- Republicans are good at phony theatrics and bad at governing
- Republicans are good at culture war bullshit and bad at policy
- Republicans are good at sliming everybody to make a point and bad at talking reality
- Republicans are good at pushing panic and bad at fixing problems
- Republicans are good at sitting on their asses in recess and bad at doing the work
- Republicans are good at making promises and bad at delivering on them
- Republicans are good at looking stupid and bad at being smart
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Friday, February 16, 2024
Texas Paul
Sunday, February 11, 2024
I'm Not Racist But...
... I think the Dems are the racists because they blame white people who're just trying to keep the brown people from ruining this country.
Monday, January 29, 2024
Tuesday, January 09, 2024
Friday, January 05, 2024
What Do They Mean?
I think I know the answer to my question, but sometimes, like an idiot goat trying to get somebody to explain a typewriter to him, I find myself trying to make sense of something that isn't meant to make sense to me or anybody else.
Shutting down the borders is a pretty classic Daddy State type move. And when you can couple it with some good old-fashioned racial scapegoating - hey - why not?
They have yet to articulate what exactly "shutting down the border" would look like. What does Mike Johnson mean as he calls for "... transformational policy change to secure our border, enforce our laws, and deter even more illegal immigration"?
I'm afraid it's not a big stretch to think it means machine guns, razor wire, and land mines.
And let's remember that a closed border serves to keep people in too.
Border dispute could force partial government shutdown
Far-right House Republicans are threatening to block legislation to keep the federal government operating without sweeping changes to immigration laws
Far-right Republicans in the House are threatening to force a partial government shutdown unless Congress enacts strict new changes to immigration law, imperiling crucial government services — and U.S. aid to Ukraine — over a long-fraught issue that could be critical in this year’s elections.
Dozens of GOP lawmakers toured a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Tex., on Wednesday to push House-passed legislation that would significantly limit migrants’ ability to claim asylum, restart construction of a border wall and cut into President Biden’s power to grant humanitarian parole to migrants. Members of the Republican conference’s most conservative flank demanded that legislation become law in exchange for their votes to approve federal spending for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year, though the GOP-led House already rejected such a trade in September.
“H. R. 2 needs to be the unflinching House policy because all of it’s important to securing the border,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the archconservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Washington Post. “The president and Senate majority leader have no interest in securing the border, and so therefore, we as a House majority should say, ‘We’re not going to fund a government that is going to continue to facilitate this border invasion.’”
Federal agents recorded nearly 250,000 illegal crossings along the southern border in December, the highest total ever in one month, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Post.
That crisis is complicating efforts in Washington to head off a partial shutdown. Funding for roughly 20 percent of the federal government — including for essential programs such as some veterans assistance and food and drug safety services — expires on Jan. 19, and money for the rest of the government runs out shortly after that, on Feb. 2. But lawmakers have not yet agreed on how to pass full-year spending bills or more temporary funding. Without action by the first deadline, a partial government shutdown would begin. Congress returns next week with little time to work out the details.
The White House’s top budget official told reporters Friday that the GOP tactic significantly increased the risk of a shutdown.
“I wouldn’t say pessimistic, but I’m not optimistic [about the odds to avert a shutdown],” Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “Earlier this week, their border trip left me with more concerns about where they’re headed.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did not formally back the demands to link immigration restrictions with federal spending, but with a narrow GOP majority in a bitterly divided chamber, he relies on the Freedom Caucus, a group that has been a persistent thorn in the side of Republican leadership, to maintain power. He called that immigration bill, H.R. 2, a “necessary ingredient” to any immigration policy.
“Let me tell you what our top two priorities are right now,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “In summary, we want to get the border closed and secured first, and we want to make sure that we reduce nondefense discretionary spending.”
Republican lawmakers and political operatives say immigration issues work to their advantage, and hope to capitalize on the porous border to maintain control of their narrow House majority, retake the Senate and propel former president Donald Trump back to the White House.
“I would prefer the Senate Democrats found enlightenment and said, ‘H.R. 2 is what we want to do.’ Turns out I live in the real world and that’s not going to happen,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said. “But if we can get a substantial win on the border, I think it is one of those rare cases where it actually really helps the country and helps us politically.”
That strategy has at least some support in the Senate, where Democrats control the chamber by a single vote, requiring help from Republicans to get around potential filibusters to pass new spending legislation.
“I think that we have a real fiscal crisis in our country, but I think the most significant crisis we have is what is going on at the southern border,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a regular interlocutor between hard-right lawmakers in the House and more pragmatic Senate Republicans, told The Post on Friday. “And I encourage my Republican friends in the House to use all the negotiating leverage they can to solve this problem politically.
A bipartisan group in the Senate — Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) — has been negotiating border legislation for weeks in connection with a separate spending bill that would devote more than $100 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel and to the U.S.-Mexico border, among other priorities. That bill would include $14 billion in border security provisions. Senate Republicans have demanded immigration policy changes, as well as the security funding, before they’d vote to approve additional money for Ukraine.
But House Republicans are far more skeptical of Kyiv than their Senate counterparts, and demands to link immigration policy to ongoing government funding, instead of to the Ukraine aid, could mean the House won’t pass any assistance for the war in Ukraine.
This round of budgetary negotiations wasn’t supposed to be so complicated. In the spring, President Biden struck a deal with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to suspend the nation’s debt limit in exchange for limiting discretionary spending to $1.59 trillion in 2024, with 1 percent growth in 2025. Because that represented a cut when taking inflation into account, Biden and McCarthy agreed to spend another $69 billion each year in a side deal, with some of that offset by repurposing existing funds.
But House Republicans, led by members of the Freedom Caucus, were unsatisfied with that arrangement. A few months later, they ousted McCarthy from the speakership when he turned to Democratic votes in September to maintain those spending levels and avert a government shutdown. In a sign of stark internal divisions, though, the GOP-led House also rejected a stopgap funding measure with steep budget cuts that included the sweeping border changes the far right now seeks. (McCarthy resigned from Congress at the end of 2023.)
After taking over as speaker, Johnson in November also needed support from Democrats to pass another stopgap funding bill, which staggered expiration dates between Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.
The $69 billion side deal that McCarthy struck has been a sticking point through the fall and winter. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), then chair of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters just after Thanksgiving that his group would support the $1.59 trillion spending total that the debt ceiling law set — even though that was the amount that led some members to boot McCarthy from the speakership and drive the government to the verge of a shutdown — but only if it didn’t include the side agreements.
By early December, Johnson echoed the sentiment, declaring that the additional funding was not codified in law, but merely a handshake deal between his predecessor and Biden.
“This budget agreement was not a handshake agreement,” Young, from the White House OMB, said Friday. “It was a vote of Congress. It is not optional. They have to keep their word.”
“That group has got sway over Johnson. They’ve toppled McCarthy. They’re the reason why nothing’s got done in the last 12 months,” Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told The Post.
Good, the Freedom Caucus’s new leader, said he has told Johnson that the speaker would “be a hero to the American people” if he threatened a government shutdown over border security.
“I think that’s a fight the American people will reward Speaker Johnson for waging,” Good said.
Far-right House Republicans are threatening to block legislation to keep the federal government operating without sweeping changes to immigration laws
Far-right Republicans in the House are threatening to force a partial government shutdown unless Congress enacts strict new changes to immigration law, imperiling crucial government services — and U.S. aid to Ukraine — over a long-fraught issue that could be critical in this year’s elections.
Dozens of GOP lawmakers toured a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Tex., on Wednesday to push House-passed legislation that would significantly limit migrants’ ability to claim asylum, restart construction of a border wall and cut into President Biden’s power to grant humanitarian parole to migrants. Members of the Republican conference’s most conservative flank demanded that legislation become law in exchange for their votes to approve federal spending for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year, though the GOP-led House already rejected such a trade in September.
