A Nation of Immigrants Under Attack [View all]

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/farrah-hassen/114212/a-nation-of-immigrants-under-attack

A Nation of Immigrants Under Attack
by Farrah Hassen | June 27, 2025 - 5:30am

— from OtherWords


Across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are tearing families apart, terrorizing communities, and upending businesses.

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If these attacks on immigrants were really about “following the law,” then immigrants fleeing war and persecution would be able to exercise their right to seek asylum — a human right long enshrined under international and U.S. law. Their due process rights would be respected.

In fact, the vast majority of immigrants in this country — including those kidnapped by ICE — have no criminal history. According to agency data compiled by research organization TRAC, out of the 56,397 people held in ICE detention as of June 15, 71.7 percent had no criminal record.

Both Republicans and Democrats have enabled ICE’s rampant human rights abuses since the agency’s creation in 2003. ICE functions as a quasi-police force with limited public oversight and uses private data sources like utility bills to conduct unauthorized surveillance of potentially anyone in the U.S.

The current system has a vested interest in locking up and deporting people instead of pursuing real immigration solutions, like pathways to citizenship. This system, which includes ICE and its detention facilities, must be defunded and dismantled.

People abducted by ICE are not numbers. They’re someone’s entire world. They’re cherished members of communities. And they’re on the frontlines of defending all of our civil liberties. We must stand together and demand that ICE leave our communities. We are a nation of immigrants after all.