Saturday, March 10, 2018

How Donald Trump's Immigration Policy Is Separating Families | Time

How Donald Trump's Immigration Policy Is Separating Families | Time:



America's immigration policy and Donald Trump's orders to ICE to deport any illegal immigrants are separating families and sowing fear.



Bakersfield makes the news again for all the wrong reasons.  Republicans so disgustingly and blatantly use racism to scapegoat immigrants and to divide white workers from workers of color in a race to the bottom.  So many white people have learned to accept exploitation and submit to authority because they're sustained by the idea that "at least I'm not like those [n word]."  The wages of whiteness indeed.



"Just before 7:30 one Friday morning last March, Alejandro said goodbye to his wife Maria and his two small daughters and headed off to work. He didn’t make it far. Four blocks from his home near Bakersfield, Calif., two unmarked vehicles, a white Honda and a green Mazda pickup truck, pulled up behind him at a stop sign. Plain-clothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents spilled out. They wore vests emblazoned with the word POLICE.



Alejandro dialed Maria from his cell phone and told her what was happening. Her heart dropped. She said later that she knew it wouldn’t matter that Alejandro had no criminal record, not even a speeding ticket. Or that he’d driven these same roads every day for the past decade, picking grapes, pistachios and oranges in California’s Central Valley. Since 2006, when Alejandro overstayed his visa, he had been considered a “fugitive alien,” in ICE parlance, and therefore subject to immediate deportation to Mexico. Now he was arrested on the spot.



A few days later, he was given an ankle bracelet and allowed to return home to say goodbye. He was gone by the end of spring—before his eldest, Isabella, began talking, before Estefania took her first steps, before Maria gave birth this winter to their third baby girl."

No comments:

Post a Comment