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america's voice
ICE Encounter With Autistic 5-Year-Old Sparks Alarm
"This visceral event is just another frightening example of a broader and deeply disturbing pattern by this administration."
Sep 23, 2025
A video of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with a 5-year-old autistic girl outside her family home in Leominster, Massachusetts generated alarm after it was published Monday by NBCUniversal's Spanish-language Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra.
While Telemundo first reported that the family accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of holding the girl in an effort to pressure her father, 22-year-old Edward Hip Mejía, to surrender to ICE, and the agency initially did not respond to a request for comment, the outlet updated the article on Tuesday, including with a comment from a government spokesperson.
The video from last Tuesday shows the little girl seated outside an open vehicle, drinking from a water bottle while surrounded by law enforcement. A man can be heard shouting "Don't touch her!" and a woman identified as the girl's mother tells one agent that the others took her daughter, who is 5 years old and on the autism spectrum. She also says, "Give me my daughter back."
The mother, who did not want her name shared, told Telemundo that her husband called her while driving with their daughter because he thought they were being followed. Her husband "managed to run back into the parking lot of my house," she said, and her daughter was left with the agents. The video shows agents trying to get Hip Mejía to come outside the house to show them identification.
According to NBC Boston, "Leominster police arrived at the scene, recovered the child, and returned her to the family."
Medically complex and disable children shouldn’t be bargaining chips, period. This outrageous act by #immigration officials is inexcusable and ultimately led to the separation of this 5-year-old autistic girl from Massachusetts 😡
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— Little Lobbyists (@littlelobbyists.com) September 23, 2025 at 10:43 AM
The couple has two children who were born in the United States. Neither parent was taken into custody that day. However, two days later, ICE returned to their home and took Hip Mejía into custody, his wife said. He is now being held at a detention center in Plymouth.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Department of Homeland Security, responded to NBC News' English version of the initial reporting, calling it "a disgusting smear." She claimed that Hip Mejia "ignored law enforcement emergency lights to pull over and drove back to his house," and then "abandoned his 5-year-old daughter in the car."
The family's experience is part of an attempt by ICE to deliver on US President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations.
The initial reporting and footage sparked swift outrage, with critics across the United States and beyond condemning agents' treatment of the family as "fascism," "truly evil," and "a fucking abomination."
Joanna Kuebler, chief of programs at the advocacy group America's Voice, said in a Tuesday statement that "this visceral event is just another frightening example of a broader and deeply disturbing pattern by this administration."
"The combination of cruelty and impunity in pursuit of a mass deportation crusade is dangerous for America and all of our safety," Kuebler added. "Smashing car windows, ripping families apart, and traumatizing children threatens the public safety of American communities and the stability of our nation.”
This article has been updated with comment from the US Department of Homeland Security and corrections by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra.
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As White House Doubles Down, Judge Launches Inquiry of Refusal to Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia
"There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding," the judge said. "Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments... I expect all hands on deck."
Apr 15, 2025
As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday had a "full-blown meltdown" after a reporter asked about the Maryland man wrongly deported to a prison in his native El Salvador, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis launched an inquiry into the Trump administration's refusal to seek the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States.
The Trump administration has previously admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly sent to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)—despite an immigration judge's 2019 order barring his deportation to El Salvador—due to an administrative error. Xinis ordered the administration to facilitate his release, a decision unanimously affirmed last week by the U.S. Supreme Court.
However, Abrego Garcia remained imprisoned as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued in a Sunday filing that Xinis has "no authority" to compel the administration to bring him home, and as President Donald Trump on Monday welcomed Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to the White House. Their meeting was followed by a Tuesday court hearing.
According to NBC News: "Attorneys for Abrego Garcia had asked that the administration be found in contempt of court over its inaction. The judge said she wants to review the evidence the administration submits, which is expected to include sworn depositions, before ruling on the matter."
During the hearing, Drew Ensign of the DOJ told Xinis—who was appointed to the District of Maryland by former President Barack Obama—that if Abrego Garcia "appears at a port of entry or U.S. Embassy we will facilitate his return."
Meanwhile, the judge called out the administration, saying: "What the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing. I asked for reports from individuals with direct knowledge, and I've gotten very little information of any value."