“H. R. 2 needs to be the unflinching House policy because all of it’s important to securing the border,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the archconservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Washington Post. “The president and Senate majority leader have no interest in securing the border, and so therefore, we as a House majority should say, ‘We’re not going to fund a government that is going to continue to facilitate this border invasion.’”
Federal agents recorded nearly 250,000 illegal crossings along the southern border in December, the highest total ever in one month, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Post.
That crisis is complicating efforts in Washington to head off a partial shutdown. Funding for roughly 20 percent of the federal government — including for essential programs such as some veterans assistance and food and drug safety services — expires on Jan. 19, and money for the rest of the government runs out shortly after that, on Feb. 2. But lawmakers have not yet agreed on how to pass full-year spending bills or more temporary funding. Without action by the first deadline, a partial government shutdown would begin. Congress returns next week with little time to work out the details.
The White House’s top budget official told reporters Friday that the GOP tactic significantly increased the risk of a shutdown.
“I wouldn’t say pessimistic, but I’m not optimistic [about the odds to avert a shutdown],” Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “Earlier this week, their border trip left me with more concerns about where they’re headed.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did not formally back the demands to link immigration restrictions with federal spending, but with a narrow GOP majority in a bitterly divided chamber, he relies on the Freedom Caucus, a group that has been a persistent thorn in the side of Republican leadership, to maintain power. He called that immigration bill, H.R. 2, a “necessary ingredient” to any immigration policy.
“Let me tell you what our top two priorities are right now,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “In summary, we want to get the border closed and secured first, and we want to make sure that we reduce nondefense discretionary spending.”
Republican lawmakers and political operatives say immigration issues work to their advantage, and hope to capitalize on the porous border to maintain control of their narrow House majority, retake the Senate and propel former president Donald Trump back to the White House.
“I would prefer the Senate Democrats found enlightenment and said, ‘H.R. 2 is what we want to do.’ Turns out I live in the real world and that’s not going to happen,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said. “But if we can get a substantial win on the border, I think it is one of those rare cases where it actually really helps the country and helps us politically.”
That strategy has at least some support in the Senate, where Democrats control the chamber by a single vote, requiring help from Republicans to get around potential filibusters to pass new spending legislation.
“I think that we have a real fiscal crisis in our country, but I think the most significant crisis we have is what is going on at the southern border,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a regular interlocutor between hard-right lawmakers in the House and more pragmatic Senate Republicans, told The Post on Friday. “And I encourage my Republican friends in the House to use all the negotiating leverage they can to solve this problem politically.
A bipartisan group in the Senate — Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) — has been negotiating border legislation for weeks in connection with a separate spending bill that would devote more than $100 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel and to the U.S.-Mexico border, among other priorities. That bill would include $14 billion in border security provisions. Senate Republicans have demanded immigration policy changes, as well as the security funding, before they’d vote to approve additional money for Ukraine.
But House Republicans are far more skeptical of Kyiv than their Senate counterparts, and demands to link immigration policy to ongoing government funding, instead of to the Ukraine aid, could mean the House won’t pass any assistance for the war in Ukraine.
This round of budgetary negotiations wasn’t supposed to be so complicated. In the spring, President Biden struck a deal with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to suspend the nation’s debt limit in exchange for limiting discretionary spending to $1.59 trillion in 2024, with 1 percent growth in 2025. Because that represented a cut when taking inflation into account, Biden and McCarthy agreed to spend another $69 billion each year in a side deal, with some of that offset by repurposing existing funds.
But House Republicans, led by members of the Freedom Caucus, were unsatisfied with that arrangement. A few months later, they ousted McCarthy from the speakership when he turned to Democratic votes in September to maintain those spending levels and avert a government shutdown. In a sign of stark internal divisions, though, the GOP-led House also rejected a stopgap funding measure with steep budget cuts that included the sweeping border changes the far right now seeks. (McCarthy resigned from Congress at the end of 2023.)
After taking over as speaker, Johnson in November also needed support from Democrats to pass another stopgap funding bill, which staggered expiration dates between Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.
The $69 billion side deal that McCarthy struck has been a sticking point through the fall and winter. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), then chair of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters just after Thanksgiving that his group would support the $1.59 trillion spending total that the debt ceiling law set — even though that was the amount that led some members to boot McCarthy from the speakership and drive the government to the verge of a shutdown — but only if it didn’t include the side agreements.
By early December, Johnson echoed the sentiment, declaring that the additional funding was not codified in law, but merely a handshake deal between his predecessor and Biden.
“This budget agreement was not a handshake agreement,” Young, from the White House OMB, said Friday. “It was a vote of Congress. It is not optional. They have to keep their word.”
“That group has got sway over Johnson. They’ve toppled McCarthy. They’re the reason why nothing’s got done in the last 12 months,” Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told The Post.
Good, the Freedom Caucus’s new leader, said he has told Johnson that the speaker would “be a hero to the American people” if he threatened a government shutdown over border security.
“I think that’s a fight the American people will reward Speaker Johnson for waging,” Good said.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Making America Grumpy Again
While Republicans continue to bitch about how we need to unbundle the budget, and vote on individual spending bills, they insist on tying Ukraine aid to their demands to fund shittier treatment of immigrants.
There is no bottom that these clowns can't dig under.
How Trump is wrecking hopes for a ‘reasonable’ Ukraine deal
Sen. Thom Tillis wants you to know that he’s very “reasonable.” That’s the word the North Carolina Republican used with reporters this week while describing immigration reforms that the GOP is demanding from Senate Democrats in exchange for supporting the billions in Ukraine aid that President Biden wants.
But the demands from Tillis and his fellow Republican leading the talks, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, are not reasonable at all — they’re following Donald Trump’s playbook. Under the guise of seeking more “border security,” they’re insisting on provisions that would reduce legal immigration in numerous ways that could even undermine the goal of securing the border.
According to Democratic sources familiar with the negotiations, Republican demands began to shift soon after the New York Times reported that in a second Trump term, he would launch mass removals of millions of undocumented immigrants, gut asylum seeking almost entirely, and dramatically expand migrant detention in “giant camps.”
As one Senate Democratic source told me, Republicans started acting as though Trump and his immigration policy adviser Stephen Miller were “looking over their shoulders.”
Biden has asked Congress to provide tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and Israel, and an additional $14 billion to buttress the southern border with new law enforcement agents, expanded detention and other increased security measures. But Republicans won’t agree to that latter request — or the Ukraine aid — without substantial changes to immigration policy as well.
This week, Tillis told reporters that without “language on parole,” any compromise would not constitute “border security,” and without it, Republicans will oppose aid to Ukraine. That’s a reference to Biden’s use of parole authority for humanitarian purposes to allow 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to gain entry to the U.S. each month.
According to the Democratic sources, Republicans are demanding that presidential parole authority be scaled back so it can only be applied on an individual case-by-case basis, not to large groups from a single nationality.
That would functionally gut those programs entirely — an absurd demand. Under those parole grants, if migrants gain U.S. sponsors and pass background checks, they can live and work here for two years. This provides an orderly alternative to the mode of entry that enrages Republicans, in which migrants breach the border, seek asylum and disappear into the country while awaiting a hearing. Gutting parole could mean more of the latter.
“Canceling parole would significantly heighten the pressures on the border and the numbers of migrant crossings,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “It’s the opposite of what’s needed to strengthen border security.”
In another absurdity, Republicans have said publicly that Democrats must agree to reduce illegal border crossings by more than 50 percent. But that’s a fuzzy demand: It’s unclear how policy changes could dramatically slash the number who attempt to enter and simply get intercepted by law enforcement. When Democratic staffers sought clarification on this point, the sources say, they got nothing back.
Republicans would also raise the legal standard to qualify for asylum, and here the situation gets particularly frustrating. One can envision a compromise that provides changes to the asylum standard in exchange for, say, legalizing “dreamers” brought here illegally as children. But Republicans have ruled out making any such concessions. (Spokespeople for Tillis and Lankford didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
What’s really bizarre about the impasse is that Republicans should support much of what’s in Biden’s initial request for border security funding. After all, it would also fund expedited asylum processing, which could reduce the window for migrants to exploit the system and prompt faster removals for those who don’t qualify. Aren’t those things Republicans want?
