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alejandro mayorkas
Critics Compare Biden's Proposed Asylum Rule to 'Failed Trump-Era Policies'
"The Biden administration and Congress must not erect any more unjust barriers to asylum that will sow further disorder and result in irreparable harm," said one migrant rights advocate.
May 09, 2024
Immigrant rights advocates on Thursday slammed the Biden administration's proposal to fast-track the rejection of certain migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
On Thursday the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule that would empower immigration officials to disqualify certain asylum-seekers during their initial eligibility screening—called the credible fear interview (CFI)—using existing national security and terrorism-related criteria, or bars.
DHS said the rule would apply to noncitizens who have "engaged in certain criminal activity, persecuted others, or have been involved in terrorist activities."
"I urge President Biden to embrace our values as a nation of immigrants and use this opportunity to instead provide relief for the long-term immigrants of this nation."
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the proposed rule "yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here."
However, Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, argued that while "bars are an important feature of our immigration laws to ensure that dangerous individuals are not allowed into the country," they must be "accurately applied where warranted."
"This change could make the process faster by excluding people who would not be entitled to stay," he noted. "However, due process will likely be eroded by accelerating what is a highly complex legal analysis needed for these bars and conducting them at the preliminary CFI screening."
As Chen explained:
At that early stage, few asylum seekers will have the opportunity to seek legal counsel or time to understand the consequences of a bar being applied. Under the current process, they have more time to seek legal advice, to prepare their case, and to appeal it or seek an exemption. Ultimately to establish a fair and orderly process at the border, Congress needs to provide the Department of Homeland Security with the resources to meet its mission and also ensure the truly vulnerable are not summarily denied protection without due process.
Democratic lawmakers—some of whom held a press conference Wednesday on protecting undocumented immigrants in the U.S.—also criticized the proposal.
"As the Biden administration considers executive actions on immigration, we must not return to failed Trump-era policies aimed at banning asylum and moving us backwards," said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), referring to former Republican President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee to face President Joe Biden in November.
"I urge President Biden to embrace our values as a nation of immigrants and use this opportunity to instead provide relief for the long-term immigrants of this nation," he added.
One year ago, critics accused Biden of "finishing Trump's job" by implementing a crackdown on asylum-seekers upon the expiration of Title 42—a provision first invoked during Trump administration at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued by Biden to expel more than 1 million migrants under the pretext of public safety.
Earlier this week, the advocacy group Human Rights First released a report detailing the harms of the policy on its anniversary. The group held a press conference to unveil the report and warn of the dangers of further anti-migrant policies.
"The interviews with hundreds of asylum-seekers make clear that the asylum ban and related restrictions strands in danger children and adults seeking asylum, punishes people for seeking protection, leads to the return of refugees to persecution, spurs irregular crossings, and denies equal access to asylum to people facing the most dire risks," Human Rights First director of research and analysis of refugee protection Christina Asencio said during the press conference.
"The Biden administration and Congress must not erect any more unjust barriers to asylum that will sow further disorder and result in irreparable harm," Asencio added.
On Wednesday, three advocacy groups—Al Otro Lado, the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, and the Texas Civil Rights Project—sued the federal government on behalf of noncitizens with disabilities seeking more information regarding CBP One, the problem-plagued Customs and Border Protection app migrants must use to schedule asylum interviews at U.S. ports of entry.
"We have and continue to see migrants with disabilities facing unlawful discrimination and unequal access to the asylum process due to the inaccessibility of the app," said Laura Murchie, an attorney with the Civil Rights and Education Enforcement Center involved in the case.
"CBP needs to release these documents so we can advocate for and ensure compliance with the law so asylum-seekers with disabilities do not continue to be harmed by CBP's disregard for rights that are guaranteed by federal disability law," she added.
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'A New Low': House Republicans Impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas
"When you have no record of accomplishment to run on... this is what you do," said one Texas Democrat. "You put on a circus."
Feb 13, 2024
In what congressional Democrats blasted as yet another example of right-wingers in the U.S. House of Representatives creating "chaos" because they "simply can't govern," 214 Republicans voted Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Three Republicans—Reps. Ken Buck (Colo.), Mike Gallagher (Wis.), and Tom McClintock (Calif.)—joined all 210 Democrats present in voting against impeaching Mayorkas for his handling of immigration at the southern U.S. border. Two members of each party did not vote.
