A rights group warns that the U.S. president is “well on track to repeat” Obama’s failures.
Feb. 28, 2018: Protest against deportations outside the San Francisco Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters. (Peg Hunter, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
Rights group United We Dream warned Tuesday that unless he takes immediate steps to improve his administration’s treatment of immigrants, President Joe Biden is at serious risk of repeating the destructive failures of former President Barack Obama, who deported roughly 3 million people during his eight years in office.
Despite Biden’s characterization of Obama’s mass deportations as a “mistake” and pledge to usher in a more humane immigration system, United We Dream estimates that the administration has deported just over 300,000 people since January — largely using a Trump-era policy called Title 42.
The policy was first issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last March — at the start of the coronavirus pandemic — and has been kept in place by the Biden administration. As Human Rights Watch (HRW) explained earlier this month, “The Title 42 expulsion policy has effectively closed the U.S. border to nearly all asylum seekers based on the misapplication of an obscure, 75-year-old public health law.”
(U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
“That law, the Public Health Service Act of 1944, was designed to confer quarantine authority to health authorities that would apply to everyone, including U.S. citizens, arriving from a foreign country,” HRW noted. “Quarantine authority was never meant to be used to determine which noncitizens could or couldn’t be expelled or removed from the U.S.”
In a statement on Monday, Cynthia Garcia of United We Dream stressed that “Title 42 was designed under one of the most anti-immigrant administrations in modern history.”
“President Biden and the Department of Homeland Security must be reminded that their inaction to protect vulnerable immigrant communities seeking refuge in the U.S. is not only putting lives on the line; it upholds a white nationalist immigration system that seeks to expel and keep Black and brown immigrants out at any cost,” said Garcia, who voiced dismay at the Biden administration’s deportation of vulnerable Haitians and others.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas arrives at DHS headquarters following his swearing-in ceremony on Feb. 2. (Wikimedia Commons)
According to a report (pdf) released late last month by the Haitian Bridge Alliance and other advocacy groups, the Biden administration used Title 42 to deport more Haitians during its first weeks in power than the Trump administration did in all of Fiscal Year 2020.
“Reflecting on his time as vice president, President Biden acknowledged that the Obama administration was wrong in deporting over 2.5 million people and vowed to never make that mistake again when he took office,” Garcia continued. “President Biden is well on track to repeat history. Now, he must make a choice: repeat the mistakes of the Obama administration or do everything in his power to end the cruelty of detentions, expulsions, and deportations and show that he is a president of his word.”
National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), a coalition of more than 40 immigrant and refugee rights organizations, echoed United We Dream’s concerns about continued mass deportations during the first 100 days of the Biden administration.
While pointing to positive steps Biden has taken since January — such as ending Trump’s Muslim ban and pushing for a path to citizenship for Dreamers — NPNA noted that “there are many changes that the Biden administration can pursue with little to no congressional action, including ending the use of Title 42 expulsions, redesignating [Temporary Protected Status] for Haiti and other countries [that] are set to expire, and increasing the number of refugees that the U.S. will resettle as part of the presidential determination.”
“These are literally life or death decisions that will impact millions of lives,” the group said. “The administration can also take action to expand access to citizenship and justice and to bolster due process protections through an increase of legal representation for those in detention and removal proceedings.”
This article is from Common Dreams.
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Consortium, this article is another of many now abundantly available that makes clear that “facts” are now found that fit an agenda. This article is similar to the ones that complained about Obama’s “many” deportations. But that ignored fact that made-up numbers were involved. Obama began counting in a contrived way those turned back at the border–something never done before. And at the same time he was finding ways through executive orders to enable people regardless of documentation to enter the country. And he pushed a variety of measures that provided internal rewards for those who made it. As a consequence, this country unsustainably absorbed 30 million people in about a 10 year period, and that population growth exacerbated almost every problem we have. Biden’s undoing of border control plus reinforcing some of the internal magnets is what caused hundreds of thousands to rush to the border.
The world is in the midst of the perfect storm of an immigration crisis that no country is equipped to handle. Poor governance, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic is causing unprecedented population displacement. India is plagued by a government that places profit above human life, with disastrous results. Mexico’s economy is collapsing under the leadership of an autocratic leader, and on and on. Climate change is causing a major disruption as well. There is plenty of blame to go around, but we are way short on the means to effectively resolve the issue, let alone the political will to engage it. We are in the midst of the world’s sixth great extinction cycle, and it appears to be accelerating.
The huge monster in the room is over population, which gets no media coverage, no discussion. lThe absence, over recent generations, of education to enable global, family- size planning is stupid, outrageous and perhaps suicidal. And no religion should be allowed to interfere with such education that should lead, eventually, to fewer , better valued people and a safer environment.
The tragedy is clearly visible in the plight of so many immigrants in so many places.
There is the life boat parallel – let’s not let that happen to more people in years to come.
