Turnabout

"Conservatives" love to bitch:

"Why are we spending all that money on [insert mindless outrage du jour here], when there are [insert the pathos-invoking downtrodden here] ?"

But they don't give one empty fuck about anything but their need to pimp the conflict - any conflict. Constant rage-tweaking keeps people divided and not thinking about how coin-operated politicians are fucking us all with our pants on.

Veterans and immigrants aren't each other's enemies. The enemies - everybody's enemies - are the cynically manipulative politicians and their "donors", and a corporate media cartel that can't bring itself to think beyond their fly-specked ledgers.

So turn it around:

"Why are we spending billions on a sketchy border crisis performance art when the Americans who live down there are struggling to get clean water and decent healthcare?"

Trump is spending billions on border security. Some residents living there lack basic resources.

The president has reportedly urged Congress to pass $175 billion for border security. But residents of Del Rio, Texas, and Douglas, Arizona, say basic needs — like safe drinking water and hospital access — aren’t being met.

Within hours of taking office, President Donald Trump declared an emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, giving him authority to unilaterally spend billions on immigration enforcement and wall construction. He has since reportedly urged Congress to authorize an additional $175 billion for border security, far exceeding what was spent during his first term.

In the coming months, border towns in Texas and Arizona will receive more grants to fund and equip police patrols. New wall construction projects will fill border communities with workers who eat at restaurants, shop in stores and rent space in RV parks. And National Guard deployments will add to local economies.

But if the president asked Sandra Fuentes what the biggest need in her community on the Texas-Mexico border is, the answer would be safe drinking water, not more border security.

And if Trump put the same question to Jose Grijalva, the Arizona mayor would say a hospital for his border city, which has struggled without one for a decade.

Although billions of state and federal dollars flow into the majority-Latino communities along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, many remain among the poorest places in the nation. In many towns, unemployment is significantly higher and income much lower than their interior counterparts, with limited access to health care, underfunded infrastructure and lagging educational attainment. Security walls are erected next to neighborhoods without running water, and National Guard units deploy to towns without paved roads and hospitals.

By some estimates, about 30,000 border residents in Texas lack access to reliable drinking water, among more than a million statewide. For 205,000 people living along Arizona’s border with Mexico, the nearest full-service hospital is hours away.

Such struggles aren’t confined to the border. But the region offers perhaps the most striking disparity between the size of federal and state governments’ investment there and how little it’s reflected in the quality of life of residents.

“The border security issue takes up all the oxygen and a lot of the resources in the room,” said state Rep. Mary González, a Democrat from El Paso County who has sponsored bills to address water needs. “It leaves very little space for all the other priorities, specifically water and wastewater infrastructure, because most people don’t understand what it’s like turning your faucet and there’ll be no water.”

Here’s how residents in two border towns, Del Rio, Texas, and Douglas, Arizona, experience living in places where the government always seems ready to spend on border security while stubborn obstacles to their communities’ well-being remain.

Nearly a fifth of the nearly 50,000 residents in Val Verde County, Texas, live in poverty, compared with the state’s 14% average.

When Cierra Flores gives her daughter a bath at their home in Del Rio, she has to keep a close eye on the water level of the outdoor tank that supplies her house. Like any 6-year-old, her daughter likes to play in the running water. But Flores doesn’t have the luxury of leaving the tap open. When the tank runs dry, the household is out of water. That means not washing dishes, doing laundry or flushing the toilet until the trip can be made to get more water.

Flores lives on a ranch in Escondido Estates, a neighborhood where many residents have gone decades without running water. Flores’ family has a well on their property. But during the summer and prolonged droughts, as the region is now experiencing, their well runs dry.

At those times, the family relies on a neighbor who has a more dependable well and is willing to sell water. Flores’ husband makes hourlong trips twice on weekends to fill the family’s water tank. Their situation has felt even more tenuous lately, as her neighbor’s property was listed for sale, prompting worries about whether they’ll continue to have access to his well.

“I have no idea where we would go here if that well wasn’t there,” Flores said. “It’s frustrating that we don’t have basic resources, especially in a place where they know when the summer comes it doesn’t rain. It doesn’t rain, we don’t have water.”

Val Verde County, where Del Rio is located, is three times the size of Rhode Island and hours from a major city. About a fifth of its nearly 50,000 residents live in poverty, a rate nearly twice the national average. Some live in colonias — rural communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, including illegal subdivisions that lack access to water, sewers or adequate housing.

The county has worked for years to bring water to residents, piecing together state and federal grants. Yet about 2,000 people — more than 4% of the county’s population — still lack running water, according to a database kept by the Texas Office of the Attorney General. For those residents, it means showering at fitness centers and doing the dishes once a week with water from plastic jugs.

Some neighborhoods along the Mexican border on the outskirts of Del Rio, such as the area where Cierra Flores and her 6-year-old daughter, Olivia, live, still lack infrastructure like paved roads and access to safe drinking water.

In the early 1990s, then-Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat, toured some of the state’s colonias along the border to assess the living conditions. After stepping into the mud on an unpaved street, she’s said to have been so moved by the scene that she told a staffer, “Whatever they want, give it to them.”

Fuentes, a community organizer, likes to tell that story because it drives home how long residents have fought for water and other improvements but been stymied by state and local politics and limited funds.

“It’s going to be an uphill battle, but we are going to keep on battling,” she said. “What else is there to do?”

Over the past 30 years, the state has provided more than $1 billion in grants and loans to bring drinking water and wastewater treatment to colonias and other economically distressed areas. Texas 2036, a nonpartisan public policy think tank, estimates Texas needs nearly $154 billion by 2050 to meet water demands across the state amid population growth, the ongoing drought and aging infrastructure.