Democratic President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection in November, said in a lengthy statement after the vote that "history will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games."
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) declared that "the 'do-nothing' Republican Party continues to waste time and resources that could be spent working for the American people on baseless, partisan attacks of Biden administration officials as they take up this sham impeachment vote of Secretary Mayorkas."
Jayapal noted that Tuesday's vote came after a failed attempt last week, when only House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) was absent and Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) voted with the three Republicans and 212 Democrats who opposed impeaching Mayorkas.
"There is no question that the immigration system is broken—and what the American people want and deserve is an orderly and humane system that properly processes people and modernizes an outdated immigration system that has not been updated in over 30 years to reflect for the needs of our American economy, communities, and families," she said.
As The New York Times summarized earlier this month:
The first article of impeachment accuses Mr. Mayorkas of refusing to enforce a law that mandates the detention of migrants who lack authorization to enter the United States, and of exceeding his authority to parole those people into the country, allowing them to live and work temporarily while they wait for their immigration claims to be processed.
The second article accuses the secretary of breaching the public trust by misrepresenting the state of the border to lawmakers and hampering the Republican-led investigation into his conduct.
Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) took to the House floor to condemn the impeachment as a "sham."
"When you have no record of accomplishment to run on... this is what you do," he said. "You put on a circus."
The only other Cabinet member to ever be impeached was William Belknap, who resigned as secretary of war just before the vote in 1876. According to Time, "The Senate went forward with the trial anyway, but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict."
In 2024, the Senate is narrowly controlled by Democrats, and as The Associated Press noted Tuesday, "neither Democratic nor Republican senators have shown interest in the matter and it may be indefinitely shelved to a committee."
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that Mayorkas' impeachment is an attempt by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) "to further appease" former President Donald Trump—the GOP presidential front-runner who has pressured congressional Republicans to abandon their battle for new border policies so he can campaign on limiting immigration.
"This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans," said Schumer. "House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime. House Republicans failed to show he has violated the Constitution."
"House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense," he added. "This is a new low for House Republicans."
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The Border Convoy Was a Green Light for Political Violence
The bigotry and violence that stemmed from the border convoy represents a terrifying snapshot of what anti-democracy forces want America to look like.
Feb 11, 2024
This past weekend, the nation saw a dangerous in-person mobilization, the troubling result of bigoted rhetoric and online organizing, an ilk of which we haven’t seen since the January 6 insurrection.
The much-hyped anti-immigrant convoy of a few dozen pickup trucks, dubbed by its organizers as “Take Our Border Back,” made its way from the East Coast and expanded as it coalesced on Saturday, February 3, with rallies in Eagle Pass, Texas; San Ysidro, California; and Yuma, Arizona. The convoy, mostly comprised of lesser-known pro-Trump grifters, also had the endorsement of elected officials and right-wing media figures. Its “goal” was ostensibly to draw further attention to a perceived crisis on the U.S./Mexico border, but to dismiss it as a mere publicity stunt would be a mistake. Last weekend’s Take Our Border Back convoy was a rallying cry to white nationalist groups and a green light for political violence.
The fact that the convoy occurred at a moment when anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. has reached a fever pitch is hardly a coincidence.
Our democracy also requires an end to impunity for illegal paramilitary activity.
Election years traditionally are harbingers of spikes in anti-immigrant sentiment, and this year is no different, with political ads in states far from the border full of nativist vitriol and former President Donald Trump telling an audience that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” In Congress, repeated attempts from the GOP to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are entirely focused on xenophobia, and white nationalist groups around the country are also jumping on the anti-immigrant bandwagon, organizing anti-migrant protests in multiple states.
It would also be a mistake to see the border convoy as an isolated incident. Instead, it is part of an escalating effort by illegal paramilitary groups to use violence and to achieve their anti-immigrant goals. These groups are acting with impunity—not only are they rarely stopped by law enforcement, but worse, they have even been colluding with them. They are mobilizing members based on the same bigoted rhetoric being echoed by members of Congress, and they are attracting bad actors from across the anti-democracy movement.
