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When do our First Amendment rights become wrongs?

Well, when it comes to exercising your rights of free speech, assembly and petition in Tennessee, be careful. Setting up a up a tent for an overnight stay during a protest could land you in prison for up to six years.

A new law signed quietly into effect on Nov. 5 by Gov. Bill Lee changes the crime of overnight camping on state property without a permit aimed at deterring protesters who have done that from a misdemeanor to the much more serious felony. It also provides for stricter penalties and minimum jail terms for such clear threats to the republic as drawing in chalk on state property or interrupting legislators or local officials who are in a meeting.

In recent years, police have resorted to sweeps during demonstrations that operate on the theory of arrest all and sort them out later, sometimes taking into custody non-protesters simply walking to lunch or shopping. The Volunteer States new anti-protest law advocates call it criminal justice reform requires a magistrates intervention to gain early release for anyone sooner than a mandatory 12-hour minimum stay behind bars.

A move in states to silence public protest began about a decade ago, around the time of the Occupy movement. The latest Tennessee statute was sparked by demonstrators who set up camp in Nashvilles War Memorial Plaza for nearly two months this year while seeking removal of a bust of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, first leader the Ku Klux Klan, from the state Capitol building.

By some reports, as many as 40 states have considered or adopted direct or backdoor attempts modeled on a draft law prepared by a conservative alliance of legislators and corporations to restrain public protest. Some proposals include providing legal immunity for motorists who essentially absent a declaration of intent to injure or kill strike demonstrators standing in a public thoroughfare.

Some proposed laws have been deemed outright to be unconstitutional for targeting certain groups or simply for being too broad or too vague. But government officials can enact lawful restrictions on time, place and manner in how we protest. If upheld by the courts, such laws can reasonably limit the hours and locations of public demonstrations or individual protests, the size of signs or the number of people who can gather in public spaces or on sidewalks.

Such laws nonetheless can chill free speech in ways seemingly distant from the 45 words of the First Amendment. Being convicted of a felony also may mean forfeiting the rights to vote, carry a gun or obtain a professional license and negatively can affect your ability to get a job or obtain a mortgage.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis recently proposed not only felony charges on protestors, but also penalties on cities and towns deemed not to be taking appropriate law and order measures in response to demonstrations. If enacted and if the provisions survive court challenge Florida would have the harshest anti-protest laws in the nation.

DeSantis proposal, to be considered when the legislature meets in March, includes felony charges for obstructing traffic during an unauthorized protest or for toppling a monument; an initial no bail provision for those arrested during a demonstration, and a mandatory six-month jail term for anyone who strikes a law enforcement officer during a protest. Anyone who organizes or donates money to protesters would risk penalties under the states racketeering laws.

Tennessees chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said that the new law in that state law requiring 12-hour holds upon arrest, putting in place mandatory minimums and enhancing petty crimes to felony-level offenses will send a message loud and clear that Tennessee is no place to exercise your constitutional rights if state or local government entities disagree with you. An op-ed writer in the Memphis Commercial Appeal noted in August about the then-proposal that In George Orwells novel 1984, the state transforms all manner of innocuous activities into the most serious crimes because in totalitarian societies, any deviation from even the smallest part of the system is perceived as a threat to the system as a whole.

U.S. Supreme Court decisions stretching back more than 140 years have upheld our rights to assemble and petition. In 1937, the US. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in De Jonge v. Oregon that that the right to peaceably assemble for lawful discussion, however unpopular the sponsorship, cannot be made a crime. And in 1939 the court held in Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization that streets and parks have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens and discussing public questions.

Ten years later, Justice William O. Douglas, in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, wrote that free speech is intended to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.

More recent court rulings echo Douglas in acknowledgement that protest is inherently disruptive, may well be offensive or cause anguish to some, but is protected because of a need for robust public discussion around public policy and practices.

Yes, democracy is messy and public demonstrations at times may well inconvenience, insult or infuriate you and me. But legislative acts designed to restrain, remove or chill our rights to protest are not just unconstitutional, but unpatriotic.

As James Madison, author of the First Amendment, once observed about the new nation: The censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.

Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.

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FIRST FIVE: We cannot allow our First Amendment rights to become 'wrongs' - The Decatur Daily

Hannah Michelle BussaCONTRIBUTOR

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects five major rights, though Amy Coney Barrett seemed to forget during her confirmation hearings that the right to protest is one of them.

