Soon, leaders of the sanctuary movement were charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to violate federal law. Not long afterwards, sanctuaries began spreading from churches to college campuses, local legislative bodies and state level protections and laws.
Now Donald Trump insists that sanctuary cities are havens of crime so overrun by dangerous immigrants that he needs to have an army of agents like ICE, the National Guard, and the military to control a plague of epic proportions perpetrated by people of color, poor people who have suffered unimaginable violence and persecution. That, of course, demands an expansion of "detention centers" which are, in reality, concentration camps where innocent people and families can languish for years.
"Many of these deportations threaten a range of fundamental human rights including the right to family unity, the right to seek asylum from persecution, the right to humane treatment in detention, the right to due process, and the rights of children," Human Rights Watch points out.
These rights are being denied by an administration that is hell-bent on making America white again, run by cowards and oligarchs who suck up to and financially support a wannabe lifetime dictator. But as Rebecca Solnit wrote in The Guardian, "The more we stand up, the harder it is for this authoritarian agenda to succeed, and the more uncomfortable we make it for those going along with the lies and cruelty, the harder it will be to persecute any single person who says what's being done to immigrants is terrorism."
Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.
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