Texas state leaders said they are committed to investing in water projects and infrastructure. Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said he is calling on the Legislature to dedicate $1 billion a year for 10 years and is looking forward to working with lawmakers “to ensure Texans have a safe, reliable water supply for the next 50 years.”

Kim Carmichael, a spokesperson for Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, said, “Texas is at a critical juncture with its water supply, and every lawmaker recognizes the need to act decisively and meaningfully invest to further secure our water future.” The Texas House’s base budget proposes $2.5 billion for water infrastructure.

One of the challenges — at the federal and state level — is that infrastructure needs often exceed available funds, said Olga Morales-Pate, chief executive officer of Rural Community Assistance Partnership, a national network of nonprofits that works with rural communities on access to safe drinking water and wastewater issues. “So it becomes a competitive process: Who gets there faster, who has a better application, who is shovel ready to get those funding opportunities out?” she said.

The plight of people without water often gets overlooked, said Karen Gonzalez, an organizer who used to work with Fuentes. Even though she grew up in Del Rio, it wasn’t until she started to work with the community that she learned some county residents didn’t have water.

“Every person that I come across that I tell that we’re working this issue is like, ‘There’s people that don’t have water?’” she said. “It’s not something that is known.”

Unlike border security, which is constantly in the spotlight.

During his inauguration, Trump praised Abbott as a “leader of the pack” on border security. In 2021, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a multibillion-dollar effort aimed at curbing illegal immigration and drug trafficking. As part of the operation, the state has awarded Val Verde County and the city of Del Rio more than $10 million in grants, state data obtained by The Texas Tribune shows.

A state-funded border wall that has gone up in the county a short distance from the Rio Grande stretches in fits and starts, including next to a neighborhood without running water. As of November, about 5 miles of it had cost at least $162 million, according to the Tribune. The state Legislature’s proposed budget includes $6.5 billion to maintain “current border security operations.”

Meanwhile, organizers, elected officials and residents say state and federal programs to fund water infrastructure will continue to fall short of the need. Last year, the state fund created by lawmakers in 1989 to help underserved areas access drinking water had $200 million in applications for assistance and only $100 million in available funding.

When grants are awarded, water projects can take years to complete because of increasing costs and unforeseen construction difficulties — like hitting unexpected bedrock while laying pipe, said Val Verde County Judge Lewis Owens. Project delays — some of them, Owens acknowledged, the county’s fault — impede the ability to get future grants.

Organizers like Fuentes and Karen Gonzalez said their frustration with the slow progress on water has grown as they’ve watched the border wall go up and billions more dollars spent to deploy state troopers and the National Guard to aid federal border security officers.

“It’s just infuriating,” Karen Gonzalez said. She said she hopes elected officials “focus on what our actual border community needs are. And for us, I feel like it’s not border security.”

As paramedics loaded her 8-year-old son into a helicopter in the Arizona border town of Douglas, Nina Nelson did her best to reassure him. Days earlier, Jacob and his father had been riding ATVs on their ranch in far southeastern Arizona, along the U.S.-Mexico border. Dust irritated Jacob’s lungs, and over the next few days his breathing deteriorated until Nelson could see him fight for every breath.

He needed care that isn’t available in Douglas, a town of about 15,000. And he would have to make the trip without her.

“Buddy, you’re gonna be OK,” she recalled telling him. She knew it would take more than twice as long to drive the 120 miles to Tucson and the nearest hospital that could provide the care he needed. “I’m gonna be racing up there. I’ll be there. I’m gonna find you,” she said.

Douglas lost its hospital nearly a decade ago. Southeast Arizona Medical Center had struggled financially for years and by 2015 was staffed by out-of-state doctors. When it ran afoul of federal rules too many times, jeopardizing patient safety, the government pulled its ability to bill Medicare and Medicaid and it closed within a week.

As her son’s breathing took a turn for the worse, Nelson considered the variables everyone in Douglas confronts in a medical emergency. Should she go to the town’s stand-alone emergency room, which treats only the most basic maladies? Drive the half hour to Bisbee or an hour to Sierra Vista for slightly higher levels of care? Or could Jacob endure the two hours it takes to drive to Tucson?

“That is the kind of game you play: ‘How much time do I think I have?’” Nelson said.

Arizona hasn’t been as aggressive as Texas in funding border security. But when concerns about the border surge, money often follows.

In 2021, the state created the Border Security Fund and allocated $55 million to it. A year later, then-Gov. Doug Ducey asked state lawmakers for $50 million for border security. They gave him more than 10 times that amount, including $335 million for a border wall. The measure was proposed by Sen. David Gowan, a Republican who represents Douglas. In October 2022, crews began stacking shipping containers along the border in Cochise County, where Douglas is located. Gowan’s spokesperson said he wasn’t available for comment.

The container wall wasn’t effective. Migrants slipped through gaps between containers, and a section toppled over. When the federal government sued, claiming the construction was trespassing on federal land, Ducey had the container wall removed.

The cost of erecting, then disassembling the wall: $197 million. (The state recouped about $1.4 million by selling the containers.)

Daniel Scarpinato, Ducey’s former chief of staff, said border security is a significant issue for nearby communities and requires resources, “especially given the failures of the federal government.” He noted that the Ducey administration didn’t ignore other needs in the area, including spending to attract doctors to rural Arizona. “But we will make no apologies for prioritizing public safety and security at our border,” he said.