Sam Petto, the Communications Director for the ACLU of Nebraska, explained the importance of protests.

The right to join with others in protest is critical to a functioning democracy and at the core of the First Amendment, Petto said. We have a right to gather and tell the government how it can do better. The late Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo said the First Amendment is linked to nearly every other freedom. Thats how important it is.

Clarice Dombeck, a fourth-year double major in Black Studies and Sociology at UNO, actively exercises this right. She has participated in Black Lives Matter protests, the Rally for Trans Lives and the Wake Up West Omaha protest.

The right to protest is important because it serves as a tool for residents to show displeasure in our political, economic and social systems, Dombeck said. It also gives residents an opportunity to hold representatives and corporations responsible for harm they have caused.

Valeria Gaytan is a junior at UNO who has also attended and organized multiple protests this year. Her focus is speaking against the forced sterilization and abuse happening to immigrants at ICE detention facilities.

I am a Latinx individual and right now, I represent and am a voice for my people, she said. People of color have been targeted since America was founded. It is a crucial time in our history right now, and we must end this cycle of racism, oppression and division.

Andre Sessions Jr. is a senior at UNO and participated in multiple protests this summer. These protests focused on Mayor Stotherts policies, abolishing ICE and:the murders of George Floyd, James Scurlock and other Black individuals across the country.

You may not always be able to make the changes you wish to fight for, but in a lot of cases you are able to alter policies, he said. Protesting challenges those in power and this brings about debate, which brings awareness to these issues. Even the great abolitionist Fredrick Douglass said, Power concedes nothing without a demand.

The First Amendment is not something to take for granted.

These are rights that constantly take defending because they constantly come under attack, Petto said. Your best defense is always knowing your rights.

The right to protest gives the power back to we the people.

I am grateful for the right to protest because it is how I can voice my disagreement with the governments decisions and actions, Gaytan said. The power rests in the people. The right to protest is animportant right that allows our government to listen and take action to our demands.

Dombeck is grateful for the First Amendment for another reason.

I am thankful for the right to protest because it has allowed me to become more engaged in my community, he said.

I want to encourage those that have been thinking of fighting for something that they are passionate about to just get up and do it, Sessions Jr. said. Protesting is just as important as voting. Malcolm X said, A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

Gaytan emphasized the power in exercising the right to protest.

We the people have the power. Your voice is more powerful than you believe, she said.

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We the People: Gratitude for the First Amendment's right to protest - The Gateway

Justice Amy Coney Barretts first week as an active Supreme Court justice began on Nov. 2 and almost immediately included a case that could test her credentials as a religious conservative.

On the surface, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which was argued in front of the court on Nov. 4, concerns whether the city can require organizations it partners with to accept same-sex couples as foster parents.

But underneath are questions about how Barrett and her fellow justices will deal with a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that could have wider implications for religious liberty cases.

The case in front of the justices concerns how Philadelphia partners with private organizations both religious and secular to find homes for children in foster care. In 2018, Philadelphia learned that two organizations, Catholic Social Services and Bethany Christian Services, had religiously motivated policies against placing children with same-sex couples in violation of Philadelphias Fair Practices Ordinance.

Philadelphia stopped sending foster care placement requests to these organizations as a result, prompting Catholic Social Services to sue.

Lawyers for Catholic Social Services argue that Philadelphias response violates First Amendment protections of religion and speech. Two lower federal courts ruled in Philadelphias favor. It is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the lower courts got it right.

Based on the questions asked during oral arguments, Fulton could well be decided on technical grounds over whether Catholic Social Services is a contractor or licensee of Philadelphia. But from my perspective as an attorney and First Amendment scholar, Barretts questions during oral arguments are of significant interest in considering the future of First Amendment law as it pertains to religious freedom.

Specifically, they suggest that Barrett is examining a key piece of First Amendment precedent: Employment Division v. Smith.

In Employment Division v. Smith, decided in 1990, the Supreme Court held that Oregon was not required to create an exception to its drug laws to permit the use of the hallucinogenic peyote in religious rituals. Central to the case was how to balance religious freedom with the rule of law.

In writing the courts opinion in favor of the state, Justice Antonin Scalia recognized that without some kind of limit on the Constitutions religious free exercise clause, laws could become meaningless.