"We're going to move. There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding," Xinis continued. "There are no business hours while we do this… Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I'm usually pretty good about things like that in my court, but not this time. So, I expect all hands on deck."
NEW: Judge Xinis authorizes up to 15 interrogatories, 15 document requests, depositions from all govt declarants (Cerna, Katz, Kozak, and Mazzara) and up to two others to assess what the govt has done to "facilitate" Kilmar Abrego Garcia's release storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) April 15, 2025 at 6:36 PM
At the White House on Tuesday, a reporter asked Leavitt who is responsible for Abrego Garcia and where he is going to end up. The press secretary responded by sharing unfounded allegations that he is a "terrorist" and member of the gang MS-13, and said that "deporting him back to El Salvador was always going to be the end result."
Leavitt also used Bukele's framing from the Oval Office event, when he suggested that returning the Maryland resident would mean smuggling a terrorist into the country. In addition to Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has sent 238 Venezuelan migrants to CECOT, and the president on Monday expressed interest in sending "homegrown" American prisoners there.
"This is what mass deportation looks like," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, said in a Tuesday statement. "The concept of stripping citizenship from U.S. citizens and sending them to El Salvador prisons without due process is the stuff of nightmares and undemocratic regimes, yet here we are."
"It's hard to overstate what the stakes are for our democracy and core American principles given what we're seeing and what the administration is now floating as the next steps in their larger deportation agenda," Cárdenas added. "And it's time Americans of all political perspectives stand up and speak out in opposition."
Some Democrats in Congress have blasted the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda and are part of the battle to bring Abrego Garcia home—including U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is aiming to travel to El Salvador if the deported man is not swiftly returned to his state. Multiple Democratic members of the House of Representatives have signaled that they plan to join the trip.
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'Blizzard' of Anti-Immigrant Trump Moves Aimed at Remaking US in 'MAGA's Preferred Image'
"Rather than viewing each executive action in isolation, we should take in totality: They are attempting to kick out and keep out as many immigrants as possible—whether here legally or not," said one advocate.
Feb 21, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's "flood the zone" strategy, characterized by a relentless stream of policies and proclamations, has extended to his anti-immigration agenda, with a "blizzard" of news stories this week detailing the administration's hostility toward and endangerment of asylum-seekers and immigrants across the country.
One immigrant rights organization on Friday advised the public not to lose sight of the overarching goal of the Trump administration and his MAGA movement as people try to make sense of the harms being imposed on their communities: to "embark on a radical reshaping of America that tramples on both our interests and our values."
America's Voice, which works to create a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., said that "the sheer volume of immigration policy news is best viewed in the aggregate, taking into account the array of proposed and enacted policies and the larger through lines and implications."
This past week, as Common Dreams reported, Americans learned about the fates of about 300 people who had come from all over the world to seek safety in the U.S., only to be deported to Panama—which has agreed to serve as a "bridge" country in Trump's mass deporation operation—and locked in a hotel before many of them agreed to board flights back to their home countries. About 100 of them, including eight children, were sent to a remote detention camp near the sweltering Darién jungle where authorities confiscated their cellphones, cutting them off from contact with journalists.
"None of the actions taken are about public safety or our economic interests or even what's best for the lives and futures of Trump voters."
That news came ahead of reports that Trump was revoking Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants, making them eligible for deportation starting this summer even as "Haiti continues to be roiled by violence and disorder," as America's Voice executive director Vanessa Cárdenas said.
As Common Dreams reported on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of the Interior moved to cut off legal services for unaccompanied migrant children, ordering organizations that have helped tens of thousands of children to stop providing representation to them and ending funding for the legal programs.
On top of those developments were the shifting of Department of Homeland Security resources away from investigating drug dealers, suspected terrorists, and weapons trafficking to deportation operations—which have swept up thousands of people with no criminal records—and the firing of federal health inspectors at some border stations while the administration has said it plans to begin turning away migrants on the grounds that they could spread communicable diseases.
"The disconnect and hypocrisy was a particularly stark reminder that the administration isn't motivated by keeping the public safe as much as keeping out and kicking out immigrants as their top priority," said America's Voice.
