Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, Donald Trump issued a slew of immigration related executive orders that criminalize and demonize immigrants. People across the country are swiftly denouncing the executive orders as an attack on our shared values of dignity, freedom, and opportunity that the majority of Americans deeply believe in.
“Donald Trump is ushering in an unprecedented wave of terror with yesterday’s executive orders that will cause immediate suffering and long lasting harm to the nation as a whole,” said Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director of Detention Watch Network. “The administration is taking a ruthless, multi-pronged approach to dehumanize and criminalize our immigrant neighbors, friends, family members, and coworkers while stripping away the limited protections people have to live and work in the United States without fear of being arrested, detained, and exiled from their loved ones. Immigrants are vital and valued members of our communities and we demand elected leaders at all levels vehemently and vocally reject the Trump administration’s hateful attacks.”
A snapshot of the immigration executive orders impact:
- More people locked up with the expansion of the inhumane immigration detention system. There are already over 39,000 people locked up in immigration detention, these orders would result in thousands more people in detention and would require massive investment in new detention infrastructure.
- The orders explicitly direct immigration authorities to expand immigration detention capacity, to detain all people throughout the duration of their deportation proceedings, and to terminate various parole programs.
- The President rescinded the previous administration's executive order ending the use of private prisons by the federal government. While it never applied to immigration detention, the rescission opens the door to restoring and initiating new federal contracts with private prison corporations, and with that, the possibility of additional federal prison capacity being used to incarcerate immigrants.
- A hyper-militarized police state. Together the orders create a web of entanglement among immigration, military, and criminal law enforcement at the federal, state, and local level. These orders go dangerously beyond any past collaboration between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), local law enforcement, and branches of the armed forces, weaponizing the criminal punishment system and U.S. military to create a hyper-militarized police state to embed fear and target people.
- The orders direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) and DHS to create task forces at the state level across the country, and direct ICE to expand its use of the 287(g) program to utilize local police in immigration enforcement.
- The orders threaten jurisdictions that seek to protect their immigrant community members by cutting funding to localities with critical sanctuary policies that welcome people, help keep families together, and ensure local tax dollars are used to promote safety for all;
- The orders require extreme vetting and registration of immigrants seeking to enter the United States as well as those already here, while calling on branches of the Armed Forces to send personnel and equipment to the border and across the country to target and surveil immigrants, and to construct physical barriers that put people's lives at risk.
- The orders conflate immigration with national security and use the terrorism label to further entrench this false narrative and greenlight money grabs from various government agencies for immigration enforcement.
- A slush fund to target, surveil, detain and deport people. Trump’s fabricated National Emergency Declaration along with directives to various branches of the military will increase cash flow to immigration enforcement and will be layered on top of the already alarming billion dollar budgets of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The result will be more agents, surveillance, detention, and physical barriers that put people’s lives in jeopardy. As seen in Trump’s first term, this administration opposes constitutional checks and balances and is attempting to concentrate power–particularly over federal resources–in the Executive Branch.
- Fast-tracked mass deportations. These orders pave the way for mass deportation by expanding the number of people who will be the target of raids, arrests, surveillance, detention and deportation.
- The orders direct ICE and CBP to expand the use of expedited removal, a fast-tracked backdoor process to deport people en masse while denying their right to challenge their deportation.
- DHS and DOJ are also directed to prioritize criminal prosecutions of people crossing the border. This policy was the backbone of the previous Trump administration's family separation that caused a national outcry.
- Block lawful pathways and virtually end people’s right to seek asylum. The orders direct CBP to shutdown immigration processing at the border, seek to end the asylum system along with various lawful pathway and parole programs, reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy, and suspend refugee resettlement. Together these restrictions on lawful migration will force people into unsafe situations where they are vulnerable to violence and trafficking, undermine due process, and purposefully create chaos along the U.S. Mexico border.
Ghandehari added:
“Trump’s fearmongering rhetoric exploits people’s concerns about their economic situation by blaming immigrants for problems where our leaders have failed us, including but not limited to the housing crisis, opioid crisis, and rising costs at the grocery store. Instead of investing billions of dollars to carry out these cruel executive orders that will separate loved ones and sow fear into communities, our government should be investing in education, housing for all income levels, climate resilient infrastructure and health care that will benefit everyone.
In this moment we must uphold our shared humanity. We reject Trump’s scapegoating. We denounce Trump’s attacks. We are resolute in our commitment to fight Trump’s mass detention and deportation agenda. In doing so, we are fundamentally committed to supporting the local community groups across the country that are the first line of defense in keeping people safe.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.