Included in the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ (CPC) new call for achieving key goals through executive action are asks that immigrant rights advocacy groups say could “protect millions of undocumented immigrants who are at risk of deportation, family separation, and enduring brutal conditions by the enforcement system.”
“As allies, we know that this administration has the power to provide the relief that millions of immigrants who call the U.S. home have been waiting for,” We Are Home Campaign leader Bridgette Gomez said in a statement received by Daily Kos. She called the CPC’s agenda “a promising step forward.”
“The pandemic underscored how critical immigrants are —as essential workers who kept the country running, and as neighbors in our communities. But too many are still living without legal protections, and under systems that exploit their labor,” a CPC fact sheet said. “While Congress continues to fight for a roadmap to citizenship, we must begin by ensuring immigrants’ and their families’ rights are protected.”
One key recommendation made by the CPC is deportation relief for immigrants from nations facing unrest but have yet to be designated for Temporary Protected Status, including Cameroon, Mauritania, and Somalia. This could protect thousands of immigrants already here. But while the Biden administration has in recent days designated Ukraine and Afghanistan for relief, Black immigrants also facing harm remain without protections.
Gomez said the Biden administration must “protect people from danger and fear of being deported to countries where they risk persecution and their lives are in grave danger as conditions in those countries are too unsafe for return, such as Cameroon.”
Further key recommendations include a halt to the expansion of private detention, terminating or declining to renew these private detention contracts in favor of community-based alternatives, the termination of agreements that allow local law enforcement to act as mass deportation agents, the removal of nonpriority cases from the backlogged immigration court system, and an end to the debunked Title 42 policy, which has similarly targeted Black asylum-seekers for disparate treatment.
“It is this administration’s moral obligation to address the racial disparities that are rampant in our immigration system,” Gomez continued in the statement. “Our country cannot move forward if we are leaving behind millions of undocumented immigrants who are integral to our nation.”
In a similar call last month, more than two dozen immigrant rights organizations also urged the president to take a series of executive actions to deliver “a more fair, humane, and functional immigration system,” including extending deportation relief, an end to anti-asylum policies, and expanding legal assistance to people in immigration court.
The organizations noted how the president has already taken decisive action to terminate or revoke more than 200 anti-immigrant policies issued by the previous administration while implementing dozens of pro-immigrant actions, including rescinding the racist Muslim ban and protecting nearly half a million people through existing Temporary Protected Status designations. More can certainly be done, and all it takes is a pen—and the will to use it.
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