"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
As Trump Rages About Immigrants, They Go to the Ivy League
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American sisters born in Cameroon, from left, Ella, Chris and Xaviera.CreditVictor J. Blue for The New York Times
Ten years ago, a family arrived in the Bronx from Yaoundé, Cameroon, not speaking a word of English. This Christmas, they are celebrating a feat that would be impressive for any family: Three of the family’s five daughters have been accepted to Ivy League universities.
In a year in which our nativist president would have you believe that immigrants are, at best, a job-stealing drain and at worst, criminals, rapists and people with AIDS, these three remarkable sisters are worth paying attention to. Not just because they are inspiring — they are — but because they are far better ambassadors for this country and exponents of its ideals than the 45th president.
“We brought the girls to this country because there are better opportunities here,” says Flore Kengmeni, their mother, who works as a nurse. “I don’t know of another country where you can try hard, work hard and get somewhere. Where you are given the opportunity to fulfill your potential.”
“This country is built on immigrants,” Francois de Paul Silatchom, their father, a professor of economics at SUNY, starts to say, before his middle daughter, Ella, a sophomore at Yale, interjects: “Our experience as a family is what America is.”
That experience is marked by hard work, optimism, resilience and a persistent sense of gratitude even to have the opportunity.
All three girls admit it wasn’t easy. They recall sitting in class during their first year in America and not understanding what their teachers and classmates were saying. They remember being made fun of, but not really knowing why.
“Everyone spoke so fast and I guess we speak that fast now, too,” says Xaviera, the youngest of the three, who was accepted to Harvard earlier this month.
They turned to books for guidance. Their parents got the girls library cards and made reading mandatory — “Education is the most valuable asset,” the parents say repeatedly when we meet. The sisters were encouraged to read broadly, from “The Magic School Bus” to “Harry Potter,” and they practiced English as a family in their two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx’s Pelham Parkway neighborhood.
By the end of their first year at their local public schools, the girls had learned enough English to take the state exams, and were excelling in their classes. But their parents were alarmed that they were finishing their homework during the school day and coming home bored. They asked teachers to assign their daughters more homework. But even that wasn’t enough.
“Something was wrong,” Mr. de Paul Silatchom says. “I started looking for schools that would challenge them and keep them busy. At a school fair, we learned about Democracy Prep.”
At Democracy Prep, a public charter school in Harlem where I met them one recent afternoon, the day begins at 7:45 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. Longer school days, many argue, allow teachers to spend more time on subjects other than math and English, and keep students out of trouble.
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Francois de Paul Silatchom, left, poses for a portrait with his daughters (left to right) Xaviera, 17, Ella, 19, and Chris, 20, and their mother Flore Kengmeni, center, at their church on the Upper East Side.CreditVictor J. Blue for The New York Times
Through the school’s Korean language program, the sisters were exposed to a culture completely different from their own, which sparked an interest in global affairs for all of them. Civics is a core part of the school’s curriculum, which Xaviera says showed her that, “Regardless of how disadvantaged you are in society, you have an advantage if you understand how our system of government works.”
“I learned so much here,” Ella says of the school. “And between that and our parents, my work ethic — our work ethic — really developed. Our parents required us to do an extracurricular, so sports or choir or whatever and that was for after 5 o’clock. That was normal for us.”
When the oldest, Chris, now a junior at Dartmouth, got into the college in 2014, friends and family were elated, but her parents made it clear that the work wasn’t over.
“The night I got into Dartmouth, Mom asked me, ‘Have you done the dishes?’ Getting in was exciting and I knew she was proud, but it was just a regular day,” Chris says.
“They haven’t ‘arrived,’ as people like to say, just because they are into Ivy League schools,” Mr. de Paul Silatchom says. “It’s a good start and a platform of opportunity.”
When speaking, the sisters transition seamlessly between New York-accented English and French, their first language. The irony that they landed at a school called Democracy Prep after immigrating from one of the world’s least democratic countries is not lost on them.
It’s something they’ve spent a lot of time thinking about as President Trump has rolled out various cruel immigration policies, from his proposed travel ban to, in September, rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA — an Obama-era program that protected the country’s approximately 800,000 undocumented youth raised in the country from being deported.
“It’s scary to see because this is not the country we know,” says Chris, who along with her sisters, became an American citizen in 2016. “America at its core is principled on immigrants. We came to this country to improve our futures and I feel as American as anyone born here.”
“These girls are more American than Cameroonian,” their mother says. “Can you imagine being undocumented? We were very lucky,” Xaviera adds.
Watching videos of immigration agents separating families in recent months has been particularly difficult for Ms. Kengmeni and Mr. de Paul Silatchom. “I can’t imagine what it’s been like for these children who go to school in the morning knowing they might come home at the end of the day to no parents,” Ms. Kengmeni says.
This year, Christmas break involves running around to pack for Chris’s semester abroad and attending three Christmas Masses, but the family is grateful to be all together, even if it’s for just a few days. They know they are the lucky ones.
Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Watching Ella, Chris and Xaviera, I’d bet good money that they will join those ranks of these world-class leaders. But the question I find myself asking as I leave their school: Who are the young women the Trump administration is currently keeping out?
“Washington (CNN)In the end, the calendar won — and that has some recalculating who will have leverage in January for negotiations on immigration.
Congress finished up its business for the year Thursday night and left town without resolving major outstanding issues — including a resolution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which lawmakers had repeatedly pledged to fix before the end of the year.
Republicans voted to pass an extension of government funding through mid-January without acting on immigration, health care or disaster spending issues, pushing a showdown into January.
Some DACA advocates worry that by not forcing a government shutdown fight, they gave up leverage for next year.
“I think it’s pretty evident that — how do I say this kindly — that there was some leverage potentially to do (DACA) this year, I think Nancy (Pelosi) and the Democrats kind of abandoned it,” said Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who has long supported immigration reform. “But I’m still committed to getting it done and I think it will get done.”
close dialog
DACA protected from deportation young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. But after President Donald Trump decided to end the program, DACA permits are set to begin expiring in early March. So the closer talks get to that date, it could make Democrats more desperate to secure a fix, and they will have to swallow more concessions — or at least so some Republicans hope.
“Yeah, I do have concerns about that,” Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who’s a leading progressive advocate for DACA in the Senate, said about the potential that a deal will get worse for supporters as negotiations slip into the new year.
Supporters also note that despite Trump’s plan to have no permits expire before March by offering a renewal window, more than 20,000 DACA recipients were either unable or unwilling to renew, meaning an average of 122 of them are losing their protections every day. Moreover, experts have expressed concern that any replacement program will take time to establish, resulting in potential gaps in protections the later it gets.
Harris noted the daily number of individuals losing status and living with the fear of possible deportation and inability to work.
“These timelines are not theoretical,” she said. “There is literally a consequence each day we don’t get it done.”
Her concerns were echoed by Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who has been pushing hard in the House for a compromise on DACA.
“I think the later it gets on this issue, the more difficult it will be to put together a workable compromise for everyone,” Curbelo said.
Negotiations continue
Negotiations will continue during the holiday break on possible solutions such as pairing a DACA fix with conservative asks like border security, interior enforcement and some elements of immigration reform. On the Senate side, Democratic Whip Dick Durbin’s bipartisan working group will continue to meet, likely by phone, according to a source familiar.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, pledged Wednesday to call a bill to the floor if the working group can reach a deal that’s acceptable to both sides.
On the House side, bipartisan talks have made substantial progress and the result of those efforts could be introduced in January, when lawmakers are looking to move a deal, though House leadership has not committed to endorse any of those efforts.
One Republican aide said that if lawmakers can reach a compromise in the time the continuing budget resolution buys them, leverage won’t change much from the end of December. But closer to March is less forgiving for Democrats.
“I don’t think it’s a victory for either side. It epitomizes what Congress does best, which is kicking the can down the road,” the aide said on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. “Now, if we manage to kick it down the road past January 19, maybe the dynamic changes.”
