In a week, #AbolishICE has gone viral on social media and protest signs. The movement is not new: many progressives and immigrant activists consider ICE and CBP rogue agencies and have been calling for much greater accountability or their outright abolition. Two events made #AbolishICE go viral at the end of June: Trump’s family separation policies and the upset victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who made it part of her winning platform.

Vox explains:

“As the people on the ground carrying out Trump’s deportation agenda, ICE agents have become, to many, the face of the administration’s worst impulses. They’re America’s “Gestapo.” They’re a “rogue agency.” Rumors and reports of ICE raids have rippled through communities and social media with regularity; arrests of parents, recorded on their children’s cellphone cameras, have provoked nationwide outrage.”

The #AbolishICE campaign originated with activists, not with politicians, but politicians have begun to swing around to support the movement. Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI) jumped out in front of the Congressional crowd, introducing a bill to abolish ICE and set up a commission to figure out what to do to replace it. Other early supporters of the legislation include Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR),  and Jim McGovern (D-MA).

Many Democrats now endorse the movement. Others—including Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth—do not.

Trump says “I love that issue,” calling it an extreme open borders position that will get Democrats beaten in the mid-terms.

It’s not an open borders position. That’s just the usual Trump lie about anything Democrats propose on immigration. But what is #AbolishICE?

Background: ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP is Customs and Border Protection, sometimes referred to as Border Patrol. Both are part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CBP operates within 100 miles of U.S. borders.

ICE includes both interior Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). ERO is the face of ICE seen most often, as in recent raids on workplaces in Ohio and other states. HSI, charged with transnational criminal investigations, is increasingly uncomfortable with the immigration enforcement operations of ICE.

USCIS is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which processes requests for immigration benefits, and is also part of DHS. Then there’s the immigration court system—the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), both in the Department of Justice and under the direct command of the Attorney General.

Immigration enforcement dramatically expanded after 9/11 and now accounts for more enforcement spending than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, including the FBI, DEA, and the Secret Service. Beginning with 9/11 up to the current Muslim Ban, the direct linking of civil immigration enforcement with national security is a lose-lose for both due process protections and fiscal restraint.

Today: ICE and CBP are both enforcement agencies. Some immigration activists call them, together, the Deportation Force. Since their establishment in 2003, neither has ever been accused of being friendly to immigrants. There have been numerous internal and external investigations of both CBP and ICE that demonstrate the need for reform and accountability of conduct such as use of force and non-compliance with basic detention standards.

Under the current administration, early executive orders have not only thrown out concepts of prosecutorial discretion but have directed both agencies to dramatically increase arrests in an early version of “zero tolerance.” Trump’s systemic use of dehumanizing rhetoric referring to immigrants as rapists, murderers and animals clearly seeks to create a good vs. evil narrative.

Even within DHS, ICE’s heavy-handed enforcement has critics. In a recent letter to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielson, 19 HSI special agents in charge from across the country asked for formal separation of HSI from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, in part because their work is being “unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of civil immigration enforcement.”

The banner of #AbolishICE includes a spectrum of ideas. #AbolishICE does not mean the same thing to everyone who carries a sign. But to be clear, all of them respond to the un-hecked, arbitrary, unrestrained, and inhumane activities of ICE and CBP that have increased under Trump.

For some, including Democrats introducing legislation that will go nowhere in this Congress, #AbolishICE means setting up a study commission and figuring out how to redistribute its enforcement functions in a kinder, gentler deportation force with stronger oversight and more restricted priorities.

Ocasio-Cortez told Documented NY that she still sees some role for immigration enforcement:

“In a similar way where we have law enforcement enforce legitimate crimes of violence, crimes of harm, mass, large fraud, I think that there is a role for enforcement there, but I do not think that it in any way is equivocal to what we are seeing with ICE right now.”

Others, including Mijente, a Latinx and Chicanx racial justice organization, would go much further. Mijente’s Free Our Future: An Immigration Platform for Beyond the Trump Era says:

“We literally mean: disband the agency. Trump’s deportation squad should cease to exist. Immigration enforcement as we know it should end. What would this mean in practice? A moratorium on deportations. The end of all forms of immigration detention. The reimagining of the Border Patrol as a humanitarian force that rescues migrants, rather than destroying their water supplies to hasten their deaths. Border Patrol could be staffed by emergency services experts and healthcare workers, not police.