Grijalva, a Douglas native, was sworn in as mayor in December with a list of needs he is determined to make progress on: a community center, more food assistance for the growing number of hungry residents and a hospital. Money the state spent on the container wall would’ve been better used on those projects, he said. “I appreciate Doug Ducey trying that, but those resources could have gone into the community,” he said.

The median income in Douglas is $39,000, about half the state’s median income, and almost a third of the town’s residents live in poverty. A shrinking tax base makes it difficult for Douglas to provide basic services. The town doesn’t have enough money for street repairs, let alone to reopen a hospital. The backlog of repaving projects has climbed to $67 million, while Douglas nets only $400,000 a year for street improvements.

Money for wall construction or National Guard units gives a short-term boost to the economy, but those efforts can also interfere with the economic lifeblood of towns like Douglas: cross-border traffic.

Both Trump and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, have deployed hundreds of guard members and active military personnel to the border. None have shown up in Douglas yet, Grijalva said. When they do, they’ll spend money. But a couple dozen troops don’t compare to the 3.6 million people who cross the border each year. The Walmart in Douglas, a stone’s throw from the port of entry, is packed daily with shoppers from Agua Prieta, Sonora, Grijalva said. More troops on both sides of the port bottleneck traffic and raise people’s fears of being detained, which may discourage them from crossing, even when they are doing so legally, he said.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Grijalva declared a state of emergency, which could make the city eligible for federal aid if its economy takes a hit. “I know the executive orders didn’t do anything to stop the legal immigration, but it’s the perception,” Grijalva said. “If our economy dips in any way, they could give us some funding.”

Douglas’ new mayor, Jose Grijalva, declared a state of emergency in January over concerns that Trump’s executive orders on border security and immigration will harm the border town’s fragile economy.

Attracting a new hospital is a longer-term effort. Construction alone could cost upwards of $75 million. But then it would have to be staffed. In its final years, the hospital in Douglas suffered from the shortage of health care professionals plaguing much of rural America. The year it closed, it had no onsite physicians, said Dr. Dan Derksen, director of the Arizona Center for Rural Health. The state has programs to address that problem, including helping doctors in rural areas repay school loans. But the shortage has persisted. If a hospital were to open again in Douglas, it could cost as much as $775,000 to launch a residency program there, according to Derksen and Dr. Conrad Clemens, who heads graduate medical education for the University of Arizona.

“There’s policy strategies that you can do at the state level that help, but there’s no single strategy that is a cure-all,” Derksen said. “You have to do a variety of strategies.”

Border security funding, on the other hand, is easier to get.

Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels is known for his aggressive border enforcement activities. His office soaks up state and federal grants to help with drug interdiction, human trafficking and surveillance equipment on the border. The state also awarded him $20 million for a new jail and $5 million to open a border security operations center, a base for various agencies enforcing the border, in Sierra Vista, about an hour from Douglas.

At its grand opening in November, Dannels said all he had to do was ask for the money.

“I was speaking with Gov. Ducey and the governor asked me, ‘What do you guys need?’” Dannels said. “I said, ‘We need a collective center that drives actions.’” Shortly after, the plan came together, he said.

However, if Cochise Regional Hospital were still open, Dannels’ office would have one less security concern. The abandoned building, which is deteriorating in an isolated pocket of desert on the outskirts of Douglas, is a common waypoint for smugglers.

Pretty Real Journalism

The problem is that there's not enough hardcore, in-your-face, prove-you're-not-the-asshole-you-seem-to-be questioning.

I really miss what 60 Minutes used to be.

Step By Step

Closer and closer to full blown Daddy State.

The American justice system was set up in such a way that we'd be OK with letting a couple of bad guys slip thru the cracks in order to protect the rights of everybody else.

Maybe we have to let 100 bad guys get away with shit, so 335,000,000 good guys don't have to worry about being disappeared into a shithole prison in El Salvador without so much as a fuckin' phone call.

What the fuck are we doing?

The kicker, of course - the great potential tragedy - is that we've let Trump get away with shit, and now we get to see what Payment Due really looks like.

Laying Bare The Lie

It was never about "they should do it the right way" or law-n-order, or any of the other excuses and deflections.

It is, and always was, about rounding up brown people.

This country already has a genocide on its soul, and 400 years of slavery. Now we're going to add ethnic cleansing?

You are nine kinds of fucked up, America.

From The Cato Institute

That's Cato - not exactly a hippie hangout.

The Vigilanté Rears His Ugly Head

ilrc.org

aclu.org

Debunkment Redux

Over the last 20 years, the odds of an American being killed by

an undocumented immigrant or a foreign-born terrorist:

about 1 in 3 billion

Americans killed every year by lawn mowers:

about 1 in 4 million

You're almost 1000 times more likely to be killed by your lawn mower than you are by an undocumented immigrant or refugee terrorist.

 

If you really feel like banning something, ban gardening equipment.

Fact Check: No evidence 4,000 people are killed yearly by undocumented immigrants

There is no evidence to suggest undocumented immigrants are responsible for 4,000 U.S. deaths every year, contrary to social media posts sharing the unsubstantiated statistic.
The social media graphic, opens new tab contains statistics comparing the alleged deaths by undocumented immigrants to the number of people killed by rifles.

“Less than 500 people a year are killed by rifles… let’s ban them! Over 4,000 people a year are killed by illegals... let’s give them $2,200 a month taxpayer assistance, register them to vote in our elections and keep the border wide open to invite more of them into our country,” reads the graphic.