Sending a message
Democrats hope that the strong show of force against the continuing resolution — which passed the House with only 13 Democrats and lost 16 Republicans, and passed the Senate with 32 Democratic no votes — will send a message to Republicans that they will have to negotiate in January.
As lawmakers had faced the possibility of a government shutdown over Christmas, Republicans who have had major opposition to various elements of government funding mostly agreed to punt the issue to January. But Democrats expect that the next go-round, they will not be so willing, and Republicans will have to come asking for Democratic votes.
“I think we end up being in a better position, because they cannot hold their caucus,” said Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona. “At some point, the Freedom Caucus and the sort of conservative hawks will end up revolting against a CR, and that’s why we need to stay strong, in the House and in the Senate.”
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, of which Gallego is a member, made a last-minute march to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office on Thursday to urge him to hold his caucus against the continuing resolution. While it was never expected that Democrats would deny the House-passed CR the votes it needed, especially with vulnerable red state Democrats up for re-election, the hope was that a strong showing of no votes would help send a message to Republicans.
“It keeps the momentum, and I think as we get into more complicated issues like the (spending) cap and others, that presence is just going to get stronger and stronger, because internally they’re going to get to the same point that Boehner was at and Ryan’s been at trying to hold those groups,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, referring to former House Speaker John Boehner and current Speaker Paul Ryan.
“I think it’ll intensify and become more urgent and bitter, period,” Grijalva added of January’s new deadline. “There’s no way to go but it getting more bitter.”
I think that the Dems will have much the same “leverage” in January, but better “optics.” And, the GOP won’t be able to pass a budget without the Dems help. That’s because of the irresponsible “Bakuninist Wing” of the GOP (a/k/a the “Freedom Caucus”) which is committed to a program of anarchy and destruction of all viable public services. With the holidays over, and most voters (including some of the GOP’s “corporate sponsors”) wanting some Dreamer relief, I think the Dems can hold the line and, if it comes to that which I hope to won’t, let the GOP (after all, they control all branches of Gov) shut things down.
I realize that the Dreamers have been “left behind” before and are growing impatient. But, I think they need to “ease up” a bit on the Dems. The GOP has a fairly narrow base to “play’ to (mostly the rich and the disgruntled who wish they were rich). But, the Dems have a wider constituency that they need to keep on board. Sending Government workers home for the Christmas holidays without paychecks wouldn’t play so well everywhere. I know that as Government worker, I was upset each time we had a useless “shutdown.”
So, hang in there Dreamers. I think you day will be coming in the near future.
But so many foreigners had flooded into the country since January, he vented to his national security team, that it was making a mockery of his pledge. Friends were calling to say he looked like a fool, Mr. Trump said.
According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.
More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.
Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.
As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.
Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denied on Saturday morning that Mr. Trump had made derogatory statements about immigrants during the meeting.
“General Kelly, General McMaster, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Nielsen and all other senior staff actually in the meeting deny these outrageous claims,” she said, referring to the current White House chief of staff, the national security adviser and the secretaries of state and homeland security. “It’s both sad and telling The New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous ‘sources’ anyway.”
While the White House did not deny the overall description of the meeting, officials strenuously insisted that Mr. Trump never used the words “AIDS” or “huts” to describe people from any country. Several participants in the meeting told Times reporters that they did not recall the president using those words and did not think he had, but the two officials who described the comments found them so noteworthy that they related them to others at the time.
The meeting in June reflects Mr. Trump’s visceral approach to an issue that defined his campaign and has indelibly shaped the first year of his presidency.
How We Reported This Story
The Times conducted over three dozen interviews with current and former administration officials, lawmakers and others close to the process.
Seizing on immigration as the cause of countless social and economic problems, Mr. Trump entered office with an agenda of symbolic but incompletely thought-out goals, the product not of rigorous policy debate but of emotionally charged personal interactions and an instinct for tapping into the nativist views of white working-class Americans.
Like many of his initiatives, his effort to change American immigration policy has been executed through a disorderly and dysfunctional process that sought from the start to defy the bureaucracy charged with enforcing it, according to interviews with three dozen current and former administration officials, lawmakers and others close to the process, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private interactions.
But while Mr. Trump has been repeatedly frustrated by the limits of his power, his efforts to remake decades of immigration policy have gained increasing momentum as the White House became more disciplined and adept at either ignoring or undercutting the entrenched opposition of many parts of the government. The resulting changes have had far-reaching consequences, not only for the immigrants who have sought to make a new home in this country, but also for the United States’ image in the world.
“We have taken a giant steamliner barreling full speed,” Mr. Miller said in a recent interview. “Slowed it, stopped it, begun to turn it around and started sailing in the other direction.”
It is an assessment shared ruefully by Mr. Trump’s harshest critics, who see a darker view of the past year. Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group, argues that the president’s immigration agenda is motivated by racism.
“He’s basically saying, ‘You people of color coming to America seeking the American dream are a threat to the white people,’” said Mr. Sharry, an outspoken critic of the president. “He’s come into office with an aggressive strategy of trying to reverse the demographic changes underway in America.”
. . . .
Even as the administration was engaged in a court battle over the travel ban, it began to turn its attention to another way of tightening the border — by limiting the number of refugees admitted each year to the United States. And if there was one “deep state” stronghold of Obama holdovers that Mr. Trump and his allies suspected of undermining them on immigration, it was the State Department, which administers the refugee program.
At the department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, there was a sense of foreboding about a president who had once warned that any refugee might be a “Trojan horse” or part of a “terrorist army.”
Mr. Trump had already used the travel ban to cut the number of allowable refugees admitted to the United States in 2017 to 50,000, a fraction of the 110,000 set by Mr. Obama. Now, Mr. Trump would have to decide the level for 2018.
At an April meeting with top officials from the bureau in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room, Mr. Miller cited statistics from the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies that indicated that resettling refugees in the United States was far costlier than helping them in their own region.
Mr. Miller was visibly displeased, according to people present, when State Department officials pushed back, citing another study that found refugees to be a net benefit to the economy. He called the contention absurd and said it was exactly the wrong kind of thinking.
But the travel ban had been a lesson for Mr. Trump and his aides on the dangers of dictating a major policy change without involving the people who enforce it. This time, instead of shutting out those officials, they worked to tightly control the process.
In previous years, State Department officials had recommended a refugee level to the president. Now, Mr. Miller told officials the number would be determined by the Department of Homeland Security under a new policy that treated the issue as a security matter, not a diplomatic one.
When he got word that the Office of Refugee Resettlement had drafted a 55-page report showing that refugees were a net positive to the economy, Mr. Miller swiftly intervened, requesting a meeting to discuss it. The study never made it to the White House; it was shelved in favor of a three-page list of all the federal assistance programs that refugees used.
At the United Nations General Assembly in September, Mr. Trump cited the Center for Immigration Studies report, arguing that it was more cost-effective to keep refugees out than to bring them into the United States.
“Uncontrolled migration,” Mr. Trump declared, “is deeply unfair to both the sending and receiving countries.”
. . . .
As the new year approached, officials began considering a plan to separate parents from their children when families are caught entering the country illegally, a move that immigrant groups called draconian.
At times, though, Mr. Trump has shown an openness to a different approach. In private discussions, he returns periodically to the idea of a “comprehensive immigration” compromise, though aides have warned him against using the phrase because it is seen by his core supporters as code for amnesty. During a fall dinner with Democratic leaders, Mr. Trump explored the possibility of a bargain to legalize Dreamers in exchange for border security.
Mr. Trump even told Republicans recently that he wanted to think bigger, envisioning a deal early next year that would include a wall, protection for Dreamers, work permits for their parents, a shift to merit-based immigration with tougher work site enforcement, and ultimately, legal status for some undocumented immigrants.
The idea would prevent Dreamers from sponsoring the parents who brought them illegally for citizenship, limiting what Mr. Trump refers to as “chain migration.”
