Most injuries from Israeli 'massacre' at Gaza school are severe burns, lost limbs: Medical official

Over 100 killed early on Saturday, when Israeli army hit school where displaced Palestinians were performing dawn prayer, say official Palestinian sources

Hosni Nedim |10.08.2024 - TRT/AA

Palestinians mourn after an Israeli attack at the Et-Tabiin school where displaced people took shelter in the Ed-Deraj neighborhood in Gaza City, Gaza on August 10, 2024.


GAZA CITY, Palestine

Most people injured in an Israeli strike that hit a school in Gaza City early on Saturday suffered severe wounds, including full-body burns and loss of limbs, the director of the Baptist Hospital in the city told Anadolu.

"This day is one of the most challenging in the ongoing war," Dr. Fadel Naeem said, highlighting the significant number of casualties caused by the "massacre" at the Al-Taba'een School.

Naeem said the death toll was expected to rise as many victims are in critical condition in the hospital's operating rooms.

"So far, 70 victims of the massacre have been identified, while the rest are in pieces that make identification difficult," said the official.

Naeem said that the Baptist Hospital, the only open medical facility in Gaza City, was severely under-equipped as it lacked basic medical supplies and blood units to treat the wounded.

He emphasized that the hospital was struggling to manage the overwhelming number of patients due to the shortage of medical staff and essential supplies, exacerbated by the ongoing war since Oct. 7.

Earlier, the Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip had said that the Israeli army "directly targeted displaced civilians while performing fajr (dawn) prayers, (which) led to a rapid rise in the number of casualties."

The attack killed over 100 Palestinians and injured several others, according to official Palestinian sources.

Despite appeals on Thursday from mediators, including Egypt, the US, and Qatar, to stop hostilities, reach a cease-fire, and a hostage exchange agreement, Israel persists with its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip has killed about 39,800 people since last October following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi

Israel ramps up demolitions in West Bank village


Fayha' Shalash The Electronic Intifada 7 August 2024

Barbed wire surrounds the village of al-Walaja. (Yahel Gazit / ActiveStills)

Mahmoud al-Araj has been in the village now called al-Walaja since he was born.

Now in his sixties, he recalls when “we lived a quiet life, cultivating our land and eating what we harvested.”

The calm was relative and should be contextualized.

Around 1,600 people were uprooted from the original village of al-Walaja when it was invaded by the Israeli military in October 1948. A few hundred of them would set up a new village, keeping the name al-Walaja.

Located west of Bethlehem, it was a few kilometers away from their original village.

During the 1970s, Israel founded the settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo. Land was stolen from al-Walaja for their construction.

The Israelis would subsequently build a bypass road around al-Walaja. It was designed so that settlers would have access to Jerusalem.

Mahmoud al-Araj and his family live near the entrance to the village. The road was built “right next to our homes,” he said.

“Now we have trouble sleeping because of the constant noise,” he said. “The road is suffocating us.”

“We cannot sit on the balcony at night and children cannot play outside,” he added. “We are afraid that they will be harmed.”

In the first decade of this century, the Israeli authorities began implementing a plan for Har Gilo’s expansion – at al-Walaja’s expense.

Israel’s massive wall in the West Bank is strangling the village, too. The section of the wall in al-Walaja partly comprises barbed wire.

Over recent weeks, the Israeli occupation has ramped up its violence against al-Walaja.

Between 9 and 22 July, the Israelis demolished 10 residential buildings in the village. Almost 80 people were displaced as a result.

Israel uses the pretext that homes were built without permits when carrying out demolitions. In practice, it is virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain permits from their occupiers.
“War against all Palestinians”

Ahmad Abu al-Tin is among those whose homes were attacked.

In mid-July, the Israeli forces arrived with bulldozers at his home. No warning was given.

He had been told that the house faced a demolition order a few months prior. He then paid “huge sums of money to lawyers,” so that he could challenge the order and seek a building permit.

He had no luck obtaining one.

When the bulldozers arrived, Ahmad and his neighbors were made to leave their homes immediately. The Israeli forces would not allow them to remove their furniture before the demolition.

Ahmad and other members of his family saw their home being reduced to rubble.

“What is happening to us is a small part of what is happening to the people of Gaza,” he said. “This is a war against all Palestinians.”

Since the demolition of his home, Ahmad and his immediate family have been sheltered by his brother, who lives in Bethlehem.

Their conditions are cramped. Six people have to live in one room.

Along with the destruction and threatened destruction of their homes, al-Walaja’s people have faced countless other human rights violations. They include movement restrictions and reducing the delivery of water to villagers.

