by Malliki Dutt
Araceli doesn’t go out alone anymore. She is frightened of ongoing harassment by local police, whom she used to trust to protect her. Trini drops her two children off at school every morning unsure if she will be there at pickup time. Other mothers in her communities have, after all, been "disappeared," taken from their homes, and families, without warning or trace.
Think this is happening in Kabul? Juarez?
Actually, it’s happening in Alabama.
Today, the escalating "war on women" has — rightly — sparked widespread outrage and urgent action to protect women’s human rights in the United States. But the also-ongoing "war on immigrants" is not merely a coincidental crisis. Both are elements of a sweeping crusade against the fundamental rights of women living in the U.S., documented and otherwise.
The current attacks on women’s health, sexuality, and self-determination — in states, in GOP debates, on the airwaves, and beyond — is appalling enough. But it’s only part of the story. The war on women is even more than an assault on the most basic and personal choices in our lives, even more than an assault on our right to determine if, when and under what circumstances to become mothers. It is also an attack on our essential right to mother — to raise healthy, safe children in healthy, safe families. And on that front, it is immigrant women and women of color who suffer the most.
Laws such as Alabama’s HB 56 and federal enforcement measures such as 287g have injected fear and anguish into even the most routine aspects of many women’s daily lives: going to work or taking kids to school, or seeing the doctor. HB 56 gives police officers sweeping authority to question and detain anyone they suspect of being undocumented, with snap judgments based on skin color — that is, blatant racial profiling — accepted as an "utterly fair" method of determining who to accost. It also requires school administrators to track the immigration status of their students. It is shocking in its singularity of purpose: to make everyday life so intolerable for undocumented immigrants to the United States. that they will, indeed, "self-deport." And already, the consequences for immigrant families have been unspeakably high.
These are families like that of Jocelyn, a fourteen-year-old girl who was sent to live with relatives when it became too dangerous for her mother and father to stay in Alabama. Jocelyn is not alone: a growing number of parents are giving power of attorney over their children to friends, neighbors and employers — even landlords and other near-strangers because the threat of deportation and indefinite detention is just too real. Immigrants in detention are often denied the right to make arrangements for their children or attend family court hearings. Others have been stripped of their parental rights entirely. The Applied Research Center estimates that deportation of parents have left five thousand children currently in foster care.
All this in a climate where worship of "family values" — that is, in reality, certain value placed on certain families — has reached near maniacal proportions. Ask Maria about how this country really values women, babies and families, and she will tell you how harassment by ICE agents — who refused to leave her hospital bedside — nearly led to dangerous labor complications. Ask Juana about giving birth to her son in shackles. Ask Tere about "family values," and she will tell you how she risked everything to bring her son to the U.S. for life-saving heart surgery. Today, the danger is on our soil: she is so afraid of being picked up and detained that she has stopped taking her son to the medical appointments his condition requires.
The current war on women is in many ways an unprecedented crisis. But it’s also an unprecedented opportunity for action. I have been deeply moved, inspired and challenged by the actions of women who have refused to be collateral in a culture war, women who are demanding their fundamental humanity above all else. It’s time to use that power to make it absolutely clear that this war on women is a war on all women.
Many activists and advocates have long fought for the women’s rights movement to include immigrants and the immigrant rights movement to include women. And right now, we have the attention of the 24-hour news cycle, the pundits, the politicians, the millions of people in this country who value families and fairness — and who are now seeing the true colors of those who do not.
As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear a challenge to these egregious immigration laws, it’s time for those of us outraged by women’s human rights violations across borders and oceans to step up for all women’s human rights at home. It’s time to stop fighting battles in isolation. It’s time to stand together to win this war once and for all.
This article originally appeared on the site RH Reality Check. Follow Mallika Dutt on Twitter, @mallikadutt.