Trump Administration Indicates It Will Seek to Implement Latinx Ban at Southern Border

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 25, 2018

CONTACT
Hayley Burgess, [email protected], 202-805-0375

Trump Administration Indicates It Will Seek to Implement Latinx Ban at Southern Border

WASHINGTON — News media reported today that the Trump administration is considering a ban aimed at preventing certain individuals from exercising their legal right to seek asylum in the United States.

The news, which is alarmingly reminiscent of Trump’s early days in office, when he acted on a campaign promise to ban Muslims from traveling to the United States, comes as a group of mostly Honduran women, children, and men makes its way through Mexico to the southern U.S. border. With abundant news coverage of the group’s journey and the midterm elections just days away, Trump has fixated on politicizing the group’s plight, spreading racist lies to stoke fear and promising to shut down and deploy hundreds of additional military service members to the southern border.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, issued the following statement:

“This is one more disturbing and dangerous development in a string of xenophobic attacks on immigrant communities. With this threat to ban Latinx immigrants, Trump is once again showing us that his racism-driven cruelty has no bounds, as he did with the implementation of the Muslim ban and separation of families at the border. Since day one of Trump’s presidency, he has made it clear that his administration will do anything in its power to make immigrants feel unsafe and unwelcome in this country.

“It is unconscionable that Trump continues to play political games while putting forth radical and extremist policies which will have real-life consequences for people seeking to exercise their legal rights to apply for asylum, as well as cause unprecedented economic harm to the vibrant U.S.-Mexico border communities that depend on migrants coming back and forth daily.

“We will continue to stand with our civil rights, Latinx, immigrant, Muslim, and refugee communities to fight these xenophobic and hateful attacks. We are strong. We are resilient. We will use every tool to stop Trump from undermining the Constitution and international laws and from instituting his administration’s agenda to impose a Latinx ban in any form. We call all communities to reject these policies of hate. We can and must be better than this.”

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