Cárdenas said the policies of the past week have made clear that "the Trump administration's anti-immigrant obsession comes at a high cost to all of us."
"Rather than viewing each executive action in isolation, we should take in totality: they are attempting to kick out and keep out as many immigrants as possible—whether here legally or not," said Cárdenas. "It is particularly egregious that this administration is going yet again after children by preventing their access to legal representation. None of the actions taken are about public safety or our economic interests or even what's best for the lives and futures of Trump voters, as their immigration agenda and plans for indiscriminate mass deportations will harm each of those measures. Instead, it's part of a larger effort to remake the nation in MAGA's preferred image."
As the administration introduced new policies and the human impacts of its anti-immigration agenda were made increasingly clear, the White House released an "ASMR" video this week featuring the sounds of handcuffs and chains being used in Trump's mass deportations. It also posted to social media a Valentine's Day message threatening to deport people who are unauthorized to be in the United States.
"Trump's intention is not to solve a problem but to create one as he puts on a show of cruelty for his supporters with his plan for mass deportations," wrote Maribel Hastings, a columnist with America's Voice. "Trump 'thrives' on the chaos he creates he purposely provokes to maintain a narrative and justify actions such as indiscriminate detentions and deportations."
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'To Instill Widespread Fear Is the Point': Trump Plots Chicago Immigration Raids
"It's a performance with serious costs for immigrant communities," said one critic. "And it's a performance to help sell their greater authoritarian agenda."
Jan 18, 2025
Citing four unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's administration intends to start delivering on his long-promised mass deportations with "a large-scale immigration raid" in Chicago, Illinois that "is expected to begin on Tuesday morning, a day after Trump is inaugurated, and will last all week."
"The Trump team intends to target immigrants in the country illegally with criminal backgrounds—many of whose offenses, like driving violations, made them too minor for the Biden administration to pursue," according to the newspaper. "But, the people cautioned, if anyone else in the country illegally is present during an arrest, they will be taken, too."
After considering which "sanctuary cities" to target, "they settled on Chicago both because of the large number of immigrants who could be possible targets and because of the Trump team's high-profile feud with the city's Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson," the Journal detailed. "Large immigrant centers, such as New York, Los Angeles, Denver, and Miami, are also in the incoming administration's sights, and more targeted raids could come."
The Trump transition team, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and representatives for Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker did not respond to the paper's request for comment, but the Democratic governor on Saturday circulated "know your rights" resources from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights on his social media accounts and pledged to "protect those rights and ensure our state laws are followed."
Every family and child deserves to feel safe and secure in the place they call home. Every resident of Illinois should know their rights. I intend to protect those rights and ensure our state laws are followed.
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— Governor JB Pritzker ( @govpritzker.illinois.gov) January 18, 2025 at 12:36 PM
As that resource sheet notes, people questioned by ICE officers have the right to remain silent, and the federal agency's officers must have a warrant signed by a judge to enter a private residence without consent.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that "Beatriz Ponce de Leon, deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant, and refugee rights, warned City Council members of the impending street sweeps during a series of virtual briefings Friday" and advocates are "organizing 'know your rights' workshops and distributing cards in Latino neighborhoods with bilingual information on residents' legal rights."
Under the Welcoming City Ordinance, the Chicago Police Department does not document immigration status or share information with federal immigration authorities. WGN9 pointed out that "Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Park District, and Community Colleges of Chicago have all been directed not to allow ICE access into any of its buildings."
According to The New York Times, which spoke with two unnamed sources and obtained related correspondence, "hundreds of agents were asked to volunteer" for ICE's "Operation Safeguard," and the agency plans to send roughly 150 agents to Chicago.
Tom Homan, Trump's incoming "border czar" and former acting director of ICE, previewed the administration's targeting of the Illinois city while attending a Northwest Side GOP holiday party last month, telling other attendees that "Chicago's in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks," and if Johnson "doesn't want to help, get the hell out of the way."
The reports about the massive raids in Chicago confirmes much about the mass deportation regime. 1 Homan is in charge 2 raids are weapon to be selectively wheeled at political opponents - yes it’s about targeting the undoc but also the Dem mayor 3 the staged performance is their key objective
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— Zachary A Mueller ( @zacharyamueller.bsky.social) January 18, 2025 at 10:16 AM
In a social media thread about the reported plans for Chicago, Zachary Mueller, senior research director at the advocacy group America's Voice, said that Trump's administration "will parade out some number of immigrants who have committed serious crimes, to sell the lie that this is about protecting the American people. It's not."
