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While Immigrants Die to Repair Bridges, US Politicians Risk Lives by Building Walls
The lives of Miguel and the five other workers filling potholes on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge have been cut short, but the hatred of immigrants, sadly, is alive, well and growing this election year.
Mar 29, 2024
Immigrants helped build this country, a fact no amount of racism or xenophobia can erase. Immigrants, including children, work in fields and factories, driving our economy. A group of immigrant men were working late last Tuesday night, filling potholes on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.
At 1:27 am, the Dali, a massive cargo vessel, 948-feet long and laden with roughly 4,700 shipping containers, lost power and rammed into the bridge, causing it to collapse. Two survived the disaster, six died. Only two of their bodies have been recovered from the cold, murky water of the Patapsco River.
Their tragic deaths occurred as increased immigrant arrivals are being exploited by former President Donald Trump and his right-wing extremist allies to foment division and to boost Trump’s presidential campaign. Just hours after the bridge collapse, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, interviewing Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott, attempted to link the maritime disaster to immigrants at the U.S.’ southern border:
“I want to understand the threats or the potential threats that this country is facing right now given the wide open border, the fact that we don’t know who is in the country. The FBI is looking… to ensure there was no foul play.”
“While we’re being talked about as like this invading horde that’s coming to destroy the country, what does this story actually show us? That immigrants are filling our potholes at night so that we can have a smooth drive to work in the morning.”
This is the same dog-whistle racism that Trump invoked in 2015, launching his first campaign: “When Mexico sends its people…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Trump continues his white supremacist ranting, saying at a recent Ohio campaign rally, “I don’t know if you call them people… These are animals and we have to stop it.”
Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief of the Baltimore-based Real News Network, interviewed coworkers of the deceased. He said on the Democracy Now! news hour, “While we’re being talked about as like this invading horde that’s coming to destroy the country, what does this story actually show us? That immigrants are filling our potholes at night so that we can have a smooth drive to work in the morning.”
The six who died while working on the Key Bridge were hardworking men, from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Miguel Luna was a welder, a 49-year-old father and grandfather, a native of the Usulután Department in El Salvador, ravaged by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran military and paramilitaries in the 1980s. He played on the professional soccer team in the town of Berlin in his home region. His widow, Maria del Carmen, owns a food truck. Miguel was a beloved member of his community.
Miguel and another victim of the collapse, Maynor Suazo Sandoval, were members of CASA, an immigrant rights non-profit founded in 1986 to build solidarity with those impacted by the U.S.-backed violence in Central America. CASA wrote, “Maynor migrated from Honduras over 17 years ago, and he alongside his brother Carlos were active members in the activist committee of Owings Mills… Carlos said ‘He was always so full of joy, and brought so much humor to our family.’ He was a husband, and father of two.”
Details are still emerging of the other named victims, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, of Mexico and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, of Guatemala. Their bodies were found inside a pickup truck, submerged in the river. Two more victims, also reportedly from Mexico and Guatemala, remain unnamed by their respective governments.
Millions of enslaved people also built this country, a point worth remembering as we mourn the immigrant laborers on the Key Bridge. The bridge was named after Francis Scott Key since, while watching the British navy bombard Fort McHenry in 1814, not far from where the bridge was built in the 1970s, Key wrote the poem that would become the national anthem. His poem has four stanzas, the first made famous as “The Star Spangled Banner.” Key was a slave owner, and denounced those who fled enslavement in 1814 to fight against the United States, for the British, who promised them freedom in return.
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,” Key wrote in his poem, words left out of the national anthem, but which nevertheless noticeably rhyme with “Land of the free and home of the brave.” This should be considered by those tasked with naming the replacement bridge.
The lives of Miguel and the five other workers have been cut short, but the hatred of immigrants, sadly, is alive, well and growing this election year. Pledges from President Joe Biden to quickly open Baltimore’s port to commerce parallel campaign rhetoric on both sides to “shut down” the southern border to people seeking asylum.
“Immigrants like Miguel are building bridges to connect communities, not building walls to divide them,” CASA wrote, eulogizing Miguel Luna. Let those words inspire an embrace of immigrant communities, an anthem we can all rally around.
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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, toldThe 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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