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Tag: immigration

Biden Cancels Billions For Trump’s Military-Funded Border Wall

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

President Joe Biden is cancelling billions in funding for construction of a wall at the southern border that had been authorized by his predecessor, according to The Hill.

Donald Trump had used emergency powers in 2019 to raid Defense Department coffers in order to fund his precious border wall after Congress declined to fully fund the project. Now the White House says some of the leftover funding will be used to help reverse the environmental damage caused by construction of the wall.

"Consistent with the President's Proclamation terminating the redirection of funds for border wall, no more money will be diverted from other purposes to building a border wall," a Biden administration official said Friday. "Today, the Department of Defense will begin cancelling all wall projects using the diverted funds, and will take steps to return remaining unobligated military construction funds to their appropriated purpose as permitted by law."

The move follows on Biden's immediate cancellation upon taking office of the state of emergency Trump had declared at the southern border. In total, Trump had secured some $16 billion for his precious wall, with about $6 billion of it being appropriated by Congress, according to the Associated Press. Now some of the $1.4 billion in funding that had been appropriated for the wall will instead be used to address environmental damage caused by the wall, including soil erosion in the San Diego area and increased risk of flooding in the Rio Grande Valley.

According to the AP, as of mid-January, the government had spent $6.1 billion of the $10.8 billion in work it had contracted to have done. Trump reportedly worked "feverishly" his final year in office in order to complete more than 450 miles of the wall.

In January, following the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Trump traveled to Texas to take one last sad little victory lap on the wall, declaring, "I kept my promises" on completing 450 miles of wall.

Based on the amount still under contract, another 214 miles would have been built, bringing the total to 664 miles.

But President Biden brought that chapter to a close on Friday. Good riddance.

Why Is The Washington Post Hyping The GOP's ‘Border Crisis’?

Reprinted with permission from Press Run

Eagerly joining forces with partisan Republicans, the Washington Post over the weekend uncorked a doomsday write-up about the surge of young migrants currently overwhelming U.S. facilities along the Southern Border. Laying all of the blame for the three-decade problem directly at the feet of the new, two-month-old Democratic administration, the Post article echoed every conceivable GOP talking point.

What the piece failed to do was include crucial context for a complicated policy puzzle, and to delve deeply into whether Trump spent four years deliberately creating a border crisis that Biden is now trying to fix.

The Post also included no context for how Biden's brand new administration has been addressing border crossings while at the same time dealing with the aftermath of a deadly insurrection, an impeachment trial, and passing the largest social spending bill in U.S. history. All in less than 60 days.

The Post is hardly alone in manically hyping the border story, at the behest of the GOP. In a highly unusual move, ABC This Week staged its entire Sunday program from the border, in order to focus on the "emerging crisis for the Biden administration."

On Saturday night, Post reporters fanned out on Twitter to tout their breathless story, which Republicans quickly seized upon. "'No end in sight: Inside the Biden administration's failure to contain the border surge," posted Josh Dawsey of the Post. Even more frantic was the tweet from colleague Nick Miroff: "How the Biden admin's poor planning, botched messaging, rush to repudiate Trump and a broken asylum system unleashed the biggest border surge in 20 years, with "no end in sight""

Fact: This is not currently the "biggest border surge in 20 years." It's not even close.

The Post article, as Julian Castro advisor Sawyer Hackett noted, was "pure hot garbage, beginning to end." He added, "Where the fuck was the outrage when Trump deported 13K children last year?"

Designed to portray the White House as poised on the brink of a defining and perhaps fatal failure, the Post article was drenched in politics instead of policy — "Republicans are reveling in the administration's border problems." The piece stressed the issue of immigration could be a loser for Democrats — it could cost them the House in 2022! — and even "overshadow" the administration's success in vaccinating tens of millions of Americans in recent weeks, and passing the wildly popular $1.9 trillion relief package. All of that could be forgotten, the Post stressed, because more people are trying to cross the U.S. border. That's an absurd premise that only adds up if you're trying tell this story from a Republican perspective.

Among the article's more egregious failures was its refusal to mention that the surge in unaccompanied minors at the border began during Trump's last year in office, as well as a surge in adults seeking asylum, the Trump team's refusal to cooperate with the Biden White House transition, and the Republicans' deliberate delay in confirming key cabinet members who most closely work on border issues.

