 So, prior to Joe Biden's inauguration, he was talking a big game when it comes to immigration. Not only did he promise comprehensive and sweeping immigration reform, he also promised to stop all deportations for the first 100 days of his administration. Now, fast forward to him being in power and things are already starting to change. It's been what? Like, a little over a month of him being president and he's already backtracking on his promises. He started almost immediately when he signed an executive order to do what he promised to do. Stop all deportations. The problem is that a judge blocked that order to stop deportations because of something that Trump's administration put in place at the last minute. They basically said that any changes that you make, you have to notify the state. So Texas actually sounded the alarm and they got this stopped, right? So any and all deportations that were scheduled to go into effect before Biden came into power, they went on as planned. The issue is that Biden legally can still just stop. Stop those deportations by rescheduling them. Scheduling them for months later so that way in the event you are successful in this legal war, well, those deportations will stop. He didn't do that. Immigration activists called on him to take action and he didn't take action. As a result, hundreds of people were deported. And now he has just done a complete 180. And I don't know how else to describe this other than saying this is a gigantic brazen betrayal, contrary to what people want you to believe. People in media who are trying to do apologia for Joe Biden here. So as Colin Combacher of Long Crime Explains, Breaking, President Biden just issued new ICE guidance, wholly abandoning his pledge to halt deportations. ACLU says this is a disappointing step backward from the Biden administration's earlier commitments to fully break from the harmful deportation policies of Trump and Obama. The seven-page guidance can generally be characterized as a return to form these immigration enforcement under the Obama administration. Some of the new provisions are likely to be of extreme concern to immigrants, immigrant communities and immigrant rights activists and advocates. Most headlines about this have not taken stock of the full nature of this interim guidance. History media largely appears to be taking ICE at their word that the new enforcement priorities, really just the old enforcement priorities, are targeted toward criminals. But that's not true, as the removal priority sections above, which work in tandem, show new undocumented immigrants are subject to immediate deportation. That's a huge departure from what Biden promised and has nothing to do with public safety or criminal law. Being undocumented is a civil offense. Now Colin lays all of this out more comprehensively in an article for law and crime, but I think that the tweets are sufficient because they concisely explain the situation. But I do want to read the statement that the ACLU put out in response to this news, because I think that they really, they put it best. They write, the memo is a disappointing step backward from the Biden administration's earlier commitments to fully break from the harmful deportation policies of both the Trump and Obama presidencies. While the Biden administration rightly acknowledges that immigrants are our family members, our co-workers, and our neighbors, for now it has chosen to continue giving ICE officers significant discretion to conduct operations that harm our communities and tear families apart. The interim enforcement priorities detailed today import the injustices of the criminal legal system and will lead to continued disproportionate deportations of black and brown immigrants. The priorities use sweeping and overboard presumptions of threat that have for decades resulted in biased profiling and harmful immigration consequences for black and brown people, including Muslims. The priorities presume that all recent border crossers are threats in total contravention of President Biden's commitment to ensuring that people seeking asylum are treated with dignity. We expected better from the Biden administration and believe that the next 90 days will continue to reaffirm the need to force ICE to downscale its operations, including by ending ICE programs that tap state and local law enforcement for immigration enforcement, such as the 287G program and the use of ICE detainers. And we will demand accountability for the unjust arrests and deportations that ICE officers and their local partners will inflict on immigrant communities until DHS further reforms. At a time when black immigrants are being deported, including to the lethal situation in Haiti, the Biden administration must not hesitate to put real limits on ICE as it works to undo the chaos and cruelty of both the Trump and Obama administrations. The Biden administration must fully break from the racist and unfair policies of the past. So this is something that is deeply disturbing, but it's not surprising. I didn't necessarily expect a change in the status quo when Biden, all throughout his 2020 campaign, didn't really seem to care much about immigrants, like when he was confronted by an immigration activist about the Obama era policies. Do you remember what he told that person? He said, you should vote for Trump. That's what he said to an immigrant activist who confronted him about his policies. So I'm not surprised that he's not doing anything different. Like I was pleasantly surprised to see that he did sign that executive order to halt deportations, but when further action was needed, I mean, of course, the old Biden that we all know and hate was back. He chose to not take action. And so this is why we have to get a lot more radical in the way that we talk about immigration, and it should be non-negotiable that ICE be abolished. This is a rogue agency. And Biden at this point is not even doing the bare minimum to try to rein them in. He is absolutely culpable here. And by issuing this new guidance, this is a direct betrayal. You can't call it anything but that. This is a betrayal. And by calling ICE a rogue agency, I don't want to make it seem as if like Biden is a good faith actor here. He's not. He has the power as the president of the United States to stop all deportations during a pandemic. And you might not be able to permanently stop them, but at a minimum, reschedule them. So that way we can sort things out, do immigration reform perhaps. But he's not doing that. And this is a really, really quick betrayal. This is the second betrayal that we've already seen with him being in power for less than a month. He lied about the $2,000 survival checks. And then he said, OK, it's going to be $1,400 survival checks. And we were supposed to get this immediately. And now we're looking at March to get these checks. And now, after promising to halt deportations to change the status quo, to right the wrongs of the Obama and Trump eras, now we're seeing the same deportation policies that are harmful put into practice by Biden. It is deeply disgusting, albeit exactly what we should have expected from Biden. He doesn't deserve a honeymoon. He never did. And this is why people like me were saying immediately when he is sworn in, you hold his feet to the fire. Because it's not like there's any confusion about who Joe Biden is. He has a lengthy decades plus long record and he has governed as a conservative. So don't give him the benefit of the doubt. Immediately apply pressure to him, because if we don't keep constant pressure on Joe Biden, he is going to do a lot of damage. And we're already seeing this. The media was never going to hold him accountable. But grassroots activists, they can hold him accountable. And so if we don't make a stink about this, then he's not going to feel any pressure to do the right thing. So I hope that members of the squad and Bernie Sanders and progressives in positions of power, progressive organizations actually sound the alarm about this, because this is downright morally reprehensible.