On the Day Without Immigrants, one Facebook status update proclaimed that we’re “just fine” without them.
That Facebooker is very likely on the wrong side of history here, but she is certainly entitled to her opinion.
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The official Twitter hashtag is #diasininmigrantes, or #daywithoutimmigrants. Today, Feb. 16, 2017, is the Day Without Immigrants. It’s a Thursday in which the good old-fashioned American consumer drove to the strip mall or corner store only to find the place closed for business, doors locked.
The Day Without Immigrants is a protest over arrests made across the country by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, at the behest of the Trump administration.
WFAE News in Charlotte reports that more than 250 businesses in the area closed for the day. School attendance is down, too. One teacher’s tweet, accompanied with a picture of the classroom: “Empty desks today as over half my class stays home.”
What has ICE been up to?
ICE has been up to a lot lately. Its mission, according to ICE.gov, is to “protect America from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety.” Trump says that there’s a lot to threaten national security and public safety when it comes to our borders, so ICE has been arresting undocumented immigrants nationwide.
As per the Intercept, ICE arrested hundreds of people last week, and “advocates are bracing for more to come.”
Will Trump’s immigration ban survive legal scrutiny?
On a related note, Trump’s immigration ban has been “dealt its strongest blow yet,” according to Vice News, when a federal judge granted a temporary freeze on the ban for the state of Virginia, citing evidence that Trump’s executive order violated the Establishment Clause against religious discrimination. Virginia’s evidence consisted largely of public statements Trump has made about Muslim immigrants and Islam.
District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s opinion came on Feb. 13 – the same day, as it happens, that an opinion writer on The Hill proclaimed that he saw “no merit” in the claim that Trump’s ban is unconstitutional based on religious discrimination.
“While it is true that the countries subject to the 90-day suspension have large Muslim populations,” Nolan Rappaport wrote, “this was not the basis for selecting them.” Ultimately, Rappaport believes that Trump will be a “shoo-in” winner if this reaches the Supreme Court.
We will have to wait and see.