Supreme Court Deadlock on Immigration: Unacceptable, Illegitimate, Criminal

June 27, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legitimized vicious and massive attacks upon immigrants. In 2014, the Obama administration issued an order that temporarily put off the possible deportation of more than four million “undocumented” people, mainly immigrants from Mexico and Central America with children who are U.S. citizens. In 2015, a judge in Texas said this order was invalid, and prevented it from being implemented. The 4-4 deadlocked Supreme Court let the judge’s ruling stand.

Now, with this ruling, these four million, along with about eight million other “undocumented” people not included in Obama’s order, could be snatched by the authorities at any moment, taken from their families and jobs, and sent hundreds or thousands of miles away. The ruling of the court is a green light for breaking into homes, workplace raids, deportations—for relentless repression on a truly massive scale. Horrors already occurring every day, in every part of the country, will escalate, with a “seal of approval” from the highest court in the country.

This is utterly outrageous, unacceptable, illegitimate, and criminal! People’s right to live, work, and support their families should not be negotiable, or subject to the legal rulings and political disputes of the very system that dominates the countries people come from and has forced them to come to this country in the first place!

Thousands of people are already being deported every week, before this Supreme Court ruling. People like Elena Santiago, who opened the door to her Phoenix home and saw her house surrounded by ICE agents. She was arrested and sent to Mexico with only the shirt on her back and learned her infant daughter and teenage son were going into foster care. Elena’s only “crime”: living and working undocumented in the U.S.

People like Wildin Acosta, who fled horrific violence in Honduras as a teenager and applied for asylum. He was arrested on his way to his high school in North Carolina, held in a detention center and ordered deported because he had supposedly missed a court date. Wildin was one of dozens of teenagers, women, and small children picked up as part of Obama’s Operation Border Guardian that targets Central American mothers and children.

After the Supreme Court ruling, one immigrant woman said that now her “hopes are gone.” Multiply that by millions. Millions of people living in fear of sudden deportation. Millions of people going to work each morning not knowing if they’ll come home at night. Millions of children going to sleep every night worrying that their parents may be taken from them. Millions of people whose hope has been crushed.

This contemptible Supreme Court ruling comes in an escalating atmosphere of ugly, hateful rhetoric—and attacks—against immigrants, whipped into frenzy by the likes of Donald Trump and others.

Obama wants to be seen as the president who is looking out for immigrants. But he has presided over the deportation of more people than any previous president in U.S. history; has poured military, police, and repressive legal forces to an already heavily militarized border; and has maintained “detention centers” (concentration camps) for immigrant children and their mothers. Now, with the ruling, these attacks are going to escalate even further—with horrific consequences for millions.

One indication of the massive, horrific scale of repression the government is preparing for: the same judge who initially ordered the injunction also ordered the federal government to provide the names and personal information of 50,000 people who had supposedly “benefited” from a temporary and partial stay on their deportation. He has since put a hold on this order until August. But it could be lifted then, or applied at a later time, on a broader scale.

This Supreme Court ruling is an illegitimate decision from an illegitimate system.

Millions of immigrants and others have waged courageous and fierce struggles for several years—to stop raids and deportations, to end the break-up of families, and to be recognized as full human beings. Needed now is even more fierce, determined defiance and resistance to the renewed assaults on immigrants, from everyone who opposes oppression and injustice.

The deadlock in the Supreme Court is itself reflective of larger divides among the powers that be on how to approach immigration overall and the millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. already. There are those like Obama, Clinton, and others with their rhetoric of “immigration is not something to fear”—even while they continue to heartlessly deport millions, separating loved ones and families and imprisoning and deporting refugee children from Central America who have risked their lives to escape horrific conditions at home. These conditions—of extreme poverty and violence—are themselves the result of the workings of this system of capitalism-imperialism and conscious U.S. policies over decades. See Bob Avakian speaking on “Why do people come here from all around the world?”

Then there are those like Trump and others who openly demonize Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” call for mass deportations of all estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., and incite hatred against immigrants, including and especially those of Muslim descent.

Even with these divisions, all the rulers of the U.S., both Democrat and Republican, are united on the need for some fundamental things—vicious repression of immigrants and massive deportations, and an insanely militarized border with Mexico to confront what they see as their “problem” of immigration. Other than more horrors, they—this system and its leaders—have NO ANSWER. The REVOLUTION does! There isn’t an “immigration problem”—there is a capitalism-imperialism problem!

It is TIME TO GET ORGANIZED FOR AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION.

 

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