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Speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., criticized Democrats immigration proposals and claimed that President Joe Biden was giving terrorists and other criminals a pass to stay in the country even if they were here illegally.

"They have halted deportations for all illegal aliens murderers, rapists, terrorists, MS-13 gang members are not being deported," Cotton told CPAC attendees Feb. 26 in Orlando.

Is Cotton right about criminals being allowed to stay? No. His claim ignores the policies of the Department of Homeland Security.

"Sen. Cotton misspoke," with respect to terrorists not being deported, James Arnold, a spokesperson for Cotton, told PolitiFact.

100-day deportation pause order did not apply to national security and public safety threats

On Jan. 20, David Pekoske, then-acting secretary of homeland security, ordered a review of immigration enforcement practices and an immediate 100-day pause on the deportation of people with final orders of removal.

"Due to limited resources, DHS cannot respond to all immigration violations or remove all persons unlawfully in the United States," Pekoske said. "Rather, DHS must implement civil immigration enforcement based on sensible priorities and changing circumstances."

The deportation pause did not apply to people who had engaged or were suspected of engaging in terrorism or espionage, or posed a danger to national security and public safety.

People were still eligible for deportation if they were in prison or jail and released on or after the date of Pekoskes memo, and if they were convicted of an aggravated felony. An aggravated felony includes murder, rape or sexual abuse of a minor.

Cotton also left out that a federal judge in Texas has since blocked the deportation moratorium indefinitely. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration over the deportation pause.

DHS told PolitiFact that Cottons claim was incorrect, noting that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Feb. 18 issued interim operating guidance that said removal resources would focus on threats to national security, border security and public safety.

"Individuals are presumed to be a threat to public safety if, for example, they have been convicted of an aggravated felony or engaged in certain activity as part of a criminal gang or transnational criminal organization and there is reason to believe they currently pose a threat," ICE said.

We dont have data on how many murderers, rapists, gang members or terrorists have been deported during the Biden administration. But it is inaccurate to say that their deportations were halted.

Our ruling

Cotton said, "They have halted deportations for all illegal aliens, murderers, rapists, terrorists, MS-13 gang members are not being deported."

Bidens administration ordered a 100-day deportation pause, but it did not apply to criminals such as murderers, rapists, terrorists or gang members.

We rate Cottons claim False.

UPDATE,Feb. 26, 7:10 p.m.: We updated the story shortly after publication to clarify the response from Cotton's spokesman.It did not affect the rating.

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Tom Cotton falsely claims Joe Biden halted the deportation of criminals - PolitiFact

Ahead of the vote on President Bidens $1.9 trillion stimulus package, lawmakers have offered an array of misleading claims to promote their position on the bill. Heres a fact check of some common talking points.

WHAT WAS SAID

This is supposed to be a Covid bill. Only 9 percent of it goes to Covid. Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the House minority leader, in an interview this week on Fox News.

This is misleading. A spokeswoman for Mr. McCarthy said that the 9 percent referred to the $160 billion for a national vaccination program, expanded testing and a public health jobs program, as outlined by the Biden administration. In other words, 8.4 percent, or $160 billion of the $1.9 trillion package, is allocated specifically to fighting the coronavirus.

But that is a rather narrow interpretation of pandemic-related funding. The bill also includes other health care spending like subsidizing insurance coverage for laid-off workers, extending paid sick leave and funding for veterans care.

And like the first two relief bills signed by President Donald J. Trump and an alternate measure proposed this year by 10 Republican lawmakers, much of the Biden plan is devoted to providing financial help to families and businesses harmed by the economic effects of the pandemic. The $1,400 stimulus checks and extension of unemployment benefits are the two biggest single expenditures, according to a breakdown by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

WHAT WAS SAID

Weve run the numbers and heres your receipt, @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer, Senator Marsha Blackburn this week on Twitter, breaking down the bill into categories like arts, museums and library services; Pelosis subway; services including Planned Parenthood; and climate justice.

This is misleading. Ms. Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, accused Democratic leadership of drafting a $1.9 trillion bill that amounted to a liberal wishlist. But the four specific areas of funding she highlighted add up to $547 million or about 0.03 percent of the total $1.9 trillion.

Pelosis subway refers to a project to extend the Bay Area Rapid Transit system into downtown San Jose which is an hour south of San Francisco and the district Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents. The project is actually in the district of another Democrat, Representative Zoe Lofgren.

A spokeswoman for the House transportation committee said that the BART extension was not receiving special funding, but rather simply being funded proportionately to other similar projects around the country.

