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Why You Should Actually Be Terrified Right Now

Stripping citizens of their passports is a precursor to genocide.

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It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.

Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another.

The administration is currently launching an effort to take citizenship from people who they suspect of fraud in obtaining it. Fraud in these cases is exceedingly rare. The last time the government tried to strip people of their citizenship was, according to Columbia Professor Mae , during The Red Scare of the 1950s. As Ngai remarks, McCarthyism is not typically remembered as a good period in American history.

There is good reason to believe that this could portend still worse things to come for the U.S. Hispanic population, unless people begin to speak out loudly, and fast.

Edited to Add:
English/Spanish legal advice for if you are a Latinx American citizen whose citizenship is being challenged.

All other American citizens, GO FIND A PROTEST FOR THIS WEEKEND.

And FLOOD YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES WITH YOUR FEELINGS ON THIS SHIT! Here’s how to do it for free by text.

2nd Edit: Someone asked “What Can Be Done Abroad?”

Thank you for asking!

1) Get the word out in your home country’s print and broadcast media and internet. People in the USA really don’t get how suppressed our press has become and it’s only getting worse by the day. Part of it is getting any one topic to surface long enough above the churn, which is an intentional tactic being successfully used by the political party in power.

2) The one thing that no one is the USA is not seemingly able to do at all is get attention onto the Republican party as a whole for how complicit they are in all the illegal activity. If anyone can throw some weight in that direction, it’s an elephant in the room that we REALLY need to get lots of attention on.

3) Support sanctions against the US for our human rights violations.

4) Donate to US groups fighting in the trenches

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.hrc.org/

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

http://refusefascism.com/

https://www.splcenter.org/

https://resist.bot/

5) Check how your own country is doing on ethnic minorities and immigration. Some bad shit is going around.