CAFTA
Climate change and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which passed in the U.S. Congress in 2005, also had a negative impact on immigration because it forced people out of their homes in Central America. Climate-related disruptions to Mexican agriculture were directly influenced by CAFTA. Just like NAFTA, CAFTA supporters claimed that free trade deals would slow down immigration. CAFTA had the opposite result as immigration steadily increased from Central America to the US., especially from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. CAFTA’s passage, similarly to that of NAFTA, led to a flood of U.S. agricultural exports and products into Central America, resulting in a massive growth in U.S. exports in 2016. Information on CAFTA can be found here: Climate change, CAFTA and forced migration.
The Obama Administration: DACA
In 2012, President Barack Obama signed an executive order titled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). This executive order enabled an estimate of about 800,000 young adults known as “Dreamers” brought into the U.S. as children through improper channels to work and go to school legally without the fear of deportation. DACA never provided legal status to the Dreamers (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). By the end of Obama’s term, detention numbers reached a record high of over 40,000 people per day. The Obama Administration deported over 3 million people – more than all of the presidents since 1890 combined (Freedom for Immigrants). This number drastically increased because Obama decided that everyone should be treated equally and not treated based on their nationality or race, as other administrations had done.
The Arguments of White Nationalists and Nativists
“This system is separating people. It is killing people! I am a victim. It has affected all of my life. I want you to know, to understand – look after these people. They are being treated unjustly. Make justice for them because ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ Look at the detention system. It is difficult and almost impossible! There is no law. ICE doesn’t care about nobody. ICE doesn’t care about human life. ICE is heartless. I see people dying in detention – people sick. [ICE] laying false charges on people. Please stand up! It is a problem. I couldn’t believe this would happen to me. This is unbelievable.”
C.P.A.
Nativists and white nationalists have argued that Mexican immigrants take jobs, breed crime, and are violent drug traffickers and gang members. These nativists and nationalists claim that, “…between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the number of ethnic Mexicans in the United States rose by 54 percent, from 11.2 million to 31.8 million. This growth rate subsequently slowed after the economic recession of 2008, but not enough to calm racial anxieties among a citizenry fearful of foreigners taking their jobs, committing horrendous crimes, and breeding terrorists ready to strike” (Oxford). This was not new to American immigration history as these claims were held against blacks in the early Republic, in the 20th century when European Jewish immigrants were accused of being anarchists, and once again in the 1950s when anti-Communist rhetoric and Cold War fears were spread to stop immigrant entry into the U.S. and other countries. This also quickened deportations.
“Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda network, a discourse termed securitization by scholars has emerged among politicians, the popular media, and the citizenry that depicts immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, as imminent security threats. Donald J. Trump invoked this language against Mexican immigrants during his June 16, 2015 speech announcing his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic].They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” His proposed solution was to severely limit authorized Mexican immigration and the number of admissible refugees, curtailing unauthorized entries by building an impenetrable wall along the US-Mexico border, for which, Trump vowed, Mexico would pay.”
Oxford research Encylopedias
What these nativists and white nationalist do not understand is how dangerous it is to travel to the United States or the dire circumstances many southern border crossers face. For example, according to various sources such as PBS, many immigrants travel north from South America to the United States through the Darien Gap. The Darien Gap is one of the world’s wildest jungles and is uninhabitable. Most immigrants that travel this route have no map and no instructions on how to navigate it.
Learn More: Darien Gap, What migrants face as they journey through the deadly Darien Gap
The Trump Administration and Increase in Xenophobia
With the swearing in of the Trump Administration (2017-2021), a new wave of immigration reform came to the United States. Both presidential nominees, Donald Trump (Republican) and Hillary Clinton (Democrat) made campaign promises based on immigration reform. Senator Clinton promised to end the two 1996 laws that her husband, President Bill Clinton had signed into law. Donald Trump used immigration as a signature issue during his 2016 presidential campaign. On January 27, 2017, just 7 days after his swearing in ceremony after winning the 2016 presidential election, President Trump signed Executive Order 13769, titled “Protecting the Nation From Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals” (Federal Register). It suspended entry for citizens of seven countries for 90s days: Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. This order also stopped the admission of refugees that were trying to escape from the Syrian Civil War and it put to a halt the entry of all refugees to the U.S. for 120 days. Executive Order 13769 was commonly referred to as the “Muslim Ban” among the immigration advocacy community. Trump was using Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as his foundation for Executive Order 13769.
“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”
8 U.S. Code § 1182 (Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952)
Trump revised Executive Order 13769 on March 6, 2017 and excluded Iraq, visa-holders, and permanent residents from the temporary suspension. However, he did not differentiate Syrian refugees from refugees from other countries (Chakraborty, Barnini). On June 26th, the U.S. Supreme Court partially allowed the executive order to come into effect. On September 24, 2017 Executive Order 13769 was superseded by Presidential Proclamation 9645 to put forth travel restrictions on seven countries. This proclamation omitted Sudan from the original list, but it also added North Korea and Venezuela. Near the end of October in 2017, Trump ended a ban on refugee admissions while adding rules about tougher vetting for applicants. He halted entry of refugees from 11 “high risk” nations. By January 2020, Trump added six more countries to the ban. “People from Nigeria (the most populous country in Africa), Myanmar (where refugees have been fleeing alleged genocide), Eritrea, and Kyrgyzstan will be banned from obtaining immigrant visas (for people intending to stay in the United States). People from Sudan and Tanzania will be banned from obtaining diversity visas” (Kanno-Youngs, Zolan).
