Crackdown on Muslims: Trump makes Obama’s program worse

Scan page 4

Trump’s ban on Muslims, which tens of thousands pro­ tested at airports across the country, was the most recent escalation of an ongoing assault on the rights of Muslims and youth from Africa and the Middle East. This group has been targeted continuously at least since the beginning of the so-called “War on Terror.”

In the fall of 2014, the Obama administration announced that a new program called “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) would be launched, with pilots in three cities—Min­ neapolis, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Minneapolis, not coincidentally, has the largest Somali immigrant population in North America. The Somali people have faced deep political and economic instability because of war and monumental environmental destruction and drought, forcing them to flee to the U.S., where they have been facing undue profiling, racism, and discrimination. The Boston Marathon bombing in April of 2013, attribut­ ed to two Muslim brothers, made that city a second logical choice. Funds were filtered through the Massachusetts State Department of Health as “Peace Grants,” the largest amount going to the Boston Police Foundation, an NGO that funds the police department. The rest went to groups that work with youth and the Somali immigrant community. Although the administration gave no reason for its choice of Los Angeles, the region is home to one of the country’s largest Muslim populations. According to a September 2014 Los Angeles Times article, Fatima Dadabhoy, senior civil rights attorney of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA), responded to the announcement by saying: “If it’s going to lead to more profiling and surveil­ ... Attacks on Immigrants (continued from page 1: “Trump escalates war on immigrant workers”)

used against them in future immigration proceedings.

This provision threatens Dreamers especially, since all who applied for this status during the Obama years in order to avoid deportations were required to pro­ vide extensive personal background information on application forms. All personal information supplied by Dreamers to avoid deportation can now be used by the government to deport them.

Trump’s immigration raids began in the first part of February. During just one week, ICE enforcers ar­ rested over 680 immigrants in at least 11 states. Im­ migrants who had been earlier targeted by ICE were seized during neighborhood “sweeps” of streets and homes at all times of the day and night. Trump ex­ plained the raids by his bellicose declaration and lie that “gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!” On Feb. 23, Trump referred to the deporta­ tion raids as “a military operation.”

Protests erupted in response. On Feb. 13, more than 20,000 marched in Milwaukee, protesting raids and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who is pro­ viding local police to act as federal immigration en­ forcers.

On Feb. 16, immigration rights activists took to the streets in at least 12 states, declaring “A Day With­ out Immigrants.” These actions, billed as a “one-day strike,” brought out over 5000 protesters in Chicago 4 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2017 lance, that’s clearly going to be problematic. Is it really a project to counter violent extremism, or is it really a project to counter violent extremism in the Muslim community?” CVE is based on PREVENT, a “counter radicalization” program introduced in Britain in the wake of the 2005 Lon­ don bombings. Based on misconceptions about how “radi­ calization” happens, PREVENT has pushed health profes­ sionals, including mental health workers, to violate profes­ sional ethics regarding privacy and confidentiality. It has undermined health, social service organizations, and edu­ cational institutions that have partnered with the program, making them ineffective in providing needed services. It has also damaged communities’ trust in agencies that have received funds or collaborated in the program due to law enforcement pressures to participate in surveillance of those they serve; deterred those in need from seeking treatment (many British Muslims are afraid to seek medi­ cal and mental health service for fear of being targeted); divided communities and engendered suspicion in mosques and community centers, denying the community the right to speak freely about political or social views for fear of being wrongly reported; and created good Muslim-bad Muslim scenarios, pitting neighbors and friends against each other. The entire rationalization for the PREVENT program has been discredited. It is not possible to disentangle the al­ leged signs of “radicalization” from the personality traits displayed by the vast majority of youth. Nor has any con­ nection been demonstrated between so-called radicalization and actual acts of violence. But this did not stop the Obama administration from importing the program. The initiative works without apparent transparency—of­ fering funding to nonprofit health and social service agen­ and thousands more in other cities. In Alabama, 60 businesses closed down, and hundreds of restaurant workers walked off the job around the country. USA Today reported that high schools around the country had noted unusually high absenteeism, and one-third of high school students in Phoenix had skipped class.

