SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
A dejected-looking President Donald Trump leaves the White House to head to Texas on January 12, 2021 for his first public appearance since the January 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
'He Is Not Welcome': Trump Border Visit Denounced as PR Stunt of 'Blood-Soaked' President
"Trump has blood on his hands, and he is not welcome at the border," one migrant rights activist bluntly declared.
Jan 11, 2021
Human rights advocates in Texas on Tuesday had a resounding message for President Donald Trump as he headed to the southern border in what critics say is a desperate bid to deflect attention from his culpability in last week's deadly U.S. Capitol invasion and his impending impeachment: You're not welcome here.
As the chorus of calls for Trump's removal or impeachment intensifies in the wake of the January 6 mob assault on the Capitol, Trump flew to Texas to tout his pet project, the barely built wall along the Mexican border that has cost U.S. taxpayers--and not Mexico, as the president incessantly promised--billions of dollars.
"Our community will not be used as a prop to distract the public from the accountability Trump is trying to avoid."
--Juanita Valdez-Cox, LUPE
Instead of attempting to defuse tensions even after the FBI warned Monday that pro-Trump militants are planning possible attacks across the nation in the coming days, the president while traveling from Washington, D.C. to Texas called his speech preceding the Capitol attack "totally appropriate."
The House Democrats' article of impeachment against Trump, however, alleges his remarks amount to "incitement of insurrection."
The Capitol attack and its aftermath were very much on the minds of Texans as Trump headed--apparently without notifying local officials--to the symbolically charged town of Alamo, which is named after the site of the famous last stand of mostly illegal U.S. immigrants routed by Mexican forces at San Antonio de Bexar, Mexico in 1836.
But also on the minds of many were matters much closer to home, including some of the Trump administration's most egregious human rights violations: the imprisonment of refugees and other migrants in concentration camps, the torturous seizure of children (hundreds of whom remain separated) from their parents, the devastating and dangerous "remain in Mexico" asylum policy, and other racist and xenophobic policies and actions.
Reflecting resistance to these longstanding administration misdeeds, reaction to recent developments in Washington, and fears that Trump's visit could spark further right-wing blooshed, immigrant and human rights advocates told Trump in no uncertain terms how they felt about his visit.
"After stoking mob violence at the Capitol, he has chosen our community to continue spewing his violence-inciting lies," Daniel Diaz, mobilizing director of la Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), wrote in a petition.
"We cannot allow Trump to bring his racist mob violence to the Rio Grande Valley," added Diaz. "Local officials must denounce his visit, call on him to cancel, and refuse to coordinate his visit with [U.S. Department of Homeland Security.] Should any violence occur on Tuesday, all public officials who did nothing to stop this visit will be responsible."
Fernando Garcia of the Border Network for Human Rights--which will lead a peaceful march to protest Trump's visit to Alamo--was even more blunt:
Trump has blood on his hands, and he is not welcome at the border... His policies and rhetoric are also responsible for the white supremacist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 that claimed the lives of 23 people, and the astounding violence inflicted on peaceful Black Lives Matter activists by the police last year at nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black and Brown people at the hands of law enforcement.
Rather than spend his last days in the Oval Office addressing the pressing Covid-19 pandemic and ensuring an orderly transition, Trump is doubling down on his xenophobic, white supremacist agenda...
Trump does not and has never represented our communities. His presence at the borderland is a provocation, and an act of violence in and of itself. Border communities are calling for the dismantlement of the wall of shame, racism, and white supremacy. The wall and all it represents have no place in our society, and Trump must be held accountable.
In a tweet, the ACLU called Trump's visit "a slap in the face for our communities" that "should be a wake-up call for President-elect [Joe] Biden to prioritize reckoning with Trump's legacy of ruthless border policy."
LUPE executive director Juanita Valdez-Cox asserted that "our community will not be used as a prop to distract the public from the accountability Trump is trying to avoid," adding that the president must not be permitted to "return to his tired playbook of demonizing border communities and putting their constituents at risk."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Human rights advocates in Texas on Tuesday had a resounding message for President Donald Trump as he headed to the southern border in what critics say is a desperate bid to deflect attention from his culpability in last week's deadly U.S. Capitol invasion and his impending impeachment: You're not welcome here.
As the chorus of calls for Trump's removal or impeachment intensifies in the wake of the January 6 mob assault on the Capitol, Trump flew to Texas to tout his pet project, the barely built wall along the Mexican border that has cost U.S. taxpayers--and not Mexico, as the president incessantly promised--billions of dollars.
"Our community will not be used as a prop to distract the public from the accountability Trump is trying to avoid."
--Juanita Valdez-Cox, LUPE
Instead of attempting to defuse tensions even after the FBI warned Monday that pro-Trump militants are planning possible attacks across the nation in the coming days, the president while traveling from Washington, D.C. to Texas called his speech preceding the Capitol attack "totally appropriate."
The House Democrats' article of impeachment against Trump, however, alleges his remarks amount to "incitement of insurrection."
The Capitol attack and its aftermath were very much on the minds of Texans as Trump headed--apparently without notifying local officials--to the symbolically charged town of Alamo, which is named after the site of the famous last stand of mostly illegal U.S. immigrants routed by Mexican forces at San Antonio de Bexar, Mexico in 1836.
But also on the minds of many were matters much closer to home, including some of the Trump administration's most egregious human rights violations: the imprisonment of refugees and other migrants in concentration camps, the torturous seizure of children (hundreds of whom remain separated) from their parents, the devastating and dangerous "remain in Mexico" asylum policy, and other racist and xenophobic policies and actions.
