Humane cages?

Countless variants of the theme of caged children were used to try to shame leftists into voting for Biden in the recent presidential elections, despite the fact that – as President Trump repeatedly and correctly noted in a twisted defense of his own family separation policy–the Obama/Biden White House started the program. Now that we are getting a glimpse of Biden’s transition team, it is clear that his opponents on the left were right to curb their enthusiasm and (in many cases) cast their votes elsewhere. Instead of a reprieve from policies that fall squarely within the definition of genocide, Biden appears poised to dig in his heels. Take, for example, his appointment of Obama’s former top immigration adviser Cecilia Muñoz to his transition team, who brushed off NPR interviewer Maria Hinojosa’s question about family separation, responding that “Some of these things are going to happen.”

While much has been made of the gendered diversity of Biden’s transition team (including Muñoz) and potential cabinet picks, it will be little comfort to the women of Central America, or any other region subject to U.S. interference, to know that the new US #GirlBosses may include Susan Rice as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton as UN ambassador, or Michele Flournoy as Secretary of Defense.

Many of Biden’s DHS transition team selections show his platform will differ (if at all) only in form, not in substance, from that of Trump. None of his team members hail from the ranks of BIPOC organizers who delivered him his victories in key states like Arizona, and for whom immigration is a major issue.

Instead, Biden’s picks further the logic of his Latino campaign strategy, which pandered to right-wing Miami Cubans and Venezuelans, ignoring the vast, diverse majority of Latinx communities for whom immigration justice, access to quality healthcare and education, and protection from police violence are far more important than fighting communism. While numerous analysts on the left have pointed out that Biden’s approach didn’t even win him Florida, he’s sticking to it.

Biden’s DHS transition team members range from billionaire-funded think tank pundits to corporate lawyers, with a smattering of left-liberal ACLU types, none of whom fundamentally question the overarching logic of border security. Take Blas Nuñez-Neto, for example, DHS transition team member and RAND analyst who accuses migrants of “taking advantage of incentives created by the US asylum process” and has advocated that asylum seekers be made to seek asylum from U.S. embassies while still living in their countries and building more private prisons to detain entire families indefinitely, as humane alternatives to family separation.

Excerpted: ‘More Humane Cages? Prospects for Immigration Justice Under Biden Appear Dim’

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