Fall 2016 National Immigrant Solidarity Network Monthly News Digest and News Alert!

Lee Siu Hin
National Coordinator – National Immigrant Solidarity Network

There’s no doubt, hate and racism won the electron, with president-elect Trump calling to deport millions of immigrants, banning Muslims and building the border wall, U.S. will become fascist state.

But that’s nothing new—President Bush and Obama had been doing the same: Bush has been attacking Muslims and foreign students, created DHS; Obama has been detained and deported hundreds of thousands of migrants with more detention centers. Trump just continuing their legacy with one big step more--Both Democratic and Republican racist polices share the equal blame.

We find ourselves today in a worldwide struggle such as we have never seen before. We are not only confronting the destructive nature of neoliberalism and imperialist wars, we are in a race towards the end of the world as we know it with respect to ecological degradation.

With Donald Trump we will have a United States president who speaks eagerly about the possible use of nuclear weapons, who does not believe in climate change and who wants to significantly advance extractivism and the oil and coal industries.

We will have a president openly motivated by racism. This racism will not only define a repressive political character within the US, but will be a guiding principle in international relations. Racism has always been an underlying aspect of the US experience. But with Trump, we are already seeing an aggressive legitimization of violent racism in our streets and this will certainly be reflected in the government’s comportment towards other countries of the world.

Nevertheless, equal to the possibilities for destruction, we also have the possibility for a new era of people’s internationalism. While many of us are in a state of shock with the election of Trump, we cannot stand idly by. We need to soberly assess where we are. The tools we need to advance our revolutionary cause already exist in the real world. We must know what they are and how to use them.

We of the Alliance for Global Justice are focused on struggles against Empire and for popular democracy, especially with respect to the Empire’s policies toward Latin America, which we understand as US military and political power in service to transnational capitalism.

Since the election of Trump, we have received requests from friends and partners in other countries concerning what to expect from a Trump administration. This declaration is our answer to these solicitations.

We must start by talking about what the election signifies for the US people. There exists a great polarization here. We are divided politically between a strong extreme right wing and a popular movement of resistance that is also strong, but less organized, less united. That popular movement has produced important uprisings. For instance, the Occupy movement popularized the language of class struggle with its identification of the 1%, or the wealthy and the capitalists, as the primary source of repression in the country and the world. We have been able to mount large movements against wars, for immigrant rights, for the Earth, against Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), against mass incarceration, and more. But we have lacked the political consciousness to sufficiently sustain them.

Additionally, the press, the government and the capitalist powers work every day to diminish our voices and to isolate and marginalize us, but they can’t do it. We keep coming back and won’t be eliminated.

With the Black Lives Matter movement against racist police brutality we have seen something that may have staying power. We also see this possibility with struggles against oil and gas pipelines such as the Keystone pipeline. Today that movement is focused on stopping the Dakota Access Pipeline that would pass through traditional territory of the Standing Rock Sioux, violating sacred sites and threatening the nation’s only water supply as well as the Missouri River, one of North America’s most important water sources.

What we in AfGJ have known and said many times is that the US is going to change and the one option we don’t have is that we can maintain the status quo. The US is going to turn to the Left toward popular democracy or to the Right toward fascism, more war, more exploitation. With the victory of Trump we see the latter, unless we can mount a durable opposition in the streets.

The election of Trump is a terrible victory for bigotry and hate. Trump frequently expressed extreme racist and sexist remarks and encouraged violence on the part of his supporters. Those who voted for him heard these, which means they either agreed or were not sufficiently motivated to confront them. But his election also reveals something profound for the Left and the Right. Neoliberal capitalism isn’t working for the middle and working class. More than anything else, those who voted for Donald Trump were voting against the political establishment and business as usual which has crushed the aspirations of working class people.

We know that Trump does not represent all the US people, or even a majority. Of those with the right to vote, 45% did not vote at all. Participation in the presidential election was the lowest in 20 years. There are many obstacles that block electoral participation of many citizens. There are many people who have lost all faith in the US electoral system. This is easy to understand considering we have a system that does everything in its power to prevent the emergence of a campaign that confronts transnational corporate greed and that truly addresses itself to the most fundamental concerns of poor and working families. In fact, in our so-called democracy, a person can become president even when they lose the popular vote. That happened with George W. Bush in 2000 and, again, with Donald Trump in 2016.