One of Trump’s campaign promises was the mass deportation of “illegal immigrants.” Trump had proposed a Deportation Force that would carry out his plan. This was modeled after Operation Wetback from the Eisenhower Administration. Another one of Trump’s campaign promises was to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexican border. He claimed that Mexico would pay for its construction through increased border-crossing fees and NAFTA tariffs. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto claimed after their meeting at the end of August in 2016 that they never discussed who would be paying for the border wall (Reuters). He also stated that Mexico will not be paying for it. In December 2018, after the federal government had partially shut down due to a funding dispute for Trump’s border wall, on January 4, 2019, White House press secretary, Sara Sanders falsely claimed that roughly 4000 known or suspected terrorists came across the southern border were apprehended in 2018 (Julia Ainsley). In 2019, ICE began carrying out raids, often arriving unannounced and arresting dozens of workers suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
In 2017, Trump switched his target to DACA. Trump announced in September 2017 that he was canceling this order. The cancellation was put on a hold by a court order, and the Supreme Court ruled in June 2020 that the Trump Administration’s decision to end DACA violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Trump’s views greatly resembled that of the Know Nothing Party of the 1840s and 1850s. Trump had other numerous immigration plans that included asylum restrictions, DNA tests on immigrants, the closing of sanctuary cities, troop deportations to the border, and a Zero-Tolerance Policy on family separation at the border. Many of these plans were carried out. Trump’s detention centers were constantly criticized. Immigrants in these centers often complained of physical and sexual assault, racist and bigoted remarks, and medical neglect (Aída Chávez).
Explore More: Information about the No Nothing Party is in The Rise of Nativism: The Know-Nothing Party
The Deportation of United States Veterans
Another problem that seems to be largely ignored by previous administrations are undocumented United States veterans. They served the U.S. and as a favor they were swiftly deported instead of being granted citizenship. Once deported, they try to stay in touch with one another or stay in large groups. For example, there is a city in Mexico that consists mostly of deported U.S. veterans: Tijuana, Mexico.
Learn More: Information about Tijuana can be found here, A home in Tijuana is a refuge for deported U.S. veterans
The 2020 Presidential Election Results and the COVID-19 Pandemic
The 2020 presidential election had a vastly different outcome for Trump. Vice President Joe Biden of the Obama Administration ran as a Democrat after Senator Bernie Sanders stepped down at President Obama’s recommendation (Glenn Thrush). Where Trump stood by the same campaign promises that he had for the 2016 presidential election, Biden proposed that he would do the following: “take urgent action to undo Trump’s damage and reclaim America’s values, modernize America’s immigration system, welcome immigrants in our communities, reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees, and tackle the root causes of irregular migration Implement effective border screening” (Biden-Harris). Biden promised that within the first 100 days he would reverse the Trump Administration’s cruel and senseless policies that separate parents from their children at our border, end Trump’s asylum policies, end the mismanagement of the asylum system, end prolonged-detention, protect Dreamers, etc. (Biden-Harris).
The Biden Administration and More Centers for Immigrant Children
Biden won the presidential election in 2020, partly due to Trump’s strict and inhumane immigration policies and his lack of action on the COVID-19 pandemic, which reached the United States in early 2020. The pandemic further incited anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. because the country of origin for COVID-19 was China. On day one of his presidency, Biden signed several executive orders, including one that ended Trump’s Executive Order 13769. Many immigrant rights supporters have hope that Biden will provide positive immigration reform to the United States. Immigration attorney Sujata Winfield expressed hope for the “…reversal of Trumps policies, which Biden is already doing by executive orders… He has gotten rid of the fence, the wall, the Muslim ban, solidified DACA…”
“The Biden administration has reopened temporary facilities to hold an increasing number of migrant children arriving on the US southern border, reviving concerns about their welfare after immigration agents forcibly separated families and kept children in prison-like conditions under former President Donald Trump.”
Nicole Narea, immigration reporter
These new detention facilities, which are overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), are different from the cages in US Customs and Border Protection detention centers that generated widespread outrage under the Trump administration. “In those holding facilities, children slept with nothing but mylar blankets to keep them warm at night on concrete floors. Some immigrant advocates argue the ORR facilities are also unsuitable, but they are set up to administer care to children, complete with schooling and recreational amenities” (Nicole Narea). Biden’s facilities quickly became overwhelmed, and the Biden Administration opened temporary overflow facilities. However, immigration advocates are still concerned that the children will be subjected to inhumane treatment as well as prolonged stay in these supposedly temporary facilities. Immigration advocates continue to demand that Biden take steps to avoid their confinement altogether.
Learn More: Check out two immigration centers in Georgia here Detention Center Case Studies. This page includes an interactive map!
Continue Reading: Eugenics Use Against Immigrants
Last edited April 25, 2021.
U.S. Immigration Detention 
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