Page 12
December 12, 2018
O PINION
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Lessons from the Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric
Moments that
give me hope
J asmine a guilera
President Trump’s
anti-immigrant rheto-
ric hasn’t just infected
U.S. politics. Now it’s
made its way south of
the border.
As a caravan of
hundreds of migrants arrive in Ti-
juana, some residents there have
started taking up Trump’s ideol-
ogy. Juan Manuel Gastélum, the
mayor of Tijuana, has been seen
wearing a red “Make Tijuana
Great Again” baseball cap. In an
interview with Milenio News, he
painted the migrants as a danger-
ous threat.
“Sure, there are some good peo-
ple in the caravan, but many are
very bad for the city,” Gastélum
said.
And on Nov. 19, a few hundred
protested against the migrant car-
avan in Tijuana chanting “Tijuana
first.” In the days before the pro-
test, locals even attacked some
migrants with stones.
These are the real effects of
Trump’s rhetoric. Luckily, de-
spite growing anti-immigrant
by
sentiments, there are still many in
Mexico who support and defend
the migrants. This gives me hope.
Thousands of migrants are fac-
ing a humanitarian crisis
in Tijuana, after walking
more than 2,500 miles.
Many simply want their
chance to seek asylum in
the United States, which
is their legal right. But
they may have to wait
grants to travel safely together
to the United States. The media
spectacle around the practice now
obscures an important fact: Un-
authorized migration to the U.S.
has been declining for years. Last
year, arrests at the border fell to a
46-year low.
But just before the midterm
elections, Trump decided to pick
on a caravan of migrants from
Honduras, telling U.S. residents
All the administration has done
is put the migrants — largely
women and their children — at
further risk, even subjecting them
to attacks with tear gas, a weap-
on so brutal that international law
bans it in military combat.
Mexicans themselves, once the
target of Trump’s racist campaign
(remember when he called them
rapists and murders?), have start-
ed repurposing Trump’s words to
All the administration has done is put the
migrants — largely women and their children
— at further risk, even subjecting them to
attacks with tear gas, a weapon so brutal that
international law bans it in military combat.
months for their chance.
Not only are the migrants deal-
ing with unsanitary, impoverished
conditions while they wait. Now
they have to face the hatred that’s
resulted from Trump’s presidency
before they even cross the border.
Migrant caravans have existed
for decades as a way for immi-
that they’re criminals to stoke fear
— and to make himself the hero
of the story.
Trump even deployed near-
ly 6,000 military troops to the
U.S.-Mexico border while the car-
avan was still weeks away, mak-
ing it clear to me that this was all
just politics for Trump.
point the arrow at a new target:
migrants trying to escape some of
the most dangerous countries in
the world.
I’m the daughter of Mexican
immigrants who saw their own
share of hatred when they arrived
in the United States. It’s heart-
breaking to me that Mexicans in
Tijuana would now start turning
their backs on these migrants, and
it’s clear to me that Trump has in-
fluenced them. Just listen to their
chants of “Mexico first.”
The situation is dire. But for all
of the hatred that’s spewed out of
this humanitarian crisis, there are
hopeful moments.
While hundreds of anti-immi-
grant protesters took to the streets
to express their anger, there were
also people countering them with
welcoming chants.
Many along the caravan’s path
welcomed the migrants, offer-
ing food, shelter, and clothing. A
new president in Mexico, Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, has also
promised more humane treatment
of the migrants, and plans to work
with the Tijuana mayor to come
up with a practical solution.
If anti-migrant Mexicans are
now taking after Trump, I hope
more Americans will now take
after the Mexicans who chose to
welcome the refugees. No matter
your ideology, they deserve to be
treated humanely as they act on
their legal right to seek asylum.
Jasmine Aguilera is a freelance
writer and reporter from El Paso,
Texas. Distributed by OtherWords.
org.
Heartbreaking Images of the Attacks on Asylum-Seekers
Border response
a new moral and
human low
m arian W right
e Delman
It has come to this:
tear-gassing toddlers.