This election was not so much a victory for Trump as a defeat for Hillary Clinton and her allies in the Democratic Party. Although people fear Trump, we know Clinton. We remember that during her husband’s administration, she supported or was silent when he dismantled our welfare system, went to war in Yugoslavia, bombed and maintained sanctions against Iraq, passed laws that raised our incarceration rate to the highest in the world, passed the North American Free Trade Agreement and began construction of the border wall. We remember how Hillary Clinton supported wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and how she wants to escalate a war in Syria that would be directed toward regime change. We remember that she supported the coup against the elected government in Honduras as well as ongoing coup attempts in Venezuela, and that she pushed forward the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In all the political world of the Democrats, they chose as their candidate the one person who could not mobilize and inspire a successful campaign against Donald Trump.

What can we expect from a Trump administration? There is a mountain of reasons for us to be worried. But we should also recognize that with Trump we have a window of opportunity regarding two matters. Although Trump is a dedicated imperialist, he wants to normalize relations with Russia and cooperate with them with respect to Syria. Nevertheless, Trump has also promised to escalate military activities of the US in Syria and we must oppose these. We simply cannot trust in the designs of the US oligarchy or the Pentagon and we must oppose any further US military intervention in the region.

Another opportunity has to do with the struggle against corporation-friendly FTAs. For many years, the leadership of both the Republicans and Democrats has pursued passage of FTAs despite the fact that both Party bases opposed them. On the Left, we do not want what Trump wants, which is protectionism. We want fair trade and community based economies and sustainable agriculture. But we have a good opportunity to advocate for the repeal of existing FTAs and to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

With respect to relations with Latin America, there are clear dangers. Trump promised to end normalization with Cuba. He poke in racist terms about immigrants from Mexico and his desire to massively detain and deport those without documents, and to militarize the border even more than it already is. His policies will result in a witch hunt not only against immigrants, but against all Latinos since, by virtue of skin color, culture and language, they will be targets for racial profiling.

There is no struggle more important in the world than the struggle for climate and ecological justice. Trump does not believe in climate change and is committed to developing more mines, more oil wells, more pipelines, more out of control and unsustainable consumerism for obscene profits for the very few. He wants to end whatever international accords or policies we have to confront climate change.

We simply must unite in common cause for the defense and integrity of our ecosystems and communities. The opportunity that presents itself now is the possibility to raise up international resistance that can truly challenge the power of Empire and its drive toward environmental collapse.

Many times AfGJ has offered our solidarity to popular struggles in Latin America and the world. We now ask for solidarity. With Trump we are going to see increased attacks against our people of African heritage, undocumented immigrants, Latinos, the indigenous, Muslims, women, the working class, the poor, LGBTIQ people, and the environment. The solidarity we need can take many forms. For example, we hope that a President Trump can never travel anywhere in the world without being met by massive demonstrations against his presence. With Trump as president, we expect that many people of the world will plan NOT to travel to Disney World, the Grand Canyon, New York City, and other popular tourist attractions. This informal boycott can have a positive effect by showing economically that racism and nativism has consequences. By the same token, a cultural boycott, such as exists against Israel, could be another helpful consequence. If global citizens show their solidarity through how they spend their money, that would be an act aimed precisely where capitalism and Empire are most vulnerable.

But more than anything, we need two forms of solidarity. First of all, we need to learn and take inspiration from our international comrades, especially from the movements in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and every place where the people have achieved defeats of their enemies and have won popular power. Above all we ask our friends and partners that you continue your struggles against the Empire and that you defend your anti-imperialist and popular governments and movements.
We the people of the United States also suffer the effects of imperialism. The Empire robs us of our resources, submits us to injustice and represses our workers, our students, our communities, our oppressed peoples in order to advance its militaristic and exploitative adventures around the world. We understand that international liberation struggles are part of our own liberation struggle. We believe that together, we can make a better world a reality, a world the size of our dreams.