Over all, the bill includes $30 billion to help public transit agencies, the bulk of which covers operational costs of transit systems across the nation. About $1 billion of that goes to a Transportation Department grant program to ensure that already approved transit projects like the BART extension as well as rail improvements in Republican-led states like Indiana and Arizona remain solvent.

Art, museums, and library services refer to the $135 million set aside for the National Endowment for the Arts and $200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The bill also devotes $50 million to family planning projects, which Ms. Blackburn characterized as services including Planned Parenthood. The group is not explicitly mentioned in the bill, but it has previously received family planning grants. Other grantees include state and local health agencies (including Tennessees Department of Health family planning program) and other nonprofits.

Another $50 million is earmarked for environmental justice purposes, the bill reads, and is intended to address the health outcome disparities from pollution and the pandemic.

WHAT WAS SAID

There are bailouts to Planned Parenthood, stimulus grants to illegal immigrant families. Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, in an interview this week on Fox News.

This is misleading. Mr. Bankss claim about illegal immigrant families receiving stimulus grants refers to families with mixed immigration status, not families where all members are undocumented. Under the bill, couples who jointly file their taxes need to have only one valid Social Security number to receive a stimulus check. But the amount would be $1,400 for an individual, not $2,800 for a couple.

In other words, American citizens or legal residents married to undocumented immigrants would receive the $1,400, but their spouses would not.

The first two rounds of stimulus checks had the same conditions with virtually identical language.

WHAT WAS SAID

Theres over a trillion dollars of money unspent from previous relief bills that were bipartisan. The moneys still sitting in a bank account. Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, in an interview this week on ABC.

If you think about whats happened already, $4 trillion worth of stimulus has been passed. Theres still a trillion dollars worth, or close to a trillion dollars, that hasnt even been spent yet. Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, in an interview this week on Fox Business.

This is misleading. In an op-ed published this month by The Washington Post, Mr. Scalise linked to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budgets coronavirus spending tracker as his source for this claim. According to the tracker, about $3 trillion has already been spent. But that does not necessarily mean that $1 trillion will remain unused.

The think tank explained in a blog post in January that much of it is already allocated or scheduled to be spent, and a small portion will never be spent. About $775 billion of the unspent funding came from the $900 billion stimulus package signed into law in late December, according to the blog post. Funding expected to be doled out over time (loans and Medicaid spending), as well as data lags, also explain some of the disparity.

WHAT WAS SAID

In fact, 95 percent of that money cant even be spent until 2022. Do you really want to wait until 2022 to start having your kid go back in school? This bill actually will delay school reopening. This is crazy. Mr. Scalise in an interview this week on Fox News.

We need to get and follow the science and get kids back to school. This bill does not do that. Mr. McCarthy, in an interview this week on Fox News.

This is misleading. The bill sets aside $128.5 billion for funding K-12 schools through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that $6.4 billion of that would be spent in the 2021 fiscal year, which ends in September.

But the budget office also said that the spending rate it estimated was subject to considerable uncertainty.

In a letter to congressional leaders, education groups wrote that the notion that schools did not need more funding because of how much they would spend this year was inaccurate.

In conversations with our respective memberships, they report that while the spend rate may seem quite low to those unfamiliar with state and district school financial procedures and requirements, they have budgeted for every dollar they are scheduled to receive from the Covid relief bills and are still anticipating more significant costs they will be unable to meet without additional federal funds, the groups wrote.

A spokeswoman for Mr. McCarthy also noted that the bill provides no assurance to families that schools will reopen and that funding was not tied to reopening schools.

Nothing in the bill explicitly delays school reopening, nor does it condition funding on reopening. But a spokesman for the House Education and Labor Committee noted that it was never intended to.

Our position has always been that these decisions should be made by local school districts in consultation with public health officials, said Joshua Weisz, the communications director for the committee. Congress should not be coercing schools into reopening.

WHAT WAS SAID

If we dont pass the American Rescue Plan, 40 million Americans will lose nutritional assistance through a program we call SNAP, the old food stamp program. Do we not invest $3 million $3 billion to keep families from going hungry? Mr. Biden in remarks last week at a Pfizer plant.

This is exaggerated. As FactCheck.org noted, the White House transcript of Mr. Bidens remarks added some of in brackets before the words nutritional assistance. That is because failure to pass the bill would not lead to Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in losing all of their benefits. Rather, the stimulus package signed into law in December temporarily increased food stamp benefits by 15 percent from January to June. The current bill and Mr. Bidens plan would extend that increase to September.