“We need to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to examine the abuses perpetrated by Homeland Security agencies (ICE, CBP, USCIS, TSA). We need reparations distributed to the millions who have been terrorized by ICE. Maybe you’re not used to seeing such bold demands emerge from our side. The Right, on the other hand, has demanded the dissolution of nearly every cabinet level agency at some point. Let’s be bold too. Let’s create a future free of ICE, free of the possibility that any future President will have at their disposal a police force whose sole purpose is to terrorize immigrant communities.”

Some Democrats worry that the #AbolishICE sounds too extreme. Greg Sargent, writing in the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, warns against timidity:

“[T]here’s no real percentage [for Democrats] in making a big show of policing their left flank over it. Trump wants Democrats to publicly wring their hands in terror of his attacks. This is a sucker’s game, one that is designed to bait Democrats into projecting timidity, equivocation, lack of conviction and weakness. Instead, Democrats should continually turn this back on him, by going on offense against his horrible policies and the immense human toll they are inflicting.”

This is an evolving national conversation that is relevant today because of the escalating cruelty by the Trump administration  in ripping children from parents, both on the border and in the interior of the United States. Those most directly impacted and threatened lead this call for accountability in U.S. immigration policies. The history of lack of any true accountability by either ICE or CBP calls out for long overdue Congressional action.

For more information on #AbolishICE, see:

• “Abolish ICE,” explained (Vox)
• The Problem With ‘Abolish ICE’ (Real Clear Politics)
• ‘Abolish ICE’: The Roots of the Left’s New Immigration Rallying Cry (New York Magazine)
• “Abolish ICE” is becoming more than just a protest cry (Vox)
• Free Our Future: An Immigration Platform for Beyond the Trump Era (Mijente)
• How ‘abolish ICE’ illustrates the importance of party politics (Vox)
• It’s Time to Abolish ICE (The Nation)
• Abolishing ICE Isn’t Very Popular (Yet) (Huffington Post)
• Policy Brief: Ten Reasons Why Congress Must Defund ICE (National Immigrant Justice Center)

 

 

June 26, 2018—Today’s Supreme Court decision allows Trump’s third version of his Muslim ban to go into full effect. This shameful ruling upholds bigotry and xenophobia, and betrays our country’s commitment to religious liberty and to safe haven for refugees.

Trump’s heartless ban separates families and today’s decision promises no end date to the separations. In Minnesota, home to the largest population of Somalis outside of Somalia, the vast majority of our Somali-Minnesota neighbors are impacted by this blanket ban and its continued separation of families who have endured years and even decades of desperation as loved ones wait and suffer in refugee camps. Of course it’s not only Somalis. Sharifa, a Yemeni national, had a visa to rejoin her U.S. citizen husband in the United States until the ban—then her visa was revoked. Now he is in the United States and she is stranded in Djibouti. Two of their four U.S. citizen children are with her, and two are in the United States. She is pregnant with a fifth child, who will be a U.S. citizen, born to a mother who is denied entry to this country.

This Muslim ban also refuses entry to desperate refugees who have undergone years of vetting, first by the United Nations and then by the United States and now have no hope of rejoining family members already here. These include refugees from brutal wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia, who have no homes to return to.

Further, the decision is a failure of the Court to protect the independence of a judiciary increasingly disparaged, disrespected and attacked by Trump: from the racist remarks against Indiana-born U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, to the disparagement of courts the president disagrees with, to this week’s comments that immigrants should be deported without access to courts and due process. ILCM and many immigration lawyers also have grave concerns that the waiver process, the exception to the wholesale banning of citizens of the affected countries, does not work and does not reflect any meaningful process or protection. The dismal approval rates cited in the Sotomayor dissent are early proof that it is a failure.

“The Supreme Court decision is wrong,” said ILCM Executive Director John Keller, “just as it was wrong in Korematsu, upholding the internment of Japanese-Americans, and wrong in Dred Scott, upholding slavery. More than 70 years later, the Court today overturned Korematsu, acknowledging that was the wrong decision. We hope it does not take as long for the Court to recognize that today’s decision is equally wrong.”