Israel has even sought to deny religious freedom. Calls to prayer are being muffled, with Israel complaining that Palestinian mosques are too near its settlements.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

Adel al-Atrash, an activist from al-Walaja, noted that Israel’s policies have proved devastating to farming.

“Al-Walaja could have all the elements of a prosperous life,” he said. “But the Israeli occupation has made that impossible.”

Fayha’ Shalash is a journalist based in the occupied West Bank.

Far right pulling masks off Israeli legal charade


Mati Yanikov The Electronic Intifada 5 August 2024

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, joins tens of thousands of ultra-nationalist Jews as they prepare to march through the Old City of Jerusalem on 6 June, 2024. Eyal WarshavskySOPA Images/SIPA USA

On 19 July, the International Court of Justice published its advisory opinion on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

The World Court couldn’t have been more clear.

The occupation is unlawful, Israel’s presence in occupied territory must come to an end as “rapidly as possible,” Israel is guilty of “systematic” racial discrimination, Israel must immediately cease all settlement activity, and Israel owes reparation to Palestinians.

That is not to mention the legal responsibilities of other states in view of this ruling, to act to end Israel’s illegal presence in occupied territory, not accept any physical or demographic changes imposed on these territories, and to end any assistance or aid that helps Israel maintain its presence in occupied territory.

That task is growing rapidly harder, however.

In the weeks prior to the ICJ decision, a number of plans by far-right Israeli ministers to seize more occupied land and change the legal status of administrative bodies in the 1967 occupied territories came to light.

If followed through, these plans amount to a huge leap for Israel’s ongoing annexation of West Bank land and would grant ever more leeway to settler attacks on Palestinian villages, property and lives.
Mega-dramatic

Israel’s illegal practices in the West Bank are of course not new. But the advent of the current Israeli government, generally considered the most far right in the state’s history, has allowed extremist ministers to assume significant positions related to the administration of the occupied territories, greatly influencing housing, policing and regulation of Israeli settlements, many of them illegal even under Israeli law.

One of the most significant characters is Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, who has seized the opportunity presented by 7 October to forge ahead with settlement expansion plans that he has been busy outlining to supporters.

During a private Jewish settler gathering on 9 June in a settlement outpost south of Qalqilya in the West Bank, Smotrich was almost ebullient.

“I’m telling you, it’s mega-dramatic,” the head of the Religious Zionism Party holding one of the country’s most important portfolios, told his audience about plans – well advanced – to transfer legal authority of the so-called Area C, or 60 percent of the West Bank, from the Israeli military to a civilian administrator answerable to the defense ministry.

“Such changes change a system’s DNA,” Smotrich, a proponent of the full annexation of all occupied territory, added.

His words, recorded secretly by a member of the Israeli rights group Peace Now, were leaked to The New York Times and subsequently reported by other media outlets.

“We created a separate civilian system,” Smotrich said at the gathering, a system, he clarified, that maintains a role for the Israeli ministry of defense in order to deflect international scrutiny, and give the impression that the military is still at the heart of West Bank governance.

This is important to present Israel’s occupation as not permanent, as this would be a clear transgression of international law. For this reason, Israel’s supreme court has long maintained the obvious fiction that Israel’s continued occupation of 1967 territory is “temporary.”
Legal cover

As long as it is officially administered by military bodies and army officials, it superficially corresponds to the Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying army is permitted “temporary military occupation where necessary in lawful self-defense,” and until agreement for resolution is reached, though this correspondence does not include settlements.

The Israeli Civil Administration, which was established to govern the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank, is a military body used to justify the legality of the 57-year-old “temporary” military occupation.

Transferring it from military control to civilian control is therefore indeed “mega-dramatic,” especially in light of the ICJ’s 19 July advisory opinion.

According to several reports, Smotrich has already appointed a deputy on his behalf to the Civil Administration.

Hillel Roth, a West Bank settler like Smotrich, has assumed all authority related to planning, real estate, enforcement, transportation and environmental protection.

Roth is not under the supervision of the current head of the Civil Administration, Brigadier General Hisham Ibrahim, but under a new administration Smotrich has established.

According to The New York Times, Smotrich said the government had secured $270 million from Israel’s defense budget to guard the settlements in 2024-2025.

All this leaves the Civil Administration with very little authority and changes the situation significantly, arguably moving Israel’s creeping de facto annexation into de jure territory.

