A year of systematic cruelty

January 25, 2018

Today at noon our offices will hold a moment of silence.

We will take this moment to remember that one year ago today, the Trump Administration released an executive order titled Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements that put into place the first pieces of the immigration machine that is now clawing its way from Washington D.C. toward California.

That executive order added thousands of new ICE agents.  It threatened repercussions for cities that created “sanctuary” by refusing to deputize local law enforcement systems for ICE’s purposes.  And it created a set of so-called deportation “priorities” that fundamentally threaten our treasured values of due process and the rule of law by allowing each individual ICE agent to make subjective and unregulated determinations about who is a “priority” for deportation.

And of course, just two days later, the Trump Administration released the first Muslim travel ban executive order, thrusting the global community into chaos, stranding passengers traveling to the US from around the world, and ripping apart families throughout California and the country.

So today we will mark this moment in silence.  In contemplation of the past year.  And we will hold in our hearts the many families and communities who now live under the threats implicit in this immigration policy, and those whose lives have already been up-ended.

The administration’s actions on immigration policy over the last year make their position clear. The January 2017 executive orders that were signed (as well as others that were leaked), the termination of the DACA program in September, three iterations of the Muslim travel ban, the legal arguments that the President’s actions in this area are unreviewable by the federal courts – they all make it very clear.  This administration’s immigration policy can only be described as a framework of systematic cruelty.

The human species is by its very nature migratory.  We have moved all over the face of the earth throughout human history.  We move for joyful reasons – because we fall in love, seek new skills and education, because we get amazing job opportunities.  We also move for horrific reasons – to escape persecution, warfare, and devastating natural disasters.  Of course all of this human movement is regulated in some way by each country’s laws.  But at the heart of it all are just the purely human reasons for migration, which we share as a species.

But the Trump Administration views this organic human movement with suspicion and disdain. Rather than seeing human migration as normal, natural, and even as a potential source of new talents, skills, and energy for the United States, the administration’s derogatory and racist language degrades both the reasons for human migration – and the people and families involved.

It is critically important that we – as a nation – understand this core fact: the brunt of the unbearable impact of the administration’s immigration policy falls on families.  It is the young Syrian refugee seeking to reunite with his wife and US citizen son in Long Beach during the chaos of the first travel ban.  It is the grandmother stranded in Germany as she is trying to travel to the Bay Area to hold her daughter’s hand during the birth of her first grandchild.  It is a sobbing mother and teenagers as their father is deported at an airport in Michigan.

So it is those families that we hold in our hearts today at noon – and every day moving forward. Their persistence and courage are inspiring. Their stories fuel our fight.

Want to stand up to protect immigrant families? Sign up for the statewide Immigration Pro Bono Network for alerts, updates and volunteer opportunities!