The Democrats—Aiding and Abetting Monstrous Crimes Against Immigrants

What Top Democrats Did and Said:

June 27: Nancy Pelosi brokered a $4.6 billion deal for Trump’s “emergency funding” for the border wall. She did this following a meeting with Mike Pence in which, according to the New York Times, he promised her the fascist regime “would voluntarily abide by some of the restrictions and rules that she had sought, including notifying lawmakers within 24 hours after the death of a migrant child”!

This was after Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande near Brownsville, Texas. The same day, the bodies of four other migrants—a 25-year-old woman, a toddler, and two infants—were found, dead from dehydration, 50 miles upstream from Brownsville. Pelosi justified the deal with Trump by saying this will enable the government to “get resources to the children fastest... As we pass the Senate bill, we do so with a Battle Cry as to how we go forward to protect children in a way that truly honors their dignity and worth.”

September 4: After the Trump/Pence regime diverted $3.6 billion in military funding toward paying for the wall, top Senate Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand released a statement complaining Trump is putting U.S. “national security at risk, and limiting the military’s ability to compete with our country’s most powerful adversaries.”

What Top Democrats Did and Said:

Trump targeted these four women for who they are and also as a stand-in for whole sections of people who the regime seeks to dehumanize, terrorize, and “cleanse” from America. A Democratic Congress member introduced a resolution, called a “censure,” that would be an official condemnation of Trump. But Pelosi prevented it from coming to a vote. She said in a closed-door meeting that a weaker resolution—criticizing Trump’s remark as “racist” but not condemning Trump himself—might allow more Republicans to support it. The resolution was passed with 240 votes—4 of them Republican.

What Top Democrats Did and Said:

This summer, courageous protesters across the country have faced brutality and arrest demanding that the immigrant concentration camps be shut down. Activist Scott Warren was put on trial and faces a retrial in October for providing food, water, medical assistance, and a place to rest for two immigrants who had just survived a 2-day trek across the scorching Arizona desert. Meanwhile armed white supremacist vigilantes prowl the border, often working in conjunction with Border Patrol, threatening, detaining, and turning over immigrants.

In response, the top Democrats have said and done... nothing.

What Top Democrats Did and Said:

In response to Trump’s racist, fascist attacks on people seeking asylum, Schumer issued a three-point plan: more judges at the border to hear asylum cases (so more people can be deported more quickly); the ability for people to apply for asylum in the U.S. in their home countries (which could be a death sentence for people who go to a U.S. embassy and say they need protection from the police and other threats in their own country); “security assistance” to Central American countries (more of the U.S.-trained military and police already persecuting people).

Schumer’s plan is essentially identical to what Trump is already doing—with one difference. While Trump is constructing tents in U.S. border towns to hold farcical teleconference hearings about the fate of the lives of immigrants who are forced to wait outside the U.S., Schumer and the Democrats want such a hearing to be conducted with due and proper legal decorum.

A New York Times op-ed (8/15/19) noted that both Trump and the Democrats recognize that either way, “a vast majority of asylum claims will be rejected.”

Top Democratic presidential candidates have all acknowledged this because they all agree the U.S. must “defend its borders”:

Cory Booker: “An unlawful crossing is an unlawful crossing... If they have no justifiable reason to be here, they are returned.”

Julián Castro: “We have a system to consider asylum claims based on certain criteria where people either qualify for asylum or they don’t... can we take everyone who would like to be in the United States? Nobody has called for that.”

Bernie Sanders: “If you open the borders, my God, there’s a lot of poverty in this world, and you’re going to have people from all over the world. And I don’t think that’s something we can do at this point. Can’t do it. So that is not my position.”

Joe Biden: When asked about Obama’s record of deporting 3 million people, Biden said Obama “did the best thing that was able to be done... I stand with Barack Obama all eight years.”