The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee advances human rights through grassroots collaborations.
What Do Trump’s Executive Orders Really Mean? Part 1/3
By on January 26, 2017
This series looks at the recent executive orders on immigration the Trump administration signed. Many, however have been left wondering what the actual impact of the new executive actions will be in practice. We hope this three-part executive order series of what we know so far will be helpful in finding answers. Click here to read parts two and three.
President Trump climbed the rostrum at the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, January 25 to a 19th century abolitionist anthem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which includes the lyric, “let us die to make men free.” Far from promising freedom, however, the new President pledged only detention, deportation, and family separation on an unprecedented scale. The orders issued on Wednesday in the name of public safety and border security—the first of several anticipated executive actions targeting refugee and immigrant communities —threaten to fulfill the worst expectations for Trump’s presidency and to bring his horrifying campaign proposals into reality.
There was no mistaking the intent behind the President’s toxic rhetoric Wednesday, which cast undocumented people as violent criminals and implied collective guilt on their part purely on the basis of race and national origin.
Trump’s executive orders will separate families and sow terror among immigrant communities through mass deportation.
The orders call for the hiring of 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, empowered to:
- Conduct mass deportations with the broad mandate to “execute […] the immigration laws of the United States against all removable aliens.”
- Enable federal officers to deputize state and local law enforcement to act as federal immigration agents, effectively creating an even more extensive deportation force.
- Call for federal grants to be stripped from “sanctuary” jurisdictions that refuse to comply with or assist federal enforcement efforts.
The orders will likewise reinstate the notorious Obama-era “Secure Communities” program, under which state and local police held undocumented people in county jails on ICE detainers, to be later picked up by federal authorities and deported. “Secure Communities” was eventually retired in 2014 due to public outcry, as it effectively exposed any undocumented person who encountered local police—even for a minor offense, such as a broken taillight—to detention, deportation, and separation from their loved ones. The program not only tore families apart, but ironically, it also made communities less secure, by eviscerating trust of law enforcement agencies among the undocumented.
UUSC stands in solidarity and partnership with immigrants and refugees regardless of what comes next, so that the lyrics that accompanied the President’s speech Wednesday may be something other than a cruel irony… Let us strive to make all people free!
