So, Jeff the Elf, you want a culture war? Let's get it rolling!

The Kebler Elf's evil twin, Attorney General Jefferson Beuregard Sessions III, came to Sacramento on Wdnesday to insult and threaten them thar California cultural elite librul types.

He didn't bother making a courtesy call on the Governor of California. Who is not an enemy that either Jeff or Trump should really be inviting to challenge them on national news platforms.

Jeff the Evil Elf took his shot with a xenophobic show in Sacramento, Suing California, Sessions vows to ‘use every power’ to stop state laws on immigration enforcement PBS Newshour 03/07/2018.

Jerry Brown responded, CA governor and atty. gen. discuss sanctuary cities PBS Newshour 03/07/2018:

Among other things, he says in that press conference:

Look, this is completely unprecedented for the chief law enforcement of the United States to come out here and engage in a political stunt, make wild accustations, many of which are based on outright lies, that's unusual.

And particularly for a fellow from Alabama talking to us about secession and protecting human and civil rights.

He and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra also did an interview with Margaret Warner, Gov. Jerry Brown: Sessions 'sowing discord' instead of proposing immigration reform PBS Newshour 03/07/2018:

In his last year as Governor of California, Jerry Brown is still out there fighting for civil rights and the rights of immigrants, a major theme of his entire political career. In this interview we see Jerry the formidable debater and former Jesuit seminarian who has never had any problem about applying his religious values to politics. Trump and Jeff Sessions didn't really understand, I'm sure, what they were getting into with this latest stunt. Some of Jerry's comments in this interview (Gov. Jerry Brown: Sessions ‘sowing discord’ instead of proposing immigration reform transcript PBS Newshour 03/08/2018):

[Jeff Sessions is] going after men, women, and children, some who have worked 10 or 20 years picking our food, washing our dishes, building houses. And, yes, we need an immigration reform for the whole nation. We don’t need a Gestapo-kind of tactic with vitriol spewing out of Jeff Sessions’ mouth.

What we need, Jeff Sessions, propose an intelligent immigration reform, and we will work with you. But don’t come out with these kind of gutter tactics, bring some of your really discredited politics from your background here. It’s just not right. It’s not generous, and it’s not Christian."Sessions is in a cesspool of deception and mendacity. So, don’t believe him.

Sessions is in a cesspool of deception and mendacity. So, don’t believe him.

I call upon Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump to act like Americans, act like the good Christians they claim to be, and work with us to get a good immigration law, and not to try to just hyperbolically scare the hell out of people ...

This face-off between California and Washington has some interesting historical echoes. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is a smirking prick who could have stepped right out of a White Citizens Council convention in 1961. Jerry Brown has been an active supporter of immigrant rights and farmworkers for pretty much his entire life.

Harold Meyerson writes about an even older historical echo in There Are Echoes of the Fugitive Slave Act in Today’s Immigration Debate The American Prospect 03/06/2018:

An 1842 court ruling absolved states of any duty to cooperate in the recapture of former slaves who'd freed themselves by fleeing to the North. In response, as part of the Compromise of 1850, the Congress passed and President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act, which not only required state and local governmental officials to aid owners and their agents who'd come North to capture and re-enslave the runaways, but also required the same level of cooperation from all citizens. If a slaver was in the act of recapture, bystanders were required to help out.

Not surprisingly, the North greeted the new law with fury and resistance. Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, and Wisconsin all enacted “personal liberty laws”—the 1850s equivalent of California's sanctuary state law—forbidding public officials from cooperating with the slave owners or the federal forces sent to back them up, denying the use of their jails to house the captives, and requiring jury trials to decide if the owners could make off with their abductees. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the Constitution's 10th Amendment, which gave states the power to enact laws not specifically preempted by federal authority. (The Southern-dominated U.S. Supreme Court overturned that ruling on the eve of the Civil War).

Opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act also took to the streets (and jury rooms, where verdicts were rendered that freed some of the captives). Crowds would form to oppose and resist, sometimes forcibly, the apprehensions of African Americans. [my emphasis]

After the Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War, unreconstructed white Southerners created a neo-Confederate narrative that, unfortunately, is very much a part of the white nationalist narrative currently dominant in the Republican Party. And a key element of it was the false claim that the Confederate states had seceded from the Union in 1860-61 over the abstract issue of States' Rights, and not, oh Lordy certainly not over slavery!

That's because slavery by 1865 had become so completely discredited in the whole country that the former Confederates wanted to try to distance themselves from it. The Fugitive Slave Act is one of the major reasons we know that postwar claim was nonsense. I mean, apart from the fact that the seceding states made it as clear and explicit as they could that they were seceding over slavery. Or, as Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens described it in his Cornerstone Speech in March of 1861:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [from human equality]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

For the decade prior to the election of Abraham Lincoln, the major conflicts between the slave and free states associated with events like the Compromise of 1950, the mini-civil war in Kansas, and the Dred Scott decision involved the Slave Power using its domination of the federal government to impose pro-slavery measures on unwilling free states.

The reliable if stodgy Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and its repercussions this way (Fugitive Slave Acts 01/17/2018):

The demand from the South for more effective legislation resulted in enactment of a second Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Under this law fugitives could not testify on their own behalf, nor were they permitted a trial by jury. Heavy penalties were imposed upon federal marshals who refused to enforce the law or from whom a fugitive escaped; penalties were also imposed on individuals who helped slaves to escape. Finally, under the 1850 act, special commissioners were to have concurrent jurisdiction with the U.S. courts in enforcing the law. The severity of the 1850 measure led to abuses and defeated its purpose. The number of abolitionists increased, the operations of the Underground Railroad became more efficient, and new personal-liberty laws were enacted in many Northern states. These state laws were among the grievances officially referred to by South Carolina in December 1860 as justification for its secession from the Union. Attempts to carry into effect the law of 1850 aroused much bitterness and probably had as much to do with inciting sectional hostility as did the controversy over slavery in the territories. [my emphasis; internal hotlink omitted]

For the secessionists of South Carolina, the unwillingness of state governments to knuckle under to an atrocious proslavery federal law which really did encroach of the Tenth Amendment right of states was a grievance to be used as a justification for treason and secession.

Dealing over mass deportation

Leading up to the State of the Union address on Tuesday, the Trump Administration has presented its white supremacist immigration program. (Anita Kumar and Franco Ordoñez, Trump’s swap: Citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, legal immigration gutted McClatchy Newspapers 01/25/2018)

Here's today Morning Zoo analysis of the new proposal. Including the pundits talking as if nice Donald Trump would love to accommodate the Dreamers but his mean base won't let poor Don do it. Because Mr. Don is a well-meaning fellow. What’s Inside The White House’s Latest Immigration Plan? Morning Joe/MSNBC 01/26/2018:

Velshi & Ruhle are looking for the pundits' Holy Grail of centrist Bipartisanship on these proposals, White House Proposes Path To Citizenship For “Dreamers” MSNBC 01/26/2018:

Out here in the real world, the Democratic Kinda-Sorta Resistance Party just took a huge dive on immigration just this past Monday. William Rivers Pitt (Bellycrawling Through History With Schumer and the Democrats Truthout 01/24/2018) charaterizes that cave-in well:

If the current iteration of the Democratic Party is what passes for "The Resistance," we may as well slap a gaudy crown on Trump's head and name him "Emperor Of All The Things."