"Don't fall for their trap," Mueller continued. "There will be arrests in other cities to say that this is not weaponized raids as [a] political attack on political opponents. But the [performance] to instill widespread fear is the point. Fear to immigrant communities. Fear to any elected official not in a major city of the cost of speaking out."
"Homan wants a confrontation. They want to perform the narrative for their audience they are taking it to the 'enemy within," Mueller added. "It's a performance with serious costs for immigrant communities. And it's a performance to help sell their greater authoritarian agenda."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, responded similarly, saying Friday: "The actual operation described in the piece (100-200 agents) seems not that unusual for ICE (Google Operation Cross-Check). Expect a PR blitz, though."
"Not to diminish... the impact, but from [the Journal's] reporting it seems that the scale of this is entirely precedented. ICE has done similar operations in the past. This seems mostly about generating media," Reichlin-Melnick explained.
"As many people have said, it is going to take time for the Trump administration to ramp up immigration enforcement," he added. "In the meantime, however, they are going to basically slap a 'mass deportation' logo on the side of every regular ICE operation."
In addition to sounding the alarm over how Trump's mass deportations are expected to impact the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and their families, migrant rights advocates and experts have warned that the plan, if fully implemented, "would deliver a catastrophic blow to the U.S. economy."
Although Trump won't be president again until his Monday inauguration, Republicans on Capitol Hill are already pushing forward the GOP's anti-migrant agenda, with help from some Democrats in Congress. On Friday, 10 Democratic senators voted with Republicans to advance the Laken Riley Act, setting it up for a final vote next week.
Those 10 Democrats are Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), and Mark Warner (Va.). Gallego and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who did not vote on Friday, also co-sponsored the bill.
"The process displayed by Democrats during the Laken Riley Act legislative debate is an alarming first sign of acquiescence to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller," said America's Voice executive director Vanessa Cárdenas, referring to the family separation architect set to serve as the president-elect's homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy.
"Greenlighting a massive increase in unnecessary detention and empowering the radical anti-immigrant state attorneys general is deeply harmful and undermines the solutions we need," she stressed. "Despite Donald Trump's victory and the prominence of his vicious anti-immigrant pledges, a strong majority of the American public prefers a balanced approach to immigration, involving both border security and legalization for undocumented immigrants, instead of mass deportation."
According to Cárdenas' group, a coalition of nearly two dozen organizations including Families for Freedom, United We Dream, and multiple state arms of Make the Road are launching a nationwide week of action scheduled to begin Monday in California, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
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Congressional Report Calls Trump Deportation Plan 'Catastrophic' for Economy
"All it will do is raise grocery prices, destroy jobs, and shrink the economy," JEC Chair Martin Heinrich said of the president-elect's plan to deport millions of immigrants.
Dec 12, 2024
Echoing recent warnings from economists, business leaders, news reporting, and immigrant rights groups, Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee detailed Thursday how President-elect Donald Trump's planned mass deportations "would deliver a catastrophic blow to the U.S. economy."
"Though the U.S. immigration system remains broken, immigrants are crucial to growing the labor force and supporting economic output," states the new report from JEC Democrats. "Immigrants have helped expand the labor supply, pay nearly $580 billion a year in taxes, possess a spending power of $1.6 trillion a year, and just last year contributed close to $50 billion each in personal income and consumer spending."
There are an estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and Trump—who is set to be sworn in next month—has even suggested he would deport children who are American citizens with their parents who are not and attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Citing recent research by the American Immigration Council and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the JEC report warns that depending on how many immigrants are forced out of the country, Trump's deportations could:
- Reduce real gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 7.4% by 2028;
- Reduce the supply of workers for key industries, including by up to 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction;
- Push prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028; and
- Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half a million immigrants who are removed from the labor force.
Highlighting how mass deportations would harm not only undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens, the report explains that construction worker losses would "make housing even harder to build, raising its cost," and "reduce the supply of farmworkers who keep Americans fed as well as the supply of home health aides at a time when more Americans are aging and requiring assistance."