To his credit, Tillis did compromise on this issue last year, when he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) negotiated reforms that ultimately died in Congress. And Democrats say Lankford, who has acknowledged the need for both sides to compromise, is acting mostly in good faith. But Trump’s seemingly unshakable influence over the GOP stands to reshape these ongoing negotiations.
Trump’s loud broadcasting of plans for an extraordinarily cruel immigration crackdown if he is elected president again appears to be rendering Republicans even less open to compromise without him being in the room. Hence, their slapdash demand for cuts to legal immigration and other radical measures, which seems to cast about for some way to satiate the former president’s taste for draconian nativist savagery.
The bottom line: Senate Republicans are demanding that Democrats add numerous extreme concessions to a package that already gives Republicans many border security measures they ordinarily support, in exchange for Ukraine aid that many already back anyway.
Tillis and Lankford can either be “reasonable” in these negotiations, or they can satisfy Trump and Miller. But they can’t do both. Unfortunately, they appear to be privileging the latter.
Sen. Thom Tillis wants you to know that he’s very “reasonable.” That’s the word the North Carolina Republican used with reporters this week while describing immigration reforms that the GOP is demanding from Senate Democrats in exchange for supporting the billions in Ukraine aid that President Biden wants.
But the demands from Tillis and his fellow Republican leading the talks, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, are not reasonable at all — they’re following Donald Trump’s playbook. Under the guise of seeking more “border security,” they’re insisting on provisions that would reduce legal immigration in numerous ways that could even undermine the goal of securing the border.
According to Democratic sources familiar with the negotiations, Republican demands began to shift soon after the New York Times reported that in a second Trump term, he would launch mass removals of millions of undocumented immigrants, gut asylum seeking almost entirely, and dramatically expand migrant detention in “giant camps.”
As one Senate Democratic source told me, Republicans started acting as though Trump and his immigration policy adviser Stephen Miller were “looking over their shoulders.”
Biden has asked Congress to provide tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and Israel, and an additional $14 billion to buttress the southern border with new law enforcement agents, expanded detention and other increased security measures. But Republicans won’t agree to that latter request — or the Ukraine aid — without substantial changes to immigration policy as well.
This week, Tillis told reporters that without “language on parole,” any compromise would not constitute “border security,” and without it, Republicans will oppose aid to Ukraine. That’s a reference to Biden’s use of parole authority for humanitarian purposes to allow 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to gain entry to the U.S. each month.
According to the Democratic sources, Republicans are demanding that presidential parole authority be scaled back so it can only be applied on an individual case-by-case basis, not to large groups from a single nationality.
That would functionally gut those programs entirely — an absurd demand. Under those parole grants, if migrants gain U.S. sponsors and pass background checks, they can live and work here for two years. This provides an orderly alternative to the mode of entry that enrages Republicans, in which migrants breach the border, seek asylum and disappear into the country while awaiting a hearing. Gutting parole could mean more of the latter.
“Canceling parole would significantly heighten the pressures on the border and the numbers of migrant crossings,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “It’s the opposite of what’s needed to strengthen border security.”
In another absurdity, Republicans have said publicly that Democrats must agree to reduce illegal border crossings by more than 50 percent. But that’s a fuzzy demand: It’s unclear how policy changes could dramatically slash the number who attempt to enter and simply get intercepted by law enforcement. When Democratic staffers sought clarification on this point, the sources say, they got nothing back.
Republicans would also raise the legal standard to qualify for asylum, and here the situation gets particularly frustrating. One can envision a compromise that provides changes to the asylum standard in exchange for, say, legalizing “dreamers” brought here illegally as children. But Republicans have ruled out making any such concessions. (Spokespeople for Tillis and Lankford didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
What’s really bizarre about the impasse is that Republicans should support much of what’s in Biden’s initial request for border security funding. After all, it would also fund expedited asylum processing, which could reduce the window for migrants to exploit the system and prompt faster removals for those who don’t qualify. Aren’t those things Republicans want?
To his credit, Tillis did compromise on this issue last year, when he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) negotiated reforms that ultimately died in Congress. And Democrats say Lankford, who has acknowledged the need for both sides to compromise, is acting mostly in good faith. But Trump’s seemingly unshakable influence over the GOP stands to reshape these ongoing negotiations.
Trump’s loud broadcasting of plans for an extraordinarily cruel immigration crackdown if he is elected president again appears to be rendering Republicans even less open to compromise without him being in the room. Hence, their slapdash demand for cuts to legal immigration and other radical measures, which seems to cast about for some way to satiate the former president’s taste for draconian nativist savagery.
The bottom line: Senate Republicans are demanding that Democrats add numerous extreme concessions to a package that already gives Republicans many border security measures they ordinarily support, in exchange for Ukraine aid that many already back anyway.
Tillis and Lankford can either be “reasonable” in these negotiations, or they can satisfy Trump and Miller. But they can’t do both. Unfortunately, they appear to be privileging the latter.
Monday, May 15, 2023
On The Border
I'll go way out on a limb and say Biden will get slammed from the right because, "It's a crisis of his own making and we're glad he's finally doing what we said he should do, and blah blah bullshit blah."
And he'll get slammed from the left because "he shoulda done more/better/sooner yada yada bullshit blather."
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right - here I am stuck in the middle with you.
Of course, there's about 47 other shoes to drop - because there's always another 47 shoes to drop - but it's just possible Biden's approach may be starting to show some positive returns.
And that means the Republicans will soon be up to their old tricks, trying to fuck it up again, so they'll keep the destabilizing thing going and regenerate the requisite "Blame Biden" mindset for the rubes.
We'll see what we see.
WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) - Migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have unexpectedly fallen, not risen, since Title 42 curbs expired and reinstating criminal penalties for illegal entry is likely the biggest reason, the Biden administration said on Sunday.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said border patrol agents have seen a 50% drop in the number of migrants crossing the border since Thursday, when President Joe Biden's administration shifted to a sweeping new asylum regulation meant to deter illegal crossings.
"The numbers we have experienced in the past two days are markedly down over what they were prior to the end of Title 42," Mayorkas said on CNN's "State of the Union" program. He said there were 6,300 border encounters on Friday and 4,200 on Saturday, but cautioned it was still early in the new regime.
Mayorkas credited the criminal penalties for migrants who illegally enter the country, which resumed under existing law after Title 42's expiration, for the decrease in crossings. The COVID-era rule adopted under former President Donald Trump allowed officials to expel migrants quickly without an asylum process but did not impose penalties.
Biden, asked during a bike ride near his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, how he believed the border situation was going, responded: "Much better than you all expected."
Biden said he did not have plans to visit the border in the near term.
The Biden administration plan requires migrants to schedule an immigration appointment through an app or seek protection from countries they passed through on their way to the U.S. border. If they do not follow the process and are caught entering the U.S. illegally, they are not allowed to try again, even through legal means, for five years. There are prison terms for other violations.
"There is a lawful, safe and orderly way to arrive in United States. That is through the pathways that President Biden has expanded in an unprecedented way, and then there's a consequence if one does not use those lawful pathways," Mayorkas said.
Officials from communities along the border agreed they had not seen the large numbers of migrants that many had feared would further strain U.S. border facilities and towns.
"The amount of migrants we were expecting initially - the big flow - is not here yet," Victor Trevino, mayor of Laredo, Texas, told CBS News' "Face the Nation."
But Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives warned a surge could still be on the way.
Migrants stand near the Rio Bravo river after crossing the border, to request asylum in the United States, as seen from Ciudad Juarez
"I do think there are caravans going up. I think they still want to get in," Representative Michael McCaul said on ABC's "This Week" program.
Representative Mark Green, Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN: "What the secretary failed to say is, this week has seen more crossings than any time, any week, in our history."