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her reasoned and eloquent dissent:

“Taking all the relevant evidence together, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was driven primarily by anti-Muslim animus, rather than by the Government’s asserted national security justifications.  …

“[D]espite several opportunities to do so, President Trump has never disavowed any of his prior statements about Islam. Instead, he has continued to make remarks that a reasonable observer would view as an unrelenting attack on the Muslim religion and its followers. …

“By blindly accepting the Government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security, the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu [the Japanese internment decision] and merely replaces one “gravely wrong” decision with another.”

Today’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in Hawaii vs. Trump is wrong. It refuses to acknowledge racist and xenophobic intentions stated over and over again for the last two years. ILCM will continue to defend the value of true due process, equality under the law, and the importance of immigrant and refugee families to Minnesota and the United States.

Trump’s executive order creates new dangers for migrant children.

June 21, 2018—Trump tried to shut down international outrage with yesterday’s executive order on family separation. Treating that order as if it solved the crisis he created for children and families would be a mistake. The president’s action actually ordered that children and parents be imprisoned together—likely on military bases—for unlimited periods of time and in direct violation of court ordered protections in place since 1997.

The executive order makes no provision for the reunification of migrant parents with the 2,342 children who have already been taken from their mothers and fathers. These children have been scattered across the country, without notice to their parents, and often without records of who and where they are. Hundreds of these stolen children were flown to New York “under cover of darkness” in recent days. Babies were among those sent to Detroit: an 8-month-old and an 11-month-old. Despite the change in policy, administration authorities refuse to prioritize  the reunification of these children, and Trump did not even hint at a plan to bring these children back to their parents.

“The chaos created by this administration’s cynical child separation policy has been replaced by an equally ill-conceived family detention policy with nowhere to put them,” says John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. “The family detention he ordered would violate the child protection requirements of the Flores decree. Trump’s solution is to ignore child protection, get rid of the Flores decree, and lock up indefinitely asylum seekers and their children.”

None of the Republican bills coming up for votes today ends family separation.  All of them hold children and parents in internment camps and gut the nation’s asylum system. Instead of listening to the condemnation by medical professionals, 350 advocacy, legal, and service-provider organizations, including ILCM, religious leaders, media influencers, and even other members of the Republican Party, Trump’s order and Republican bills continue to exacerbate the on-going humanitarian crisis.

“In an awful irony,” says Keller, “Trump issued his order on World Refugee Day. As Trump ordered asylum seekers to be locked up with their children, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement saying, ‘We will continue to help the world’s most vulnerable refugees, reflecting the deeply held values of the American people.’ Yesterday’s executive order is one more demonstration that neither Trump nor Pompeo gives a damn about those American values.”

 

June 19, 2018—The past weeks’ images hurt our hearts: children crying in cages, assembly lines of shackled mothers and fathers pleading with judges who cannot tell them where their children are, anguished mothers deported without their children. The United Nations calls the Administration’s zero-tolerance policy “unconscionable” and Amnesty International called it “nothing short of torture.” What has happened to our country?

“Senior Trump strategists” told the Washington Post that family separation is a strategy to gain funding for a border wall and the rest of Trump’s anti-immigrant platform. The Attorney General says families are torn apart as a deterrent to others, to frighten people into staying away. Whatever the reason for the policy, the administration cares so little about the sacred bonds between parents and children that they fail to keep good enough records to ensure eventual reunification.

“The number of people crossing our border is lower than it has been since Richard Nixon was president, and we are intentionally putting children in cages,” says John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. “Holding children hostage to extort funding for a border wall is unconscionable. We do not have an immigration crisis, we have a crisis of cruelty, a crisis of leadership, a crisis that threatens the soul of our nation, not its border.”

With denunciations of the Trump family separation policy mounting, House Speaker Paul Ryan claims that Republican “compromise” immigration legislation will end family separation. It will not. Instead, it will remove the current, limited legal protections for children held by immigration authorities.

Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced the Keep Families Together Act (S. 3036), which would stop the separation of children from their mothers and fathers at the border. Some 39 other senators, including Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar and Senator Tina Smith, have signed on as co-sponsors. Senator Klobuchar says that “each and every one of the 49 Senate Democrats“ supports the bill.

“Congress must not only talk about this crisis – it must exercise its independent oversight as a co-equal branch of government. It must pass this single-topic bill to end family separation as quickly as possible. Period,” says Keller. “These children and their parents should not be used as a bargaining chip for a border wall or anything else. They deserve our care and protection now.”