Last weekend’s rallies included local neo-Nazis, anti-democracy politicians like Joe Kent, and anti-democracy provocateurs. Their driving force is rhetoric that can lead to violence. For instance, Gov. Greg Abbott, who said, “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border.” Small pockets of attendees have engaged in direct intimidation of migrants, filming them and espousing conspiracies about aid groups on the border. Earlier last week, the Border Patrol processing center in Eagle Pass had to be evacuated after the FBI warned of threats. And on February 6, news broke of a militia “sniper” Paul Faye Sr. arrested the day before after plotting to go to the border with explosives to target Border Patrol agents in an attempt to inspire a “domino effect” of more targeting of federal agents.
Faye Sr.’s court records reveal that he is a proponent of the great replacement conspiracy theory, which has motivated antisemitic violence in Pittsburgh, anti-Black violence in Buffalo, racist violence in El Paso, and anti-immigrant violence at the border again and again. This is the same conspiracy theory echoed by many border convoy speakers last weekend and by members of Congress, who used it as justification for filing articles of impeachment against Mayorkas. In fact, according to the immigrant rights group America’s Voice, GOP candidates and officials have echoed the great replacement theory over 1,040 times in the past year, a sobering example of how white nationalist conspiracy theories have moved from the margins to the mainstream.
The dangerous mobilization last weekend was just the latest chapter demonstrating the link between bigoted rhetoric to violence and intimidation. Paramilitary groups have spent decades crossing state lines and flocking to “patrol” the border, to hunt down and detain migrants. Many of these groups are not doing so stealthily but are advertising and filming their “missions” and openly asking for donations and supplies through Amazon wish lists. The problem has become so widespread that in July of last year, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) called on the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the presence of paramilitary militia groups patrolling the border and their attempts to court law enforcement personnel.
We didn’t arrive here overnight. While former President Trump certainly helped to expedite the process, before him, the organized anti-immigrant movement in the United States spent decades cultivating relationships with elected officials, drafting draconian legislation at the local level, and spewing out reports blaming immigrants for all of America’s ills. That movement was founded by white nationalist John Tanton, who once wrote, “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
Thankfully, border communities last weekend demonstrated that there is much we can do to defend against pernicious anti-immigrant sentiment. They organized, they spoke out based on their values, and they prioritized community safety. We need to see the same dedication from our elected officials in Congress to push back, again and again, against the normalization of bigotry.
Our democracy also requires an end to impunity for illegal paramilitary activity. The evacuation of the Border Patrol processing center in Eagle Pass along with the arrest of Paul Faye Sr. should send a clear message to Border Patrol that America’s militia movement is not their friend. For too long, the Department of Homeland Security has evaded scrutiny from civil rights groups for evidence that its agents are working directly with these vigilante groups. A clear rejection of armed illegal paramilitary groups by Customs and Border Protection would close the space for these groups to operate.
The bigotry and violence that stemmed from the border convoy and the racist conspiracy theories that fueled the Mayorkas impeachment hearings represent a terrifying snapshot of what anti-democracy forces want America to look like. We must continue to reject that vision and work toward an America that includes opportunities and rights for all of us.
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Biden Reportedly Open to Attacking Immigrant Rights to Secure Israel/Ukraine Aid
The Biden administration is "just openly willing to bring back Title 42 in order to get money for their well-funded genocide happening in Gaza?" asked one immigration rights advocate.
Dec 13, 2023
Faith-based and civil society groups on Tuesday condemned reports that the Biden administration, in ongoing negotiations with Republicans over a military aid package, has signaled a willingness to expand attacks on immigrant rights in exchange for the funding.
As CBS News reported, talks between the administration and Republican negotiators including Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) are ramping up regarding a $100 billion funding package President Joe Biden has requested from Congress, which would include military aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been on Capitol Hill this week, "engaging with negotiators in the Senate," according to CBS, and the White House has reportedly offered a number of concessions on U.S.-Mexico border policy to secure the funding, including support for:
- New legal authorities for border officials that would allow them to expel migrants without processing their asylum claims, effectively reviving the Trump-era Title 42 program that paused U.S. asylum protections;
- An expansion of "expedited removal," which allows the deportation of migrants who do not apply for asylum or do not pass their asylum interviews; and
- Expanded migrant detention for people whose asylum claims are being processed.
The White House's reported openness to the policies comes days after the Congressional Progressive Caucus said it would not support a deal that trades military aid for a Republican-backed anti-immigrant package.
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said the White House is reportedly considering support for policies which would have "outraged" Democrats if they'd been proposed by former Republican President Donald Trump.
