On the Road to Genocide: The Trump/Pence Regime’s Anti‑Immigrant Barrage

Hundreds of Thousands, Including Children in Dozens of Concentration Camps

In 2018 ICE booked 396,448 people into its custody. In addition, another 12,000 children were held under supervision of the Office of Refugee resettlement.¹¹ ICE has detention centers in every state in the country, with the highest concentration being in Texas, California, and Arizona.¹² By December 2018, almost 15,000 children were in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.¹³

This photo was taken in May 2019 at a concentration camp near McAllen, TX and obtained by CNN from an unnamed person.

Deaths in U.S. Custody

Since Trump took office, 12 immigrants have died while in Border Patrol custody; 27 while in ICE custody.¹⁴ These include a two-year-old Guatemalan boy who died of pneumonia and seven-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin, who went into cardiac arrest brought on by severe dehydration. As of September 20, at least 15 immigrant children died while in Border Patrol custody or immediately after being released this year.¹⁵

Death in the Deserts

In 2017, the last year for which there are official figures, 412 people died within the U.S. just over the border. Most of these people died from “prolonged exposure to the extreme environments in the border region.”¹⁶ According to the group Border Angels, about 10,000 people have died attempting to cross the border since 1994.¹⁷ The official U.S. Customs number of deaths between 1998 and 2017 is 7,126. These figures only reflect known deaths—how many hundreds or thousands have perished in the blistering heat is unknown. Border Patrol agents routinely destroy water bottles and other survival provisions left in the desert by people trying to help the desperate immigrants. The federal government tried twice—unsuccessfully—to convict on felony charges Scott Warren, a geography professor who set water bottles in the desert.

Screenshot from video posted by No More Deaths showing border agent grinning while pouring out water left for migrants. No More Deaths reported “Border Patrol agents are destroying gallons of water intended for border crossers.... In data collected by No More Deaths from 2012 to 2015, we find that at least 3,586 gallon jugs of water were destroyed” in one desert corridor.

Killed While in Border Patrol Custody or Fleeing Border Patrol

Clear figures of deaths of immigrants in U.S. custody at the border are not provided by the U.S. government. But we do know that as of November 6, at least 15 adults are known to have died while in Border Patrol custody or while trying to evade them in 2019.¹⁸ Most of these people died of “extreme dehydration” after they were taken into Border Patrol custody. How long they waited to receive medical attention is not clear. Others were killed in car and foot chases. This is a 50% increase over all of 2018.

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ICE Raids and Deportations

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the main government agency responsible for deporting people arrested within the U.S. One of Trump’s first actions as president was to sign an executive order instructing ICE agents to enforce U.S. laws against “all removable aliens.”¹⁹ This greatly enlarged the number of people potentially targeted for deportation, since the previous policy had been to focus on “criminal aliens.”

August 7, 2019, U.S. Immigration raided several Mississippi food processing plants, including this Koch Foods Inc. plant in Morton, MS. The early morning raids were part of a large-scale operation targeting allegedly undocumented employees. Photo: ICE.

Expanding ICE, Increasing Raids

There were 6,848 “worksite investigations” by ICE in 2018, over 5,000 more than in 2017.²⁰ Thousands of people have been arrested and deported in raids across the country.²¹ In July 2019, Trump announced that ICE is poised to escalate raids in about a dozen cities. In August, about 680 people, mainly workers in poultry plants, were arrested in ICE raids across northern Mississippi. In the fiscal year 2018, 287,741 people were deported from raids within the U.S. interior, the highest number in any year since an institute at Syracuse University began keeping records.²² Trump has directed the Department of Homeland Security to hire 10,000 additional ICE agents. At this point, Congress hasn’t provided all the funding for that, and it is still being contested.

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrested about 680 people in several Mississippi towns in the August 7, 2019 raids. Magdalena Gomez Gregorio, 11 years old, pleads for the return of her father who was picked up in the raid.

