Reuters reports that the Obama Administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans a new 30-day surge of raids, arrests, and deportations. The plan is to focus on mothers and children. This is appalling, and a shameful reflection on the sheer sadism of U.S. immigration politics. No matter what party it represents, no matter what name it assumes, no matter what liberalism it pretends, U.S. government, liberal or conservative, is an instrument of violent nationalism and a belligerent, destructive assault on migrant communities. Every deportation is a shattered family, and every border is a bloody scar cut across the human heart. The Obama administration’s record on detention and deportation of immigrant families has been outrageous and inexcusable, and this planned escalation of ICE’s war on undocumented families and communities of color will only make the damage even worse, and the legacy of this administration even more of an offense against human compassion and the basic human liberties of immigrants.

U.S. immigration officials are planning a month-long series of raids in May and June to deport hundreds of Central American mothers and children found to have entered the country illegally, according to sources and an internal document seen by Reuters.

The operation would likely be the largest deportation sweep targeting immigrant families by the administration of President Barack Obama this year after a similar drive over two days in January that focused on Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina.

Those raids, which resulted in the detention of 121 people, mostly women and children, sparked an outcry from immigration advocates and criticism from some Democrats, including the party’s presidential election frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has now told field offices nationwide to launch a 30-day “surge” of arrests focused on mothers and children who have already been told to leave the United States, the document seen by Reuters said. The operation would also cover minors who have entered the country without a guardian and since turned 18 years of age, the document said. Two sources confirmed the details of the plan.

The exact dates of the latest series of raids were not known and the details of the operation could change.

–Julia Edwards, U.S. plans new wave of immigrant deportation raids
Reuters (12 May 2016)

Shared Article from Reuters

Exclusive: U.S. plans new wave of immigrant deportation raids

U.S. immigration officials are planning a month-long series of raids in May and June to deport hundreds of Central American mothers and children found…

reuters.com

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Shared Article from Vox

I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American. I've fai…

No, becoming a US citizen is not as simple as "just get married."

vox.com

From college to law school to professional life, from student visa to work visa, I have scrupulously followed every immigration regulation, paid all my taxes, filed all the papers I had to file, and have not so much as received a parking ticket. But it turns out that following all the rules is not enough. A move into public interest work unexpectedly fell through, leading to the imminent cancellation of my work visa. . . . Following all of Uncle Sam’s rules has led me, 15 years down the road, to a plane ticket booked on short notice to anywhere but here. Maybe at some point in the indefinite future I will be able to come back, but I cannot count on it, certainly not the when or the how. Maybe in five years, maybe 10, maybe never. I have done battle with the US immigration system for a decade and half, and I have lost. . . .

Numerous American friends, when the subject of my immigration status came up, have said to me things to the effect of, “Why don’t you just become a citizen?” To the Americans I have known, it really seems that people, or at least law-abiding people like me, should be able to just go down to the DMV, fill out some paperwork, and get citizenship. Time and again I have had to disabuse my friends of this misconception. What matters when it comes to obtaining citizenship is your “status” while you’re in America, and your status can be difficult to change. Years spent as a student do not count. Neither do years on a work visa unless your employer is willing to sponsor your green card. . . . Right now there is no viable path for me to gain citizenship or even to stay in this country, because right now there is no way for me to get a green card.

–William Han, I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American. I’ve failed.
Vox (23 June 2015)

When people say I’m not against immigration, I just want immigrants to follow the rules, what that actually means, in practice, is I’m not against immigration, I just think people should have to wait in line forever and find out after years of waiting that it’s still literally impossible for them to legally stay in the U.S.

Borders are an injustice, an imposition, a usurpation, and a callous inhumanity. They seek out, attack and destroy everything that is precious and respect nothing that is loving or compassionate in human life. It is unconscionable that anyone should be expected to get ground through the gears of a monster bureaucratic machine like this in order to prove the validity of living their lives. Borders and citizenship and border-control laws and government permission-slips have no value compared to a human life, and they deserve no notice except to be trampled underfoot. Everyone should be free to immigrate without restriction and all currently documented and undocumented immigrants should be completely free from government scrutiny or nativist shaming.

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Shared Article from The Huffington Post

Obama Delays Immigration Action Until After Election

WASHINGTON (AP) — Abandoning his pledge to act by the end of summer, President Barack Obama has decided to delay any executive action on immigr…

huffingtonpost.com

Of course, this is a shameful move from Barack Obama. Immigrants’ lives and families are being sacrificed, yet again, over and over and again, to opportunism and to crass political calculation. The careers of Democratic politicians are not more important than people’s lives and livelihoods. What makes it worse is that this move is as completely predictable as it is morally grotesque.

Progressive electoral politics is like building a vast, extraordinarily expensive, Rouge River-scale machine plant to build cars. Then, after the ribbon is cut, the plant opens to great fanfare, billions of dollars are spent, and a couple of go-karts are rolled off the line as a test, the manager up and tells you that there won’t be any more cars for the time being — because all the wear and tear on the machines would destroy their ability to make more cars, some day in the future. So until then you’ll have to wait. All the while the machine whirs along, drawing more power and costing more money all the time, but no more cars ever come off the line, because every time there might have been some output, it was sacrificed to make sure that the machine itself would keep idling smoothly. But it is so perfectly polished.