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US immigration policy 'extremely racist': Analyst

Abayomi Azikiwe

America’s recent deportation of 100 Guatemala migrants infected with the novel coronavirus highlights the inherent racism in the US immigration and health care systems, an African American journalist in Detroit says.

“The immigration policy in the United States is extremely racist,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, editor at the Pan-African News Wire.

“It targets, people from Central America, who are here, largely because their countries, particularly agricultural sectors, have been destroyed as a result of the policies of US imperialism,” Azikiwe said in a phone interview with Press TV on Friday.

“It shows just the lack of health care policy and also the inherent racism in the US system,” he added.

Guatemala blasted US President Donald Trump on Thursday over US deportations of migrants infected with the coronavirus.

President Alejandro Giammattei said the deportations had saturated quarantine centers in Guatemala and heaped pressure on the Central American country's weak health system.

"Guatemala is an ally to the United States, the United States is not an ally to Guatemala," he told the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based international affairs think tank.

Giammattei, 64, a retired doctor who walks with crutches because of multiple sclerosis, also said the United States had sent not “even a mask” during the pandemic.

Trump has made toughening immigration policies a central tenet of his presidency and has vowed to build a wall along the US-Mexico border to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking from Central America.

“They should never in fact be deporting anyone who has tested positive. They should be putting quarantine and offering medical assistance,” Azikiwe said.

“Guatemala is a unique ally of the United States. And the way it became an ally of the United States because of the internal interference by Washington in the affairs of Guatemala,” he added.

“There’s a history of the US fueled civil war [in Guatemala], dating back to the mid-1950s all the way through the 1980s.”


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