The rifle figure is somewhat true, as fewer than 500 murders were committed yearly with rifles from 2019 to 2021 according to the FBI’s latest annual figures, opens new tab, but the figure rose to 556 in 2022 and 511 in 2023 (See “Crime in the United States Annual Reports,” click “Expanded Homicide Tables” and open “Table 8”). The number of homicides committed using all types of firearms was 13,529 in 2023, according to the report.

There is no evidence for the “4,000” figure, however. Studies and estimates by academics and think tanks show undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born individuals.

NO NATIONAL STATISTIC

There is no nationwide data on crimes committed specifically by undocumented immigrants, but research shows they do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
“We know of no national statistics on the numbers of deaths committed by unauthorized immigrants,” Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director of the Migration Policy Institute think tank, said in an email.

Despite the lack of official data, there is significant research demonstrating “unauthorized immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S. born,” Mittelstadt said.

Texas is the only state that logs immigration status in its arrest records, and several studies use data from the Texas Department of Public Safety to examine criminality among immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

TEXAS DATA

Two studies found that undocumented immigrants in Texas commit homicide at significantly lower rates than their U.S.-born counterparts.

Authoritarian governments are doomed to fail because they all have a fatal flaw: They insist on not releasing much information in general, but especially not damning information, while also insisting on very thorough record-keeping. Those records are meticulous because eventually the ability to show how shitty your behavior has been is what gets you ahead - documenting your shittiness gets you that promotion you want.

We know all about Pol Pot, and Sadam, and Stalin, and the Nazis because the bureaucrats and underlings were very good at showing the boss how bad they were making things for "the enemy within."

And that shit always gets out. Always.

A June 2024 analysis, opens new tab by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh found that, for the years 2013-2022, the homicide conviction rate in Texas for “illegal immigrants” was 2.2 per 100,000, while that of native-born Americans was 3.0 per 100,000.

• For example, in 2022, undocumented immigrants made up about 7.1% of the Texas population and accounted for 67, or 5%, of the 1,336 people, opens new tab convicted of homicide.
• That same year, 1,209, or 90.5%, of people convicted of homicide were native-born Americans, who made up 82.5% of the population, the analysis said.
• “I’ve seen zero evidence for illegal immigrants killing 4,000 people a year,” Nowrasteh said in an email. “I've never seen that number defended by anybody spreading it.”
• Similarly, a 2020 study, published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal found that undocumented immigrants were less than half as likely to be arrested for homicide than U.S.-born citizens, based on Texas data.
• The study, by Michael Light, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and two other researchers, found the arrest rate, opens new tab for homicide was 1.9 per 100,000 people among undocumented immigrants and 4.8 per 100,000 among U.S.-born citizens from 2012 to 2018.

IMPLAUSIBLE STATISTIC

The social media graphic’s assertion that undocumented immigrants kill 4,000 people per year is unlikely even when taken at face value, Light said in an email.
“Put simply, the 4000 figure is implausibly large given what we currently know,” he said.
When applying the figure by using the Pew Research Center’s latest estimates of 11 million, opens new tab “unauthorized immigrants” in the U.S. in 2022, the homicide rate would be 36.4 per 100,000 people.

“This would be greater than a six-fold higher homicide rate than the overall homicide rate,” Light said. The murder rate in the U.S. in 2023 was 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2023, according to the FBI’s annual report on crime statistics released on Monday.

VERDICT

No evidence. There is no evidence that 4,000 people are killed by undocumented immigrants every year.

Overheard

So - ICE set up an anonymous Tip Line so people could report their suspicions on possible "Illegal Aliens", and within hours, they had to shut it down because 90% of the calls were complaining about Elon Musk.

Don't Forget

A Progressive's super power is a good memory.

It's been very annoyingly difficult for me to get a straightforward answer to what I think should be a very simple question:

What are the rights for immigrants in the US?

All I've been able to find is a lot of vague shit that doesn't directly address my questions.

Here's a selectively edited bit from the Oregon ACLU:

It is not intended to be, and is not a substitute for, legal advice.

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS BEING DEPORTED:

• We encourage you to contact a lawyer as soon as possible.

IF LAW ENFORCEMENT ASKS ABOUT YOUR IMMIGRATION STATUS:

• You have the right to remain silent and do not have to discuss your immigration or citizenship status with police, immigration agents, or other officials. Anything you tell an officer can later be used against you in immigration court.
• If you are not a U.S. citizen and an immigration agent requests your immigration papers, you must show them if you have them with you. This requirement only applies to immigration agents. You do not have to show any documents to local or state police, except that you do have to show a valid drivers’ license if police pull you over for a traffic violation.
• If the police or an immigration agent asks if they can search you, you have the right to say no. Agents generally do not have the right to search you or your belongings without your permission or a warrant.
• If you’re over 18 and are not a U.S. citizen, carry your papers with you at all times. If you don’t have them, tell the officer that you want to remain silent, or that you want to consult a lawyer before answering any questions.

Immigrants' Rights Guide:

ICE is at my door. What do I say?

You have rights that ICE must respect. For example, you have the right to refuse entry into your home if ICE does not have a warrant signed by a judge that says they can search your address. We recommend that you keep a copy of this script in your home should you need to use it in the future.

ICE is at my workplace. What are my rights?

You and your employer have rights at work that can protect you from ICE arrests. For example, your employer has the right to refuse ICE entry into their property if ICE doesn't have a warrant, and you have the right to remain silent if ICE is at your workplace. You also have the right to be free from discrimination at work, and be treated fairly in payment and other treatment, regardless of your immigration status. 

I am an immigrant with children. How can I plan or prepare for an immigration emergency?

