Trump’s So-called “Deal” to End the Shutdown Is a List of Hostage Demands

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 19, 2019

CONTACT
Email: [email protected]
Juan Gastelum, 213-375-3149
Hayley Burgess, 202-805-0375

Trump’s So-called “Deal” to End the Shutdown Is a List of Hostage Demands

WASHINGTON — In a televised speech from the White House today — a month into a partial government shutdown — President Trump proposed a one-sided “deal” to reopen the government in exchange for $5.7 billion in taxpayer dollars for a border wall, further border militarization, and decimating protections for asylum-seekers and trafficking survivors. Trump’s proposal attempts to justify these xenophobic, harmful demands by offering grossly inadequate and temporary protections for long-term residents, including DACA youth and those with temporary protected status (TPS), whose protections he took away.

Avideh Moussavian, legislative director at the National Immigration Law Center, issued the following statement:

“Trump is the chief architect of what has become the longest shutdown in modern history — which his enablers in Congress have allowed the administration to prolong. He is also similarly responsible for terminating DACA and TPS and for trampling on the rights of people coming to the U.S. in search of safety. Instead of reopening the government, he is rehashing nonstarter proposals to once again torpedo every good-faith effort to fix the very harms he created in service of his racist, xenophobic agenda. To blindly trust that this isn’t just another attempt to hurt our immigrant and border communities would be foolish.

“The Trump administration has taken immigrant youth and other immigrant communities, our government, and the financial well-being of 800,000 federal workers hostage to his demands. We should call this so-called ‘deal’ what it really is: an extortionist wishlist dressed up to look like an offer. It’s past time for Trump and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to stop playing games with people’s lives and reopen the government now.”

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