The Democrats lost in 2016 for the same reason they got rolled so completely on this shutdown/Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) deal: The so-called "opposition party" has a genuine knack for being strategy-free when it matters most, and they keep managing to forget who they're dealing with on the other side of the aisle. "I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head," President Harry Truman once asked, "before you find out who's hitting you?" The modern-day inheritors of Truman's party still have no answer to that question.

That metaphor doesn't work for the Pod Pundits at MSNBC, though. On a normal day, their view of the political world sounds like it could be the result of head injury.

Since the Democrats reverted to their comfort zone of Preemptive Surrender on Monday, the pundits are free to repeat their stock fantasies about bipartisan harmony and the infinite virtue of the Center which moves farther and farther to the right by the week.

Pitt is more realistic in evaluating the current moment:

Pressure from a variety of pro-Dreamer organizations, as well as from within the Democratic Caucus, was brought to bear: Attach the looming government spending bill to a deal for the Dreamers, and if the GOP balks, let the government shut down. Schumer and the Democrats did exactly that... for less than 72 hours.

It was at this juncture that the Democrats once again decided to showcase their uncanny talent for self-immolation. By Monday perhaps the most preposterous deal in recent political history was struck: If Schumer and his people voted to reopen the government, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised with sugar on top to allow debate on an immigration bill aimed at salvaging DACA and the Dreamers sometime in early February. Note well: McConnell didn't say he would do this. He said it was his "intention" to do this.

Schumer went for the "deal," backed by a clutch of Red State Blue Dog Democrats who couldn't summon a single damn for the 700,000 people who got hung out to dry, again. DACA recipients, many of whom have put themselves on the line with bold action to protect themselves and their peers, now know full well who it is they can count on when the chips are down. Hint: Few with a (D) after their name make the cut.

Pitt closes by saying, "The same "leaders" keep bellycrawling through history, and this time, it's quite possible that a million people -- the Dreamers and their families -- are going to pay a brutal price."

Charlie Pierce just wrote on a different aspect of the Trump Disaster something that applies at least as much to the immigration travesty, as well: "History’s not going to be kind to a lot of people who are living through these insane times." (The Mueller Bombshell Proves Republicans Are Running Out of Time Esquire Politics Blog 01/26/2018)

What's at stake on the mass deportation issue

After the Democrats' humiliating collapse on DACA on Monday, Josh Marshall takes another look at the Trump Administration's current stand on immigration. He analyzes a White House statement yesterday by the shameless press hack Sarah Huckabee Sanders laying out "four pillars" of the Trumpist immigration policy. And he warns:

The core of Trump’s reform is a dramatic reduction of legal immigration and changes which change the ethnic and racial makeup of the immigration which continues.

What is just as important is what is not included. The so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” which was several times pushed and failed over the last decade had two basic pillars: new security and impediments to illegal immigration and some settlement for the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants who are already in the country and in many cases have been here for years or even decades. “DACA” was one portion of that larger whole – what we might call the most “deserving” subsection the 10 to 12 million: undocumented immigrants who came too young to have any choice in the matter and knew no other country than the US, despite not being citizens.

Trump’s pillars don’t explicitly say these 10 to 12 million people must all be deported. But that’s the upshot. And it seems unlikely that we’ll remain in the status quo of the last dozen years or so. Trump is on record for mass deportation and he’s shown for a year that he is as good as his word. We don’t need to guess. Mass deportation is already the policy and practice. [my emphasis in bold]

A disgraceful policy aimed as seriously hurting millions of people is underway.

If the Democrats are unwilling to use every means of leverage they have to stop this, the rot in the party is far worse than even most pessimists imagined.

Racism, a close cousin to xenophobia

La Opinión recently ran this useful editorial, Racism: silence gives consent 03/14/2017:

The anti-immigrant movement’s base is founded on racism. The comments made by Congressman Steve King about the importance of “American culture” and the difficulty to “rebuild your civilization with somebody else’s babies” is telling, particularly when they come from the leader in immigration issues at the House of Representatives.

This does not mean that people sincerely questioning the presence of undocumented people on legal grounds are racist. However, such people are in really bad company.

Deportees in Mexico, refugees in Hungary

AlJazeera reports on Mexicans deported from the United States, Back to reality: Waves of US-deported Mexicans struggle to survive 03/19/2017:





Aljazeera's Inside Story also reports on the ugly way in which Hungary is dealing with the refugee crisis in Europe, highlighting how badly the EU as a whole is handling this situation, Why Hungary's crackdown on refugees is being criticised 03/19/2017:

Monday against mass deportation

A Senator in the Irish Parliament, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, calls for celebrating St. Patrick's Day this year as a day of solidarity with immigrants and refugees. Viral, Irish Senator Standing Up To President Donald Trump AM Joy MSNBC 03/12/2017:

Andrés Oppenheimer writes about the Trump Family Business Administration's information campaign against immigrants in Trump’s office of anti-immigrant propaganda will hurt all immigrants Miami Herald 03/08/2017:

Trouble is, virtually all serious studies show that undocumented immigrants tend to commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. And there are good reasons for that: undocumented immigrants — the maids, gardeners, waiters and fruit pickers who do jobs few Americans want to do — fear being caught by police and being deported.

According to a study by the American Immigration Council , or AIC, a non-partisan Washington, D.C., think tank, U.S. Census data show that only 1.6 percent of immigrant males — both legal and illegally in the country — between the ages of 18 and 39 are incarcerated in U.S. prisons, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born.

The AIC study reached the same conclusion when it looked specifically at young Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan men without high school education, who make the bulk of undocumented migrants. They have significantly lower incarceration rates than U.S. born men without high school degrees, it said.

“Innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime,” the report says.

Recitation of facts won't convert xenophobes from their hatred in itself. But it's important for the rest of us to keep a grip on reality.

Pilar Marrero reports that Latino leaders are warning that the Trump mass deportations are causing real damage to the entire Latino community, La comunidad latina en pleno sufrirá con Donald Trump, no sólo los inmigrantes, dicen líderes La Opinión 03/13/2017

Mexican politics and the Trump mass deportation program

The left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática; PRD) is positioning itself by calling for “Solidaridad con México ante las agresiones del gobierno de los Estados Unidos” ("solidarity with Mexico before the aggressions of the government of the United States.") (Jesús Zambrano se integra a la Alianza Progresista y presenta resolutivo perredista contra políticas de Trump Proceso 12.03.2017)

But the PRD itself may be flaming out as a political force. Elected officials and party activists have been leaving the party. Their high point electorally was 2006, when their Presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador won 36% of the vote and nearly 30% in the election for deputies to the Congress. Their percentage has notably declined since then. (Jesús Cantú, El PRD, con cáncer terminal Proceso 09.03.2016)

The next Mexican national election is coming in July 2018, including the Presidency.

López Obrador himself (also known by his initials AMLO) is coming to New York this week to support Mexicans living in the US against Trump's mass deportation. He also plans to visit Washington, Laredo and San Francisco. These days, I guess the State Department has to learn about a major opposition politician from Mexico visiting the United States from the news like the rest of us.

