Their Next Gambit

It's always a matter of coercion or outright force for these assholes.

They don't get what they want with persuasion and negotiation, so they try to muscle their way through.

Fuckin' bullies. Weak shit bullying pussies.

Trump’s border chief threatens to close customs at top US airports

Markwayne Mullin said officers in some Democrat-run ‘sanctuary’ cities could not be relied upon to enforce immigration policy

President Trump’s new homeland security secretary has suggested he will withdraw customs officers from the airports of Democrat-run “sanctuary cities” that protect undocumented migrants.

The proposal from Markwayne Mullin, who was appointed to the role last month, would affect international travellers at many of the busiest airports in the United States, including JFK in New York, Los Angeles international airport and Denver international airport.

“If they’re a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city?” Mullin said on Fox News in his first interview since taking up the role.

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His words are seen as an attack on local sanctuary policies, which typically limit police co-operation with federal immigration authorities.

“Right now remember the Democrats are wanting to defund Customs and Border Patrol,” Mullin added, misnaming Customs and Border Protection. “Well, who processes those individuals when they walk off the plane?

“If they’re a sanctuary city and they’re receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport they’re not going to enforce immigration policy? Maybe we need to have a really hard look at that, because we need to focus on cities that want to work with us.”

Twelve states and 18 cities are recognised as sanctuary jurisdictions by the US government. Their status has survived a number of legal challenges.

New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Denver, Boston and Chicago are all on the list. Each of those cities has a big airport.

Mullin, a former Oklahoma senator, replaced Kristi Noem as head of the department after Trump fired her last month. She had carried out the president’s mass-deportation agenda for more than a year.

Model was ‘paid $25 a minute to talk dirty with Kristi Noem’s cross-dressing husband’
Experts said Mullin, a longstanding ally and friend of Trump, was unlikely to go through with the customs proposal as it would devastate the aviation industry, but still expressed concern.

“I did some research. By administration’s own definitions this would end international air travel at US airports where about 58 per cent of international traffic happens,” Todd Schulte, president of the pro-immigration political advocacy organisation FWD, wrote on X, “so would crash economy (hence won’t happen). [But] it’s very bad it even gets floated!”

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California and a possible Democratic presidential contender for 2028, also condemned the idea. “If you thought the economy was bad with Trump’s war driving prices at the pump up … just wait until international travel is halted at some of the busiest airports in the world,” he said on X. “Talk about a stupid idea (no wonder it’s being considered by the Trump admin).”

California Governor Gavin Newsom gestures during a press conference on law enforcement efforts targeting illicit fentanyl in San Diego.
Gavin Newsom called the proposal “stupid”

Federal funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapsed on February 14, triggering a partial government shutdown and a prolonged stand-off between Democrats and Republicans over immigration enforcement funding.

The Trump administration has long fought a legal and political battle with sanctuary jurisdictions. Last year a federal judge in San Francisco issued an injunction prohibiting the White House from retaliating against sanctuary cities by withholding federal funding.

Lighten Up, Stephen

If Trump decides he needs to soften the approach, which is unlikely, or least it's not likely that he'll allow the perception that he's "going soft" on anything, then the question (as always with politicians) will be how many MAGA rubes will flip-flop with him on this one too, versus how many will break with him.

Normal people would just come out and say, "OK, so that didn't work quite the way we wanted it to work, so we're going to try something a little different."

Normal people would do that, because that's just good business. But Trump is not normal, and he's not good at business, so I'm not going to start expecting him to behave like a good business guy - or as a normal guy either for that matter.

In the meantime -

REMEMBER THE EPSTEIN FILES

Trump Throws Stephen Miller Under the Bus in Surprise Show of Panic

On the surface, Trump wants less attention paid to mass deportations. Meanwhile, Miller is taking new and hidden steps to wreak havoc in the lives of undocumented children and their families.

Has Donald Trump finally figured out that Stephen Miller’s fascist cruelties have become a niggling political liability for him? Well, maybe. A striking report in The Wall Street Journal suggests Trump may be moving to marginalize Miller’s influence. But Trump appears to think the difficulty can be cured by a few optical tweaks, when the real culprit is a deeper ideological one.

Trump wants to “lower the profile of his mass deportation effort,” the Journal reveals. He wants voters to think the targets of these deportations are “bad guys,” not noncriminal undocumented residents. He wants less visibility for ICE raids in cities, fewer public confrontations with local officials, and less public talk about “mass deportations,” which, he now grasps, are hideously unpopular.

Tellingly, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles now sees deportations as a liability for the midterms, per the report. That Trump is siding with her on the politics here is a sign of political panic and a rebuke to Miller, who apparently delights in flaunting the administration’s vicious sadism and overt white nationalism—and seems certain that latent majorities are quietly cheering along.

To be clear, this report deserves serious skepticism. It very much bears watching whether ICE will actually end up deprioritizing the removal of noncriminal immigrants. Trump mostly wants the appearance of a pivot: According to the Journal, he wants a focus on “criminals” in GOP “messaging.”

But recalibrating the “messaging” won’t address the public’s broad rejection of Trumpism’s deeper anti-immigrant project. And all signs are that this project is fully forging ahead.

Case in point: Miller just met with Texas state legislators and floated a truly extreme proposal. The New York Times reports that Miller discussed the idea of ending state public funding for the education of undocumented children, and asked the lawmakers why they hadn’t passed a bill limiting funding for education so it only goes to kids who are citizens or are lawfully present in the United States.

This idea—denying public school to undocumented children—has mostly passed under the radar, but it’s a long-held dream of the anti-immigrant right. The basic aim is to destabilize the lives of undocumented families as another way to encourage them to self-deport. But there’s an even more pernicious ideological aim at work here.

Getting a red state to attempt this would run afoul of a 1982 Supreme Court decision, which blocked states from denying public education to young people based on immigration status. Plyler v. Doe is not as well known as the other big civil rights rulings, but it’s momentous: It held that restricting public education this way would violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s enshrinement of equal protection before the law.

Miller and his allies are gunning for Plyler. If a state did restrict education to migrant kids, it would likely provoke another court battle—possibly providing an opening for the right-wing court to overturn Plyler.

