“Give me Your Tired, Your Poor…”

I am the child of two parents who came to this country as refugees from Nazi Europe. I was raised with a sense of national pride that derived in part from the words of Emma Lazarus, engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Of late, so many principles that were the foundation of my pride in America are under assault. Like many Americans, I am horrified to see how federal ICE agents in Minneapolis have terrorized an entire city. There are hundreds of reports of illegal searches, arrests, deportations and physical harassment of citizens and immigrants alike; Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, U.S. citizens trying to protect their neighbors, were shot dead by immigration enforcement agents brutalizing their communities with impunity. What is happening in Minneapolis is part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration to punish our immigrant and refugee neighbors and dramatically reduce the number of newcomers who can come to the U.S. This includes people seeking asylum, not unlike my parents did. 

For decades, people fleeing persecution in their home countries could ask for protection at the border, be processed by U.S. officials and then have an asylum officer or immigration judge rule on their case based on whether the evidence presented showed that they were in danger of persecution or violence. But at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term of office, his administration shut down the asylum process at the southern border and introduced a slew of restrictive policies to undermine due process in asylum hearings. 

For those who have followed border policy for a while, this may feel familiar. Over the past 10 years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the U.S. government has enacted increasingly draconian policies to restrict asylum access. The first Trump administration implemented several measures to close the door to people seeking refuge; these included formalizing a policy, introduced in the final year of the Obama administration, known as “turnbacks” or “metering” along the southern border. Under this policy, border agents would turn asylum seekers away, denying them the opportunity to go through the legal asylum-seeking process. Stranded in Mexico, many faced violent assault, kidnapping and death. Refugee advocates sued, and the courts sided with them, ruling the practice illegal..

In 2021, the Biden Administration formally rescinded the turnback policy — but other dangerous restrictions on asylum protection took its place. Now, the Trump administration has dredged up the issue of turnbacks again, bringing it to the Supreme Court in Noem v. Al Otro Lado. On March 24, the court will hear arguments in the case and decide whether the policy is legal. 

Last year, I travelled to the Mexican border on a fact-finding mission led by HIAS, an organization inspired by Jewish values and history to provide vital services to refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons around the world, and to advocate for their fundamental rights. I witnessed firsthand the condition faced by many of these refugees languishing at our country’s doorstep. 

I also learned that so much of international law governing the treatment of asylum seekers was informed by the Holocaust, to ensure that states would never again return people escaping violence and persecution to their deaths. It’s a lesson epitomized by the tragic story of the 937 German Jewish

refugees who crossed the Atlantic in May, 1939 on the SS St. Louis, only to be denied entry, first to Cuba and then to the United States, before the ship was forced to return to Europe, where one third of the refugees from the “voyage of the damned” died in the Holocaust. In an amicus brief filed in February, HIAS has asked the Supreme Court to remember this lesson and recognize the human cost when we turn our backs on refugees.

My father left his family in Berlin in 1938 and sailed to the U.S. at age 16 on the last successful voyage of the St. Louis.  A few years later, he returned to Europe in a U.S. Army uniform to help defeat the Nazis in World War II. I owe my life to an America that did not turn its back on a refugee, my father. 

In the Book of Exodus, we read: “You shall not oppress the stranger for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” America can never be “great” as long as we demean, deport and close our doors to “the huddled masses yearning to be free.” We must demand that our elected officials reclaim the spirit of welcome and compassion symbolized by the Statue of Liberty.