Since Trump's election, AMLO has also visited Chicago, El Paso, Los Ángeles and Phoenix. (David Brooks [not Bobo!], AMLO llegará a NY para promover defensa de inmigrantes La Journada 09.03.2017)

Daniel González and Rafael Carranza, Mexican populist Andrés Manual López Obrador calls Trump border wall 'criminal act' in Phoenix visit Arizona Republic 03/06/2017:

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican presidential hopeful, brought his populist message to Phoenix on Tuesday, denouncing President Donald Trump's "criminal" border wall and immigration policies.

"The U.S. economy can not be sustained without the labor of immigrants, and he knows it," López Obrador said in a rousing speech in a Phoenix ballroom packed with hundreds of cheering supporters, mostly immigrants from Mexico.

"The wall is not going to stop the flow of workers. It's just going to make it more dangerous," he said. "That is why I believe it is a criminal act."

The leftist Mexican politician and former mayor of Mexico City also attacked corrupt governments in Mexico that he said force Mexicans to seek better economic opportunities in the U.S.

AMLO has a new electoral vehicle after breaking with the PRD. "López Obrador, founder of the left-wing National Regeneration Movement, or MORENA, in Mexico, has not officially announced his candidacy for the 2018 Mexican presidential race. But he is campaigning like a candidate, having already held rallies in several U.S. cities with large Mexican immigrant communities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and El Paso, where he spoke Monday."

Campaigning against Trump is a promising posture for the 2018 election:

"What the Trump administration is doing is really inflaming nationalist attitudes in Mexico," said Francisco Lara-Valencia, a professor at Arizona State University's School of Transborder Studies. ...

"He is coming here because he recognizes that (Mexican migrants) are a source of economic stability" through the billions of dollars in remittances they send home to relatives each year, Lara-Valencia said.

López Obrador also understands that Mexican migrants in the U.S. have the power to influence how friends and family members back home may vote in the Mexican presidential election, he said.

Ramirez said López Obredor has a better chance of delivering his message directly to migrants in the U.S. because the media in Mexico favors the Mexican establishment and unfairly paints López Obrador as a radical socialist. ...

During his speech in Phoenix, López Obrador said he is touring U.S. cities to offer his "unconditional support for our immigrant community" and to confront "the campaign of hate, and the campaign against Mexicans who come to look for a better life and an honorable life" not available to them in Mexico.

Univision interviewed AMLO in February, López Obrador: “México no ha entendido cuál es la estrategia de Donald Trump” 02/08/2017:

Daniel Borunda reported on his El Paso visit (Mexico's Obrador talks of Trump in El Paso visit El Paso Times 03/06/2017

The fiery leftist candidate is a fixture in Mexico politics and has run twice before for the presidency. The third time is the charm, he said on stage to loud cheers.

"We are going to end the principal problem of Mexico, which is corruption," López Obrador said.

He said Mexico's problems stem from government policies that harmed farmers, fostered low wages and forced people to leave their homes and migrate.

He pledged to cut taxes, lower gas prices and increase development with the building of roads, schools, hospitals and other public works.

He would create a free zone along the U.S.-Mexico border to spur investment, lower prices and raise wages. He pointed out that Mexican factory workers earn pennies compared to workers doing the same job in the United States.

Immigrants aren't the only victims, López Obrador said adding that drug violence in Juárez was the result of "absurd security strategies" and government policies.

"In recent years, we saw how a police problem escalated until it converted into a war that cost thousands of lives and resolved nothing. The price was tragic," he said.

On AMLO leaving the PRD, see Mexico's Lopez Obrador leaves coalition to form new movement BBC News 09/10/2012. MORENO was set up as a political party in 2014.

The Trump image of immigrants as a terrorist threat

Kate Brannen at Just Security (More Info Needed on Travel Ban’s Claim that 300 Refugees Under Counterterrorism Investigations 03/06/2017) has an update on the demagogic claims that the Trump Family Business Administration is making about "criminal aliens" to justify their mass deportation program that is primarily aimed at Latinos residents in the US.

A key point is that being investigated for something at all terrorism-related is not at all the same as being charged, much less convicted. And as Brannon writes, "It goes without saying that just because there is an investigation, that does not mean terrorist activity has been established."

... Faiza [Patel] notes that it’s important to know whether the word “investigation” is actually referring to an “assessment” or a full investigation. “An assessment is an early stage investigation which does not require suspicion of criminal activity, but rather can be started by an agent with an ‘authorized purpose,'” Faiza says. “The overwhelming majority of assessments do not result in full investigations — not surprising because they are not based on facts.”

This New York Times article from 2011 shows that from December 2008 to March 2009, only 3.7 percent of 11,667 assessments led to full investigations.

The number of investigations leading to successful prosecutions is even smaller. According to Justice Department statistics, there were 580 terrorism and terrorism-related convictions from Sept 11, 2001 through the end 2014. That’s roughly 41 to 42 per year, so about 10 percent of full investigations lead to a conviction (assuming the numbers obtained by the NYT are representative of the rate at which investigations lead to convictions).

Also of note is the fact that terrorism-related suspicions can cover a broad category of offenses, including immigration violations, according to Faiza. “These may have started as terrorism investigations, but we cannot know whether they actually have anything to do with terrorism.”

I would be very careful reporting this claim that 300 refugees are under counter terrorism investigation. Very fishy, no back-up.

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) March 6, 2017

Andrew Lindsay analyzed the information on immigrants and terrorism last month for the Brennan Center in What the Data Tells Us About Immigration and Terrorism 02/17/2017, reminding us that many of the actual "terrorism" convictions since 2001 have been FBI stings, some of very dubious quality:

For example, Laguerre Payen is one of four convicted in a Newburgh, NY sting operation made infamous by an HBO documentary. An FBI informant recruited James Cromite, a low-level drug dealer and offered him $250,000 to recruit three other Muslims and carry out an attack. The informant recruited Payen, a homeless crack addict and paranoid schizophrenic. When told of a trip to Florida as reward, Payen said he could not go because he had no passport. He hardly posed the type of threat on which the government should expend resources.

Another example is Patrick Abraham, one of five convicted in a Miami sting operation. An FBI informant targeted a group of poor African-American and Haitian men, offering them $50,000 to join a terror plot. Subsequently, the informant recorded Abraham and the other men pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda. The group, dubbed the Liberty City 7, was not even Muslim, but a sect of the Moorish Science Temple that called itself the “Seas of David.” According to Mother Jones, the men were financially strapped misfits who operated out of a warehouse, where they had no weapons save a ceremonial sword. They were clearly misguided in seeking support from a purported member of a terrorist group but not, as the government asserts, domestic al-Qaeda operatives intent on, much less capable of, committing harm to the United States.

"Relying on raw and undifferentiated data," he writes, "serves to obfuscate rather than assist the development of an effective response" to terrorism.

And there's this: Fahgim Abeb and Rod Nordland, Afghans Who Worked for U.S. Are Told Not to Apply for Visas, Advocates Say New York Times 03/10/2017.

Officials at the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York said they had learned that as of Thursday, Afghans were being told that applications were no longer being accepted, though the suspension had taken place on March 1. “Our worst fears are proving true,” said Betsy Fisher, the group’s policy director.

Mac McEachin, another official at the organization, said the decision could affect the 2,500 soldiers of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division who might be deployed to Syria. “Now that the world has seen how we turn our backs on our Afghan allies, there is almost no chance that local allies in Syria will be inclined to work with us,” he said.

American military officials are also requesting an increase in troops deployed to Afghanistan.