WHAT WAS SAID

For example, if it went if we gradually increased it when we indexed it at $7.20, if we kept it indexed by to inflation, people would be making 20 bucks an hour right now. Mr. Biden last week at a CNN town hall event.

False. The federal minimum wage was last raised to $7.25 in July 2009, which if indexed for consumer inflation would be about $8.81 today. Mr. Biden most likely meant to say worker productivity instead of inflation. Dean Baker, an economist at left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, has estimated that if the minimum wage had kept up with productivity, it would be about $24.

We welcome suggestions and tips from readers on what to fact-check on email and Twitter.

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Assessing Claims in the Coronavirus Stimulus Debate - The New York Times

Last week, President Joe Biden attended a town hall in Milwaukee to discuss a range of issues and policies he hopes to tackle during the beginning of his term.

President Biden told CNN interviewer Anderson Cooper he hopes to provide roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants a path towards citizenship and dramatically expand the number of refugees the United States accepts each year.

The White House website statesthis bill is part of the presidents commitment to modernize our immigration system.

And he is right. If passed, Bidens bill would be the largest reform on U.S. immigration laws in decades.

Specifically, Bidens proposals would implement some long-desired liberal reforms, as well as peel back many Trump-era enactments.

Providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is one of the hallmarks of the Democrats policy goals. Biden reaffirmedthis at his Milwaukee town hall.

Democratic congressmen have attempted to pass such a measure for years now two similar bills failed in Congress in 2007 and 2013. President Obama attempted to protect illegal migrants through an executive order in 2014 but his actions were quickly challenged and overturned in court.

Now, polls show increasing support among affiliates of both political parties for amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Many also believe Biden hopes to pass immigration reform now so he can provide tangible results for moderate Latino voters who supported his campaign.

Clocking back in as the worlds policeman: Biden adopts foreign policy strategies of his predecessorsLast week, President Biden delivered his first speech on U.S. foreign policy and described his main goals for the United Read

Director of the Milwaukee-based Voces de la Frontera advocacy group Christine Neumann-Ortizprojects 90,000 undocumented workers reside in Wisconsin, working primarily in health care and food service.

I would say for myself and other Latino and immigrant families that were deeply involved in the effort to not just drive out Trump, but to help President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, that was done on the basis of their commitment to champion immigration, both around pandemic relief and immediate protections, Neumann-Ortiz said.They had an impressive platform on immigration that reflected the demands of the movement over the last 20 years.

Other motivations for immigration reform include removing many controversial policies implemented by former President Trump. This week, Biden began by removing last years ban on green card workers, allowing thousands of migrants to come to the United States to work legally. Biden also already ended the controversial Muslim Ban on his first day in office.

Biden hopes to solve many other lasting issues with his legislation, such as the lingering effects of family separations and Trumps reduction of the number of refugees accepted annually.

Biden must address how fake news claims and media distrust continue to fuel Trump supportersIf you have ever wanted to see the totally unfiltered opinions of the American people, look no further than the Read

Other measures in Bidens immigration bill reflect his sympathy with some Trump-era policies. For example, Biden hopes to continue to strengthen border security by investing in more advanced screening technology and protective infrastructure at the border to combat drug trafficking.

Biden also advocates increasing U.S. agencies roles in Latin American countries by personally combating and collecting intelligence on drug cartels. He proposes establishing Designated Processing Centers across Latin America to distribute migrants to the United States. An overall ambitious plan, which would be incredibly invasive in the domestic affairs of other countries.

Bidens plan would be the most streamlined route for immigration in decades. Not since 1965 when the Immigration and Nationality Act ended racial barriers from entry have U.S. immigration laws changed this significantly. A reform of this magnitude will likely cause a similar ripple of effects previous reforms did.

Bidens immigration legislation hopes to address decades of neglect by Congress and turn the direction of Americas attitude towards immigration.

UW students react to 2020 election results with joy, hope amid pandemic anxietyMadison residents and students burst into celebration and rushed to the Wisconsin State Capitol Nov. 7 after multiple news outlets Read

Even if youre not involved in politics at all, you have probably heard me say this 1,000 times and matter that everyone is entitled to be treated with decency, with dignity, Biden saidin Milwaukee. Everyone is entitled to that.

The history of American immigration constantly battled with this principle. For decades, many people were banned from coming to the U.S. or unjustly deported because of their skin color.

This past year, Trump lowered the countrys overall refugee quota to just 15,000, (with only just over 5,000 actually accepted) starkly contrasting Obamas last year in office with a quota of 110,000.