There are a lot of policies that President Trump could enact on day one, but it did not seem like building his beautiful southern border wall was one of them. The U.S. already spent billions to merely fence off about a third of the border, and attempting to construct a concrete wall could cost as much as $25 billion. Even with Republicans in control, that’s not something that’s going to move through Congress swiftly.

But according to one member of Trump’s transition team – who’s rumored to be a top contender for attorney general – his immigration advisers have already worked out how to start on the wall without any help from Congress.

Kansas secretary of State Kris Kobach tells Reuters that he has been holding conference calls with about a dozen Trump immigration advisers for the past few months, and they believe the Homeland Security Department can reappropriate funds from its current budget to begin construction immediately. Congress would likely balk at this, and he acknowledged “that future fiscal years will require additional appropriations.”

According to Kobach, the team has also been looking at how to implement Trump’s vague plan for the “extreme vetting” of Muslims entering the country. One possibility: simply reinstate the post-9/11 registry of Muslims entering the country on visas from countries that pose a terror threat.

Under the 2002 National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which Kobach helped design, people from “higher risk” countries were interrogated and fingerprinted upon entering the country. The “special registration” program required some noncitizen males over the age of 16 to register in person and occasionally notify the government of their whereabouts.

Following complaints that the program violated civil liberties and was discriminatory toward Muslims, the special registration program ended in 2003.

“It was clearly discriminatory because the nations listed were only Arab and Muslim nations,” Abed Ayoub, the national legal and policy director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told The Wall Street Journal. “They just put in North Korea for good measure.”

The Obama administration ended the rest of the NSEER requirements in 2011, but it accomplished that by removing all the countries from the list. Technically, the regulation is still on the books.

Presumably, this is just a small peek at the proposals Kobach is preparing for President Trump. He’s known for drafting extreme immigration laws, such as Arizona’s “show me your papers” law, which was struck down by the Supreme Court. He’s also passionate about fighting voter fraud, though there’s little evidence that it exists. He pushed for a 2013 Kansas law that required people to provide documents proving their citizenship in order to register to vote, which was also overturned by the courts.

Kobach has taken credit for the idea that Mexico would pay for the wall, and he seems like a perfect fit for Trump’s cabinet — even when it comes to the controversy his nomination would generate. In 2015, he spoke before the Social Contract Press, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a white nationalist group, saying:

Recent articles in its main product, The Social Contract, have propagated the myth that Latino activists want to occupy and ‘reclaim’ the American Southwest, argued that no Muslim immigrants should be allowed into the U.S., and claimed that multiculturalists are trying to replace “successful Euro-American culture” with “dysfunctional Third World cultures.”

11/13: Donald Trump Says He Will Deport up to 3 Million Immigrants 'That Are Criminal'

Speaking to 60 Minutes, president-elect says Mexico border wall would partially consist of fencing: ‘I’m very good at this. It’s called construction’

President-elect Donald Trump has said he plans to deport as many as 3 million people once he accedes to the Oval Office, and that fencing will form part of his promised wall on the border with Mexico.

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, set to be broadcast Sunday, Trump said: “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate.”

On the campaign trail, Trump said he would deport all undocumented migrants living in the US, estimated to be about 11 million people. He has stressed his desire to deport “criminal aliens” and said that he would deport families “in a very humane way”.

His comments to CBS stopped short of such extremes but they also contrasted with the words of House speaker Paul Ryan in a Sunday interview with CNN.

“That is not what our focus is,” Ryan told State of the Union. “We are focused on securing the border before we get on any immigration. We are not planning on erecting a deportation force, Donald Trump’s not planning on that.”

Speaking to CBS in his first broadcast interview since he defeated Hillary Clinton in the electoral college and lost to her in the popular vote, Trump referred to undocumented migrants without criminal records as “terrific people”. He did not describe in detail what his policy would be toward them.

“After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized,” he said, “we’re going to make a determination on the people that they’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that.”

