Sessions Tells “DREAMers”:
You Too Are “Subject to Being Deported” at Any Time
April 21, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
“Everybody in this country illegally is subject to being deported.” This is what Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Southern white supremacist and now the Trump/Pence regime’s top law enforcer—said on Fox News on Tuesday, April 18. He made clear that if you’re undocumented it doesn’t matter how long you have been in this country, or how young you were when you were brought here—in the eyes of this regime, you’re still a “criminal alien,” at risk at any time of being stopped, locked up, and thrown out of the country. And this includes the estimated 750,000 mostly young immigrants, brought to the U.S. without documents when they were children, who had been accepted into the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and are known as “DREAMers.”
DACA was a 2012 executive order issued by Obama. It granted a two-year, renewable protection from deportation, a permit to work legally, and more for undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children. No more.
Sessions made his statement in response to questions about people with DACA status—in particular, the case of 23-year-old Juan Manuel Montes. Juan Manuel says he was stopped by Border Patrol agents in Southern California on February 18 and, within hours, forced across the border into Mexico. He was brought to this country when he was nine years old and, according to his lawyer, has DACA status until 2018, which should have protected him from deportation.
After declaring that all undocumented immigrants are “subject to being deported,” Sessions went on, clearly referring to people in the DACA program: “… so people come here and they stay here a few years and somehow they think they are not subject to being deported—well, they are.”
Up until this point, Trump had been speaking out of both sides of his mouth on this subject. He bragged during his campaign he was going to abolish DACA on day one; telling a Phoenix audience he “will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties," [referring to DACA and DAPA, for parents of children born in this country]. Recently, Trump has given the impression he might be reconsidering this small part of his extreme, fascist agenda: “We’re going to show great heart. DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you.” Many people were taken in by this con artist—wanting to believe that things might not get worse, that maybe this fascist could “grow a heart.”
But the massive war on immigrants is a cornerstone of this regime. For millions of his most rabid supporters, when Trump says “Make America Great Again,” they equate that with “make America white again.” As we wrote before Trump’s nomination:
He is organizing those who feel left out and “disrespected,” who have been taught that their white skin and American identity make them special but who don’t “feel special” anymore, and who blame it on those they have been taught to despise as being “beneath them” in society. This sense of frustrated “white male entitlement” runs deep in the marrow of white America; it is openly played on by the Republicans and “politely respected” (while being played on its own way) by the Democrats—and now Trump has taken it to a whole other level. He is aiming these angry people at immigrants, at Black people—against, in short, the most oppressed; he is aiming them against “foreigners” and “the different,” and in particular against all Muslims: and he is aiming them against anyone who would refuse to go along with the crimes of this system or who even dares differ with Trump.
This is the wind behind this fascist regime’s outrageous assault on immigrants already unleashed, with much more in the works. They plan to hire another 10,000 ICE and 5,000 Border Patrol agents. They are making immigrant enforcement a priority for U.S. attorneys everywhere, and hiring more of them, as well as more judges, so they can round up and prosecute more and more immigrants, at a faster rate. They are moving ahead on plans to integrate police on every level into a national immigrant police force. And they have just warned seven sanctuary cities that beginning July 1, federal funds will be withheld if they don’t cooperate with the crackdown on immigrants. It is not a heart these fascists are growing—it’s fangs.
We cannot let the Trump/Pence regime continue consolidating their violent, racist, patriarchic, xenophobic, hyper-militarist, life-threatening norms. The upcoming 10 days of protests, from April 22 to May 1st, the end of the first 100 Days of the Trump/Pence Regime, must be a big leap in organizing the movement to drive this fascist regime from power.
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