Passing this bill is a positive step toward making American laws more just for aspiring immigrants. But some of his more troubling measures regarding increased surveillance and intervention in Latin American affairs should be reconsidered before they are forgotten amid the wave of progressive optimism for this bill.

While ambitious in its goals, any smaller version of this bill would enact ever-needed changes on the troubled American immigration system.

Hayden Kolowrat ([emailprotected]) is a graduate student studying Southeast Asian studies.

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Biden's new plans propose progressive immigration reforms, but undocumented Wisconsin immigrants may have quicker ways to citizenship - UW Badger...

On Jan. 22, 12 Mexican state police officers allegedly participated in the mass murder of 19 people, including migrants from Guatemala, who were only miles away from the Texas border.

The smugglers, along with the migrants, wereshot and burned beyond recognition. They were discovered piled on top of one another in a charred pickup truck near Camargo, Mexico, near the Rio Grande River.

The investigation is ongoing but authorities in Mexico suspect that the smugglers didnt pay the local cartel's pisos,a sort of tax imposed for using their territory to move people across. In the end the migrants paid the ultimate price.

REP. JOHN KATKO: BIDEN'S BORDER CRISIS HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED IN RECORD TIME, AND WHERE THIS WILL LEAD

These are the deaths that are often ignored in the tragedy of the illegal immigrationdebate,but they are frequent and horrific.

In the narco-world there are only two choices once you cross into their territoryplataoplomoin English it's "silver or lead." Any group, any person, traversing the border illegally is at the mercy of the cartels: if the silver isn't paid, a "lead"bullet is the retribution.

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The deadly narco-organizations have spies everywhere. It can be the person selling food in the placita,the local police officer seemingly patrolling the route along the border or a child riding his bike with a Nextel in his back pocket. The narco-payrolls go far beyond those just trafficking drugs and their foot soldiers can be anyone.

The State Department designates the major cartels as Transnational Criminal Organizations, and they collect so-called taxes from migrants being smuggled into the United States. Those taxes are wrapped into the cost of migration and from where and how far the migrants have had to travel.

It has been that way since the 1970s when the Mexican cartels rose to prominence operating as a shadow government and taking control of the territory along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Art Del Cueto, president of the National Border Patrol Councils Local 2544 in Tucson, has spent his life along the border. He said hes seen over the years how the cartels continuously change their tactics to go unnoticed over Arizona's rough 372-mile border terrain with Mexico.

Like Texas, the Arizona border is known for its harsh environment. The cartels care little about the migrants crossing, as they collect their cut of money from the smuggling organizations every month, Del Cueto said. The cost varies on multiple factors "but no one crosses illegally without paying the cartels," he added.

The cartels tactics are always evolving, headded. He described a recent incident, in which he questioned two individuals from Ecuador and Honduras who had been apprehended by Border Patrol.

"They told me they came by themselves, which I knew was a lie," said Del Cueto, recalling a conversation hehad with the illegal migrants after they were apprehended.

It took some time but eventually the migrants revealed that the traffickers they paid took their original group of 300 and broke them into groups of two to mitigate the chances that they would be caught. They sent each group with a cheap cellphone, which contained maps with"way points"that told them where to move on a predesignated route into the U.S.

The cartels operate under their own rules and the migrants, along with the nation's own national security, are at their mercy.

"At each point, they checked in with the guide and then kept moving," said Del Cueto. "The guides keep track of the migrants, while the scouts for the smugglers are watching the (Border Patrol) agents along the route. The cartels want to make sure the people get through and they want to make sure the guides don't get exposed."

DEA agents often warnthat the drug cartels are not inhibited by rules, regulations or changing policies. The cartels operate under their own rules and the migrants, along with the nation's own national security, are at their mercy.

In a recent interview on "The Sara Carter Show," Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who is the co-chair of the new House Border Security caucus, saidthe situation is getting worse.

"Human trafficking, and drug trafficking, is increasing," he said. "I just don't understand this notion that an open the border is humane when quite frankly to the cartels these people are merely product, that's what they are and so they don't care whether they live or die."

And the cartels monitor both their human product and narcotics with some of the most advanced monitoring equipment,law enforcement officials tell me.

Theres been a significant escalation in violence, human trafficking and smuggling of contraband since the beginning of the year, according to federal law enforcement. The Biden administration's reversal of Trump's strict border policies is the reason why, say law enforcement officials.These policies are being used by the cartels to increase their profits and lure thousands of undocumented migrants to the U.S.

