Trumps Immigration Policy Just Signed This Journalist’s Death Warrant
When Martin Méndez Pineda fled across the Mexican border into the United States in February, he was expecting to receive political asylum. Pineda is a journalist who published an expose on police brutality which led to the federal police viciously beating him.
Despite Citizenship and Immigration Services finding that Pineda has a “credible fear” that his life is in danger in Mexico as a result of his journalism, the Donald Trump administration wants to see him deported and is holding him in custody until his deportation hearing.
Trump’s hatred of immigrants, and in particular Mexican and other Latino immigrants, is leading to cruel and potentially lethal decisions.
Pineda’s lawyer, Carlos Spector, has told the media that the decision to refuse Pineda asylum and deport him for crossing the border illegally came straight from Washington D.C. An officer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Spector that the outrageous decision to send Pineda to his likely death came from “upstairs.”
The move by the upper echelons of Trump’s government to override what would normally be a straightforward decision to grant asylum is disturbing, and shows the lengths that the administration is willing to go to crack down on any and all Latinos who dare to try entering America.
Just last month, according to Reporters Without Borders, three journalists were murdered in Mexico and another two survived attempted murders.
The decision to deny Pineda parole – despite the fact that he turned himself in to ICE when he first entered America – and schedule a deportation hearing is likely a result of an executive order Trump signed on January 25 that was designed to drastically reduce the number of undocumented immigrants released from federal custody.
Apparently that means that even asylum seekers who risk murder upon deportation should not be released into American society. Trump’s America is looking increasingly brutal cruel. After winning an election with bigotry and anti-Latino racism, Trump is not disappointing his alt-right fanbase.