“But before we make that determination,” he added, “it’s very important, we are going to secure our border.”

The day he began his presidential campaign, Trump warned about Mexican migrants who were “rapists” and “criminals”, and spent weeks saying migrants were “pouring in” across the border, although research does not support links between immigration and crime, net migration has remained level for years, and more Mexican migrants are leaving the US than entering it.

The US already has a large infrastructure for arresting, detaining and deporting migrants. Over eight years, Barack Obama has deported more than 2.5 million people, more than any other president, and more than doubled the number of border patrol agents. He has also increased border surveillance, and contracted the country’s largest prison company to help detain migrants.

Obama pursued immigration reform but failed to press a bipartisan bill through Republican opposition in Congress in 2013 and 2014. He subsequently ordered sweeping executive actions to shield eligible migrants, mostly young people and all without criminal records, from deportation. Trump has pledged to rescind those orders.

Trump also discussed his way to secure that border, the proposed wall, which on the campaign trail he said would be a genuine wall made of “hardened concrete”, “rebar” and “steel”.

Long stretches of the nearly 2,000-mile southern border already have fencing, under a years-long project that has proven difficult and expensive to enact.

Asked if some stretches of his wall would consist of fencing, as suggested by congressional Republicans, he said: “For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate.

Please download our latest newsletter: http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Newsletter/Fall16.pdf

Thanks for GREAT works from Detention Watch Network (DWN) to compiled the following information, please visit DWN website: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org

Useful Handouts and Know Your Immigrant Rights When Marches

Immigrant Marches / Marchas de los Inmigrantes

(By ACLU)

EN ESPAÑOL
Acerca de la Union Americana de Libertades Civiles

Immigrants and their supporters are participating in marches all over the country to protest proposed national legislation and to seek justice for immigrants. The materials available here provide important information about the rights and risks involved for anyone who is planning to participate in the ongoing marches.

If government agents question you, it is important to understand your rights. You should be careful in the way you speak when approached by the police, FBI, or INS. If you give answers, they can be used against you in a criminal, immigration, or civil case.

The ACLU's publications below provide effective and useful guidance in several languages for many situations. The brochures apprise you of your legal rights, recommend how to preserve those rights, and provide guidance on how to interact with officials.

IMMIGRATION
Know Your Rights When Encountering Law Enforcement
| Conozca Sus Derechos Frente A Los Agentes Del Orden Público

ACLU of Massachusetts - Your Rights And Responsibilities If You Are Contacted By The Authorities English | Spanish | Chinese

ACLU of Massachusetts - What to do if stopped and questioned about your immigration status on the street, the subway, or the bus
| Que hacer si Usted es interrogado en el tren o autobus acerca de su estatus inmigratorio

ACLU of South Carolina - How To Deal With A 287(g)
| Como Lidiar Con Una 287(g)

ACLU of Southern California - What to Do If Immigration Agents or Police Stop You While on Foot, in Your Car, or Come to Your Home
| Qué Hacer Si Agentes de Inmigración o la Policía lo Paran Mientras Va Caminando, lo Detienen en su Auto o Vienen a su Hogar

ACLU of Washington - Brochure for Iraqis: What to Do If the FBI or Police Contact You for Questioning English | Arabic

ACLU of Washington - Your Rights at Checkpoints at Ferry Terminals
| Sus Derechos en Puestos de Control en las Terminales de Transbordadores

LABOR / FREE SPEECH
Immigrant Protests - What Every Worker Should Know:
| Manifestaciones de los Inmigrantes - Lo Que Todo Trabajador Debe Saber

PROTESTERS
ACLU of Florida Brochure - The Rights of Protesters
| Los Derechos de los Manifestantes

STUDENTS
Washington State - Student Walkouts and Political Speech at School
| Huelgas Estudiantiles y Expresión Política en las Escuelas

California Students: Public School Walk-outs and Free Speech
| Estudiantes de California: Marchas o Huelgas y La Libertad de Expresión en las Escuelas Públicas

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May day across the world: Warzones & peaceful celebrations

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Please download our latest newsletter: http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Newsletter/Fall16.pdf