The Trump administration has once again made its priorities painfully clear: punish Black, Brown, Asian, and Muslim communities while protecting white supremacy at every level of our immigration system. Yesterday’s so-called “travel ban” is not about national security—it’s about racism. The latest chapter in a long history of using immigration policy as a weapon to exclude, criminalize, and dehumanize our people. And we will not let it happen again without a fight.
Communities United for Status & Protection (CUSP) stands firmly against this racist executive order. We’ve seen this strategy before: targeting immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America under the pretense of “national security” while ignoring the real and growing crises that displace people—many of which are fueled by U.S. policy itself.
Let’s be clear: climate change, driven by governments and corporations in the Global North, is already making entire regions unlivable. Floods in South Sudan, droughts in Burma, rising sea levels across the Caribbean and Pacific—people are being forced to flee because the planet is on fire. Add to that decades of U.S. war, sanctions, and military intervention that have destabilized countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and Syria, and you have a world where migration is not a choice—it’s survival.
Yet instead of offering refuge, this administration doubles down on bans, detention, and deportation. It tells Black, Asian, Brown, Muslim, and Indigenous people that our lives are disposable. That we don’t belong. That we are a problem to be managed, not humans to be welcomed. The cruelty is intentional.
We must all reject Donald Trump’s dangerous and false claim that “hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens” have flooded into the United States under the Biden administration. The truth is that the majority of Haitians arrived through legal channels—including the CHNV humanitarian parole program and Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which are lawful responses to urgent humanitarian needs. This lie isn’t just inaccurate—it’s racist scapegoating designed to fuel anti-Black, anti-immigrant hysteria and justify repressive policies.
This ban is not grounded in facts and the hypocrisy is staggering: countries like Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, majority-white nations, consistently account for some of the highest raw numbers of visa overstays, according to DHS’s own data. But it’s migrants from Black, Asian, and Brown countries who are painted as dangerous, as fraudulent, as criminal. Why? Because this is about who this administration believes belongs—and who it doesn’t. Targeting our communities while allowing others with similar or greater immigration violations to pass unnoticed is not policy—it’s a mirror of a violent, racist worldview.
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders and displaced people are not the threat—they are the outcomes of global injustice. We deserve protection, not punishment. TPS holders, many of whom come from the very countries now targeted, have deep roots in this country. We are nurses, delivery drivers, care workers, artists, organizers, students, and parents. We pay taxes. We raise families. We build community. And we’re tired of being told that our existence is a “threat.”
We reject the criminalization of migration. We reject the lie that safety comes from surveillance, exclusion, and punishment. We believe in the right to move, to stay, to return, and to live with dignity. We believe in the right to be free from climate catastrophe and the violence of empire. What threatens our communities is an administration committed to resurrecting white nationalist immigration policies at the expense of truth, justice, and human dignity.
To the Trump administration: we see your racism. We feel your hate. And we are organizing against it—together. Your fear won’t stop our movement.
To our people: we are organizing, we are rising, and we are not going anywhere. CUSP will continue to fight alongside TPS holders and immigrant communities across this country. We will fight in the courts, in the streets, and in every space where our voices can be heard.
We say no to bans. No to borders. No to the lies that divide us.
Another world is possible—and we’re building it together.
Contact:
info@wearecusp.org
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Communities for Status and Protection (CUSP) is a collaborative of grassroots immigrant organizations working to win permanent status & build a more inclusive immigrant rights movement centering the needs and experiences of African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, Arab/Middle Eastern, and Asian immigrants. CUSP is Adhikaar for Human Rights & Social Justice, African Communities Together, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the National Network for Arab American Communities, and the UndocuBlack Network.