Denouncing federal immigration raids as a form of \u201cethnic cleansing,\u201d Rep. Maxine Waters and a group of U.S. citizens announced Monday that they were petitioning the United Nations to investigate the Trump administration sweeps for potential human rights violations. <\/p>\n
Sitting beside famed civil rights activist Delores Huerta, Waters told reporters that the crackdown was untenable and would tear the country apart if left unchecked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people are targeted because of how they look or the language they speak, the government is absolutely failing,\u201d Waters said. \u201cWe cannot rely upon the administration to police itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Filed partly on behalf of four U.S. citizens, including a pregnant woman who was shackled and detained during one raid, the petition accuses federal agents of waging a campaign of \u2018\u2019ethnic cleansing against Latino minorities in the United States,\u201d and calls on the U.N. Human Rights Council to appoint independent investigators to scrutinize \u201ckidnapping arrests, prolonged detentions without due process of law and the brutal excessive use of force.\u201d<\/p>\n
The petition, which was filed by civil rights attorney Luis Carrillo, states that \u201cthe actions of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Border Patrol, F.B.I. and others have caused countless human rights violations that can only be remedied by this Council.\u201d <\/p>\n
Petitioners argue that domestic efforts to stop \u201croundups\u201d of immigrants have failed, because the Supreme Court lifted a federal judge\u2019s ban on \u201croving patrols\u201d and found that agents can stop individuals based on their appearance, the language they speak, where they are located or their vocation. <\/p>\n
In addition to the four U.S. citizens, the petition states that it was also filed on behalf of \u201cmillions of Latino immigrants and U.S. citizens within the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n
The announcement comes a day before President Trump is slated to speak before the U.N. General Assembly. Federal immigration authorities dismissed the petition as a dangerous stunt that would inflame tensions.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaxine Waters is a radical sanctuary politician who is fanning the flames of hatred in this country with her dangerous rhetoric,\u201d read a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of garbage about ICE and Border Patrol agents engaging in an \u2018ethnic cleansing,\u2019 and racial profiling vilifies our law enforcement. This demonization is inspiring violence across the country. Our ICE officers are facing a more than 1000% increase in assaults against them. We have to turn down the temperature before someone else is killed. This violence must end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huerta, a lion of the Latino civil rights movement who helped organize farm workers, told reporters Monday that the ongoing federal immigration raids were the worst she has ever seen, and that an appeal to the the United Nations was the only option left. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 95 years old,\u201d Huerta said. \u201cI lived through Operation Wetback when they were deporting people at that time, but I never saw any kind of abuse like was seen today when people are being kidnapped off the street, taken away in unmarked cars, when the people that are kidnapping them are masked nobody knows who they are, when people have been brutalized the way that they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The often brutal immigration sweeps of the Eishenhower administration \u2014 which bore the name of a racial slur \u2014 targeted Latinos and deported more than one million immigrants. Trump hailed the effort during his campaign and said that it was a model \u201cdeportation force.\u201d<\/p>\n
The petition cites several citizens and legal residents who were detained, or beaten during immigration operations, including Cary Lopez Alvarado, 23, who tearfully recounted the day in June that U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped her in Hawthorne by her husband\u2019s work. She was nine months pregnant and they were \u201cpulling me and dragging me, handcuffing me from the back, which later turned to shackles under my belly,\u201d she recalled as she held her three-month-old baby in her arms. <\/p>\n
After she was released, she went to the hospital where doctors told her she had already dilated two centimeters. The petition said that \u201cexcessive use of force\u201d by Border Patrol officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents caused her to give birth prematurely. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I see a vehicle that looks like theirs, I\u2019m scared that you might try to pull me over,\u201d she said. \u201cI still live in fear.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denouncing federal immigration raids as a form of \u201cethnic cleansing,\u201d Rep. Maxine Waters and a group of U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[26885,150027,4094,3590,150028,150026,150029,68878,15812,17955,150025,2725,457,108441,8406,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-444601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-border-patrol","9":"tag-brutal-excessive-use","10":"tag-country","11":"tag-day","12":"tag-domestic-effort","13":"tag-ethnic-cleansing","14":"tag-federal-immigration-agent","15":"tag-force","16":"tag-ice","17":"tag-immigrant","18":"tag-l-a-petition","19":"tag-law","20":"tag-people","21":"tag-u-s-citizen","22":"tag-united-nations","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115251079406123167","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}