba's foreign policy in the regional context. Fight against the blockade.
12: 45-14: 45: Lunch
15: 00- 17:00: Panel: Challenges of the left in the current regional scenario before the imperialist offensive.
17: 15-19.15: Anti-imperialist tribune in support of just causes.
- Closing of the tribune with Cuban troubadours and foreigners participating in the event.
                                                                                  
2nd day: November 2

09.00- 09.15: Audiovisual material presentation

09: 15- 10:45: Panel: Challenges for a solidarity articulation of
                       our struggles.

10: 45- 11:00: Break
11: 00- 13: 15: Working in Thematic Commissions.
- Solidarity with Cuba and other just causes.
- Peoples before free trade and trans-nationals.
- Decolonization and cultural war.
- Youth: strategies and continuity in struggles.
- Democracy, sovereignty and anti-imperialism.
- Strategic communication and social struggle.
- Integration, identities and common struggles.
1:30 - 3:00: Lunch
14:00 - 15:00 Anti-imperialist Twitter-storm
15: 00 - 16:30 Working in Thematic Commissions
16.30 - 18.00 Coordination Meetings
                             
3rd day: November 3

09: 00- 12:00: Process of articulation in Plenary.
- Presentation of working Commissions.
12: 00- 13:45: Lunch
14:00 -16: 00: Closing Plenary.
- Presentation and approval of the Action Plan Project.
- Closing speech.
16:00 - 18:00: Cultural Gala.

Five days after taking office, President Trump signed “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States”

Five days after taking office, President Trump signed “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” – an executive order calling for the hiring of thousands of new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the use of state and local police to enforce immigration law.

It effectively broadened the scope of who was at risk of being deported: “We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”

And so, Trump’s war on immigrants began as he set in motion an enforcement machine long dreamed of by the nativist movement Trump had championed during his campaign.

In fact, the administration’s policies mirror the published “wish list” of the Center for Immigration Studies, a hate group that’s part of a network created by the late John Tanton, the white nationalist who founded the modern nativist movement. It’s no coincidence that White House aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policies, is a close ally of the Tanton network.

Now, on any given day, some 55,000 immigrants are packed into ICE detention centers across America awaiting deportation proceedings that can take months or even years to resolve. Another 20,000 are held inside Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) facilities.

Many of these individuals have lived and worked in their communities for years. Many others simply came to the border seeking asylum in the exact way our laws require. The people held in ICE custody are not being held on criminal charges – yet this civil detention mirrors the punishing conditions of U.S. prisons and jails in nearly every way.  

Nevertheless, this administration has chosen what appears to be a strategy of deliberate, unrelenting cruelty. In 2018, journalists revealed that the administration was separating thousands of families at the border and putting children in kennel-like cages.

The tragic fact is, families and communities are being shattered not only at the border but all across America. Children, including U.S. citizens, are losing mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters to an uncertain fate. People are being deported to countries they hardly know – or where they face grave danger.

And Trump is not just targeting the people he calls “illegal aliens.” 

Just this week, he once again floated the idea of using an executive order to end birthright citizenship for the children of noncitizens, calling it “frankly ridiculous.” This “ridiculous” right is enshrined in the 14^th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” 

Nowhere is the administration’s depravity on display more than in the facilities used by ICE and CBP to imprison immigrants. 

Near El Paso, a university professor encountered what he called a “human dog pound,” where as many 150 men were held outdoors, behind a chain-link fence, in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. The men said they had been there for a month, were hungry and had not been able to change clothes the entire time.

In May, a Department of Homeland Security inspector found 900 people crammed into a space designed for no more than 125.

There have been numerous other reports of the inhumane treatment that immigrants in detention are enduring, with disastrous effects. We know that at least 26 people have died in ICE custody since Trump took office. And there is unseen suffering by tens of thousands of men, women and children who are living in repurposed prisons and jails, deemed dirty and unsafe by ICE’s own inspector general.

Earlier this summer, lawyers who visited a facility in Clint, Texas, found hundreds of children living in intolerable conditions – hungry, deprived of basic needs and sleeping in concrete prison cells designed for adults.

The New Yorker wrote: “The conditions … were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of one another because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.”

The Associated Press reported that three girls were taking care of a 2-year-old boy “who had wet his pants and had no diaper and was wearing a mucus-smeared shirt.”

What hasn’t received as much attention is ICE’s shocking indifference toward immigrants’medical and mental health care as well as their disability needs.

This past Monday, in partnership with the Civil Rights Enforcement and Education Center (CREEC) and Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), we filed a national, class-action lawsuiton behalf of 15 detained immigrants who are being denied the care they need.

We filed this case as a class action because the experiences of our clients offer examples of the inadequate care and inhumane conditions that individuals in ICE custody endure on a daily basis. It’s clear that systemic change is needed to prevent further abuse.

One of our plaintiffs is a Marine veteran who suffers from PTSD. Others are languishing in solitary confinement, and those who are deaf or mobility-impaired face discrimination on the basis of their disability and are denied access to accommodations.

In one heartbreaking case, an asylum seeker from Jordan lost his eyesight from a preventable condition. A doctor recommended surgery, but immigration officials denied him the care he needed and irreparable injury resulted.

Many of ICE’s 158 facilities are operated by private, for-profit prison companies that are paid an average of $208 per day for each person in their custody – more than double the $99 per day that the Federal Bureau of Prisons spends to incarcerate people convicted of federal crimes.

“This administration has functionally given ICE a blank check, with no accountability for how taxpayers’ money is spent,” says SPLC Deputy Legal Director Lisa Graybill. “Private contractors and local jails are making millions imprisoning immigrants in these conditions. Detained people are treated as pawns in this money-making scheme, and the consequences for them can be deadly.”

Our suit is vitally important.

If we don’t hold this administration accountable for its inhumane conditions, this situation will only worsen. Just this week, the administration announced a new rule under which it would be able to detain children and their families indefinitely.

That’s a recipe for more tragedy.

The plaintiffs in our case do not seek monetary damages for themselves. Instead, they aim to reform immigrant detention system and ensure our nation treats the human beings who have come to our shores, in many cases to escape violence and persecution, are treated with dignity and respect. 

It was Hubert Humphrey who, in 1977, said that “the moral test of government is how that government treats those … who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Today, our federal government would unquestionably fail that test.

The Editors

P.S. Here are some other pieces we think are valuable this week:

Sites like Facebook, Google and Twitter allowed white supremacists to flourish. Now what? from USA Today

How Trump’s policies are leaving thousands of asylum seekers waiting in Mexico from The New York Times

Portland police keeping far-right protesters, antifa groups apart; violence avoided during rallies from USA Today

ICE provides ‘deplorable’ healthcare to detained immigrants, advocates allege in massive lawsuit from Los Angeles Times

We asked 3 prisoners about the movement to give them voting rights from Vox