Republicans content with terrorizing undocumented immigrants

If illegal immigration is a problem, the Trump-led Republican Party is unwilling to provide anything resembling a civilized solution.

It was not always that way. After their loss to Barack Obama in 2012, Republicans released a forward-looking report called the “Growth and Opportunity Document.” Citing a disastrous loss of Hispanic support resulting from Mitt Romney’s “self deportation” language as well as changes in demographics that would necessitate reaching out to more than white voters, the document called for “comprehensive immigration overhaul.”

Soon after, a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight introduced the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. The bill overwhelmingly passed the Senate but faced strong resistance in the House amid absurd claims from the Tea Party that it amounted to “amnesty.”

In fact, the bill called for a 13-year path to citizenship. (Not that amnesty is a radical concept: Both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush forgave numerous unauthorized immigrants.)

The Gang of Eight fled from the bill, and the “Growth and Opportunity Document” was abandoned. But if winning — as opposed to governing responsibly — was the only metric, Republican Party officials had no need to worry: For the next two years, candidates would spew racially tinged, uncompromising anti-immigration rhetoric and were rewarded for with a slew of electoral victories at all levels of government. 

The Republican villification of non-white immigrants reached its culmination in 2016 when they nominated a man who opened his presidential bid by calling undocumented Mexicans rapists and repeatedly made absurd promises that Mexico would pay for a wall along the entirety of the Southern border. Once elected, Donald Trump’s administration reversed long-standing policy that prioritized deporting immigrants that committed violent crimes and began terrorizing the undocumented community as a whole.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would lay in wait at church parking lots, school bus stops and restaurants. They would board buses (public and private) at random, demanding papers from anyone who looked Latino to them. They detained parents in front of their weeping children and arrested men and women who were considered pillars of the community by people who had been their neighbors for years.

The draconian inhumanity of the Trump administration reached its nadir in 2018 when it announced the “zero tolerance” policy of border enforcement which called for separation of children from their parents. This was not an action of last resort, as it had been during the Obama administration when a surge of unaccompanied children arrived at the southern border. This was the first action Border Patrol agents were to take when confronting families, even those requesting amnesty.

The subsequent chaos resulted in hastily constructed detention facilities where children were caged in large groups and moved around the country. Children as young as 3 were forced to appear in court alone. Children in these de facto concentration camps were abused and mistreated.

In addition to the countless traumas these children have endured and will have to live with for the rest of their lives, at least six died under Border Patrol supervision. Many have still not been reunited with their parents to this day since no plan was initially put in place to track children and parents for future re-unification. This was not a plan, after all. It was immoral cruelty meant to punish. 

In the center of all of this stands Stephen Miller, the central architect of Trump’s anti-immigration policies. Miller promotes websites like VDARE that traffic in eugenics, which has been rebranded as “race science.”

He sees immigration in white nationalist terms, using words like invasion, and sees immigrants as a threat to “our country as we know it.” He has mocked the idea that diversity is an American virtue. Immigration, including legal immigration, is, to him, a threat to Western Civilization. It is little wonder that self-professed fascists and white supremacists are such strong supporters of Trump with Miller as a top advisor.

In 2020, we find ourselves worlds away from the outreach proposed by the Republican National Committee in 2013. Reform is never mentioned today.

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. Republicans seem perfectly content with terrorizing them all, rounding them all up and deporting them no matter the financial, constitutional or psychological costs for the nation of such divisive police state callousness.  

Writer Katherine Fugate observed, “What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.” We have seen monstrous escalation in just four years. Imagine how much worse it will get should Trump be re-elected.

This piece was written by Sandy Parker and Veronica Donoso with assistance from other volunteers from Indivisible Gainesville.