It is important to be prepared in the event that you may encounter immigration agents. Use these resources to develop an emergency plan for your loved ones in case you are facing deportation. 

I have a court date coming up. Can I be arrested at the courthouse?

This depends on your state's laws.

I am an immigrant. Can I obtain a driver's license?

This depends on your state's laws.

I am an immigrant youth. What are my protections?

Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a federal policy that gives youth and young professionals opportunities to work in the U.S. while temporarily being protected from deportation. While DACA is currently being challenged in the federal courts, the protection remains available to people who are eligible. 

That's it for now. Good luck.

It's Moving Right Along

WTF, bubba? Slave patrols now?

Your Papers Please

US Citizens Are Being Told To Carry Birth Certificates Amid ICE Raids

United States citizens, including Native Americans, are being warned to carry ID with them after reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers questioning and detaining people this week.

One such warning came from the Navajo Nation President, Buu Nygren, in Arizona, following reports that some residents had been approached by officials.

Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE for comment via email Friday morning.

Why It Matters

With President Donald Trump's plan to ramp up deportations of illegal immigrants, ICE and DHS will likely come under increased scrutiny in the coming weeks and months as they seek to show force when it comes to immigration enforcement. Any overstepping could result in legal action against the agencies.

Americans largely support his mass deportation plans. A New York Times/Ipsos poll, carried out from January 2 to 10, found 55 percent of voters strongly or somewhat supported such plans. Eighty-eight percent supported "Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records." Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the immigration system is broken.

What To Know

Nygren's post on Facebook Wednesday came a day before ICE carried out a raid in Newark, New Jersey, in which a U.S. veteran was reportedly detained by officials, along with some American citizens.

According to the tribal leader in Arizona, there had been "several concerns and unconfirmed reports" that immigration officials had detained Diné people in urban areas.

"My office is looking into this matter and will provide updates as they come," he said in the post. "I am working actively with our state leaders and law enforcement to protect our Diné people."

The leader said citizens should carry their certificate of Indian birth, their state ID or driver's license, or other forms of identification in case officials stopped them. The message reflected advice from the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), with both organizations adding that those detained by ICE had the right to access an attorney and the right to remain silent.

Matthew Fletcher, a professor at the University of Michigan who focuses on federal Indian law, told Newsweek that many tribal citizens in rural areas do not have any form of I.D. proving their citizenship. For those who do, ICE agents are not always familiar with their documents, he said.

Since the election in November, immigration advocacy groups have been trying to prepare communities for potential increases in immigration enforcement, including courses and classes on immigrants' rights. Warnings of racial profiling have also been issued by groups and experts, with concerns those with legal status or citizenship could be accidentally targeted.

The detention of American citizens by immigration enforcement is not new. In 2021, the Government Accountability Office reported that ICE may have deported as many as 70 between 2015 and 2020, while 674 were arrested.

In 2021, civil rights groups in California sued ICE for arresting Brian Bukle, a Black man living in Riverside County, who had been a U.S. citizen for 50 years. The state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation wrongly reported him for deportation to ICE, who detained him for 36 days before his citizenship was acknowledged. The case led to a $150,000 payout.

The Trump administration has promised to carry out the President's mass deportation plans, already touting hundreds of detentions and some deportation flights in recent days. Numbers given by ICE were similar to those seen in the last few months of the Biden administration, while deportation flights are also a regular occurrence.

What People Are Saying

Fletcher told Newsweek: "Indigenous people in the southwest should absolutely be on their guard. There are many mixed-race brown people there who are Indigenous and tribal citizens. I get the sense that ICE is engaged in a massively overbroad initiative right now on purpose, a shock and awe policy, that will sweep in many American citizens."

NIJC executive director Mary Meg McCarthy said in a statement on Monday: "NIJC and allies across the country will be fighting back. We will continue to work to extend access to legal counsel to as many people as possible, defend rule of law and due process by challenging illegal policies in federal court and defending law that holds the federal government accountable, and never lose sight that our communities are stronger when we welcome immigrants and ensure access to justice for all."

New Jersey Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, on the raid in Newark, said on X:

"It doesn't matter if you're a citizen who served our country in uniform, you too can be stopped without a warning or a warrant and shaken down for your papers … There is nobody in this country who should be subjected to a warrantless search. No federal agent has the authority to stop and harass any passerby without cause."

What Happens Next

While sanctuary cities and states have continued to promise to support undocumented migrants who have not committed any other crimes, it is expected that ICE will conduct raids in these communities in the coming days and weeks.

The White House will look to put out a strong message that it is delivering on Trump's promises, already having been more vocal on enforcement actions taking place.

Resisting This Shit

Disclaimer: This is not actual legal advice.

And BTW, it's generally a bad idea to interfere with the assholes who're carrying out these unlawful orders.

We are all Miep and Jan Gies now.

Watch on TikTok

Overheard

Go ahead and find ways to fuck with 'em.

Just be a little careful - these assholes are itchin' to punish people.

Today's WTF

The guy is saying he was pretty sure they wouldn't do what they said they would do, and he voted for them anyway.

His profile has to be fairly well aligned with: "You can't trust politicians and their campaign promises - they're all a buncha liars", but he's right there, going along with those lyin' untrustworthy politicians.

WTAF, MAGA?

Farm owner: if they deport all my workers within 2 days there will be no food!

(Trump voter convinced the leopard won’t eat HIS face

pic.twitter.com/UIHXeLAHiX

— Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 (@RachelBitecofer) January 23, 2025

The Emperor Wants Boats

Trump Has Promised to Build More Ships. He May Deport the Workers Who Help Make Them.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to increase the pace of U.S. military shipbuilding. 