NBC News reported that over 100 workers were fired for participating in the nationwide protests. Of these, 18 were strikers terminated by Bradley Coat­ ings, a commercial painting company in Nashville, Tenn. Workers were warned they would be fired, but walked off the job anyway.

Bipartisan attacks Both the Democratic and Republican parties favor deportation and other forms of regulating the flow of immigrants into the U.S. They differ only on what lev­ el of flow is necessary. Both capitalist parties benefit from the super-exploitation of immigrants, because nearly all U.S. industries, including Trump’s luxury re­ sorts, profit mightily from the cheap and sometimes slave labor these immigrants provide.

Trump and the Republicans are aggressively expand­ ing the program of deportations conducted under the Democrats. Trump is utilizing Obama’s method of tar­ geting “undesirables” or “non-deserving” immigrants who may have been arrested, jailed, or charged in the U.S. The Republicans use a broader definition of “criminal,” but both capitalist parties want to deport what they term “undesirables.”

The false idea that a certain category of immigrant Countering Radical Islam.”

Reuters reported on Feb. 2 that five people briefed on the matter said the program would change to “Countering Is­ lamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extrem­ ism” and drop any pretense of targeting groups such as white supremacists. Some Republicans have been pushing for such a change. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul recently called for the Trump administration to “repeal and replace” President Obama’s “failed, politically correct” CVE program and instead “tar­ get the specific threat we face from radical Islamist terror.”

The explicitness of the Trump administration is already having ripple effects. A New York Times article also dated Feb. 2 reported that both Ka Joog (in Minneapolis) and Leaders Advancing and Helping Communities (in Dear­ born, Mich.) would not accept their half-million-dollar grants, while the Muslim Public Affairs Council was “wait­ ing to see what changes will take place in the program be­ fore making a decision about keeping the money.”

The morphing of counter-terrorism efforts, from those that employed neutral-sounding rhetoric while very specifi­ cally targeting Muslim communities to those that acknowl­ edge directly what such efforts are really about, has forced groups like Ka Joog to withdraw what had been overwhelm­ ing support for CVE. And it has broader implications too.

The Trump administration is signaling an end to “good Muslim-bad Muslim” divisive rhetoric. Those who hid be­ hind the pretense that CVE was actually meant to help the communities it targeted cannot pretend this is the case with Trump’s version.

The new program will further institutionalize Islamopho­ bia but will also trigger broader resistance. We must shut down these programs and purge them from our hospitals, clinics, workplaces, schools, and community groups. Those of us who are non-Muslims can stand up vocally for those individuals and groups who are wrongly labeled and pun­ ished as “extremists” and “terrorists,” simply because of their religion, their skin color, or their political ideology. No to Islamophobia! Stand with the Muslim community! n deserves deportation needs to be roundly rejected. It divides the immigrant rights movement, which stands opposed to all deportations. It also provides politi­ cal cover for politicians who spread the lie that large sections of the immigrant population are “criminals.” Nothing can be farther from the truth.

Both capitalist parties promote the fiction that poor immigrants in search of a job and a better life can eas­ ily chose to enter the U.S. “legally.” This cynically ex­ ploits the widely held misunderstanding behind the question, “Why don’t they just get in line?” In fact, no line is available for the vast majority of the poor work­ ers and farmers who are classified as “unauthorized” immigrants. The “regular channels” in U.S. immigra­ tion rules simply don’t apply to them, and in most cases “legal” entry requires a U.S. employer to request specific workers.

Those who cross U.S. borders to work have no rights as citizens, can be deported at any time, and are forced to accept the lowest paying and most dangerous jobs. They are demonized and in constant fear of deporta­ tion and separation from their families, which makes them easy targets—prey to greedy employers out to manipulate and abuse them.

This super-exploitation provides another benefit to capitalist owners; it allows them to maintain sharp divisions in the working class, and drive down wages of the working class as a whole, pitting one section of workers against another. This is especially fostered by (continued on page 9, in “Leon Trotsky’s 1917 stay in New York City”)