"Expedited removal basically means fake due process for immigrants," said Romero. "Expanding the detention system and fast-tracking deportations contradicts President Biden's campaign pledges. These proposals will not offer a real fix to our immigration system."
The administration, he added, appears to be searching for "a quick fix at the border," where migrant crossings have surged in recent months.
"Even if these policies are enacted, we will see surges at the border with increased human suffering—as we haven't addressed the root causes or systemic failures of our immigration system," said Romero. "We urge Congress and the White House to abandon these proposals and do the hard work to advance sensible, humane, and effective solutions to border management. But if the president's advisers are looking for ways to suppress turnout and enthusiasm among young progressives and immigrant voters, then this will do the trick."
Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, agreed that increasing deportations and detentions would "make the border more disordered, not less," with migrants who have endured long and grueling journeys to the U.S. turned away.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director for the American Immigration Council, was among the critics who pointed out that the U.S. cannot "just shut the border" without the cooperation of Mexico.
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) were among those who noted that accepting the GOP's demands for anti-immigration policies would represent "a total abandonment" of Biden's campaign promises.
The request for more military aid comes as the Biden administration is increasingly isolated on the world stage in its support for Israel's war in Gaza, in which more than 18,600 Palestinians have now been killed and where witnesses on Wednesday reported that the Israel Defense Forces executed displaced women and children, and babies. The U.S. was joined by just nine other countries Tuesday in rejecting a call for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire at the U.N. General Assembly; 153 countries supported the cease-fire.
"President Biden campaigned on reversing all [these] BS policies from the Trump administration," said Erika Andiola, communications director for the Young Center. "Now they are just openly willing to bring back Title 42 in order to get money for their well-funded genocide happening in Gaza?"
On Tuesday, more than 375 religious leaders and faith-based organizations wrote to the White House, urging the president to reject Republicans' anti-immigrant proposals as part of the supplemental aid package, noting that families with children make up "an increasing proportion" of asylum seekers arriving at the border in recent months.
"We face real challenges at the border that demand a coordinated and well-resourced response," wrote the groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice, and Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice. "The asylum restrictions under consideration would do nothing to support that needed effort. Deterrence-based policies at the border have repeatedly proven ineffective."
"Certainly, they do not prevent those fleeing danger from seeking life-saving protection at the border, and they fail to make the asylum process more efficient, orderly, or humane," the letter reads. "Attempting to leverage the safety, freedom, and wellbeing of some of the world's most vulnerable people for unrelated foreign policy objectives is a violation of our call to honor and uphold the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, no matter their country of origin or the circumstances they face."
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100+ Groups Urge Biden to Cancel 'Baffling and Cruel' Border Wall Waivers
The signers of a letter to the U.S. president "underscore the profound and irreparable harms border walls have inflicted on border communities and wildlife."
Oct 16, 2023
More than 100 advocacy groups on Monday urged the Biden administration to rescind its waiver of more than two dozen environmental laws in order fast-track construction of the separation wall along the U.S.-Mexico border championed by former President Donald Trump.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the groups—which include the Center for Biological Diversity, the ACLU, Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the Wilderness Society, GreenLatinos, Defenders of Wildlife, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, United We Dream, and others—implore the administration to heed "our call to restore legal protections for clean air, clean water, Indigenous graves, and endangered species" by rescinding waivers to 26 environmental laws.
"Border communities, wildlife, and Indigenous nations deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else in America."
On October 5, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filed a "notice of determination" under Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, a law signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996. According to the DHS filing, Mayorkas has determined that "it is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations, and other legal requirements in order to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas."
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the 26 laws include the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
"Secretary Mayorkas' decision to cast aside these critical protections to rush the construction of a wall that you admit 'does not work,' but that you are undertaking because the administration claims it is compelled to uphold appropriations law, suggests either serious confusion or troubling hypocrisy," the groups' letter states. "We would like to believe that you are sincere in wanting to uphold the rule of all laws for all people in the United States, including the millions who call the border region home."
The letters' signers "underscore the profound and irreparable harms border walls have inflicted on border communities and wildlife."
"Just last month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a damning report detailing the severe damage border wall construction caused to wildlife, public lands, and Indigenous sacred sites and burial grounds along the U.S.-Mexico border, aided and enabled by the waivers of dozens of laws to rush construction," the letter notes.
Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that "border communities, wildlife, and Indigenous nations deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else in America."