Does anyone in this Administration know what they're doing except for hustling sweetheart deals for the family business?

Fighting the mass deportation

A press release from the National Immigration Law Center describes legal efforts on behalf of Daniela Vargas, the Argentine Dreamer arrested in Jackson MS by ICE in an obvious retaliation for her having spoken out publicly against the Trump Family Business Administration for arrested her father and brother as part of their mass deporation operation (Civil and Immigrants’ Rights Groups Work to Win Release for Dreamer Daniela Vargas and Prevent Deportation 03/07/2017):

Civil and immigrant rights groups have taken legal action to stop the deportation of Daniela Vargas, a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient who was detained by immigration agents immediately after she spoke at a March 1 press conference protesting recent U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Mississippi. Vargas spoke of her hope that she and other Dreamers could remain in and contribute to this country.

The National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the law firm of Elmore & Peterson, and the Law Office of William Most filed a habeas petition on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Alexandria Division.

“Detaining Dany just minutes after she spoke publicly about immigrants’ rights appears to be nothing short of ICE retaliating against somebody who dared assert their First Amendment rights,” said Naomi Tsu, deputy legal director for the SPLC. “Dany, an aspiring math teacher and active community member, is not a threat to her community. Her detention only serves to chill free speech and stoke fear throughout immigrant communities.”

BBC Mundo reports on the 23 countries that ICE describes as uncooperative or outright refusing to take deportees that the US claims are from their countries. (Los 23 países que rechazan recibir a sus nacionales deportados desde Estados Unidos 03/07/2017) Cuba is the only one from Latin America on the list of 23. Canada is also not one of the 23. And Canada is seeing an increase in the number of Mexicans requesting refuge there. Aumenta en Canadá el número de peticionarios mexicanos por refugio

Just Security 03/08/2017 provides A Line-by-Line Comparison Between Trump’s Original Muslim Ban and Today’s 03/08/2017.

Faiza Patel evaluates the new order in A Muslim Ban By Any Other Name Smells Just the Same Brennan Center 03/06/2017: "The revised executive order President Trump signed Monday morning is still a Muslim ban and it is still unconstitutional."

I'm guessing that the Trump Family Business Administration will try to protect at least one business from being much disturbed: the small arms proliferation business, which relies heavily on its own form of undocumented activity, Estados Unidos, principal vendedor de armas a México Proceso TV 03/07/2017:

"Family values" in Deportation Nation

A new cruelty being floated by the Trump Family Business Administration in its immigration policy is report by Julia Edwards Ainsley for Reuters, Exclusive: Trump administration considering separating women, children at Mexico border 03/04/2017:

Women and children crossing together illegally into the United States could be separated by U.S. authorities under a proposal being considered by the Department of Homeland Security, according to three government officials.

Part of the reason for the proposal is to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children, said the officials, who have been briefed on the proposal.

The policy shift would allow the government to keep parents in custody while they contest deportation or wait for asylum hearings. Children would be put into protective custody with the Department of Health and Human Services, in the "least restrictive setting" until they can be taken into the care of a U.S. relative or state-sponsored guardian.

Currently, families contesting deportation or applying for asylum are generally released from detention quickly and allowed to remain in the United States until their cases are resolved. A federal appeals court ruling bars prolonged child detention.

This idea provides yet another way to provide more business paid by the public to the private for-profit prison companies that are already handling a lot of the deportation detentions:

Holding mothers in prolonged detention could also strain government resources, said Randy Capps of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based non-profit.

“You are talking about a pretty rapid increase in the detention population if you are going to do this," Capps said. "The question is really how much detention can they afford."

See also: Adam Raymond, Mothers and Children Would Be Ripped Apart Under Reported DHS Proposal New York 03/03/2017

Trump's "criminal aliens" hate-mongering

Shirin Sinnar writes about the Trump Family Business Administration's evil demagoguery against immigrants in More Misleading Claims on Immigrants and Terrorism Just Security 03/04/2017:

In President Trump’s speech to Congress Tuesday night, he claimed that, “[a]ccording to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.” The following day, the Justice Department elaborated to the Washington Post that it had obtained convictions “against over 500 defendants for terrorism or terrorism-related charges in federal courts” and a “review of that information revealed that a substantial majority of those convicted were born in foreign countries.”

The Justice Department did not provide the raw data to support its assertion, but if that data derives from the source it appears to come from – a Justice Department National Security Division (NSD) list of terrorism and terrorism-related convictions – the claim is highly misleading. That’s because the NSD list is designed in ways that seriously undercut its ability to shed light on the scope or source of the terrorist threat.

This is yet another reminder of why its so important to be cautious about unsubstantiated official claims and about the attempts of Trump and his xenophobic supporters to generate fear and hatred by distorted and/or dishonest claims about "criminal aliens."

She gets into the weeds of this claim. And who should turn up there but now-Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama? We have reason to suspect AG Sessions may not be above processing evidence with highly political motives in mind. (Jon Swaine and Oliver Laughland, 'Gun for hire': how Jeff Sessions used his prosecuting power to target Democrats The Guardian 03/04/2017)

For analysis of the "criminal aliens" hate propaganda technique - and that's what it is - see:

• Digby Parton, Trump’s “Office of Immigrant Crime” has sinister implications — and dark echoes of history Salon 03/02/2017
• Peter Beinart, Trump Scapegoats Unauthorized Immigrants for Crime The Atlantic 03/01/2017

Meanwhile, here in the real world of Deportation Nation (Jenny Jarvie, Attorneys for Mississippi 'Dreamer' say they're racing to prevent her deportation Los Angeles Times 03/03/2017):

Attorneys for Daniela Vargas, a young “Dreamer” who was detained by immigration agents in Mississippi after speaking to the media about her family’s plight, say they are racing against the clock to prevent her from being deported without a court hearing.

While an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman continues to maintain that Vargas will appear before an immigration judge, Vargas’ attorney, Abigail Peterson, said ICE officials informed her Thursday that Vargas would be processed as a “visa waiver overstay” and is likely to be flown back to Argentina without a court hearing or bond.

And there's this, Children Sob As Father Arrested By ICE The Young Turks 03/03/2017:

Daniela Vargas and the Trump mass deporation

Daniela Vargas, the Dreamer busted by ICE in Jackson MS after participating in a press conference criticizing the Trump mass deportation, facing an ICE attempt to rapidly deport her:

Matt Kessler, Dreamer in process of Daca renewal to be deported without court hearing The Guardian 03/03/2017
Sarah Fowler, Immigrant detained after press conference Clarion-Ledger 03/01/2017
Julianne Hing, Daniela Vargas’s Detention Shows How Vulnerable DREAMers Are Under Trump The Nation 03/02/2017

Hing writes, "Despite dangling the possibility of immigration reform before the nation this week, the Trump administration continues to show exactly what its immigration intentions are where it matters most: in the streets."

The Young Turks reported on Daniela's story on Thursday, Did Trump Target This Immigration Activist? 03/02/2017:

Daniela and her family are from Argentina, though Daniela herself grew up and finished college in the US. The Buenos Aires Herald reports:

Argentine art curator Juan García Mosqueda, a legal United States resident, was deported from the country after he was detained in an airport for 14 hours, becoming the first known case of an Argentine expelled from the country since President Donald Trump promised to implement stricter border controls. “The process was dehumanising and degrading at the same time,” Mosqueda had posted in an Instagram photo. He complained that he had been interrogated for 14 hours and was threatened from returning to the country for five years. Another Argentine immigrant, Daniela Vargas, was also arrested in Jackson, Mississippi later in the week over immigration issues yet unlike Mosqueda she had been illegally residing in the US.

