California Democrats Push Back on Reports of Trump Administration Plans to Deport Immigrants by Ship
A pair of California congressmembers are mounting resistance to the Trump administration after reports of a proposal to use ships — including a maritime training vessel at Mare Island — for deportation voyages.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Tuesday, Democratic Reps. John Garamendi, who represents Solano County, and Salud Carbajal, of Santa Barbara, said the plan “is outrageous and should be immediately discarded.”
Garamendi is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and his district includes the Cal Poly Maritime Academy in Vallejo, where the 500-foot Golden Bear has served as a training ship for mariners over three decades. He told KQED that deportation journeys by ship could take many days, as opposed to hours on an airplane, and would be costly and inhumane.
“An airplane is expensive enough. A ship is several times more expensive,” he said. “Immigrants are often detained in very unsafe facilities. Immigrants have died in these facilities. And to add to this complex, dangerous program of detention, to put immigrants on a ship in the middle of the ocean with no healthcare anywhere nearby … makes absolutely no sense.”
The letter follows reporting by the New York Times earlier this month that the departments of Homeland Security and Defense are considering a plan to use ships, possibly including ferries and commercial vessels as well as the Golden Bear, to transport hundreds of people to Central and South America.
The Golden Bear served as a training vessel at Cal Poly Maritime Academy for 30 years. It is set to be transferred back to the U.S. Maritime Administration as the academy transitions in the coming months to a new training ship, according to the academy.
The Golden Bear has been an invaluable floating classroom that just returned from a three-month trip training cadets on navigation, engine mechanics and other skills essential to the maritime industry and military fields, Garamendi said.
“Any efforts to use the Golden Bear as a floating prison to hold, detain and deport migrants would be a dangerous misuse of government and taxpayer property,” the letter to Mullin said. “Mass relocations by sea would require moving hundreds of detained individuals through international waters and raises enormous operational, safety and legal challenges.”
In addition, the congressmembers said, “the plan recalls catastrophic historical examples of deportations by sea that violated human rights and resulted in deadly consequences.” They reference 19th-century expulsions of Irish refugees and Chinese immigrants, and mass deportations of Mexicans in the 20th century, all of which employed ships.
Garamendi said he’s not opposed to immigration enforcement, but he faulted Republicans for scuttling Democratic legislation to address immigration issues “humanely and sanely,” and instead turning to strategies he called cruel.
“The entire Trump immigration program to deport the worst of the worst has descended into deporting anybody they can get their hands on, and often doing it in a very, very dangerous way,” he said, adding the plan for deportation ships “makes no sense at all. Do not do it. Don’t even consider it.”
Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to KQED’s request for comment by press time.