"The cartels are very wise and watching all the talking points the Biden administration is saying and everything they're doing regarding immigration," said Tom Homan, former actingdirectorof the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Homan has been outspoken in recent weeks regarding Biden's reversal of Trump policies and told me that these policies not only endanger the livesof migrants but Americans as well.

"This humanitarian crisis, however, quickly turns into a national security crisis," Homan warned. "They keep the BP agents tied up with family units and then move the drugs and the bad guys through another location. Theyplay this game and they smuggle the contraband across the border and we have no idea what it is."

Homan pointed out how cartels work in sync with the human smugglers "and they tax those groups as well, sometimes up to $200 a person" for crossing in theirterritory.

The cartels combined have amassed billions of dollars and sometimes their resources far exceed U.S. law enforcements. They raise their money off the backs and lives of the poor and desperate. Failed U.S. policy perpetuates that behavior.

"It's a simple as that," said a coyote a trafficker I interviewed during one of many trips into Nuevo Laredo, "If you dont payupthey kill you."

"Plata oplomo," he said. "Silver or lead."

I heard this phrase for the first time during a trip I took to Laredo, Texas, in 2006. It was there that I met JamesKuykendallSr., a former special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. His DEA partner, Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the drug cartels in 1985 while working undercover in Guadalajara. His death brought national attention to the Mexican drug war and the corruption that plagued the Mexican government.

Since Camarenas death the wars along the border have continued, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

It is a seemingly never-ending battle. When I hear Afghanistan is America's longest war, I always pause. I would argue America's longest war is its undeclared war with the Mexican drug cartels.

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Make no mistake it is a war.

Sadly, those who pay the biggest price are the migrants attempting the dangerous crossing, the American people whose communities are flooded with drugs, and U.S. law enforcement officials who are trapped in a political web that has left everyone at the mercy of the cartels.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY SARA CARTER

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Sara Carter: Lethal cartels control border they make billions on drugs, trafficking while migrants suffer - Fox News

At a time when the economy remains in tatters, the coronavirus continues to kill, and Texas is colder than Stephen Millers heart, does Joe Biden really need to worry about what we call those who are in this country illegally?

Oh yeah.

This week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would forevermore use inclusive language in public and intra-agency communications. It was a warmup to an immigration-reform bill that seeks to offer a pathway to citizenship for more than 11 million people in this country without legal status.

So say adis to any official mention of assimilation, and hola to civic integration. Time to replace alien with noncitizen. And illegal alien, the harsh-sounding couplet that conjures up images of intergalactic invasions? Bidens team wants his people to instead go with undocumented noncitizen or undocumented individual.

The move has triggered expected responses from the Left and Right the former applauds the move as a humanistic touch after four years of Trumpian ugliness, while the latter cries PC Reconquista. Its a test balloon for the rancor to come as President Biden tries to push through the first immigration amnesty in 35 years. A dust-up over language will seem like afternoon tea once those debates get going.

Illegal alien has existed in the legal realm for decades, and colloquially dates back in the United States to the 1880s, when it was Chinese, Jews and Italians we were trying to keep out. But the term didnt truly take off as part of our culture wars until it caught the attention of Californias two most prophetic voices in the states eternal, existential debate over illegal immigration.

Bert Corona and Barbara Coe passed away long ago he in 2001, she in 2013. But their legacy looms large in the debate over illegal alien. It was their shared linguistic cudgel to advance their respective causes.

Civil rights activist Bert Corona fought against the use of illegal alien.

(Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times)

For Corona, the legendary civil rights activist confronted people and institutions that used illegal alien to argue that their choice of words was no better than anti-Latino insults of yore like greaser, wetback and spic.

For Coe, a chain-smoking grandmother from Huntington Beach who jump-started Americas modern-day nativist movement, that was the point. An Anaheim Police Department civilian worker, Coe tapped into the xenophobia that always bubbles underneath Californias surface by being one of the loudest masterminds behind Proposition 187. The 1994 ballot initiative sought to make life miserable for illegal immigrants and galvanized left and right to reach the fever pitch were at on the matter today.

Orange County activist Barbara Coe was a driving force behind Proposition 187 in 1994.

(Iris Schneider / Los Angeles Times)

Corona and Coe represents two sides of the same California coin that seems to flip to the other side every decade or so when it comes to illegal immigration. Right now, its showing Corona but dont count out Coe just because Bidens camp says to. Hate doesnt disappear that fast, after all if ever.

