Immigration: "Biden administration has the opportunity to undo the evil of the past"

US President Joe Biden has promised to regularize 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States.

AP - Meg Kinnard

Text by: Eric de Salve Follow

5 mins

From his first day in the White House, Joe Biden took the opposite view of Donald Trump in matters of immigration: suspension of the construction of the wall on the Mexican border, end of the “muslim ban”, 100-day moratorium on expulsions, promise of massive regularizations of 11 million undocumented migrants.

This Tuesday, February 2, the new American president is due to announce new measures.

Many migrant associations immediately applauded these decrees while remaining cautious.

This is the case of Edwin Carmona-Cruz, legal advisor for people in an irregular situation in California and head of the “California Collaborative For Immigrant Justice”, a coalition of organizations defending migrants.

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RFI: After four years of a fiercely anti-immigration policy by the Trump administration, does the new immigration plan announced by Joe Biden sound like a relief for you?

Edwin Carmona-Cruz:

I am relieved but I remain very careful.

Because whatever the administration in power, Republican or Democrat, many punitive measures remain.

We are in the midst of a pandemic and thousands of people are currently being held in

detention centers

across the country.

In California, more than 50 organizations including mine and the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union, the leading NGO for the defense of freedoms in the United States, Editor's note] are asking that all detainees be released immediately.

This new Biden plan on immigration and the administrative regularizations that accompany it are just one part of a much larger immigration system in the United States.

However, the great good news of the Biden plan on immigration is its inclusiveness with the promise to regularize not only the

beneficiaries of the DACA

[which protects young illegals who arrived on American soil before the age of 16, Ed], but also the millions of people who have lived in the United States for many years in an irregular situation.

This is a great relief to many of my own family who will directly benefit from this new Biden plan.

However, we do not yet know clearly the criteria for benefiting from these administrative regularizations. 

This Tuesday, Joe Biden is to announce the launch of a task force supposed to bring together more than 600 children still separated from their families by the Trump administration.

Do you think the United States is done with the brutal treatment of migrants and undocumented migrants?

I think it will continue.

The ICE [federal customs and border control agency], the anti-immigration police was created in 2003 with the Department of Homeland Security to respond to fear after the attacks of September 11.

These police officers have been trained to arrest and detain as many people as possible.

They were trained to

separate thousands of families

and evict them.

They will therefore continue to do this work.

Now the Biden administration will undoubtedly demand more accountability from them.

But I'm skeptical because Republicans are already opposing Biden's immigration plan, the contents of which we don't even know in detail yet.

We know it will be a long battle in Congress and the Democrats have a slim majority.

Upon coming to power Joe Biden decreed a 100-day moratorium on evictions but this moratorium is currently blocked and challenged in Texas justice.

On the other hand, the Biden administration is one thing but at the same time, in California for example, there are many counties where elected officials and local officials share exactly the same views as the Trump administration.

And they are still there. 

However, do you think that deportations, especially of people who have lived in the United States for years, will decrease with the new Biden administration?

The Biden administration has the opportunity to undo the evil of the past.

But among the people I help, family members and friends in an irregular situation, the fear is still constant.

Whether under the Trump administration, Obama or now Biden, if you are undocumented, you always have a target behind your back.

The Obama administration has expelled a record number of people.

It's true, under Trump, the priority order was to arrest and deport all illegal immigrants but this resulted in an incredible job of thousands of local activists who managed to reduce cooperation between the ICE and the local police and therefore to limit the number of arrests.

Suddenly, although for the past four years the Trump administration has been one of the most radical administrations under which any immigrant was in danger, despite this, thanks to the work of activists across the country, the number evictions has not been as high as under the Obama administration.

So with Biden, yeah, that's the general relief, people are a little more comfortable.

But as long as there are no regularizations, people in an irregular situation will remain in fear. 

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To read also: United States: the immigration reform announced by Biden raises many hopes

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