We have been viewing with dismay all the recent reporting that the White House has been negotiating with extremist anti-immigrant Republicans, and Democrats concerned more for staying in office than serving their constituents, by offering concessions on the right to asylum, and limits on the Presidents’ authority to grant humanitarian parole to those needing a safe home in the country that has given so much to the rest of us, in return for more munitions to Ukraine and the Netanyahu government.

Now it is reported that Biden has offered to expand the already-flawed “expedited removal” policy from the border to nationwide. This means that ICE would be authorized to round up people anywhere in the US to be deported. We remember the terror in our neighborhoods when Trump sent ICE raids into New Jersey towns, and we will not accept a similar, and permanent policy based on this. Especially not from a President who ran on promises to improve our lives and present a vision that heals our country’s divisions, and acknowledges our shared history as a nation made from many cultures and strengthened by the contributions of all.

WOTS stands with the suffering people of Israel, where hundreds of families have been displaced by hostilities, and hundreds of families will never see their loved ones again or are still wondering if they will ever be released. We stand with the tens of thousands of civilians in Palestine, slaughtered in the indiscriminate retaliatory war, and those who have suffered the deprivations and humiliations of an illegal occupation for decades.

We do NOT stand with the cynical cling to power of one man, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose own citizenry were filling the streets in the hundreds of thousands to protest his attempts to gut the democracy of Israel, right up to the time of the Oct. 7 massacre. We do NOT stand with the electoral calculations of one man, Joe Biden, who feels that the way to “insulate” himself against Republican claims of being “soft” on immigration is to unilaterally hand them their wildest dreams, so that ICE trucks can roll through our neighborhoods and terrorize our communities like they did under Trump.

Too many were silent in holding Biden accountable when, on the eve of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he practically invited it by calling it “a minor incursion.” Too many were silent when he authorized vicious cluster munitions, banned by 120 countries, to be shipped to Ukraine. Too many were silent when his Office of Management and Budget said that the funds he is now requesting for Ukraine are needed to “invest…in the American defense industrial base” and “expand production lines, strengthening the American economy and creating new American jobs.”

We will not be silent now. Biden’s policies have nothing to do with protecting people. Now they are explicitly aimed, more than ever, at inflicting harm, in our own neighborhoods. We will join with our allies, our neighbors, the majority of good people who, alongside is, call this country our home, and stand against armed forces coming into our communities. We will speak at the polls next year, as our consciences dictate. But long before it comes to that point, we call on our elected officials to loudly tell the President this is the wrong, unacceptable course to take. Senators Booker and Menendez, REJECT this and all capitulations to extremism, and we appreciate your statements against its previous forms. ALL members of the NJ House delegation, REJECT this and speak strongly against it too!