‘Racial reckoning’: AOC injects BLM rhetoric into demand for sweeping US migration policy changes

At the start of last week it was reported that the Biden administration hired a deputy director with a history of anti-ICE activism.

With such a change, it left questions about what kind of potential impact it might have in long-term policy. In a polarized landscape where US border patrol agents are seeking early retirement.

This new letter from AOC and thirty-four members of congress, addressed to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE Director Tae D. Johnson, demanding significant changes to US migration rules, might provide answers.

This new group letter from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others in itself stems from an immigration crisis created by the Biden administration. Record numbers of arrivals into the United States from Mexico this past March and April are indicative of the global perception people have for the current President. Let alone the scandal surrounding the various episodes of children being left to fend for themselves, and being jam-packed into facilities when migrants do make it across.

But what we’re left with in the meantime is a letter that seeks to combine the Biden border crisis with the Black Lives Matter style of rhetoric. Quite literally. In the closing it says:

“We are in a moment of racial reckoning in this country, with communities across the country calling for an end to mass incarceration and racist policing. It is time to end the carceral approach to immigration, which relies on these same flawed systems.”

Ironically it’s being addressed to an administration whose President is in large part responsible for the creation of the 1994 crime bill.

But what does this letter by AOC and co-signed by other representatives in Congress actually argue?

The first paragraph says currently the Biden administration removes anyone that enters the USA illegally, and AOC says that might mean turning away people who “have fled persecution.”

Secondly AOC takes offense to what “aggravated felony” means, as it’s also applied in America’s removal policy and prioritization. She says it’s a “relic of the racist War on Drugs,” and that in the case of incoming potential migrants it’s used against them to argue for deportation, if it turns out someone was convicted for such a thing.

Drugs are relevant in cases like the 500 kilograms of Mexican methamphetamine a cartel tried smuggling into the USA at the beginning of April.

The final paragraph of the letter claims that “racial profiling” is being deployed whenever a border officer is trying to determine whether or not someone incoming to the United States participated in a gang. “It is well documented that law enforcement’s practices of labelling people as ‘gang-involved’ is often faulty, based on arbitrary and racist factors, and not subject to due process.”

This demand has to be weighed against documented cases of MS-13 gang members trying to enter America.

Since the Biden administration is willing to prioritize transgender migrants coming across the US border? AOC’s wishlist has a fair chance of being heard by White House officials.