That would be seismic. The basic principle at issue is whether these kids are to be regarded as equal persons despite being undocumented. The Burger court found that denying them education would relegate them to an unacceptable subclass status. As immigration law scholar Hiroshi Motomura explains, the ruling embodied the idea that “the emergence of a permanent subcaste is intolerable within a national constitutional culture based on equality.”

Miller really wants to end that “constitutional culture based on equality.” It’s hard to know whether Texas lawmakers will do his bidding—or how the high court would rule if they did. But if it worked, other red states with many immigrant families in them could follow.

This would immeasurably impoverish our nation, but the effort advances Miller’s ideological project in still another sense. Trump wants the Supreme Court to rule in favor of his 2025 executive order ending birthright citizenship. That of course also involves the Fourteenth Amendment—its guarantee that all persons born in the United States are automatic citizens.

Here again, Trump and Miller are aiming at something very profound, if maliciously so. As legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar writes, the “big idea” animating the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause, its “moral north star,” is that birthright citizenship enshrines a guarantee that all persons are born free and equal—their status is not dictated by blood. The goal of undoing this, Amar notes, is to make the constitutional order more “hereditary” and “caste-like.”

That’s precisely what Trump and Miller want. You can hear echoes of this in JD Vance’s now-infamous suggestions that heritage, not adherence to creedal ideals, makes one American. As Jamelle Bouie explains, Vance’s vision is of “tiered citizenship” based not on equality of birth but on one’s “connection to the soil and to the dead.” Ned Resnikoff hears hints of this in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Western-civilizational-supremacist rhetoric, as well.

Miller’s apparent push to end the guarantee of public education involves undocumented kids, not American-born citizens. But it, too, would create a permanent subclass by denying those kids equality before the law. “Miller’s true goal is to use immigration as a tool to chisel away at the Fourteenth Amendment,” Chris Newman, counsel at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told me. “Until he’s ejected from the White House, all our rights are in danger.”

The true essence of Miller’s project resides here. It is to treat immigrants—not just undocumented ones but lawfully present ones, and even their American-born children—as fundamentally unfit to become American, as a civilizational threat of existential proportions. That threat must be arrested via mass forced removals—hence the Department of Homeland Security’s rhapsodizing about 100 million deportations—and via an end to treating immigrants and their kids as equals.

Overturning Plyler and ending birthright citizenship are aimed at that goal—and both initiatives are alive and well. So are Miller’s efforts to snuff out every legal pathway for migrants to come here for humanitarian reasons. So too is his construction of massive prison camps to facilitate all those expulsions. So is his effort to deport as many people as possible regardless of their deep ties to communities here: In 2025, only 14 percent of those arrested by ICE had violent criminal records.

Trump can dress this up with spin about targeting “criminals” all he likes. But until all the ethnonationalist, civilizational-emergency-mongering nonsense is exorcised, the deeper problem will fester. Trump believes all those ideas himself, but the depth of his commitment to them has never been all that clear. One doubts he’ll be so inclined, but should he ever want to stop this madness, only one move on his part—a big personnel move—can truly put an end to it.

The Camps

Seized Art, Eavesdropping Guards: Parents Describe a Clampdown at Dilley Detention Center as Kids Shared Their Stories

Detainees told ProPublica that art supplies have been removed in room searches, immigrants have lost access to Gmail and staff hover within earshot during video calls. The Trump administration and a private prison operator disputed detainees’ claims.

When guards appeared earlier this month outside the room Christian Hinojosa shared with her son and other women and children at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, she guessed what they might be after. She quickly donned her puffy winter jacket, then slipped a manila envelope inside it. “Thank God the weather was cool,” she said — the jacket didn’t raise suspicions.

Then, she said, she was instructed to leave the room while eight to 10 guards lifted up mattresses, opened drawers and rifled through papers. In the envelope were kids’ writings and artwork about life in America’s only detention facility for immigrant families, a collection of trailers and dormitories in the brush country south of San Antonio. She planned to share their letters with the outside world.

Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils and drawing paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to Hinojosa and three other former detainees, along with lawyers and advocates in contact with the families inside.

Guards have taken artwork, too, they said — even one child’s drawing of Bratz fashion dolls.

They said detainees have lost access to Gmail and other Google services in the Dilley library amid stepped up searches, seizures and restrictions on communications, making it more difficult for them to contact lawyers and advocates.

They and family members said guards sometimes hover within earshot during detainees’ video calls to relatives and reporters.

“We Are Kidnapped Help!”

Seven-year-old Mathias Bermeo, a detainee at Dilley wrote: “I’m writing this letter so that you can hear my story. I need you to help us. I have been detained for 23 days with my mom and my 3-year-old sister. I cry a lot. I want to get out of here go back to my school. They don’t treat us well here. There are many children. We are kidnapped help!”

The detainees and others interviewed for this story said these measures increased after the Jan. 22 arrival of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old in a blue bunny hat, sparked protests and congressional visits. They said the clampdown intensified as children and parents at Dilley wrote letters to share with the public and reporters and relatives recorded video calls with the detainees, including those published by ProPublica this month. The children’s stories, many told in their own words, fueled an outcry over the scope of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, which the president had promised would focus on criminals.

The detainees said the more they tried to make their voices heard, the more difficult it became.

One mother, who asked to remain anonymous because her immigration case is still pending, told ProPublica that she and her three kids watched through a window as guards swept through their room in late January, removing drawings from the walls and placing colored pencils and crayons in plastic bags before taking them away.

With little schooling available at Dilley and weather too chilly for kids to want to play outdoors, drawing had been the children’s main diversion, the former detainee said. “What were they going to do now?” she said. “They were so bored.”

After the room inspection, the woman said, the children just “cried and cried and cried.”

“I Can’t See My Pet Willi”

A detainee at Dilley wrote, “I feel bad being here! Bad because I can’t because I can’t see my pet willi and I can’t eat what I want and I can’t see my friends from school and at home.”

CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs the Dilley facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a written statement that routine inspections of living facilities are a common practice and that detainees are informed of what items they are allowed to have in their rooms.

“We vehemently deny any claims that our staff have confiscated or destroyed children’s personal artwork or their related supplies,” the statement reads, adding that there are examples of kids’ artwork “proudly displayed” throughout the facility.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that “ICE is not destroying children’s letters,” but the agency acknowledged that in one case “all the written items in the cell were seized” as part of an investigation of a mother who DHS said refused to comply with a search and pushed a detention center employee. CoreCivic referred questions to DHS when asked about this incident. ProPublica was unable to reach the mother for comment.