Additionally, the article quoted former Department of Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf attacking the Biden administration. Wolf was a key member of Trump's anti-immigrant border team who worked overtime creating deliberately ineffective, chaotic, and cruel policies, which Democrats are now trying to fix. But Wolf gets to spout off in the Post about how Biden has created a crisis?

Is Biden alone responsible for the current surge? Not according to the Washington Post's own reporting just four months ago: "Attempted crossings have risen as migrants fled the aftermath of powerful hurricanes in Central America and as crime, hunger and political instability continued to ravage numerous countries in Latin America." That's now all been flushed down the memory hole, as the Post amplifies GOP attacks and targets Biden, and Biden alone for the surge.

Also disturbing was the premise from the Post piece, which echoed a Republican talking point: 'There are too many undocumented people crossing the border and in U.S. custody!' Left out of that simplistic and alarmist narrative is the fact that they're in U.S. custody because this Democratic administration has adopted a humane policy of not sending children back to often unlivable conditions. Basically, the Post penalizes Biden for trying to fix Trump's deliberate mess, by wildly hyping the change in border numbers.

"The politicians and the pundits trying to push America back to the "good old days" of 2018, of ripping families apart or condemning them to inhumane refugee camps in Mexico, are shameless," stressed the Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch, after the Postarticle was published.

In terms of border crossing apprehensions, 2021 is currently on pace to match the 2019 surge under Trump. Where was the panic-stricken media coverage about the border "crisis" then, and how the Republican administration had no policy answer? In truth, Trump touted the huge influx in 2019 because he thought it was good politics for wanting to build a mythical wall across America's southern border, which Democrats opposed.

So when a Republican was in the White House, he claimed the huge border surge was bad news for Democrats, and the press largely played along. Two years later, the press is once again playing along with Republicans, claiming a huge border surge is bad news for Democrats.

Longtime Hate Group Amplifies GOP Immigration Rhetoric

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

An anti-immigration group with long-standing ties to white nationalism has spent the last week amplifying harsh Republican rhetoric on immigration, some of which was created by the group itself.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which goes by the acronym FAIR, has used its social media accounts, which are followed by millions of people, to promote the Republican Party's attacks on Democratic President Joe Biden.

On Wednesday, the group hosted a video stream of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers seeking to push Republican leadership to the right, on its Facebook page as House Republicans held a press event in front of the Capitol on "Biden Border Crisis." FAIR has over 2.3 million followers on Facebook, and another 413,000-plus more on Twitter, where it also promoted the stream.

The event's slogan, which has been on the lips of multiple Republicans for the last few weeks, took hold after FAIR issued a press release on Jan. 21, the day after Biden was sworn into office, accusing Biden of "inducing an immigration and border crisis."

The Biden administration's Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has said the challenges at the border are largely due to inheriting an immigration system he described as having been "gutted" by the Trump team.

FAIR and its Republican allies have continued their attacks nonetheless.

In just one week on Twitter, FAIR has promoted several immigration-related tweets from Republicans in Congress. They have retweeted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), and shared Rep. Dan Bishop's (R-NC) comments twice.

Additionally, FAIR tweeted out stories reporting on Republicans pushing FAIR's message on immigration, including remarks from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, also a Republican.

FAIR has also shared immigration tweets from the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in Congress, and the official account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. The tweet from the Judiciary Committee minority was a request to get FAIR's language in the hashtag "#BidenBorderCrisis" to trend on Twitter.

FAIR has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has longstanding ties to white nationalism.

The organization's founder and board member John Tanton wrote in 1986 that " whites see their power and control over their lives declining," and said, "for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority."

Tanton ran the Social Contract Press, a publishing company that republished the anti-immigrant novel The Camp of Saints, which describes "swarthy hordes" of Indian immigrants overrunning France and calls immigrants "monsters." The book is reportedly a favorite of former Trump White House official Stephen Miller.

Additionally, for nearly 10 years FAIR took over $1.2 million in grants from the Pioneer Fund, which advocated for eugenics.

