PHOENIX — Marisa Franco, Director and Co-Founder of Mijente, the national digital and grassroots hub for Latinx and Chicanx organizing, released the following statement in response to the White House proposal on the southern border and the government shutdown:
“The crisis that is at the border and now across the federal government are manufactured by the Trump Administration, and the proposal that President Trump offers is a hollow concession and an attempted deal that should be wholly rejected by members of Congress. Immigrant communities should not be forced to choose between a more humanitarian response at the US/Mexico border and the preservation of DACA and TPS programs. Furthermore, federal workers and the millions who expect a functioning federal government should not be bargained away as leverage.
Congress must not consider any part of Trump’s proposal and reject it in full. In his proposal, Trump intends to grant tech companies $675m to build a surveillance wall. We strongly condemn this plan. A surveillance wall would be even more dangerous than a physical wall for immigrant communities. Continuous monitoring, flawed facial recognition, and sentiment analysis to figure out whether someone is ‘dangerous’ or not all result in incredibly alarming directions for migrants. The practice of using border communities as a laboratory for surveillance and law enforcement programs must end and is a threat to the civil liberties and human rights to all Americans.”
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Mijente is a political, digital, and grassroots hub for Latinx and Chicanx organizing and movement building. Launched in 2015, Mijente seeks to strengthen and increase the participation of Latinx people in the broader movements for racial, economic, climate and gender justice. @conmijente on Twitter.