In addition to reducing home care labor, Trump's deportation plan would specifically harm seniors by reducing money for key government benefits that only serve U.S. citizens. The report references estimates that it "would cut $23 billion in funds for Social Security and $6 billion from Medicare each year because these workers would no longer pay into these programs."
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who chairs the JEC, said Thursday that "as a son of an immigrant, I know how hard immigrants work, how much they believe in this country, and how much they're willing to give back. They are the backbone of our economy and the driving force behind our nation's growth and prosperity."
"Trump's plan to deport millions of immigrants does absolutely nothing to address the core problems driving our broken immigration system," Heinrich stressed. "Instead, all it will do is raise grocery prices, destroy jobs, and shrink the economy. His immigration policy is reckless and would cause irreparable harm to our economy."
Along with laying out the economic toll of Trump's promised deportations, the JEC report makes the case that "providing a pathway to citizenship is good economics. Immigrants are helping meet labor demand while also demonstrating that more legal pathways to working in the United States are needed to meet this demand."
"Additionally, research shows that expanding legal immigration pathways can reduce irregular border crossings, leading to more secure and regulated borders," the publication says. "This approach is vital for managing increased migration to the United States, especially as more people flee their home countries due to the continued risk of violence, persecution, economic conditions, natural disasters, and climate change."
The JEC report followed a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that explored how mass deportations would not only devastate the U.S. economy but also harm the armed forces and tear apart American families.
In a statement, Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, thanked Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) "for calling this important discussion together and shining a spotlight on the potential damage."
Cárdenas pointed out that her group has spent months warning about how Trump's plan would "cripple communities and spike inflation," plus cause "tremendous human suffering as American citizens are ripped from their families, as parents are separated from their children, or as American citizens are deported by their own government."
"Trump and his allies have said it will be 'bloody,' that 'nobody is off the table,' and that 'you have to send them all back,'" she noted, arguing that the Republican plan will "set us back on both border control and public safety."
Cárdenas concluded that "America needs a serious immigration reform proposal—with pathways to legal status and controlled and orderly legal immigration—which recognize[s] immigrants are essential for America's future."
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'Completely Un-American': Progressives Slam Trump Plan to End Birthright Citizenship
"Emboldened by a Supreme Court that would use its power to uphold white supremacy rather than the constitution of our nation, Trump is on a mission to weaken the very soul of our nation," said Rep. Delia Ramirez.
Dec 09, 2024
Progressives in Congress and other migrant rights advocates sharply criticized U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for his comments on immigration during a Sunday interview, including on his hopes to end birthright citizenship.
During a 76-minute interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker, Trump said he "absolutely" intends to end birthright citizenship, potentially through executive order, despite the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among many lies the Republican told, he also falsely claimed that the United States is the only country to offer citizenship by birth; in fact, there are dozens.
In response,
outgoing Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said on social media Monday: "This is completely un-American. The 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. Trump cannot unilaterally end it, and any attempt to do so would be both unconstitutional and immoral."
Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) similarly stressed that "birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution as a cornerstone of American ideals. It reflects our belief that America is the land of opportunity. Sadly, this is just another in the long line of Trump's assault on the U.S. Constitution."
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, said in a statement: "'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' It is important to remember who we are, where many of us came from, and why many of our families traveled here to be greeted by the Mother of Exiles, the Statue of Liberty."
Ramirez argued that "the story of our nation wouldn't be complete without the sweat, tears, joy, dreams, and hopes of so many children of immigrants who are citizens by birthright and pride themselves on being AMERICANS. It is the story of so many IL-03 communities, strengthened by the immigration of people from Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Mexico, and Guatemala, among others. It is the story of many members of Congress who can point to the citizenship of their forebears and ancestors because of immigration and birthright."
"Let's be clear: Trump is posing the question of who gets to be an American to our nation. And given that today's migrants are from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin and Central America, it is clear he is questioning who are the 'right' people to benefit from birthright citizenship," she continued. "Questioning birthright citizenship is anti-American, and eliminating it through executive action is unconstitutional. Donald Trump knows that."
