CommentsBCK FILE--On Sunday, President Trump, who seems to have no love for California, tweeted
Just out. The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities. We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or (sic) its poor management & high taxes!
Democrats must change the Immigration Laws FAST. If not, Sanctuary Cities must immediately ACT to take care of the illegal immigrants and this includes Gang Members, Drug Dealers, Human Traffickers, and Criminals of all shapes and sizes and kinds. CHANGE THE LAW NOW!
Since he first announced his candidacy, Trump has made immigration the backbone of his political brand, He has referred specifically to immigrants from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries to our south as “rapists and drug dealers.” Last month, Fox, which is essentially the press arm of his administration, referred to “3 Mexican countries” in a chyron. The network has since issued an apology for the gaffe.
From April through June of last year, the Trump Administration has separated thousands of migrant children from their parents without a policy to reunite families it had separated. After facing national and international criticism, Trump signed an executive order ending family separations on June 20, 2018. In January of this year, the Trump administration admitted that thousands more children had been separated than the initial report of 2,737. The exact figure is unknown. Officials admitted no plans to reunite the children because “it would destabilize the permanency of their existing home environment and could be traumatic to the children.”
Cities across the United States, including Los Angeles, prohibit local authorities to cooperate with federal immigration police and it is these sanctuary cities that Trump has a gripe against. Aside from the human rights atrocity of using human beings as political pawns, is transporting migrants at the border to sanctuary cities is an abuse of power, waste of resources, and likely illegal.
According to the Los Angeles Times, internal deliberations by administration lawyers had previously rejected the plan as “probably illegal and emblematic of the failure of the administration to conceive of a fair and cohesive immigration policy.”
According to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, senior White House aide Stephen Miller might be summoned to testify about the deliberations behind Trump’s immigration policy.
Whether the rehash of the sanctuary city threat results from Trump’s frustration and ire or as a distraction from the Mueller Report, separating children from parents and now, threatening to use humans as a political pawn are egregious human rights violations that result from an immigration policy based on scapegoating and fear-mongering instead of substantive policy.
(Beth Cone Kramer is a professional writer living in the Los Angeles area. She covers Resistance Watch and other major issues for CityWatch.)
-cw
