Hundreds gathered at the Milwaukee ICE headquarters Thursday morning to make their voices heard about what is happening at the U.S. – Mexico border.
Voces de la Frontera was honored to be a part of the “Never Again is Now” shut down of the Milwaukee Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. This action was part of a national wave of actions, in which the Jewish community reminded the nation and the world of what can happen if we turn away from the growing threat of fascism. Today, that relentless threat calls to each one of us. Almost daily, we are reminded of what is at stake.
Just within the last few weeks, there have been shocking new examples of Trump administration hardliners who are vigorously trying to implement explicitly racist policies that amount to state-sponsored torture and child abuse. The administration has announced a new regulation that permits the indefinite detention of children and repeals minimum standards of care for their well-being inside detention facilities. This regulation repeals a court ruling called the Flores Settlement that was intended to protect children from the trauma they experience when they are jailed.
In yet another example of state-sponsored cruelty and racism, the Trump administration announced new criteria that would deny U.S. citizenship to low-income, lawful, permanent residents who use Medicaid, food stamps or other forms of public assistance. There would be higher income and higher English language requirements that are clearly intended to attack low-income, working-class families who are not English-language dominant.
While non-citizen, low-income immigrants use public benefits at a lower rate than low-income, U.S.-born citizens, this policy is intended to stigmatize immigrants, create barriers to citizenship for some and result in more families and children being pushed into harsher poverty, hunger, illness and suffering.
While these latest initiatives will be challenged in the courts, these strategies are intended to desensitize us to the suffering of a group of people: immigrants, refugees, people of color, whom they want us to see as the “other” and undeserving of compassion. This is how fascism grows, not just in rhetoric but in actions.
Donald Trump’s modern-day concentration camps and his policies of separating families have inflicted lifelong trauma on children and their parents. Trump, in violation of human rights laws, continues to deny people fleeing violence a safe and dignified process to apply for asylum. The camps are overcrowded, deny medical care, clean food and water and have resulted in 24 deaths, including those of children held in federal facilities.
‘Never Again Is Now’
The Trump administration’s celebration of their policies of family separation continue to play out—most recently in the mass workplace raid at seven agricultural processing plants in Mississippi in which 680 workers were arrested and detained, leaving their children stranded at home or school—or in the recent threats of escalated raids in urban areas specifically targeting tens of thousands of parents and children. Yet, we know when we say, “never again is now” that we have the power of that knowledge to hold as a light to banish the darkness.
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At the federal level, it is critical for people to call both Wisconsin U.S. senators—Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin—to demand that they not provide ICE or CBP (Customs and Border Protection) with any more funding in upcoming appropriations votes as part of a national campaign called #notonedollarmore.
At the state level, people can support Voces del Frontera’s efforts to pass local policies that create strong firewalls between ICE and local law enforcement, as well as a statewide campaign to restore driver’s licenses to immigrants in Wisconsin. Our current campaign, #ICEOUTOFMKE, is asking for people to sign an online petition, host a postcard signing event and attend Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission hearings to lend their voices and support to strengthening the existing Milwaukee Police Department policy on immigration so MPD officers can’t be conscripted to participate in a raid, share information or transfer anyone to ICE unless ICE has a judicial warrant.
Wisconsin will be key to the future of the country in the 2020 elections. Voces de la Frontera Action is already starting to organize a network of Latinx, multiracial youth and pro-immigrant rural voters to turn out for all the national, state and local elections next year. This moment in history demands that we not just witness and condemn, but that we give challenge to injustice to bring about justice. We are writing our future; let’s write one that we can be proud of. The time to act is now.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz is executive director Voces de la Frontera.