She was arrested after she decided to publicly denounce on TV that her father, a painter, and brother, a construction worker, were arrested on February 15 by US immigration authorities. Vargas had applied for the Dreamers immigration programme for youths who want to regularise their situation. [my emphasis]

That's not the best report, though. Daniela hadn't just applied for the Dreamers (DACA) status. She had been covered by it and was eligible to renew it, which she had applied to do.

Fowler reports:

Vargas was 7 when her family came to America from Argentina, placing her under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, immigration policy. Under the policy, DACA recipients have to reapply every two years.

Vargas' DACA expired on November 11, 2016. Due to the $495 filing fee, Vargas waited several months to refile. Vargas previously told The Clarion-Ledger she recently had to drop out of school at The Univeristy [sic] of Southern Mississippi for financial reasons.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received Vargas' renewal paperwork Feb. 10, 2017.

Hing explains:

In those years [of Obama's Presidency], undocumented immigrants repeatedly told me that “coming out,” as declaring one’s status publicly came to be known, was actually a safer move, because at least their neighbors and coworkers and friends and fellow churchgoers could know and then help wage a public campaign to support a person should they get caught up in the immigration system. It was hiding in the shadows that put a person at greater risk of being deported.

But Obama is not the president anymore. And while we’ve already seen just how important political protest is in the Trump era, Trump’s executive orders on immigration have explicitly liberated ICE agents to pursue any and every undocumented immigrant. This is the reality—despite Trump’s wishy-washy public statements about DREAMers, whom he’s said he’d deal with “with heart.” The Trump administration has yet to dismantle the DACA program, which exists at the discretion of the president. It is one of Trump’s immigration campaign promises that he’s actually held off on fulfilling, and it’s one of the easiest programs to dismantle.

Yet Trump’s executive orders, the recently released implementation memos from the Department of Homeland Security, and Vargas’s arrest show that DREAMers should consider themselves vulnerable.

Mass immigration and political repression

In at least one case in Jackson MS, it appears that ICE specifically went after an immigrant activist because she spoke out publicly against the Trump mass deportation: Daniela, la “dreamer’ que denunció el arresto de su padre y su hermano y fueron por ella La Opinión 03/02/2017

Daniela Vargas is a native Argentinian. Her parents brought her to the US when she was seven years old. She's a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, which I attended for my first year in college.

This is a wretched situation that Trump and ICE intend to make much, much worse.

The Trump Family Business Administration is using the specter of "criminal immigrants" to encourage support of his mass deportation.

Erika Andiola talks about Trump's plan to create an anti-immigrant propaganda operation in Trump Creates "Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement" The Real News 02/28/2017:

Robert Pollin discusses another aspect of anti-immigrant demagoguery in Trump's Big Lie: Blaming Undocumented Immigrants for Unemployment and Low Wages The Real News 02/28/2017:

The Deportation Nation policy continues

This is an encouraging report on two Protestant pastors who are providing sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, Jacqueline García, Una casa religiosa en L.A. se torna santuario para inmigrantes La Opinión 01.03.2017.

They are part of the immigrant-support network Rapid Response Team (Grupo de Respuesta Rápida). CNN also reports on the same story in a piece with the melodramatic title, Underground network readies homes to hide undocumented immigrants by Kyung Lah 02/26/52017.

Adele Stan highlights the xenophobic emphasis of Trump's speech on Tuesday, reminding us of how it meshes with his Islamophobia (No, Trump’s Address to Congress Wasn’t ‘Presidential’ The American Prospect 03/01/2017):

But with his speech, Trump again called for the deportation of millions of Americans, falsely claimed that only immigrants who committed crimes were being thrown out of the United States, promised a massive increase in military spending, and exploited the pain of a family grieving the loss of Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens, Navy SEAL, in a raid gone awry in Yemen, which the president deemed to have been a great success, despite the killing of civilians in its execution. Earlier in the day, the president seemed less certain of the mission’s glory, blaming the loss of Owens’s life on “the generals.” Trump must have been profoundly irked when Bill Owens, the slain SEAL’s father, told the Miami Herald that he had declined to receive Trump when the president requested to meet Owens at Dover Air Force Base, where they had each come to witness the arrival of the younger Owens’s body.

Bill Owens told the Herald’s Julie K. Brown that he was deeply offended by Trump’s treatment of another Gold Star family—the parents of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in 2004 in Iraq. The late captain’s father, Khizr Khan, addressed the Democratic National Convention, demanding that Trump read the U.S. Constitution before pledging to ban Muslims from entering the country. (The Khans are Muslim.)

She also comments on Trump's attack on sanctuary for immigrants in his Tuesday speech:

The narrative created for the president by chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon and his deputy, Sean Miller (the two are reported to have written the speech) also squared nicely with Trump’s frequent demonization of Muslims, painting all with a terrorist brush. What Bannon and Miller lack in rhetorical artistry was matched for the speech’s sinister arrangement of words, as when the president said, “We cannot allow our nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.”

By deploying the term “sanctuary” in the context of terrorism, Trump conflated the dangers he says are posed by undocumented immigrants with those posed by thee maybe-terrorists his travel ban ostensibly targets.
The term “sanctuary,” of course, has been much in the news as of late, thanks to Trump’s constant attacks on “sanctuary cities”—municipalities that have declared that they will not contribute resources to federal efforts designed to deport undocumented immigrants. By deploying the term “sanctuary” in the context of terrorism, Trump conflated the dangers he says are posed by undocumented immigrants with those posed by thee maybe-terrorists his travel ban ostensibly targets. Neat trick.

The president also used the grief of families to paint undocumented immigrants, en masse, as murderers, having invited to the chamber the families of people who had lost their lives at the hands of criminals who had crossed the border. While Trump claimed that his deportation orders only target the “bad ones,” some 25 percent of those deported since Trump took office, according to PolitiFact, had no criminal records. [my emphasis in boldDepo]

Trumpism with a not-quite-so-nasty face but still xenophobic

Trump's budget State of the Union address to both House of Congress Tuesday evening sounded a lot like his campaign speeches. But since he omitted his attacks on those he and his base consider enemies, like the press or Hillary Clinton, many pundits in their theater-criticism commentary on the speech will find a gleam of statesmanship in it.

What stood out to me is that he devoted a large portion of the speech demagoguing against immigrants, linking them rhetorically to violent crime and murder and terrorism. He also signaled that he wants to escalate the decades long War on Drugs. The two together add up to many more Latino and African-Americans stuck in penal institutions.

Cenk Uygur grudgingly rates it as Trump's best speech, though he has major policy criticisms of the content, Best Trump Speech Ever The Young Turks 02/28/2017:

This report from The Real News from before Trump's speech takes a sobering and harsh though realistic look at that prospect in Is Trump Preparing a Wave of Mass Criminalization? 02/28/2017:

In a maudlin twist that Cenk calls "emotional porn," Trump had three people who had a close relative killed by undocumented immigrants sitting in the Presidential box and told a version of their stories. This kind of story was a standard feature in his campaign speeches and a key way he tried to rouse and appeal to xenophobic fear and hatred.