“He wants to make a deal,” said Mr. Graham, who spoke with Mr. Trump about the issue last week. “He wants to fix the entire system.”
Yet publicly, Mr. Trump has only employed the absolutist language that defined his campaign and has dominated his presidency.
After an Uzbek immigrant was arrested on suspicion of plowing a truck into a bicycle path in Lower Manhattan in October, killing eight people, the president seized on the episode.
Privately, in the Oval Office, the president expressed disbelief about the visa program that had admitted the suspect, confiding to a group of visiting senators that it was yet another piece of evidence that the United States’ immigration policies were “a joke.”
Even after a year of progress toward a country sealed off from foreign threats, the president still viewed the immigration system as plagued by complacency.
“We’re so politically correct,” he complained to reporters in the cabinet room, “that we’re afraid to do anything.”
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Read the full, much more comprehensive and detailed, article at the link.
Disturbing for sure, but unfortunately not particularly surprising for those of us who have watched the Administration roll out its toxic, ill-informed immigration policies. Perhaps ironically, while the immigration issue has certainly allowed Trump to capture and control the GOP, polls show that his extreme restrictionist, xenophobic views on immigration are generally out of line with the majority of Americans (although not necessarily the majority of GOP voters).
They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth. Nevertheless, their victory will be achieved through a democratic electoral process. But beware, as this will be their argument every time you question the legitimacy of their actions. They will claim a mandate from the People to change the system.
Remember – gaining power through a democratic system does not give them permission to cross legal boundaries and undermine said democracy.
They will divide and rule. Their strength lies in unity, in one voice and one ideology, and so should yours. They will call their supporters Patriots, the only “true Americans”. You will be labelled as traitors, enemies of the state, unpatriotic, the corrupt elite, the old regime trying to regain power. Their supporters will be the “People”, the “sovereign” who chose their leaders.
Don’t let them divide you – remember you’re one People, one Nation, with one common good.
Through convoluted laws and threats they will try to control mainstream media and limit press freedom. They will ban critical press from their briefings, calling them “liars”, “fake news”. They will brand those media as “unpatriotic”, acting against the People (see point 2).
Fight for every media outlet, every journalist that is being banned, censored, sacked or labelled an “enemy of the state” – there’s no hope for freedom where there is no free press.
They will create chaos, maintain a constant sense of conflict and danger. It will be their argument to enact new authoritarian laws, each one further limiting your freedoms and civil liberties. They will disguise them as being for your protection, for the good of the People.
See through the chaos, the fake danger, expose it before you wake up in a totalitarian, fascist state.
They will distort the truth, deny facts and blatantly lie. They will try to make you forget what facts are, sedate your need to find the truth. They will feed “post-truths” and “alternative facts”, replace knowledge and logic with emotions and fiction.
Always think critically, fact-check and point out the truth, fight ignorance with facts.
They will incite and then leak fake, superficial “scandals”. They will smear opposition with trivial accusations, blowing them out of proportion and then feeding the flame. This is just smokescreen for the legal steps they will be taking towards totalitarianism.
See through superficial topics in mainstream media (see point 3) and focus on what they are actually doing.
They will propose shocking laws to provoke your outrage. You will focus your efforts on fighting them, so they will seemingly back off, giving you a false sense of victory. In the meantime they will push through less “flashy” legislation, slowly dismantling democracy (see points 4 and 6).
Focus your fight on what really matters.
When invading your liberal sensibilities they will focus on what hurts the most – women and minorities. They will act as if democracy was majority rule without respect for the minority. They will paint foreigners and immigrants as potential threats. Racial, religious, sexual and other minorities will become enemies to the order and security they are supposedly providing. They will challenge women’s social status, undermine gender equality and interfere with reproductive rights (see point 7). But it means they are aware of the threat women and minorities pose to their rule, so make it your strength.
Women and minorities should fight the hardest, reminding the majority what true democracy is about.
They will try to take control of the judiciary. They will assault your highest court. They need to remove the checks and balances to be able to push through unconstitutional legislation. Controlling the judiciary they can also threat anyone that defies them with prosecution, including the press (see point 3).
Preserve the independence of your courts at all cost, they are your safety valve, the safeguard of the rule of law and the democratic system.
They will try to limit freedom of assembly, calling it a necessity for your security. They will enact laws prioritizing state events and rallies, or those of a certain type or ideology. If they can choose who can demonstrate legally, they have a legal basis to forcefully disperse or prosecute the rest.
Oppose any legislation attempting to interfere with freedom of assembly, for whatever reason.
They will distort the language, coin new terms and labels, repeat shocking phrases until you accept them as normal and subconsciously associate them with whom they like. A “thief”, “liar” or “traitor” will automatically mean the opposition, while a “patriot” or a “true American” will mean their follower (see point 2). Their slogans will have double meaning, giving strength to their supporters and instilling angst in their opponents.
Fight changes in language in the public sphere, remind and preserve the true meaning of words.
They will take over your national symbols, associate them with their regime, remake them into attributes of their power. They want you to forget that your flag, your anthem and your symbols belong to you, the People, to everyone equally. Don’t let them be hijacked. Use and expose them in your fight as much as they do.
Show your national symbols with pride, let them give you strength, not associate you with the tyranny they brought onto your country.
They will try to rewrite history to suit their needs and use the education system to support their agenda. They will smear any historical or living figure who wouldn’t approve of their actions, or distort their image to make you think they would. They will place emphasis on historical education in schools, feeding young minds with the “only correct” version of history and philosophy. They will raise a new generation of voters on their ideology, backing it with a distorted interpretation of history and view of the world.
Guard the education of your children, teach them critical thinking, ensure their open-mindedness and protect your real history and heritage.
They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you don’t need them. They won’t care for the rest of the world, with their focus on “making your country great again”. While ruining your economy to fulfil their populist promises, they will omit the fact that you’re part of a bigger world whose development depends on cooperation, on sharing and on trade.
Don’t let them build walls promising you security instead of bridges giving you prosperity.
They will eventually manipulate the electoral system. They might say it’s to correct flaws, to make it more fair, more similar to the rest of the world, or just to make it better. Don’t believe it. They wouldn’t be messing with it at all if it wasn’t to benefit them in some way.
Oppose any changes to electoral law that an authoritarian regime wants to enact – rest assured it’s only to help them remain in power longer.
And above all, be strong, fight, endure, and remember you’re on the good side of history.
EVERY authoritarian, totalitarian and fascist regime in history eventually failed, thanks to the PEOPLE.
– With love, your Eastern European friends
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Martin Mycielski is a journalist, serving as Brussels correspondent for leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. Before that he was one of the leaders of the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD) NGO and protest movement, which has organized the largest mass demonstrations in Poland since the fall of communism, opposing the authoritarian and unlawful actions of the Law and Justice (PiS) government and its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński (read more here and here, or just Google). In 2016 KOD’s efforts to defend democracy, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law were recognized by the European Parliament which awarded it the European Citizen’s Prize.
Since childhood Martin has been enamoured with the US, it’s culture, politics and people. Tragically, January events have put the worlds greatest democracy at risk, as they have clearly undermined the fundamental values the States were build upon, such as freedom, democracy, equality & diversity. As these values form the idea of America Martin has been raised on, he has decided to step in and help to defend them the only way he knows how – by sharing with you his experiences from a continent being currently torn apart by populists, authoritarians and tinpot dictators.
His message to President Donald J. Trump is therefore a paraphrased fragment from W. B. Yeats:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams; And if you don’t, we the People will push you off them.
Scary, but important points to remember if we want “liberal Western democracy” to survive the Trump era.