But the group's past has not prevented Republicans from repeatedly hosting representatives from FAIR to give Congressional testimony, and now both find themselves pushing the same anti-immigrant rhetoric once again.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Candidates Must Address Bipartisan Roots Of Immigration Crisis

This article was produced in partnership by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The Democratic candidates missed the opportunity last week in Nevada—a state with a 30 percent Latino population—to address the root causes of our immigration crisis. They predictably criticized the worst Trump administration immigration policies, such as families separated at the border and chronic uncertainty for undocumented people in the U.S., many of whom arrived decades ago as children. How we treat people at or inside our border certainly deserves attention, but we cannot ignore that many people come to the United States in the first place because our foreign policies—by both Democrats and Republicans—force them to leave their homes in Latin America and elsewhere.

The U.S. displaces its neighbors by displacing their governments. The Obama administration supported the 2009 coup d’état against Honduras’ elected President Manuel Zelaya by U.S.-trained generals. The Obama and then the Trump administrations supported repressive and corrupt governments that followed Zelaya’s ouster, giving a green light to assassinations of dissidents and journalists, government-linked drug trafficking, and spiraling crime. This repression continues to drive tens of thousands to seek asylum in the U.S. each year, regardless of the legal obstacles we erect. More recently, the Trump administration supported last November’s military coup d’état in Bolivia—with little opposition from Democrats—deepening that country’s political crisis.

United States aid and trade policies—often touted as helping our neighbors—also drive people from their homes to our borders. NAFTA opened markets for highly efficient and highly subsidized U.S. farmers by lifting tariffs. Less subsidized Mexican farmers could not compete, and overnight lost their livelihood, forcing many to seek replacement livelihoods in the United States. In Haiti, President Bill Clinton admitted—after he left office—to a “devil’s bargain” on rice tariffs that was “good for some of my farmers in Arkansas,” but destroyed rice farming and generated hunger and malnutrition in Haiti.

The failure of the United States to tackle climate change contributes to a global migration crisis. Catastrophic disasters—growing more frequent and severe —displace more than 20 million people each year. This includes Nicaraguans and Hondurans benefitting from Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States since 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, and hundreds of thousands in Central America’s “Dry Corridor,” now facing their sixth year of drought.

The burden of harmful U.S. foreign policies falls disproportionately on women. In African countries struck by droughts, girls are taken out of school to make the longer walk for their family’s water. Repressive governments we support in Brazil, Honduras, and the Philippines keep women “in their place” with regressive laws, and by committing and permitting attacks against women advocates. Women displaced from their homes and headed to our border face a high risk of sexual assault.

Congress recently demonstrated how bipartisan cooperation can achieve more principled and constructive policies. Last spring, both houses of Congress passed a bill by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) invoking the War Powers Resolution to stop U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen that has displaced 3 million people and killed more than 100,000. President Trump vetoed the bill, but Congress’ War Powers authority, neglected for decades, is now out of the toolbox: on February 13, Senate Republicans and Democrats passed a similar measure to constrain the president’s ability to attack Iran.

The Democratic candidates have moved on to Super Tuesday states, two of which, Texas and California, have 26 million Latinos—more than the total population of any other state. Many Latino voters know from personal and family experience how U.S. policies drive people from their homes. They deserve to know, as do all of us, how candidates will address these root causes of our immigration crisis.

Candidates can start to address the root causes by pledging to respect the choices made by voters in other countries—even if we disagree with them—and ensure that our tax dollars will support economic and social development rather than war.  They can announce trade policies that help farmers farm on both sides of the border, and workers everywhere earn a living wage. They can vow to reduce hurricanes, floods, and drought by putting more solar panels on our roofs and less carbon into our atmosphere. In short, the candidates can show how the United States will help our neighbors live secure, dignified lives in their own communities. Because that is a foreign policy that will ultimately benefit all of us.

Stephen Miller: Blocking Immigrants ‘Is All I Care About’

Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s senior policy adviser and the architect of many of his harshest immigration policies, told staff in a meeting last fall that restricting the ability of migrants to come to the United States is “all I care about.”

According to the New Yorker, Miller made the comments at a November 2019 meeting with officials from the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Justice. The meeting was intended to discuss plans to prohibit migrants from applying for asylum at the U.S. southern border and to force them to apply for asylum in the first country they enter instead.

“One participant in the November meeting pointed out that El Salvador didn’t have a functioning asylum system,” the outlet reported. “‘They don’t need a system,’ Miller interrupted. He began speaking over people, asking questions, then cutting off the answers.”

At the end of the meeting, Miller was even more blunt.

“I didn’t mean to come across as harsh,” he told officials. “It’s just that this is all I care about. I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life.”

