Indeed. It’s like Trump watched Police Academy: Citizens on Patrol and thought, “how can I apply this in real life, but with more racism and death and fearmongering and less comedy and zany antics and Steve Guttenberg?”
4 Likes
~10,000 children were stolen from their families by our government, some have died in custody and yet the media has to constantly debunk conspiracy theories about online cabinets for sale and pizza parlors. People can’t even see what’s happening before their very eyes.
This is how genocide happens.
4 Likes
4 Likes
Despite the SCOTUS ruling, the Trump regime was refusing new DACA applications. A judge has ruled that it must accept them.
Judge orders Trump administration to accept new DACA applications
Federal Court Orders Trump Administration to Accept New DACA Applications
Decision ends weeks of uncertainty for undocumented immigrants brought to U.S. as children after Supreme Court ruling in June
Trump administration must accept new DACA applications, judge orders
2 Likes
Looks like there was pushback against Homeland Security when they tried to eliminate a Trusted Traveller program (fast tracks people through security) and relates to NYS not allowing access to Driver’s license information to HHS. Cuomo called it 'extortion," and seems like it was another ruse to get at immigrant information.
NY won this fast tracking Travellers program back in the courts today.
The court filing offered an explanation for the Department of Homeland Security’s unexpected announcement on Thursday that it was allowing New Yorkers back into what is officially known as the Trusted Traveler Program.
The announcement came nearly six months after the department barred state residents from Global Entry and other programs because of the state’s passage of the so-called Green Light law.
Unlike its counterparts in other states, the New York law restricted immigration authorities from gaining access to state Department of Motor Vehicles records without a court order.
When the government moved to block state residents from the travel programs because of the driver’s license law, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo condemned the action as “a form of extortion.”
The dispute escalated over the course of a week, until Mr. Cuomo met with President Trump at the White House in February in hopes of working out a compromise.
The agreement that was reached, which was enshrined in a state budget bill in April, gives the federal authorities access to the motor vehicle records of those applying for trusted-traveler status.
Mr. Cuomo and federal officials said on Thursday that it was the compromise that had paved the way for the announcement that New Yorkers were being allowed to enroll in the travel programs again.
“I am glad that this issue has finally been resolved for all New Yorkers,” the governor said in a statement.
In his own statement, Chad F. Wolf, the acting Homeland Security secretary, said that “we appreciate the information sharing” that enabled the department “to move forward and begin once again processing New York residents” in Trusted Traveler Programs.
Neither man mentioned the court filing and the admissions it contained.
4 Likes
ICE really allowed themselves to be filmed thinking they’d come off as the GOOD guys? What morons!
Video in tweet:
3 Likes
Trump admin makes Supreme Court defiance official, says it won’t accept first-time DACA applicants
2 Likes
Judge blocks administration from implementing ‘public charge’ rule for immigrants during pandemic
4 Likes
2 Likes
There’s Been A Major Increase In The Use Of Force Against Immigrants At ICE Detention Centers During The Pandemic
“We are numbers to them. We are not people.”
Jail guards pepper-sprayed the unit as immigrants lay down on the ground, screaming and coughing. The officers shot pepper ball rounds that ricocheted off jail tables, broken pieces striking a detainee’s eye. Fumes lingered in the air and made it hard for the detainees to breathe.
Immigrants who spoke with BuzzFeed News described the scene at the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility in Southern California on June 12 when private prison guards contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement pepper-sprayed and shot pepper balls against more than 150 detainees following a protest. Four detainees were taken to the hospital afterward.
Alejandro Ramirez said he and fellow immigrants were protesting rolling lockdowns of the jail in advance of a planned demonstration outside the facility by refusing the guards’ orders to return to their cells. In the weeks prior, demonstrators had broken a window and injured an Adelanto employee, according to the Victorville Press.
As a result of their protest, the detainees were pepper-sprayed. Another immigrant who spoke with BuzzFeed News said he saw multiple detainees pass out. A Los Angeles Times report described a detainee having a seizure, and another being hit by rubber bullets “as he told them he had leukemia.”
