Washington, D.C. – In response to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, Silky Shah, Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, issued the following statement:
“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 will be the first line of defense in keeping people safe.
With Trump 2.0 we expect swift and cruel mass detention and deportation tactics, including raids in neighborhoods, workplaces, and even schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. The goal is to persecute and round up immigrant communities in expanded jails and private prisons with track records of abuse.
These cruel tactics are designed to create a media spectacle that will dehumanize and criminalize our immigrant neighbors, friends, family members, and coworkers while also 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.
Trump’s fearmongering against immigrants takes advantage of people’s economic insecurities and anxieties by scapegoating immigrant communities for a plethora of problems where our leaders have failed us- from the housing crisis and opioid crisis, to rising costs at the grocery store. People across the country are struggling right now, and immigrants are not to blame.
Our elected leaders must depart from the dehumanizing status quo, and be a clear counterpoint to Trump’s cruel deportation and detention agenda. Elected officials as a whole have been woefully silent on immigration, or worse, have joined in the fear mongering against immigrants.
Members of Congress and elected leaders at all levels cannot afford to remain silent on the excessive cruelty that will unfold– the consequences are dire for immigrants in our communities and our democracy as a whole. Rather, in the face of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, they must act and be unwavering in their support of immigrants, by:
- Denying Trump the resources he needs to carry out his mass deportation agenda including by cutting funds to ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
- Passing federal legislation that protects immigrants without further militarizing the border and criminalizing people for migrating
- Cutting state and local partnerships with ICE
- Passing pro-immigrant state legislation including banning immigration detention
- Opposing state and federal level anti-immigrant laws that further widen who would be vulnerable to detention and deportation
We all care about the safety and security of our families and communities. Instead of spending billions of taxpayer dollars on mass deportations, we should use that money to provide more housing, healthcare options, and education and job training opportunities for everyone to help strengthen our communities. We must remain steadfast to dismantle the systems in this country that are rooted in white supremacy and xenophobia and create communities where all can feel safe and welcomed.”
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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.