Points 8, 9, an 14 have particular relevance to what is happening in our legal and immigration systems now. thus, I reiterate them in full here:
Point 8
When invading your liberal sensibilities they will focus on what hurts the most – women and minorities. They will act as if democracy was majority rule without respect for the minority. They will paint foreigners and immigrants as potential threats. Racial, religious, sexual and other minorities will become enemies to the order and security they are supposedly providing. They will challenge women’s social status, undermine gender equality and interfere with reproductive rights (see point 7). But it means they are aware of the threat women and minorities pose to their rule, so make it your strength.
Women and minorities should fight the hardest, reminding the majority what true democracy is about.
Point 9
They will try to take control of the judiciary. They will assault your highest court. They need to remove the checks and balances to be able to push through unconstitutional legislation. Controlling the judiciary they can also threat anyone that defies them with prosecution, including the press (see point 3).
Preserve the independence of your courts at all cost, they are your safety valve, the safeguard of the rule of law and the democratic system.
Point 14
They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you don’t need them. They won’t care for the rest of the world, with their focus on “making your country great again”. While ruining your economy to fulfil their populist promises, they will omit the fact that you’re part of a bigger world whose development depends on cooperation, on sharing and on trade.
Don’t let them build walls promising you security instead of bridges giving you prosperity.
“At a televised cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Donald Trump, as is his custom, called on his appointees to publicly praise him. In a performance that would have embarrassed the most obsequious lackey of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Vice President Mike Pence delivered an encomium to his boss, who sat across the table with arms folded over his chest, absorbing abasement as his due.
“I want to thank you, Mr. President,” Pence said. “I want to thank you for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America. Because of your determination, because of your leadership, the forgotten men and women of America are forgotten no more. And we are making America great again.” The president thanked him for his kind words, and Pence replied, “Thank you, Mr. President, and God bless you.”
It was a neat summation of where the Republican Party is at the end of the first year of Trump. There’s been a synthesis, in which Trump and establishment Republicans adopt one another’s worst qualities. Trump, who campaigned as a putative economic populist — even calling for higher taxes on the rich — will soon sign into law the tax plan of the House speaker Paul Ryan’s Ayn Randian dreams. The majority of elected Republicans, in turn, are assuming a posture of slavish submission to Trump, worshiping their dear leader and collaborating in the maintenance of his alternative reality.
Some of this might be strategic; everyone knows Trump is susceptible to flattery. But in many cases — certainly with Pence — it seems sincere. In a recent Atlantic profile of the vice president, McKay Coppins wrote that Pence’s faith mandates obedience to temporal as well as heavenly authority. When he accepted the vice-presidential nomination, Coppins wrote, “he believed he was committing to humbly submit to the will of Donald Trump.” From a secular perspective, Pence, like many other Republicans, appears to be a person inclined to authoritarianism.
Erich Fromm, a German-Jewish psychoanalyst who fled Nazism, described authoritarian personalities as simultaneously craving power and submission. “The authoritarian character loves those conditions that limit human freedom; he loves being submitted to fate,” he wrote. Fate, in his formulation, can be the laws of the market, the will of God, or the whims of a leader. According to Fromm, authoritarians might make a show of valuing freedom and independence — watchwords of the American right — but long to be ruled by a stronger force.
Viewed this way, it’s not surprising that religious conservatives have been among Trump’s most ardent fans. Certainly, it’s understandable that people on the right would try to get what they can out of this president. But the relationship between Trump and many Republicans increasingly looks less like a marriage of convenience than a sadomasochistic affair.
. . . .
It is, as they say, not normal for erstwhile law-and-order Republicans to attack the F.B.I. for being overzealous in its pursuit of Russian subversion. Nunes’s inquiry appears similar to Trump’s voter fraud commission, invented to substantiate right-wing fantasies about Democratic vote rigging. The point, in both cases, is to flesh out a lie rather than find the truth. Hannah Arendt once wrote of this sort of policy-as-disinformation: “Totalitarianism will not be satisfied to assert, in the face of contrary facts, that unemployment does not exist; it will abolish unemployment benefits as part of its propaganda.”
For the past year, a lot of us have assumed that Republicans are putting up with Trump out of fear of their base or lust for tax cuts. We’ve imagined that beneath our mutual partisan loathing lies some remaining shared commitment to liberal democracy. Maybe that’s true, and Republicans will display new independence once tax reform is signed, particularly if support for the president keeps dwindling.
But there’s another possibility, which is that a critical mass of Republicans like being in thrall to a man who seems strong enough to will his own reality, and bold enough to voice their atavistic hatreds. Maybe Trump is changing Republicans, or maybe he’s just giving men like Pence permission to be who they already were.”
Read Michelle’s entire article, aptly named “Fifty Shade of Orange” at the above link. I’ll reluctantly go with “possibility two:” Trump is just giving GOP “closet bigots,” oligarchs, anarchists, racists, theocrats, and neo-Nazis permission publicly to be what they always were underneath. Not a happy thought, but at least we’ll know what we’re up against and why to date most so-called “establishment Republicans” who intend to remain in office have “gone along to get along.”
Remember, at the end of the day, not a single GOP Senator was willing to vote against a fairly obvious “Tax Heist.” That, plus all the “slavish submission” and repulsive flattery of “The Supreme Leader” this week tell you all you need to know about the “Heart and Soul” of the GOP. The country needs “regime change” before it’s too late!
“The Trump administration is considering measures to halt a surge of Central American families and unaccompanied minors coming across the Mexican border, including a proposal to separate parents from their children, according to officials with knowledge of the plans.
These measures, described on the condition of anonymity because they have not been publicly disclosed, would also crack down on migrants living in the United States illegally who send for their children. That aspect of the effort would use data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to target parents for deportation after they attempt to regain custody of their children from government shelters.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has previously considered some of these proposals, but there is renewed urgency within the administration to address an abrupt reversal of what had been a sharp decline in illegal immigration since Trump took office in January.
In November, U.S. agents took into custody 7,018 families, or “family units,” along the border with Mexico, a 45 percent increase over the previous month, the latest DHS statistics show. The number of “unaccompanied alien children,” or UAC, was up 26 percent.
Children’s shelters operated by HHS are at maximum capacity or “dangerously close to it,” an official from the agency said. Overall, the number of migrants detained last month along the Mexico border, 39,006, was the highest monthly total since Trump became president, according to DHS figures.
5:01
In a small city in Upstate New York, ICE arrests drive migrants into hiding
(Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)
The proposals, which have been presented for approval to new DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, were developed by career officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other DHS agencies, administration officials said.
Tyler Houlton, a DHS spokesman, confirmed the agency has “reviewed procedural, policy, regulatory and legislative changes” to deter migrants. Without giving further details, he said some of the measures “have been approved,” and DHS is working with other federal agencies “to implement them in the near future.”
“The administration is committed to using all legal tools at its disposal to secure our nation’s borders, and as a result we are continuing to review additional policy options,” Houlton said.
The most contentious proposal — to separate families in detention — would keep adults in federal custody while sending their children to HHS shelters. This was floated in March by then-Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly, who is now White House chief of staff. He told CNN at the time that the children would be “well cared for as we deal with their parents.”
Kelly did not move forward with the plan, in part because of the backlash it triggered, administration officials said, and also because illegal migration had plunged to historic lows.
Trump administration officials described the measures as unpalatable but necessarily tough policy options to discourage Central American families from embarking on the long, dangerous journey to the border — or hiring smugglers to bring their children north.
2:21
In southern Texas, a rancher explains why he supports Trump but not the wall.
(Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)
“People aren’t going to stop coming unless there are consequences to illegal entry,” one DHS official said.
Migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras represent the largest share of families and children taken into U.S. custody along the border, with many telling border agents that they fear for their lives if sent back to their home countries. The three nations, known as the “Northern Triangle” of Central America, are crippled by gang violence and homicide rates that are among the world’s highest.
Trump administration officials say Central American migrants and the paid smugglers who bring them to the border shamelessly exploit Americans’ compassion, entering the United States illegally and gaming the asylum process.
