Indians hit by Trump crackdown
ZERO TOLERANCE GOP distances itself from Trump’s migration policy, to hold crunch talks as White House digs in heels
WASHINGTON: There are at least 52 men from India among asylum seekers being held in US prisons as part of Trump administration’s continuing zero-tolerance crackdown on illegal immigration that has led to the separation of families and removal of children from their parents.
The Indians, mostly Punjabi and Hindi speakers, are being held in a federal detention centre in Oregon, Washington state, among a group of 123 people held for allegedly crossing into the US illegally along the Mexico border.
Some of them identified themselves as Sikhs and Christians and said they were fleeing persecution by Hindu majority in India, according to The Oregonian newspaper. It could not be immediately confirmed if they had been separated from their families.
The group in Oregon was discovered during a tour of the facility by a delegation of US lawmakers. The others in this all-male group were from China, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan and Ukraine.
They told the lawmakers that there are locked up 22 to 23 hours a day, three to a cell, The Oregonian reported. Those with families have said they have no information about their wives and children. A recent meeting with some lawyers was their first contact with the outside world in days, they added.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have been in touch with the detainees. Some other bodies have sought volunteers from the Indian American community for those from India, most of whom can only speak and understand Punjabi or Hindi.
The administration has said 10,000 of the 12,000 children in US detention facilities were those who were sent by their parents alone to be smuggled illegally into the US and 2,000 were separated from parents when their families crossed over illegally.
“We must always arrest people coming into our country illegally,” President Trump tweeted on Tuesday, defending his administration against the growing outrage among conservatives and liberals alike. All four living former first ladies have criticised it in rare public statements.
But Trump has shown no sign of ending the practice and has continued to falsely blame Democrats for it.
“Democrats are the problem,” he wrote in a tweet. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country.”
Democrats have accused the president of leveraging the plight of the children to seek support for his immigration plan of enhanced border security— including funding for a wall along the Mexico border — and end to family-based migration and diversity visa.
Republicans in Congress are trying to find a way out of a political bind imposed by Trump, who is showing no sign of abandoning his policy of separating children and parents who illegally cross the US border with Mexico.
Several Republican lawmakers said they would introduce or were working on legislation to stop family separations.