SOUTHERN BORDER -- Today, President Trump resorted to a familiar theme of demonizing families and children seeking safety, threatening to hold them indefinitely in detention, and potentially deploying more troops to southern border communities than are stationed in 160 countries combined.
His speech was a preview to an upcoming executive order next week which might block families from requesting asylum. It was his administration’s latest move to stoke irrational fear of families seeking safety before the midterm elections, and to create a false “crisis” at the southern border to justify funding his harmful wall leading up to Dec. 7 appropriation fight in Congress.
Despite President Trump’s efforts to vilify families with children for political gain, a recent poll by Change Research found that 70% of voters support families’ right to seek safety from persecution. Similarly, the poll found that 66% of voters oppose Trump’s deadly wall.
Johana Bencomo, co-chair of Southern Border Communities Coalition and director of organizing for NM Comunidades en Acción y de Fe (CAFé) gave the following statement:
“Trump’s attempt to turn these desperate families and their children into political pawns in the name of his unnecessary and harmful wall betrays the nation’s sacred promise to treat people humanely in their time of need. The fact is the public overwhelmingly supports allowing asylum seekers the opportunity to have their cases heard, and the majority oppose his vanity wall.
It is clear that President Trump is doing everything he can to find ways to justify his border wall during the upcoming lame duck session. Never mind that border walls have no impact on whether somebody flees their home country and seeks protection at our border. Never mind that border walls and hyper-militarization don’t make us safer. Never mind that border walls harm the 15 million people who call the border region home, endanger wildlife and the environment, and are a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
Instead of spewing anti-immigrant rhetoric and racist dog whistles, we need to find ways to address the root causes of the forced displacement of people. Separating and incarcerating arriving families with children who seek protection from life-threatening situations is cruel, and goes against our nation’s core values of compassion, dignity and respect. The southern border should be a place of encounter, opportunity and hope -- not a place of confrontation, hate, and out-of-control militarization.”
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The Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) brings together organizations from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas, to ensure that border enforcement policies and practices are accountable and fair, respect human dignity and human rights, and prevent the loss of life in the region.