Mayorkas defended the Biden administration policy against a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that claims the restrictions violate U.S. laws and international agreements.
"This is not an asylum ban. We have a humanitarian obligation, as well as a matter of security, to cut the ruthless smugglers out," he told ABC.
'BROKEN' IMMIGRATION SYSTEM
With U.S. immigration policy in disarray, holding facilities, hospitals and towns have been left to struggle after tens of thousands of migrants waded through rivers and climbed walls and embankments onto U.S. territory last week in the days before Title 42 expired.
Trevino said hospitals were at or near capacity, with no pediatric intensive care unit available and an emergency declaration in effect.
El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser told CBS that the Red Cross was helping private organizations and church groups provide food and other assistance for migrants.
"The immigration process is broken. There's no ifs ands or buts about it. But we are getting the resources that we need," Leeser said.
There has been little movement toward a bipartisan agreement to address immigration in Congress.
Just before Title 42 expired on Thursday, House Republicans approved legislation that would resume construction of a border wall, expand federal law enforcement efforts and require asylum seekers to apply for U.S. protection outside the country.
The Republican bill is unlikely to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Thursday, May 11, 2023
Migration
I'll make a wild guess, and answer the question posed in the headline below:
A lot of bad shit has happened in countries to the south of the US, but one of the main reasons for millions of those "millions of people leaving their homes" and piling up on the US/Mexico border is the simple fact that Republicans have been screaming about "open borders" for years now.
Are they thinking only Americans could hear them? But more to the point - are they thinking at all?
The United States is trying to curtail border crossings as a Covid-era immigration policy lifts this week, but it has little control over the crises in Latin America that have upended the lives of millions.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Millions of people are leaving their homes across Latin America in numbers not seen in decades, many of them pressing toward the United States.
While migration to the U.S. southern border has always fluctuated, the pandemic and the recession that followed hit Latin America harder than almost anywhere else in the world, plunging millions into hunger, destitution and despair.
A generation of progress against extreme poverty was wiped out. Unemployment hit a two-decade high. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine choked off a key pipeline for grain and fertilizer, triggering a spike in food prices.
Economic shocks were worsened by violence, as conflict between armed groups festered in once relatively peaceful countries and raged in places long accustomed to the terror.
Amid these events, smugglers and migrants alike have pushed powerful social media campaigns, many rife with misinformation, that have encouraged people to migrate to the United States.
This accumulation of grim factors means that when a pandemic-era border restriction known as Title 42 lifts this week, the United States will be confronted with an immigration challenge even more daunting than the one it faced when the measure was first imposed.
“You couldn’t come up with a worse set of facts to leave tens of millions of people with no choice but to move,” said Dan Restrepo, who served as President Barack Obama’s top adviser on Latin America. “It’s inevitable that you’d have massive displacement, it really is a perfect storm.”
For the last three years, the American government has tried to curtail the record flows of people arriving at the U.S. border by using the public-health measure to quickly expel those who crossed illegally.
However, when Title 42 expires, migrants who enter the country illegally will have the opportunity to apply for asylum, something many were barred from doing during the three years the public-health restriction was in place.
Qualifying won’t be easy — the Biden administration is rolling out new eligibility restrictions — and if the process works as intended, many will still be deported relatively quickly.
But the large flows building in northern Mexico could overwhelm the system, which means more people, especially families and children, may be released into the United States with a notice to appear before an immigration judge.
In some cases, social media is being used to falsely advertise the coming border rule changes as the opening of the floodgates. On TikTok, posts tagged #titulo42 have been viewed more than 96 million times, with one popular post claiming, “May 11: You cannot be deported. Title 42 has come to an end.”
The number of encounters at the border has already risen in recent days, a jump American officials hope will last only a few weeks and then eventually die down.
Many migrants are coming from places like Venezuela, which was suffering one of the worst economic crises in the world before the pandemic. Much of the country sank further into misery when the coronavirus shut the world down. A mass exit deepened, bringing the total number of Venezuelans who have fled since 2015 to 7.2 million — roughly a quarter of the population.
In Colombia, where worker protections are weak, joblessness reached its highest rate on record. Brazil recorded the second-highest number of Covid deaths worldwide. Immigrants who had already traveled from across Latin America to these two countries were among the first to lose their hold on any hope of a livelihood.
Nicaraguans historically migrated north in relatively small numbers. But inflation, sinking wages and an increasingly authoritarian government have prompted hundreds of thousands to leave in recent years.
Gang violence and homicides exploded in relatively tranquil Ecuador. Haiti got hit by a cholera outbreak, an extreme hunger crisis and warfare between armed criminal groups — all at the same time.
The Darién Gap, a treacherous 70-mile stretch of jungle that connects Central and South America, suddenly became a thoroughfare for people without the visas or money to make the journey any other way.
The United Nations expects as many as 400,000 people to pass through this year, nearly 40 times the yearly average from 2010 through 2020.
Sitting inside a pale pink tent on a Colombian beach not far from the jungle last year, Willian Gutiérrez, 31, a welder and bricklayer, said the situation at home in Venezuela had gone from bad to worse. He hadn’t had stable work in years, meals were meager, “and sometimes I stopped eating so they would be able to,” he said, motioning to his children, Ricardo, 5, and Yolayner, 2.
The family lived in a half-built house without electricity in the oil-rich city of Maracaibo, Mr. Gutiérrez’s wife, Johana García, 38, explained. After watching so many friends leave for the United States, she said, they had decided to risk the trek.
They went because the American economy bounced back quickly from the coronavirus and then got hungry for workers.
But they also were told — by human smugglers, relatives and people posting on Facebook, TikTok and WhatsApp — that under President Biden, they could actually cross the border and stay.
Ms. García, who had just enough money to purchase a tent, a headlamp and two bags of bread for the jungle trip, had heard this from Venezuelans who had made it to the United States before her.
“It’s difficult, yes,” they told her, “but it’s possible.”
American border authorities have in fact been regularly using Title 42 to immediately turn back people who enter the country illegally, invoking it more than 2.7 million times since March 2020.
Venezuelan migrants walk toward the United States to surrender themselves to Border Patrol ahead of the end of Title 42 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Saturday.Credit...Alejandro Cegarra for The New York Times
But Mexico only agreed to take in expelled migrants from a handful of countries in the region, forcing the Biden administration to fly others back to their homelands — a slower process constrained by cost, logistics and the fact that some governments have not always accepted expulsion flights from the United States.
“What on paper was in some ways the harshest border policy ever put into effect, like a complete and total ban on entry, never worked like that in practice,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy organization.
Since taking office, according to federal data, the Biden administration has allowed some 1.8 million migrants to stay in the country while awaiting asylum hearings, many of whom turned themselves in after crossing the border. Unknown numbers also entered the country undetected.
“People who want to get to the United States know that it has been an advantageous time to try to get into the country,” said Andrew Selee, the president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. “They calculate their chances of getting in before they go.”
Ana Gabriela Gómez, 28, a pharmacy assistant who made less than $100 a month at home in Caracas, left Venezuela with her two young sons in September. After nine terrible days in the Darién jungle, she heard that Mr. Biden was tightening border restrictions against Venezuelans.
But so many neighbors and friends had gotten through. She didn’t quite believe the president.
“I’m going to go to see it with my own eyes,” she decided. After she got to the U.S. border with her boys, ages 5 and 6, she crossed the Rio Grande at Ciudad Juárez and turned herself in to U.S. Border Patrol agents, who let her through.
She’s now staying in a shelter in Manhattan, and plans to apply for asylum. In her view, the journey was painful, but worth it.
“My goal was to get here,” she said, “but now I have another goal: to work, to get my papers, a good school for the boys.”
In Facebook and WhatsApp groups directed at would-be migrants, a cascade of users have been encouraging migrants to make the trip to the border after the public health measure expires.
“For those who want to know if the border is open,” one person said last week in a Facebook group called Darién Jungle Migrant Survivors, “yes it is.”
