Page 12
July 11, 2018
O PINION
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Abolishing ICE Isn’t Radical — It’s Rational
Agency has
become a
menace
f izz P erkal
As someone who
was born and raised
in the border state of
New Mexico, I’m very familiar
with political speak about immi-
grants and the border, especially
when it comes to talking about
safety.
After 9/11, concerns about safe-
ty led to the passing of the Home-
land Security Act, which created
a new cabinet department as well
as a new law enforcement agen-
cy: Immigration and Customs En-
forcement, or ICE. ICE was given
a never-before-seen level of crimi-
nal and civil authority — in theory,
to keep Americans safe.
It’s now the largest investigative
by
branch of the Homeland Security
department. Unlike other law en-
forcement agencies like the FBI
or DEA, ICE doesn’t answer
to the Department of Justice,
which for decades has at least
paid lip service to due process.
Far from being a law en-
forcement agency, ICE has be-
come the closest thing we have
to a lawless organization.
Rather than keeping Americans
safe, the organization has become
a menace, wasting taxpayer money
while doing tremendous violence
to communities that pose no threat.
From separating families to
having 3-year-olds stand trial for
deportation, and from staking out
churches to stealing immigrants’
identities to open up fraudulent
credit cards, ICE embodies cruel-
ty. More worrying still, people are
dying in ICE custody at alarming
rates.
In May, a transgender woman
from Honduras named Roxsana
Hernandez died in ICE custody in
New Mexico. Roxsana came to the
United States seeking asylum from
persecution and violence in her
home country.
Rather than being treated with
the dignity and respect befitting
all humans, and particularly those
seeking asylum, she was detained
by ICE and held in a freezing cold
cell with the lights turned on 24
hours a day. This approach to de-
tention is so common it has a name
— the icebox, because the cells
feel as cold as a freezer.
As a queer, gender non-con-
forming New Mexican, this hit
close to home for me. Not only
did Roxsana come to this country
because she wanted the safety to
live her life as her authentic self,
but she died in Albuquerque, my
hometown. She died a terrifying
and lonely death due to complica-
tions of pneumonia, likely caused
by the frigid conditions of her de-
tention.
I have to say: Her death certain-
ly doesn’t make me any safer.
In another devastating case,
Pablo Villavicencio, an undocu-
mented man originally from Ec-
uador, was detained by ICE while
he was delivering pizza to a mili-
tary base in New York City. Pablo
lives in New York with his wife
and young children, all of whom
are U.S. citizens. His detention
and possible deportation certainly
won’t make me, or anyone else,
any safer.
ICE was created to protect the
U.S. from terrorism. But it seems
the biggest threats they can identify
are refugees and workers support-
ing their families. If you ask me,
ICE is the one terrorizing people.
Unfortunately, ICE has become
even more aggressive in the past
18 months — and not just against
people from Mexico and Central
America. The number of Haitians
deported rose from 300 in 2016 to
5,500 in 2017 — as if almost the
entire city of Aspen, Colo. were de-
ported. The rate of deportation for
people from Somalia nearly dou-
bled during the same time.
To what end?
At this point, ICE’s targeting
of families and non-threatening
individuals makes it clear that it’s
beyond reform. Immigrants aren’t
threats to the nation’s security —
they’re people, just like you and
me, who are trying to make the best
of their circumstances.
We need to find better ways to
make sure our communities are
safe without relying on a lawless,
violent organization. It can’t be
that hard — we did it for centuries
before the Homeland Security Act.
ICE must be abolished.
Fizz Perkal is a Next Leader
at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.
An All-Out War on Kids, Not Just on the Border
What we’re
seeing part of a
larger pattern
g eorge g oehl
Donald
Trump’s
choice to separate mi-
grant children from
their parents has un-
leashed a flood of out-
rage across the polit-
ical spectrum. While
the president has stepped back
from separating families at the
border, his solution is to imprison
children with their parents, and
change laws so he can hold them
indefinitely.
Trump is a master of bait-and-
switch: He distracts voters with
tough-on-immigration politics, then
sells out working families. Irrepara-
ble harm to thousands of children is
a price he’s willing to pay, if it helps
him score political points.
While these hateful acts against
children are Trump’s most blatant
to date, they’re hardly the first.
His policy agenda is a full-throat-
ed attack on children from poor
and working class families.
What’s happening at the bor-
der is part of a larger pattern: an
all-out war on kids. Your children
will feel the hurt of the Trump’s
agenda, too. Here are a just a few
highlights.
The Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program provides nu-
tritional support to over 19 million
children, or 1 in 4 kids in America.
by
The Farm Bill just passed by the
House will reduce SNAP benefits
for over 2 million people, includ-
ing hundreds of thousands of chil-
dren.
