ICE smashing car windows is a chorus of alarm bells for us all
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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Guess Who’s Eligible for Student Loan Forgiveness: New ICE Agents
The Trump administration is trying to roll back student loan forgiveness for most people currently seeking it, from the debt forgiveness that organizers pushed Joe Biden to do, as well as for nonprofit and public service workers. But there’s one group of people to whom the Trump administration is happy to extend student loan forgiveness: new ICE Agents.
DHS announced this week that along with a 50k signing bonus, newly hired ICE agents will have options for both loan forgiveness and repayment. Life is poised to become much harder for millions of folks with debt across the country, except for those interested in becoming ICE agents. “It is hypocritical to provide additional funding for debt relief for certain categories of workers while seeking to deny it to everyday Americans,” said Sara Partridge, director of higher education at the Center for American Progress.
While the rolling back of loan forgiveness for people in public service will likely be challenged in court, it remains to be seen where DHS will get the money to pay off ICE agent’s student loans.
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Anti-Immigrant Language Is Rising—Even on the Left
Despite concerted efforts by advocates and progressive journalists to replace dehumanizing terms for immigrants with neutral terms like “undocumented (person/worker/etc),” recent data from Google Trends indicates a resurgence of dehumanizing terms to describe children and adults traveling from one country to another in search of a better life. This includes the use of dehumanizing language among self-identified liberals like Joe Biden and Trevor Noah.
Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs at Western States Center, an advocacy group that recently published guidelines for journalists on responsible immigration coverage, explains that such language “flattens” people into a caricatured category, mainstreaming language that originates in the hate speech of the far right.
To be clear, language that designates some people as “legal” and some as “illegal” falls into a right-wing trap, implying that some humans deserve human treatment and some do not. In the ongoing struggle to achieve freedom of movement for everyone, we must ensure that our language reflects our commitment to decriminalizing immigration.
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Trump administration denies having daily quota for immigration arrests
According to the Guardian, Stephen Miller, lead xenophobic ghoul in Trump’s cabal, has championed the idea of paying a bonus for every person detained by the Department of Homeland Security. Also this week, ICE announced they are getting rid of any and all age restrictions on hiring. Truly a model of professionalism and standards. Trump and his fascist pals swore up and down that they had no plans for a bounty of any kind. Later reporting in the New York Times confirmed The Guardian’s report, and noted that the only reason that the bounty didn’t happen was because of the spotlight from journalists and activists.
Bounties create perverse incentives for ICE agents to further break the law in pursuit of Trump’s ethnic cleansing project. Let’s stay vigilant that this grotesque bonus structure never gets put in place.
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ICE smashing car windows is a chorus of alarm bells for us all
Content warning: the linked article contains video and descriptions of violent ICE arrests
ProPublica recently published a piece outlining the growing trend of violent immigration-related arrests involving masked agents, who consistently refuse to identify themselves, smashing vehicle windows and dragging people into the street to arrest them.
Footage from LA, Baltimore, Massachusetts, and elsewhere shows agents using weapons to break car windows and violently dragging people out of their cars. More than one situation involves children, infants, and/or pregnant people. The agents don’t seem to care; no person’s vulnerability mitigates the alleged government agents’ willingness to threaten or commit violence.
No person deserves such treatment, regardless of status or any other factor. ICE agents seem to disagree: some of these violent incidents involve damaging the vehicles of American citizens and arresting or detaining them, in spite of the fact that ICE has no jurisdiction over US citizens. This should alarm all of us.
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Take Action:
We are heartbroken to share that our friend, Xóchitl, was abducted by ICE from the El Paso airport earlier this week, despite holding DACA status. When Never Again got started in 2019, Xóchitl was organizing with Cosecha, a powerful national movement of immigrant leaders, families, and workers fighting for permanent protection, dignity, and respect for the entire undocumented community. The partnership with Cosecha helped guide our founding.
Now, it's time to stand with Xóchitl as she fights for her freedom.
Support financially: bit.ly/freexoch.
Petition for her release: Freecata.com
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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.
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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.