Expanding and Upgrading “E-Verify”

In 2017, Trump ordered that E-Verify, an electronic system that enables employers to check the legal status of employees and potential employees, be expanded and upgraded. For now, it is “voluntary,” though it is mandatory by state law in 22 states,²³ and all federal contractors and subcontractors must use it.

Attacking Sanctuary Cities, Expanding Local and State Police Enforcement of Immigration Law

In January 2017, Trump issued an executive order that no federal grants go to law enforcement in sanctuary jurisdictions. This has been overturned several times in courts, but the Trump/Pence regime continues to contest it. Meanwhile, it has developed other ways of cutting off funds to sanctuary cities, within the framework of existing immigration law.²⁴

“Zero Tolerance”

The (In)Justice Department instructed its prosecutors to pursue all “illegal entry” cases as criminal charges. Previously the government policy, if not always its practice, had prioritized arresting immigrants wanted for or convicted of criminal offenses. In May 2018, it announced that the Department of Homeland Security would pursue “100%” of entry cases as “criminal.”²⁵

Locking up Pregnant Women

In 2017, Trump ordered ICE to end a policy that enabled it to release pregnant women from federal imprisonment while awaiting court appearances.²⁶

Limiting Legal Appearances, Accelerating Deportation

Upon taking office the Trump/Pence regime began implementing numerous changes to speed up immigration cases and get people into the deportation pipeline quicker, and it continues to do so.²⁷ These include using video teleconferencing for court appearances, hiring more immigration judges, limiting continuances, sending judges to locations across the country where the caseload is highest, instituting metrics that demand “peak efficiency” (meaning, maximum deportations the quickest), ending the grossly misnamed “child-friendly practices,” “expediting dockets” in 10 large cities “with the expectation that (each case) would be adjudicated within 180 days,” and others. These measures have included bringing toddlers before immigration judges. Immigration courts are not obligated to provide attorneys or maintain even the pretense of “due process” supposedly available in criminal courts.

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Burning Down the House—and Throwing the Victims Back in It

In January 2018, the Trump/Pence regime announced it is ending TPS for people from El Salvador—turning upside down the lives of not only about 200,000 Salvadorans with TPS but hundreds of thousands of family members. This was a couple of months after the cancellation of TPS for 50,000 Haitians. As a Salvadoran woman in Los Angeles who has two children born in the U.S. said, “We had hope that if we worked hard, paid our taxes and didn’t get in trouble we would be allowed to stay.” She said she would risk arrest rather than return to El Salvador, even though without the TPS she would lose the job she had for 12 years and medical insurance for herself and her family.

The Salvadorans covered under TPS had fled a country torn by a civil war in which the U.S. supported and trained death squads and a military that killed about 75,000 people in the small country, and displaced one-fifth of the population. Then in 2001, two massive earthquakes left much of the already devastated country in even worse ruins. The Trump/Pence regime’s twisted rationale for ending the TPS for Salvadorans was that the conditions that made it unsafe to return to El Salvador no longer existed. As revcom.us wrote, “This is like setting a house on fire, shooting down some of the people who manage to escape, and gathering up others to throw them back in the burning building. For decades, El Salvador has been tormented by U.S. domination. Millions of people live in a hell of hunger, poverty, and death that has ‘Made in the USA’ stamped all over it.”

New York, November 21, 2017, outside Representative Peter King's office on Long Island, demanding that Temporary Protected Status be saved, and the passage of a clean DREAM Act.

Photos: Make the Road NY

TPS Cancellation Blocked for Now—but Threat Hangs Over the Head of Immigrants

In October 2018, a federal court judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump/Pence regime from ending TPS for people from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Sudan. The regime is appealing the ruling. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security said that TPS status for people from those countries would be extended through January 2020, and re-extended in nine-month intervals if needed. In a separate lawsuit, a group of TPS holders from Honduras and Nepal are challenging their status. But Trump/Pence officials have made it clear they are pressing forward with the attempt to get rid of TPS altogether, and that once that happens, people covered by TPS will have 120 days to leave the U.S.

