Concrete, steel or transparent barriers — President Trump doesn’t care how the wall is built, as long as he can continue to build walls on the US-Mexico border and between Americans. Now his attempt to build a wall around the immigrant community that already resides within the country is backfiring as a New York federal judge shot down his proposed citizenship question for the 2020 census.
By seeking to deter undocumented immigrants from participating, the Trump administration is rigging the census in a blatant attempt to gerrymander districts to support his racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ vision of the United States. The citizenship question — which is still to be considered by the Supreme Court in February — is also a signal to immigrants that they are being watched, tracked and hunted. Borrowing from war tactics used throughout the centuries, the Trump administration’s proposed citizenship question is an insidious attempt to encircle and isolate immigrants, walling them off from the support of their neighbors and larger community.
The census is just one of many battlefronts. The Trump administration is continuing its march on communities of color through a barrage of racist policies and tactics designed to inspire fear and treat Black and Latinx communities as criminals. Indeed, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s adoption of a zero tolerance approach through Operation Streamline provides the administration cover to criminally prosecute migrants en mass — trying up to 70 people at one time.
Migrant children, young people and families from Central and South America are doing what any of us would do in life-threatening circumstances. They’re traveling thousands of miles to find themselves denied, torn apart from each other and abused. Indeed, despite preaching to us about “law and order,” the Trump administration is in fact breaking the law by denying entry to asylum seekers. Now, President Trump is holding the country hostage and has threatened to declare a state of emergency in order to circumvent the legal process through which our federal budget is approved.
Through these policies and Trump’s constant attacks on migrants, the administration has pushed Latinx and immigrant communities into a position of fear and panic. For those already wary of strangers knocking on their doors, census workers would be seen as an outright threat rather than as civil servants.
Trump is not upholding the law; he is breaking it. In order to get his way, he is manufacturing a crisis that is impacting millions of people. By urging the US public to turn its back on migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and the Latinx community at large, President Trump is asking the nation to once again betray our stated fundamental values.
Thankfully the New York federal judge’s decision has given us hope that at least, in this one attempt to attack immigrants, the Trump administration may not be successful.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
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We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
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With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy