On Sunday, January 8, President Joe Biden traveled to Texas to make a mere four-hour stop in El Paso, a vital border city.
Three days before his first trip to the southern border, on Jan. 5, President Biden announced “a far-reaching crackdown” on migrants at the border who were seeking asylum. They include severe restrictions on political asylum that will be dramatically expanded to discourage migrants from crossing into the U.S. Immigration activists in El Paso and elsewhere were quick to respond.
The Border Network for Human Rights of El Paso and community allies held a press conference and community march in response to Biden’s trip to their city. The day before his arrival, they marched “to support the rights and dignity of migrants and border communities and denounce the violent, inhumane state and federal immigration policies at the southern border.”
Their press release stated “In response to the Biden administration’s announcement on new parole process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans at the expense of expanding Title 42, the BNHR and its allied communities will hold the “This is Our New Ellis Island” community march. Border communities will further protest the racist, xenophobic, white-supremacist, and anti-immigrant agenda imposed by Gov. Abbott.
President Biden received considerable critical support from immigration activists during his bid for president. Yet Biden issued policies in contradiction to what had been expected by advocates.
Biden’s administration will deny people from those countries the chance to apply for asylum. All those who enter the US without documents even if they are already in the U.S. will now have no chance to apply for asylum.
The announcement reinforced the message that Vice President Kamala Harris made on her first international trip to Mexico in 2021 where she vociferously stated “I want to be clear to folks in this region (Central American region-TG) who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come.” (NPR, June 2021)
She added, “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.”
Biden’s January 5 announcement echoes this xenophobic view. “Today, my administration is taking several steps to stiffen enforcement for those who try to come without a legal right to stay,” Biden said: “My message is this: if you’re trying to leave Cuba, Nicaragua, or Haiti, or have agreed to begin a journey to America, do not do not just show up at the border.”
While in El Paso, President Biden did not visit those he should have visited. Instead of seeing what migrants are experiencing as a result of decades-long imperialist policies, Biden went to Fort Bliss and visited with the feared and hated Border Patrol agents.
In addition to protesting federal policies the El Paso movement also demanded an end to Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s enforcement of Operation Lone Star and the withdrawal of the Texas National Guard as it only serves to militarize the border.
Notably, the BNHR condemned Gov. Abbot for his” latest political stunt, calling on the Texas Attorney General to investigate NGOs providing humanitarian support to migrants at the border.”
Conditions in El Paso/Ciudad Juárez
On Democracy Now, December 28, Luis Chaparro, a journalist was interviewed about the reality of migrants on the border. It was the same week that the Supreme Court announced the continuation of the Trump-era Title 42 pandemic policy. The cruel mandate “has been used to expel over 2 million people at the border since March 2020” according to DN.
From El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Chaparro reports that keeping Title 42 in place means that tens of thousands of migrants are “stuck in Mexico. This news comes as a “bucket of ice water” for them.
As the Biden administration either willingly or unwillingly continues to go along with Trump-era policies, Chaparro explains: “This is a dream for smugglers and drug cartels in Mexico, because they know many of them are going to get tired of waiting. The migrants are disappointed and desperate, and the cartel is going to go after them to be smuggled in. Drug cartels in Mexico, particularly in Ciudad Juárez, have been preying on migrants. They know that they can make a lot of money. I recently interviewed one of the smugglers working for the Juárez Cartel, the local cartel here in Ciudad Juárez. And he said that right now a migrant — and this is, I’m quoting him — “a migrant worth more than a kilo of cocaine.” So, this is how they’re looking at migrants in Mexico: as merchandise.
He continues “In Ciudad Juárez, we’re talking about more than 25,000 migrants, some of them sleeping in shelters, but not all of them have places in shelters, so many are sleeping by the banks of the Rio Grande. And in El Paso, the city is also overwhelmed by those who are waiting to be processed under their asylum-seeking process. And hundreds are sleeping in the streets. It’s freezing outside on the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border. …Title 42 is creating a harsh situation. It’s not really that many of them are trying over and over to get across. The real situation is that Title 42 is creating a blockage for all of them, so there are tens of thousands of migrants confused, forming lines along the US border wall to wait to be processed by U.S. Border Patrol.”
This is why the movement in the U.S. to defend migrants and fight for asylum is so critical. This is a humanitarian crisis that demands the attention of the progressive movement.
What is the solution? Continue the struggle
The El Paso movement describes this moment as the “new Ellis Island”.
The history of Ellis Island is written on their website in this manner “Ellis Island may not appear large on a map, but it is an unparalleled destination in United States history. After welcoming more than 12 million immigrants to our shores, Ellis Island is now a poetic symbol of the American Dream.”
It is now well known that many of those migrants who arrived at Ellis Island did not experience a “Dream”. It was a nightmare. They were treated unfairly and exploited despite this revisionist romantic description.
The comparisons, however, are similar: when the capitalist class needs cheap exploitable labor it welcomes migrants with open arms; when it does not it vilifies and terrorizes this vulnerable group of workers.
The United States government is to blame for the conditions that force migration. It should welcome migrants from Haiti, Central America, and so on as it was Wall Street and this government that destabilized the region.
The 2006 upsurge that shook the ruling class in this country was a wake-up call to the power that immigrants have. They shut down city after city and many corporations lost profits as strikes were held throughout the country.
But it cannot succeed without the unity of the movement for social and economic justice. That is critical.
The National Day Laborers Network stated its co-director in response to Biden’s trip to El Paso. It said “Biden went to El Paso, but instead … of highlighting the dangers of extremism, his photo op visit lent legitimacy to the white nationalists. President Biden could have said what El Pasoans and the rest of us needed to hear. He could have repudiated the suspicion and hostility that his predecessor brutally stoked against immigrants and Latinos. He could have gone to the Walmart on the east side of the city, where a Texas man driven by fear of a “Hispanic invasion” shot 23 people dead and injured dozens of others in August 2019.
“Instead he went to the international bridge, did meet-and-greets with immigration agents and local politicians, toured a migrant-processing center, shook hands with and got scolded by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and flew off to Mexico City. He avoided visiting or even mentioning the bleeding, beating heart of what El Paso means today. It’s Not the Wall. It’s the Walmart.”
Indeed, this righteous statement reflects the anger millions of like-minded people feel. Once again, the Democrats have shown they are incapable of responding to the needs and demands of the very people who work to get them elected. It is past time to rebuild the movement, independent of the politicians.
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