Some Israeli military personnel have voiced concerns over the reaction in the West Bank. The Israeli daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, quoted one unnamed “senior security source” worrying that: “There is a high probability that the Palestinian side will see this as a blatant violation of the Oslo Accords. After all, in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], the Civil Administration is also responsible for a Palestinian population in Area C.”

During the 9 June settler gathering, Smotrich reportedly also explained that his first goal had been to establish his new administration outside the ministry of defense to be fully under his control, but he eventually changed his mind, mainly because he thought “it will be easier to swallow in the political and legal context, so no one can say we are engaged in annexation, sovereignty and so on.”

The legalization, regulation, budgeting and infrastructure plans for 63 illegal outposts were also announced at the gathering. These outposts, built illegally even under Israeli law, are placed at strategic locations in order to disrupt movement, control the Indigenous population and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, an intention Smotrich was very open about on 9 June.

“We came to settle the land, to build it, and to prevent its division and the establishment of a Palestinian state, God forbid,” he told the gathering.
No man’s land

On 27 June, two weeks after the gathering, Israeli media reported that Israel’s government was to take a series of punitive steps against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The steps – including the “legalization” of five settlement outposts, settlement expansion, enforcement of building restrictions in Area A (under full PA control) and sanctions against senior PA officials, curtailing their movement and preventing travel abroad – were imposed as a result of the announcement a month earlier by the International Criminal Court that prosecutors would seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant, as well as the recognition by a number of European countries of a Palestinian state.

“This is our answer,” Smotrich said, following the announced sanctions: “We said a month ago that any country that unilaterally recognizes a Palestinian state, we will establish a settlement in Judea and Samaria in its name. Five states made this mistake, we have now established five settlements.”

Smotrich is not the only far-right minister flexing his muscles in the occupied West Bank.

At the end of June, an article in Yedioth Ahronoth described the West Bank as a “no man’s land” following the appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir, another far-right Israeli politician who is head of the Kahanist Jewish Power party, as minister of national security.

His position grants him, among other things, authority over the police.

The article goes on to claim that the Israeli police in the West Bank – which is responsible for law enforcement over Jewish settlers in the area – is reluctant to investigate hate crimes so as not to annoy Ben-Gvir.

The article also reports that Ben-Gvir intervenes in investigations into Jewish terrorism, and details growing tensions between the three main security agencies in the occupied territories: the police, the military and the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency.

Not only do police refuse to investigate incidents of deadly shooting by settlers, they are afraid to enter settlements with warrants, and sometimes they simply leave suspicious settlers to operate without restriction.

This corresponds with a reality on the ground that was established long before Ben-Gvir’s appointment. For Palestinians in the West Bank, the distinction between “military” and “civilian” has been non-existent for decades, best exemplified by the regular pogroms villagers and townsfolk in the West Bank suffer at the hands of the so-called hilltop youth and extremist settlers, often under the watchful eye of the military.

What’s different this time is that the state seems to not care even to present a pretense of due process.
Rivalries

What it also reveals, however, is that the Israeli ruling elite is not a monolith. There are many power struggles at the top of the various security agencies over the correct management of Israel’s apartheid rule.

How is it “not a single radical Jew” was arrested, Netanyahu was quoted as asking his security chiefs in a recent meeting over an incident in April that resulted in the killing of two Palestinians in the West Bank.

“The Americans are pressing,” he is reported to have said.

No charges were filed following the event, and the military commander of that area of the occupied West Bank openly questioned Ben-Gvir’s police district commander during the meeting over how the investigation was being conducted, calling it “interesting.”

But while such spats suggest friction among Israel’s security elite – and while Netanyahu’s words suggest Israel is feeling some genuine pressure from a US administration desperate to show it is doing something – the friction is contained within very narrow boundaries.

For many years, Israel’s far right has served the purpose of distinguishing between official Israeli policies and “the extremists.” This helps whitewash Israeli atrocities behind a façade of legality, while purposefully leaving the dirty work to the extremist fringes the state itself created by encouraging and funding the illegal settlement project.

But these extremist fringes have found their way to formal power and the mainstream. The monster the state created has escaped its control. How to maintain this façade?

The various reactions in Israel to the capture of power by the extremist fringes are really an indication of a growing rift in Israeli society over how best to manage apartheid, occupation, settler colonialism and genocide.

Those who are committed to a legalistic approach are mainly the legal and security establishments, and the middle-class “pro-democracy” social movement, one of whose leaders, Shikma Bresler, has been quite clear that the priority was shielding Israeli soldiers from international courts.

For these elites, the appearance of rule of law must be kept at all costs.