(There are almost 8 billion people on this little planet. Think about it…)
Yes there are limits to how many a lifeboat can absorb? Economic systems are Ponzi schemes that assume that unlimited growth is possible.
There are hundreds of millions of desperate people right now in various countries who would like to come to the US. What would this mean for citizens already here? It would be disastrous to have open borders, which some foolish people have not thought through.
Perhaps the Democrats think if they let all of these poor people in that they will vote Democratic Party – this is selfish and short-sighted – as well as ignorant.
Already here in North Coast of Maine illegal migrants have taken local people’s jobs in the harvesting of blueberries, fishing boats helpers, processing seafood, forestry work, and more – – why? It’s not for lack of local people’s work ethic who traditionally did all this work – – it’s industries’ Holy Grail of CHEAP LABOR – always the reason for hiring foreign workers.
Let’s remember that politicians rarely think of the humanitarian reasons – they act on what their donors want – and in this country that’s Wall Street corporations which want, ABOVE ALL, to repeat – CHEAP LABOR……..unless we set population and pollution limits we won’t survive global climate change fo
much longer. Earth’s and the US’s natural resources are finite and some are becoming scarce.
Let’s act in the interest of American citizens and ignore those demanding they have a “right” to be allowed in. They have no such “right” and we do have to protect our own interests and not be foolish as climate change moves in on us.
Sensible thoughts from Nancy Oden….
Essentially I agree with you Nancy. This does not mean we can’t help desperate people but importing them isn’t the answer and it’s simply drags down the income potential for people who do manual labor. There’s nothing wrong with manual labor I do plenty of it and lots of other things too, but any work where we import labor is going to compete with the labor that we have here. A good example would be Indian doctors, doctors from India. Perfectly competent and intelligent people, they get their education from the country of India and then they take their skills and bring them to America where they’re going to get paid a lot more. Is that fair to India? Answer no. All sorts of countries do this around the world. There is in this Maelstrom of malcontent a common theme. I’m going to put it simply here it is. Too many people. Essentially the United States is subsidizing the Catholic churches Dominion over Mexico Central and South America. The Church forbid’s birth control or abortion and the result is families of too many children poor desperate unable to take care of their children they ship their problems to us and that’s what’s happening right now. We are forcing low-income people in our country to compete with desperate people from countries who won’t control their populations. It’s as simple as that.
#1 Where is your proof that Biden has returned that # of people. #2 TI have only seen numerous videos and testimony of thousands of illegals being bused & flown to various US cities, housed in hotels with no proof of who they are, no way of tracking them and all on our tax dime when the US is bankrupt.! God help us!
Immigration and sovereignty. This article expresses a position that virtually anyone claiming asylum should be able to enter the United States. Needed is a discussion of what nation sovereignty entails and what rights a nation has in deciding who should enter and stay . What rights does a nation possess to protect its borders, to decide if and when persons are allowed enter it and achieve citizenship.
At issue too is the question of asylum. It would appear that many take the position anyone who can do better in the United States than where he or she lives is entitled to asylum. The solution, obviously, goes in a different direction to better living conditions where people live and America being hard nosed about who can become citizens.
This in no way reflects on all those coming in. Who has not observed how hard working and law abiding most are. Most people I think support programs which allow entrance with work permits because employers can find anyone locally as capable and hard working. When you watch them work, you wish everyone had the same work ethic
But it begs the point. Who should decide who can enter and who can not. Who can reside permanently and who cannot. There needs to be a honest discussion of the issue- not a political football as is the case today.
I am also aware that our country is among the most blatant actors in its disregard of sovereignty of other countries and that is another issue.
Are you suggesting the USA become the first modern nation on Earth with open borders? Do you know that an estimated two billion poor people will migrate to the USA if allowed? Are you aware that illegal immigration hurts poor Americans the most? Are you suggesting that Biden was wrong to deport foreigners who arrived without permission?
Please explain your criticism of Biden.
Read the article again, and pay special attention to the business about Article 42. Two billion (!) poor people will come, eh? Wow! They gonna build the ships and planes to get here? Hundreds of thousands of desperate people are coming here because they’re fleeing a situation in their country that US policy caused. They have a right to asylum. This is not about only illegal immigration, and no amount of reactionary cant about ” hurting poor people here” (so touching the concern for finance capitalism’s victims in the USA!) is going to change that.
Thank you for injecting humanity into this comment list. The previous comments were leaving that little detail.
Lacking, not leaving.
Thank you, TimN!
Close to 200,000 entered in March. That is what adds up to 2 million in a year.
Look at population numbers per year and you will see that this country has been absorbing more than a million a year for the last few decades, and the Pewe group makes clear that immigrants and their children now consistitute 90 percent of this country’s population growth. How long can that go on, given now all waterways are polluted, and depleted ecological health has meant huge species die-off. What will you “humanity” means when life support continues being inundated by the population footprint?