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Tag: mass deportations

  • ‘This Is Why You Fight These Cowards’: AOC Unmoved by Trump Border Czar’s Threats

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    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. on November 19, 2024.
     (Photo: Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “The Fourth Amendment is clear and I am well within my duties to educate people of their rights,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “He can threaten me with jail and call names all he wants. He’s got nothing else.”

    U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday dared Trump immigration czar Tom Homan to pursue an investigation against her after he attacked the New York Democrat in two television appearances and said he has asked the Justice Department to “look into” whether she violated the law by holding a webinar informing constituents of their rights.

    “This is why you fight these cowards. The moment you stand up to them, they crumble,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media after Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), called her “the dumbest congresswoman ever elected to Congress” in an interview on the far-right network Newsmax.

    The resort to a personal attack, said the New York Democrat, shows that “Homan has nothing.”

    “The Fourth Amendment is clear and I am well within my duties to educate people of their rights,” she added. “He can threaten me with jail and call names all he wants. He’s got nothing else.”

    Less than an hour later, Ocasio-Cortez wrote “go ahead” in response to a separate interview in which Homan told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he has asked the deputy attorney general to examine whether the New York congresswoman’s webinar amounted to teaching people “how to evade ICE arrest.”

    “Let the people see you for what you are,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in response.

    Go ahead.Let the people see you for what you are.

    — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) 2025-02-18T03:54:44.834Z

    Homan, whom President Donald Trump has tasked with spearheading the new administration’s mass deportation efforts, has repeatedly attacked Ocasio-Cortez in recent days as the White House zeroes in on New York City with the help of disgraced Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, the beneficiary of an out-in-the-open quid pro quo arrangement that is now at the center of a legal and political controversy.

    On her congressional website, Ocasio-Cortez—who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens—has a page devoted to informing her constituents of their legal rights when faced with ICE agents.

    “ICE does not have the right to enter your home without a valid warrant signed by a judge,” reads a flyer produced by Ocasio-Cortez’s office, a message that was echoed during last week’s webinar.

    Days after the webinar, Homan said in a Fox News appearance that he “sent an email” to the deputy attorney general asking whether Ocasio-Cortez is illegally “impeding our law enforcement efforts.”

    “Maybe he can learn to read,” the New York Democrat wrote in response. “The Constitution would be a good place to start.”

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.

  • Trump Signs Sweeping Xenophobic Bill, Rescinding Due Process for Millions

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    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a signed copy of the Laken Riley Act in Washington, D.C. on January 29, 2025. (Photo: Pedro Ugarte/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The Laken Riley Act capitalizes on a horrible tragedy in order to advance President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda by scapegoating people seeking safety,” said one campaigner.

    Human rights defenders decried U.S. President Donald Trump’s signing of legislation Wednesday that critics warn will strip due process rights from millions of people while harming some of the most vulnerable members of society, including migrant children, victims of sexual violence, and survivors of domestic abuse.

    Trump signed the Laken Riley Act—named after a young woman murdered last year by a Venezuelan man who, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), entered the United States illegally—calling it a “landmark law” that “will save countless innocent American lives.”

    “The Laken Riley Act is based upon false, xenophobic narratives that dehumanize and criminalize an entire group of people due to the actions of one person.”

    However, Amy Fischer, director of the ACLU’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Program, said in a statement Wednesday that “the Laken Riley Act capitalizes on a horrible tragedy in order to advance President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda by scapegoating people seeking safety and stripping away their right to due process.”

    “This legislation mandates the arrest and detention of our undocumented neighbors for being convicted or charged of any theft, shoplifting, burglary, or larceny offense,” Fischer noted. “Mandatory detention solely for being accused of theft strips people of their right to due process and constitutes arbitrary detention under international human rights law.”

    “The Laken Riley Act is based upon false, xenophobic narratives that dehumanize and criminalize an entire group of people due to the actions of one person,” Fischer added. “It will separate families and make our communities less safe. It is simply unconscionable for Congress to create a new mechanism that gives people the power to falsely accuse immigrants of theft knowing their detention is mandatory.”

    As the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the Bay Area, which called the law “shameful and unconstitutional,” noted Wednesday: “This bill does not require a conviction—simply being accused of a crime is enough to force individuals into mandatory detention without review by any judge. In doing so, the law strips due process protections and allows for discrimination against vulnerable immigrant communities.”

    The group continued:

    The federal government already has the power to detain and deport individuals who commit criminal acts. But in our legal system, judges act as a constitutionally required check on police actions. This new law removes that check. It is a direct attack on the constitutional rights of immigrants and communities of color, and it erodes the civil liberties of American society at large. It will incentivize racial profiling and divert law enforcement resources away from real threats, making our communities less safe.

    “Lawyers’ Committee and our partners vow to challenge this unconstitutional law in court,” Bianca Sierra Wolff, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. “We will not stand by while the rights of immigrants and communities of color are trampled for political gain.”