This week, DHS issued press releases that it said were “correcting the record” about Dilley, saying “adults with children are housed in facilities that provide for their safety, security, and medical needs.” DHS’ and CoreCivic’s statements to ProPublica did not answer questions about Google services being blocked or whether guards listen in on Dilley detainees’ calls.

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, visited Dilley after Liam and his father, both originally from Ecuador, were picked up in Minnesota and transferred in January. He went again last week and was asked at a Friday news conference about reports of children’s letters and drawings being suppressed.

“I believe those stories, because I’ve heard similar stories myself,” Castro said.

He said he’d been told repeatedly that guards had warned detainees not to talk to him. “Yes, I think there’s a lot of secrecy there,” Castro said.

DHS did not respond when asked to comment on Castro’s assertion about the guards. A CoreCivic spokesperson said, “We are not aware of any staff member warning residents not to speak with Rep. Castro.”

The Dilley Immigration Processing Center first opened during the Obama administration primarily to hold families that had just crossed the border. Then Biden ended the practice of detaining families in 2021. President Donald Trump restarted it even as border crossings in his second term hit record lows. Now ICE is ramping up immigration arrests inside the country, and Dilley holds many families who have been living in the United States for years.

The families spend their days behind a metal fence, sleeping in rooms that hold six bunk beds and a common area with a few small tables and desks. More than 3,500 people have cycled through the detention center since the Trump administration began sending families here last spring.

A ProPublica reporter who had been speaking with families at Dilley since late last year went to the center for an in-person visit in mid-January and asked families whether their children would want to write about their experiences. On Jan. 22, we received a packet of colorful drawings and handwritten letters from a detainee who had been recently released, which we later published.

Then on Jan. 24, dozens of detainees staged a mass protest in the yard, which was photographed from above, where they yelled “libertad” and held up hand-drawn signs. The signs were made using the detention center’s art supplies, former detainees said.

That protest and Liam’s detention triggered widespread media coverage and a visit by Castro, who arrived on Jan 28. Supporters gathered outside Dilley, and some clashed with state troopers. At the beginning of February, Liam and his father were released, and ProPublica published the letters it had received. By that time, it had become clear to detainees that their voices — especially children’s voices — had gotten broad public attention.

They kept writing.

“We were looking for help,” said Hinojosa, who collected letters at ProPublica’s request. “We were looking to be heard.”

Hinojosa, along with her 13-year-old son, Gustavo, both originally from Mexico, were released in early February after four months at Dilley to return home to San Antonio. (Although a 1990s legal settlement holds that children should generally not be detained for more than 20 days, DHS has said the settlement should be terminated because newer regulations have addressed the needs of child detainees.)

“My parents say it’s been 4 months but for me and my little sister,” a 9-year-old wrote in one of the letters Hinojosa gathered. “It feels like a year I just want to go to the United States to be with my grandparents and finally end this nightmare.”

“I’m writing this letter so that you can hear my story,” a 7-year-old wrote in another of the letters. “I need you to help us … I cry a lot. I want to get out of here go back to my school.”

“I see how they treat us like criminals,” wrote Edison, a seventh grader from Chicago who was born in Guatemala, “and we’re not.”

“We Are Not Criminals”

While detained at Dilley, 7-year old Diana wrote: “I lived in oregon We were detained in a hospital parking lot I feel bad because I miss my stuffed animals I don’t want to be here and I miss my friends and also miss my teacher and my house and my bed. we are not criminals I’m a very pretty girl.” Obtained by ProPublica. Alien Registration Number redacted by ProPublica.

CoreCivic said that Dilley residents are given a written description of property they’re allowed to have in their living areas, and that decorating rooms with personal items is permitted “provided they do not present a health or safety hazard.”

Former detainees told ProPublica they experienced room searches before January but that they typically were carried out by just two employees at a time, not eight or more.

After guards searched Hinojosa’s room following the protest, she said, she and the other residents were unable to locate their colored pencils, which were purchased at the commissary and stored in a little cup atop the writing table where the kids liked to doodle. “Even knowing that we had paid for those ourselves,” she said, “they removed them.”

“There were many, many families whose children had their pencils and what they created thrown away,” said a third mother, who also asked to remain anonymous because of her immigration status.

“I Just Want to … Finally End This Nightmare”

A handwritten letter with a drawing of four people trapped behind bars:

Nine-year-old Valentina wrote: “I have been detained for a long time. My parents say it’s been 4 months but for me and my little sister Jireth it feels like a year I just want to go to the United States to be with my grandparents and finally end this nightmare that my family has had to live through, I feel like I’ve had the worst days of my life I want God to help us get out of here so we can be happy again and study together as a family. Please help us and our parents get out of here thank you.”

Former detainees and their family members described close attention by guards during calls home, some of which happened via tablet computers in a common area.

Edison, the 13-year-old Chicago seventh grader, cried during a recent video call home that his father shared with ProPublica, saying he felt locked up.

The father, who asked that his son’s last name not be used, recalled the boy saying before the recording began, “Dad, there’s an agent here and he’s watching us.” He said his son sounded panicked.

The mother who said she watched guards sweep her room told ProPublica that after the January protest inside Dilley, a half-dozen guards were posted in a room where calls took place. “Every time someone came in to make a call,” she said, “they practically stood behind you.”

As families held at Dilley continue to try to make themselves heard, Hinojosa and other recently released detainees are determined to help.

Hinojosa carefully protected her fellow residents’ letters and drawings before her release. Every time she left her room, she wore the CoreCivic-issued puffy gray jacket and tucked the drawings and letters inside.

“I carried them around with me all day to prevent anyone from taking them,” she told ProPublica. “I knew they were valuable.”

Many of the pieces she carried were different from the vibrant paper drawings ProPublica received in January. With paper in short supply, Hinojosa said, children drew pictures on the backs of old artworks. With crayons and colored pencils now scarce, some drew in plain pencil.

Hinojosa walked out of Dilley earlier this month with her son Gustavo and with 34 pages of drawings and letters. They capture the names and lives of dozens of people.