El Salvador Government Makes Devil’s Bargain with Trump/Pence

In October of this year, the Trump/Pence regime separately extended the TPS for the people from El Salvador. But there were reports that this extension came at a price: the signing by the Salvadoran government of an agreement demanded by the Trump/Pence regime under which El Salvador would step up efforts against the flow of refugees from Central America to the U.S. Furthermore, according to the Los Angeles Times: “Trump administration officials painted a different picture, however, attempting to limit the scope of the extension. Acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli, in fact, said TPS was not being extended at all. ‘Rather, work permits for Salvadorans will be extended for 1 year past resolution of litigation for an orderly wind down period,’ he said on Twitter.”

Denying TPS to People from Bahamas after Deadly Hurricane

In September, the Caribbean island nation of the Bahamas was hit with a deadly hurricane that totally destroyed parts of the country and left dozens dead. The Trump/Pence regime refused to grant TPS to people from the Bahamas. And about 100 people fleeing the devastation were told to get off a ferry that was to take them from the Bahamas to Florida because the U.S. would not let them in. A Boston Globe editorial noted, “A massive hurricane striking an island nation is practically a textbook definition of the sort of humanitarian crises that Congress had in mind when it created the program. If Bahamians don’t qualify, then exactly who does?” And that was exactly the point the Trump/Pence regime was making with this deliberately inhumane move: we are NOT going to give TPS to anyone.

Great Abaco, Bahamas, September 5, 2019, in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian. Photo: AP.

Adding to the Cruel Separation of Families

There are an estimated 273,000 children who were born in the U.S. to parents who are covered under TPS. If the Trump/Pence regime succeeds in its declared intention to end TPS, these families would face an agonizing situation. As an op-ed writer in the Washington Post noted: “Parents will be faced with the decision of whether to take their children—most of whom speak mainly English and know only life in this country—back to countries deemed by the State Department as not safe for travel, some with the highest homicide rates in the hemisphere. Otherwise, parents will have to leave their children alone in the United States or, if they’re lucky, with relatives, or foster parents who they may or may not know, or some with ‘adult sponsors’ chosen by federal agencies. The only other choice available to those parents would be to hide in the shadows as undocumented aliens.”

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Regime Declares End of DACA

In September 2017, the Trump/Pence regime terminated the DACA program, throwing the lives of millions of people in this country into a whole new level of fear and danger. To qualify for DACA, people had to provide ICE with every detail of their lives: their residence, their work info, and the names and status of their family members and relatives. With the ending of DACA, it means this information could be used by the government to go after them and their loved ones. When they applied for DACA, they were told this information would not be used to deport them. But the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services later said that policy “may be modified, superseded, or rescinded at any time without notice.” Although DACA itself applies to a small percentage of immigrants in this country without documents, many of the DACA recipients live in households with both “legal” and “illegal” status—and the Trump/Pence regime’s targeting of DACA is a big part of the overall fascist assault against immigrants.

Court Cases Have Stopped Elimination of DACA for Now—but the Threat Sill Hangs Over the Heads of the Dreamers

Various court challenges have prevented the Trump/Pence regime—so far—from carrying out the complete elimination of DACA. The issue is now at the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the case on November 12, and is expected to come out with a ruling next June. In August, Justice Department lawyers submitted a brief to the Court claiming that Trump was fully within his rights in ending DACA. They said that the Department of Homeland Security had “correctly, and at a minimum reasonably, concluded that DACA is unlawful.” (Trump’s justification for eliminating DACA has been that Obama acted illegally in creating the program in the first place.)