Reflecting resistance to these longstanding administration misdeeds, reaction to recent developments in Washington, and fears that Trump's visit could spark further right-wing blooshed, immigrant and human rights advocates told Trump in no uncertain terms how they felt about his visit.
"After stoking mob violence at the Capitol, he has chosen our community to continue spewing his violence-inciting lies," Daniel Diaz, mobilizing director of la Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), wrote in a petition.
"We cannot allow Trump to bring his racist mob violence to the Rio Grande Valley," added Diaz. "Local officials must denounce his visit, call on him to cancel, and refuse to coordinate his visit with [U.S. Department of Homeland Security.] Should any violence occur on Tuesday, all public officials who did nothing to stop this visit will be responsible."
Fernando Garcia of the Border Network for Human Rights--which will lead a peaceful march to protest Trump's visit to Alamo--was even more blunt:
Trump has blood on his hands, and he is not welcome at the border... His policies and rhetoric are also responsible for the white supremacist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 that claimed the lives of 23 people, and the astounding violence inflicted on peaceful Black Lives Matter activists by the police last year at nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black and Brown people at the hands of law enforcement.
Rather than spend his last days in the Oval Office addressing the pressing Covid-19 pandemic and ensuring an orderly transition, Trump is doubling down on his xenophobic, white supremacist agenda...
Trump does not and has never represented our communities. His presence at the borderland is a provocation, and an act of violence in and of itself. Border communities are calling for the dismantlement of the wall of shame, racism, and white supremacy. The wall and all it represents have no place in our society, and Trump must be held accountable.
In a tweet, the ACLU called Trump's visit "a slap in the face for our communities" that "should be a wake-up call for President-elect [Joe] Biden to prioritize reckoning with Trump's legacy of ruthless border policy."
LUPE executive director Juanita Valdez-Cox asserted that "our community will not be used as a prop to distract the public from the accountability Trump is trying to avoid," adding that the president must not be permitted to "return to his tired playbook of demonizing border communities and putting their constituents at risk."
Human rights advocates in Texas on Tuesday had a resounding message for President Donald Trump as he headed to the southern border in what critics say is a desperate bid to deflect attention from his culpability in last week's deadly U.S. Capitol invasion and his impending impeachment: You're not welcome here.
As the chorus of calls for Trump's removal or impeachment intensifies in the wake of the January 6 mob assault on the Capitol, Trump flew to Texas to tout his pet project, the barely built wall along the Mexican border that has cost U.S. taxpayers--and not Mexico, as the president incessantly promised--billions of dollars.
"Our community will not be used as a prop to distract the public from the accountability Trump is trying to avoid."
--Juanita Valdez-Cox, LUPE
Instead of attempting to defuse tensions even after the FBI warned Monday that pro-Trump militants are planning possible attacks across the nation in the coming days, the president while traveling from Washington, D.C. to Texas called his speech preceding the Capitol attack "totally appropriate."
The House Democrats' article of impeachment against Trump, however, alleges his remarks amount to "incitement of insurrection."
The Capitol attack and its aftermath were very much on the minds of Texans as Trump headed--apparently without notifying local officials--to the symbolically charged town of Alamo, which is named after the site of the famous last stand of mostly illegal U.S. immigrants routed by Mexican forces at San Antonio de Bexar, Mexico in 1836.
But also on the minds of many were matters much closer to home, including some of the Trump administration's most egregious human rights violations: the imprisonment of refugees and other migrants in concentration camps, the torturous seizure of children (hundreds of whom remain separated) from their parents, the devastating and dangerous "remain in Mexico" asylum policy, and other racist and xenophobic policies and actions.
Reflecting resistance to these longstanding administration misdeeds, reaction to recent developments in Washington, and fears that Trump's visit could spark further right-wing blooshed, immigrant and human rights advocates told Trump in no uncertain terms how they felt about his visit.
"After stoking mob violence at the Capitol, he has chosen our community to continue spewing his violence-inciting lies," Daniel Diaz, mobilizing director of la Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), wrote in a petition.
"We cannot allow Trump to bring his racist mob violence to the Rio Grande Valley," added Diaz. "Local officials must denounce his visit, call on him to cancel, and refuse to coordinate his visit with [U.S. Department of Homeland Security.] Should any violence occur on Tuesday, all public officials who did nothing to stop this visit will be responsible."
Fernando Garcia of the Border Network for Human Rights--which will lead a peaceful march to protest Trump's visit to Alamo--was even more blunt:
Trump has blood on his hands, and he is not welcome at the border... His policies and rhetoric are also responsible for the white supremacist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 that claimed the lives of 23 people, and the astounding violence inflicted on peaceful Black Lives Matter activists by the police last year at nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black and Brown people at the hands of law enforcement.
Rather than spend his last days in the Oval Office addressing the pressing Covid-19 pandemic and ensuring an orderly transition, Trump is doubling down on his xenophobic, white supremacist agenda...
Trump does not and has never represented our communities. His presence at the borderland is a provocation, and an act of violence in and of itself. Border communities are calling for the dismantlement of the wall of shame, racism, and white supremacy. The wall and all it represents have no place in our society, and Trump must be held accountable.
In a tweet, the ACLU called Trump's visit "a slap in the face for our communities" that "should be a wake-up call for President-elect [Joe] Biden to prioritize reckoning with Trump's legacy of ruthless border policy."
LUPE executive director Juanita Valdez-Cox asserted that "our community will not be used as a prop to distract the public from the accountability Trump is trying to avoid," adding that the president must not be permitted to "return to his tired playbook of demonizing border communities and putting their constituents at risk."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.