Stop the Mass Deportation and Detention Machine

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.