Sabrina Siddiqui and Lauren Gambino reported on that tactic in a pre-speech article, Trump invites relatives of those killed by undocumented people to Capitol Hill 02/28/2017.

This cartoon was featured today by Proceso using the face of our ExxonMobil Secretary of State to stand for the hostile policy of the Trump Family Business Administration toward Latino immigrants and toward Mexico in particular:

In the article La 'diplomacia' del desprecio that the cartoon accompanies, La "diplomacia" del desprecio," (The "Diplomacy of Contempt), Héctor Tajonar writes:

La manifiesta hostilidad de Donald Trump hacia México coloca al país en una situación de vulnerabilidad y riesgo acaso no vivida desde 1846, año del inicio de la guerra planeada por el presidente James K. Polk para apoderarse de la mitad del territorio nacional.

[The manifest hostility of Donald Trump toward Mexico puts the country in a more vulnerable and risky situation that we have seen perhaps since 1846, the first year of the war planned by President James K. Polk take over half of the national territory.]

The historical refernce is, of course, to the Mexican War. Or as it's known in Mexico, La guerra entre Estados Unidos y México.

Deportation Nation unleased

Digby Parton takes on the mass deporation issue in her Salon column today, Trump takes the “shackles” off: Mass deportations begin as the world looks on in outrage 02/27/2017:L

We know that a serious concern about the threat of terrorism is not the motivation for the travel ban. Echoing George W. Bush administration’s treatment of intelligence analyses that showed little evidence that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program, the Trump administration has apparently rejected a Department of Homeland Security report indicating that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.” Claiming that the report was politically motivated and poorly researched, a White House spokesman said, “The president asked for an intelligence assessment. This is not the intelligence assessment the president asked for.” That’s not how this works. ...

[It is clear] that those called “bad dudes” by Trump and his Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are all undocumented immigrants, and the Trump team wants to deport every one of them. Horror stories are multiplying like the one of agents arresting a woman seeking shelter from an abusive boyfriend, and another tale of officials detaining a woman with no criminal history who was in the hospital seeking treatment for a brain tumor. Incidents have been reported of Customs and Border Patrol agents demanding that all passengers on a domestic flight provide IDs when disembarking the airplane, which is highly unusual.

And I certainly won't quarrel with this judgment of Digby, "African-Americans and Latinos living in urban neighborhoods can be sure that he plans to “take off the shackles” there, too."

The Stream from Al Jazeera English reports on current developments in Trump's mass deportation program, Trump’s immigration crackdown: Part II 02/27/2017:

Part 1 02/23/2017, with the same panelists, from 02/23/2017:

One of the panelists is Jessica Vaughan from the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). The Southern Poverty Law Center said of CIS in 2010 (Fudging Facts: A Look At CIS' Studies 01/29/2010):

CIS has blamed immigrants, both legal and undocumented, for everything from terrorism to global warming. To make its case seem as strong as possible, CIS often manipulates data, relying on shaky statistics or faulty logic to come to the preordained conclusion that immigration is bad for this country. But CIS studies have been regularly debunked by mainstream academics and think tanks including the Immigration Policy Center, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and America's Voice.

Vaughan in both videos makes a polite version of the hardline pro-mass-deportation pitch. But she also does crass fear-mongering about "criminal aliens." It's cheap demagoguery, even when delivered in a relatively polite tone.

And, as I've mentioned before, the Trump mass deportation offers rich prospects for the private prison industry, as the Young Turks report in Trump Team Can't Wait To Fill More Private Prisons With Minorities 02/26/2017

And Erik Prince is there looking for new bitness in the Trump Family Business Administration.

Erik Prince is Back: Former CEO of Blackwater Offering Services to the Trump Administration

I haven't seen any indications yet that Prince's company is under consideration for private prisons or domestic law enforcement.

The instances of white people behaving badly in the United States aren't made any less deplorable by white people in Europe behaving badly. Though that's occurring, too.

Hope and decency vs. fear and hatred in the Trump mass deportation

Pilar Marrero sums um Trump's first weeks in office, which have emphasized his mass deportation effort against Latino immigrants (Un mes de Donald Trump: enfoque intenso contra la inmigración La Opinión 24.02.2017):

Un mes y pocos días después de tomar posesión de la Casa Blanca, el presidente Donald Trump ha dictado órdenes ejecutivas amplias para la ampliación de deportaciones, reafirmado su compromiso con el uso de cárceles privadas para inmigrantes, iniciado el proceso de buscar constructores para el muro fronterizo y prácticamente ha eliminado el uso del español en su gobierno, a excepción de una pírrica cuenta de Twitter (@LaCasaBlanca) que no ha tenido una actualización desde hace 24 días.

[A month and a few days after taking possession of the White House, President Donald Trump has issued broad executive orders to increase deportations, reaffirmed his promise to use private prisons for immigrants, initiating the process of looking for builders for the frontier wall and practically eliminating the use of Spanish in his government, with the exception of a Pyrrhic Twitter account that hasn't been updated for 24 days.]

Since private prison companies will be making money and getting lots of new detainees to hold in the Trump mass deportation operation, it's worth remembering always what a truly bad idea that private prisons are in any case. The story gives us a reminder, Private prison deprived inmates of heat and hot water for months, lawmaker finds by Mary Ellen Klas Miami Herald 02/25/2017:

The 284 women housed in C-dorm at Gadsden Correctional Facility lived for months without hot water or heat, faced flooded bathrooms daily and endured water rations when the septic tanks were jammed with food waste.

After state Rep. David Richardson demanded action following a series of surprise visits over the past 18 months, the private prison operator that runs the facility — Management Training Corp. of Centerville, Utah — received approval from the state to repair and replace the water heater, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $10,000. But Warden Shelly Sonberg never authorized the work.

Religious communities are playing an important part in immigrant support. Here's just one of many local examples: Sarah Tan, Piedmont: Crowd turns out for immigrant-aid workshop The Montclarion/East Bay Times 02/20/2017:

More than 100 people — including Kehilla Community Synagogue members and the general public — turned out Sunday to find out how to support immigrants.

Kehilla Community Synagogue hosted an “Accompaniment Teams” workshop to enlist those interested in helping the newcomer families acclimate to life in the United States.

The project, called “Nueva Esperanza,” has four teams. At Sunday’s meeting, members of the teams spoke to the public about how hosting asylum-seeking and refugee families from Central America has been an enriching experience for all involved. ...

Kehilla’s accompaniment teams are organized through Nueva Esperanza, which is a project of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, and the Rev. Deborah Lee, the interfaith group’s director, was also present at the workshop. The Nueva Esperanza program was established in 2014, and Lee said she began it to help the growing number of immigrants fleeing violence in Central America.

“There was so much negative anti-immigration sentiment, even back then, that we wanted to show people there was a group that said, ‘Welcome,’ ” Lee said. “And also, not only did they need to know they were being welcomed, they also needed concrete support.”

Catholic campus groups and Catholic colleges are also stepping up to support immigrant students, especially DACA students (Dreamers), as Shireen Korkzan reports for the National Catholic Reporter Online (Despite Catholic campus support, DACA students fear deportation 02/23/2017)

Trump's views of DACA recipients seem ambivalent. In a press conference Feb. 16, he said DACA is "one of the most difficult subjects I have because you have these incredible kids, in many cases, not in all cases. And some of the cases, having DACA and they're gang members and they're drug dealers, too. But you have some absolutely, incredible kids, I would say mostly. They were brought here in such a way — it's a very — it's a very, very tough subject."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Trump's new immigration policies will leave DACA alone for now, but the fear of possible arrest and deportation still lingers.

