In June 1939, a passenger ship named the St. Louis approached the coast of Florida, planning to dock in Miami. The boat was packed with nearly a thousand refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe. Most were Jewish, and they thought they’d find a safe haven in the United States.

They were wrong. President Franklin Roosevelt denied their pleas for help, and the U.S. Coast Guard prevented the St. Louis from reaching our shores. By the end of World War 2, nearly a third of the people on board had been killed by the Nazis.

As Europe emerged from the inferno of war and the Holocaust, nations across the world resolved that people fleeing violence and persecution, like those on the St. Louis, would no longer be met with indifference by other nations. In 1951, the Refugee Convention was signed, and by 1980 Congress enshrined the principle of asylum for refugees in domestic immigration law. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, America has been a leader in providing humanitarian protections to people fleeing persecution, torture, and genocide.

For decades, these protections have been the law of the land in the U.S. We have sheltered people from across the globe, enriching our communities and proudly standing as a beacon of hope in the process.

Today, the U.S. government under President Donald Trump is doing everything it can to destroy those protections. And although the ACLU and our partners have managed to block some of their efforts, the administration is currently being allowed to implement key aspects of its ruthless agenda on the ground.

In the past few months, nearly 50,000 vulnerable asylum-seekers have been placed into a cruel program that forcibly returns them to Mexico before their applications are even processed by U.S. immigration authorities. The program was designed for one purpose: to make it so difficult and dangerous to apply for asylum that people will simply give up and return to the persecution they fled. Cartels and criminals in the border cities where asylum-seekers are stuck have learned they are easy prey for extortion, kidnapping, and sexual assault.

And that’s not all. Another new policy bans virtually all asylum-seekers from receiving asylum if they arrived at the border after transiting through a ‘third-country.' This regulation is especially vicious, given the dangerous overland journeys many asylum-seekers make, and the inability of most to arrive directly in the U.S. from their home country without passing through another one first.

The stories emerging from the border right now due to these policies are horrifying. Border Patrol agents giving pregnant women medication to stop their contractions so they can be dumped in Mexico without shelter. Children kidnapped after being placed into the program, with their assailants threatening to kill them and sell their organs. Vulnerable young women raped and assaulted in cities where they don’t know anyone and can’t rely on the authorities for protection. Entire families stuck in squalid tent camps just a stone’s throw from safety in the U.S.

What we know of the dangers these people are facing on our doorstep is just the tip of the iceberg. Because advocates, journalists, and lawyers have limited access to them, most of their suffering is unheard and unseen by people in the U.S. After harrowing journeys fleeing gang violence, political persecution, domestic abuse, and ethnic targeting, they’ve found only indifference at our hands.

The Trump Administration can’t be allowed to unilaterally strip people of humanitarian protections created by Congress.  A majority of the judges who have considered our challenge to the forced return to Mexico program have found it has serious legal flaws, but the government has been permitted to implement it during the initial stage of litigation anyway. It has thus become part of a virtual border wall being built by Trump as he builds his physical one. And no degree of cruelty goes too far for its architects.

They want you to believe that the asylum system was broken before they took office, and that these policies were created to stop people from “gaming the system.” In fact, the opposite is true: the administration's policies are causing chaos and making the system unworkable for people who need – and are legally entitled to – our protection. In 2017, for example, it ended a program that had assisted asylum-seekers in attending 99% of check-ins and court dates while claiming that it needs to radically expand the immigration detention system because asylum-seekers don't show up for hearings. Government asylum officers themselves call Trump’s new asylum policies a “supervillain plan” and immigration judges have described the newly created “tent courts” as something that might exist in “China or Russia.”

The president and his appointees are the ones breaking the asylum system, and they are hoping that you won’t notice or be outraged. They want the people pleading for help at our border to stay out of sight and out of mind, and for you to assume they’re someone else’s problem. We can’t let that happen.

We’re in court tomorrow challenging two of Trump’s most ruthless anti-asylum policies. The stakes could not be higher. If these policies are allowed to stand, tens of thousands of people will remain in danger, with few options other than to return back to the persecution they're trying to escape. Make no mistake, that’s exactly what this administration wants.