Along with long notes from moms who remain inside are simple sketches by the kids detained with them: a teddy bear. A bus going home. A pet cat named Willi. A family of three stick figures trapped behind a wire fence. A family of six stick figures trapped behind a wire fence. A single small stick figure trapped behind a wire fence. Many of the drawings show faces, and most of the faces are frowning.

Today's Rich

Immigrants - people here legally are otherwise - are better for the US economy than Republicans.

And always remember, there was a workable proposal for real Immigration Reform on the table ready for Congress to take it up, haggle it out, and vote it into law in the summer of 2024, but Trump jumped in and told the dog-ass Republicans to throw it out so he'd have an issue to run on.

First, we got "They're eating the dogs - they're eating the cats."

And now we've got roving gangs of masked thugs raiding daycare centers and hanging out in Home Depot parking lots, hunting down anyone who looks a bit too brown - and killing people who pose absolutely no threat to anyone.

None of us should trust any politician too much, but damn - you can trust Republicans about as far as you can spit a bowling ball.

The Cato study:

Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by $14.5 Trillion Since 1994

Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets

Today, the Cato Institute published “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023,” a study on the fiscal effects of immigrants—legal and illegal—that builds upon the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) fiscal effects model. The paper, which I coauthored with Michael Howard and Julián Salazar, is the first to analyze three decades of federal, state, and local government budgets to determine how immigrants affected the total US government debt and deficit.

In this paper, we wanted to accomplish two main things:

1) Provide the first-ever assessment of the total net fiscal effect of all immigrants from 1994 to 2023, rather than a one-year snapshot or forward-looking projection like many other studies. We wanted a sufficiently long period to assess claims like those by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, asserting that immigrants have already sucked us dry.

2) Provide the clearest explanation for the mechanisms driving the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets.

Immigrants Have Reduced the Deficit Every Year

Every year since 1994, when data collection began, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from the federal, state, and local governments. The fiscal benefits have continued to rise, reaching their highest level ever in 2023.

The fiscal surplus from all immigrants from 1994 to 2023 was $14.5 trillion, compared with a deficit of $48 trillion without immigrants. That means that immigrants cut deficits by nearly a third in real terms over the last three decades.

Why the Average Person Is Fiscally Positive

How can immigrants be so fiscally beneficial when the country overall is running such extreme deficits? The answer is that a big part of the US budget is pure public goods—primarily the military and interest payments on past debt accrued before the immigrants came—which don’t scale with population growth. These are essentially fixed costs or sunk obligations that the United States will have to cover whether immigrants come or not.

The figure below shows how, in most years, tax revenue exceeds the costs of providing benefits—that is, everything that requires scaling with population growth. Thus, immigrants will be fiscally positive so long as they are at least average in their revenue creation and benefits received. In fact, immigrants are significantly better than average in both aspects of the fiscal equation.

Immigrants Pay More Taxes, Receive Fewer Benefits

Immigrants pay more in taxes than the average person. This is counterintuitive because they have lower hourly wages, but because they work at much higher rates (the blue line), they end up with higher per capita incomes (the gray line) and pay more in taxes than their share of the population predicts (the dotted line). Thus, immigrants have been better at generating revenue for the government than the average person.

Are their tax revenues overwhelmed by the costs they impose? Here’s everything the federal, state, and local governments spent money on over the last 30 years in per capita dollar amounts. Immigrants did not create significantly higher costs for any items and saved the government enormously in two areas: old-age benefits and education costs.

Immigrants cost less as retirees: First, the savings on old-age benefits are not because immigrants are significantly less likely to retire. Instead, it is because they are far less likely to receive a government pension, since they were less likely to have government jobs and thus less likely to receive expensive government pensions. The main reason, though, is that they were simply barred from applying for Social Security and Medicare because they either arrived too late in life to earn the necessary qualifying work history, or they are here illegally or in a temporary status and ineligible for that reason.

Immigrants cost schools less: Immigrants arrive in the United States at the average age of about 25, meaning that the United States gets workers without having to pay to educate them. Even though they are more costly when in school—due to bilingual education needs—they are much less costly overall because they are so much less likely to be in school. The result is that immigrants cost the US education system about half as much as the US-born population.

Immigrants aren’t big welfare users. The savings on education aren’t lost in the welfare state. Immigrants are much more likely to be in poverty but use roughly an average amount of what we call “needs-based” assistance. That includes traditional welfare, food assistance, Medicaid, refundable tax credits, and unemployment insurance. The entire reason for this disconnect between poverty rates and welfare use rates is that many immigrants are here illegally and so are ineligible to apply for welfare in most states. This conclusion, that immigrants use welfare at the same rate as the US-born population, matches the Trump administration’s conclusion in 2018.

Here is the full picture of spending and taxes for immigrants from 1994 to 2023. Immigrants—legal and illegal—paid more in taxes every single year than they received in benefits, broadly defined, and the gap has grown over time.

Immigrants Don’t Cause Deficits

Here’s another way to look at our main conclusion. Immigrants accounted for 14 percent of tax revenue and 7 percent of government spending from 1994 to 2023. Even if the government had not spent a dollar on immigrants, while somehow still getting all their tax revenue, the US government at all levels would still have run a $20 trillion deficit. Immigrants are not to blame for government deficits. Indeed, they reduced the deficit by about $14.5 trillion.

We use the highest-quality data available for this report and the best methods for this type of analysis. Although there are undoubtedly methodological finer points that can be debated, these broad conclusions are inescapable:

1. The average additional person is fiscally positive because pure public goods are such a big portion of the budget.

2. Immigrants generate more tax revenue. Immigrants’ employment rates are well documented. The correlation between income and taxes is well established.

3. Immigrants use fewer benefits. The effects of status-based limits on welfare and entitlements are clearly apparent in numerous data sources. The savings from education are indisputable, as immigrants are less likely to be enrolled in school.

Since these effects are not driven by the absence of immigrant retirees, we shouldn’t expect our conclusion to reverse after tracking a specific cohort of immigrants over time. Indeed, when we do follow the cohort that entered from 1990 to 1993, we find that after three decades, the cohort was still paying far more in taxes than they received in benefits, and that the fiscal gains had grown over time. In total, this cohort reduced the deficit by $1.7 trillion.