The far right, on the other hand, is committed to direct action. Powerful figures like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are willing to take risky decisions that will change the legal status quo of the occupied territories to continue to physically sabotage any chance of a future Palestinian state.

And they are no longer a fringe, as the many, well-attended conferences and marches demanding renewed Israeli settlement in Gaza attest to.

As the masks are being pulled off, Israel – and the entire Middle East with it – is stepping into an uncertain future. It is becoming harder and harder for the “rules-based world order” to keep granting Israel impunity.

Mati Yanikov is a Haifa-based anti-colonial activist.

Second gender-row boxer Lin Yu Ting wins Olympic gold after Imane Khelif; rival left with bloodied face

By Aditi Srivastava
Aug 11, 2024 

Lin Yu Ting defeated Poland’s Julia Szeremeta with a 5-0 score at Roland Garros, securing her first Olympic gold medal.

Lin Yu Ting has etched her name in Olympic history, claiming the gold medal in the women's featherweight division. The Taiwanese boxer, who faced intense scrutiny and gender-related controversies, followed in the footsteps of Imane Khelif, another boxer who came out with flying colours amid similar challenges. Both athletes were disqualified by the IBA from the 2023 World Championships. Lin defeated Polish competitor Julia Szeremeta, 20, to secure her first Olympic gold medal.

Paris 2024 Olympics - Boxing - Women's 57kg - Final - Roland-Garros Stadium, Paris, France - August 10, 2024. Yu Ting Lin of Taiwan celebrates after defeating Julia Szeremeta of Poland. John Locher/Pool via REUTERS(via REUTERS)


Lin Yu Ting clinches gold

Ting made it to the finals by beating Turkey's Yildiz Kahraman, who was clearly upset about losing and even made an "XX" sign with her hands during their fight. In the championship bout, the 28-year-old Lin dominated Julia Szeremeta, resulting in the Polish contender with a bloodied face and a silver medal.
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Lin won the match with a 5-0 score in three sets at Roland Garros on Saturday, bending down to kiss the mat in celebration. Ting's four-inch edge made it tough for Szeremeta, who could dodge punches but couldn't hit back strongly enough to score.

Also read: Celine Dion mocks Trump’s Titanic tune blunder, slams ‘unauthorised’ use at rally: ‘Really, that song?’
‘I feel incredible’: Lin Yu Ting after winning Olympic gold

After enduring a flood of social media criticism and intense scrutiny over the gender row, the gleaming gold medal finally brought a smile to the athlete’s face. She reflected, "Winning 5-0 might look easy, but it represents countless hours of practice and hard work." “I feel incredible,” she told reporters post match. “I want to thank everyone who has supported me, and thanks to my team and everyone in Taiwan. They gave me the power.”

Following her victory, Khelif emerged with a robust response, vehemently addressing criticisms regarding her eligibility and gender status, particularly in relation to the now banned IBA. Conversely, Lin encountered several protests from her opponents. throughout the match. In both of Yu Ting's semifinal and quarterfinal matches, her rivals displayed two X's with their index fingers, a gesture that appeared to suggest a reference to the female chromosome symbols.

Imane Khelif slams IBA

"Regarding the IBA, I have been boxing under their organization since 2018," Khelif stated following her gold medal win over China’s Yang Liu in the women’s welterweight tournament in Paris. “They know me very well, they know what I’m capable of, they know how I’ve developed over the years but now they are not recognised any more. They hate me and I don’t know why. I send them a single message: with this gold medal, my dignity, my honour is above everything else,” she added.


The gender identities of both Yu-ting and Khelif have been scrutinised following their disqualification from the 2023 World Championships due to failing gender identity tests.

Kamala Harris overtakes Donald Trump in six different polling averages across three key states

By Aditi Srivastava
Aug 11, 2024 


National aggregates show Harris with a lead of 0.5 to 2.5 percentage points, indicating a shift in voter sentiment as the 2024 election approaches.

Kamala Harris has recently overtaken Donald Trump in six different polling averages, signaling a major shift in the race as the 2024 election draws closer. The Democratic nominee as of Saturday surged in three key battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where voter sentiment has dramatically swung in her favour. These states, which were pivotal in the 2020 election, now appear to be leaning towards Harris, giving her a crucial edge.