There is no way to sugar-coat the reality of what’s happening at the border. Our government is waging a war on asylum-seekers, and it's counting on the American public to stay silent and not pay attention. We’re doing what we can in the courts and in Congress, but we need you to get informed, get angry, and generate public pressure on our elected officials – as well as all the presidential candidates – to demand an immediate reversal of these policies.

We need your help, and so do the vulnerable families in danger at our doorstep within arms reach of the safety they deserve. It’s time for us to look at ourselves in the mirror and decide who we want to be. Are we going to protect those families and welcome them onto our shores, or will we be like those who turned the St. Louis away and condemned hundreds of its passengers to death?

Omar Jadwat, Director, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project

This post is also published in South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Three state legislators recently used this editorial space to champion SB 7066, a law they passed this year to block 80 percent of returning citizens from voting in Florida elections.

In fact, they proudly proclaimed that individuals with prior felony convictions don’t deserve to vote. To quote from their op-ed, “We, the law-abiding citizens of this great Republic don’t owe ex-felons anything.” Despite what they claim in the article, they clearly don’t believe in second chances.

Republicans, Democrats and independents supported Amendment 4 and restoring voting rights to 1.4 million people last November. But SB 7066, designed to limit Amendment 4, passed this spring along party lines and effectively restricted the amendment’s scope to a fraction of the returning citizens it was meant to benefit.

If you voted for Amendment 4, you should be outraged by what these legislators did. They disregarded your vote and ignored your voice. We fought to end the injustice of Jim Crow voter disenfranchisement and ensure that returning citizens can participate in our democracy once they have served their time for a felony conviction. We fought for second chances and collectively won that fight by passing Amendment 4.

Now, these three legislators are trying to tell you that you misunderstood what your support for Amendment 4 meant, even though the wording was clear. Amendment 4 stated that, except for persons convicted of murder or felony sexual offenses, “(t)he amendment restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.”

The Florida Supreme Court reviewed the amendment’s language and approved it. The justices did not say that returning citizens had to pay court fees or fines to vote, which is what SB 7066 mandates. Nothing in Amendment 4’s text excluded the right to vote for those who could not afford to pay.

If you voted for Amendment 4, you correctly believed that it was designed to restore voting rights, regardless of the size of one’s bank account. You correctly understood that the amendment’s purpose was to increase the number of individuals who are eligible to vote. Amendment 4 was about fairness and giving fellow Floridians a second chance.

Maybe you also were one of the voters who was tired of Florida being one of only four states still using racist Jim Crow laws to prohibit Floridians — particularly Black Floridians — from participating in the democratic process. Although 17 percent of Floridians are black, the percentage of black voters disenfranchised by our state constitution was twice that percentage. And SB 7066 creates a voter disenfranchisement scheme even worse than the unfettered, arbitrary and inequitable system we have had until now, administered by Florida’s Executive Clemency Board.

It’s clear, from the 5.1 million voters who passed Amendment 4, that we were collectively outraged that our state remained a bulwark of racial injustice. But according to these legislators, you misunderstood what you did when you voted “yes” for Amendment 4.

Tellingly, this same power bloc said the public did not know what it wanted in 2016 when 71 percent of voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing the use of medical marijuana. Unsurprisingly, these legislators have worked actively to undercut that amendment.

That same bloc also told 74 percent of voters who backed the 2014 Water and Land Conservation Initiative that they did not know what they really wanted. Voters knew they allocated state funds to purchase and protect environmentally vulnerable natural treasures. Subsequently, Tallahassee’s political machine has repeatedly used that money for purposes completely unrelated to preserving our environment and Florida’s natural treasures.

Indeed, this same political machine passed a law this year making it substantially harder for citizens to place future constitutional amendments on the ballot. They know they cannot control what Floridians want and know is right, therefore, these legislators endeavor to restrict Florida voters from shaping a more just and inclusive state.

Soon after you approved Amendment 4, newly-elected governor Ron DeSantis announced his belief that Florida’s Constitution required “implementing language,” which was nothing more than a way of undermining the amendment’s purpose. The tactics of the governor and these legislators are not novel. Indeed, such efforts to undermine truly representative government and the will of the people were commonplace during the Reconstruction era through the passage of Jim Crow laws.

When our country ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870, granting African-American men the right to vote, states like Florida immediately adopted so-called “implementing language” to undermine it. Literacy tests and poll taxes became the order of the day.

Even more telling, soon after DeSantis signed SB7066 into law, he said Amendment 4 was a “mistake.”

