Jobs with Justice joined Senator Ed Markey today at the Chelsea Collaborative for a press conference. He released a copy of his report Under the Radar: The Trump Administration’s Stealth Attack on the U.S. Immigration System that details dozens of policy changes from the Trump administration that directly harm our neighbors. Several women directly impacted by these cruel policies spoke about their experience.

By reviewing the near totality of the Trump administration’s actions during the first two years of the president’s term, we can see that these policy changes all function in concert with one another, seeking to fulfill a perverse vision that erases the existence of immigrants in theUnited States.

This report is divided into three sections. The first exposes the Trump administration’sconstruction of an immigration system hostile to those it is intended to serve. In addition to the high-profile decisions to rescind protections for vast numbers of immigrants, President Trump has rewritten the rules to make it as difficult as possible for immigrants to obtain or retain legalstatus in the United States. Whether by preventing immigrants from obtaining humanitarianprotections, eliminating pathways to legal immigration, or denying immigration benefits, thisadministration wants to shut the doors on those lawfully seeking entry to our country and imperil the legal status of those already here.

The second section details how immigrants have been subject to the relentless enforcement activities of the Trump administration. The Trump administration has been employing draconianenforcement policies and aggressive policing practices. In effect, the administration has empowered a merciless deportation force.

The closing off of longstanding avenues to relief for immigrants addressed insection one, and the expanded enforcement actions against them discussedin section two, reflect the Trump administration’s twin aims of barricadingthe country from current and future migration and unabashedly targeting immigrants already here. In practice, President Trump has manufactured an unforgiving and ever-growing path to deportation, denial, and exclusion.

The final section covers policy changes affecting our immigration courts. The Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is responsible for adjudicating immigration cases. Under the Trump administration, EOIR has drastically reshaped our immigration courts tohasten deportations and undermine immigrants’ due process rights — brazenly citing the Trump-created surge of immigration cases as justification for hurrying cases to resolution and rolling back immigrants’ rights.

At every opportunity, President Trump has embraced policies that upend the lives of those seeking promise and security in the United States. While many of those policies have beenheadline news, others reflect a stealth anti-immigration campaign. But no less than the high- profile measures, the Trump administration’s quiet anti-immigrant actions chip away at ouridentity as a nation of immigrants.

Full Report: https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/UNDER%20THE%20RADAR.pdf