(

 This combination of file pictures created on August 3, 2024 shows US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaking on March 26, 2024, (AFP)


Kamala Harris leads Trump in multiple polling average

Six national aggregate polls have placed Kamala Harris at the forefront in the presidential race, with margins ranging from 0.5 to 2.5 percentage points, reports Newsweek. The Vice President turned presidential hopeful officially entered the election on July 21, following President Joe Biden's endorsement and his decision to step back as a candidate. Earlier polls had shown Harris outperforming Biden in some matchups against Trump.

Right now, RealClearPolitics shows that Harris is just beating Trump by a super slim edge, with a 0.5 point lead—47.6 percent to 47.1 percent based on the six polls analysed.
What are the polls where Harris is leading against Trump

The New York Times surveys show Harris just a bit ahead at 48 percent, while former President Trump is right behind her at 47 percent, meaning Harris has a 1-point edge. But things change when we add in independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In that case, the difference between Harris and Trump grows to 2 points, with Harris at 45 percent, Trump at 43 percent, and Kennedy getting 5 percent of the vote.

Looking at the big picture, Harris is in the lead over Trump by 1.6 percentage points, but both of them are falling behind when you count in the votes from third-party candidates in Race to the WH's aggregate. FiveThirtyEight and 270toWin both say Harris is up by 2 percentage points (45.6 percent to Trump's 43.5 percent) and (47.5 percent of the vote to Trump 45.5 percent) and Kennedy is pulling in about 5% of the votes.

Also read: Second gender-row boxer Lin Yu Ting wins Olympic gold after Imane Khelif; rival left with bloodied face
Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania rally behind Harris

The Democratic nominee has made waves with her strategic choice of Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, as her vice-presidential pick. Walz, a well-regarded figure in American politics, contrasts sharply with Donald Trump's more controversial choice of JD Vance as his running mate. A poll from The New York Times and Siena College shows that if the election happened now, 50% of the people who say they'll vote in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania would pick Harris, but 46% in each state would go for Trump.

Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin poll gives Harris a 2.5-point lead over Trump, while The Hill shows her trailing by 0.2 points.

Team Genocide Walks Out on Nagasaki Commemorations

by Eugene Doyle

 August 9, 2024
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In an astonishing “Fuck you” to the survivors of the 1945 US nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, several Western countries including the US, Australia, Canada, France, Italy and the UK have just dropped a bombshell: announcing their ambassadors are shunning this week’s commemorations in solidarity with Israel.

Last week the mayor of Nagasaki, Shiro Suzuki, rescinded Israel’s invitation to the annual peace ceremony. It was a gentle but pointed diplomatic message: Lest we forget what it was – and still is – all about.

Shigemitsu Tanaka, the 83-year-old head of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council, supports the move to keep the Israelis away from the commemorations saying it was inappropriate to invite representatives from countries waging armed conflicts in defiance of calls from the international community.

As a hibakusha – “a survivor of the bomb” – his words carry, or should carry, weight.  The average age of a hibakusha is 88 years old. For some this will be their last commemoration.  Their lives will be book-ended by nuclear blasts killing hundreds of thousands of civilians at one end and a powerful statement of Western contempt for both Japanese and Palestinian civilian lives at the other.

It is likely that in generations to come people will look back on the governments of these Western countries as a kind of moral detritus floating across an ocean of American violence.

The atomic bomb that exploded over Nagasaki at 11:02 on the morning of 9 August 1945 took the lives of 74,000 people.  As with Hiroshima a few days earlier, the Americans decided that killing civilians was a legitimate tactic to achieve a strategic victory.

The people of Gaza have had several times more US-Israeli bombs, by explosive power, dropped on them than was inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined; a staggering statistic.

The US can, rightly, condemn Hamas for killing hundreds of Israeli civilians on October 7th, but has the chutzpah to say mass killings of civilians are ok when it’s done by them. People will passionately argue every side of this but should attempt to discover some central core of consistency amongst the complexity, not least because consistency is the cornerstone of both morality and rationality.

Back in June Mayor Suzuki sent a letter to the Israeli ambassador calling for a ceasefire.  He pointed out that as a child of survivors of the Nagasaki bombing he knew only too well the human cost of armed conflict.

It is worth remembering that no US President has ever apologised for the deliberate targeting of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. With this in mind, their attendance at previous Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorations is akin to a murderer turning up at a funeral. Sorry is obviously the hardest word.

George HW Bush said the nuclear attack on civilians was right because it spared American lives. U.S. President Bill Clinton said, “the United States owes no apology to Japan for having dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”  George W Bush was widely condemned for his offensive comment, “Hey let’s forget that, let’s go forward now together.”

