Earthjustice Vice President of Policy and Legislation Martin Hayden issued the following statement regarding President Trump’s recent actions and comments on immigrant families seeking asylum in the U.S. – Mexico border. 

“In a time when our country needs unity, compassion, and healing, President Trump continues to use fearmongering rhetoric to engage in political opportunism. Today, the scapegoating and policies that have accompanied it are targeted at migrants fleeing dire conditions who are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

“Many of us are contributing to the well-being of the United States only because our forbearers fled oppression and violence in their native lands and sought refuge in a place where they saw opportunity and the ability to speak out and participate in Democracy.

“Now, Trump will greet the most vulnerable — migrant families, women, and children desperately fleeing violence — with militarization, banning immigrants from seeking asylum while threatening to shut down the border on those in need seeking help. Making matters worse, Trump threatened,  this week, to try to gut the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution through executive action so that babies born in the United States would no longer have an inherent right to citizenship.

“His actions divorce our country from the hope, love, and opportunity that makes this country, in fact, great.

“We call on the President to stop his hateful rhetoric and honor the human rights of migrants and their right under existing U.S. law to seek asylum and refuge from persecution.”