What are you willing to risk?
When you know there's nothing
for you at home, and a very slim chance
at something better for your family
at the end of a very dangerous
1200-mile hike north -
what do you do?
Who Gets In? A Guide to America’s Chaotic Border Rules.
New restrictions on asylum will lead many migrants to be deported — but others will still get into the United States. Here’s what the process will look like.
On Thursday, the United States will lift a pandemic rule that had been used to immediately kick out hundreds of thousands of migrants who crossed the border illegally over the last three years.
Now, those migrants who enter the country illegally will have the opportunity to apply for asylum, which is a legal status people can get if they prove that they would face persecution or other risks at home.
That doesn’t mean it will be easy to actually qualify. The Biden administration is set to impose new restrictions on eligibility, and if the process works as planned many migrants would still be deported relatively quickly. But if new arrivals overwhelm the system, it’s possible officials will let many people stay in the country to await asylum hearings.
So what determines whether you get in or not? Sometimes it’s about how good of a case you can make, or whether you’ve followed the rules of an often chaotic system. Much of the time, it’s just luck.
Here’s what the process of getting across the border will look like under the new rules, as best as we could determine with the help of Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, and one of the top experts in the country on this issue.
In the last several months, President Biden used his executive authority to open what essentially amounts to a back door for certain migrants to enter the country legally: apply for what’s called “humanitarian parole.”
It gives Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans the chance to live for two years in the United States if a sponsor files an application for them online. Hundreds of thousands have taken advantage of the program. The catch is that the number of monthly slots is limited. You also have to get someone already in the United States to take financial responsibility for you, and you need to have a valid passport and the money to pay for a plane ticket.
In January, the administration opened yet another pathway to encourage people to migrate in an orderly way rather than take a dangerous route that creates a bottleneck at the border. This one involves a new app, called CBP One. Migrants can use the app to make an appointment with border officials at a port of entry, who then can decide whether to allow them into the United States with a notice to appear in immigration court down the line.
It sounds relatively easy, except that the app has been glitchy, and the likelihood of getting an appointment has been compared to winning a lottery ticket. There are few slots available each day relative to demand. Only migrants who are in northern Mexico, near the U.S. border, or in Mexico City are eligible to use it. And many people have spent months trying day after day to make this work for them, to no avail.
If migrants did that when Title 42 was in place, U.S. officials could send them back to Mexico within minutes, which will no longer be an option. Now, people who enter the country without proper documentation will either be put into formal deportation proceedings, which is a years-long, drawn-out process, or an expedited removal process that is intended to process and deport people much faster.
Families and children will mostly be put on the first, slower track, which means they will be given a date to appear before an immigration judge, but will be allowed to wait inside the country, living and working legally until their case is decided.
Single adults, on the other hand, will probably go through the expedited lane. If the system works as intended, those migrants could be on their way to deportation with a felony charge in hand within days.
If you entered illegally and did not enter the United States because you were fleeing persecution or serious danger, you will probably be deported. If you are seeking safe haven, you must claim fear of returning to your home country to apply for asylum. But it will be much harder to qualify than it once was, thanks to new barriers President Biden is putting in place this week.
Migrants will now have to show that they applied for asylum and were rejected by Mexico or another country they passed through on their journey in order to be considered for protection in the United States. That requirement, which critics call a “transit ban,” will probably face legal challenges by human-rights groups who say it amounts to a near prohibition on asylum. It can take months, if not years, to apply for asylum in Mexico, where the government’s system is extremely backed up. Many migrants also say they do not feel safe in countries they travel through.
If you’re put on the fast track, this might be applied just days after you crossed.
Even if you’re released into the United States, whenever you finally go before a judge you will still have to show that you were rejected for asylum by one of the countries you passed through on your way to the United States — even if that journey happened months or years ago.
A final option, which has always been available and probably always will be: You can make an often arduous, perilous, and uncertain trek through rough terrain and unforgiving elements, and then try to sneak into the United States without being caught. If you manage to make it, you live in the shadows, with the risk of the authorities finding and deporting you at any moment.
Tuesday, May 02, 2023
Priorities
Make sure people are fighting about immigration and not about the guns.
It simply will not do to let "conservative" voters wonder why their favorite scapegoat (ie: an "illegal immigrant") was able to get a gun, totally eluding the keen-eyed law enforcers diligently on the lookout for aliens entering the country illegally to do their dastardly immigrant mischief.
It has to be obvious - these GOP assholes want us to concentrate on one thing in order to distract us from some other thing. And when two of their absolute favorite hobby horses converge to make a giant fucked up mess, they have to prioritize.
It looks for all the world that their priority is guns, which I think brings something into focus:
They don't really care all that much about immigration because the main point, actually, is their need to keep us angry and afraid and ready to kill each other. So they pimp the xenophobia to give us a way to rationalize the gun fetish they've cultivated in us, and our gun fetish is a means to an end - to keep us shooting each other instead of shooting cynically manipulative coin-operated politicians and their plutocrat paymasters.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Please understand that I'm not advocating shooting any coin-operated politicians and their plutocrat paymasters.
Maybe the hidden point of the exercise is to stir the shit in such a way as to provoke violent semi-organized revolt as pretext for an authoritarian clamp down. (Hey c'mon - it almost worked on Jan6, y'know)
What if a new Daddy State government that rode in on the backs of armed citizens decided suddenly that it was a bad idea to have armed citizens running around helter-skelter?
Don't think 'irony'
Don't think 'hypocrisy'
Think 'intent'
Think 'long game'
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been criticized for his response to a mass shooting that left five people dead in his state.
Authorities appear no closer to catching the suspect, identified as Francisco Oropeza, after more than two days of searching.
Oropeza, 38, is considered armed and dangerous after fleeing the Cleveland, Texas, area on Friday night. Authorities say he entered his neighbors' home and fatally shot five people, including a 9-year-old boy after they had asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard at night because a baby was sleeping.
Abbott, a Republican, announced $50,000 in reward money for information on Sunday, noting in a press release and tweet that the victims were "illegal immigrants." The release also noted that Oropeza was in the country illegally.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat, blasted Abbott's statement, calling it "a new low" and accusing the governor of "continuing to do nothing" to keep Texas safe from gun violence.
Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, where a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers last year, wrote on Twitter: "Greg, how was an undocumented person able to obtain an AR-15 in the first place? I'll tell you why. It's because you and other Republicans have made safe gun laws nonexistent. I challenge you to show some actual political courage and #DOSOMETHING."
Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar wrote: "They were part of a family, @GregAbbott_TX — and one of the victims was a child. What a disgusting lack of compassion and humanity."
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus also hit out at Abbott.
The caucus tweeted: "5 innocent lives lost to gun violence. TX @GovAbbott decides to dehumanize & delegitimize the lives of those killed in this horrific attack by calling them "illegal" immigrants. Just horrible. Thoughts are with the families and the survivors during this difficult time."
New York Rep. Ritchie Torres wrote that Abbott's "hatred for immigrants and love of AR-15s far outweigh his humanity."
Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, wrote that Abbott is a "racist xenophobe" who "can't bring himself to say a man with easy access to assault rifle [slaughtered] a family and child in his state."
Actor George Takei replied to Abbott's tweet: "This is despicable. I would have thought bringing up the immigration status of the innocent victims of this senseless violence would be beneath even you. But I was wrong."
Meanwhile, Carlos Eduardo Espina, an immigrant rights activist, tweeted a photo of an ID apparently belonging to one of the victims, confirming that she was a permanent resident of the U.S.
"But I guess to Greg Abbott, anyone who is from another country is an 'illegal immigrant.' Shameful," Espina wrote.
However, others praised Abbott. "Other politicians should be so forthright - call a spade a spade, and tenaciously pursue the suspect," one person tweeted, while others suggested closing the border.
Another person wrote: "Pretending nothing is happening at the border and focusing on choice of words is beyond dehumanizing. Thank you for putting up money and trying to find the killer. Your actions are stronger than words."