But his pledge to also clamp down on immigration could make it hard for shipyards already facing workforce shortages.

Early last year, President-elect Donald Trump promised that when he got back into the Oval Office, he’d authorize the U.S. Navy to build more ships. “It’s very important,” he said, “because it’s jobs, great jobs.”

However, the companies that build ships for the government are already having trouble finding enough workers to fill those jobs. And Trump may make it even harder if he follows through on another pledge he’s made: to clamp down on immigration.

The president-elect has told his supporters he would impose new limits on the numbers of immigrants allowed into the country and stage the largest mass deportation campaign in history. Meanwhile the shipbuilding industry, which he also says he supports and which has given significant financial support to Republican causes, is struggling to overcome an acute worker shortage. Immigrants have been critical to helping fill the gaps.

According to a Navy report from last year, several major shipbuilding programs are years behind schedule, owing largely to a lack of workers. The shortfall is so severe that warship production is down to its lowest level in a quarter century.

Shipbuilders and the government have poured millions of dollars into training and recruiting American workers, and, as part of a bipartisan bill just introduced in the Senate, they have proposed to spend even more. Last year the Navy awarded nearly $1 billion in a no-bid contract to a Texas nonprofit to modernize the industry with more advanced technology in a way that will make it more attractive to workers. The nonprofit has already produced splashy TV ads for submarine jobs. One of its goals is to help the submarine industry hire 140,000 new workers in the next 10 years. “We build giants,” one of its ads beckons. “It takes one to build one.”

Still, experts say that these robust efforts have so far resulted in nowhere near enough workers for current needs, let alone a workforce large enough to handle expanded production. “We’re trying to get blood from a turnip,” said Shelby Oakley, an analyst at the Government Accountability Office. “The domestic workforce is just not there.”

In the meantime, the industry is relying on immigrants for a range of shipyard duties, with many working jobs similar to those on a construction site, including on cleanup crews and as welders, painters and pipefitters. And executives worry that any future immigration crackdown or restrictions on legal immigration, including limits on asylum or temporary protected status programs, could cause disruptions that would further harm their capacity for production.

Ron Wille, the president and chief operating officer of All American Marine in Washington state, said that his company was “clawing” for workers. And Peter Duclos, the president of Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding in Somerset, Massachusetts, said the current immigration system is “so broken” that he was already having trouble holding onto valuable workers and finding more.

There is no publicly available data that shows how much the shipbuilding industry relies on immigrant labor, particularly undocumented immigrant labor. Both Wille and Duclos said that they do not employ undocumented workers, and industry experts say undocumented workers are unlikely to be working on projects requiring security clearances. However, reporting by ProPublica last year found that some shipbuilders with government contracts have used such workers. That reporting focused on a major Louisiana shipyard run by a company called Thoma-Sea, where undocumented immigrants have often been hired through third-party subcontractors.

The story reported on a young undocumented Guatemalan immigrant who was helping build an $89 million U.S. government ship for tracking hurricanes. When he died on the job after working at Thoma-Sea for two years, neither the company nor the subcontractor paid death benefits to his partner and young son.

⇧ See how that works? ⇧             ⇩ and ⇩

ProPublica also reported that executives at Thoma-Sea, which declined to comment, had made tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Republican candidates. However, if Trump’s last time in office is any guide, the shipbuilding industry wouldn’t be exempted from any future crackdown. One of the final workplace raids under Trump’s first administration was conducted at an even larger shipbuilder in Louisiana called Bollinger.

In July 2020, federal immigration agents arrested 19 “unlawfully present foreign nationals” at Bollinger’s Lockport shipyard, according to a story in the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. Immigration and Customs Enforcement refused to provide information on the raid. According to Bollinger’s website, that yard produces U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrol boats. Five of the workers arrested were sent to an ICE detention center and 14 were released with pending deportation cases, according to the news report.

Typical stupid approach - attack the supply side, and never mind the demand.

Bollinger denied any wrongdoing following the raid. Four years later, there’s no evidence in publicly available federal court records that Bollinger executives faced any charges in connection to it. Meanwhile, federal electoral records show that the company’s executives donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican elected officials last year, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both Republicans from Louisiana. The company did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

President Joe Biden’s administration ended workplace raids like the one at Bollinger, saying that it would instead focus on “unscrupulous employers.” Department of Homeland Security officials did not answer questions or provide data on how many employers had been prosecuted since then. However, Trump’s designated “border czar,” Tom Homan, has signaled that the incoming administration will return to carrying out the raids. When asked how the second Trump administration will increase shipbuilding while limiting immigration, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team only doubled down on the president-elect’s deportation promises, saying they would focus enforcement on “illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers.”

A few days after Trump won the election, a group of undocumented shipyard welders leaving a Hispanic grocery store near the port in Houma, Louisiana, expressed a dim view when asked what they thought lay ahead. One man, who declined to provide his name, broke into a nervous laugh and blurted, “Well, we could be deported.” Another man, a welder from the Mexican state of Coahuila who’d been working in the U.S. for about two years, also declined to give his name but said he worried about losing the life he’d managed to build in this country.

“When they grab you,” he said, “they’ll take you, and you’ll have to leave everything behind.”

That Slippery Slope Thing

The kicker here of course is that they're creating a new agency to grace this fucked up racist shit with the appropriate official imprimatur.

And I realize this is the classic Slippery Slope Fallacy, but if this thing is left to its own devices, it will morph into a spoils system, where people can point at an immigrant-owned business or property, make whatever claims of illegality that seem to fit, and confiscate that commercial entity, splitting the proceeds with the coin-operated asshole running the Missouri Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program.