One of the pepper balls used struck a table, Ramirez said, and a broken piece cut his eye.
Ramirez told BuzzFeed News in July he couldn’t see out of one of his eyes for three days.
“We are numbers to them," he said. "We are not people. They are not going to listen to us. They are going to follow their rules. There is nothing we can do.”
He was later deported to Mexico.
The force used in Adelanto, which ICE said was needed to “preserve order” after multiple unsuccessful attempts to de-escalate, is the latest in a series of similar incidents since the beginning of the pandemic.
ICE officials do not proactively report these cases unless media outlets request the information, and the agency does not compile data from use-of-force incidents within detention centers nationwide. BuzzFeed News, however, reviewed internal government reports and has found that there has been a substantial increase in uses of force during the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the end of March through the beginning of July, guards at detention centers across the country deployed force — pepper spray, pepper balls, pepper spray grenades — in incidents involving more than 10 immigrants at a time on a dozen occasions, according to a review of internal reports.
In total, more than 600 detainees have been subjected to these group uses of force. Other reports obtained by BuzzFeed News do not list how many detainees were affected. In one event, detention guards pepper-sprayed underneath a door after some detainees protested being isolated due to potential COVID-19 exposure, according to an internal report.
The recent figures stand in contrast to the period before the pandemic. In the six months prior to the health emergency — from September to March — there were two use-of-force incidents against more than 10 detainees, according to a review of the documents BuzzFeed News obtained.
ICE officials acknowledged the recent uptick, which they attributed to disruptive detainees.
“During the pandemic, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seen more incidents where groups of detainees become confrontational with staff, sometimes acting in ways that are unsafe for the general population,” said Danielle Bennett, a spokesperson for the agency. “When such incidents occur, and staff is unable to deescalate the situation through other means, the use of OC spray is permitted and consistent with agency protocols, as described in the detention standards, to preserve order and maintain a safe environment.”
Medical experts, however, said the increased use of pepper spray during the pandemic in a closed space was concerning.
“It’s a bad idea. Pepper spray is an irritant of the respiratory system and often causes people to cough, and we know that cough increases the spread of virus,” said Marc Stern, a public health expert and faculty member at the University of Washington. “It comes with an additional risk that did not exist in pre-COVID times.”
Stern said guards should weigh whether using pepper spray could increase the risk of spreading the disease through the use of pepper spray inside the jails.
The incidents often follow a similar pattern, with force being used after detainees refuse commands from guards. Some incidents have been directly tied to the pandemic: detainees protesting conditions, resisting being quarantined, or being moved within the facility. ICE officials say that detainees involved were disruptive, disregarded orders, and in some cases were violent.
Immigrants and their advocates, however, believe the use of force is unjustified and excessive.
“The lack of transparency into these facilities have allowed guards to use force —including pepper spray, rubber bullets, and physical force — with impunity. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, this has only grown worse, due in part to the fear of people in detention as the virus continues to spread in facilities, sickening and killing people,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU.
Laura Rivera, the director of Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, said that detainees are advocating for “freedom” during the pandemic due to fears they will contract the disease in custody.
“In return, ICE routinely retaliates with ruthless force. Clad in riot gear, guards deploy pepper spray, pepper-ball ammunitions, and physical force,” she said.
Medical experts and immigrant advocates have warned that the highly contagious disease puts everyone in detention at risk. They’ve pointed out that detention centers have a lack of necessary space to accommodate proper social distancing guidelines. ICE has countered that the agency has ramped up testing and released many detainees who are medically vulnerable. As of late July, nearly 1,000 detainees had tested positive for COVID-19 and almost 4,000 had gotten the disease in custody.
In one incident, ICE medical officials held a meeting about COVID-19 at a detention center in Louisiana, according to a government document obtained by BuzzFeed News. During the class, a group of detainees began protesting and ignored the guards’ orders. Pepper spray was soon used to keep a group of detainees from escaping an area of the jail, the report stated.
