Trump: Racism and Extreme Xenophobia

This week, President Donald Trump carried out his threat to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program which was protecting some 800,000 foreigners – mainly Mexicans and Central Americans – from being deported.

The program, initiated during the Obama administration, allowed young people who had arrived in the United States as small children, brought by parents fleeing violence and lack of work in their home countries, to study or work.

The neo-fascist leader pledged to do this in his election campaign in order to secure the votes of white racists and xenophobes. He also promised to build a wall on the border with Mexico to stem the flow of immigrants, an affront he appears equally prepared to carry out.

A few weeks ago, Trump offered words of support to groups of white supremacists, heirs to the Ku Klux Klan – advocates of racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-Catholicism and anti-communism for over a century.

The reversal of DACA, however, has been rejected by state authorities who will challenge the decision in the courts, and by large sections of society who will put pressure on Congress to legalize the status of the 800,000 young people. Trump’s follies should provoke widespread protest for comprehensive immigration reform.

The pro-immigrant protests must also call for Trump’s resignation or removal from office. The racist and xenophobic head of state is a threat to immigrants, to the American people and to the entire world.

Trump’s war-mongering urges have put the world on tenterhooks, and represent the gravest danger to the continued existence of humanity. The U.S. president’s sinister threats have indeed provoked other nuclear threats, like that from North Korea.

Today, more than ever, all governments and people of the world, especially Latin Americans, who care for the preservation of life on this planet need to renounce this neo-fascist occupant of the White House.

El Salvador must take a tough stance on Trump’s affronts to immigrants. Until now, its position has been halfhearted. The communiqué on the DACA reversal from the El Salvador Department of State doesn’t condemn the decision, but only clarifies that deportation would not be immediate, and announces that it will lobby the United States Congress.