This Must Be Stopped: Trump/Pence Regime’s Fascist Terror Against Immigrants
May 21, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Today, in this country—over 400 people will be ripped away from their lives, families, and jobs by agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). People getting ready for work. People taking their kids to school. People relaxing at home. People “doing the right thing” and reporting to authorities like they’re supposed to. The Trump/Pence regime was inaugurated on January 20—and this is what has been happening every day under their rule.
A few of the many incidents since the inauguration: Five men arrested in Lawrence, Massachusetts, when they reported for routine immigration hearings... A young woman in Mississippi arrested after she spoke at a press conference to denounce the unjust arrests of her parents... an ICE raid in Portland, Oregon, that swept away a youth at his home after he showed agents his work permit... 26 men in Ft. Worth, Texas, busted by ICE when they reported for community service.
One of Trump’s first acts as president was to issue an executive order prioritizing “the removal of immigrants in the country illegally,” regardless of supposed criminal records. This puts 11 million people in the middle of the government’s bull’s eye. Beyond that—tens of millions who live under the constant fear that their parents, their siblings, their dear friends, their schoolmates and co-workers, could be snatched away at any moment. The result so far: as the Washington Post reports, “the biggest increase [of arrested immigrants] by far is among immigrants with no criminal records.”
The Trump Era, the Fascist Era
During the Obama years, 2.7 million people were deported, and he was rightly called the “deporter in chief.” The Trump/Pence regime is on a pace to eclipse that despicable record. Last week, an ICE report indicated that 41,300 people were arrested for deportation between January 22 and April 29. This is a rise of almost 40 percent from the year before. The New York Times noted that these figures are “one of the first clear indications that the president’s hard-line [anti-immigrant] policies are being carried out on a grand scale.”
But it’s not just the numbers of people being arrested that makes this sustained, escalating assault fascist. Trump’s measures are deliberately and consciously aimed at terrorizing all immigrants, and many citizens and legal residents—anyone that any ICE agent claims may be “illegal.” Tens of millions of people whose language, accent, clothing, or any damn thing a cop thinks “suspect.” Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, made this clear last month: “This is a new era. This is the Trump era. The lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws and the catch-and-release practices of old, are over.” No one is off limits in Trump’s America. Last week a federal immigration officer went to an elementary school in New York asking questions about a fourth grader!
This is fascist repression. It is laying the groundwork for possible ethnic cleansing. It is a linchpin of the entire fascist program of Trump and Pence. Tens of thousands arrested, millions threatened directly, tens of millions more terrorized by the escalating clampdown. Made to live under a constant state of terror that at any moment they or their loved ones could be snatched away, forever. An immigration lawyer in Texas said that there are couples who have quit jobs, and make sure they never leave their home together, so if one gets arrested another is still there with the kids... for now. There are people like Silvia Avelar-Flores, a 31-year-old mother of three, picked up by ICE while shopping with her eight-year-old daughter in a Salt Lake City suburb. Or Leandro Arriaga, in the U.S. for 16 years making a living by remodeling homes, arrested in Lawrence, Massachusetts, when he went to an immigration office to begin a process of legalization. People who are here one day, gone the next.
Today, everyone in this country confronts a challenge: Are you going to stand by and find a way to accommodate yourself to these atrocities happening in our midst? Are you going to accept their deceitful justifications? Or are you going to enter into determined political struggle to put an end to this? The attacks on immigrants must be stopped, this entire fascist agenda must be defeated, this fascist regime must be driven from power.
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