Julián Castro Critica Las “Desquiciadas” Políticas De Inmigración De Donald Trump
El candidato demócrata a la presidencia de EE.UU. Julián Castro
escoltó el lunes a una docena de solicitantes de asilo al paso
fronterizo entre Estados Unidos y México situado en la ciudad de
Brownsville, en el estado de Texas, en un intento por desafiar la
llamada política de “Permanecer en México” del presidente Trump.
El grupo incluía a una mujer salvadoreña con discapacidad y a sus
familiares, así como a nueve personas pertenecientes a la comunidad
LGBTQ de Cuba, Guatemala y Honduras. Muchos de ellos han indicado que
fueron amenazados y agredidos durante el periodo de tiempo que se han
visto forzados a esperar en la ciudad fronteriza mexicana de Matamoros
hasta que se procese su solicitud de asilo.
A los solicitantes de asilo que acompañaba Castro se les negó la entrada a Estados Unidos.
En Twitter, Castro escribió “Por ley, se supone que estos migrantes
están exentos de la política de Permanecer en México, pero @CBP [la
Agencia de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza] ha decidido ignorar su
debido proceso. Indignante”.
Compartimos la entrevista en inglés a Julian Castro, quien habló con
https://www.democracynow.org desde la ciudad de San Antonio, en el
estado de Texas, donde fue alcalde desde 2009 a 2014 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Democratic presidential
candidate and former Housing Secretary Julián Castro. On Monday, he
escorted a dozen asylum seekers to the U.S. port of entry at
Brownsville, Texas, in a challenge to President Trump’s “Remain in
Mexico” policy. The group included a disabled Salvadoran woman and her
relatives, as well as nine LGBTQ people from Cuba, Guatemala and
Honduras. Many of them report they’ve been threatened and assaulted
while they’ve been forced to wait in the Mexican border city of
Matamoros. The asylum seekers were refused entry into the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: On Twitter, Julián Castro wrote, quote,
“By law, these migrants are supposed to be exempt from the Remain in
Mexico policy—but @CBP [Customs and Border Protection] had decided to
ignore their due process. Outrageous.”
Julián Castro joins us now from San Antonio, the city where he served as
mayor from 2009 to 2014, now attempting to become the first Latino
president of the United States.
Secretary Castro, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you tell us exactly what you did this week? JULIÁN CASTRO: Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for having me.
So, I was invited by the Texas Civil Rights Project, that works with
migrants who are seeking asylum and who have been caught up in the Trump
administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy — technically called the
Migrant Protection Protocol policy — which has them claim asylum here,
and then sends them to wait in Mexico while their asylum claim is
adjudicated. I had been asked to visit Matamoros, on the other side of
Brownsville, Texas, because you have about a thousand people who are
there, who — most of whom are seeking asylum, waiting for their court
dates, that are caught up in this “Remain in Mexico” policy.
And we wanted to highlight especially the claims of members of the LGBTQ
community and also one person who is disabled. She’s deaf. We were
highlighting them specifically because under the terms of the “Remain in
Mexico” policy itself, somebody with a physical issue or mental health
trauma is supposed to be exempted. In other words, they’re supposed to
be allowed to remain in the United States while their claim is
adjudicated, instead of being sent back to Mexico. These members of the
LGBTQ community, they have been persecuted. They’ve been subjected to
violence. They’ve been threatened. They’re suffering trauma and, some of
them, PTSD. And so, we believe that they should qualify for that
exemption because of the mental health trauma they’re going through. And
the person who is deaf has a physical disability, a physical issue. She
never should have been put in that program in the first place.
And let me just say, you know, when I went over there, as I mentioned,
there are over a thousand people. They’re all living in tents. They told
me, to a person, that they don’t have clean water to drink, that a lot
of the kids there are sick. I saw children as young as 12 days old, a
baby that was 12 days old. They’re living basically in a field that’s
right near the river, the Rio Grande river, and right next to the border
station. So, these are people who are in desperate circumstances,
living in unsanitary conditions, in squalor, not knowing what’s going to
happen to them, and pleading for help.
We took these 12 individuals to present to the Border Patrol agents,
CBP. And they were eventually interviewed, and then they were all sent
back. They were all denied any kind of relief under the exemption in the
MPP policy. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Secretary Castro, I wanted to ask
you, because, obviously, Mexico has to participate in this “Remain in
Mexico” policy. And I don’t know if you saw the op-ed piece that Jorge
Ramos, the co-anchor of the national Univision News had in The New York
Times this week, where he said Mexico may not be paying for the wall,
the Trump wall, but Mexico has effectively become the wall and is
participating in this attempt of President Trump to prevent more people
from coming into the country. I’m wondering about your sense of the
Mexican policy under President López Obrador? JULIÁN CASTRO: Yeah, I did not see that op-ed, but I
think that Jorge puts it very well there, that — you know, that this was
something that Mexico agreed to. And to me, that was surprising, given
the history of López Obrador and what I thought he would stand for and
do once he was in office.
