[ad_1]
In addition to adopting a white supremacist trope falsely accusing asylum-seekers of COVID-19 superspreading, Mother Jones reports that Abbott is responding to unaccompanied children arriving to the U.S. in search of safety and protection by deploying 1,000 officers to the border, including Texas Rangers. “Abbott said these interviews will identify victims of human trafficking, but Melissa Lopez, an attorney at Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services in El Paso, questioned the timing of so-called Operation Lonestar,” the report said.
“I think it’s highly hypocritical of Gov. Abbott to be suddenly concerned with the humanitarian situation at the border,” Lopez said according to the report, noting his lack of concern prior to noon on Jan. 20, 2021. “At no point was there ever concern for their safety, for their dignity. And suddenly, there’s a ‘crisis at the border,’ and we need to be concerned, and we’re going to start investigating human trafficking, as if human trafficking is something new.”
KSAT reports that in recent remarks, Abbott falsely claimed that “President Biden’s reckless open border policies have created a humanitarian crisis,” which he said “is enriching the cartels, smugglers, and human traffickers who often prey on and abuse unaccompanied minors.”
Some fact checks: The reality is that the Stephen Miller-pushed Title 42 policy, which advocates have strongly urged the Biden administration to end, is still blocking adult asylum-seekers. Human rights advocates also condemned Remain in Mexico as the policy “adding to cartel profits,” with one kidnapped asylum-seeker forced to Mexico saying “one of his captors told him the cartel had been hiring,” Human Rights Watch said last year. “Since the United States is deporting so many through here, we are capturing them and that has meant more work,” Human Rights Watch said his captor told him. “We’re saturated.” Biden has since begun to wind down that policy. But Abbott wasn’t so concerned during its duration, was he?
Mother Jones also reports the disturbing, anti-Mexican history of the Texas Rangers. Tim Murphy wrote last year that “[t]he Texas Rangers were vicious enforcers of white power” who in the early 20th century “instigated a reign of terror in which between 300 and several thousand Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans were killed.” Murphy wrote “[t]he Rangers have been portrayed in popular culture as icons of law and order.”
In a recent press conference, El Paso Rep. Veronica Escobar and local leaders echoed Lopez and pressed on the urgent need to shift away from aggressive militarization that has become all too common in the borderlands. “The emphasis is putting more resources to treat people humanely, rather than use resources to militarize the border,” Border Network for Human Rights executive director Fernando García said according to El Paso Times. “The migrants that are running for their lives, and running from situations that are untenable for them, are not running because it’s an easy journey or because it is their first choice—this is their last choice,” Escobar said.
During a Spanish-language interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, Rep. Escobar said that roughly half of unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. have parents already here and that they can be released to by the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Biden administration has also recently announced new guidance that should speed up the safe release of unaccompanied children who have parents or relatives already here.
Rep. Escobar also recently invited House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to meet with local advocates, but he ignored that invitation because his sole purpose in going to the border was to pull off a stunt. “It is time that Texas leaders embrace and actually identify ways that they can help and support children that are coming, support families that are seeking asylum, and facilitate the lives of immigrants that have been here and contributing to the country,” Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance’s Adriana Cadena said according to Mother Jones.
[ad_2]
Source link