The op-ed authors — Speaker Pro Tem MaryLynn Magar of Hobe Sound, Majority Leader Dane Eagle of Cape Coral, and Majority Whip Mike Grant of Port Charlotte — argue SB 7066 is not a poll tax and claim they are outraged anyone would label it that way. But their representations do not change the fact that hundreds of thousands of returning citizens will not be able to vote because they can never afford to pay certain amounts of money. If it looks like a poll tax and smells like a poll tax, then it is a poll tax.

That Florida’s current leadership remains unwilling to break with the state’s dismal history of voter suppression is disgraceful. That is what Floridians voted for in November — no matter what some lawmakers want you to believe.

The Trump administration yesterday announced its plan to admit 18,000 refugees this fiscal year, taking another step in its agenda to dismantle the program that has long provided protection for people and families seeking safety from persecution. This sickening announcement is consistent with Trump’s attacks on refugees, Muslims, and immigrants across the board — particularly those who are Brown or Black.

The U.S. has long been a global leader in refugee admissions. By the end of the Obama administration, the United States’ annual refugee admissions ceiling was 110,000 — and many felt it should be higher in light of multiple international crises that were causing many people to flee their homes. Given that many of these crises were in Muslim-majority countries like Syria, and that some Muslim communities, like the Rohingya in Myanmar, were being specifically targeted for persecution, nearly half of refugees admitted to the U.S. at the time were Muslim.

While crises around the world continue, the Trump administration has consistently and significantly reduced refugee admissions, lowering the previous 110,000 admissions ceiling to 45,000 in fiscal year 18; 30,000 in FY 19; and now to 18,000 in FY 20. This is consistent with their targeting of Black and Brown people, including Muslims whose admissions dropped to 17 percent in the first half of FY 18 (as compared to the then 63 percent Christian admissions). In addition, only 62 Syrians were admitted in FY 18 — a 99.05 percent decline from FY 17 to FY 18.

These attacks on those seeking our help through the refugee program have extended to individuals seeking asylum. The asylum program, like the refugee admissions program, is intended to help those seeking refuge from persecution. While those applying for refugee status apply from abroad, those seeking asylum apply in the U.S. In fact, many are making claims at our southern border and others are already living in the United States.

The substance of the claims is the same — people in need, calling for our help, asking that we welcome them so that they may survive. These humanitarian programs are a part of our immigration laws and are the country we strive to be.

But the administration disagrees, and is trying to unilaterally erase these protections.  Just recently, for example, the administration abruptly announced that individuals, other than Mexicans, at our southern border can’t get asylum here unless they apply for protection in a third country and are rejected there. This directive could virtually shut down a large part of the asylum system. It has been challenged in an ACLU lawsuit and found unlawful by multiple courts, but is currently being implemented while the litigation continues. 

With that policy and yesterday’s announcement, Trump continues the legacy he began with the Muslim ban, betraying communities and implementing discriminatory and hateful policies. The original Muslim ban included a ban on refugees. Even once the administration split the Muslim and refugee ban into two orders, the targeted countries for the refugee ban were almost entirely Muslim-majority countries. And now, the administration’s minimal number of  refugee admissions is another part of Trump’s systemic effort to dismantle our humanitarian programs and further eliminate admissions of Muslims, Black, and Brown people.

Trump is doing everything he can, whether through policy or early morning Twitter rants, to send people back to the “places from which they came” or prevent them from coming at all. His rhetoric and his policies are consistent — spreading the message that Congresswoman Omar, a U.S. citizen, is less than American, while simultaneously dismantling the refugee process through which she came to the U.S. 

There is a Muslim ban in place, the administration has slowly but surely put forward policies to dismantle the asylum process, and visa numbers for Brown and Black immigrants have dropped significantly in the employment and family-based system. The agenda is clear.

The implementation of these discriminatory policies and processes are as revolting as Trump’s rhetoric and attacks on people of color and other marginalized communities. These attacks are part of the fabric of this administration and cannot be viewed in isolation. They are part of his anti-immigrant agenda to turn our backs on those in need. That may be Trump’s version of America, but it’s not ours. And we won’t stop fighting until our country reflects the humanity, diversity, and justice for which we strive. This is our America.

Manar Waheed, Senior Legislative and Advocacy Counsel, ACLU