Our paper also concludes:

• Without the contributions of immigrants, public debt at all levels would already be above 200 percent of US GDP—nearly twice the 2023 level and a threshold some analysts believe would trigger a debt crisis.
• Even low-skilled immigrants—those without bachelor’s degrees—reduced the debt by $2.8 trillion.
• Immigrants in all categories of educational attainment, including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product (GDP) during the 30-year period.
• Illegal immigrants likely reduced the deficit by at least $1.7 trillion.
• Even including the second generation, who are mostly still children who will become taxpayers soon, the fiscal effect of immigration was positive every year, reducing the debt by $7.9 trillion.

Table: Fiscal flows and GDP effect by citizenship and education, cumulative, 1994–2023 

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, the main conclusion of our paper is that there is nothing systematically wrong with US immigration policy regarding the fiscal effects of immigrants. There is nothing unsustainable about the US immigration system. We could have scaled immigration as it existed without burdening government budgets. For years, nativists in Congress and the administration have wrongly claimed that immigrants are behind the growth in debt and that the US immigration system allows foreigners to take advantage of Americans’ generosity. Our data completely repudiates this view. Immigrants are subsidizing the US government.

The best way to balance the budget is to reduce spending—particularly on wealthy retirees—but rather than hinder our efforts to control deficits, immigrants are helping.

You can read the entire study here: Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023

On Liam And His Dad

I knew there had been a win in court. I didn't know how bigly the judge had dunked on Kristi Noem and Donald Trump.

This is outstanding.

Liam

(cribbed and paraphrased from a FB post by Richard Ojeda)

I look at my own sons now - grown and busy building their lives - and I have to think about how much has been possible only because they got to grow up safe, protected, and never afraid of the people who were supposed to be there to help.

That’s why the story of a five-year-old boy being detained by ICE, pulled out of a car in his own driveway and held hostage in order to lure his family out of their home, hits me like I've been kicked in the stomach. No parent should ever have to imagine their kids being put in that position, and no child should ever be forced to carry that kind of fear.

I’ve been around for quite a while, I've seen what real threats look like, and a kindergartener with a backpack, wearing a bunny hat, is not one of them.

Using a child to project power or to make a point isn’t law enforcement - it’s cruelty. And it violates everything this country claims to stand for.

When my kids were little, their biggest concerns were all about being on time for the school bus and playing and wondering if they could talk me into fixing their favorite chicken enchiladas for supper - feeling loved.

Liam’s world was shattered in an instant by masked agents who decided terrorizing a child was an acceptable tool for achieving a fucked political goal.

If we allow this to be normalized - if we look away because it’s happening to someone else’s kid - then we’ve already lost something fundamental about who we are.

Terrifying times. pic.twitter.com/iN7Z3US9Xk

— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) January 24, 2026

Today's Hawk

Where are the arrests and the seizures of massive amounts of street drugs?

• Gang members
• Drug rings
• Sex traffickers
• Coyotes

If it ever was about "illegal immigrants" or the "worst of the worst" that's long been over.

They're going after any and all brown people.

And we fuckin' told you - assholes.

A Reuters photographer captured the image of a man named Saly being taken from his house and marched into the cold by ICE agents, who didn’t bother finding out who they were arresting.

Saly’s brother-in-law shared the story on the Hmong American Experience page on Facebook.

“ICE came to my brother-in-law Saly’s apartment, broke down the door, trashed the place, handcuffed him, and put a gun to his daughter-in-law’s head. They did not allow him to put on proper clothing and forced him outside in freezing weather.”

“Saly is a naturalized US citizen. He has NO criminal record.”

“ICE drove him around for nearly an hour, questioned him, and fingerprinted him. Only after all of that did they realize he had no criminal history and no reason to be detained. They then dropped him back off at his apartment like nothing happened.”

“We believe they were looking for someone who previously lived there, but instead of asking for identification, they chose violence, intimidation, and humiliation.”

Every few hours, we get a new story of some outrageous act of violence and intimidation from these lawless thugs.

Just ONE of these stories should be enough to trigger major investigations into ICE and their withdrawal from the field — but it keeps happening over and over and over again as our rights get violated and our citizens get brutalized, terrorized, and thrown in prison for no reason.

WTF ICE?

What does it say about the system when a guy says he might get better treatment if he's deported to a place he had to flee in fear for his life?

In recorded calls, reports of overcrowding and lack of food at ICE detention centers

In early May, NPR began receiving desperate messages from family members of detainees in Florida.

It was accompanied by a screenshot of a photo of a man with swollen red eyes, with another screenshot of his full detainee information.

"Please help me. Im desperate."

The woman who sent it, Maria, was texting about her brother at the Krome Detention Center in Miami. She requested their last name be withheld for fear of retaliation against her brother, who has been held in detention for more than two months.

She told NPR he had a fever, a serious eye infection for almost two weeks, and says he was denied medication for both.

"There are a lot of sick people there, and they aren't getting medical attention," she said in a phone interview. "They are sleeping on the floor and sometimes don't get meals."

Florida has pledged to be a national model for state cooperation with President Trump's immigration crackdown. As detention centers here and across the country fill up, NPR has received an outpouring of messages about severe overcrowding and inhumane conditions in immigration facilities across the state.

More than a dozen detainees, family members and lawyers described similar issues as Maria, including detainees underfed and in ill health. Krome, which is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been dogged for years by allegations of inhumane conditions and investigated by the Department of Justice in 2000 on accusations of sexual abuse. This year alone, there have been two deaths at the facility: Ukrainian immigrant Maksym Chernayak and Genry Ruiz Guillen of Honduras.

This morning, a group of Krome detainees assembled in the patio to form a human "SOS" sign.

In a written statement, ICE told NPR that "a group of detainees at the Krome Service Processing Center (Krome) decided to stage a peaceful sit-in in the center's recreation area. There has been no injuries or use of force of any kind during this demonstration." It added, "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to ensuring that all those in the agency's custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments under appropriate conditions of confinement."

Private prisons and local jails are ramping up as ICE detention exceeds capacity

"I had a client who was at Krome," says Miami based lawyer Jeff Botelho, who adds the client recently told him that "they had been sleeping on the floor for a week or two. For food, he said they were given a cup of rice and a glass of water a day. It was very concerning."

Lawyers, advocates and experts are warning that overcrowding is the new normal across the country. The federal government is holding more than 48,000 people in immigration detention, about a 20% increase since January. But deportations are not keeping pace. Experts say that's largely what's driving the overcrowding in detention centers.

