The Ukraine Solidarity Network (US) is outraged at the Trump Administration’s ongoing effort to deport US residents and student visa-holders opposed to Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine as well as hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere. Our perspective is “Occupation is a Crime, from Ukraine to Palestine.”
The unlawful arrest and threatened deportation of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is a crime against humanity directed at everyone who opposes Trump’s reactionary agenda. The government’s behavior, including ignoring court orders, is inseparable from its deadly threat against remaining constitutional rights and process in the United States. We demand the immediate release of Khalil, Alireza Doroudi and all activists who have been arrested and/or threatened with deportation for expressing their democratic right to oppose injustice.
The administration’s effort to demonize those solidarizing with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination is also inseparable from its effort to deport millions of immigrants and refugees, many of whom have lived in the United States for decades.
- Trump has ended the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela Parole Program (CHNV) which allowed temporary residency for 530,000 otherwise ineligible immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security has announced it will deport and arrest all those who do not leave the United States before their permits are cancelled on April 24. Trump is now fulfilling Biden’s declared aim of sunsetting CHNV.
- Trump has revoked the more than 30-year-old Temporary Protected Status program that has allowed 836,000 immigrants from 16 countries to remain in the US. As of the start of this year more than 500,000 Haitians and 600,000 Venezuelans as well as tens of thousands from El Salvador, Honduras, Afghanistan, Cameroun, Ethiopia, and Ukraine were eligible to apply for TPS.
- Trump is ending Uniting for Ukraine, a program established in 2022 to allow US citizens and permanent residents to sponsor a Ukrainian refugee to remain in the US for at least two years. About 200,000 Ukrainians have received protection under this program—which the administration has now indefinitely suspended.
Trump’s effort to “make America white again” by deporting millions of people of color is now being extended to Ukrainians forced to flee by Putin’s imperialist invasion. Now that Trump has forged an alliance with Putin, who shares his white nationalist colonial mindset, the lives of Ukrainians are seen as completely expendable.
This must not stand! We call on everyone opposed to occupation and colonial domination to combat these moves and demonstrate solidarity with all immigrants and political activists being targeted by the emerging MAGA-Putin Axis. We oppose all forms of occupation, imperialism, and dehumanization.