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The MS-13 Gang, A Straw Man for Republican Racism

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By Hunter / Daily Kos

Donald Trump’s support is based on racism. And the racism is based on Republican conspiracy theories. And those conspiracy theories are now, thanks to White House propaganda, taking root within his racist, gullible base.

A majority of people who voted for President Donald Trump consider criminal gang MS-13 a threat to the United States, a new poll finds, indicating the Trump administration may be succeeding in inflating the perception of the gang’s national risk.

Specifically, 85 percent of Trump voters call MS-13 a “very” or “somewhat” serious threat to the United States, and roughly half of them are worried MS-13 is going to target them or their families personally, which is a ludicrous, asinine theory based entirely on Trump-peddled propaganda. Before Trump’s team settled on “MS-13” as their stand-in for Violent Ethnic People Coming To Get You, it would be a fair bet to say that precious few among Trump’s base would even know what MS-13 was. Now half of them are worried that MS-13 is hiding under their floorboards.   [Read more…]

ICE IS – The Break with Michelle Wolf | Video Worth Watching

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ICE IS – a tradition since 2003. Seemed like a good idea at the time. But then who could have predicted the likes of “Kjirstjen Njielsjen” or Donald Trump … You know it’s a problem when, as Alternet reports, ICE agents themselves have written to Secretary Nielsen asking to have ICE reorganized so that they don’t have to be part of it.   [Read more…]

Activist Actions in San Diego Keep Up the Pressure on Border Enforcement Issues

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Ongoing injustices require ongoing resistance. Such is the case with efforts to call public attention to the plight of immigrants and asylum seekers along the southern border of the United States.

The mass demonstrations of June have given way to July’s protests near locations with literal or symbolic connections to the Trump administration’s enforcement mechanisms.

Despite the court rulings saying Zero Tolerance and its kindred sadism aren’t legal, authorities are stalling and/or proceeding as though some draconian solution will eventually prevail.   [Read more…]

Watch Tearful Migrant Families Reunite After Weeks of Separation | Video Worth Watching

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Some good news, courtesy of Mother Jones, on the reunification of families separated at our borders.   [Read more…]

Smart Activism: Not Every Protest Or Petition is Worthy of Your Time

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Amy Siskind has published a weekly list of specific news stories representing eroding norms in the United States since Donald Trump took office. It’s a depressing read, and in recent weeks it’s gotten longer and more intense.

Over the weekend, we learned about an administration effort to quash a UN resolution encouraging breastfeeding. This wasn’t just a “hey, we disagree” situation; representatives of the U.S. Government threatened backers with trade sanctions and cuts to military aid. Outrageous.

Our taxpayer dollars also paid for a successful effort at this World Health Assembly meeting removing suggestions of introducing a soda tax from a document advising countries on fighting high rates of obesity.

This week in San Diego, mass trials for people charged with immigration violations, aka Operation Streamline, are starting up. Lawyers for the accused get a few minutes to speak with their clients in a courthouse garage, with US Marshalls standing nearby.   [Read more…]

The Immigrants Deported to Death and Violence – The Backstory – The New Yorker | Video Worth Watching

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A grim reminder of what is at stake for many of the asylum seekers that make it to our border and why they U.S. government needs to treat the issue of asylum deadly seriously. Back in January of this year The New Yorker’s Sarah Stillman reported on people who fled their home countries fearing for their lives, and the tragic consequences when they were sent back. This video provides some of the back story. The original New Yorker story from January is here.   [Read more…]

‘He was full of dirt and lice’: Court Documents Describe Cruel Treatment of Migrant Kids, Families

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By Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos

Hundreds of pages of sworn affidavits and court documents from forcibly separated migrant parents, immigration attorneys, immigrant rights groups and others reveal intentional cruelty, neglect, and chaos behind the Trump administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy that has torn thousands of children from families at the U.S./Mexico border.

Over the past several weeks, officials have made it increasingly difficult for elected leaders and media to access both detention facilities and detained families. U.S. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, among the first to attempt to access a children’s detention facility in Texas, was asked to leave the property. Scanning the pages of court documents, some tweeted by reporter Adam Klasfeld, gives an insight into why.   [Read more…]

The Big ‘Bad Hombres’ Lie: Less Than 1 Percent of Texas Tent City Migrants Are From Mexico

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By Mike Harlos / Via Facebook

So I have almost completely avoided political posts for over a year now.

Today, I take a break from that.

Tornillo, Texas, is on the US/Mexico border. There is a “tent city facility” setup there. The facility is housing 326 children (312 boys, 14 girls).

Of the 326:

162 are from Guatemala

117 are from Honduras

40 are from El Salvador

4 are from “other countries”

3 are from Mexico   [Read more…]

Trauma at the Border | Video Worth Watching

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From the Brave New Films YouTube website:

Pediatricians reveal the long-term damage that can be done when children are imprisoned – even with their families. Let’s stop this government-sanctioned child abuse now!

Childhood trauma, like imprisonment and family separation, provokes long-lasting implications caused by high levels of toxic stress. Short term damage can present with depression, anxiety, developmental delays, and autism-like symptoms; long term damage presents as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Through the expertise and first-hand observations of current American Academy of Pediatrics president, Dr. Colleen Kraft, and her pediatric colleagues: Dr. Lanre Falusi and Dr. Nathalie Quion viewers are confronted with the heartbreaking reality that these innocent, traumatized children are unwilling participants forced to endure the consequences of the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policy.

  [Read more…]

The CEOs Profiting Off of Immigrant Detention – Follow the Money | Video Worth Watching

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Brave New Films has produced an exposé of the private, for-profit prison industry’s role in the incarceration of immigrants: Immigrant Prisons. Here is a portion of the work that highlights the for-profit component and puts names and faces to the anodyne company names.   [Read more…]

UPDATED: Resistance to Operation Streamline in San Diego, Assembly-Line Injustice for Immigrants

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The uproar over the Trump administration’s immigration policies continues unabated.

Over the weekend there were protests in big cities and small towns across the 50 states. (See San Diego coverage here.)  Sister demonstrations took place in London, Munich, Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo, and others cities around the globe.

Starting today, San Diego and nearby points will be the focus of more protests and non-violent civil disobedience in response to the ramping up of the Justice Department’s Operation Streamline, which applies a one-size-fits-all approach in assembly-line court proceedings for migrants.

Busses and caravan with labor and faith activists came to San Diego from Orange County, Los Angeles and Pheonix to a start-up rally in Chicano Park.

  [Read more…]

Border Patrol and ICE, What Will We Call Them Next? Trump’s Troopers?

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By focusing on tearing apart families on the southern border, [Border Patrol] make interrogations at a checkpoint far from any border seem downright neighborly in contrast.

By Susan Grigsby / Daily Kos

Perhaps it is because I have only lived in Maine for a year and a half, and everything is still new to me, that I hadn’t really noticed the massive influx of Canadians trying to escape from their homeland by illegally crossing our northern border. True, it is a little warmer down here during the winter. And Maine has legalized recreational marijuana, so perhaps these undocumented immigrants were too impatient to wait for October and Canadian legalization.

Or, they have simply tired of life in a country that provides health care to its citizens, that has civilized laws and whose citizens welcome their neighbors in times of trouble. I mean, who doesn’t want to pay higher prices for medications?

Whatever their reasons, apparently this flood of undocumented immigrants has our Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deeply concerned. Border Patrol agents have been sent here to Maine to protect us from the invading horde that is for some unknown reason crossing our border without authorization. Checkpoints have been set-up on 1-95 north of Bangor, Maine, and on I-93 in New Hampshire to counter this apparent threat.   [Read more…]

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