Latino voters played a crucial role in the election of Barack Obama in 2008. The mandate of their vote was clear: legalize the undocumented and stop the ICE raids, deportations, and governmental repression. But Obama has so far betrayed this mandate.

The New York Times reported on the sad-state of Obama’s immigration policies in an August 12, 2009 article “Napolitano Focuses on Immigration Enforcement”:

“A day after President Obama announced that legislation to overhaul immigration laws would have to wait until next year, the secretary of homeland security played down the need for change in a speech here and took a tough stance on enforcing current immigration laws. The secretary, Janet Napolitano, defended the administration’s assertive strategy against illegal immigrants and companies that employ them, relying largely on programs started under President George W. Bush. That strategy has drawn fire from immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who say the president has not lived up to campaign promises.”

It is true that Obama has made various small concessions to the immigrants rights movement, notably by lessening work-place raids; passing new guidelines that state that lactating mothers can no longer be arrested and separated from their nursing children (although they can still be deported); that children should not be detained nor should family detention centers be built; that one parent from a family in the process of deportation will be set free at least so as to allow for parental supervision; and that asylum coverage should be expanded to more women claiming  persecution because of domestic violence in their home countries.

But overall, the administration has not only failed to stop the raids or implement immediate legalization for all (amnesty), but it has in many ways worsened repression against the undocumented. In this press conference, Head of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano stated: “Border security will not itself stop illegal entrants into our country …. Our border strategy must be combined with better enforcement of the immigration laws within the United States.”

The new administration has only changed some of the tactics of its repression by switching from public work-place raids to instruments such as E-Verify system, which requires verification of legal status before hiring.  The Obama administration has made E-verify mandatory for all federal contractors and sub-contractors.

In her press conference, Napolitano bragged that the Obama administration has outdone the Bush White House in its repression against immigrants.  ICE agents have arrested 181,000 undocumented immigrants and deported 215,000 people so far this year. Both these figures are double what they were for the same period two years ago.

Indeed, contrary to promises for “change,” the Obama administration government has deepened repression inside the United States and on the U.S.-Mexico border (under the pretext of the “war on drugs.”)

“How many more millions if not billions of dollars are we going to put into the border without fixing the immigration system?” asked Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. Joshua Hoyt, of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said that Napolitano is “increasing enforcement of laws that President Obama and she have both said are broken, and the result is going to be a lot of human misery.” Every month there are more and more signings of 287(g) agreements allowing for local police enforcement of federal immigration law, which allow for proto-facists like Phoenix Sherriff Joe Arpaio to terrorize whole communities.

Even worse, the Obama administration has done nothing to counter the growing nativist hysteria against “illegal aliens” that mainstream media pundits such as Glen Beck and Lou Dobbs have been fanning 24/7 throughout the country. The New York Times noted that Napolitano’s speech “was notable for its lack of a single passage about the positive role many illegal immigrants play in society, a concession that has become standard in most political pronouncements from Democrats on the subject.”

Obama’s shameful catering to anti-immigrant demagogues has marked the whole health care debate. Republican Congressman Joe Wilson made national waves when he yelled out “You lie!” when Obama claimed in his speech that his reform plans would not give coverage to “illegal immigrants.”

Obama has not challenged this inhumane, openly discriminatory scapegoating by countering with the simple reply that all people have the right to receive health care. With neither the Democrats or Republicans arguing in defense of the rights of immigrants, the right-wing has seized the moment and gone on the offensive, mobilizing over 50,000 right-wing nutjobs in Washington D.C against immigrants rights, health care, and “socialism.”

Though they represent a minority of the population, the anti-immigrant neo-fascists are gaining momentum nationally. It would be a serious mistake to underestimate the dangerous threat these forces pose. A resistance movement is urgently needed. But the major immigrants rights organizations and trade unions have remained demobilized and silent at this crucial moment. Why?

The sad answer is that these leaderships do not want to challenge or embarrass “their friends in power”, despite the fact that the Obama administration and the Democratic Party have clearly made a decision to escalate repression against immigrants and to accept the basic political premises of the scapegoating vile that fills talk radio, FOX News, and CNN.

It should be clear that the only way to counter the increasingly-violent attacks on immigrants -- and the only way to force the Obama administration to grant full rights to immigrants --- is through (re)building the independent mass struggle in the streets, workplaces, and barrios, that shook the country in 2006. There is no time to lose.

Stop the Deportations Now! Legalization for All Now! No Human Is Illegal!