You can help to stop family separation at the border. You can help by political action and by supporting organizations that directly help immigrants and refugees, here and at the border. [UPDATED 7/5/18, 7/9/18]

The problem

President Trump ordered that children be taken away from immigrant families who cross the U.S. border without permission. Between mid-April and the end of May of this year, more than 2,000 children were separated from their parents. For more information, see our Family Separation Fact Sheet.

The law does NOT require family separation. The law does NOT require detention for parents or for children. Workable alternatives exist.

On June 26, a federal judge ordered the administration to reunite all separated families within 30 days, and all children under the age of 5 within 14 days. The Trump administration’s response was to say it will hold parents and children in detention together—indefinitely.

This DOES NOT NEED TO HAPPEN. Presidents Bush and Obama both considered the possibility of family separation and rejected it as cruel and un-American. There is no law requiring the separation of children from their families simply because their parents were seeking a better life in the U.S. Other solutions work: parents can be released with orders to return for specific court dates, or with ankle monitors.

Call Congress—and more

The president has failed to stop family separation. On June 24, he said he wants an end to due process for all unauthorized immigrants: no judges, no hearings, no consideration of their claims to stay.

1. Call your Congressional Representative and tell them to vote NO on all Republican immigration bills. Republicans are talking about a “skinny” bill to address family separation by authorizing indefinite detention of children in adult facilities.
2. Call your Senators and Representative every day, and tell them to stop the separation of families and to allow humane alternatives to detention for all families. Ask them to support the Keep Families Together Act (S. 3036). Congress tallies who calls about which issues so your repeated calls about this issue will elevate it on their radar. Tell your friends and family to do the same, especially if they reside in states with strong Republican congressional leadership
3. Write a letter to the editor and/or editorial for publication in any newspaper that prints an article about the family separation policy
4. Contact the White House with the message that you oppose putting children in detention and that you support due process for immigrants, and releasing immigrants until their cases can be heard.
5. This is an election year. Talk to candidates—tell them this is a crucial issue for you and that you need to know where they stand.
6. Talk to your friends. Tell them what is happening right now. Post stories on your social media pages. Remind your friends and family that this is a human issue, not just a partisan political issue. Tell them that Laura Bush has denounced the separation of children from their parents, as have other Republicans and many religious groups, including conservative religious groups.
7. Follow ILCM on Facebook and Twitter. Like or comment on our posts, so that Facebook will keep showing them to you instead of burying them. We will keep you posted on what is actually happening, on the border, across the country, and in Minnesota.
8. Vote!

Direct assistance

Many people have contacted us saying that they want to do more. There are no public defenders in immigration cases, not for parents and not for children. Legal assistance is crucial, both in helping parents to find their children and in helping parents and children to present their cases in court.

We appreciate and need your continuing support, but we also know our supporters are generous and will help organizations helping families on the border. Some good organizations to support are:

• RAICES: This Texas-based organization offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children and families. Donate hereand sign up as a volunteer here.
• Annunciation House in El Paso provides shelter and assistance to parents who have been released from detention and are looking for their children. Donate here.
• The El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center provides legal representation to immigrants who might not be able to afford it otherwise. It’s accepting volunteers and donations.
• Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. works to prevent the deportation of asylum-seeking families fleeing violence. The group accepts donations and asks people to sign up for volunteer opportunities here.
• Pueblo Sin Fronteras: This organization provides humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants on their way to the U.S. Donate here.
• Together Rising: This Virginia-based organization is helping provide legal assistance for 60 migrant children who were separated from their parents and are currently detained in Arizona. Donate here.
• Al Otro Lado: This bi-national organization works providing legal services to deportees and migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, including deportee parents whose children remain in the U.S. Donate here.
• The Florence Project: This Arizona-based organization offers free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody. Donate here.
• Texas Civil Rights Project: This organization has been using legal advocacy and litigation to help families separated at the border. Donate here.
• Border Angels: This California-based organization supports San Diego County’s immigrant population and focuses on issues related to the U.S.-Mexico border. Donate here.
• Neta: This Texas-based grassroots organization helps asylum seekers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Donate here.
• South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR): This project of the American Bar Association is currently supporting over 1,000 unaccom­panied children in detention centers across South Texas. Donate here.
• Kids In Need of Defense (KIND) represents and advocates for immigrant children in legal proceedings. Donate here.
• Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley shelters immigrants who’ve recently been released from U.S. Border Patrol custody. 
  American Gateways provides legal services and representation to detained parents. It’s currently seeking volunteers to represent detained parents and is accepting donations.
• Diocesan Migrant & Refugee Services is the largest provider of free and low cost immigration services in West Texas and says it’s the only organization in El Paso serving unaccompanied children.
• Justice for Our Neighbors provides free and low-cost legal services to immigrant individuals and families in Texas.
• The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is looking for more child advocates to visit the immigrant kids inside the detention centers weekly and accompany them to immigration proceedings. It is also raising money for advocates who will deal specifically with family separation cases.
• Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is raising money to provide immigrant children “immediate shelter and beds, medical services, counseling and therapy to help them deal with the trauma of family separation.”
• Tahirih Justice Center is providing free legal and social services to immigrant women and girls fleeing gender-based violence.
• Circle of Health International has staffed a clinic caring for refugees and asylum seekers immediately upon their their release. Their McAllen clinic is currently seeing upwards of 100 patients a day.
• The Salvation Army of El Paso is supporting 17 shelter rooms for separated families while they await reunification with their children and their court hearings.
• La Posada Providencia in San Benito runs a shelter for people who have applied for asylum and been released from detention centers while their cases are pending.
• The Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee in El Paso started the Fronterizo Fianza Fund, which will go toward things like posting bond for asylum seekers.
• The Migrant Center for Human Rights is providing free and low-cost legal services for detained asylum seekers in Texas.