Sure hope everybody's ready for an American version of Kristallnacht. Cuz that's where we're headed if we don't wise up and stop it.

Missouri Republican proposes $1,000 bounty program to turn in undocumented immigrants

State Representative An incoming Missouri Republican lawmaker introduced a bill this week that would offer $1,000 bounties to residents who turn in undocumented immigrants to the state highway patrol.

The bill, filed by Sen.-elect David Gregory, a St. Louis-area Republican, would require the Missouri Department of Public Safety to create phone and email hotlines as well as an online portal where Missourians would be able to report alleged undocumented immigrants.

The bill is among several pieces of legislation that deal with illegal immigration ahead of next month’s legislative session. They come as President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans across the country have made frustrations with immigration, and the U.S.-Mexico border, a hot-button issue.

In addition to the payouts, Gregory’s bill would require the Department of Public Safety to create a “Missouri Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program.” The program would certify people to become bounty hunters to find and detain undocumented immigrants.

Individuals who are licensed as bail bond agents or surety recovery agents would be able to apply to become bounty hunters under Gregory’s bill.

Undocumented immigrants who are caught by the bounty hunters would be considered guilty of “trespass by an illegal alien.” Those found guilty of the offense could face jail time and would be prohibited from voting and other rights.

Gregory, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, had made illegal immigration one of the central focuses of his Senate campaign. He filmed a campaign ad at the southern border with Mexico and has promoted media coverage of his bill on social media.

Edgar Palacios, executive director of Revolución Educativa, a Kansas City group focused on education issues in the Latino community, said Gregory’s bill was “horrendous.”

“Immigrants are human and humans aren’t meant to be hunted,” Palacios said in an interview. “This idea of having a bounty hunter for immigrants is wild and I think it displays a narrative that, again, people see, not everybody, but certain people see immigrants as inhuman.”

Nimrod Chapel, president of the Missouri NAACP State Conference, drew parallels between Gregory’s bill and legislation historically aimed at marginalized groups such as the 1820 Missouri Compromise which admitted Missouri as a slave state.

“This bill by our new senator has returned exactly to those roots,” Chapel said. “You’re going to create a system that is not only going to differentiate people based on how God made them, which, in my spiritual belief, is just fundamentally wrong, but then you’re going to try to create in a system…that seeks to differentiate people in much the same way that some of the Jim Crow laws did.”

Chapel referred to the bill as “a really draconian and racist piece of legislation.”

“It scares the hell out of me,” he said. “And the reason it does is because I already know that Black and brown people have been catching hell in the state of Missouri for a very long time.”

Impact on Kansas City

While Gregory faces blowback for his bill, it comes as Missouri politics have been awash in rhetoric about migrants. The focus on immigration would have an outsized impact on the Kansas City region, which has become a center of migrant arrivals over the last decade, according to U.S. immigration court data analyzed by The Washington Post.

Since 2014, roughly 8,300 migrants have settled in Jackson County since 2014 and 37% came from Honduras.

Earlier this year, Republican Gov. Mike Parson sent Missouri National Guard troops to aid Texas, which has promoted a plan dubbed “Operation Lone Star” that uses Texas state resources to combat illegal border crossings.

Parson, who will term out of office next month, heavily promoted the deployment, even though he later vetoed funding to continue it.

Candidates for office in both major parties emphasized illegal immigration on the campaign trail, including Democrat Lucas Kunce. But the issue was perhaps the most prevalent in the race to succeed Parson as governor, with all three major GOP candidates touting immigration frustrations in campaign ads and public statements.

Each of the three candidates, including Gov.-elect Mike Kehoe, also seized on comments Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas made in April welcoming migrant workers who are in the United States legally.

Amid the campaign rhetoric, outgoing House Speaker Dean Plocher, a Des Peres Republican, also created a committee that focused on “Illegal Immigrant Crimes.” The committee held hearings across the state, including in Kansas City, to maximize public attention on the issue.

For Palacios, with Revolución Educativa, immigrants are coming to the U.S. in search of a better life and to pursue “the American dream.” He said politicians should be focused on ensuring everyone has access to education and opportunities.

“I think the narrative is harmful. I think it’s designed to create fear amongst certain members of our community,” Palacios said. “It riles up a base that may not fully appreciate, again, the value that immigrants and folks from the migrant community bring, not to our state, but to our country.”

Careful What You Wish For

Mary Trump

Concentration camps.

Trump's Plans

A concentration camp is a concentration camp is a concentration camp.

Trump confirms plans to use military for mass deportations

President-elect Trump confirmed Monday that he is planning to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations.

Why it matters:

Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants one of the cornerstones of his 2024 campaign, and his team has already begun strategizing how to carry its plan out.

Driving the news:

Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on Truth Social earlier this month that Trump was "prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program."

Trump reposted Fitton's comment Monday with the caption, "TRUE!!"

The big picture:

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump's mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.

Immigration advocates and lawyers are preparing to counter the plan in court.

The president-elect's team is aiming to craft executive orders that can withstand legal challenges to avoid a similar defeat that befell Trump's Muslim ban in his first term, Politico reported.

Their plans also include ending the parole program for undocumented immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, per Politico.

Zoom out:

Trump has also already begun filling out his Cabinet positions with immigration hardliners.

This includes tapping Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to serve as his "border czar."

In addition, Trump nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

On The Border

I'm not the least bit crazy about the mass deportation of immigrants. Especially when so many are coming here to get away from horrendous conditions in their home countries. This is the place where good and decent people from everywhere have dreamed of coming for a very long time.