In March, Mother Jones reported that an attorney representing a woman in the detention center said that she was told that "the women were coughing, crying, and that some fainted throughout the approximately one hour that they were locked in the room with tear gas.”
Later, in May, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office used pepper spray on 25 detainees after they refused to be tested for COVID-19. Sheriff’s officials said that the immigrants “rushed violently” at correctional officers and broke windows in the facility. Advocate groups have denied the allegations. The ACLU has since sued to get video footage from the incident.
Rev. Annie Gonzalez Milliken, a minister at the First Parish in Bedford, said she got a call from one detainee the night the incident occurred.
He told her that the sheriff’s officials had grabbed him, and that the detainees had been sprayed in the face and in the mouth.
"They want to take us to the other unit to be tested, we don’t want to go on the other unit for cross-contamination, we want to be tested, but not moved,” she said the detainee told her.
The most recent incident came on July 1 at the Immigration Center of America in Farmville, Virginia, where more than 40 detainees were pepper-sprayed after they refused to return to their cells for a day population count. The detention center’s warden said in a federal court filing that the detainees had congregated in the center’s day room instead.
“Several officers and supervisors spoke with them and attempted to persuade them to return to their bunks in Dorm 7 on their own,” he said in the affidavit filed in federal court as part of a lawsuit filed by Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition over the conditions in center. “After about thirty minutes, I authorized the use of pepper spray. Four of the detainees picked up chairs and used them as weapons against the officers. A total of 11 detainees became violent and are now isolated from the rest of Dorm 7 for disciplinary and safety reasons.”
The incident came as the detention center has seen an uptick in COVID-19 cases. As of early July, there were more than 250 detainees with the disease. Advocates have called the situation an “outbreak” and a “human rights crisis.”
In June, the detention center received 74 detainees from Arizona and Florida, 51 of whom tested positive for the disease.
“There’s no doubt in my mind this egregious use of force had to do with the erupting COVID-19 outbreak that resulted from the ICE transfers. Our clients described feeling scared and sick, not getting adequate food or medical attention, people passing out in the dorms — they were simply trying to get answers and to be treated with dignity and respect,” said Sirine Shebaya, head of the National Immigration Project. “Instead, the guards attacked them with pepper spray and escalated a disastrous situation of their own making."
3 Likes
ICE and GEO can’t be bothered with little issues like having to quarantine infected immigrants away from healthy ones, so they’ve adopted Trump’s tactic: just don’t test at all. No cases then, right?
3 Likes
Trump Cabinet officials voted in 2018 White House meeting to separate migrant children, say officials
Miller saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. Miller, with the support of Sessions, advocated for separating all immigrant families, even those going through civil court proceedings, the former officials said.
While zero tolerance ultimately separated nearly 3,000 children from their parents, what Miller proposed would have separated 25,000 more, including those who legally presented themselves at ports of entry seeking asylum, according to Customs and Border Protection data from May and June 2018.
Miller the monster
4 Likes
Cross-posting 
4 Likes
The weirdest revelation for me recently is that after learning how she refused to re-instate child separation, refused to use microwave heat rays on immigrants, and other such stands that lead to her eventual removal, we may have misjudged former DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen.
3 Likes
U.S. has expelled 8,800 migrant children under coronavirus rules
The administration implemented new border rules on March 21 that scrapped decades-old practices under laws meant to protect children from human trafficking and offer them a chance to seek asylum in a U.S. immigration court. The administration said the emergency rules were designed to avert coronavirus outbreaks inside migrant holding facilities and among the broader U.S. population.
Since then, U.S. officials have been quickly removing migrants, including unaccompanied minors, without standard immigration proceedings.
3 Likes
this is genocidal policy
‘Like an Experimental Concentration Camp’: Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Detention Center
2 Likes
Horrifying.
3 Likes
400,000 Immigrants Can Be Forced to Leave the U.S., Court Rules
A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration acted within its authority in terminating legal protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to live and work legally in the United States, sometimes for decades, after fleeing conflict or natural disasters in their home countries.