Miller is widely known as the architect of some of the Trump administration’s most racist immigration policies. He spearheaded the Muslim Ban, which restricts travel from countries with majority Muslim populations, and has played an integral role in the administration’s efforts to ban refugees from coming to to the United States.

He made headlines in August 2017 when he argued with reporters that the poem mounted on the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus, was not representative of U.S. views on immigration because it was added to the statue later.

That claim is popular among white supremacists and has been pushed by the likes of David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and white nationalist Richard Spencer.

In November, Miller came under fire for leaked emails that showed him promoting white nationalist propaganda and materials from white supremacist sites. The emails, mostly between himself and a former Breitbart editor, were so alarming that a group of 27 senators sent a letter to the White House in December demanding Miller be fired.

The letter stated that the emails showed Miller was motivated “not [by] national security” but rather “white supremacy — something that has no place in our country, federal government, and especially not the White House.”

Miller continues to work in the White House. Trump attended Miller’s February wedding, which took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

The Amazing Fall Of Donald Trump’s Wall

Big, high walls can be troublesome. Ask Humpty Dumpty. Or consider the Canaanite city of Jericho: According to a Biblical tale, its walls came tumbling down when Joshua and the Israelites encircled it and blew their horns.

However, for a real-life, epic story about wall troubles, ponder the trials and tribulations of our very own president. He trumpets that he is the most bodacious barrier builder of all, yet he can’t seem to get his one “big, beautiful wall” funded or even taken seriously, much less built. Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has continuously stamped his tiny feet and demanded that Congress shell out more than 10 billion of our taxpayers’ dollars to erect a monster of a wall across some 2,000 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico. Like a flimflamming snake-oil peddler, he rants that his magnificent edifice would magically keep “aliens,” “rapists,” “murderers,” “terrorists,” “drugs” and “cartels” from entering the U.S. from the south. But even when his own party controlled both houses of Congress, the presidency and the courts, his grand scheme went unloved, unfunded and unbuilt.

Still, he kept insisting … and persisting. In January, he directed his Customs and Border Control officials to put up a short section of his 30-foot-tall wall on the border at Calexico, California, to show the world how effective the Trump bulwark would be. Alas, though, the thing blew over! Not from a hurricane-force storm but from moderate winds topping out at only 37 miles an hour. The metal panels flung over into Mexico. Embarrassing.

More embarrassing was a personal visit Trump made to San Diego last September for a media event hailing a new supertech model of a wall that the master builder declared to be “virtually impossible” for violators to climb. Calling the design “amazing,” he used a Sharpie to sign his name on the structure, declaring to the media: “I tell you this strongly: No more people can come in.”

A month later, a climbing group in Kentucky built a replica of that wall and held an up-and-over competition. Winning time was 13.1 seconds! Sixty-five competitors easily topped it, including an 8-year-old girl and a guy who climbed it one-handed while juggling various items with his other hand.

Trump has, however, proved that one thing truly is impenetrable: his head. Absolutely no embarrassment, logic or factual evidence can enter his locked mind and deter his extravagant folly.

Remember when candidate Trump promised repeatedly that not only would he wall out all migrants crossing our Mexican border but — by gollies — he would also see to it that Mexico would pay the tab for his xenophobic wall?

Mexico hasn’t paid a peso … and won’t. So, just as he did in building many of his luxury condos and resorts, Donald Dealmaker ran to the government, demanding that it pony up the unlimited billions of dollars for his pet political project. Aside from a token appropriation in 2018, however, Congress has said, “Ummmm … no.”

But that’s no hill for a narcissistic climber. Unable to get tax money legitimately, Trump has simply stolen it, reaching into the Pentagon’s budget for military funding. Ignoring the constitutional mandate that only Congress is empowered to direct the flow of money from the people’s purse, Trump filched $6.1 billion from our military last year, snatched another $3.8 billion this month and intends to swipe at least another $3.4 billion before the year is out.

This executive “reprogramming,” as the White House euphemistically calls its daylight robbery, is being pulled off by masking Trump’s wall obsession as a “national emergency.” To fulfill the president’s whimsical political desires, Pentagon brass has been yanking funds for military equipment and construction projects from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, National Guard … and, ultimately, from our fighting forces.