"There's incredible pressure to ramp up arrests inside the interior of the United States," says Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group. He estimates that ICE is at 125% detention capacity. "And so far, there has been, if anything, just a slight increase in the capacity to actually deport people."

ICE told NPR that "some ICE facilities are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations. We are actively implementing measures to manage capacity while maintaining compliance with federal standards and our commitment to humane treatment. The reality is that these accusations do not reflect ICE's policies or practices."

What do the detention and deportation numbers say? 

The increase to nearly 50,000 detainees marks a sharp increase from the number of detentions during the Biden administration, which climbed to 39,703 in January 2025.

Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher, who tracks immigration statistics, notes that immigration arrest numbers are simply not made available by local or federal officials.

ICE did not respond to NPR's questions about Florida's detention numbers so far this year.

Deportation numbers are even trickier to come by. The government says it has deported 139,000 people as of April 2025. Some experts are skeptical that those figures are accurate.

"Up until about three weeks ago or so, things were pretty consistent with what they were in terms of the end of the Biden Administration," says Tom Cartwright, who has been tracking deportation flights for years. "Typically four to five deportation flights per day."

But Cartwright says that number has increased in the last few weeks to six to seven flights a day, mostly to Central America. And while he has no way of knowing how many people are in each airplane, he calculates each plane has the capacity to carry between 120 and 150 people.

At most, that's an estimated 1,050 people being deported every day out of the 50,000 or so who are detained.

Overcrowding, illness and hunger reported  in detention facilities 

"They're serving rotten food. People are getting sick. My spouse is not eating," J. told NPR in May. His loved one was being held at Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Fla. He asked that we refer to him by his first initial because he fears retaliation against his loved one.

J. is one of the many family members of detainees who called NPR to report their loved ones not receiving meals or getting rotten food. Detainees who NPR spoke to over the phone confirmed this, and many said they'd had to sleep on the floor for weeks.

The situation at Krome Detention Center is believed to have gotten so dire, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida paid a surprise visit there last week. She told NPR that in the intake area, two to three dozen men are "crammed into the perimeter of a very tiny room for up to 48 hours. They defecate in front of each other, they eat, they sleep on stone floors. It's really inhumane."

Advocates say this situation is playing out nationally.

"We have seen a rapid deterioration over the last few months," says Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at the nonprofit advocacy group Detention Watch Network. "We're hearing reports … that there isn't enough food." She says she's increasingly been hearing accounts from people in detention going hungry. "I've heard people use the word 'starving.' "

There have been nine deaths in ICE detention since January, which is on track to be the deadliest year since 2020. At least three of those deaths have been in Florida.

Major expansion of detention facilities coming 

The Trump administration is promising to increase the rate of arrests of immigrants to 3,000 people a day. "President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day," White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told Fox News last week.

Miller was discussing the sweeping budget bill passed by the House and now before the Senate. It would provide $75 billion over the next couple of years in additional funding for ICE, including $45 billion for detention facilities and $14.4 billion for removal operations.

"We can have, permanently, the safest, strongest, most secure system in American history," Miller told the network.

But immigrant advocates warn the measure will expand mass detention and surveillance.

"I think that it is not designed to increase the removals of people who are not legally allowed to be here," says Deborah Fleischaker, former acting chief of staff for ICE during the Biden administration. "It is designed to hold more people for longer."

Fleischaker believes ICE has historically been underfunded. But she says the bill as written "is so significant and so extreme. What they're trying to enable … I don't think it is within the imagination of the American people when they voted for Donald Trump."

Isacson of WOLA adds that the actions occurring now will multiply. "Plainclothes people using rough tactics and covering their faces to take people off the streets and sort of muscle them into vehicles," he says. "This is going to be common. And it's going to become much more common to see that all around the country military bases may have detention facilities."

"What are the chances my deportation flight will make a wrong turn?"

"I am anguished. I have not heard anything about my son."

Late in May, NPR began receiving messages from Vivian Ortega, a mother in Venezuela, regarding her son, Jhonkleiver Ortega.

Jhonkleiver Ortega came to the U.S. three years ago and was working in construction. He was picked up while driving in November 2024 for not having a license, which under Florida state law is not available to immigrants without legal status. She told us she had sold her house in Venezuela to pay for his $7,000 bond in January. When he went to his next court hearing in February, he was detained.

Vivian had heard from him infrequently, and she was terrified "he was barely eating in there."

Data trackers and policy experts say the Trump administration's goal of deporting one million migrants a year is so high that encouraging self-deportation is paramount. "The fact that [detention] is often so unsafe and unhealthy leads me to believe that there's also a desire to wear people down," says Isacson.

High-profile flights — with migrants sent to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and to El Salvador's notorious detention center CECOT and, more recently, a flight headed to South Sudan — have sent a strong message. For Vivian, the possibility was a source of constant anguish.

On June 3, NPR was able to locate Jhonkleiver Ortega at Glades Detention Center in Florida. He had been to immigration court the day before. NPR was given permission by the family to record his conversation with his mother.

"They told me they had to review my asylum case," Ortega told his mother. "They told me I have to send proof that I was tortured in Venezuela. And in four months they would give me an answer. And I said I can't anymore. It's been months of this. They barely feed us here. I can't anymore. I asked to be deported. This week or next I will be on a flight to Venezuela. If they give me a call from Louisiana I'll call you before the flight."

"What?" his mother asks.

"I asked the judge what are the chances that my flight will get lost and accidentally end up in another country? And she said if that happens you call the deporter. Or email me."

This Fuckin' Guy

Here we go again. Shoulda seen this shit coming.

It's not a big stretch to think this will be used as amped-up pretext for DHS to start cracking down on Americans who speak out &/or protest.

And it's pretty weird, because we're already seeing "man-on-the-street" feedback showing Venezuelan immigrants praising Trump's "liberation" of their home country.

So the standard contradiction-packed "policy" seems to be "We're going to keep fucking with Hispanic immigrants even as we do you all a great favor so you'll support the Trump administration."

And, of course, the bonus is that the Epstein files problem will likely be ignored - at least for a while.

President Donald Trump said the United States “will run” Venezuela until a U.S.-approved transfer of power can take place, following his administration’s attack on the country and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a news conference on at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago on Saturday. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation as we had for the last long period of years.”