If a migrant’s stated fear of being sent home is considered “credible,” they enter an asylum process that may take years to adjudicate, and the flood of such petitions in recent years has worsened the backlog of more than 600,000 cases pending in U.S. immigration courts.
Asylum seekers are typically issued work permits while they wait for the process to play out, and when their rejected appeals are exhausted, they often ignore court orders to leave the United States, choosing to remain in the country illegally.
The Trump administration wants to significantly expand immigration detention capacity, and hire more judges and expedite asylum cases to stop migrants from taking advantage of “loopholes” in the asylum process.
The proposal to separate parents from their children is viewed by the agency as a more immediate tool to halt the latest border surge.
DHS has three family detention centers — two in Texas, one in Pennsylvania — with about 2,200 beds available. But legal restrictions on its ability to detain children mean that families are typically given a court date and released from detention not long after they arrive. In November, the three detention centers reached their highest occupancy levels for the year, and they remain near maximum capacity, officials said.
“The parents that would undertake this perilous journey to the United States would be less likely to do it if they knew they would be separated from their kids,” said Andrew R. Arthur, a resident fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to reduce immigration. A former U.S. immigration judge and Republican congressional policy staffer, he called it “a reasonable step to take.”
“It might seem heartless, but it’s more heartless to give them the illusion they’re going to be able to enter the United States freely by hiring a smuggler to come here, because the dangers associated with smuggling along the southwest border are real,” Arthur said.
The unaccompanied minors are typically seeking to reunite with a parent already living illegally in the United States. By law, migrants under age 18 who arrived without a parent must be turned over to HHS within 72 hours of being taken into DHS custody. The shelters where they are housed are designed to be more like boarding schools than grim detention centers.
The minors are placed in the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which seeks to identify an adult sponsor who can take custody of them.
The process takes about six weeks on average, HHS officials say. “It’s a little-known fact that over half of those who enter illegally are placed with a parent already in the United States,” ACF spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said.
The parents, or any other adult seeking to take custody of a child, must submit to an extensive background check that includes information about their immigration status. But administration officials say that information is neither checked against DHS biometric data nor shared with ICE for potential enforcement purposes. The new DHS proposals under consideration would change that.
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If children are forcefully separated from their mothers and fathers, or if parents know they could be arrested or targeted for trying to reunite with their children, migrant advocates say the U.S. government will be inflicting “devastating” trauma on families fleeing Central America because they feel their lives are at risk.
“These measures will only drive families who are vulnerable to exploitation further into the hands of traffickers and smugglers,” said Greg Chen, director of government relations of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
“These are families that have no other choice for their survival,” he said.”
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“Come on, man” clueless claim:
“The parents that would undertake this perilous journey to the United States would be less likely to do it if they knew they would be separated from their kids.”
The hard truth:
“These are families that have no other choice for their survival.”
The Non-White Nationalist reality:
We could absorb all of the “good guys” fleeing from gang violence in the Northern Triangle without any long-term adverse effects; in fact, it would likely help us prosper as a nation, and would be far more “cost-effective” than the various failing “strategies” we now employ, and have employed in the past, in a vain and counterproductive attempt to prevent the inevitable.
I wouldn’t necessarily give everyone a “Green Card” right off the bat. But, we should have a vastly expanded TPS program for the Northern Triangle, keeping open the possibility of eventually issuing everyone who wants to stay and who has demonstrated payment of taxes (something that even native born GOP rich guys, and most notably the Trumpster himself, hate to do) and no serious crimes to eventually qualify for the Green Card.
“A promised year-end deal to protect the young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation collapsed Wednesday as Republicans in Congress — fresh off passage of their tax plan — prepared to punt nearly all remaining must-do agenda items into the new year.
Congressional leaders still hope that before leaving town this week they can pass an $81-billion disaster-relief package with recovery funds for California wildfires and Gulf Coast states hit during the devastating hurricane season. But passage even of that relatively popular measure remained in doubt as conservatives balked at the price tag.
Rather than finish the year wrapping up the legislative agenda, the GOP majorities in the House and Senate struggled over their next steps.
Congressional leaders had hoped to extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, which provides insurance for some 9 million children nationwide, and pass measures to stabilize the Affordable Care Act. Instead, they appeared resigned by the end of the day to simply avoiding a government shutdown Friday by extending into mid-January the deadline for passing money bills and picking up the legislative battles in 2018.
For Dreamers, young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, many of whom have been protesting for weeks at the Capitol, Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat, had a simple message: “I’m sorry.”
“We have a long way to go,” said Durbin, who has led efforts to pass legislation known as the Dream Act in the Senate. “I’m sorry that what we thought would be a moment and an opportunity did not happen.
“At this point it looks unlikely.”
Nearly 800,000 immigrants who were protected under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order are at risk of deportation now that President Trump has announced the end of the program in March. More than 1,000 immigrant advocates arrived in Washington this week pleading with lawmakers to negotiate a legislative solution before leaving town for the Christmas holiday, a deadline for action that Democratic leaders had insisted on earlier this year.
Durbin and others continued to hold out hope that Congress could act on a version of the Dream Act in January. At least one Republican who has been involved in negotiations on the issue, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, predicted a deal was still at hand.
“Bipartisan #DACA bill will be on the Senate floor in January,” he tweeted.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledged Wednesday that he would bring a bill to the Senate floor for a vote that included a DACA fix and border security measures if negotiators can “develop a compromise that can be widely supported by both political parties” by the end of January — a promise that leaves him considerable flexibility.
Dreamer advocates said they would persist, despite their disappointment. “We have never been so close to protection as we are right now,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, 29, the policy director at United We Dream, an immigration advocacy organization. “Whether it’s today or it’s January, immigrant young people are going to continue to grow our base and fight back. It’s about our lives.”
The Dreamers have a broad range of allies. Deep-pocketed Republican donors in the business world, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have urged Congress to pass a bill. Charles Koch, the influential conservative billionaire, joined with Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook this week to write an op-ed supporting the young immigrants.
But negotiations to reach a deal have soured in recent days, according to officials involved in the talks. In a meeting with key senators, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly outlined a wish list of immigration law changes that Trump wanted in exchange for backing a DACA replacement. It included strict limits on new arrivals and went beyond the border security measures both sides already had largely agreed to.
Conservative Republicans who back cuts in legal immigration, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), joined the talks as the two sides moved further apart. The group met again on Wednesday.
Dreamer advocates have pressured Democrats to insist on a bill to resolve the status of the young immigrants even at the price of blocking money for federal agencies and provoking a partial government shutdown.
Democrats, although they are the minority party in both houses, have leverage because many conservative Republicans in the House refuse to vote for spending bills, meaning that GOP leaders must rely on Democrats to pass them. In the Senate, spending bills require 60 votes, so the GOP needs the cooperation of at least eight Democrats.
But although some Democrats said they would refuse to vote for any spending bill that did not solve the DACA issue, many moderates, especially in the Senate, made clear they were not willing to shut down the government over the issue, saying they could still resolve it next month.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who has been under pressure from Dreamers to deliver, blamed Republicans for spending so much time and effort on their tax plan that other issues have been left undone.
“We will get it done,” she told reporters. “It’s shameful that we didn’t, because they’ve been too busy ransacking the middle class, robbing the children’s future and rewarding the rich.”
Meantime, Republicans scrambled to figure out a way forward on the spending and disaster bills, huddling in a basement strategy session late into the evening after celebrating passage of the tax bill at the White House.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) was hoping enough Democrats would join Republicans to approve disaster funds, which include $4.4 billion for California in the aftermath of wildfires.
“If you look what’s in (it) for California, it’s very strong,” he told reporters.
The spending bill would probably be voted on separately from the disaster bill. It would provide a simple continuation of funds for the next few weeks, without the beefed-up Defense money Republicans wanted or the policy measures Democrats pushed for, including renewal of CHIP.
Also set aside, for now, were votes on measures to stabilize Obamacare sought by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) as part of negotiations for her support on the tax bill.