"But emboldened by a Supreme Court that would use its power to uphold white supremacy rather than the Constitution of our nation, Trump is on a mission to weaken the very soul of our nation," she warned. "I—like many sons and daughters of immigrants and first-generation Americans—believe in and fight for a land of freedom, opportunities, and equality. To live into that promise, we must stand against white nationalism—especially when it is espoused at the highest levels of government."
Although Republicans are set to control both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives next year, amending the Constitution requires support from two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures, meaning that process is unlikely to be attempted for this policy.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) highlighted the difficulties of passing constitutional amendments while discussing Trump in a Monday appearance on CNN. The incoming chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus was born in the Dominican Republic and is the first formerly undocumented immigrant elected to Congress.
As Mother Jones reporter Isabela Dias detailed Monday:
Critics of ending birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants argue it would not only constitute bad policy, but also a betrayal of American values and, as one scholar put it to me, a "prelude" to mass deportation.
"It's really 100 years of accepted interpretation," Hiroshi Motomura, a scholar of immigration and citizenship at UCLA's law school, told me of birthright citizenship. Ending birthright citizenship would cut at the core of the hard-fought assurance of equal treatment under the law, he said, "basically drawing a line between two kinds of American citizens."
Trump's NBC interview also addressed his long-promised mass deportations. The president-elect—whose first administration was globally condemned for separating migrant families at the southern border and second administration is already filling up with hard-liners—suggested Sunday that he would deport children who are U.S. citizens with undocumented parents.
"I don't want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back," Trump told Welker.
Responding in a Monday statement, America's Voice executive director Vanessa Cárdenas said, "There's a growing consensus that the Trump mass deportation agenda will hit American consumers and industries hard, but the scope of what Trump and his team are proposing goes well beyond the economic impact."
"Trump and allies are making clear their mass deportation agenda will include deporting U.S. citizens, including children, while aiming to gut a century and a half of legal and moral precedent on birthright citizenship," she added. "In total, their attacks go well beyond the narrow lens of immigration to the fundamental question of who gets to be an American."
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'Hitlerian': Trump Vows to Deport Haitians Legally in Ohio to Venezuela
"The lies and conspiracies about Haitians are part of a larger volume of anti-immigrant and dehumanizing rhetoric that actively courts political violence," one immigrant rights advocate said.
Sep 14, 2024
U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his attack on the Haitian immigrant community of Springfield, Ohio on Friday when he promised to begin his mass deportation plan there if elected president.
"We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations," Trump told reporters at his golf course near Los Angeles, California. "We're going to get these people out. We're bringing them back to Venezuela."
Trump's remarks come despite the fact that most of the immigrants in Springfield are from Haiti and are in the country legally. Trump had previously pledged to deport the 15 to 20 million people who he says are or will be in this country illegally by the time he takes office. Speaking on Friday, he repeated his vow to carry out the "largest deportations in the history of our country," starting in Springfield and Aurora, Colorado, where online rumors have exaggerated isolated incidents of Venezuelan gang activity.
"This is Hitlerian rhetoric," USA Today columnist Rex Huppke wrote on social media in response to Trump's statement. "That's not being hyperbolic. He's dehumanizing legal immigrants, and for some reason saying he'll deport Haitians to Venezuela. I've followed Trump since the beginning. He has devolved to his most base, hateful level, an often incoherent racist."
Schools and city buildings in Springfield have received bomb threats in recent days after Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance elevated unfounded online rumors that newly arrived Haitian immigrants in the city were stealing and eating pets. One journalist referred to the Trump campaign's rhetoric as "blood libel."
Around 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to Springfield in recent years, and the overwhelming majority are there legally with temporary protected status.
"The majority of Americans who reject this dark and dystopic vision and the lies courting violence should come together to denounce this outrageous spectacle of hatred and to chart a different direction for our nation."
"It's essential to recognize the larger strategy on display from the Republican Party and their allies," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America's Voice, said in a statement Friday. "The lies and conspiracies about Haitians are part of a larger volume of anti-immigrant and dehumanizing rhetoric that actively courts political violence."
Cárdenas continued: "In addition to the lies about Haitians, which echo tropes like the antisemitic blood libel, Trump described this nation in increasingly violent and graphic terms... What's the potential response from an unhinged supporter hearing those words and believing those threats? It is violence like the Haitian community is fearful of, and Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans have already experienced in places like Pittsburgh, El Paso, and Buffalo."