"It's baffling and cruel that the administration plans to ignore these vital laws to build a destructive wall that the president admits is useless," he continued.
"Federal officials have falsely claimed they had no choice but to waive protections for border communities and wildlife, but this terrible decision was theirs alone and they have the power to undo it," Jordahl added. "They can stop bulldozers from descending on Starr County and protect some of the best wildlife habitat left in south Texas."
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'Horrific Step Backwards': Biden Admin Waives Protections to Speed Border Wall Construction
"Every acre of habitat left in the Rio Grande Valley is irreplaceable," said one advocate. "We can't afford to lose more of it to a useless, medieval wall."
Oct 04, 2023
Environmental protection advocates and immigrant rights campaigners expressed horror Wednesday over a Department of Homeland Security plan entered into the Federal Register that will waive more than two dozen laws in order to expedite the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The "notice of determination" was entered under Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, which was signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1996, and said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas "has determined, pursuant to law, that it is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations, and other legal requirements."
The 26 laws—which include the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act—are being set aside "to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas," the Federal Register said.
The waiver will allow construction through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and could threaten endangered species including ocelots, as well as the plant species Zapata bladderpod and prostrate milkweed, said the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).
Voces Unidas Rio Grande Valley said it was "disappointed, but not surprised" by DHS's plan and noted that it will further limit the access to green spaces that area residents have.
Mayorkas' determination marks the first time the Biden administration has used its waiver authority under the REAL ID Act of 2005 to override federal laws.
The Trump and George W. Bush administrations
used the authority in all four states that border Mexico to build walls and roads that they claimed were "an impediment" to the construction. Environmental groups have long condemned the REAL ID Act and its waiver authority.
Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate for CBD, said it was "disheartening to see President Biden stoop to this level" in order to "build ineffective wildlife-killing border walls" that international advocates say also violates human rights.
"Starr County is home to some of the most spectacular and biologically important habitat left in Texas and now bulldozers are preparing to rip right through it," said Jordahl. "This is a horrific step backwards for the borderlands."
The proposal is the Biden administration's latest escalation of its anti-immigration policies and follows an expansion of the Trump-era Title 42 policy and a rule barring entry into the U.S. for asylum seekers who can't prove they applied for asylum in another country.
"Every acre of habitat left in the Rio Grande Valley is irreplaceable," said Jordahl. "We can't afford to lose more of it to a useless, medieval wall that won't do a thing to stop immigration or smuggling. President Biden's cynical decision to destroy a wildlife refuge and seal the beautiful Rio Grande behind a grotesque border wall must be stopped."
The proposal was announced a month after the federal government's own watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, released a report saying that border wall construction under Trump damaged native plants, helped spread invasive species, disrupted migration patterns for endangered species, and destroyed Indigenous burial grounds and sacred sites.
"There's no end to this insanity,"
said historian Greg Grandin of Biden's plan to fast-track the wall's construction.
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'Affirming Apartheid': Biden Admin to Allow Israel Into Visa Waiver Program
One critic called it "an outrageous endorsement of the Israeli government's systematic discrimination against Palestinian Americans and a reward to the most extremist, racist government in Israel's history."
Sep 27, 2023
Human rights advocates on Wednesday forcefully denounced the Biden administration's move to let Israelis apply to travel to the United States without visas, and vice versa, despite charges that Israel's treatment of Palestinian Americans violates the program's legal requirements.
The U.S. departments of Homeland Security and State confirmed that by November 30, "the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) will be updated to allow citizens and nationals of Israel to apply to travel to the United States for tourism or business purposes for up to 90 days without first obtaining a U.S. visa."
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said that the designation of Israel into the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) "represents over a decade of work and coordination," and "is an important recognition of our shared security interests and the close cooperation between our two countries."
While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that "this important achievement will enhance freedom of movement for U.S. citizens, including those living in the Palestinian territories or traveling to and from them," rights groups and some American lawmakers have been pushing back against such claims.
U.S. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), joined by over a dozen colleagues, wrote in a letter to Blinken earlier this month that according to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed in this summer, "Israel is not expected to fully implement one system that all U.S. citizen travelers can use for purposes of visa waiver travel until May 1, 2024, well beyond the September 30, 2023 deadline for meeting program requirements."
