(dramatic music)
Thanks for staying with us.
On night two of the convention,
the president held a
swearing-in ceremony
for new citizens
at the White House.
This was part of the effort
during the convention
to portray Trump as
sympathetic to immigrants,
even though he sought to
eliminate DACA protection
for Dreamers, refuses to give
TPS status to Venezuelans,
rewrote rules to curtail
legal immigration,
and all but eliminated
the country's asylum
and refugee programs.
Maria Rodriguez is the executive
director of FLIC Votes,
a group that advocates on
behalf of immigrants in Florida.
Do you want to play
some of the videos
of the kids crying
for their parents
while they're in cages with
those Mylar blankets in kennels?
This administration
had a record,
almost 70,000 kids in
cages, creating trauma,
not just for them,
but for generations,
at an incredible cost.
It costs almost
700, almost $800,
$775 per kid to create
that trauma for them
and for generations.
So, that's one example.
You're talking about refugees
at the moment in the world
where there's the most refugees
in the history of our world.
And the U.S. has historic low
levels of refugee acceptance
since the 1980, when the
refugee program started.
That's less than
18,000 last year.
That is insulting the
DNA of our country,
insulting Emma Lazarus
and the Statue of Liberty.
It's a making a mockery of
our history and of our values.
And I can go on and on.
The Cuban community
is very affected
by these immigration policies.
Having to wait outside of the
border for family petitions,
if you've gone through a third
country, you're disqualified,
the rocket dockets with
no guarantee to council.
It's one thing after another.
Like I said, a thousand
either executive orders
or administrative orders that
are truly, truly hurting,
not just immigrant families,
that are hurting the
values and the vision
of our history and of
our future, for sure.
The Republicans argue
that the alternative
is to just basically
have open borders
and that if you don't
have secure borders,
you don't have a country.
Absolutely rubbish.
That's garbage.
Everybody wants
a secure country.
Everybody wants public safety.
That's not what is at stake.
They are criminalizing
immigrants.
There has been a false paradigm
of criminalizing
migration and immigrants.
We are not a threat.
We are not a public safety
or national security issue.
In fact, Nobel Prize
economists have said
that migration is good
for growing economies.
Migration is a natural
historical phenomenon
since the beginning of time.
What is happening is
the criminalization
of that migration is hurting us.
It's hurting us morally and
it's hurting us financially.
And the fact is, is that
even legal immigration
is being attacked under
this administration.
I mentioned some of the
gutting of the asylum pieces,
naturalization, the fees
have gone up to 80%,
both naturalization
and green card fees,
making it harder for
low-income immigrants
to migrate legally
to United States.
I can go on and on and on.
This has been a xenophobic
attack of historic proportions
and will go down in the
history of this country
as a very, very
dark, ugly period.
You have to though acknowledge
that under the Obama
administration and Obama-Biden,
there was a lot of deportation.
They were deporting.
I remember the Hispanic
community was very upset
with the Obama administration
for the level of deportations
that the Obama administration
has engaged in.
How is that any different
than what Donald Trump
has been doing for
the last three years.
We fought the Obama
detentions and deportations
with the same vigor.
I was arrested at
the White House
pressuring Obama to
bring relief to families
when they're enforcing a
broken immigration law.
The big difference is that
there were priorities set
under the Obama administration,
where at least
purportedly they attempted
to deport those who had some
kind of criminal background.
Under this administration,
it is fair game,
open game, open season on
hunting after immigrants,
no matter what, right here.
And the problem is
not just Trump, Jim.
The problem is Trumpism,
whether it's at the state
level with DeSantis,
or frankly and sadly
at the local level
with Republican Mayor Gimenez,
who has collaborated in
diverting $25 million of ours
to collaborate with ICE
and to deport people,
a third of them who are there
because of minor infractions,
such as driving
without a license.
And that is a crime and that's
separating families brutally
and creating a
detention deportation
machine that hurts us
while some people are
making profit off of it.