He held that the Constitution does not allow religious adherents to violate a neutral law of general applicability, by which he meant a law that applies to everyone and does not favor or disfavor people based on their religion or lack thereof. Because Oregons law was neutral and generally applicable, the states refusal to exempt religious peyote use from its drug laws was deemed constitutional.

The Smith ruling has always been controversial, and many conservatives have long wanted the decision overturned.

But the Smith ruling has never been simply a left-versus-right issue. After all, its author was conservative stalwart Scalia, whom Barrett worked for as a law clerk. And even before her appointment, the Supreme Courts conservative wing had the numbers to overturn Smith if they so chose.

In addition, now that Smith has been precedent for over 30 years, justices who disagree with its reasoning face the issue of stare decisis the well-established legal principle advocating against overruling past decisions whenever possible.

Notably, limitations on stare decisis were a reoccurring topic in Barretts scholarly writing during her time as a law professor.

The lawyers for Catholic Social Services have argued that the Smith ruling should be overruled. In Nov. 4s proceedings, Barrett gave substantial attention to this line of argument in her questions.

In questioning one of Catholic Social Services lawyers, Barrett asked, What would you replace Smith with? This question might suggest that Barrett views the arguments for overturning Smith as worth taking seriously.

Barrett also made the following remarks while questioning Catholic Social Services lawyer:

You argue in your brief that Smith should be overruled. But you also say that you win even under Smith because this policy is neither generally applicable nor neutral. So, if youre right about that, why should we even entertain the question whether to overrule Smith?

These comments are important. Judges generally prefer to avoid overruling past decisions when a case can be decided for other reasons. Thus, even if Barrett were to think Smith is bad law, she might not advocate overruling it in Fulton if she thinks that Catholic Social Services can win on other grounds.

Barrett wasnt alone in picking up on the Smith argument. Justice Stephen Breyer spoke in favor of Smith at the Nov. 4 hearing, saying it was a solution to a problem that nobody could figure out how to answer. This indicates that Breyer sees Smith as striking the right balance between religious freedom and the rule of law and that he is unlikely to support overruling it.

It is unlikely that Smith would need to be overruled in order for the court to overturn the lower court decisions and side with Catholic Social Services. Still, some think that Barrett and her conservative colleagues may be willing to overrule Smith at some point.

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After all, Justice Barrett herself has written that stare decisis must be flexible in fact, not just in theory.

If Smith is someday overruled, it would likely increase the ability of courts to provide religious organizations with exemptions that allow them to discriminate against LGBTQ people. But as I believe oral arguments in the Fulton case suggest, that may be the outcome even with Smith left in place.

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Amy Coney Barrett sizes up 30-year-old precedent balancing religious freedom with rule of law - The Conversation US

Richard Stengel, the top state media appointee for US President-elect Joe Bidens transition team, has enthusiastically defended the use of propaganda against Americans.

My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist, Stengel said in 2018. Im not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I dont necessarily think its that awful.

Richard Rick Stengel was the longest serving under-secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in US history.

At the State Department under President Barack Obama, Stengel boasted that he started the only entity in government, non-classified entity, that combated Russian disinformation. That institution was known as the Global Engagement Center, and it amounted to a massive vehicle for advancing US government propaganda around the world.

A committed crusader in what he openly describes as a global information war, Stengel has proudly proclaimed his dedication to the carefully management of the publics access to information.

Stengel outlined his worldview in a book he published this June, entitled Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.

Stengel has proposed rethinking the First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech and press. In 2018, he stated, Having once been almost a First Amendment absolutist, I have really moved my position on it, because I just think for practical reasons in society, we have to kind of rethink some of those things.

The Biden transition teams selection of a censorial infowarrior for its top state media position comes as a concerted suppression campaign takes hold on social media. The wave of online censorship has been overseen by US intelligence agencies, the State Department, and Silicon Valley corporations that maintain multibillion-dollar contracts with the US government.

As the state-backed censorship dragnet expands, independent media outlets increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs. In the past year, social media platforms have purged hundreds of accounts of foreign news publications, journalists, activists, and government officials from countries targeted by the United States for regime change.

Stengels appointment appears to be the clearest signal of a coming escalation by the Biden administration of the censorship and suppression of online media that is seen to threaten US imperatives abroad.

