Donald Trump’s deportation machine continues its abuse of every value that’s supposedly sacred to Americans — unless of course you acknowledge that White Supremacy is the most important value for the people running things now. The Border Patrol has been unleashed on New Orleans, where, as usual, the order of the day has been chaos, with little effort by the feds to let local officials know what the hell is going on. The DHS swarm into Louisiana has a target of deporting at least 5,000 people, and the thugs don’t seem too particular about who they grab.
Mother Jones reports that the deportation sweeps — which have the support of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry but not of NOLA Mayor-elect Helena Moreno — have even dragged Louisiana Department Of Wildlife And Fisheries officers away from their normal wildlife-management duties, like enforcing hunting regulations. Instead, the fish and game cops are being sent out to help Border Patrol grab up immigrants. Your tax dollars at work.
As is typical, DHS is hyping up the supposed danger without going into much detail. By Sunday, the AP notes, the agency had publicly detailed only six arrests, “including a man they vaguely said was convicted of ‘homicide’ and another convicted of sexual assault.” We haven’t dug into those particular cases, but we’ll note that DHS press releases often highlight offenses that happened years or even decades ago, for which detainees have already finished their sentences, or arrests where charges were dismissed.
Yes, under federal law, those are still grounds for deportation, and polling consistently shows that most Americans support deporting those who have serious criminal records, while we’re substantially more divided about mass deportation of folks who lack papers but have no criminal record — and as the crackdowns continue, support for extreme deportation policies and maximum cruelty keeps declining.
But keep in mind that the administration reads the polls, too, so DHS goes out of its way to portray all immigrants as immediate threats to the community, bloodthirsty thugs who have been taken off the streets just as they were about to do something unspeakable. For instance, they insist that Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House Lie Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, must be deported because she’s a “criminal” — based, apparently, on a summons (no arrest, no charges) to juvenile court when she got into a fight with another girl when she was 16.
With that in mind, DHS Propaganda Minister Tricia McLaughlin is playing up the sweeps in New Orleans as a huge success, insisting that “Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens harming them, their families or their neighbors.” Many New Orleans residents aren’t buying the fearmongering, however; hats off to the convenience store manager who locked the store’s door Saturday and told Border Patrol goons to get lost.
Oh, yes, and the AP also reports that federal and state law enforcement are tracking social media posts about New Orleans, to “monitor” public opinion on the occupation, noting posts from “a combination of groups urging the public to record ICE and Border Patrol” as well as helpful snitches who provide “additional locations where agents can find immigrants.”
Big Border is watching.
Amnesty International last week released a major report alleging serious human rights abuses at Krome North Processing Center, a DHS immigration prison outside Miami, and also at the Florida-run immigration gulag in the Everglades, which is still open and houses an unknown number of prisoners. It’s a state facility handling immigrants in federal custody, so Gov. Ron DeSantis says it doesn’t have to release any information.
Amnesty, in addition to confirming previously reported horrors, also reported that the Everglades gulag imposed what amounts to torture similar to that used at CIA “black sites,” only without any pretense of trying to interrogate anyone. Prisoners were routinely sent to “the box,” an outdoor cage too small to fully stand up in, for hours at a time as punishment. Prisoners’ wrists and ankles are shackled so they can’t sit, lie down, or change position, and there’s no protection from sun, heat, or insects. One man said, “People ended up in the ‘box’ just for asking the guards for anything. I saw a guy who was put in it for an entire day.”
Another former detainee at the prison told the Amnesty team,
“One time, two people in my cell were calling out to the guards telling them that I needed my medication. Ten guards rushed into the cell and threw them to the ground. They were taken to the ‘box’ and punished just for trying to help me. Any time that anyone demanded that our rights be respected, they were punished.”
Hey, nobody went to prison for the CIA torture program, so obviously this shit’s legal now — or at least not subject to any accountability.
In a statement, DeSantis’s press secretary Molly Best told the media that Amnesty is just making stuff up, the way human rights groups always do, insisting that the entire report was “nothing more than a politically motivated attack.”
Shame on anyone who would suggest these fucking sadists are a bunch of sadists.
After the November 26 shootings of two National Guard members who should never have been ordered to DC at all (one died, the other is still hospitalized with critical injuries), Donald Trump halted all asylum decisions and expanded the US travel ban to what could eventually be over 30 countries, because all immigrants are dangerous, duh. Especially those from “every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem fascistically put it.