Collins, however, said that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called her Wednesday and told her the House “remains committed to passing legislation to provide for high-risk pools and other reinsurance mechanisms similar to the bipartisan legislation I have introduced.”
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Let’s just focus on the most obvious. Today, the Washington Post and other major media reported that preventable deaths from the “opioid crisis” had slashed an astounding two monthsfrom the life expectancy of a child born in the U.S. during 2017!
Incredible, that in the USA, life expectancy could actually be falling! What’s happening here? (Congress did manage to get it together to pass a “temporary extension” of Children’s Health Insurance Funding.)
In a responsible democracy, one might expect the Government to have read the studies, paid attention, and be working on this problem as the highest domestic national priority!Not in the Trump GOP’s US!
The GOP Congress and the “Trump Kleptocracy” were far, far too caught up in self-congratulatory “victory dances,” and looting the Treasury for the benefit of the “Fattest of Fat Cats” to pay any attention to, or have any realistic plan for combatting, opioid addiction deaths. Even though many such deaths occur in so-called “Trump Country,” the attitude is basically “tough luck suckers.” In other words “Tough Noogies.”
Remember those revoltingly smarmy photos of smug Republicans celebrating gross irresponsibility with Trump today. When the “day of reckoning” for their greed, fundamental inhumanity, and gross irresponsibility arrives, don’t let GOP Trumpsters “off the hook” for their disgusting, irresponsible, selfish, and deadly behavior!
“IN OCTOBER, the government tried and failed to keep an undocumented teenager in federal custody from ending an unwanted pregnancy. Yet officials appear to have learned little from 17-year-old Jane Doe’s victory in court over the government’s effort to keep her from the abortion clinic. Again, it has fought tooth and nail — and failed — to prevent two more pregnant teenagers from getting the medical care they desired.
Since his appointment by President Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), antiabortion activist E. Scott Lloyd has barred federally funded shelters for undocumented minors from “supporting” access to abortion without his approval. Mr. Lloyd has reached out personally to convince some teenagers against ending their pregnancies. Others, like Ms. Doe, are forced to attend “life-affirming options counseling.”
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of two more undocumented teenagers whom ORR blocked from obtaining abortions. Like Ms. Doe, both are pregnant and crossed into the United States without their parents.
Both will now be allowed to get their abortions. A federal district judge allowed one teenager to travel to a clinic as of Monday. And the Justice Department dropped its appeal of the other teenager’s case after discovering that she was 19 years old, not 17 — meaning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not ORR, should take custody of her as an adult. ICE has now released her. But even if it hadn’t, ICE allows undocumented women in its care to obtain abortions as a matter of policy.
The collapse of the court case demonstrates just how absurd ORR’s policy really is. The government acknowledges that the Constitution grants these teenagers the right to an abortion. Yet when a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old have the same right under Roe v. Wade, how can the government justify summarily blocking one from obtaining an abortion but not the other? The rest of the government’s case was equally flimsy. ORR argues that it has no obligation to “facilitate” the procedure — though in each case so far, the logistics and costs have been privately arranged, leaving ORR with the responsibility of simply getting out of the way.
ORR also made the case that the teenagers could simply leave the country or depart federal custody for a government-approved sponsor. But the fact that a person could cross back across the border doesn’t strip her of constitutional rights while in the United States. And each week it takes to find a suitable sponsor makes abortion more difficult and dangerous to obtain.
It’s welcome news that the government is no longer abusing its power over these two vulnerable teenagers. Yet even as the ACLU mounts a broader legal challenge to ORR’s behavior, it’s likely that ORR will continue to trap other undocumented teenagers in the same situation. Mr. Lloyd should abandon this cruel policy.”
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We also learned elsewhere this week that Trump considered withdrawing his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supremes because Gorsuch had the audacity to stand up for his judicial colleagues in the face of outrageous attacks on their professionalism and integrity by Trump.
In other words, Gorsuch threatened to take his oath to uphold the Constitution seriously, rather than putting loyalty to Trump first in the manner of Vice Sycophant Mike Pence and many others in the GOP. (Witness the disgusting display of fawning and “public a— kissing/licking” of Trump by the GOP “establishment” like Ryan and McConnell after they pulled off the biggest heist of public funds for private enrichment in American history,)
Trump has exactly the same expectation of “judges as robed stooges for the executive” as do strongmen and Third World Dictator/Presidents for Life. Think Vladimir Putin, President Xi, President Duterte, or President Sisi want an independent judiciary looking over their shoulders? Neither does Trump! And these guys, not leaders of democracies, are the leaders that Trump admires and wants to emulate.
Scott Lloyd has decided not to follow the Constitution. In a normal Constitutional Government, the DOJ would decline to defend Mr. Lloyd in court, thus forcing him to comply.
But, fellow scofflaw Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions not only has defended Lloyd’s unconstitutional actions but made frivolous arguments in support of Lloyd. He’s even taken his frivolous positions all the way to the Supremes and outrageously made a further frivolous request for sanctions on the ACLU lawyers defending the Constitution!
Ironically, the only time when Sessions, Lloyd, and other GOP restrictionists have any concern for Hispanic children is when they are unborn. Once they are born, Gonzo, Homan, and the restrictionists are eager to abuse Hispanic kids by deporting their parents or siblings, breaking up families, terrorizing their communities, depriving them of support, health care, and education, and generally making their lives as miserable as possible.
Indeed, the Trump/Sessions White Nationalist “strategy” seems to be that if you mistreat US citizen kids of color badly enough, they eventually will leave and never return to exercise their rights. But, I actually think that most will remember what Trump/Sessions & the GOP White Nationalists are doing to them now. Once they become voting age, they can help insure that America is never again subjected to the travesty and preventable horror of the likes of Trump, Sessions, and other White Nationalists holding public office and attempting to force their vile, minority views on immigrants down the unwilling throats of the majority of us.
If private lawyers conducted themselves with such obvious contempt for the Constitution and Courts, they would be facing contempt of court charges, loss of law license (in Gonzo’s case), and possible imprisonment. But, Lloyd and Gonzo are actually flaunting their lawless behaviorand the unwillingness of a Court supposedly “bought and paid for” by the GOP to restrain an out of control GOP Administration.
Until the Supremes get serious about holding Constitutional scofflaws and bullies like Lloyd and Gonzo accountable, finding them in contempt, and throwing them in jail if they continue to abuse the Constitution and the time of the US Courts, the Administration’s all-out assault on the true “rule of law” will continue unabated!
The Trump Administration (certainly not undocumented migrants) is the single greatest threat to the continued existence of American democracy and American greatness. Will we wake up as a nation before it’s too late?
SEUNG MIN KIM, HEATHER CAYGLE and ELANA SCHOR 12/19/2017 08:40 PM EST
Top senactors and White House officials are laying the groundwork for a major immigration deal in January to resolve the fate of young undocumented immigrants whose legal protections were put in limbo by President Donald Trump.
At a Tuesday afternoon meeting with nearly a dozen senators deeply involved in immigration policy, White House chief of staff John Kelly pledged that the administration will soon present a list of border security and other policy changes it wants as part of a broader deal on so-called Dreamers, according to people who attended the meeting. The plan could come in a matter of days, senators said.
About a half-dozen senators have been negotiating a bipartisan package prompted by Trump’s decision to kill the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era executive action that granted work permits to nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came here as minors. Yet the senators could not fully flesh out a deal before they knew what Trump was willing to sign.
“We couldn’t finish this product, this bill, until we knew where the administration was,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has been negotiating a DACA compromise for weeks, said in an interview after the meeting with Kelly. “And that’s why this meeting was so important.”
Congressional Republicans and the White House have long said any DACA deal would need to be paired with security and other enforcement measures. Democrats say that’s fine as long as the provisions weren’t too onerous. But the border security question has been a sticking point for weeks, as senators swapped proposals without cutting a deal, so far.
