Wisconsin is in a tumultuous time with the Trump campaign’s recount of votes in Milwaukee and Dane counties. It is seemingly a last ditch effort by the Republican Party to de-legitimize and undermine a fairly democratic process. Groups throughout Milwaukee’s South Side have watched this unfold after working hard to raise voter awareness over the last several months. Securing a Biden win is only the first step in a long climb up a ladder to hold the Democratic Party accountable to Latinx voters.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, says that in Wisconsin, Latinx voters, “were not just voting to reject Trump’s hate mongering and incompetence but voting with hope to realize the implementation of the Biden/Harris platform on immigration and pandemic relief in the first 100 days of the Biden Presidency through executive orders and through the U.S. Congress.”
“This immigration platform includes restoring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), restoring Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), restoring humane policies and treatment for asylum seekers, and reuniting families,” Neumann-Ortiz continues. “This includes abolishing private for-profit prisons and detention centers, ending policies such as 287G in Wisconsin and other sister policies that encourage collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement, and more broadly includes an overhaul of the criminal justice system that reimagines a new system focused on harm reduction and reinvestment in mental health treatment and education. No one should be criminalized because of their income, the color of their skin or their legal status.”
Biden has also promised that on the first day of his presidency, he will appoint a task force to track down the parents of 666 children who have still not been found three years after Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy was enacted. The task force may have difficulty in this task, as the Trump Administration never kept comprehensive contact information for the parents whose children were separated from them.
