Prediction: Right Wing Will Go After Migrant Children at San Diego Convention Center
Our local history is rife with racism and woefully short of people willing to stand up to the right wing.
The Department of Health and Human Services will be using the San Diego Convention Center to temporarily house unaccompanied migrant children seeking asylum.
Mayor Todd Gloria and Supervisor Nathan Fletcher issued a joint press release yesterday saying the decision came in response to a request from HHS Secretary Xavier Baccera. While the start date is uncertain, the facility is to be used for three months, costs will be paid by the federal government, and the average stay will be 30 to 35 days.
This being San Diego, it took less than a New York minute for the bad takes on this humanitarian action to surface.
Although the phasing out of the Convention Center as a location for sheltering homeless humans has been public knowledge for weeks --if not months-- there was an immediate response suggesting that some sort of double-dealing was involved.
While it’s completely true that our city’s response to unhoused humans is severely lacking, not every event is part of a greater conspiracy. Using homelessness as an excuse to denigrate needed humanitarian action for migrants is an unnecessary distraction.
This is no less wrong than claims about the increasing numbers of unaccompanied minors being the fault of the Biden administration. Mexico is refusing to accept many families with young children back because their homeless shelters are above capacity.
Of more concern are the responses from sympathizers and advocates for nativism and white nationalism.
In short order the right wing outrage machine was operating. Notice how the anger filters down from ‘respectable’ to seedy…
Here’s CD-50 Congressman Darrell Issa flat out lying about a (non-existent) Biden administration “open borders policy.”
https://twitter.com/repdarrellissa/status/1374176215133736963?s=20
It is not a “Biden administration policy” that allows unaccompanied minors to request legal protection at the border. That is the American asylum system, codified into law by Congress in the Refugee Act of 1980. It is also a duty under international law treaties the US has signed onto.
If past experience is any guide, the words in these right wing posts (consisting mostly of erroneous information) will lead to action by local nativists. The only question remaining is “how ugly will it get?”
KUSI quickly dipped into their list of local “citizens,” finding a right wing lawyer to complain about local resources (federal funding, remember?) being used for migrants as opposed to businesses impacted by the pandemic.
https://twitter.com/KUSINews/status/1374143648321839104?s=20
Alert readers might remember the attorney being interviewed by KUSI as one of the featured speakers at a January 2020 Chula Vista rally urging Latinos to leave the Republican Party.
And then the outrage filtered down to social media from the remnants of the East County/Patriot/Vigilante groups. Those remaining on social media (many have been booted for unsavory content) are just exercising their First Amendment Rights; it’s the ones we can’t see who might be interested in exercising the Second Amendment Rights.
The next step in the right wing process will be some obnoxious harassment at the Convention Center site aimed at 1)garnering coverage in sympathetic media and 2)creating discomfort for the workers and volunteers involved in providing humanitarian aid.
Sprinkled into this repulsive behavior will be the usual claims about migrants carrying diseases, the threat of terorism, and how doing the right thing will somehow deprive upstanding citizens of something they feel entitled to.
You can take these reactions to the bank; our local history is rife with racism and woefully short of people willing to stand up to the right wing.
A couple years back, volunteers with the San Diego Rapid Response Network felt obligated to hide the locations of facilities then being used to assist migrants being dumped on the street by the Trump administration due to harassment and threats.
Further back, in 2014, bus loads of immigrant mothers and children arriving at the Temecula Border Patrol station for processing were turned away by angry mobs.
The first three buses arrived in Murrieta, California, on Tuesday, carrying around 140 immigrants who came from Central America and entered the US via Texas. Most were women and children. To ease congestion at that border crossing, they were transferred to the seemingly quieter Border Patrol facility in Murrieta for processing, where they were met with fierce protest. Over 100 of Murrieta’s residents paraded around signs that read "RETURN TO SENDER" and "AMERICA HAS BEEN INVADED," ultimately forcing the buses to turn back by way of a human blockade. “Illegals today, Jihadists with Nukes tomorrow!” roared another sign, and as the buses approached, locals yelled, “Send them back to their countries! You don’t belong here! We don’t want you! Get back to El Salvador!”
In 2007, Union-Tribune columnist Ruben Navarro wrote about a nativist group harassing a Catholic Church that dared to offer services to migrants:
Members of the San Diego unit recently picketed a suburban church northeast of San Diego and held up an effigy of a priest depicted as the devil. According to one Catholic civil rights organization, the Minutemen used bullhorns to hurl invective at parishioners and taunted Hispanic children who were on their way to make their First Communion, telling them their parents were in the country illegally. Things got really crass when some of the border-watchers made references to the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal.
I could keep going, but these examples illustrate that San Diego has a long history of being a locale associated with racist attacks on migrants. After four years of Trump, I doubt that anything has changed.
San Diegans need to be aware of our history and understand the likelihood of violence. Talk to your neighbors, write letters to the editor, and insist that local politicians do their job in directing the appropriate law enforcement agencies to prevent attacks.
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FYI, Via KPBS --- Your help is needed!
Two years ago, the county and Jewish Family Service of San Diego, the San Diego Rapid Response Network and the state provided services and temporary shelter for families seeking asylum at a closed county courthouse after the Trump administration began releasing migrants in border communities.
On Monday, Jewish Family Service and the SDRRN's Migrant Shelter Services put out a call seeking volunteers and additional staff for the current effort.
"The last two weeks have been exceptionally challenging," said Michael Hopkins, CEO of Jewish Family Service. "In order to serve the hundreds of asylum seekers in our care, more volunteers and staff are needed.
"We continue to work with all levels of government and our partners to determine how we can all best meet needs. It is critical that the federal government continue to work to rebuild and reimagine our country's broken asylum and immigration systems, including the processes for migrant shelter services across the border region," Hopkins continued.
Since March 1, SDRRN Migrant Shelter Services has assisted more than 1,700 asylum seekers, compared to 490 migrants served for the month of February.
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