And while liberal Democrats and grass-roots activists are pressuring Congress to enact permanent legal protections for Dreamers this year, both Democrats and Republicans at the meeting with Kelly said there was a consensus that legislation wouldn’t pass before lawmakers leave Washington. It was one of the clearest sign yet that a Dreamers agreement won’t, to the chagrin of liberals, come before 2018.
“Our belief is that if this matter is not resolved this week — and it’s not likely to be resolved — that come the omnibus and the caps, that we have another chance to finally come up with a bipartisan package of things to include” by mid-January, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who also attended the meeting. “The closer we get [to the March deadline], the more nervous I get, not to mention the way these young people feel. I’m sorry that it’s taken this long.”
Flake said he believes he has a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to hold a cloture vote on the floor on an immigration deal by mid-January, before the next likely deadline to fund the government, Jan. 19.
A spokesman for McConnell did not immediately return a request for comment. But the majority leader said during a Fox News interview that he has talked about the immigration issue with his counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
“No, we’ll not be doing DACA … this week,” McConnell said. “That’s a matter to be discussed next year. The president has given us until March to address that issue. We have plenty of time to do it.”
At the Tuesday meeting, Kelly and other administration officials went into detail about how much of the southern border is currently fenced and how much more the White House would want in exchange for a DACA deal, according to people who attended.
Senators also pressed the White House on other immigration demands, such as an overhaul of the nation’s asylum system or a change in policy toward unaccompanied minors who are apprehended at the southern border, and whether they needed to be included in the current DACA talks.
“Which of those policy items, or immigration law changes, do we need to make as part of this and what can wait for something else?” Flake said, summing up the questions from senators. “There’s a lot of nice things we need to do as part of broader comprehensive reform, but we need to have a bill in January and we need to know what has to be in it and what the administration will support.”
The bipartisan group of senators — Flake and Durbin, Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) — has discussed a legalization plan that would marry the DREAM Act, drafted by Durbin and Graham, with a more conservative proposal for Dreamers written by Tillis and Lankford, Flake said.
Those seven senators attended Tuesday’s meeting with Kelly, as did Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia.“I think what we’re trying to do is to get some clarity from the administration on what they require by way of border security and other enforcement measures,” Cornyn said as he left the meeting. “We got a promise to provide it to us and hopefully we’ll get that in short order. Maybe even this week.”
Republicans’ commitment to taking up a DACA deal next month won’t spare Democrats the fury of liberal groups that have demanded that any spending bill this year include a solution for Dreamers.
Democratic leaders have signaled that they won’t risk a government shutdown this month to secure relief for the Dreamers, though some lawmakers have vowed to withhold their votes for any must-pass funding measure without an immigration fix.
Durbin, the influential second-ranking Senate Democrat, is firmly in the camp of senators who won’t vote for a spending bill without help for Dreamers. That group also includes liberal Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Durbin was asked by reporters Tuesday if there was a divide between him and Schumer over where to draw the line on the issue, and acknowledged that there “may be.”
Schumer, for his part, put Republicans on notice Tuesday that they shouldn’t count on Democratic votes for a short-term funding package that includes just some of Democrats’ priorities — such as children’s health insurance — while leaving immigration for next year.
In the House, lawmakers, including several in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, privately say they don’t see a path to secure a legislative fix for Dreamers before the end of the year. They acknowledge that the sides are now positioning themselves for a fight in January.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) touched on dynamics during a private leadership meeting Monday night.
“We need to stick [together] and show that they need us,” said one Democratic member with knowledge of the strategy going into January. Republicans “are not going to be able to keep going on with the CRs. … Then we’re at an inflection point in January.”
That hasn’t stopped some members from making a last-ditch effort to reach a bipartisan agreement, in hopes Democrats can use it as leverage in the House if Republicans need their votes to pass a short-term funding bill later this week.
“I believe that my leadership is gonna close the deal and I have to believe that,” said CHC Chair Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), noting she’s canceled all Christmas travel to stay in Washington and work on a legislative fix.
Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) are behind one effort that would pair a proposal similar to the DREAM Act with border security, according to several members.
And the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of 48 moderate Democrats and Republicans, is preparing to publicly embrace a specific proposal in the next day or two. A subset of the group has been working for weeks to hammer out an agreement and the entire caucus planned to meet again Tuesday night.
“There’s certainly scenarios where this could get done this week. I’m not an expert on how all these pieces could unfold,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a co-chairman of the group. “But everything is clearly on the table, which is why we think it’s important we move and move quickly here.”
Cristiano Lima contributed to this report
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Ironically, as I’ve pointed out before, the controversial “Border Wall” seems to be the least overtly harmful to humans and the long-term interests of the US of the various unnecessary enforcement measures the GOP has put out there in negotiations. Yeah, it is a waste of money, a boondoggle for certain contractors, and makes us look like a nation of scared nincompoops.
But, ending normal family migration (or as GOP White Nationalists pejoratively have termed it “chain migration”), funding the “New American Gulag,” and/or providing more unneeded agents for the Trump-Sessions-Bannon “American Gestapo” all will do much more long-term damage to actual human beings and to the economic future and social fabric of our country,
Perhaps, at some better time in the future, we could pay a diverse group of native and immigrant workers to tear down “The Wall” as part of our gala Fourth of July celebration on TV. Or, it could work as part of the celebration of the birthday of President Ronald Reagan. Or, we could implode The Wall on national TV.
‘People here live in fear’: MS-13 menaces a community seven miles from the White House
By Michael E. Miller and Dan Morse December 20 at 8:00 AM
Abigail Bautista, 34, of Langley Park, Md., describes what MS-13 did to her and then to her son. “People here live in fear,” she said. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
It took Abigail Bautista less than a month of living in Langley Park to learn that her new neighborhood in Maryland had its own set of laws, written not in statutes but in gang graffiti and blood.
The Guatemalan mother of five was pushing a cart of merchandise along University Boulevard one winter morning in late 2012 when three young men approached.
“Do you know who we are?” one asked her in Spanish.
Bautista shook her head.
“We are La Mara Salvatrucha,” he said. “And here, there are rules.”
Pay $60 “rent” per week or there would be trouble, he said. Undocumented and afraid of being deported if she went to police, Bautista began handing over the cash.
She had heard of the international street gang growing up in Central America, where MS-13, as it’s known, controls cities through brutality and corruption. But she had lived for the better part of a decade in the United States without crossing its path.
Now, she realized, she’d unwittingly moved into MS-13 territory a mere seven miles from the White House.
As the gang has grown in strength in recent years, so has its sway over communities across the country. From Boston to Northern Virginia to Houston, a string of grisly MS-13 murders has highlighted its resurgence, drawing a response from the White House.
“One by one, we’re liberating our American towns,” President Trump said this summer in Long Island, where MS-13 has been linked to more than a dozen recent killings.
Left out of Trump’s speeches, however, is the fact that most of the gang’s victims are not Americans but undocumented immigrants like Bautista. And when it comes to the gang’s infamous motto of “kill, rape, control,” it’s the third — enforced daily through extortion and intimidation — that defines life for some immigrants in places such as Langley Park.
“They are preying on the communities that they are living in,” said Michael McElhenny, a supervisory special agent for the FBI in Maryland.
More than a decade after a string of MS-13 killings shook the heavily Latino neighborhood, Langley Park is still struggling to shake off the gang’s influence. Despite aggressive policing, the area continues to be plagued by MS-13 drug dealing, prostitution, robbery, extortion and murder, according to court records and interviews with residents, activists, prosecutors and gang experts, as well as local and federal law enforcement officials.
. . . .
Federal authorities say the racketeering case and two other recent MS-13 indictments show they are serious about again dismantling the gang in Maryland. But Bautista won’t be satisfied until authorities lock up the man she suspects of leading MS-13 in Langley Park.
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Two weeks after her son’s body was found, and a few days before his vigil, she said, a letter was slipped under her door.
