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AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration is vowing to escalate its targeting of immigrants. White House adviser Stephen Miller is pushing for ICE to make 3,000 arrests a day. He outlined the plan on Fox News last week.
STEPHEN MILLER: Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day, so we can get all of the Biden illegals that were flooded into our country for four years out of our country.
AMY GOODMAN: We’ll spend the hour looking in detail at the Trump administration’s plans to target immigrants.
On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration could strip the legal status and work permits for 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who had been granted protection by the Biden administration under the humanitarian parole process. The Supreme Court’s ruling is only temporary as lower courts consider the legality of Trump’s move. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Justice Jackson wrote, quote, “The Court has now apparently determined … that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims,” she said.
We begin today’s show with Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, joining us from Laguna Beach, California.
Guerline, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you explain the significance —
GUERLINE JOZEF: Good morning, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Explain the significance of what the Supreme Court ruled.
GUERLINE JOZEF: Good morning, Amy.
The Supreme Court rules on Friday literally have unraveled the entire community of over 500,000 people from Venezuela, from Cuba, from Haiti and from Nicaragua. And we have seen complete panic, terror, chaos, trauma throughout the United States. It is the biggest mass delegalization in modern history of people who followed every single rule that the U.S. government asked of them to come here, quote-unquote, “legally.” And overnight, the rug has been literally pulled under them, rendered them undocumented and prioritizing for expedited removal, deportation. And this has been a nightmare. I cannot explain to you the level of fear that exists within the community. Children are afraid to go to school. Parents are unable to leave their homes to go to work, to go to the hospital. The level of trauma and terror and fear that we are experiencing cannot be explained.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Guerline, the Biden administration had also extended humanitarian parole to tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Afghans, as well. Yet the Trump administration is not moving to deal with those humanitarian parole recipients? And what do you — what’s your sense of, at the same time, the Trump administration admitting white South Africans into the United States as refugees?
GUERLINE JOZEF: Thank you, Juan.
I think one thing that I have always said, and I felt like John the Baptist in the desert, screaming that we do not have an immigration issue in the United States, because when the government wants to bring a certain group of people, they find a way to do so. We have a system that is anti-Black, anti-Brown and anti-anyone who does not fall in line with what they want to do. As a plaintiff of the humanitarian parole, that includes CHNV, that includes U4U for the Ukrainians, that include the Afghan — our Afghan neighbors in family reunification, the Haitian Bridge Alliance is a plaintiff on the case for all humanitarian parolees, not just the Haitians and the Cubans, for all of us. So, we are really looking into how we are going to move forward and how this will impact these other communities that we are fighting for and we’re continuing to push on their behalf.
We are clearly seeing that the president of the United States bringing in, quote-unquote, “farmers” from South Africa, welcoming them — we just received the second group of people, right? Yet we are seeing the people who have been in this country, have followed every single law, every single rule to come here, and now they will be criminalized. They will be — their lives will be destroyed. And we do not know how they are going to be able to move forward. This cannot be the norm of the United States. That is why we are calling on nonimmigrants, people who do not have current immigration status, to stand on behalf of the 500-plus thousand people whose lives have been put at risk.
We already started seeing deportation, the deportation machine in full effect. Yesterday, we had people being arrested coming out of court in Santa Ana, California. This morning, I woke up to a text telling me that a mother who just gave birth went to court with her husband. The husband got detained in Los Angeles. We are seeing our community members being detained as they are following the law, going to court, and then get kidnapped, detained and arrested by ICE.
This cannot continue to be how we, as a country, are treating people who are here in search of safety and protection, who are our neighbors, our friends, our church families. And we are literally destroying lives instead of giving them the opportunity to continue to live their lives here with dignity and compassion. And those people have come here — again, the CHNV parolees have followed every single law. So we clearly see that this is not about illegal or legal immigrants, which is, by itself, unacceptable terms. But we clearly see that it is about the anti-Black racism, the anti-Brown and anti-other, that is at the heart of everything that this administration is doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Guerline, I wanted to ask you about an earlier group that had — of asylum seekers. There were 350,000 Venezuelans under temporary protected status. The Supreme Court issued a similar order, siding with Trump’s attempts to revoke their status. And what about about half a million, 500,000, Haitians that are also under temporary protected status? What’s their situation?