In a statement provided to Newsweek, Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said information provided by federal officials after the shooting had indicated that the suspect and victims were in the country illegally.
"We've since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally," Eze said.
"We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal. The true focus remains on catching this heinous criminal who killed five innocent people and bringing the full weight of Texas law against him."
Her statement did not address why Abbott mentioned the victims' status in his statement.
The FBI in Houston has released more images of Oropeza on Twitter, and said it would be referring to the suspect as Oropesa, not Oropeza, going forward to "better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems."
According to The Associated Press, his family lists their name as Oropeza on a sign outside their yard, as well as in public records.
The San Jacinto County Sheriff's Office and the FBI have also chipped in reward money, together offering a total of $80,000 for any information about Oropeza's whereabouts.
More than 250 officers from multiple jurisdictions were searching for Oropeza by Sunday evening.
"FBI Houston and other local, state, & federal agencies will not stop assisting SJSO until he is captured and justice is brought on behalf of the 5 victims," the FBI in Houston posted on Twitter.
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Today's Press Poodle
To: WaPo Editors, for their outstandingly craven effort to attract eyeballs, and to Both-Sides the thing by inviting the inference: "Hey, maybe those idiot Republicans have a point there."
The story is trying to be an update about the guy who wanted to kidnap, torture and then assassinate Nancy Pelosi, and almost killed her husband in the process because she wasn't home at the time - while the headline is all about pimping a GOP talking point.
At the very least, WaPo could have taken the opportunity to clue people in on the simple fact that most "illegals" are not brown people who are here having "invaded" from the south. Most of them came here on airplanes, or in cars, from some very white, very Christian places, and have just not bothered to renew their visas, no matter how or when they entered this country, and maybe we could drop the bullshit about "The Brown Tsunami".
But no - we have to lede the story with "Illegal Immigrant". And then meander through 9 or 10 paragraphs (some admittedly rather informative) concerning immigration law - and then make a point about "sanctuary states" - before we get back to the part where DHS is still very worried about domestic terrorism swirling around the election, and that we can expect it to increase for 3 months after election day.
(pay wall)
Immigration officials confirm alleged Pelosi attacker was in the U.S. illegally
The man accused of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer is a Canadian citizen who was in the United States illegally and is facing possible deportation after his criminal cases are resolved, the Department of Homeland Security said late Wednesday.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on Canadian national David DePape with San Francisco County Jail, Nov. 1, following his Oct. 28 arrest,” DHS officials said in an email.
ICE, which is under Homeland Security, sends “detainers” to state and local law enforcement asking them to notify the agency before releasing a foreign citizen who could also be deported. Deportations are civil proceedings that often take place after criminal cases are resolved, but immigrants also have been detained after they post bail.
DePape, 42, is facing state and federal criminal charges in the gruesome attack on Paul Pelosi, 82, early Friday morning, and for threatening Nancy Pelosi. DePape has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody.
Relatives have told the media that DePape grew up in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, but his trajectory to Northern California has remained a mystery.
Federal records show that DePape entered the United States legally on March 8, 2008, via Mexico. He crossed at the San Ysidro port of entry, an official border crossing that links San Diego County with Tijuana.
Canadians traveling for business or pleasure generally do not require visas, officials said, and he was admitted as a “temporary visitor,” traveling for pleasure, DHS said.
Canadians admitted for pleasure are generally permitted to stay for up to six months. DHS did not say precisely when DePape’s permission to stay in the United States expired.
The Canadian government confirmed this week that they were working on DePape’s case.
“Canadian officials are engaging with local authorities to obtain more information,” said Global Affairs Canada spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod. “Due to privacy considerations, no further information can be disclosed.”
California, home to millions of immigrants, is a sanctuary state and has passed laws limiting state and local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration officials, which has frustrated immigration officials seeking to deport immigrants arrested for crimes.
California has exceptions for people with serious criminal histories and it remains unclear how DePape’s case will unfold. State prosecutors have said he poses an extreme safety risk.
Federal authorities on Monday filed attempted kidnapping and assault charges against DePape, alleging he broke into the Pelosi home, bludgeoned her husband with a hammer in front of police, and then said he wanted to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps as a warning to other Democrats.
DePape also was arraigned Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court on state charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary, false imprisonment and threatening the life of or serious bodily harm to a public official.
Court records show DePape allegedly used the hammer to break into the House speaker’s San Francisco home early Friday and rousted her husband, who was sleeping upstairs.
“Are you Paul Pelosi?” DePape allegedly said when he confronted Pelosi, court records show, standing over him holding a hammer and zip ties. “Where’s Nancy?”
Paul Pelosi managed to call 911. But when officers arrived and told DePape to drop the hammer, he pulled free and struck Pelosi in the head, knocking him unconscious.
State prosecutors called the attack “near fatal.”
Paul Pelosi underwent surgery to repair a “skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” according to a statement issued by Drew Hammill, spokesman for Nancy Pelosi. The speaker has said her husband is making steady progress toward recovery.
DePape allegedly told police he was on a “suicide mission” and had created a target list of state and federal politicians in his quest to quash “lies” coming out of Washington.
DePape also had published hundreds of blog posts in recent months supporting far-right personalities and writing diatribes against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people.
The attack added to the growing concerns nationwide about the threats posed by domestic violent extremists as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach.
The FBI, DHS and other agencies issued a memo last week warning that extremism could increase in the 90-day post-election period, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post.
The memo said the most plausible threat “is posed by lone offenders who leverage election-related issues to justify violence.”
Worry about election-related violence prompted President Biden to make a speech in Washington Wednesday night.
“We must, with one overwhelming unified voice, speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America, whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans,” Biden said. “No place, period. No place, ever.”
DePape allegedly told police he was on a “suicide mission” and had created a target list of state and federal politicians in his quest to quash “lies” coming out of Washington.
DePape also had published hundreds of blog posts in recent months supporting far-right personalities and writing diatribes against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people.
The attack added to the growing concerns nationwide about the threats posed by domestic violent extremists as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach.
The FBI, DHS and other agencies issued a memo last week warning that extremism could increase in the 90-day post-election period, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post.
The memo said the most plausible threat “is posed by lone offenders who leverage election-related issues to justify violence.”
Worry about election-related violence prompted President Biden to make a speech in Washington Wednesday night.
“We must, with one overwhelming unified voice, speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America, whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans,” Biden said. “No place, period. No place, ever.”
Friday, September 16, 2022
The Stunts
Keep in mind that Republicans have had more than a few chances to sit down with the Democrats and hammer something out that at least updates an immigration "system" that's admittedly cumbersome and clunky and badly in need of overhaul. They refuse.
And I think that refusal is not because they're "playing hardball". If that was the case, we'd almost have to have something that works better by now.
So I'm left thinking that Republicans don't want to make it better.
For decades, part of their election strategy has been to keep the rubes amped up, so they'll turn out to vote for the guys who make life miserable for people they don't like - so they'll think they're OK, cuz "at least I've got it better'n them brown folks".
MARTHA'S VINEYARD, Mass., Sept 15 - Some migrants who were flown to the wealthy island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, said on Thursday they were duped about their destination, and Democratic leaders called for a probe of the move by Florida's Republican governor to send them there from Texas.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is up for re-election in November and seen as a possible presidential contender in 2024, took credit for the two flights, which originated in San Antonio, Texas, and stopped in Florida on the way to Martha's Vineyard.
The White House and residents of the vacation enclave called it a "political stunt," as DeSantis joins Republican governors from Texas and Arizona in sending migrants north. The governors have sought to highlight the two parties' differences on immigration policy and shift the burden of caring for immigrants to Democratic areas.
For months Texas and Arizona have sent busloads of migrants to the Democratic-run cities of New York, Chicago and Washington.