Large scale deportation just smacks of "round up all the brown people, put 'em in concentration camps, and then dump the survivors wherever".

That said, we can't be "the green spot" - the place on the other side of the hill where the grass is still green. We have to figure out how to keep those other places from being turned into "brown spots" - environmentally, politically, or whatever-ly.

And that's going to continue being a real bitch of a problem until we figure out how to get (mostly) Republicans and their voters, to stop behaving stupidly, and face up to the realities.

For every problem that's complicated,

and difficult,

and multi-faceted,

there's a solution that's simple,

and elegant,

and wrong.

Republican former President Donald Trump is promising to ramp up deportations from the United States to historic levels if reelected to another four-year term in the White House as part of his campaign to defeat President Joe Biden, a Democrat, who has struggled with record numbers of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

In June, Biden implemented a sweeping, new asylum ban aimed at quickly deporting more recent border crossers to their home countries or Mexico.

Even with the tougher border policy, Biden has continued to work to protect longer-term immigrants in the U.S. illegally, including through a new effort also announced in June that would ease the path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people married to U.S. citizens. He has shifted enforcement priorities inside the country to focus on removing migrants who the U.S.has deemed as public safety threats.

Trump’s pledge echoes his 2015 campaign promise to deport some 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally. After winning office in 2016, he said his administration aimed to deport 2 million to 3 million people with criminal records.

But during Trump’s term in office from January 2017 to January 2021, deportations by U.S. immigration and border authorities fell lower than most years of his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, who some advocates for immigrants dubbed the “deporter-in-chief.”

Biden had even fewer deportations than Trump during his first two years in office when not counting rapid expulsions under a COVID-era health measure which was used millions of times to turn people back to Mexico. But, faced with much higher numbers of migrants arriving at the border, he greatly increased deportations – including those of families – in federal fiscal year 2023 and the first five months of the 2024 fiscal year, outpacing Trump.

During the first presidential debate on June 27, Trump was asked to explain how he would deport millions of people but declined to give details, saying, “We have to get a lot of these people out and we have to get them out fast.” Biden highlighted a recent drop in migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border under his new asylum ban but did not directly address the efforts to step up deportations.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can deport both those arrested at the border and immigrants who have been living in the country illegally for years. In addition to ICE deportations, there are other ways the government removes migrants from the country. Many recent crossers are quickly deported by officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is separate from ICE, or sign documents agreeing to voluntarily return to their home countries. Both agencies are part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Single adults can be encountered by immigration authorities and placed into deportation proceedings in a number of ways. (Unaccompanied children are subject to different processes.)

Trump’s mass deportation pledge

Trump in an April interview with Time magazine said he would lean more on local police to turn migrants over to ICE. During his term in office, however, some police forces limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Trump in the interview said he would turn to the National Guard if needed. Tom Homan, a former top ICE official who could return in a second Trump administration, told Reuters the National Guard, if used, would play a support role but that only law enforcement officers would make immigration arrests.

According to a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, a majority - or 56% - said most or all immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be deported, though the same poll suggested some Americans may be wary of some harsher deportation plans. About half of those surveyed opposed putting immigrants in the country illegally into detention camps while awaiting removal.

Trump in the Time interview downplayed reports that he would build detention camps if reelected, saying he “would not rule out anything” but there “wouldn't be that much of a need for them,” suggesting people would be removed quickly. Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Americans support mass deportations, and reiterated the former president’s pledge.

“On Day One back in the White House, President Trump will begin the largest criminal deportation operation of illegal immigrants and restore the rule of law,” Leavitt said in a statement.

White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez touted Biden’s recent actions to deter illegal immigration as well as efforts to open up more legal pathways for would-be migrants outside the U.S., saying Biden's asylum ban would "ensure that those who cross the border unlawfully are quickly removed."

Biden and the border

During Biden’s term, the number of people apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border has reached record highs.

Biden’s administration for several years used a Trump-era border expulsion policy, known as Title 42, to quickly send many migrants back to Mexico. The public health measure, put in place in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, aimed to minimize the time migrants spent in custody and allowed border agents to rapidly expel them to Mexico without a chance to seek asylum.

Border agents expelled migrants 2.8 million times under Title 42. The vast majority of those expulsions happened under Biden, who took office in January 2021, until he lifted the measure in May 2023 when the COVID emergency ended.

Migrants expelled under Title 42 were not subject to the same consequences of a more formal deportation process, which can lead to criminal charges or long bars on reentering the country. The Biden administration argued that the quick expulsions led to more people attempting to cross the border multiple times and when it lifted the measure, U.S. officials implemented new policies aimed at more effective enforcement.

Biden has repeatedly said the only way to fix the border is through legislation. A bipartisan bill proposed in the U.S. Senate, and backed by the White House, would have toughened border rules and increased funding. But Republicans scuttled the effort after Trump came out against it, saying it would not sufficiently stem crossings. Biden called it an “extremely cynical political move” by the former president.

Unable to pass legislation in Congress, Biden has taken several executive actions to limit access to asylum, while increasing legal ways to enter the country - including by seeking an appointment at legal ports of entry on a government-run app.

Citing these and other measures, such as increased cooperation with Western Hemisphere countries to curb migration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it has ramped up the number of removals of recent border crossers after the end of Title 42 and sped up the asylum screening process.

Trump has said he would reinstate Title 42 if elected.

Humans are herd animals. We go where we're driven, in search of food, water, and shelter - and other stuff.