"The MOU states that Israel will employ 'an interim process for a U.S. citizen who is a resident of the West Bank.' Such a two-tiered system of entry inherently violates the administration's own standard for reciprocity that 'blue is blue'—meaning 'equal treatment and freedom of travel for all U.S. citizens regardless of national origin, religion, or ethnicity," the senators noted. "We have already learned of a number of U.S. citizen families who flew to Israel to take advantage of visa waiver travel under the new MOU who were denied entry for having Gaza IDs."
Van Hollen and Schatz, along with Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), reiterated their concerns in a joint statement Wednesday, saying that "to date, Israel has failed to meet the 'blue is blue' requirement. Adherence to this important American tenet of reciprocity and equal treatment of all U.S. citizens is critical to the integrity of the Visa Waiver Program, and we are deeply concerned with the administration's decision to move forward in violation of that principle."
The Biden administration's highly anticipated announcement follows a related lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), whose director, Abed Ayoub, said Wednesday that "by endorsing a tiered system for U.S. citizens, our government has given its tacit approval to Israel's prejudiced policies and apartheid actions."
Especially faced with what is widely considered Israel's most far-right government in the nation's history—reaffirmed by stunts like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presenting a map of "The New Middle East" without Palestine during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week—a growing number of rights groups have accused Israel of apartheid.
Adalah Justice Project executive director Sandra Tamari declared Wednesday that "apartheid is not only Israeli policy, it is U.S. policy too."
"Israel's discrimination is especially egregious against Palestinian Americans with ties to Gaza," Tamari stressed, "making reunification of families torn apart by Israel's siege and blockade of Gaza near impossible."
Leaders from Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American Islamic Relations, Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVP Action), Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights also denounced the Biden administration's designation.
JVP Action executive director Stefanie Fox called it "an outrageous endorsement of the Israeli government's systematic discrimination against Palestinian Americans and a reward to the most extremist, racist government in Israel's history."
"Once again, the U.S. is singling out Israel for special and exceptionalized treatment at the expense of the rights of Palestinian Americans," she added. "Jewish Voice for Peace Action calls for the immediate reversal of this decision."
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, suggested that "by choosing to make this reckless move ahead of the September 30, 2023 end of the federal fiscal year, it is also clear the issue of reciprocity was not the only barrier to Israel's eligibility to enter the VWP."
"Moving to admit them now so that an application would not have to restart under potentially different (and post-Covid) visa refusal rates—an additional requirement of the law—is another sign of the prioritization of politics over our rights," he continued. "With this move, Israel has extended its discriminatory apartheid laws to American citizens with our own government's enthusiastic support."
Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN) director of advocacy for Israel/Palestine Adam Shapiro, a plaintiff in ADC's lawsuit, said Wednesday that "the U.S. should halt implementation of the visa waiver for Israel at least until a judge reviews what we believe to be the government's arbitrary and capricious actions that enshrine Israeli apartheid in a U.S. program."
"Separate can never be equal, as was determined decades ago in the fight for civil rights in this country," Shapiro added. "Forty countries participate in the VWP, and none have formal arrangements to discriminate against American citizens; only Israel has demanded and been granted this unconscionable favor by the U.S. government."
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400+ Immigrant Rights Groups Demand Biden Take Action to Preserve TPS
While "the North Star is always citizenship" for immigrant rights groups, "this program is now the relief that the president can offer," said one advocate.
Sep 11, 2023
More than 400 immigrant rights and civil society groups on Monday wrote to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to call on the Biden administration to redesignate people from six countries for Temporary Protected Status, warning that the safety of as many as 2 million people hang in the balance as the White House has said it is up to Congress to pass comprehensive reform to protect asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants.
Organizations including the ACLU, CASA, and the National Immigration Law Center noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June extended the TPS designations of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal as it rescinded the Trump administration's termination of protections for people from those countries.
On Friday, under pressure from lawmakers including Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Jesús "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.), and Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), the administration extended the TPS registration period for people from the four countries—known collectively as the Ramos countries—from 60 days to 18 months, allowing people to have until at least March 2025 to re-register for protected status, which enables them to temporarily live and work in the U.S. and protects them from deportation.
That victory was celebrated, but advocates on Monday said DHS's formal finding that the conditions in the four countries continued to meet the requirements for TPS—which is extended to people from countries facing ongoing conflict, environmental disasters, or other violence—also allows the agency, "in its discretion, to redesignate TPS for those countries."
