Columnist Sara Weinberger: In defense of immigrants

Sara Weinberger

Sara Weinberger

By SARA WEINBERGER

Published: 03-17-2025 8:01 AM

Trump won the November election with a promise to deport millions of immigrants who crossed our southern border. He spewed propaganda, calling them drug dealers, invaders, violent criminals, rapists, murderers, illegals, terrorists; people who come to take our jobs, claim citizenship for the babies they birth within our borders; who deliver the fentanyl that kills American children.

Many of us recognize Trump’s demonization of our Central and South American neighbors as an effort to realize a white supremacist vision of the United States. The opposition, of which I am proudly a member, regards immigrants, with or without papers, as human beings.

Our immigrant neighbors are the people who work low-wage jobs that most Americans don’t want. They are the laborers who grow our produce, build our infrastructure, keep our restaurants open for business, labor on farms, in slaughterhouses, in factories. They pay taxes. The children who accompany them on their journeys attend our schools and dream the American dream. Only it’s not available to them.

While Trump imagines a USA devoid of immigrants, we worry how our economy will survive without them.

In the meantime, in western Massachusetts, many immigrant families are afraid to leave their homes to go grocery shopping, some keeping their children home from school, panicked by rumors of ICE in their communities. The fear generated by Trump’s promises of mass deportations has spread to immigrants who are here legally under a variety of programs.

These humanitarian relief programs, which are temporary and do not include a path to citizenship, include Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Deferred Enforced Departure, and Humanitarian Parole. Trump has already suspended some of these programs, and the likelihood that people will be granted extensions to avoid returning to dangerous countries is slim under this administration.

With the U.S. southern border closed to asylum seekers and the suspension of refugee programs, there are almost no options for those seeking safety. Their futures rest on the whims of an impulsive and ruthless dictator.

Even those with green cards, providing permanent residency, aren’t safe. Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian protester with a green card, was seized by ICE and taken to a detention center in Louisiana. Trump has warned that this is “the first arrest of many to come.” As of this writing, Khalil has not been charged with a crime and a judge has temporarily blocked his deportation.

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Trump’s alarming threats of deportation are used to keep us from asserting our First Amendment right to free speech.

We owe it to those who have no voice to defend and protect our immigrant neighbors, regardless of their immigration status. Trump’s attacks on free speech and immigrants of color will only spread to other groups. Spanish-speaking American citizens of color are increasingly making sure their passports are with them, after reports that some have been stopped by ICE.

At the state level, passing just laws can strengthen Massachusetts’ ability to protect immigrants from detainment, deportation, and family separation, including the following three bills:

■The Dignity Not Deportations bill prohibits Massachusetts from engaging in 287(g) agreements. These contracts allow states to rent beds in their jails for ICE detainees and permit law enforcement to be deputized as ICE workers, creating increased capacity for ICE to detain and deport greater numbers of people.

Being undocumented is a civil, not a criminal offense under federal law, yet the nearly 400 people incarcerated at Plymouth County Jail are subjected to extreme cold, poor food, inadequate medical care, harassment from guards, solitary confinement, and ignored grievances. Plymouth Jail, the only facility in Massachusetts currently contracting with ICE, can hold up to 400 immigrant detainees.

■The Safe Communities Act ends cooperation between public safety personnel and ICE by limiting voluntary police and court involvement in civil immigration matters, protecting basic rights, and keeping law enforcement agencies focused on public safety. State and local involvement with ICE discourages immigrant victims of crime and exploitation from seeking police and court protection — whether from domestic violence, wage theft, or unsafe living or working conditions.

Immigrant communities need certainty that contact with local authorities will not result in family separation.

■The Immigrant Legal Defense Act would create a funded statewide program to provide no-cost immigration legal defense to immigrants in Massachusetts who are at imminent risk of deportation, especially those held in federal immigration detention. There is no right to a government-paid lawyer in immigration court. Immigrants who cannot afford a lawyer must navigate our complex immigration system alone. Those represented by counsel are five times more likely to win relief from deportation if they are represented by counsel. Detained immigrants with a lawyer are 10 times more likely to win relief than are detained immigrants without one.

Contact your state senator and representative and implore them to co-sponsor these bills. Here’s how to find them: https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator.

Call your representative to demand the immediate release of Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention: congress.gov/members/find-your-member.

Imagine the impact if everyone who read this column took 10 minutes to make these calls. Keyboard warriors, get to your phones and computers and take action now.

Sara Weinberger lives in Easthampton.