3/14/21

By Josh Rubin

When a judge told Biden that he could not suspend deportations for 100 days, as the administration had announced, he did not tell Biden he could not immediately cut down on deportations. He didn’t say, for instance, that this would be a great time to load up planes with Haitians, and fly them back to a land in political and economic chaos. Or to continue his policy of immediate expulsions of hundreds of thousands of people, by land and by plane.

No, Biden did that all on his own. No judge involved, appointed by Trump or otherwise. So, while Biden emptied the encampment in Matamoros of a thousand people, or so, while we watched with tearful relief, many thousands more were having their fate sealed by the continuation of perhaps the worst of the Trump policies, the indiscriminate rejection of people without a chance to plead their case. And the special cruelty of intensified deportation of black immigrants from Haiti and Africa to danger and despair.

This is now. Is this the new compassion?