Cárdenas also referenced a promise Trump made last Saturday that his mass deportations would be "bloody."
"The majority of Americans who reject this dark and dystopic vision and the lies courting violence should come together to denounce this outrageous spectacle of hatred and to chart a different direction for our nation," Cárdenas said.
Meanwhile, an immigrant rights group in Colorado also spoke up against Trump's deportation threats.
"Trump's fear mongering is as dangerous as it is dishonest," Gladis Ibarra, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said in a statement. "He doesn't care about Aurora or Colorado. He's using us as political pawns to push a racist agenda that paints our entire community in a bad light, and we won't fall for it. Immigrants are our teachers, our neighbors, our parents, and our children. We will not let them be demonized or ripped from our communities."
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In Victory for Migrant Rights, US Court Blocks 'Cruel' Biden Asylum Restrictions
"The administration now faces a choice: Follow the law, or try to block the ruling from taking effect in 14 days, leaving people seeking safety in grave danger," said the ACLU.
Jul 25, 2023
Immigrant rights advocates on Tuesday applauded a ruling handed down by a U.S. district judge blocking the Biden administration's anti-asylum rule, which places restrictions on migrants who aim to exercise their internationally recognized right to seek asylum at the southern U.S. border.
Judge Jon S. Tigar, an Obama appointee who serves in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, ruled that the new policy is unlawful, as he did when former Republican President Donald Trump imposed similar restrictions.
The measure, which was introduced in May and immediately prompted the ACLU and other legal groups to file a lawsuit on behalf of several rights organizations, requires migrants to prove that they previously sought protections in a third country before applying for asylum in the United States. The Biden administration has said migrants who want to seek asylum should schedule an appointment using an app that connects them to Customs and Border Protection instead of attempting to cross the border.
"To justify limiting eligibility for asylum based on the expansion of other means of entry or protection is to consider factors Congress did not intend to affect such eligibility," wrote Tigar in his ruling.
Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, which joined the ACLU in representing the plaintiffs, said the policy "violates our laws and makes a mockery of our asylum system."
"The court got it right," Crow said. "We urge the administration to stop defending this illegal policy, and instead take immediate steps to establish a fair and humane process that upholds the rights of all people seeking refuge at our nation's doorstep."
Crow noted that the Biden administration recently admitted that "under the ban, people with meritorious legal claims can be barred from asylum and deported to countries where they face grave harm."
"To them, that is an acceptable price to pay for the illusion of border management," she said. "But they are breaking the law, sowing chaos, and putting vulnerable people in harm's way."
Tigar granted the Biden administration's request for a 14-day stay of the ruling, giving officials time to appeal the decision. The White House is expected to appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and, if the appeals court also strikes down the policy, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The ruling is a victory, but each day the Biden administration prolongs the fight over its illegal ban, many people fleeing persecution and seeking safe harbor for their families are instead left in grave danger," said Katrina Eiland, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. "The promise of America is to serve as a beacon of freedom and hope, and the administration can and should do better to fulfill this promise, rather than perpetuate cruel and ineffective policies that betray it."
In the lawsuit, the ACLU and other groups representing the plaintiffs wrote that President Joe Biden "doubled down on [his] predecessor's cruel asylum restrictions" despite having campaigned on "a promise to restore our asylum system."
"The agencies claim the rule merely provides consequences for asylum-seekers circumventing lawful pathways," reads the lawsuit. "But seeking asylum is a lawful pathway protected by our laws regardless of how one enters the country."
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America's Voice, welcomed the ruling and its "strong message to the Biden administration that it must adhere to the law."
But she emphasized that even if Tigar's decision is upheld on appeal, "it does not fix the broken asylum system."
"Only Congress can fully fix the broken asylum and immigration system, giving people the option of coming with visas for family or work and legalizing those who already work here," said Cárdenas. "Congress must deliver the modernization we need."
"In the meantime," she added, "we call on the administration to use the tools it has, including dedicating more resources to the border to address asylum backlogs, while using parole programs, [Temporary Protected Status], and the refugee admissions process to stabilize the system and provide additional pathways for those in need of protection."
