Dismantle the Mass Deportation Machine and Invest in Welcoming Communities

Immigration detention in the U.S. is unnecessary, rife with systemic abuses, arbitrary, and unlawful under international human rights law. Detaining people solely on account of their immigration status constitutes arbitrary detention, a violation of international law. And the detention of families violates the U.S.’s obligations toward the treatment of immigrant children. Fearmongering false narratives about migrant crime and invasions at the border advances policies grounded in white supremacist ideas at the expense of immigrants and people in search of safety in the U.S.

Reopening family detention facilities with devastating histories of abuses, trauma, and long-term psychological damage underscores that cruelty is the point of these Trump administration policies. 

Detaining people solely on account of their immigration status constitutes arbitrary detention, a violation of international law. And the detention of families violates the U.S.’s obligations toward the treatment of immigrant children.

Family detention is an inherently cruel practice that results in significant trauma while filling the coffers of corporations exploiting agony and anguish.

We all care about the safety and security of our families and communities. Deporting millions of our immigrant friends and neighbors does nothing to make our communities safe. Trump plans to target people already living in the U.S. and working in areas like agriculture, construction, and healthcare to support their families and make our communities better.

The Trump administration is trampling on civil rights and civil liberties to carry out mass deportations of our immigrant neighbors and friends, who are beloved members of our communities. Black and Brown immigrants are disproportionately targeted by both local police and ICE.

From billion-dollar profits for private prison corporations, like GEO Group and CoreCivic, to filling the gaps of shrinking local budgets, detention contracts incentivize the incarceration of immigrants as a money-making scheme. Whether a detention facility is run by ICE, a local government, or a corporation, detention centers are rife with systemic abuses, medical neglect, and drive perverse profits off people’s lives.

Instead of spending billions of taxpayer dollars on mass detention and deportation, we should invest that money in systems that benefit all our communities like housing, healthcare climate resilience, education, and infrastructure to help strengthen our communities. We need real solutions that respect human rights, address root causes of forced migration, allow for safe and orderly pathways to safety, and meet the needs of communities at the border and in the interior of the United States.

The U.S.’s border policies shamefully rely on deterrence, externalization, and incarceration to punish people for seeking safety, putting people’s lives in jeopardy. The continued focus on punishing people who move to seek a new, better, or safer life is not only cruel, it is ineffective and fuels the United States’ reliance on mass incarceration that disproportionately targets Black and brown people.

Borderland communities are safe, vibrant, and full of the solutions to the issues facing their communities, issues beyond immigration and asylum, like access to healthcare, reproductive justice, housing, quality education, and more.

Local governments and community organizations at the border have been working for years to build a welcoming infrastructure that eases capacity restraints on border agencies, prevents releases into the streets of border cities, educates new arrivals about their immigration responsibilities, and helps them stay off the streets and get connected to their friends, families, and new communities in the United States.

A coordinated and funded welcome and reception system that meets the immediate and long-term needs of people seeking safety would cut the chaos and dysfunction at the border and in big cities in the U.S. while meeting the needs of state, local and tribal communities who can reap the windfall benefits of new federal funding avenues, spending power of new arrivals, and new tax revenue.

The right to seek asylum is non-negotiable. People must have access to seek asylum regardless of how they enter the country, period. The United States has a moral and legal obligation to protect all people who seek safety in our country.

Seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border is extraordinarily dangerous, and people wouldn’t make that dangerous trip if there were viable alternatives.

Racist rhetoric about invasions at the border and fear-mongering about how people seeking safety are security threats fuel policies that deny people their human right to seek safety, force them to wait in danger in Mexico for months, jail them in inhumane conditions, and deport them back to danger.

Asylum does not exist at the U.S. Southern Border, in a country that was once seen as a beacon of humanitarian protection. The Trump Administration’s executive orders impose severe restrictions on asylum seekers entering the United States from Mexico at the southern border, denying human rights and violating international law. as well as the principles of non-refoulement and non-penalization.

Modernizing and investing in capacity at ports of entry allows people to walk up in a safe, orderly manner and be processed expeditiously, and stops forcing people to cross via dangerous routes at the hands of criminal actors.