Florida now joins the campaign. Details of how the flights were arranged and paid for remain unclear, as well as an explanation as to why Florida was moving migrants in Texas. The Florida legislature has appropriated $12 million to transport migrants from the state to other locations.
The two flights on Wednesday carried about 50 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, a Martha's Vineyard Airport official said.
Hours after the planes landed, two buses sent by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, another Republican facing re-election, dropped off migrants in a Washington neighborhood not far from Vice President Kamala Harris' official residence on Thursday.
One Venezuelan migrant who arrived at Martha's Vineyard identified himself as Luis, 27, and said he and nine relatives were promised a flight to Massachusetts, along with shelter, support for 90 days, help with work permits and English lessons. He said they were surprised when their flight landed on an island.
He said the promises came from a woman who gave her name as "Perla" who approached his family on the street outside a San Antonio shelter after they crossed from Mexico and U.S. border authorities released them with an immigration court date.
He said the woman, who also put them up in a hotel, did not provide a last name or any affiliation, but asked them to sign a liability waiver.
"We are scared," he said, adding he and others felt they were lied to. "I hope they give us help."
Residents of Martha's Vineyard rallied to aid the confused migrants and offered housing at St. Andrews Episcopal Church.
Martha's Vineyard is best known as a summer retreat populated mostly by affluent liberal Americans, including former President Barack Obama, a Democrat who owns a multimillion-dollar vacation home there.
Locals stopped by to donate money and children's toys, while attorneys mobilized to offer free legal help.
"It's a stunt to make political points and not caring about who gets hurt," said Mike Savoy, 58, a nurse at Martha's Vineyard Regional High School.
DeSantis defended the flights, telling a news conference that Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden "has refused to lift a finger" to secure the border.
"We've worked on innovative ways to be able to protect the state of Florida from the impact of Biden's border policies," DeSantis said.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Republican governors were using migrants as "political pawns."
LEGAL QUESTIONS
Several Democrats, including Charlie Crist, DeSantis' opponent in Florida, and California Governor Gavin Newsom, called on federal authorities to investigate.
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said at a news conference her office would be "looking into that case" and speaking with the Justice Department.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security developed a plan last year to fly migrants to interior cities in coordination with aid groups to ease pressure on border regions, a Biden administration official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss internal planning.
The White House never adopted the idea, according to a second U.S. official familiar with the matter.
The use of resources from Florida to move migrants from Texas to Massachusetts raises legal concerns, including about what information was relayed to the migrants before they boarded and whether they were coerced, said immigration law expert Pratheepan Gulasekaram of Santa Clara University School of Law.
U.S. border agents have made 1.8 million migrant arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border since last October. Many are quickly expelled to Mexico or other countries under a public health rule implemented in 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19.
But hundreds of thousands Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and others cannot be expelled because Mexico refuses to accept them, or because they can pursue asylum claims.
Many migrants who are released from U.S. custody in border states seek to move elsewhere to join relatives or find jobs. They often must check in with U.S. immigration authorities or attend court hearings to obtain legal status.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Today's Trae
Trae Crowder - The Liberal Redneck
Shipping immigrants
BTW - I just learned this myself - something else nobody told me.
And yes, I'm a little pissed at my ignorance, which seems to deepen every time I fucking turn around.
Anyway, new ideas in politics are pretty scarce, and for all intents and purposes, nonexistent in the Republican party.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
That Stoopid Wall
Hadrian's Wall
The Great Wall of China
The Berlin Wall
Show me a 30-foot wall, and I'll show you a guy selling 35-foot ladders.
Shit don't work - it just makes a few people feel a little better (mostly because they scored some political points) while making things largely and measurably worse for practically everybody else.
WaPo: (pay wall)
The border wall Trump called unclimbable is taking a grim toll
The journal JAMA Surgery offers one of the first attempts to measure injuries and deaths resulting from falls along new sections of the wall
SAN DIEGO — In the trauma wards of this city’s major hospitals, patients from the border have arrived every day with gruesome injuries: skull fractures, broken vertebrae and shattered limbs, their lower extremities twisted into deranged angles.
The patients have fallen from new 30-foot segments of President Donald Trump’s border wall, a structure he touted as a “Rolls-Royce” that “can’t be climbed.” His administration built more formidable barriers in the San Diego area than anywhere else along the southern border, with miles of double-layer steel fencing, but that has not stopped more and more migrants from trying to scale it.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they do not tally deaths and injuries resulting from such falls. But new statistics published Friday by University of California at San Diego physicians in the journal JAMA Surgery provide one of the first attempts to measure the toll.
Since 2019, when the barrier’s height was raised to 30 feet along much of the border in California, the number of patients arriving at the UC San Diego Medical Center’s trauma ward after falling off the structure has jumped fivefold, to 375, the physicians found. Falling deaths at the barrier went from zero to 16 during that time, according to the report, citing records maintained by the San Diego county medical examiner.
“I never expected we would have to climb the wall,” said Hector Almeida, a 33-year-old dentist from Cuba, recovering this week in the trauma ward at UC San Diego Health. He fractured his left leg in a fall Monday. Smugglers led his group to the wall with a ladder and told them to climb up and slide down the other side, said Almeida, who said he saw one woman fall and break both legs, and an older man with a severe head injury.
The falling incidents are a subset of the soaring number of injuries, deaths and rescues occurring all across the southern border, where immigration arrests have reached an all-time high under President Biden. Migrants attempting to evade capture have drowned in the Rio Grande, died of exposure in South Texas and Arizona, and disappeared into the Pacific Ocean during smuggling attempts at sea.
What’s different is that the border wall is a man-made obstacle that poses a lethal danger and public health challenge where one did not exist previously.
Jay Doucet, chief of the trauma division at UC San Diego Health, said injuries along the border wall occurred before its increase in height, but the older, shorter version of the barrier, ranging from nine to 17 feet, was not lethal.
“Once you go over 20 feet, and up to 30 feet, the chance of severe injury and death are higher,” he said. “We’re seeing injuries we didn’t see before: pelvic fractures, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries and a lot of open fractures when the bone comes through the skin.”
At Scripps Mercy Hospital, the other major trauma center for the San Diego area, border wall fall victims accounted for 16 percent of the 230 patients treated last month, a higher share than gunshot and stabbing cases, according to Vishal Bansal, the director of trauma.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bansal said in an interview. “This is crazy.” His trauma ward treated 139 border wall patients injured by falls last year, up from 41 in 2020.
Those injured by falls often require complex intensive care and multiple, phased surgeries, according to San Diego physicians. Lacking health insurance, many are ineligible for physical therapy and rehabilitation programs, so they remain longer in hospitals, which absorb millions in unreimbursed costs.
When the Trump administration developed a series of wall prototypes in San Diego in 2017, the most difficult to climb featured a rounded, “barrel-shaped” top. But congressional appropriations for the barrier limited development to existing barrier designs, and Trump told aides he preferred the “spiky” look of the steel bollards, which he considered more intimidating.
Thirty feet was determined to be the optimal height for new barriers, because it balanced cost concerns with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s desire to give agents more time to respond by making it more difficult to climb, according to officials involved in the design.
Border crossings have increased sharply despite the completion of the 30-foot barrier, records show. San Diego border agents made 16,660 arrests in March, roughly four times as many as they averaged monthly before 2019.
The evidence for former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano’s quip — “show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder” — is plain to see along the dusty road that edges the barrier south of San Diego.
Improvised ladders litter the brush along the base of the wall between the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa crossings. Some are fashioned from segments of metal rebar, but the more sophisticated versions use lightweight aluminum with sections that fit together like tent poles.
Smugglers hook them to the top of the wall and hurry migrants 30 feet up into the air, often with little explanation for how to get down. Many of the injuries appear to occur as migrants attempt to descend.
Videos posted to social media have shown athletic young men breezily shimmying up and gripping the bollards like fire poles to zip down the other side. But that type of skilled maneuver is beyond the abilities of many migrants, who typically attempt to climb at night to avoid detection.