CNN reported Feb. 14 that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, detained Daniel Ramirez Medina, a 23-year-old DACA recipient living in the Seattle area. ICE has alleged Medina is a gang member and a "risk to public safety," even though his attorneys denied all accusations. Medina, who doesn't have a criminal record, has a bond hearing Feb. 24.

Immigration rights groups say Medina might be the first DACA recipient who has been arrested without cause.

Catholic institutions of higher education across the country are also concerned about their undocumented students. After the presidential election in November, the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities released a statement expressing support for undocumented students at its member institutions through "campus counseling and ministry support, through legal resources from those campuses with law schools and legal clinics and through whatever other services we may have at our disposal."

Pilar Marrero's report describes the mounting effects of the emerging state terror against immigrants:

Según PEW, el 55% de los inmigrantes indocumentados, 38% de hispanos nacidos en Estados Unidos y 49% de residentes legales hispanos, están preocupados por su futuro en el país. Un 47% de los adultos hispanos, de cualquier estatus migratorio, está “muy preocupado” o “algo preocupado” por las deportaciones, sea la suya propia, amigo o familiar.

[According to Pew [Research Center], 55% of undocumented immigrants, 38% of Hispanics born in the United States and 49% of legal Hispanic residents are preoccupied about their future in the country. Around 47% of Hispanic adults, of any immigration status, are "very preoccupied" or "somewhat preoccupied" by the deportations, whether its themselves, a friend or a family member.]

Meanwhile, the conservative government of Mexican President Eenrique Peña Nieto is handling Central American refugees in a dubious way itself, Mexico doubles deportations of US-bound migrants 02/14/2017:

In a more decent North America, the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico would be cooperating constructively on ways to combat violence in Central America, create jobs in Mexico and set up sane, humane and realistic immigration policy in the US. As important as it is to debunk false comparisons between Obama's immigration policy and the far more radical and draconian mass deportation Trump has set in motion, the fact is that Obama's Administration had a conservative policy in Latin America, the Cuba normalization notwithstanding. Supporting the 2009 coup in Honduras was not only a particularly bad decision, one of the which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was very proud, contributed directly to dangerous conditions in that Central American country.

It's worth remembering that when the Bill Clinton Administration made its big push for the NAFTA treaty negotiated under Old Man Bush's Administration, one of their arguments in favor of it was the idea that the treaty would create more jobs in Mexico and thereby reduce unauthorized emigration from Mexico to the US.

It didn't work out that way, as James Patterson explained in Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore (2005):

NAFTA did not seem to greatly benefit Mexico, which suffered, as earlier, from widespread poverty and unemployment. Struggling peasants raising maize, hit hard by competition from the United States, were devastated. These and other desperately poor people continued to stream into the United States, provoking rising tensions in many parts of the Southwest.

Of course, when production of grains shifts from Mexico to the United States, displaced Mexican farm workers migrate in greater numbers to work for big growers in California and Texas and elsewhere.

We need really different kinds of policies. And not the different kind the Trump Family Business Administration is implementing.

Deportation Nation today

Xenophobia is ugly and often stupidly self-destructive. One example: Nathan Fletcher, Trump order drops protection for families of deployed military San Diego Union-Tribune 02/24/2017.

Here's another, Silvia Zuvieta Rodriguez considered suicide after her father was deported PBS Newshour 02/24/2017:

Apparently hassling legal travelers for no good reason is also part of the America First ritual now: Emma Graham-Harrison, US border agents ask Muhammad Ali's son: 'Are you a Muslim?' The Guardian 02/25/2017; Bonnie Malkin, Australian children's author Mem Fox detained by US border control: 'I sobbed like a baby' The Guardian 02/24/2017; Mem Fox, Australian author, gets apology after being wrongfully detained at LA airport ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 02/204/2017.

The ABC story reports, "She said the border agents appeared to have been given "turbocharged power" by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to 'humiliate and insult' a room full of people they detained to check visas."

Speaking of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has set up a Trump's America webpage. Here's another of their current stories, Donald Trump: Mexico bristles at US President's 'hostile' new deportation rules ahead of immigration talks 02/24/2017:

Mexico is reacting with anger to a Trump administration plan to deport non-Mexican illegal immigrants over their border if they entered the US from the southern neighbouring nation.

One official called the new US immigration guidelines "hostile" hours before senior Trump administration envoys began arriving in Mexico City for talks on the volatile issue. ...

Mexico's lead negotiator with the Trump administration, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, said there was no way Mexico would accept the new rules, which among other things seek to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico. ...

Roberto Campa, who heads the human rights department of the Interior Ministry, said the plan to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico was "hostile" and "unacceptable."

One of the dangerous moves of the Trump government is a push to quickly expand ICE enforcement with contractors, aka, rent-a-cops.(Pilar Marrero, La rápida contratación de agentes migratorios tiene sus peligros La Opinión 02/24/2017) Private security in an office building is one thing. Inadequately trained rent-a-cops on highly sensitive border enforcement is a different thing.

Keeping an eye on the role of private contractors will offer revealing insights the Trump mass deportation. Private for-profit prison businesses will get a cut of the action - and cash, of course! - in the vast new detentions by the Trump Family Business Administration as part of the mass deportation drive. (Madison Pauly, The Private Prison Industry Is Licking Its Chops Over Trump's Deportation Plans Mother Jones 02/21/2017)

It's worth keeping in mind that our anti-public-education Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' brother is Erik Prince, Yes, the Blackwater guy. (Jeremy Scahill, Notorious Mercenary Erik Prince Is Advising Is Advising Trump From the Shadows The Intercept 01/17/2017) I will be astonished is he doesn't get cut in on some major business in this process, i.e., the mass deportation and the rest of the Trump fiasco.

The risks to Mexico in this mass deportation are enormous. If this Administration does what President Tinyhands proposed to do during his campaign and pushes out 11-12 million undocumented immigrants, and pushes the bulk of them into Mexico, that would be a real humanitarian catastrophe with Mexico bearing the brunt of it.

Olga Pellicer is not impressed so far with the cautious approach Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has been taking to the new US administration so, as she explains in México en la política exterior de Trump Proceso 24.02.2017. She references the multi-city demonstrations on the 12th of February encouraged by Peña Nieto's political operation to show solidarity with the Mexican President against the US that had a notably modest turnout:

La falta de una narrativa convincente que vaya desglosando objetivos, estrategias, costos y logros en el acercamiento al gobierno de Trump es una de las debilidades más evidentes del camino seguido por Enrique Peña Nieto. No hay un discurso que concite el apoyo de grupos amplios de la sociedad mexicana a los objetivos que se fijen para la relación con Estados Unidos. Al no existir ese discurso, los intentos de movilizar a la población para expresar su agravio por los mensajes humillantes de Trump a los mexicanos han sido un fracaso. La falta de claridad respecto de las causas a defender en una marcha explica los resultados tan limitados de las que se llevaron a cabo en diversas ciudades del país el domingo 12.