Children who participate in
SNAP are less likely to be hos-
pitalized, underweight, or at
risk of developmental delays.
Now they’re at risk.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Envi-
ronmental Protection Agen-
cy administrator Scott Pruitt
is dismantling programs that
protect children from dangerous
toxins that permanently damage
cognitive ability.
Pruitt’s decision to dissolve the
National Center for Environmen-
tal Research makes it easier for big
corporations to dump chemicals
into our air and water and curbs
our ability to document the impact
toxins have on our children. Pruitt
also rejected a ban on organophos-
phate pesticides — first developed
as human nerve gas agents during
World War II and proven to cause
fetal brain damage.
Trump’s housing secretary Ben
Carson is also on the attack: Car-
son wants to triple the minimum
rent that the poorest Americans
pay for federally subsidized hous-
ing assistance, which would put
nearly a million children at risk of
homelessness.
Trump also wants to employ
a rarely used budget maneuver
called “rescission” to eliminate
$7 billion from the popular Chil-
dren’s Health Insurance Program
(CHIP).
This all constitutes a war on
kids. If you’re not part of Trump’s
family or the corporate class he
works for, his agenda is bad for
our children. Not just someone
else’s children — our children.
Each policy is likely to hurt
the health and development of
children of color in particular. Yet
even as he fans racist fires to di-
vide poor and working class com-
munities, Trump is doling out pain
to white kids as well. White fam-
ilies are the majority of residents
in federally subsidized housing
programs. The most likely person
to be on Medicaid, the federally
supported health care program for
low-income families, is white.
So if children are losing, who
wins? The wealthy corporate class
wins. We were told Trump’s $1.5
trillion tax giveaway would create
better jobs for everyday people.
Instead, corporations have been 69
times more likely to buy their own
stock than invest in better wages
or benefits for their workers.
What we’re witnessing at our
border is one part of a war against
all children — whether by cuts
to schools, child nutrition, health
care, safe air and water, or fami-
ly-supporting jobs.
“You’re fired!” is what the
White House is saying to our
children, our nation’s future. And
while brown migrant children are
in the headlines this week, Trump
is hoping we won’t notice that all
children are in his crosshairs, ev-
ery day of the week.
Children who participate in
SNAP are less likely to be hos-
pitalized, underweight, or at risk
of developmental delays. Now
they’re at risk.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Environ-
mental Protection Agency admin-
istrator Scott Pruitt is dismantling
programs that protect children
from dangerous toxins that perma-
nently damage cognitive ability.
Pruitt’s decision to dissolve the
National Center for Environmen-
tal Research makes it easier for big
corporations to dump chemicals
into our air and water and curbs
our ability to document the impact
toxins have on our children. Pruitt
also rejected a ban on organophos-
phate pesticides — first developed
as human nerve gas agents during
World War II and proven to cause
fetal brain damage.
Trump’s housing secretary Ben
Carson is also on the attack: Car-
son wants to triple the minimum
rent that the poorest Americans
pay for federally subsidized hous-
ing assistance, which would put
nearly a million children at risk of
homelessness.
Trump also wants to employ
a rarely used budget maneuver
called “rescission” to eliminate
$7 billion from the popular Chil-
dren’s Health Insurance Program
(CHIP).
This all constitutes a war on
kids. If you’re not part of Trump’s
family or the corporate class he
works for, his agenda is bad for
our children. Not just someone
else’s children — our children.
Each policy is likely to hurt
the health and development of
children of color in particular. Yet
even as he fans racist fires to di-
vide poor and working class com-
munities, Trump is doling out pain
to white kids as well. White fam-
ilies are the majority of residents
in federally subsidized housing
programs. The most likely person
to be on Medicaid, the federally
supported health care program for
low-income families, is white.
So if children are losing, who
wins? The wealthy corporate class
wins. We were told Trump’s $1.5
trillion tax giveaway would create
better jobs for everyday people.
Instead, corporations have been 69
times more likely to buy their own
stock than invest in better wages
or benefits for their workers.
What we’re witnessing at our
border is one part of a war against
all children — whether by cuts
to schools, child nutrition, health
care, safe air and water, or fami-
ly-supporting jobs.
“You’re fired!” is what the
White House is saying to our
children, our nation’s future. And
while brown migrant children are
in the headlines this week, Trump
is hoping we won’t notice that all
children are in his crosshairs, ev-
ery day of the week.
George Goehl is the director
of People’s Action. He leads a
30-state national effort to unite
poor and working class people
across race and place to chal-
lenge inequality, climate change,
and racial division. Distributed by
OtherWords.org