Congress asked to reimburse Texas for racist border militarization
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Photographer: Donna Burton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.
This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
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SCOTUS strips protections from 350,000 Venezuelan TPS holders
In a two paragraph order lacking any justification, the US Supreme Court granted a stay of a district court order which sought to challenge DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s reckless cancellation of Temporary Protective Status for 350,000 Venezuelan refugees on the basis of racial bias. On Monday, the Supreme Court condoned this racist discrimination which Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at UCLA called “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern US history.” This will result in the nullification of work permits and the devastating threat of detention and deportation to a country from which these children and adults fled in fear of their lives.
Of course, this decision also co-signs immunity for the Trump administration’s racist and illegal actions and undermines the Court’s own authority and responsibility to keep in check the discretion of the executive branch. TPS grants humanitarian protection to individuals when it is unsafe for them to return to their countries of origin. In the 35-year-history of the statute, TPS status has never previously been revoked.
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Congress asked to reimburse Texas $11B for border security costs
Since 2021, the state of Texas, under Republican Governor Abbot and a pliant legislature, has been running their own, state-level far-right anti-immigration machine. They call this expensive, dangerous boondoggle “Operation Lone Star.” You may recall the floating death buoys in the Rio Grande, the deployment of National Guard soldiers, the construction of a border wall, and other dangerous, expensive stunts that serve only to put lives at risk on both sides of the border.
Turns out, building a round the clock hate machine is expensive, and even though the state has taken in over $50 million in donations, the money collected from yearning fascist sympathizers has barely put a dent in the $11 billion these Texas xenophobes have spent since 2021.
The House of Representatives is now considering a bill that would reimburse Texas for this costly boondoggle. The House of Representatives is considering paying them back at a time, it should be noted, when Congress is considering deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Priorities, priorities.
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Amnesty International exposes human rights violations at El Paso immigrant detention facility
“The guards don’t just walk up to people and be abusive, but if you annoy a guard or something they’ll threaten to send you to Guantanamo or El Salvador.”
This is a quote from a Venezuelan man being held at the El Paso Service Processing Center, an ICE prison in El Paso that Amnesty International has been investigating. Along with local legal aid and service providers, whose funding has been cut in the past few months, Amnesty International has written a full report on EPSPC, and it’s a harrowing tale filled with abusive prison guards, rotten food and contaminated water, lack of legal services, and a myriad of other human rights abuses.
Amnesty investigators who visited the prison also heard stories of family separation and children being left alone without supervision or support. Prisoners have been denied legal representation and access to the law library inside the prison, as well as due process. Read more from Amnesty’s report at the link above.
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Momodou Taal: The best protection for students is a mass movement
Momodou Taal, who left the US in March rather than allow the current administration to deport him, speaks to In These Times about a wide range of topics, including his lawsuit against the current administration’s executive orders targeting international students.
Taal articulates one of the many connections between the targeting of immigrants and the administration’s attempts to silence the pro-Palestine/anti-genocide movement: “On the campaign trail, Trump said, if you were seen at these 'pro-Hamas’ protests, we will find you and we will deport you. So Trump is making good on his promise… what we’re essentially saying in this country now is we cannot critique another government anymore, let alone the American government.”
Taal sees the current repression, however, as a sign of weakness rather than strength: “the fact that we have the largest empire in history, the most militarized empire in history, fighting against students, repressing students and compelling and forcing universities to clamp down on students, for me, that’s not a sign of strength on their part. It’s a sign that they’re losing their ideological battle.”
There is far more in this interview than will ever fit into a short blurb--check out the rest at the link above.
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Mohsen Mahdawi: They want to silence me
Mohsen Mahdawi is a legal permanent resident of the United States. In April Mahdawi went to his naturalization interview in Vermont, the final step on his path to obtaining US citizenship. But instead of receiving his citizenship, Mahdawi was kidnapped by armed and masked DHS agents in plain clothes who prevented him from interacting with his lawyer. DHS had planned to fly him to Louisiana, but he missed the flight and was instead held in a prison in Vermont, which he credits with his speedy legal process compared to students who have been held in similar situations for months.
In this, his first interview since being freed from prison, Mahdawi goes into detail about his ordeal at the hands of ICE and his family and friends’ suffering in Palestine, and it is well worth watching the full interview to hear Mahdawi speak about his life in his own words.
His final message is: “The same message that the Gazan people have been sending to us, we’re gaining strength from them… No more universities for students to attend or to graduate from in Gaza, a painful reality. They are sending us a message that there is so much more to hope for than giving up on the idea of justice and surrendering to fear and to violence. So, I say, stay strong, and we will celebrate under the sun in a matter of a very short time.”
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3 actions you can take right now:
Support Never Again Action’s organizing by making a donation today. You can make a tax deductible donation via our fiscal sponsor at this link, or you can donate directly to our 501(c)(4) organization at this link.
Sign up for Siembra NC’s Avelo “Abduction Airlines” Mass Call to learn about the airline enabling ICE abductions and what you can do to stop its kidnapping flights. Online event, Thursday May 22 at 8pm EST.
New: Join Action Network in urging your representatives to block the administration’s devastating attacks on immigrants by rejecting funding for enforcement, detention, and deportation throughout this year’s appropriations process. Join their letter-writing campaign here.