    Writing for Common Dreams Wednesday, National Center for Youth Law senior director Neha Desai and NCYL attorney Melissa Adamson lamented the Laken Riley Act’s passage and urged Congress, both chambers of which passed the law with bipartisan support, to “do the right thing” by introducing “new legislation to protect children from this draconian law.”

    “Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle seem all too eager to support legislation that ignores that immigrant children are human beings, worthy of the same care and protections that their own children enjoy,” Desai and Adamson contended. “It is deeply disheartening to see lawmakers shift with the political winds rather than hold true to fundamental values. Congress must not acquiesce to a country in which the rejection of children’s rights is the norm.”

    Shares in private prison companies have skyrocketed since Trump won last November’s election, partly in anticipation of a boom in business due to the Laken Riley Act and the broader campaign of mass deportations now underway.

    On Wednesday, Trump also said he would instruct the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to prepare a detention facility—some critics called it a “concentration camp“—capable of holding 30,000 migrants at the notorious offshore Guantánamo Bay prison run by the U.S. military in Cuba.

    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • ‘Concentration Camps’: Border Czar Says Trump to Detain Migrant Families

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    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

    Incoming White House ‘border czar’ Tom Homan speaks during Turning Point’s annual AmericaFest 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 22, 2024. (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Decent people all over the world will hate this country… and they should,” said one critic.

    Adding to alarm over U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration plans, his “border czar” told The Washington Post in an interview published Thursday that the administration plans to return to detaining migrant families with children.

    Tom Homan, who served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, said that ICE “will look to hold parents with children in ‘soft-sided’ tent structures similar to those used by U.S. border officials to handle immigration surges,” the Post summarized. “The government will not hesitate to deport parents who are in the country illegally, even if they have young U.S.-born children, he added, leaving it to those families to decide whether to exit together or be split up.”

    Since Trump beat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris last month, migrant rights advocates have reiterated concerns about the Republican’s first-term policies—such as forced separation of families—and his 2024 campaign pledges, from mass deportations to attempting to end birthright citizenship, despite the guarantees of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

    Homan—who oversaw the so-called “zero tolerance” policy that separated thousands of migrant kids from their parents—said: “Here’s the issue… You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”

    Incoming "border czar" Tom Homan on shipping U.S.-born children out of the country with their undocumented parents: “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child.”"Chose"? That's an odd word choice. The right wants to force women to give birth, not give them a choice.

    — Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) 2024-12-26T14:30:08.168Z

    Harris and President Joe Biden have come under fire for various immigration policies, but their administration did stop family detention—and when it was reported last year that the White House was weighing a revival of the practice, 383 groups urged the president to keep the pledge he made when he took office “to pursue just, compassionate, and humane immigration policies.”

    Under Biden, the government ended mass worksite immigration raids and—eventually—the “Remain in Mexico” policy that stopped asylum-seekers from entering the United States. Homan told the Post that the next Trump administration should bring them back.

    Less than a month before Trump’s inauguration, Biden is now facing pressure to “use the power of the pen to protect those seeking sanctuary from the coming deportation machine that will crush the human rights of our immigrant neighbors and those who have dreams of finding refuge here,” as Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien put it earlier this month.

    The Post reported that “of all the border hard-liners in the incoming administration, Homan is perhaps the most cognizant of the limits of the government’s ability to deliver on promises of mass deportation—and the potential for a political backlash.”

    Those hard-liners include dog-killing Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security; family separation architect Stephen Miller, the president-elect’s homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy; and Caleb Vitello, the next acting ICE director whom Miller previously tried to install at the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

    “We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” Homan told the newspaper. However, he also said: “We need to show the American people we can do this and not be inhumane about it… We can’t lose the faith of the American people.”

    Critics of the next administration have suggested that—although Trump won the Electoral College and the popular vote last month—pursuing the GOP immigration policies, including “concentration camps” for migrant families, will anger the public.

    Maximum cruelty is the goal https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2024/12/26/immigration-border-tom-homan-trump/

    — Ric Steinberger (@ricst.bsky.social) 2024-12-26T14:29:05.618Z

    “Decent people all over the world will hate this country… and they should,” media columnist and Brooklyn College professor Eric Alterman said on social media in response to the Post‘s reporting.

    Author and New York University adjunct associate professor Helio Fred Garcia said: “Trump’s next border czar previews performative cruelty. In the first term it included kidnapping of children from their parents and returning the parents to their home countries, with no record of which kids came from which parents. A crime against humanity.”

    Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who has argued many major immigration cases, told the Post that “the incoming administration has refused to acknowledge the horrific damage it did to families and little children the first time around and seems determined to once again target families for gratuitous suffering.”

    “The public may have voted in the abstract for mass deportations,” he added, referring to the November election, “but I don’t think they voted for more family separation or unnecessary cruelty to children.”

    Original article by Jessica Corbett republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)