But wait, there’s more! DHS is also stopping people from the 19 countries on the travel ban list from being sworn in as new naturalized citizens, even though they’ve passed the test and met all the other requirements for naturalization. As WGBH reports, USCIS is also literally pulling people out of line as they’re on the way into their ceremonies, as Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship, explained. One of the group’s clients, a woman from Haiti who’s had a green card for two decades, didn’t receive the cancellation notice before the day of the ceremony. She “showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled.”
JD Vance was not on hand to personally accuse the woman of stealing and eating pets.
Also, for a little extra dickishness, the State Department has instructed US embassies and consulates to reject H-1B work visa applications from tech workers — and members of their families — if those tech people ever did stuff like fact-checking, because distinguishing truth from lies is “censorship.” The memo says that anyone who was ever “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States” should be rejected. It went on to explain that “censorship” included any work dealing with activities like “misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others,” Reuters reports.
Just for fun, they could have reminded diplomatic staff that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Susan Tincher, a US citizen, was thrown to the ground and arrested early Tuesday morning because ICE thugs didn’t like her filming a raid at a neighbor’s home.
Tincher was grabbed almost immediately after approaching the goons and asking them to identify themselves. They accused her of “obstructing” the arrests, although Tincher told Minnesota Public Radio that she remained at a “speaking distance” from the agents, and that she hadn’t done anything to “impede” them.
After bundling her into the usual unmarked pickup truck, Tincher says, the agents threatened her, telling her if she didn’t watch herself, “they were going to pull me over to the side of the road and give me this OC” (pepper spray, which isn’t supposed to be used as punishment for being too mouthy, but only for crowd control).
Tincher was held for about five hours at the Whipple Federal Building before being released; the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports she was told she’ll be charged with obstructing officers. Tincher told MPR that she’s not intimidated, and will continue volunteering to support immigrants, saying she’s primarily worried for her neighbors and their families, adding, “I just don’t want this to be happening in our country.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a package of legislation Tuesday aimed at throwing a spanner into the works of the deportation machine. Among other measures, the laws will prohibit DHS from performing civil immigration arrests in or near state courthouses, with unlawful arrests being subject to a lawsuit for up to $10,000. The bills also create new protections requiring formal procedures for law enforcement trying to carry out arrests at hospitals, universities, and daycares. At the latter, facilities will be required to post “know your rights” information where parents and workers can see them. And the legislation will also make it easier for people to sue law enforcement goons if they violate citizens’ rights under the state or US constitutions.
For the sake of symbolism, Pritzker signed the bills in the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago, where DHS thugs carried out several raids that included tear gassing residents and arresting or detaining US citizens.
“After what our communities experienced, we understood our response needed to be deep and comprehensive,” Pritzker said. “Together, we’re sending a message to Donald Trump, to Kristi Noem, to Gregory Bovino and anyone else seeking to terrorize our people: Your divisiveness and brutality are not welcome here.”
DHS Propaganda Minister Tricia McLaughlin was quick to accuse Pritzker of violating the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and also his own oath of office, because Donald Trump is actually king and you may not try to limit anything he does.
And finally, here’s a little reminder from New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani: Everyone in the USA has rights, and with the deportation machine likely to target New York soon, everyone needs to know what the feds can and cannot legally do. In a social media post, Mamdani said, “Know your rights. Protect your neighbors.
New York is — and always will be — a city for all immigrants.”
Mamdani explained the difference between a judicial warrant, signed by a judge, which allows ICE to enter your home, and a boilerplate form that has the words “warrant of removal/deportation,” which doesn’t count. He reminded viewers that ICE is allowed to lie to you, and other basic legal guidelines, like your right to remain silent. He promised that he’ll protect the right to peacefully protest, too. What a maniac.
Everything Mamdani said is completely legal, like an ACLU web page or pamphlet, but Fox News wingnuts howled that the simple act of telling people they have constitutional rights was actually “obstruction” of federal law enforcement, because rightwing pundits also have the right to lie to us.
For good stupid measure, Kristi Noem also claimed on Sean Hannity’s show Monday that Mamdani might have “violated the Constitution” by saying that immigrants have rights, and claimed that the Justice Department was “certainly going after and looking into all of that,” although she was remarkably short on any specifics, because it remains legal to tell people what their constitutional rights are. Remember, Noem is a person who thinks habeas corpus is “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights,” because since January 20 of this year we all live in Opposite America.
Good luck everyone!
Hundreds Of Former ‘Gator Gulag’ Prisoners Can’t Be Found, Is That Bad?
Kristi Noem Also Being An Evil Nazi, Please Give Her Attention Too
[AP / WaPo / WWL-TV / Mother Jones / Guardian / WGBH / CBS News / Reuters / MPR / CBS News / Daily Kos / Joe.My.God.]
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