Before being appointed as the US State Departments chief propagandist in 2013, Richard Stengel was a managing editor of TIME Magazine.

In the Obama administration, Stengel not only created the Global Engagement Center propaganda vehicle; he also boasted that he led the creation of English for All, a government-wide effort to promote the teaching of English around the world.

After leaving the State Department in 2016, Stengel became a strategic advisor to Snap Inc., the company that runs the social media apps Snapchat and Bitmoji.

Stengel also found time for a fellowship at the Atlantic Council, a think tank closelylinked to NATO and the Biden camp which has received funding from the US government, Britain, the European Union, and NATO itself, along with a host of Western weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel corporations, Gulf monarchies, and Big Tech juggernauts.

Stengel worked closely with the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab, a dubious organization that has fueled efforts to censor independent media outlets in the name of fighting disinformation.

But Stengel is perhaps most well known as a regular political analyst on MSNBC in the Donald Trump era. On the network, he fueled Russiagate conspiracy theories, portraying the Republican president as a useful idiot of Russia and claiming Trump had a one-sided bromance with Vladimir Putin.

Stengel left MSNBC this November to join Bidens presidential transition. The campaign announced that he was tapped to lead the Biden-Harris agency review team for the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

USAGM is a state media propaganda organization that has its origins in a Cold War vehicle created by the CIA to spread disinformation against the Soviet Union and communist China. (The agency was previously called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, until it rebranded in 2018.)

USAGM states on its website that its most important mission is to Be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.

An agency shakeup this year produced revelations that USAGM provided clandestine assistance to separatist activists during the protests that consumed Hong Kong in 2019. The program earmarked secure communications assistance for protesters and $2 million in rapid response payouts for anti-China activists.

When Richard Stengel referred to himself as the State Departments chief propagandist, advocated the use of propaganda against the American people, and proposed to rethink the First Amendment, he was participating in a May 3, 2018 panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

During the CFR event, titled Political Disruptions: Combating Disinformation and Fake News, Stengel hyped up the threat of supposed Russian disinformation, a vague term that is increasingly used as an empty signifier for any narrative that offends the sensibilities of Washingtons foreign policy establishment.

Stengel stated that he was obsessed with fighting disinformation, and made it clear he has a particular obsession with Moscow, accusing the Russians of engaging in full spectrum disinformation.

Joining him on stage was political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill, who mourned that alternative media platforms publish things that seem like they could be true thats the sphere where its particularly difficult to debunk them its this gray region, this gray zone, where its not traditional disinformation, but a combination of misinformation and play on rumors, conspiracy theories, sort of gray propaganda, thats where I think the nub or the crux of the problem lies.

Stengel approved, adding, By the way those terms, the gray zone, are all from Russian active measures, that theyve been doing for a million years.

The panelists made no effort to hide their disdain for independent and foreign media outlets. Stengel stated clearly that a news cartel of mainstream corporate media outlets had long dominated US society, but he bemoaned that those cartels dont have hegemony like they used to.

Stengel made it clear that his mission is to counter the alternative perspectives given a voice by foreign media platforms that challenge the US-dominated media landscape.

The bad actors use journalistic objectivity against us. And the Russians in particular are smart about this, Stengel grumbled.

He singled out Russias state-funded media network, RT, lamenting that Vladimir Putin, when they launched Russia Today, said it was an antidote to the American English hegemony over the world media system. Thats how people saw it.

Ben Decker, a research fellow at the Misinformation Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, lamented that RT is invading every weekly finance media space.

But Decker was cheered by the proliferation of US oligarchs committed to retaking control of the narrative. In America and across the world, he stated, the donor community is very eager to address this problem, and very eager to work with communities of researchers, academics, journalists, etc. to target this problem.

I think that there is an appetite to solve this from the top down, he continued, urging the many academics in the audience to apply for grant money in order to fight this Russian disinformation.

The CFR panel culminated with an African audience member rising from the crowd and confronting Stengel: Because what is happening in America is what the United States flipped on the Global South and in the Third World, which we lived with, for many, many years, in terms of a master narrative that was and still is propaganda, the man declared.

Rather than respond, Stengel rudely ignored the question and made his way hurriedly for the exit: You know what, I hate last questions. Dont you? I never, I usually just want to end something before the last question.