“One thing I have noticed is the people who are falling are not as athletic as you think they would be to go up ladder like that,” Doucet said. “They are middle-aged, and a fair number of women, even pregnant women.”
Those who fall backward while attempting to slide down can land on their heads and necks.
Some of the deceased are recent deportees, with homes, jobs and families on the U.S. side, like Efren Medina Villegas, 56, killed in a fall last year near the Otay Mesa crossing in San Diego. “He was trying to get back to his family,” said brother-in-law, Reynaldo Medina, reached by phone.
The Trump administration built 450 miles of new fencing along the Mexico border at a cost of about $11 billion, mostly replacing older, smaller barriers with three-story steel bollards anchored in concrete. Biden halted construction after taking office, but his administration has developed plans to close open gaps, mostly in Arizona.
Republicans have hammered Biden’s decision to halt construction, campaigning ahead of November’s midterm elections with calls to complete the structure.
Ronald Vitiello, former chief of the Border Patrol, said the large number of migrant releases into the United States occurring under Biden has created an incentive and driven ever-riskier attempts to cross. “More traffic equals more misery and death, from all causes,” he said.
In locations where gaps remain in the barrier, injuries and deaths appear to be less frequent. But in border areas with new, continuous segments of 30-foot fencing, such as the deserts west of El Paso, across eastern Arizona, and along California’s Imperial Valley, falling incidents have soared.
UC San Diego Health has converted a postpartum wing into a makeshift recovery ward for border wall patients, with many requiring multiple, phased surgeries and long-term rehabilitation, but lacking insurance.
Amy Liepert, the director of acute care surgery at UC San Diego Health, said the hospital is looking for help, having incurred at least $13 million in costs from border wall patients. “We need policies that fund the care that’s being delivered, in order to make sure we’re providing access for our other populations that need trauma care,” Liepert said.
Liepert said the volume of fall victims from the border wall is straining San Diego’s entire trauma system. “It means trauma surgeons, medical teams, the ICU, therapists and others all have grossly increased workloads,” she said.
Almeida, the dentist from Cuba who broke his leg, said he was knocked off the top of the wall when others in his group rushed to climb a single ladder as Mexican police approached from the south. He was able to partly grab the bollards and slow his fall, sparing a worse injury.
Some smugglers use ropes and harnesses to lower clients safely onto the U.S. side, but that technique has proved dangerous, as well. Earlier this month a Mexican woman wearing a harness got stuck descending the wall near Douglas, Ariz., and died from asphyxiation after hanging upside down for several hours.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they are amplifying their safety warnings and intensifying efforts to target smugglers. “There are not strong enough words to describe the actions of these smugglers, who are personally responsible for the deaths and injuries they cause to very vulnerable populations,” Patricia McGurk-Daniel, deputy chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, said in an interview.
She and other Border Patrol officials say the barrier remains an essential border security tool but not an unclimbable one. “Infrastructure alone was never intended to be a stopgap for everything,” McGurk-Daniel said. “We need a multitiered approach that includes technology, boots on the ground and comprehensive immigration reform.”
In trauma medicine, a fall from a height of 40 feet is considered 50 percent lethal, meaning only half of patients survive their injuries, according to Doucet. Bansal described it as “akin to being hit by a car at a moderate rate of speed.”
The San Diego medical examiner reports describe unspeakable injuries. Amet Garcia Mendez, a 31-year-old from Mexico, fell 35 feet to the ground last March, where he was found dead by agents. He died of cranial and chest fractures, with multiple perforated organs, an autopsy showed.
Marifer Jimon Rojas, a 19-year-old from Mexico, died in 2020 from a broken neck and multiple fractures to the skull and sternum. In 2019, an expectant mother fell from the wall, broke her pelvis and lost her unborn son, weeks before her due date.
“It’s absolutely tragic, and it’s not deterring anyone — it’s only harming people,” said Jules Kramer, co-director of the Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit in San Diego that has cared for several migrants injured in falls.
Last year, Kramer and her colleague Mark Lane aided an 18-year-old girl who fell from the wall and suffered five broken vertebrae and a leg fracture. They raised nearly $10,000 to medevac the teen to a hospital close to her relatives in Northern California.
She survived and regained the ability to walk, according to her attorney, Priscilla Higuera. “You couple this bigger, taller wall with Title 42 and ‘Remain in Mexico,’ and it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Higuera, referring to pandemic-era border restrictions and the Trump-era program, reinstated by federal courts, that returns some asylum seekers to Mexico.
Higuera said she has multiple clients who suffered injuries after falling, some of whom are discharged from trauma wards and deported or sent to immigration detention.
Smugglers saw through Trump’s border wall using ordinary power tools when they aren’t climbing it. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has tallied more than 3,000 breaches since 2019, records show, and along the barrier Thursday a welding crew was busy fixing a badly damaged span. Nearly every steel bollard had been sawed through and patched with a metal sleeve. Some had been cut through four times.
Liepert said the volume of fall victims from the border wall is straining San Diego’s entire trauma system. “It means trauma surgeons, medical teams, the ICU, therapists and others all have grossly increased workloads,” she said.
Almeida, the dentist from Cuba who broke his leg, said he was knocked off the top of the wall when others in his group rushed to climb a single ladder as Mexican police approached from the south. He was able to partly grab the bollards and slow his fall, sparing a worse injury.
Some smugglers use ropes and harnesses to lower clients safely onto the U.S. side, but that technique has proved dangerous, as well. Earlier this month a Mexican woman wearing a harness got stuck descending the wall near Douglas, Ariz., and died from asphyxiation after hanging upside down for several hours.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they are amplifying their safety warnings and intensifying efforts to target smugglers. “There are not strong enough words to describe the actions of these smugglers, who are personally responsible for the deaths and injuries they cause to very vulnerable populations,” Patricia McGurk-Daniel, deputy chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, said in an interview.
She and other Border Patrol officials say the barrier remains an essential border security tool but not an unclimbable one. “Infrastructure alone was never intended to be a stopgap for everything,” McGurk-Daniel said. “We need a multitiered approach that includes technology, boots on the ground and comprehensive immigration reform.”
In trauma medicine, a fall from a height of 40 feet is considered 50 percent lethal, meaning only half of patients survive their injuries, according to Doucet. Bansal described it as “akin to being hit by a car at a moderate rate of speed.”
The San Diego medical examiner reports describe unspeakable injuries. Amet Garcia Mendez, a 31-year-old from Mexico, fell 35 feet to the ground last March, where he was found dead by agents. He died of cranial and chest fractures, with multiple perforated organs, an autopsy showed.
Marifer Jimon Rojas, a 19-year-old from Mexico, died in 2020 from a broken neck and multiple fractures to the skull and sternum. In 2019, an expectant mother fell from the wall, broke her pelvis and lost her unborn son, weeks before her due date.
“It’s absolutely tragic, and it’s not deterring anyone — it’s only harming people,” said Jules Kramer, co-director of the Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit in San Diego that has cared for several migrants injured in falls.
Last year, Kramer and her colleague Mark Lane aided an 18-year-old girl who fell from the wall and suffered five broken vertebrae and a leg fracture. They raised nearly $10,000 to medevac the teen to a hospital close to her relatives in Northern California.
She survived and regained the ability to walk, according to her attorney, Priscilla Higuera. “You couple this bigger, taller wall with Title 42 and ‘Remain in Mexico,’ and it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Higuera, referring to pandemic-era border restrictions and the Trump-era program, reinstated by federal courts, that returns some asylum seekers to Mexico.
Higuera said she has multiple clients who suffered injuries after falling, some of whom are discharged from trauma wards and deported or sent to immigration detention.
Smugglers saw through Trump’s border wall using ordinary power tools when they aren’t climbing it. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has tallied more than 3,000 breaches since 2019, records show, and along the barrier Thursday a welding crew was busy fixing a badly damaged span. Nearly every steel bollard had been sawed through and patched with a metal sleeve. Some had been cut through four times.
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