Activists ask the new head of the immigration agency to make positive changes and remember when he arrived in the United States 45 years ago.
Immigrants in a shelter in Tijuana. (Manuel Ocaño)
Photo: Manuel Ocaño / Impremedia
On Tuesday morning groups of refugees and descendants of refugees from Vietnam, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala came together to deliver a letter to the new director of Customs and Border Protection (ICE), Tony Pham.
The message was clear, activists told Pham, who came to the United States as a refugee from Vietnam in 1975, that he is only being used as “a puppet” by the Trump administration.
Pham was recently appointed the new head of ICE by President Trump. However, activists and refugees say the decision was made to cover Trump’s white nationalist desertion agenda targeting non-white immigrants and refugees.
“We are mobilizing to speak out against Tony Pham because he will look like us but he does not represent us,” said one of the activists outside ICE headquarters in Washington DC
As the protesters tried to deliver the letter, a group of supporters, media and activists watched the protest via video conference.
Among them was Salvador Sarmiento, national campaign director with the Red de Jornaleros (NDLON). He indicated that the president’s action is highly offensive, especially after he announced his plans to dismantle protections for refugees.
The Trump administration is trying to cover up the nativist white supremacist’s efforts to dismantle refugee protections by covering it up by presenting a refugee, Pham, in front of ICE leadership, Sarmiento said.
“We want to send a very clear message to Tony Pham to the new director of ICE that his background as a refugee is not as relevant as his background to justify the enabling human rights violations committed by ICE to our refugee communities,” added Sarmiento. .
“We support our refugee brothers and sisters across the country and we will not be fooled by these incongruous political maneuvers,” he emphasized.
Camila Álvarez, CARECEN’s legal director, said that she has worked representing clients in detention centers since 2016 and has learned of terrible things. He had even been told before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic that conditions were “horrible.”
“There were reports of moldy food, water that people couldn’t drink, not being able to get legal services, inability to communicate with family members, and inability to get medical attention if someone gets sick,” Alvarez said.
The director said that there are also many clients who have reported trauma to themselves and their families.
“For example, a client informed me that he was detained by ICE after dropping off his daughter at school,” Alvarez said. “His daughters experienced extreme trauma from experiencing something like this when they took away their father who spent months in a detention center.”
The director stressed that asylum seekers and refugees are already suffering under Pham’s policies as ICE’s primary legal advisor.
The activists said that if Pham has any loyalty left to refugee families who are living what his own family went through 45 years ago, he will take strong action to protect the refugees. These include releasing all detainees in ICE detention centers and their immediate closures, stopping all deportations during the pandemic, working to ensure protections for TPS and DACA holders by January 4, 2021, ending collusion. ICE with hate groups.
Failure to do so would show that Pham is taking the side of the xenophobic and racist worldview that questions the presence of immigrants and refugees, activists asserted.
Pham did not go out to receive the letter from the activists in DC but they took it upon themselves to slide it under the door along with other documents for the agents who were watching the activists from inside the office to deliver it to them.
Partner organizations supporting the movement included VetRise, such as Fanm, such as CARECEN in Los Angeles, and sister organizations across the country of refugee communities in the United States.
