Editor’s note: This commentary is by Gilman Bagga, a member of Democratic Socialists of America; Laura Mistretta, who is on the leadership committee of Rights and Democracy VT; Rachel Siegel, the executive director of the Peace & Justice Center; Ashley Smith, a member of the National Writers Union, UAW 1981; and Kristen Vrancken, an organizer with the Women’s March Vermont.
An open letter to the Vermont congressional delegation
[W]e are in the midst of a full-scale humanitarian crisis on our southern border created by the Trump administration. It is arresting tens of thousands of refugees and immigrants and jailing them in what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rightly called concentration camps.
Thousands of these inmates are children, and they are being held in horrific conditions that have shocked the world. A group of developmental psychologists warned in The Washington Post that separating these kids from their families and incarcerating them in these camps will permanently damage their health.
“These experiences,” they write, “will reverberate for years in the minds of the victims. Indeed, research suggests the mistreatment of children at the border could create an epidemic of health problems — from mental illness to physical disorders leading to an early death.”
Every elected official in our country will be judged by how they respond to these assaults on human beings and their rights. Our congressional delegation must rise to this challenge and stand in defense of immigrant rights as human rights.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has set the right example in condemning Trump’s camps, using his email list to inform activists of impending raids, and pledging that his proposal of Medicare for All will cover health care for all people including undocumented workers. This is the kind of leadership that we need right now.
Unfortunately, the rest of our congressional delegation has not followed Sen. Sanders’ example and spoken with one voice in defense of immigrant rights. Sen. Patrick Leahy voted for the $4.6 billion supplemental funding bill that will keep the camps open.
Republicans claimed that this bill will finance improvements to the conditions at the facilities. This would merely provide cover for the Trump administration to continue repression on the border with more Immigration and Customs Enforcement and military patrols, more arrests, and more internment of people by Customs and Border Protection. Perhaps most worrying of all, the bill risks institutionalizing the concentration camps as a permanent and normalized feature of the border regime.
While Rep. Peter Welch voted against the Republican’s Senate bill (the one that successfully passed), he did vote for the House bill. The house bill included more humanitarian measures and restrictions but was opposed by Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.
We agree with them when they wrote “in good conscience, we cannot support this supplemental funding bill, which gives even more money to ICE and CBP and continues to support a fundamentally cruel and broken immigration system … These radicalized, criminal agencies are destroying families and killing innocent children. It is absolutely unconscionable to even consider giving one more dollar to support this president’s deportation force that openly commits human rights abuses and refuses to be held accountable to the American people.”
We in Vermont are feeling the brutal impact of Trump’s border regime. Undocumented workers are routinely being harassed, detained, and deported from our state. Just last week, ICE arrested three dairy workers, Ismael Mendez-Lopez, Mario Diaz-Aguilar, and Ubertoni Aguilar-Montero, while they were shopping at the Walmart in Derby. They are now being processed for deportation.
Now is not the time for bipartisanship, but for open defiance of the Trump administration’s war on immigrants. We demand that Sen. Leahy and Rep. Welch correct their mistaken positions on the camps and vote against any further funding of them or ICE and CBP.
These concentration camps must be closed, their inmates freed, the children reunited with their families, and all resettled where they choose, with services provided and aid to rebuild their lives.
We also ask that you:
• Speak out against the arrests, detention, and deportation of workers from our state; and,
• Call for the three workers recently detained in Vermont to be freed to return to their jobs and lives.
Our congressional delegation and the people in our state and country must unite now in defense of immigrants, because as the labor movement taught us, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” If the Trump administration can take immigrant rights away, it can put all our rights on the chopping block.