The other thing that’s been a concern is that, you know, of course, for
the municipality, for Matamoros and for the state government there, they
do have a responsibility to help make sure that these individuals are
safe, that they’re living in sanitary conditions. I was told by one
person on the other side of the border that the city is trying to do
something, but trying to get folks to move to a different part of the
community, of the city, where they’re trying to — they’ve tried to
establish more sanitary conditions and better living conditions. I don’t
know whether that’s accurate or not — it may well be accurate — but
that there’s a hesitancy among the migrants there because of the lack of
safety in other parts of the community. And, you know, they feel like
they want to be there, of course, near the Border Patrol station, when
they have their hearing, or there’s just this sense of being close to
the United States. And so they’ve been hesitant to go to that other
place that may have been established by the city for them to be at. AMY GOODMAN: So what are you demanding of the president right now? JULIÁN CASTRO: Well, he should end this policy. If I
were elected president, I would immediately end this “Remain in Mexico”
policy. It flies in the face of the United States policy of allowing
people who are making a claim of asylum to remain in the United States
while their claim is adjudicated.
So we need to do a couple things. Number one, we need to end this policy
and allow people to remain in the safety of the United States.
Secondly, and just as importantly, we actually need to create an
independent immigration court system, that’s independent from the
Department of Justice, with enough judges and support staff to hear
these asylum claims and get people an answer in a timely manner. Some
people will get asylum. We also know that some people will not. But
people should not be waiting years to get an answer on their asylum
claim. AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about The New York Times
report recently reporting President Trump privately pushed for shooting
migrants and for creating a, quote, “water-filled trench, stocked with
snakes or alligators,” along the U.S.-Mexico border; the Times also
detailing how Trump has privately proposed other radical measures to
curtail immigration, including closing the entire U.S.-Mexico border and
building an electrified border wall topped with spikes to pierce human
flesh; the Times revealing Trump has repeatedly raised the idea of
shooting migrants during staff meetings; the paper reporting, “After
publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks,
the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But
later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot
migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they
told him.” The Times article is based on the new book, Border Wars:
Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, by the Times reporters Michael D.
Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis. Julián Castro, if you could respond? JULIÁN CASTRO: I mean, that’s the product of a
deranged mind right there. What else can we say about that, except
that’s an individual with a deranged mind and, obviously, a lot of hate
toward these migrants? And, you know, this is the caliber of person
that’s sitting in the Oval Office right now. It’s just one more example
of why he should not be president of the United States, somebody who is
not only hateful, but who is so divorced from reality that he would, on
multiple occasions, bring up the idea of shooting people. It makes no
sense.
I hope that more and more Americans are paying attention to the
depravity of this president and the cruelty that he’s inflicted on
people that are simply seeking a better life. And that’s consistent with
people from different places all over the world that have come seeking a
better life, who have come from desperate circumstances throughout the
generations. And so, this is nothing new in our country’s history or the
history of the world.
And my hope is that this president is going to be held to account for
what he’s done in terms of violating his oath of office and abusing his
power, that he will be impeached, that he will be removed from office.
If he is not impeached and removed, he’s going to be defeated on
November 3rd, 2020, and that this nightmare, with respect to how he’s
treating migrants, will be over. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Secretary Castro, I wanted to ask you
also, because the president often talks about how he’s opposed to people
coming into the country illegally, but the reality is that his policies
in terms of even legal immigration are dramatically different from past
policy. I think the Census Bureau is reporting we had the lowest number
of legal immigrants admitted into the country, just a couple hundred
thousand compared to an average of about a million a year in many past
years, the reduction in refugee admissions, the clampdown on asylum
requests. Could you talk about his policy toward legal immigration? JULIÁN CASTRO: Yeah. You know, sometimes it makes some
folks feel good when they can say, “Well, you know, I’m not really
against, or the president is not really against immigration; he’s
against undocumented immigrants, or so-called illegal immigrants.” But
as you point out, clearly, this is an assault on all immigrants,
undocumented and documented. This public charge rule that they’ve
proposed, that would essentially chill legal immigrants from
participating in American life, the cutbacks to the number of refugees
that we’ll accept, also this asylum policy that has been tightened, this
“Remain in Mexico” policy, that would deal with potential asylees — in
all of these ways, the president has sought to curtail legal
immigration. So, at the bottom of this is truly a vision of America that
looks like Donald Trump. That’s what he wants. That’s what he’s trying
to create. And so, people should not fool themselves.
What I believe is that our diversity in this country makes us strong,
that we can harness the potential of immigrants, and that, for
generations, immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have made
this country stronger, have powered our economy, have helped ensure that
we continue to move forward as a nation. And that’s going to continue
to be the case in the future. And I believe that we should increase the
number of people that we’re taking in as refugees and asylees, and that
we should put undocumented immigrants who are here in the United States
on a pathway to citizenship, as long as they have not committed a
serious crime here in the United States. That’s what I would do as
president.
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