President Donald Trump Heads to the Border

By Yoli Navas

WASHINGTON, DC – Just days after threatening to shut down the southern border, and then reneging on his threat, President Trump heads to the border to add fuel to the already burning flames of his destructive policies. If it weren’t enough to be causing utter chaos at our border, devastating our asylum system, and inflicting pain and suffering upon thousands of immigrants and immigrant families, this week Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a Texas technology company and detained nearly 300 people. All this while The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other national outlets report on the ongoing employment and abuse of undocumented workers at various Trump businesses.

Nowhere is Trump’s hypocrisy more apparent than in his golf courses, where workers like Victorina Morales, and Sandra Diaz spent years enduring workplace abuse and exploitation because of their undocumented status. Trump ran a campaign based on the demonization of immigrants like Vicky and Sandra, who are not criminals, but rather hard working human beings seeking refuge from the violence that plagues their home countries and opportunities for their families here in the U.S.

Trump’s visit to the border is a slap in the face to the American people who are watching as his blatant abuses unfold. While ICE agents seek out to instill terror into hard working immigrant communities through raids and mass detentions, Trump puts himself above the laws he claims to regard so highly. Trump is not only abusing workers and Americans, he is taking his own supporters for a ride by breaking the law and exploiting undocumented immigrants instead of fixing it to help legalize workers. It seems that the consequences of Trump’s policies, including the endangerment of countless immigrant families and children, the local and national economic fallout and the strain put on border communities, don’t phase him but rather motivate him to continue down a path of hypocrisy, cruelty, and incompetence. It’s time the President is held accountable to the laws he thinks he’s above.