"Doing so would provide TPS protections to individuals who have come to the U.S. and established lives here in the many intervening years since the original designations," wrote the groups. "Such a decision to redesignate will remain open to you, as DHS secretary, in your unreviewable discretion, until and unless those conditions are no longer in place. Failure to exercise that discretion would leave one to two million people from these same nations unprotected, even though they face the exact same dangers as current TPS holders if forcefully returned to their countries of origin."
The groups also urged DHS to redesignate Venezuela as a TPS country and to designate people from Guatemala as protected under the program for the first time.
Last week, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also called on the administration to redesignate the Ramos countries as qualifying for TPS.
The Biden administration has pushed Congress to pass immigration reform—while expanding the Trump-era Title 42 program by imposing requirements on certain people fleeing their home countries for the U.S. and continuing to detain families—but advocates on Monday told The Hill that redesignating TPS for people at risk of deportation is "the most powerful tool in the president's executive arsenal" regarding immigration policy, while they continue pushing for legislation that would include a path to citizenship.
"We cannot wait," Jossie Flor Sapunar, national communications director for advocacy group CASA, told The Hill. "The only relief that can be offered to the immigrant community now is through the administration."
While "the North Star is always citizenship," Sapunar added, "this program is now the relief that the president can offer."
Redesignating TPS "would provide enormous benefits to our nation and also fulfill the spirit of the president's campaign promise not to return TPS holders to unsafe countries," wrote the groups on Monday, in addition to being "life-changing for those who have made their lives here."
"A wealth of research demonstrates the benefits to all workers and the economy of granting legal status to persons who already live and work in the U.S. and specifically documents the huge economic contributions of persons who have or would be eligible for TPS," they said. "Redesignating TPS for these countries would grant work authorization to a meaningful proportion of all currently undocumented workers, helping to alleviate tight labor markets and reducing the need for local safety net programs. It would also increase remittances back to these countries, putting resources directly into the hands of the people who need it most, helping to bring stability to those countries, and thereby reducing migration."
The letter was sent less than a week after more than 30 mayors and county executives from across the U.S. wrote to Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calling on them to redesignate TPS for Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cameroon, and Nepal and to give initial designation to Guatemala, Mali, Congo, Mauritania, and Nigeria.
"As city and county leaders, the safety and well-being of our residents is of utmost importance," wrote the local leaders, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. "We recognize that TPS is one way the Biden-Harris administration can protect many well-established residents with deep ties to our communities through their families, jobs, and homes as well as help newer arrivals establish themselves and find economic independence."
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100+ Groups Urge DHS to Condemn Abbott's 'Brazen, Cruel, and Deadly' Operation Lone Star
"To date your agencies have not forcefully disavowed the program or acknowledged the deep harms of Texas' racist and unlawful enforcement operation."
Aug 24, 2023
A coalition of more than 100 advocacy groups on Thursday implored the Biden administration to "take decisive action to condemn" and "cease involvement" in Operation Lone Star, the deadly anti-immigrant campaign launched in 2021 by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In a letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, the 108 groups implored the administration "to investigate and end any collaboration" between Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies and Operation Lone Star (OLS).
"In the two years since Texas initiated OLS, we have repeatedly called on DHS and CBP to cease all forms of cooperation with the program," the letter states. "Nevertheless, to date your agencies have not forcefully disavowed the program or acknowledged the deep harms of Texas' racist and unlawful enforcement operation."
"Federal inaction has emboldened Texas officials to employ increasingly brazen, cruel, and deadly enforcement tactics that have caused family separation, death, and daily violations of the civil and human rights of Black and Brown migrants," the signers added.
As the National Immigration Project—which led the letter—noted, these tactics include "pushing people back into the Rio Grande, denying migrants water in extreme heat, and installing life-threatening buoy and razor-wire barriers in and around the river."
"Advocates also report that Texas officers have started using OLS arrests to separate fathers from their families, seemingly with the cooperation of Border Patrol agents," the group added. "These conscience-shocking tactics will only continue in the absence of a decisive federal response."
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department sued Texas over the floating barrier, claiming it "poses threats to navigation and public safety and presents humanitarian concerns," and "has prompted diplomatic protests by Mexico and risks damaging U.S. foreign policy."