GUERLINE JOZEF: Thank you so much for that.
And again, Haitian Bridge Alliance is a co-counsel on the case for TPS for Venezuela and Haiti. And we are so heartbroken that the Supreme Court again sided with the Biden — with the Trump administration. And we see clearly the only reason is the fact that this was given under Biden. And they are using the lives of over 350,000 TPS holders from Venezuela, and potentially half a million people from Haiti, as political points to show how they are fighting and erasing whatever the Biden administration were able to put in place.
So, once again, the Supreme Court has sided to remove the protection of close to a million people, who are here fighting, who cannot go back home, whether to Venezuela, in Haiti. Now we have complete chaos, where we have close to 1 million people displaced in Haiti. So, the lives of the Venezuelan TPS holders, the Haitian TPS holders, the CHNV parolees and others are literally in the balance. And just overnight, they can be destroyed.
Again, our call is for our fellow U.S. citizens to stand on behalf of justice, on behalf of compassion, dignity, and make sure that we respect the law and making sure that we provide safety and protection for those asylum seekers, the TPS holders, the CHNV parolees, who followed every single law, every single roadblock that was put in front of them in order for them to be here, seeking safety, seeking protection, seeking asylum here, legally paying their taxes, that they will never be able to benefit from. Understand clearly that the TPS holders, the CHNV parolees have been contributing to these United States, to our lives, to make sure that we continue to move forward. Yet their lives are at risk, in the balance, and the terror that we are experiencing right now is unbelievable.
AMY GOODMAN: In related news, Guerline Jozef, the founder of the private mercenary firm Blackwater is working with Haiti’s interim government, apparently. The New York Times reported that Erik Prince recently shipped a large supply of weapons to Haiti and is planning to send up to 150 mercenaries there this summer. Prince is reportedly part of a secret task force that spent the past several weeks operating drones meant to kill gang members. A Haitian human rights group blames the drones for the deaths of over 200 people. You may not be able to comment on that at this point, but I’m wondering about the number of deportation flights that had been conducted and the number of people who have been deported back to Haiti to violence there.
GUERLINE JOZEF: Amy, to be honest, we are extremely worried at that news. I am not an expert in that field, but what I understand and have heard is the cruelty and human rights violation that this organization and this specific person have committed around the world, where they have been able to go to. And we have heard since March the drone operation that have killed hundreds of people, but none of the gang, quote-unquote, “leaders” who they are supposed to be fighting. And at the same time, we have heard someone mention that their goal is not really to protect the people, but to be in discussions with the gang leaders. So, again, I’m not an expert on what that is looking like, but we are extremely concerned at the human rights violation that can arise from people who have a history of human rights violation in other parts of the world, and what that will mean for Haiti.
And unfortunately, multiple times we are seeing the population, the civilians are the ones paying the price, while people in power continue to benefit from the chaos that we see in Haiti right now. So, again, we are keeping those people in prayer and really seeing how we can push the United States to stop the deportation to Haiti, while they have agreed that we are in a constant state of political turmoil, but they continue to still deport people to Haiti, and currently removing the protection of over 500,000 people, including Haitians, who will be put in expedite removal deportation eventually.
AMY GOODMAN: Guerline Jozef, thank you so much for being with us, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, joining us from Laguna Beach, California.
Coming up, we’ll stay in California but go to San Diego, where ICE agents tossed flash-bang grenades at a crowd of neighbors gathered to protest an armed ICE raid on a popular local restaurant. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “El Zapateado” by Las Cafeteras in our Democracy Now! studio.