Heartbreaking images
of the American gov-
ernment’s attacks on asylum-seek-
ers at the border. In one photo, a
barefoot child in a diaper sobs,
clutching her mother with one
hand and a plastic ball—a lone
prized possession—with the other.
Her mother, who was pictured in a
second photo desperately trying to
flee from the tear gas with her two
young children, told an interview-
er: “I felt sad, I was scared. I want-
ed to cry. That’s when I grabbed
my daughters and ran. I thought
my kids were going to die with me
because of the gas we inhaled.”
When I saw those pictures last
month I was instantly transported
back to Birmingham, Alabama
in 1963, to segregationist police
chief Bull Connor’s use of vi-
cious police dogs and powerful
by
firehoses to attack black children
marching for their freedom. I of-
ten say that I do this work because
I don’t want my grandchildren
fighting the same fights
we did back then. And yet
here we find ourselves,
with my grandchildren
and young people across
the country witnessing
our government attacking
small children for daring
to dream of a better life.
President Trump and Adminis-
tration officials act as if gassing
babies at the border is business as
usual, just as they did when the
public cried out about our gov-
ernment ripping children from the
arms of their parents and putting
them in indefinite detention in
cages and tent cities. But nothing
about this is “usual” and we must
not allow ourselves to become
inured to cruelty and injustice.
This is not who we should be as
a nation. We must continue to
come together, speak out at every
turn and take a stand against the
outrageous atrocities being com-
mitted by President Trump under
the guise of keeping Americans
“safe.”
The Children’s Defense Fund is
working at the heart of this issue.
When too few were paying atten-
tion to the incarceration of asy-
lum-seeking women and children
in harmful for-profit detention
centers, our Texas office fought to
stop these detention centers from
receiving state-issued child care
licenses that would have allowed
more children to be incarcerated
there for even longer periods of
time. Our affiliate was one of the
first organizations to report the
shameful practice of separating
children and babies from their par-
ents on the border.
We must never ever give up,
and we must keep fighting these
evil acts. This administration’s
attacks aren’t limited to small
children and families outside our
borders; they are taking action to
harm immigrant families already
in America, too.
The administration has pro-
posed changes to the “public
charge” rule that have the potential
to plunge millions of children and
their immigrant families into pov-
erty, hunger, and homelessness.
When parents and other adults ap-
ply for lawful permanent residen-
cy or entry into the United States
immigration officials currently
consider whether that person is, or
is likely to become, reliant on the
government, or a “public charge.”
The longstanding federal policy
is to consider whether an individ-
ual will rely on the government
by examining whether he or she
receives cash assistance or will
need long-term care benefits. But
the change proposed by the Trump
administration would allow im-
migration officials to deny green
cards and visas to a much broader
group of immigrants who use pub-
lic benefits including non-emer-
gency Medicaid, the Supplemen-
tal Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP), housing assistance, and
the Medicare Part D low-income
subsidy.
With this change, the Depart-
ment threatens to shut down le-
gal paths to citizenship for fam-
ilies that use these safety net
programs—including those to
which they are legally entitled—
to feed their children, put a roof
over their heads and keep them
healthy. Even people who haven’t
used these programs in the past
can be denied a green card or visa
if there is a suspected risk they are
“likely” to use them in the future.
Nearly 1 in 4 children in America
has at least one immigrant parent,
and nearly 90 percent of those
children are citizens.
By making legal use of safety
net programs one of several new
heavily weighted factors in de-
termining whether an individual
qualifies as a public charge, mil-
lions of immigrants will be subject
to this expanded definition of pub-
lic charge, which is likely to cause
both immigrants and their children
to forego crucial food assistance,
health coverage, and safe housing
for fear of the consequences.
Our inhumane treatment of
families and children who come
to America seeking a better life
is degrading and diminishing us
as a nation. It is not protecting us
or making us great. Let us show
immigrant children and families
both inside and outside our bor-
ders who we really are by stand-
ing up for their safety, their lives
and their right to pursue a better
future.
Marian Wright Edelman is
President of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.