The 2-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit effectively strips legal immigration status from some 400,000 people, rendering them deportable if they do not voluntarily leave the country. The decision affects the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries of a program offering what is known as “temporary protected status,” which has permitted them to remain in the United States after being uprooted from their unstable homelands.
The Trump administration has argued that the emergency conditions that existed when people were invited to come to the United States — earthquakes, hurricanes, civil war — had occurred long ago. The program, it said, had inadvertently conferred permanent immigration status for people from places like El Salvador, Haiti and Sudan, most of whom it said no longer needed safe haven.
The long-awaited decision does not immediately end the protections. The Trump administration has agreed to maintain them until at least March 5, 2021, for people from five of the affected countries and until November 2021 for people from El Salvador.
If President Trump is not re-elected, a new administration could choose to maintain the program.
2 Likes
ICE Is the New Face of America’s Legacy of Forced Sterilization
“What would it mean to give consent to be sterilized in a prison or detention center?”
‘At least 17 to 18 women’ in ICE detention abused by doctor: Jayapal
1 Like
Read: Jayapal Statement on New Details Regarding Forced Unnecessary Medical Procedures—Including Hysterectomies—Being Performed on At Least 17 Immigrant Women in Irwin County, Georgia
SEATTLE — United States Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) issued the following statement this morning about new details she has learned regarding forced unnecessary medical procedures—including hysterectomies—being performed on at least 17 immigrant women in Irwin County, Ga.:
“Late yesterday, I was briefed by three attorneys representing women who were detained at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Ga. and subjected to forced, invasive procedures by a gynecologist connected with the private, for-profit detention center. It has become painfully clear to me that the initial reports brought to light on Monday by whistleblower Dawn Wooten and Project South are likely part of a pattern of conduct.
“Since the initial story broke, I understand that there are at least five independent attorneys representing women who have found themselves to be part of this horrific pattern, subjected to unnecessary forced sterilization or medical procedures over the last several years. It appears that there may be at minimum 17 to 18 women who were subjected to unnecessary medical gynecological procedures from just this one doctor, often without appropriate consent or knowledge, and with the clear intention of sterilization. Because the majority of immigrants are pro se (unrepresented), it is also possible that there are additional similar cases for individuals who have already been deported or did not have legal representation.
“My conversations with attorneys were stunning and represent the most abhorrent of human rights violations. One woman, Pauline, who was nearly deported this morning, consulted the doctor simply about her menstrual cycle. She was put under for what she was told would be a simple procedure, only to wake up and find that the doctor had removed part of her reproductive organs without her knowledge or consent. Another woman, already deported, apparently went in to see the doctor for a simple condition related to diabetes and ended up having gynecological surgery. Two additional women apparently were shackled to the bed, reported to have had surgical procedures, including one apparent hysterectomy, without any consent.
“I am horrified and outraged to hear these stories, which contain may consistencies and raise serious questions about not only this particular doctor but about the entire detention system—largely for-profit—that is complicit in the abuses of rights and has long run roughshod over and ignored neglected the health, wellbeing and human rights of immigrants.
“Earlier today, I led 172 of my House colleagues in calling for an immediate and full Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this situation. That requires that Pauline and other women immediately receive a stay of their deportations so that they can participate in this investigation. Similarly, ICE must immediately ensure that any person who may have been subjected to forced medical procedures immediately be assured the ability to remain in the United States so that we can follow all the facts and get to the bottom of these horrific allegations.
“Additionally, this investigation must go well beyond Irwin County. Medical abuses, including poor obstetric care, in ICE custody have been documented for years. Forced sterilization, particularly of women of color, has a long and sordid history in America. To have it occurring in 2020 is beyond unacceptable. Every woman—and man—should be absolutely outraged and immediately call for justice. Everyone—regardless of their immigration status, their language, or whether they are incarcerated—deserves to control their own reproductive choices and make informed choices about their bodies.”
4 Likes