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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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Campaign Demands Justice for 8-Year-Old Girl Who Died in US Border Patrol Custody
"It is atrocious that yet another family has to mourn their child because of our collective inability to fix our broken immigration system," lamented one activist in response to the death of Anadith Tanay Reyes Álvarez.
May 22, 2023
A coalition of migrant advocacy groups on Monday mourned and demanded justice for an 8-year-old Central American girl who died in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody earlier this month.
The #WelcomeWithDignity campaign for asylum rights remembered Anadith Tanay Reyes Álvarez, an 8-year-old girl who came to the United States with her Honduran parents, following her death on May 17 after CBP agents "neglected to heed her parent's requests for medical assistance," according to the coalition.
"Anadith deserves to be alive today," said #WelcomeWithDignity interim campaign manager Bilal Askaryar. "Border Patrol staff ignored the minimum safeguards for protecting the lives in their custody."
"Anadith's parents should be preoccupied with helping their 8-year-old daughter prepare for her new life in the United States and making the journey to meet her aunt in New York," Askaryar added. "Instead, they are grieving an unspeakable tragedy and trying to raise money to take Anadith's body to their new home with them."
Reyes, who suffered a congenital heart condition and sickle cell anemia, was a Panamanian citizen who traveled with her Honduran parents and her two older siblings to the southern U.S. border at Brownsville, Texas. The family was detained by CBP agents on May 9 and held for more than a week.
On May 14, Reyes' mother Mabel Álvarez took the child to a treatment area after she complained of abdominal pain, nasal congestion, and a cough, CBP said. Reyes tested positive for Influenza and was given medications including Tamiflu and Zofran. CBP said she was also given acetaminophen and ibuprofen.
Reyes and her family were then transported to a CBP facility in Harlingen, Texas, which is "designated for cases requiring medical isolation for individuals diagnosed with or closely exposed to communicable diseases," according to the agency.
Medical records show that Álvarez took Reyes to the Harlingen station's medical facility three times on May 17. On the last visit, Reyes appeared to be having a seizure. After her body went limp and she began bleeding from the mouth, medical staff started CPR and CBP had the girl rushed to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen. She was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
"They killed my daughter, because she was nearly a day-and-a-half without being able to breathe," Álvarez claimed in an interview with the New York Daily News. "She cried and begged for her life and they ignored her. They didn't do anything for her."
"They never listened to me just because I am an immigrant," Álvarez said in a separate interview with Noticias Telemundo. "We want this not to go unpunished. We don't want this to happen to any other child."
#WelcomeWith Dignity members from numerous advocacy groups joined Reyes' family in demanding justice.
"We are heartbroken to learn of another child's tragic death in government custody. No child should be locked in a jail, no matter where they were born," said Jennifer Anzardo Valdes, deputy director at Americans for Immigrant Justice.
"There is a long and well-documented history of systemic abuse and mistreatment of children in CBP custody," she added. "In a landscape barren of rights for unaccompanied children, babies, and children coming to the United States with their parents, it is imperative that these vulnerable individuals are greeted with compassion and respect as they seek refuge and a better life in the United States. How many more children must die for CBP to effectuate change?"
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director at America's Voice, said that "it is atrocious that yet another family has to mourn their child because of our collective inability to fix our broken immigration system."
"Our hearts are with her family, and tens of thousands of other families whose pursuit of a better life ends in tragedy," she added. "The CBP needs to learn from this tragedy and take the necessary steps to ensure it doesn't happen again."
Reyes is the first known migrant child to die in CBP custody during the Biden administration. At least two other Honduran minors—17-year-old Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza and a 4-year-old "medically fragile" girl—have died in U.S. custody in recent weeks.
The children's deaths come as the Biden administration rolls out controversial migrant policies following the expiration of Title 42, which was invoked by both Biden and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, in order to deport millions of asylum-seekers under the pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"It is cruel that another set of parents had to beg the CBP for medical help for their child and then watch her die because of CBP negligence," argued Ronnate Asirwatham, director of government relations for #WelcomeWithDignity member Catholic Social Justice. "We call on the Biden administration to end this cruelty and to swiftly end the practice of long-term CBP custody for immigrants."
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