Presidential autocracy aside, Trump’s massive larceny raises three other interesting issues of public morality. One: His trickery sets a precedent not only for future presidents but also for our young people’s behavior. Two: Our Congress critters, especially Trump Republicans, set a new standard of craven meekness in the face of this direct assault on their authority and our democracy. Three: The Pentagon, by simply kissing off a budget loss of more than $13 billion, saying it’s in excess of the military’s needs, is admitting that the war machine is routinely taking away too much of the public’s money.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

Mulvaney Admits On Tape US ‘Desperate’ For Immigrants

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was caught on tape admitting that, despite President Donald Trump’s policy preferences, the United States is “desperate” for more immigrants, according to a recording obtained by the Washington Post.

He further undermined the administration’s claims of its economic prowess, admitting that immigration is necessary for sustained economic growth.

“We are desperate — desperate — for more people,” Mulvaney said, according to the post, stressing that it should be legal. “We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.”

These claims are not really contentious from an economic perspective, but they run counter to dominant narratives in the Trump administration. The president himself has repeatedly talked about immigration as a substantial burden on the country, rather than a benefit, and his administration has acted accordingly to reduce the number of immigrants coming in. Trump and his defenders have also cheered his economic stewardship of the country — on highly dubious grounds — and even predicted 5 or 6 percent growth, which hasn’t come to pass and was never even in the realm of possibility. They’ve argued that the GOP tax cuts and Trump’s deregulatory agenda have reinvigorated American economic growth, but the reality is far less impressive than the rhetoric.

While some critics of immigration insist that Trump and his allies are only opposed to illegal immigration, the policy choices tell a different story. Trump has, for instance, dramatically slashed the number of refugees the United States accepts, a form of legal immigration, and tried to restrict access to legal asylum-seeking processes.

Forbes writer Stuart Anderson argued that the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, which seeks to limit immigration from people who might need government services, could have a massive negative economic effect.

“Admitting fewer immigrants generally means less economic growth, since labor force growth is an important element of economic growth,” he wrote. “It is economic growth that improves the standard of living in a nation. Using the public charge rule to reduce legal immigration means lower long-term economic growth may be Donald Trump’s most lasting legacy.”

And the data indicates that Trump’s policies are having the expected negative effect on immigration rates. In a separate piece, Anderson found that between 2016 and 2018, legal immigration to the United States fell by 7 percent.

Before Trump’s election in 2016, it was clear Mulvaney was not on board with the Republican nominee’s agenda and disliked him personally.

“Yes, I am supporting Donald Trump, but I’m doing so despite the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being,” Mulvaney said.

In 2015, he was critical of Trump’s remarks about immigration specifically.

“The fence doesn’t solve the problem,” Mulvaney said, as CNN reported. “Is it necessary to have one, sure? Would it help? Sure. But to just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone running for president to take that simplistic of [a] view.”

Trump Sending Tactical Units Into Cities To Round Up Immigrants

The Trump is administration is deploying tactical units into multiple sanctuary cities as part of an effort to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in its campaign to detain migrants.

The units are being deployed “in order to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety, and strengthen our national security,” Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lawrence Payne told the New York Times.

According to an email sent to CBP personnel, the deployment of the tactical teams will run from February through May.

The elite units, described by the Times as the “SWAT team of the border patrol,” will have gear such as stun grenades and have gone through training like that of the Special Forces. According to the outlet, “the officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting individuals who are known to be violent, many of them with extensive criminal records.”

The planned deployment will affect cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit, and Newark, New Jersey.

ICE already operates in those cities and the deployment will add an increased degree of militarism to its immigration operations.

Donald Trump has often attacked and criticized sanctuary cities as part of his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“The state of California passed an outrageous law declaring their whole state to be a sanctuary for criminal illegal immigrants — a very terrible sanctuary — with catastrophic results,” Trump said in his recent State of the Union address.

At a campaign rally in New Hampshire, Trump complained about “left-wing politicians” who “support sanctuary cities that release criminal aliens directly into the American community.”

Under Trump, immigrant communities have expressed fears about agencies like ICE coming into communities and separating families from each other. In some instances, ICE has even apprehended and detained American citizens, despite claims that they only target migrants.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said that he would use a “deportation force” to remove 11 million immigrants from the United States.

“You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely,” he claimed at the time.

Multiple studies have shown that migrants are statistically far less likely to commit crimes than natural-born U.S. citizens.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.