After decades organizing workers of all ethnicities, Corona decided to focus on the plight of undocumented workers in the 1960s. At the time, mainstream civil-rights groups still cast them as an economic and cultural threat to Latino advancement an unthinkable position today, but the norm then.

For them, illegal alien was anodyne and a far-better alternative than wetback. Take a letter that UCLAs Chicano Law Student Assn. wrote to this paper in 1970 that argued the former phrase was better because the latter had racist overtones.

But even illegal aliens wasnt good enough for Corona.

He knew how devastating a term like that was, said UC Santa Barbara professor Mario T. Garcia, who published a book-length interview with Corona about his life in 1994. People who came from Mexico without papers were being exploited and demeaned, and it was his own sense of humanity that no one should be considered illegal.

Corona angered the Chicano and Anglo political establishment alike with his campaigns to cancel illegal alien. Cesar Chavez sicced his lawyer on Coronas group, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, after they picketed an anti-illegal immigration action blessed by Chavez. Corona even took on Otis Chandler, the legendary former publisher of this paper, to the point where Chandler agreed to a meeting over The Times continued printing of the offending words.

We stressed that such a term fed the hysteria, Corona told Garcia. We told them that we couldnt understand The Times saying that it wanted to relate to the Chicano community and that it regretted the death of Ruben Salazar and at the same time using inflammatory terms such as illegal aliens.

A 1970 letter to the Los Angeles Times by a Chicano student group asking that the paper use illegal aliens instead of wetback.

(Los Angeles Times)

Chandler promised that The Times would stop using it. The paper used illegal alien in news stories as recently as the early 2000s.

Coronas advocacy, however, sparked a radical change in how Latinos and liberals thought of undocumented immigrants and the language we use for them. Illegal alien remained the term du jour in the American mainstream through the 1970s and 1980s, but Corona and others always pushed back with softer describers such as unauthorized or the well-worn refrain no human being is illegal.

The strategy worked: illegal alien began to decline in usage after President Reagan signed a 1986 amnesty that legalized more than 3 million formally undocumented immigrants. The term illegal immigrant took its place.

Then came Coe, whose view of the political landscape was as preternatural as Corona, although she saw a far darker scenario before her.

She knew that suburbanites and working-class whites were angry at Republicans for letting Reagans amnesty bill go through, so she started citizens groups where attendees would rail for hours against immigrants. Coe channeled that anger to become the emotional force behind Proposition 187, which passed with nearly two-thirds of Californias vote in 1994.

Its legacy remains two-fold: The initiative inspired a generation of Latinos to become politically active and turned California leftward but it also triggered a wildfire of anti-immigrant sentiment that spread around the country over the past 25 years and culminated with Donald Trumps 2016 presidential victory.

And the fuel was Coes invocation of illegal aliens. She grabbed it from the ash bins of history to light her march down the dark corridors of hate, because Coe knew how effective and inflammatory it would be.

At speeches and rallies and in interviews with the media, Coe spat out the slur (and its caustic cousin, illegals) or wrote it on signs (the rejoinder to the no-humans-are-illegal argument was what part of illegal dont you understand?). The official 1994 California Voter Guide, for instance, included a Yes on 187 campaign argument that mentioned ILLEGAL ALIENS (all-caps in the original) eight times.

Coe always claimed her language was neutral This is a legal issue, it is not a racial issue, she told The Times in 1993. But it was the same dog whistle that the Trump administration learned to blow so well, said Otto Santa Ana. Hes a recently retired UCLA professor whose influential 2002 book Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse tracked the rise of inflammatory language like illegal alien and other such slurs.

Using it became a very easy argument of double attack, said Santa Ana. Illegal forecloses any other consideration of the status of the individual. Alien is an ancient term from English common law. Together, the words dont allow any subtlety.

Anti-immigrant activists doubled down on illegal alien, and conservative politicians followed. But they were on the wrong side of history even before Trump gave them a temporary bump. Santa Ana was one of hundreds of academics who signed on to a campaign in the early 2010s that urged media organizations to drop the I word that is to say, illegal. This paper agreed to do so in 2013; the Library of Congress stopped using illegal alien as a subject heading three years later.

Santa Ana applauds the Biden administrations striking of illegal alien but warns that making it a thing of the past remains an uphill battle. A shibboleth that potent doesnt just disappear with a departmental memo.

Its the best we can do right now, he said. Because until were invaded by Mars, well continue to use it.

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California roots of the fight over the term 'illegal alien' - Los Angeles Times