National Immigration Project executive director Sirine Shebaya said in a statement that "in recent months, we've seen Gov. Greg Abbott employ new and increasingly dangerous and deadly tactics as part of his illicit Operation Lone Star program."
"The federal government has a clear responsibility to not only cease collaboration with Texas officials on Operation Lone Star but also to push back on this unthinkable cruelty," she continued.
"Left unchecked, these hateful policies and inhumane treatment will only continue to escalate," Shebaya added. "As a nationwide membership organization, we will continue working with our members and partners in Texas and across the country to put an end to these horrific human and civil rights abuses."
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The Dehumanizing Cruelty at the Texas Border Is Part of a Larger GOP Pattern
While investigations should proceed to ensure accountability for those responsible for the horrors near the Rio Grande, we also need to fight against the other fronts of the GOP’s all-out nativist assault on our values.
Jul 25, 2023
Horrific details emerged last week of Texas state troopers deployed by Gov. Greg Abbott denying water to pregnant women and pushing children back into the Rio Grande and the accompanying dangers of deployed razor wire. The barriers are designed to harm and ensnare people seeking asylum in the U.S. Rather than treating it as a vile story that soon fades from the news and our consciousness, we must view the revelations through their larger context.
Unfortunately, it’s just the latest—and a particularly troubling—example of a larger pattern of dehumanizing, dangerous, and politically motivated nativism advanced by Republicans and right wing media. It’s predicated on a false portrayal of immigrants and asylum seekers as threats, invaders, and replacers. And its relentless and accompanying messaging barrage is helping to mainstream dangerous white nationalist conspiracies that are directly linked to real acts of deadly violence.
All of this should be a wake-up call about the consequences of dehumanizing immigrants and should be a focus of real and bipartisan accountability, alongside policy efforts focused on solutions to a broken immigration system. Instead, we expect Republicans to continue in a dangerous, alternate direction.
The GOP prefers chaos and obstruction, designed to keep a sense of crisis involving non-white immigrants in the headlines and portraying “us” as under siege from threatening invaders.
While investigations should proceed to ensure accountability for those responsible for the horrors near the Rio Grande, we also need to fight against the other fronts of the GOP’s all-out nativist assault on our values and its dangerous implications for our country. This includes House Republicans’ effort to pursue a sham impeachment of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—an effort that will hurtle forward this week when Secretary Mayorkas testifies before the House Judiciary Committee in the latest installment of right-wing alternate reality TV.
Keep in mind, domestic extremists—predominantly right-wing extremists—pose the greatest lethal terrorism threat to the U.S. per our government’s own assessments. Yet Republicans are intent to impeach the leader tasked with protecting our homeland, while basing their supposed case on immigration falsehoods, using many of the same talking points as the domestic extremists themselves.
This is impeachment over policy differences, and the GOP’s refusal to admit that their apocalyptic predictions about the end of Title 42 got it exactly backwards. Border encounter numbers have plummeted since the overdue end of Title 42, including because of new legal pathways announced by the Biden administration that alleviate border pressures and provide alternatives to the trek to the border.
Yet instead of acknowledging these facts, Republicans are suing to block these legal pathways while proceeding with their pre-baked attacks on Secretary Mayorkas as if their predictions got it right. None of the Republican alternative approaches would advance real solutions or move us closer to the full-scale modernization our immigration system needs—or even greater management and control—but the GOP keeps blocking anything like solutions.
The GOP prefers chaos and obstruction, designed to keep a sense of crisis involving non-white immigrants in the headlines and portraying “us” as under siege from threatening invaders. It’s dangerous, and it’s motivated by keeping the GOP base animated and inflamed. In reality, their latest impeachment push continues a political attack that GOP and right-wing leaders started long before President Joe Biden was even in office, when they blamed candidate Biden’s immigration policies for a rise in border encounters occurring during the Trump presidency.
It's all independent from the facts, moves us farther from the solutions we need, and opens the door to dangerous violence and dehumanizing treatment of immigrants by amplifying dangerous white nationalist conspiracies about “invasions” and an effort to “replace” white Americans with immigrants. In the 118th Congress alone, tracking by America’s Voice has revealed that 33 Republican Members of Congress have employed the “invasion” conspiracy, including GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee that Secretary Mayorkas will testify before.
From the horrific revelations emanating from Texas to the renewed sham impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, we need to fight against the dehumanization of immigrants and the normalization of extremism in all its forms.
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