As advocates and community leaders in Pennsylvania, we have been outraged by President Biden’s role in demonizing immigrants through his words and policies that are directly endangering immigrant families. We demand President Biden unequivocally reject xenophobia and implement policies that actively support immigrants. This must start with the immediate closure of the four immigrant detention centers in our own state and region: Pike, Clinton, Elizabeth, and Moshannon Valley.
The Woori Center, an Asian American nonprofit based in Montgomery County where I am executive director, has served our most vulnerable community members in Philadelphia’s five collar counties, including the low-income, recent immigrant, and community members of diverse immigration statuses. As a majority immigrant community, Asian Americans in Pennsylvania and nationally are profoundly impacted by immigration laws and policies. In Pennsylvania alone, the Asian American population has grown 38.2% since 2012. As of 2024, there are now 612,567 Asian American residents, all of whom will benefit from more welcoming policies.
The last few months have been a whiplashing of contradictory immigration policies from the White House. What are we to make of a president who submits to anti-immigrant extremists by passing harmful policies that endanger immigrants and their families — a president who, in the same breath, grants critical relief to a select few? For advocates and community leaders like us, it feels like more of the same, as if our lives and the lives of our community members don’t matter beyond how they can be used to further other people’s political agendas.
While it is worth celebrating the Biden administration’s “Parole in Place” policy for the protections it will bring certain immigrant families, too many more remain in need of similar protections and all need a permanent solution. We call on President Biden to return to the work he was doing at the beginning of his administration, which included the proposal of the U.S. Citizenship Act, placing a moratorium on detention and deportation, and overturning Trump era policies instead of bringing them back. We call on him to overturn Trump and to reject the political games. We need policies that do not further militarize the border and that make immigration easier and more humane, because our nation and our state is not only stronger with more immigrants, it needs more immigration for our continued success.
In 2020, President Biden promised to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented community members. However, his administration has spent the last three years expanding detention and deportation instead. Not only have these expansions separated families and led to physical harm, but they’ve also caused unnecessary and lasting trauma.
Although it is U.S. law to allow migrants to apply for asylum regardless of where they enter the country, the majority of asylum seekers are now being denied the chance to present their cases. This will have grave consequences for all who come here seeking safety: it will separate families and leave them vulnerable to physical violence. Withholding the use of executive powers to harm people who contribute to our nation’s prosperity further sets a dangerous precedent that fuels anti-immigrant hate and hurts us all.
It is not too late to make a change for the betterment of all. President Biden still has time to demonstrate his commitment to immigrant and refugee communities, and he can begin by ending the four U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center contracts in our region. We urge the administration to shut down the Moshannon, Pike, and Clinton Detention Centers in Pennsylvania, and the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. Additionally, he can support asylum seekers by reversing all executive orders that restrict asylum, expand ICE enforcement and militarize the border. He can instruct ICE to exercise prosecutorial discretion in favor of immigrants facing deportation, including agreeing to reopen deportation orders and releasing people from ICE prisons. And he can use his executive powers to create relief for people seeking status while also advocating for a pathway to citizenship to Congress.
Recently, there has been a great deal of discussion about President Biden’s legacy. Does he want to be remembered as a president who supported all Americans, including immigrant Americans or one that continued to expand the deportation machine? Our communities need justice and care and they need it now. Stand on the side of justice President Biden, our lives and the lives of our loved ones depend on it.