Trump had announced earlier on Saturday that the U.S. carried out a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela, capturing Maduro and his wife, who Trump said were then flown out of the South American nation on the USS Iwo Jima.

Trump did not offer details about how the U.S. will be involved in Venezuela. His administration “will be running it with a group,” he told reporters at the news conference, standing alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Dan Caine, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and CIA director John Ratcliffe. Caine said no American lives were lost.

“We’re designating various people and we’re going to let you know who those people are,” Trump continued. “It’s largely going to be, for a period of time, the people standing right behind me.”

Asked whether the U.S. military would retain a presence on the ground in Venezuela, Trump rejoined: “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground…we’re going to make sure that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”

“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground…we’re going to make sure that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”

President Donald Trump

Trump said reconstructing Venezuela— a country of 31 million people that has endured decades of political, social and economic turmoil — could take some time.

“For us to just leave, who’s going to take over?” Trump said. “We have to rebuild their whole infrastructure…We’ll run it properly, we’ll run it professionally.”

Asked how the action in Venezuela comports with Trump and his political movement’s “America First” mantra, Trump said: “We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors…we want to surround ourselves with energy…we need that for ourselves, we need that for the world.”

The military operation

Trump made his first statement about the attack in a post to Truth Social at 4:21 a.m. In an interview with Fox News later that morning, Trump said the operation, which he watched from Mar-a-Lago, was “extremely complex” and involved a number of aircraft. The operation was supposed to take place four days ago but was delayed due to the weather, Trump said, adding, “I watched it literally like I was watching a television show.”

“Venezuela rejects, repudiates and denounces before the international community the extremely grave military aggression carried out by the current Government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory and population,” the Venezuelan foreign minister said in a statement.

Attorney General Pam Bondi posted an unsealed indictment against Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing them of “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns” and other charges.

“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi posted to X.

Two law enforcement sources told MS NOW that agents from the FBI’s hostage rescue team embedded with U.S. military special operators from Delta Force, a counterterrorism unit, for the mission. The FBI took custody of Maduro, the sources said.

A source familiar with operation told MS NOW that the CIA placed a small team on the ground in Venezuela in August that was able to provide detailed insight into Maduro’s pattern of life that made capturing him “seamless.” Miller, Rubio, Hegseth and Ratcliffe worked on the operation for months, the source said.

Caine said that the operation — which involved more than 150 aircraft across the Western region — infiltrated Maduro’s compound at 1:01 a.m. Eastern time, adding that Maduro and his wife surrendered.

Rubio stated that Maduro had several chances to prevent this result, but “acted like a wild man” and ensured this result.

Congressional reaction

The U.S. has built up significant military force in the region surrounding Venezuela, but Trump does not appear to have sought permission from or informed Congress of Saturday’s military action.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a Trump ally, acknowledged there had been no congressional approval of — or authorization for the use of military force for — prior to the U.S. action.

Lee said he spoke with Rubio, a harsh critic of the Maduro regime, who told him that Maduro had been arrested “by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States” and that the military action “was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.” Lee said such action would fall under the president’s “inherent authority” under Article II of the U.S constitution to protect American personnel

Rubio “anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in U.S. custody,” Lee said of Rubio.

Vice President JD Vance also defended the administration’s actions, saying Trump offered “multiple off ramps, but was very clear throughout this process: the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States.”

He also suggested the operation was not illegal, pointing to federal narcoterrorism charges against the Venezuelan leader.

“Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism,” Vance wrote on X. “You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”

And some Republican lawmakers cheered the action.

“Today’s decisive action is this hemisphere’s equivalent to the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” said GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who was born in Cuba and represents a heavily Hispanic district in southern Florida. “It’s a big day in Florida, where the majority of Venezuelan, Cuban, & Nicaraguan exiles reside. This is the community I represent & we are overwhelmed with emotion and hope.”

Nonetheless, the operation had already sparked backlash in its early hours as questions swirl about the legal justification for the actions targeting Venezuela.

“No matter the outcome, we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., an Iraq war veteran, on X.

“Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress,” posted Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J. “Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war.”

Sen. Jim Himes, D-Conn., Ranking Member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement that he has seen “no evidence” that Maduro’s presidency “poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos.”

Himes added, “Secretary Rubio repeatedly denied to Congress that the Administration intended to force regime change in Venezuela. The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”

The United States has for months been building up military forces off the coast of Venezuela, and has targeted dozens of boats in the region in what the White House says is a war against illegal narco-trafficking. It has also intercepted oil tankers in the region in a bid to cut off the country’s largest economic asset.

Trump had previously warned of ground operations in Venezuela, and the CIA recently struck a dockyard in the country.

Earlier this month, the House narrowly rejected a war powers resolution that would have directed “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.” In response to the CIA’s drone strike on the Venezuelan dockyard, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the bill’s sponsor, described the actions as “illegal hostilities” and reiterated his view that the “American People don’t want another endless war over oil.”

Similar resolutions have stalled in the Senate, where the 60-vote threshold means even steeper climb.

“The illegality of Trump’s insane war in Venezuela is out of control,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted on X on Dec. 30. “Remember, this has NOTHING to do with stopping drugs from entering America. Venezuela produces cocaine bound for Europe. This is war mongering distraction.”

- and -

The madness of going to war with Venezuela

Trump's saber-rattling on Venezuela is reaching disturbing new highs, and any action could cause chaos in the region.

President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is escalating to disturbing new levels, and the prospect of a military intervention is looking more possible than ever. Such an intervention would not only be an unacceptable act of aggression against a nation that poses no threat to the U.S., it could also destabilize the region while undermining Trump’s own foreign policy and political agendas.

On Saturday, the U.S. military conducted its 21st known strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat, in the eastern Pacific. The next day, the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization and declared that Maduro was its head — a move that Trump suggested would allow him to strike Maduro’s assets and infrastructure within Venezuela. On the same day, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, arrived in the Caribbean.

Maduro is “a convenient villain” for Rubio’s crusade against left-wing authoritarian leaders in Latin America and for Trump’s quixotic war on drugs.

All of this comes after the U.S. government doubled its reward for the arrest of Maduro to $50 million and Trump admitted that he recently authorized the CIA to take covert action in Venezuela. The president now says he is open to talking directly to Maduro but hasn’t ruled out deploying troops on the ground in Venezuela.

