EL PASO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd April, 2020) The Trump administration is using the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to demonize immigrants as it plays on public health concerns to gut immigration policy, Las America Immigrant Advocacy Center Executive Director Linda Rivas told Sputnik.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that he will issue an executive order to ban immigration in the United States for at least 60 days, which will apply to those seeking permanent residency, in an effort to conserve jobs and medical resources for Americans in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It's hard to be forced to think how much worse immigration can get under the Trump administration," Rivas said. "I don't want to imagine just how much worse this can get. It's shameful to use this pandemic that we are all facing to demonize immigrants."
Rivas pointed out the struggles migrants already face due to COVID-19, including the spread of the virus in migrant detention centers across the United States and migrant children with no parents turned away at the US border with no due process.
"We have witnessed the weaponization of this pandemic against migrants first hand on the border," Rivas said.
US Customs and Border Protection recently reported that nearly 10,000 migrants - likely seeking asylum - had been turned away at the southern border from March 21 to April 9 with no due process as part of the new US response to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rivas said immigration court dates in the United States for asylum seekers continue to be delayed, leaving in limbo migrants who have to continue to wait in Mexico under the Migrant Protections Protocol.
As of Tuesday, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that 253 migrant detainees have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Migrant detainees may have likely been exposed to the virus by ICE employees. The agency has reported that 32 ICE employees at migrant detention centers have tested positive for COVID-19.
The United States currently has more than 826,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 45,000 deaths caused by the disease as of Wednesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University.
