Resistance to the administration’s Proposed Public Charge rule continues to gather steam as nearly 400 individuals and organizations have already submitted public comments. While this is a strong start, it is a far cry from the opposition that organizers mobilized against changes to public charge during the last Trump Administration. We encourage everyone to make your voices heard, and there are multiple ways you can do this. The Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition has provided a number of resources to express opposition, including their own sign-on comment for organizations and model comments for both service providers and sector specific organizations. For organizations with a focus on Asian American populations, Asian Americans Advancing Justice has their own comment that they invite others to sign-on to. MIRA is also in the process of drafting our own comment for MA organizations to sign-on to, and we will be sharing that in the next few days. If your organization would like to tell your own story, but do not have time to write your own comment, MIRA is soliciting stories for inclusion in our comment, and you can share any stories by filling out this form by EOD on Friday. Individuals and organizations are not limited to one response; you are free to write your own comment and sign-on to others’ comments as you find appropriate. Comments are due before midnight on Friday Dec 19 and can be submitted here.
- Following scores of complaints about US citizens being caught up in the Trump Administration’s inhumane civil law enforcement policies, Democratic members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a damning report on the consistent pattern of constitutional and civil rights violations committed by the Department of Homeland Security. Although the administration has repeatedly claimed that they have not arrested or detained US citizens, the investigation and report was triggered by a Pro Publica story which had found that over 170 US citizens this year, many of which had been held in detention for a day or more. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee, said of the report, “What struck most struck me is the brutality and physical violence involved in every story. This is stuff that should be unrecognizable as America. It should make everyday Americans outraged that their fellow citizens could be treated this way.”
- In the wake of the tragic shooting of two National Guard members in DC, the administration would appear to be moving forward with racist attacks on all Afghan nationals. The Associated Press has reported two dozen Afghan nationals detained by immigration authorities, many of whom have pending asylum applications while others were brought to the US following our military withdrawal from Afghanistan in early 2021. Such collective punishment is morally reprehensible and such persecution on the basis of national origin would ironically form the basis for asylum claims.
- On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the Birthright Citizenship case. Four District Courts and two Circuit Courts have already rejected the administration’s attempt to limit US citizenship in contravention of the clear language of the 14th Amendment, but court observers are nervous about the deference that the current Supreme Court has shown to the administration on a wide variety of issues. Oral arguments are expected to take place in the Spring with a ruling expected in June.
- In a new lawsuit filed on Monday, the creator of the ICEBlock app is accusing the Trump Administration of violating protected speech by forcing Apple to remove the app from the App store, something that Attorney General Pam Bondi had bragged about to the media. With over 1 million downloads, ICEBlock had been the most popular tool used to track ICE enforcement actions around the country. Although ICEBlock was never made available for Android phones, Google has been accused of removing similar tracking tools from their app store around the same time that the administration was pressuring Apple.