[The lack of a convincing narrative that breaks out objectives, strategies, costs and benefits in the approach to Trump's government is one of the most evident weaknesses of the [conciliatory] road chosen by Enrique Peña Nieto. There is no discourse that draws the support of broad sections of Mexican society to the objective on which they are focused in the relationship with the United States. Since this discourse doesn't exist, the effort to mobilize the population to express their insulted from the humiliating messages from Trump to the Mexicans has been a failure. The lack of clarity to respect of the causes to be defended in a march explicates the so limited results in the turnoout of those in various cities of the country on Sunday the 12th.]

Here is yet another example of how implemented standard neoliberal Washington Consensus economic policies leaves the public of a country doubtful about whether they can trust the established political elites to get even a critical matter of national interest right.

Mass deportation and resistance

President Tinyhands yesterday told a group of CEOs with whom he was meeting - in the interest of the common people I'm sure! - described his mass deportation operation as a "military operation."

His spokespeople tried to walk it back afterwards (Jordan Fabian, Spicer: Trump didn’t mean ‘military operation’ literally The Hill 02/23/2017):

Trump sowed confusion over the military’s role in immigration enforcement with his remarks earlier Thursday at the White House.

“We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country,” he said at a meeting with manufacturing CEOs. “And at a rate nobody has ever seen before. And they’re the bad ones. And it’s a military operation.”

Using the military to apprehend people living illegally in the interior of the country would be highly unusual — and possibly a violation of U.S. law.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly later clarified that military troops would not be used to enforce immigration laws after meeting with Mexican officials.

Kelly also insisted in Mexico that the operation was not a mass deportation, though that's clearly what is underway. (Ni deportación masiva ni use de fuerza militar: John Kelly Milenio 24.02.2017)

Mexico in its diplomatic pushback is also insisting on the US doing a better job in controlling drug trafficking on the US side and restricting the flows of guns and cash into Mexico.

Latino leaders in the US are organizing to coordinate efforts in opposing the Trump mass deporation. (María Peña, Líderes latinos anuncian ‘cumbre’ de resistencia contra Trump La Opinión 24.02.2017)

California's Attorney General tweeted:

I've joined 6 states opposing the detention of non-citizens who have never been found to pose a threat: https://t.co/cVeaOkpx8B

— Xavier Becerra (@AGBecerra) February 11, 2017

The PBS Newshour reported on the visit of Homeland Security Secretary Kelly and ExxonMobil Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Mexico, U.S. and Mexico share diplomatic dialogue amid tensions 02/23/2017:

Mass deportation developments

Woody Guthrie's song "Deportees" has gained a new, immediate significance with Trump's mass deportation program underway. This version by Delila Paz and Edgey Pires ("The Last Internationale") is my favorite version of the song. Because Delila delivers the lyrics beautifully but with a touch of anger in her voice, which seems very appropriate for this song:

The moment at the end where the names of the dead scroll across the screen always gets to me.

Francisco Castro reports on protests against the "witch hunt" against immigrants., Grupos proinmigrantes denuncian ‘cacería de brujas’ contra indocumentados La Opinión 02/21/2017

Here's a statement from one my two Senators, Diane Feinstein, Feinstein Statement on Immigration Executive Order Implementation 02/21/2017:

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today released the following statement in response to guidance released by the Department of Homeland Security to implement the president’s executive order on immigration.

“The guidance released by the Department of Homeland Security creates an unprecedented situation for undocumented immigrants living, working and paying taxes in the United States, as well as Homeland Security, which is now charged with picking up otherwise law-abiding people in their homes and places of work.

“Up until this point, the priority for removal has been dangerous criminals. But under this new guidance, 11 million undocumented immigrants are now priorities for deportation. This is simply unparalleled in its meanness, scope and most likely its enforceability.

“The solution that will prevent the separation of families is passing our bill to repeal President Trump’s executive order, introduced last week by Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto from Nevada.”

Amesty International warns that the conservative government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto isn't making adequate preparations for the humanitarian crisis that Trump's mass deportation could dump onto Mexico: Gloria Leticia Díaz, México, sin plan emergente ante las “consecuencias devastadoras” de las políticas de Trump: AI Proceso 11.02.2017

Rick Perlstein in 2015 described in dramatic terms what a complete deportation of all 11-12 million undocumented workers in the US (Donald Trump and the “F-Word” Washington Spectator 09/30/2017):

Trump has now provided more “specifics” about his immigration plan: a forced population transfer greater than any attempted in history, greater than the French and Spanish expulsions of the Jews in 1308 and 1492; greater than the Nabka of approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from British-mandate Palestine; greater than the 1.5 million Stalin consigned to Siberia and the Central Asian republics; greater than Pol Pot’s exile of 2.5 million city-dwellers to the Cambodian countryside, or the scattering of Turkey’s Assyrian Christians, which the scholar Mordechai Zaken says numbers in the millions and required 180 years to complete. Trump has promised to move 12 million Mexicans in under two years––“so fast your head will spin.”

There's always a danger in comparing various atrocities by headcount that by doing so, there is the risk of implying some sort of relative justification for the action with the smaller number of victims. One horrible thing does not make another one less horrible. But numbers do matter. A single case of the flu is an illness. Several million cases are more of an epidemic.

One other notable mass relocation of people that I thought of in this connection was the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans after the Second World War from countries in central and eastern Europe, including Czechoslovakia and Poland.

R.M. Douglas writes about these forced reloations in The Expulsion Of The Germans: The Largest Forced Migration In History Huffington Post 08/25/2012:

By mid-1945, not merely the largest forced migration but probably the largest single movement of population in human history was under way, an operation that continued for the next five years. Between 12 and 14 million civilians, the overwhelming majority of them women, children and the elderly, were driven out of their homes or, if they had already fled the advancing Red Army in the last days of the war, forcibly prevented from returning to them.

I won't try to summarize the complicated political and ideological and historical questions around that event here. Douglas covers some of it.

I'm not sure how directly that complicated event compares directly to the Trump deportation under way now. For one thing, that one happened in the wake of the most destructive war in human history. The hatred and hysteria behind the Trump mass deportation is far more subjective and wildly out of proportion to any actual threat involved from the undocumented Latino immigrants in the US to the country. And it's certainly not coming in the aftermath of any war with a Latino country.

Norman Naimark in The Russians in Germany: A History of the the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (1995) cites the figures from Gerhard Ziemer, estimating "that 2,280,000 noncombatant Germans out of a total off 11.5 million refugees died as a result of the transfer from the East." It was truly ugly stuff.

I would also note that forced relocations and more voluntary refugees - if that's a meaningful concept at all - would further complicate the comparison of the postwar expulsions of ethnic Germans to the events Perlstein lists or to Trump's mass deportation.

Hans Lemberg and Erik Franzen include a table in Die Vertriebenen: Hitlers letzten Opfer (2001) showing 11.2 million displaced persons taken in by East and West Germany combined by 1950. Not incidentally, this is something to keep in mind when you hear about European rightwingers complaining about all the refugees they are getting today. And of what an obscenity it is for the United States today to refuse to take more than a few thousand refugees from the Middle Eastern wars for which the US bears such a large responsibility.

An expulsion of 12 million people from the United States is an ugly, ugly prospect. Postwar German politicians often used the formula that there is no such thing as collective guilt, but there is collective responsibility.

That is true for Americans today with Trump's mass deportation.