I would like to talk about the atrocities committed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guards that came to light recently in this week’s assignment. Some of these guards have been accused of “systematically” sexually assaulting detainees at a facility in El Paso. Most of these victims are minor children held at their detention centers. In addition to all this, it has come to light that these children unlawfully detained for several days or months while they are allowed to detain them for a maximum of 72 hours according to government policy. The children were provided with insufficient food and have had to go without bathing or changing clothes for weeks. The pandemic situation has made life even miserable for such children as they are secretively being housed in hotels with no contact with their respective families and the outside world. In fact, they are being deported to their home countries without even seeing an attorney or a judge which is illegal and a serious case of systemic injustice.
In fact, the current administration’s approach to immigration is extremely regressive, encouraging the agencies to treat immigrants especially illegal immigrants devoid of basic human rights. The Justice Department ordered the arrest of anyone entering the country without permission when thousands of Central American families crossed the southern US border to seek asylum. This caused hundreds of families to be divided, even the separation of children from nursing mothers. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, said, “We need to take away children,” in order to scare people from getting their families across the border. It did not matter to him how young the children were. The administration however rescinded the policy of family separation after receiving widespread international criticism. Therefore, they altered their strategy, locking out asylum seekers, bare-knuckle diplomacy, and ignoring legality through minute attention to administrative information. In the current climate, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement is more than twice as likely to pick up illegal immigrants with no prior criminal record outside of immigration violations despite President Trump’s initial promise was to shut only the ones with criminal records.
I believe it is high time this has to come to an end and politicians and immigration officials need to be stopped from abusing their authority. I believe the recent calls for the abolition of ICE should see the light of the day. Organizations like ACLU and SPLC have taken to suing the government in light of such cases to put an end to this systemic injustice. Beyond this, I strongly believe that change can occur only when everyone exercises their voting privileges and elect politicians who will defend immigrants instead of dehumanizing them.
Citation –
Lariat, B. (2020, September 25). Baylor Lariat. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://baylorlariat.com/2020/09/24/its-long-past-time-to-end-americas-immigration-injustices/
Board, T. (2020, October 10). Trump’s Overhaul of Immigration Is Worse Than You Think. Retrieved October 25, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/opinion/sunday/trump-immigration-child-separations