Thread by @WitnessBorder

On the subject of the comments period open for response to newly proposed asylum rules...

The Trump administration has taken steps that have choked natural flow of migration at the southern border. Before the #COVID19 pandemic, the mechanism they chose was... 1/10

... distortion of a concept known as asylum which set rules by which a person is judged eligible for entry by demonstrating that their reasons for leaving their homes were dire. That they suffered. Asylum is a policy, a principle in int’l law that arose from the shame felt...2/10

...when people fleeing Nazi persecution were turned away by other countries. So rules were set up to evaluate persecution. Even this feint at good intentions has since been perverted by the xenophobic impulses of our & other countries. 3/10

These contortions have created painfully cruel displacement of people seeking refuge & impoverished encampments like ones in Matamoros, Mexico. When stated plainly the rules of asylum, based on measurements of suffering, would sound absurd were they not the enactment of...4/10

...crimes against humanity. They already virtually choke off entry to the poor coming by land. Currently, blaming the pandemic whose fever burns hottest in our own country, new border rules have suspended dog-&-pony show of immigration courts. 5/10

They are turning back refugees without even sham consideration. And now, new rules are proposed that make the implausible-the granting of mercy-impossible. We are asked for comment on the proposed rules, another sham process in the bureaucratic miasma. What are we to do?
6/10

Here is my comment. It starts further back, it steps us away from the framework we are being asked to work with. My comment asks: by what right do we tell people that the river makes a line that they cannot cross on their journey to a better life? 7/10

By what just principle do we defend this line with massive military might? We are told that strong borders are important, even by liberal voices that timidly call for more sympathetic treatment of the tired & poor. But on what basis do we need that strength? 8/10

With open eyes we see that there are malevolent forces in the world. But we also see that those forces are not breaching our borders-they are already here, hoarding wealth & drawing awful lines everywhere they go, defending them with guns. We need safety from those forces.
9/10

Safety lies in doing work that tears down privilege, racism,
nationalism, class. The proposed new rules, worse than the old, belong to worldview built on defense of privilege that protects turf by drawing lines, spilling blood. To hell with those rules. That is my comment. 10/10