The video of the revealing confrontation caused such a furor that CFRs YouTube account disabled comments and made the video unlisted. It cannot be found in a search on Google or YouTube; it can only be found with the direct link.

The video of the full discussion is embedded below:

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Biden state media appointee advocated using propaganda against Americans and 'rethinking' First Amendment - The Grayzone

The election of Joe Biden as the next President of the United States has come as a great relief to Natzieli Alvarezand nearly 650,000 other undocumented immigrants, who are protected from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

It seems that the United States in some circumstances understands the importance of the First Amendment, but whenever confronted with a situation where it doesnt like the type of speech or the speaker, it willfully ignores that obligation.

As a nine-year-old in 1995, Alvaraz crossed the border with her mother and sister to escape poverty and domestic violence in Mexico. She lived an underground existence until the establishment of DACA in 2012. But for the past three years, President Donald Trump has tried to dismantle this program.

The only thing I had to get me through was hope; hope that we would get him out. Just the hate he spewed. It was just too much, says Alvarez, who now lives in Medfield, North Carolina, and is active in the immigrant rights group, Siembra NC.

DACA is one of the protections Biden has pledged to restore. He can do this without Congressional approval. And thats also true for more than 400 other executive actions that Trump has unilaterally implemented in an unprecedented assault on immigration.

A more challenging task would be Bidens desire to create a roadmap to citizenship for the nearly eleven million people who have been living in and strengthening our country for years.

In the meantime, simply returning immigration to the pre-Trump days wont suffice. Alvarez, like many activists, wants to be treated the same as everyone else. We are here to remind people that you can plant roots here because you live here, she says.

Biden should instruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as Customs and Border Protection, to stop treating asylum seekers as criminals. And when immigrants do run afoul of the law, that shouldnt be a pretext for deportation.

So many individuals who have a single offense from many years ago have gone through the criminal justice system, paid their debt to society, and suddenly find themselves subject to deportation, says Alina Das, co-director of New York University School of Laws Immigrant Rights Clinic.

Ravi Ragbir, fifty-six, for example, is now fighting deportation to Trinidad and Tobago, arguing that the Trump Administration has singled him out because of his activism as executive director of the New York City-based New Sanctuary Coalition. Das, who is representing Ragbir, notes that a 2001 fraud conviction was the basis for revoking his permanent residency.

Previous administrations recognized Ragbirs contributions, and did not go ahead with deportation.

But the Trump Administration detained him for deportation in January 2018. Although Ragbirs case is still being fought out in the courts, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals recognized that he has provided plausibleindeed, strongevidence that officials responsible for the decision to deport did so based on their disfavor of Ragbirs speech.

The attempt to deport Ragbir is one of 1,010 retaliatory actions by immigration enforcement in recent years now documented on an interactive website established by the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic and the New Sanctuary Coalition.

It seems that the United States in some circumstances understands the importance of the First Amendment, says Angelo Guisado, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights. But whenever confronted with a situation where it doesnt like the type of speech or the speaker, it willfully ignores that obligation.

Guisado was one of the lawyers who represented three undocumented workers and the immigrants rights group Migrant Justice in a lawsuit recently settled with the federal government. The three are active in Migrant Justice, which organizes dairy farmworkers in Vermont. They claimed they were singled out for arrest and deportation because of their political activism. An informant was even used to spy on the group.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington, alleged First Amendment and other constitutional violations by ICE. In the settlement, the government agreed to pay plaintiffs a total of $100,000 and not proceed with their deportation. ICE, while not admitting wrongdoing, agreed to remind its agents in the Vermont field office that the First Amendment must be respected.

Bidens immigration plan calls for ending for-profit detention centers. His platform also seeks an end to long-term detention and a greater use of alternatives.

The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles was also a defendant because it shared information about applications for Drivers Privilege Cards with ICE. A 2013 state law allows undocumented immigrants to drive with such a card. This part of the lawsuit was settled last January with tighter restrictions to protect applicants.

The message is that ICE needs to get its hands off the community because workers understand that what we are doingorganizing and speaking outthats something that is constitutionally protected, says Enrique Balcazar Sanchez, one of the plaintiffs.