I grew up in the afterglow of those detonations in a New Zealand that had very little sympathy for the Japanese civilians who died. Today I live in a New Zealand where our government has little practical sympathy for the similar number of Palestinians who have died due to yet more American bombs.  According to The Lancet, the authoritative British medical journal, by July this year 186,000 Palestinian lives have likely been taken in the US-Israeli War on Gaza – a figure higher than usually reported because, as well as the bodies actually recovered, it calculates the bodies under the 150,000 buildings flattened in the bombings.

We still live in a world where killing huge numbers of civilians is considered justified if the aim is to achieve a strategic victory.  This week Israeli Cabinet Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Israel Hayom, “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.”  Latest figures: 115 hostages are being held in Gaza, several thousand Palestinian hostages are being held in Israel, including political leaders such as Marwan Barghouti and children who threw stones.

Reading Smotrich’s words, hearing those 70,000 tonnes of bombs exploding on men, women and children, the millions of bullets sprayed or sniped at those same civilians, it is not hard to understand why Palestinians fear the Israelis are planning a Final Solution to the Palestinian Question.

I note that Turkey is the latest in a growing list of countries joining South Africa’s ICJ genocide case against Israel. Consistency would suggest that New Zealand, Australia and the rest should join them.

I commend the people of Nagasaki for keeping the representatives of Israel out of their city.  I think the US, UK, Australia and the other Western nations who spat out their contempt for the hibakusha and their important moral stance should hang their heads in shame.

AMERIKA

Mass Deportations Would be a Nightmare

by Alliyah Lusuegro

 August 9, 2024
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There’s an image that’s stayed with me for weeks: A sea of people holding up “Mass Deportation Now” signs at the Republican National Convention.

Since then, I’ve been plagued with nightmares of mass raids by the military and police across the country. I see millions of families being torn apart, including families with citizen children. And I see DACA recipients — like me — carried away from the only life we’ve ever known.

Mass deportation wasn’t just a rallying cry at the GOP convention. It’s a key plank of Project 2025, a radical document written by white nationalists listing conservative policy priorities for the next administration.

And it would be a disaster — not just for immigrants, but for our whole country.

I moved to the United States when I was six. Until my teenage years, I didn’t know I was undocumented — I only knew I was from the Philippines. I grew up in Chicago with my twin brother. Our parents worked hard, volunteered at my elementary school, and ensured we always had food on the table. They raised us to do well and be good people.

But when my twin and I learned that we were undocumented, we realized that living our dreams was going to be complicated — on top of the lasting fear of being deported.

Everything changed right before I entered high school in 2012: The Obama administration announced the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA. The program was designed to protect young people like my twin and me who arrived in the U.S. at a young age with limited or no knowledge of our life before. We’re two of the 600,000 DACA recipients today.

DACA opened many doors for us. It’s allowed to drive, attend college, and have jobs. And we’re temporarily exempt from deportation, a status we have to renew every two years.

DACA helped me set my sights high on my studies and career. Although I couldn’t apply for federal aid, with DACA I became eligible for a program called QuestBridge that granted me a full-ride scholarship to college. Today I work in public policy in the nation’s capital, with dreams of furthering my career through graduate school.

But if hardliners eliminate DACA and carry out their mass deportations, those dreams could be swept away. And it would be ugly — mass deportation would be a logistical disaster, taking decades and costing billions.

Imagine your friends, neighbors, colleagues, peers, and caretakers being dragged away from their homes. For me, it would mean being forced back to the Philippines, a place I haven’t seen in two decades. My partner, my friends, my work — all I’ve ever known is here, in the country I call home.

This country would suffer, too.

An estimated 11 million undocumented people live here. We’re doctors, chefs, librarians, construction workers, lawyers, drivers, scientists, and business owners. We fill labor shortages and help keep inflation down. We contribute nearly $100 billion each year to federal, state, and local taxes.

Fear-mongering politicians want you to believe we’re criminals, or that we’re voting illegally. But again and again, studies find that immigrants commit many fewer crimes than U.S.-born Americans. And though some of us have been long-time residents of this country, we cannot vote in state or federal elections.

Despite all the divisive rhetoric, the American people agree with immigration advocates: Our country needs to offer immigrants a path to legalization and citizenship. According to a Gallup poll last year, 68 percent of Americans support this.

My dark dreams of mass deportations are, thankfully, just nightmares for now. And my dreams of a secure future for my family and all people in this country outweigh my fears. We must do everything possible to keep all families together.

Alliyah Lusuegro is the Outreach Coordinator for the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. 

Alliyah Lusuegro is the Outreach Coordinator for the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.