This evidence suggests that the Trump administration is pursuing regime change in Venezuela. The New York Times even reported in October that U.S. officials “have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.” This could take several forms; Trump appears to be creating possibilities for multiple approaches, perhaps in an attempt to apply maximum pressure on Maduro to seek a negotiated exit from power. But military action is a nontrivial possibility: Trump has deployed major U.S. assets to the Caribbean — there are now about 15,000 troops in the region, including special operations forces. A Marine expeditionary unit is conducting nighttime training this week in Trinidad and Tobago, just 7 miles from Venezuela. Right-wing commentators are already champing at the bit for military action.

Much of this saber-rattling reflects Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s growing influence over Trump’s foreign policy in the Americas. Rubio is an ultrahawk with a track record of supporting regime change via war, including in Latin America. In 2019, he encouraged Trump to back Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s unsuccessful efforts to oust Maduro from power. As George Washington University’s Alexander Downes and Boston College’s Lindsey O’Rourke point out, Rubio appears to have won a monthslong internal debate within the Trump administration about how to approach Venezuela. Key to Rubio’s victory was finding a way to reconcile military intervention-backed regime change with Trump’s right-wing nationalism.

Rubio achieved this by rendering Venezuela a threat to U.S. sovereignty by blaming it for the U.S.’s drug problems. This is both a deceptive and an absurd pretext for war. It’s deceptive because Venezuela has virtually no role in the fentanyl trade, and Drug Enforcement Administration data suggests that only about 8% of U.S.-bound cocaine gets to the country through a “Caribbean corridor” (most of that passing through Venezuela). And it’s absurd because there is no evidence in the U.S.’s decadeslong failed war on drugs that a militarized response to drug trafficking reduces demand or the flow of drugs. “Drug supply-reduction efforts, including those that deploy military assets and use of force, have no lasting impact when they leave in place the ungoverned territory and unpunished corruption that allow organized crime to thrive, fueled by the massive profits of supplying demand for prohibited substances,” wrote the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, in a recent report.

International law does not permit a state to go to war with another state because of drug trade flows from that state. A military strike on Venezuela would be a reprehensible act of aggression, and yet more proof that the “peace president” narrative was always a farce. Downes and O’Rourke, who are experts on regime change, explain that airpower alone would be unlikely to dislodge Maduro, and that the level of manpower needed for a ground deployment to achieve regime change would be huge and undermine Trump’s promises to avoid protracted foreign conflicts.

And even if U.S. military action led Maduro to step down, Downes and O’Rourke point out that “regime change instead often begets further violence — for example, it dramatically increases the likelihood of civil war in target countries.” If Trump wants to reduce the flow of Venezuelan migrants into the U.S., regime change achieved by military force could easily achieve the opposite effect.

Covert actions by the CIA — such as assisting armed dissidents, pursuing efforts to assassinate Maduro or attempting to instigate a coup against him through efforts like encouraging military defections — could also exacerbate Venezuela’s considerable problems and increase the likelihood of civil conflict. If they were to fail — all the more likely given that Trump has openly discussed them — they could also trigger new levels of repression within the country.

Maduro is a brutal and incompetent authoritarian who has ruined a once affluent and lively democracy, but that doesn’t mean ousting him by violent, nondemocratic means is prudent or just. As Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me in an interview in October, Maduro is “a convenient villain” for Rubio’s crusade against left-wing authoritarian leaders in Latin America and for Trump’s quixotic war on drugs. But the outcome of their efforts would likely do nothing to advance Trump’s stated policy agenda on drugs and migration while ushering in a new era of war and instability in the Western Hemisphere.

A few last things:

1. I can imagine the MAGA rubes being led to believe they're in for another Trump Dividend Check - The Venezuelan Oil Check - to go with the $1776 check, and the DOGE Check, and the Trump Tariff Check, and the What-The-Fuck-Is-Wrong-With-You-Idiots Check.
2. We've told the world that we are (again) totally down with whatever any country thinks they can get away with. Anything goes - knock yourself out - have an orgy.
3. If you think there won't be pressure to put American boots on the ground, I've got a pair of breeding mules to sell you.

A Thought

Names and places and uniforms change,

but the story of cruelty and abuse doesn't.

A Quote And More

"It was not Hitler or Himmler who abducted me, beat me, and shot my family. It was the shoemaker, the milkman, the neighbor, who received a uniform and then believed they were the master race."

--Karl Stojka, Auschwitz survivor

If you're not a jerk who likes to shit on people, how do you justify this? What has you thinking it's OK to put your neighbors thru this?

Due Process, Bitch

Amendment 5:

...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law

Amendment 14:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.



Trump administration cannot expand rapid deportations, US appeals court rules

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
Nov 22 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Saturday declined to clear the way for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to expand a fast-track deportation process to allow for the expedited removal of migrants who are living far away from the border.

A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to put on hold the central part of a ruling by a lower-court judge who had found that the administration's policies violated the due process rights of migrants who could be apprehended anywhere in the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in an Aug. 29 ruling sided with an immigrant rights group and blocked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from enforcing policies that exposed migrants to the risk of rapid expulsion if the administration believed they had been in the country for less than two years.

The administration asked the D.C. Circuit to stay that ruling while it appealed.
But U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and J. Michelle Childs said the administration was unlikely to succeed in showing its systems and procedures adequately protected migrants' due process rights under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.

The judges, both appointees of Democratic presidents, cited "serious risks of erroneous summary removal" posed by the administration's effort to expand the fast-track deportation process away from the borders to cover the entire U.S.

While the court largely left Cobb's order in place, it stayed part of it to the extent it required changes to how immigration authorities determine if someone has a credible fear of being sent back to his or her country of origin.

U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented and called Cobb's ruling "impermissible judicial interference."

The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration's appeal on the merits is scheduled to be heard on December 9.

For nearly three decades, the expedited removal process has been used to quickly return migrants apprehended at the border. In January, the administration expanded its scope to cover non-citizens apprehended anywhere in the U.S. who could not show they had been in the country for two years.

The policy mirrored one the Trump administration adopted in 2019 that Democratic President Joe Biden's administration later rescinded. The Trump policy also was challenged by the immigrant rights advocacy group Make the Road New York.