Biden should follow the lead of localities and states that have adopted sanctuary laws and policies to prohibit local law enforcement from engaging in various collaborations and information sharing with ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

Das, who is the author of a new book, No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants, says Biden could end the Secure Communities program, which shares fingerprints taken by local law enforcement with ICE, and no longer deputize local police for immigration enforcement. And she calls on the new administration to stop requesting that local jails hold on to immigrants who have completed jail time until they are picked up by ICE agents for detention and deportation.

Bidens immigration plan calls for ending for-profit detention centers. His platform also seeks an end to long-term detention and a greater use of alternatives.

But there needs to be a much deeper dive into detention. The number of immigrants locked up by ICEsometimes for years in deplorable conditionsballooned from a daily average of 34,376 in fiscal 2016 to 54,000 in June 2019.

This sharp increase was fueled by Trumps zero tolerance policy, which doubled down on a punitive trend of charging asylum seekers with criminal violationssuch as illegal entry or re-entry into the United States.

Clearly, this is no way to treat asylum seekers, who should not be criminally charged. Nor need they be detained by ICE. Instead, they should be released to sponsors, often family members, while awaiting resolution of their asylum claims.

In 2020, the idea that you have to lock up a person in a cage as part of a civil proceeding makes no sense, says Das.

Over the past year, the ICE detention population plummeted to about 17,000 by early November 2020but for the wrong reason.

Trumps use of the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to close the borders in March to asylum seekers has resulted in nearly 200,000 immigrants being turned away by the end of September without so much as a hearing before an immigration judge.

ICEs continued detention of a thirty-three-year-old Mexican immigrant, Carolina, shows how entrenched the agency is in the Trumpian mindset.

Carolina, who asked to be identified by first name only, survived severe abuse from her former partner who, according to court papers, beat her so badly that she was in a coma for a month. She and her family were also threatened by a criminal cartel, which tried to extort them. Police would not intervene to protect her, says her lawyer, Zachary Sanders, director of Immigration Legal Services for Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio.

In 2015, Carolina and her son, who is now fourteen, sought asylum in the United States. She was initially allowed to stay with family in the Cincinnati area. But her arrest for driving while under the influence in December 2019, which resulted in a misdemeanor plea, prompted ICE to detain her at the Butler County Correctional Complex, near Cincinnati.

This past August, Immigration Judge Bruce Imbacuan granted Carolina asylum. He found that she had credibly testified about her abuse, which caused traumatic injuries.

Still, ICE has kept Carolina in detention, away from her family, while it appeals the judges ruling.

Its like hell in here, where I am separated from my son. Life just goes, Carolina tells The Progressive.

At Butler, she says, guards, have not worn masks, and the inmates often dont cover their nose and mouth.

She can only hope Bidens election will bring change. In my heart, I believe it is betterfor everyone.

Trumps March border closures followed three years of executive branch directives that have all but blocked the United States from becoming a safe haven for the persecuted.

It has got to be a restart from essentially a dead stop, says Kate Jastram, director of policy and advocacy for the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.

Bidens campaign platform says that he will rescind a wide range of Trumps restrictive asylum policiesincluding the Migrant Protection Protocols, which have forced more than 67,000 asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while U.S. immigration courts consider their cases.

Trump has also reduced to a trickleabout 11,000 for the fiscal year that just endedthe number of refugees admitted from abroad for resettlement. Biden says hell increase the annual admissions to 125,000 and end Trumps Muslim ban, prohibitions on issuing visas to people from thirteen nations, many with Muslim majority populations.

Biden must also reopen the borders to asylum seekers, who should be valued as more important than the essential traffic that continues to make daily crossings.

Rather than imposing a ban or suspension on people seeking protection from harm, U.S. authorities should use evidence-based public health measures to process asylum seekers and others crossing the U.S. border, says a May letter from fifty-seven leading health experts to top Department of Health and Human officials.

Biden has said not another foot of border wall will be constructed on his watch and that a government task force will be established to help reunite the 666 children separated from their families by Trump.

And while Biden says he will end prosecution of parents for minor immigration violations, such an approach does not go nearly far enough to address an immigration bureaucracy out of control. He should also push lawmakers to rethink how ICE and Customs and Border Protection have trampled on rights and instilled fear in immigrant communities.

As Angelo Guisado of the Center for Constitutional Rights puts it: We need something that is more in line with our values as a society.

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A New Vision for Immigration - Progressive.org - Progressive.org