If you want to go to the border to volunteer, ACLU-MN has a list of places and ways to volunteer.

For more information on places helping families at the border, see the Texas Tribune list.

Thank you for your continuing support of the rights of immigrants and refugees.

 

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This fact sheet is now outdated. As of August 13, see Facts About Family Separation for Asylum Seekers for more current information.

In April, President Trump  directed that children be taken away from immigrant families who cross the U.S. border without permission. Their parents are charged with illegal entry, a misdemeanor offense in federal courts, and processed in mass trials. Usually, they plead guilty and are sentenced to time served and then turned over to immigration authorities. Parents are often discouraged from pursuing their asylum claims, and sometimes told the only way to be reunited with their children is to agree to deportation. Some parents are deported immediately, sometimes without their children.

Continue reading →

The House’s “compromise” immigration bill doesn’t ban family separation — it just allows kids to be detained like adults.

He took jurisdiction of an immigration case that had already been decided and reversed it.

Our 2018 ILCM Gala was a great success! About 450 people came to the Minneapolis Marriott City Center to join us in person. We shared good food and fellowship, enjoyed the music of Balung Getih, danced to Salsa del Soul, and honored leaders who have worked for immigrants and refugees.

We had our strongest showing of event sponsorship ever, raising over $60,000, to support ILCM! THANK YOU! At the event itself, between the Silent Auction, Raffle, our Fund-A-Need, and a generous match from Bill Mahlum and Donna Allan, an additional $25,000 was raised to help defend the rights of immigrants and refugees across Minnesota.

At the Gala, Dr. Ayaz Virji shared his inspiring message of courage and love in the face of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim prejudice. Dr. Virji and his family live in Dawson, a small town in western Minnesota. They moved to Dawson in 2014 because of his desire to practice what he calls “dignified medicine” in an underserved area. Then came the Trump election in 2016, and a rising tide of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant sentiment.

 

“I didn’t come to rural America to teach about my religion or to teach about Islam. That’s very personal to me. I don’t like talking about it,” he says in a video explaining his move into the public eye. “But the bottom line is, if not me, then who?”

His talks focus on the theme of “Love Thy Neighbor,” but he does not shy away from calling out injustice.

“You can sense I’m angry about that,” he said in one of his early public talks. “Wasn’t Jesus angry when he went into the temple and knocked over the tables of the money changers? He was angry. Injustice should make us angry! Okay? I am angry about the election. Because there is injustice there, and I have felt that within my family. And with the burning of mosques? And something like 150 bomb threats to Jewish synagogues? We should think.”

You can see and hear more of his story here.

To everyone who attended, to everyone who volunteered, who donated silent auction items, who sold raffle tickets, who contributed, who sponsored, who supported us in this wonderful event, we say:

Thank you … Mahadsanid … Muchisimas gracias … Ua tsaug … Ta bluh doh mah … Vielen dank … Merci beaucoup … Takk skal du ha … Tusen tack … and so much more!