JUST NOW from Oklahoma: High school students walking out of US Grant in support of #DACA recipients and all our immigrant communities. #HereToStay #HomeIsHere pic.twitter.com/rVa6g8Sx35

— rodrigo (@orrchards) November 8, 2019

Democrats Stab the Dreamers in the Back

At the end of 2017, the Senate Democrats forced a government shutdown by refusing to vote for a funding bill—supposedly in opposition to Trump’s moves to eliminate DACA. But very quickly, the Democratic leaders showed how hollow and duplicitous their show of “support” for the Dreamers was. First, top Senate Democrat Schumer, supposedly to facilitate a deal with Trump, agreed to link the fate of the Dreamers to support for Trump’s border wall. This was simply conceding that the wall and all the associated “security measures”—in other words, viciously anti-immigrant police and military actions—are valid, without getting anything in return. Then a few days later, in January 2018, Schumer and the other Democrats voted to approve the same bill to fund the government that they had just rejected. They gave away the one tool they had—forcing a federal government shutdown—by cravenly capitulating to the fascist regime and the Republicans.

In June of this year, the Democrats in the House passed a bill that called for granting DACA recipients conditional legal status for 10 years and allowing the possibility of obtaining permanent residency after completing some college, military service, or a period of work. But this was a meaningless gesture—the Republican-controlled Senate refused to take up the bill, and it has gone nowhere.

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Thousands Stranded in Mexico by U.S.’s Action

MPP has left tens of thousands of people stranded, penniless, and homeless in Mexican border cities. There they are caught in a deadly, suffocating vise: unable to enter the U.S.; terrified for their lives about returning to their homelands; preyed upon by criminal gangs and police, in some of the most violent cities in the world.²⁹

Tijuana, November 25, 2018, on the U.S.-Mexico border. People who had walked thousands of miles to apply for asylum were confronted by riot police, helicopters, machine guns, and soldiers. Border Patrol threw tear gas at these migrants, including small children and babies. Photo: AP.

“Metering”

The Trump/Pence Department of (In)Justice instituted a policy called “metering” to limit the number of cases it hears each day. People who apply for asylum when they encounter a U.S. official at the border are given a teleconference court date, usually months in the future, and sent back to Mexico. A woman from Guatemala described her encounter: “They only asked for a name, a fingerprint, and then, ‘out.’”

First the Judgement, then the Hearing

The outcome of most hearings has been pre-determined for those who manage to make it that far. Kevin McAleenan, then commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, announced this summer that a “majority of these claims will not be successful.”³⁰

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The Muslim Ban

In January 2017, Trump signed an executive order putting in place his regime’s infamous “Muslim ban.” It prohibited travel to the U.S. by people with legitimate visas from a number of predominantly Islamic countries. Protests erupted across the country. Multiple legal challenges were made against the ban. But the third rewriting of the ban was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 16, 2018.³¹ Visas from people in affected countries have dropped by as much as 92% since it went into effect.³²

Harshly Restrictive New Measures for Refugee Admission

In March 2017, the Trump regime announced that it was suspending travel of all refugees into the U.S. for 120 days, while it reviewed existing applications and admission policy. It claimed it needed enhanced “security measures.”³³ When admissions resumed, all applicants were subjected to “enhanced vetting,” and additional scrutiny if they were from countries determined to be “high risk.” The “Central American Minors Refugee and Parole Program,” which provided some protection to youths from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, was terminated.³⁴ These measures quickly took a severe toll. In fiscal year 2016, 84,989 refugees were admitted into the U.S. In fiscal 2018, 22,491.³⁵ That number is plummeting still lower this year.

Shutting Down Asylum, Redefining Fear

In June 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions narrowed the availability of asylum for those targeted by “non-state” actors. This stripped protection for victims of gang violence and domestic violence, and erected new barriers to asylum for women, children, LGBTQ victims, and others trying to escape abuse, beatings, rape, and murder.

Holding Asylum Applicants in Detention

In April 2019, Attorney General William Barr ruled that immigration judges are not allowed to hold bond hearings for asylum applicants. This aims to hold asylum seekers in detention (prison) indefinitely while their applications are pending.³⁶ This has been blocked—for now—by a federal court.

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