“If you keep talking, there will be consequences,” it warned in childlike handwriting, according to Bautista.
It was signed, she said, by the roofer.
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Read the entire, much longer, article at the link.
One thing is clear: The gang problem isn’t going to be “solved” by having having clueless, anti-Hispanic, White Guys like Trump and Sessions uttering threats against the entire immigrant community from Washington.
No, the irony is that prosecutions and deportations, although they might rack up impressive statistics, really don’t bother gangs much. Gangs control big chunks of the prisons, both in the US and, even moreso, in the Northern Triangle. To some extent, a prison sentence is just a “temporary work reassignment.”
And, deportations: well that’s actually how the MS-13 grew, when the US deported LA gang members to El Salvador during the Reagan Administration without thinking about how to deal with the long term problem — how they would grow to control and terrorize the places to which they were being deported.
It doesn‘t take a “rocket scientist” (just someone smarter and less racist than Trump and Sessions) to figure out that the overheated anti-immigrant rhetoric that lumps gang members with generally law abiding workers and asylum applicants is a “made to order” recruitment tool for the MS-13 and other gangs.
”Trump and Sessions don’t respect you and don’t want you in America. They don’t even like the ‘good’ immigrants, so don’t waste your time on the false ‘American Dream.’ We’re you’re ‘REAL’ family that isn’t afraid of Trump, and will give you power, respect, and control, as long as you remain loyal to us. What’s Trump got to offer Hispanic youth?”
Reducing gang violence will require a nuanced, time consuming, labor intensive multi-cultural approach that:
Treats Hispanic youth, documented and undocumented, with respect and shows them they are valued by society;
Provides positive role models from the Hispanic community;
Gives youth viable alternatives to gangs;
Gains the trust of all members of the Hispanic community, whether documented or not;
Involves bilingualism, more Hispanic police officers, and potentially dangerous undocover operations in the community;
Recognizes and deals with the problems of gang control in US prisons;
Deals with the difficult question of what happens when we deport gang members back to the Norther Triangle.
With respect to the latter point, if we merely send U.S. gang members back to terrorize communities in the Northern Triangle, that will lead more terrorized community members to flee to the U.S. The cycle will continue.
The Trump Administration’s ham-handed immigration policies taken from the “White Nationalist restrictionist playbook” will likely only exaberrate the problem of gangs and gang violence in the long run.
As lawmakers reach the final week to decide year-end government funding, negotiations on saving the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program are reaching a fever pitch despite long odds.
Chances remain slim that lawmakers will reach agreement before the end of the year on what to do about DACA, which President Donald Trump has decided to end. Still, talks in both chambers are continuing in the hopes that a last-minute option could be reached or there will be an opportunity early next year, according to sources close to the discussions.
The House and Senate are still divided on what it will do next to fund the government beyond Friday’s deadline. It’s believed that a deal can be reached in the Senate to punt some issues, including DACA, until January, but unclear if Republicans will have the votes in the House.
And if leadership in the House needs a substantial amount of Democratic votes, DACA could very likely be a requirement in a deal.
That’s driving some negotiators to put something out this week, just in case leadership needs a last-minute fix.
The greatest hope for advocates who want to see a version of the program, which protects young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, put into law is the Senate talks.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, has been leading a bipartisan working group with North Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. The pair hosted the group in Durbin’s office for multiple meetings last week, including a Thursday gathering before lawmakers left town that included Republicans James Lankford, Cory Gardner, Jeff Flake and staff from Sen. Thom Tillis and Democrat Michael Bennet.
After the meeting, Durbin said a deal was “starting to take form” but work remained. Tillis earlier that day estimated the group was “maybe a third of the way there,” saying what a DACA piece should look like was mostly done, but still unresolved is what border security and reform to “chain migration,” or family-based migration, which the President has repeatedly demanded, will be included.
Tillis and Lankford both said January was a more likely time for a resolution than December.
On the House side, moderate Republicans are working with Democratic colleagues to try to put together some compromise options, with Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo pushing especially hard to get something public quickly.
Curbelo is working on both an effort among the bipartisan centrist Problem Solvers Caucus. In a separate effort, Texas Republican Rep. Will Hurd, has pledged to join Democrats in not supporting government funding that doesn’t include DACA.
“At the very least, those of us who have been calling for this compromise and demanding that it get done by the end of the year should have something to show,” Curbelo said last week.
Possible bipartisan options to pair with DACA include border security investments, adjusting the diversity lottery and a version of Kate’s Law, which increases penalties on undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes, Curbelo said.
According to a House Republican aide, the Problem Solvers and the other member-driven effort are both working with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on shaping a deal. The Problem Solvers would have a version of the Dream Act and Curbelo’s Recognizing America’s Children Act, which offer pathways to citizenship, paired with border security and some visa changes. The other proposal is focused more on an adjusted Dream Act with a border security investment that is not Trump’s proposed border wall.”
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When it comes to looking for ways to make America weaker, line the pockets of the rich, screw the middle class and poor, and loot the country for their own personal gain, Trump & the GOP seem to have endless time. When it comes to governing for the public good, not so much.
That’s the problem with the Trump GOP’s “Clown 🤡 Kleptocracy!”
Maria’s always “on top” of the almost daily examples of cruel, intentionally inhumane, unconstitutional, wasteful “Gonzo” Enforcement by the Trump regime. Here is some of what she reports on the deadly conditions in “NAG:”
“The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security has criticized several immigration detention facilities for having spoiled and moldy food and inadequate medical care, and for inappropriate treatment of detainees, such as locking down a detainee for sharing coffee and interfering with Muslims’ prayer times.
Acting Inspector General John V. Kelly, who took over Dec. 1, said the watchdog agency identified problems at four detention centers during recent, unannounced visits to five facilities. The Dec. 11 report , released Thursday, said the flaws “undermine the protection of detainees’ rights, their humane treatment, and the provision of a safe and healthy environment.”
“Staff did not always treat detainees respectfully and professionally, and some facilities may have misused segregation,” the report found, adding that observers found “potentially unsafe and unhealthy detention conditions.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails tens of thousands of immigrants for civil immigration violations, holding them until they are deported or released in the United States. The jails are not supposed to be punitive, according to the report.
ICE concurred with the inspector general’s findings and said it is taking action to fix the problems, some of which have already been addressed.
“Based on multi-layered, rigorous inspections and oversight programs, ICE is confident in conditions and high standards of care at its detention facilities,” the agency said in a statement. “To ensure the safety and well-being of those in our custody, we work regularly with contracted consultants and a variety of external stakeholders to review and improve detention conditions at ICE facilities.”
The Office of Inspector General said it launched the surprise inspections after receiving complaints from immigrant advocacy groups and on its hotline about treatment of detainees. The inspectors also interviewed staff members and detainees and examined records.
Advocates for immigrants said the report reaffirmed their long-standing calls for the detention facilities to be closed. Advocates have complained about reports of physical and sexual assaults, deaths in detention and other concerns for years under past presidents — and say their worries are increasing under President Trump.
Trump has pledged to dramatically increase deportations and is seeking congressional approval for more than 51,000 detention beds this fiscal year, up from about 30,000 under President Barack Obama.
Trump’s pick for the permanent director of ICE, Thomas D. Homan, previously ran the ICE detention system.
“The realities documented by the OIG inspectors, and many more, are endemic to the entire detention system,” Mary Small, policy director at Detention Watch Network, a nonprofit group that monitors immigration detention, said in a statement. “ICE has proven time and time again to be incapable of meeting basic standards for humane treatment.”
In a statement, Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director of Project South, in Atlanta, cited the death in May of Jean Jimenez-Joseph. The 27-year-old Panamanian national was held in solitary confinement for 19 days at the Stewart Detention Center in rural Georgia, according to Project South.
Shahshahani said his death “should have served as a final wake-up call and resulted in the immediate closure of the facility.”
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The Administration tries to hide, obscure, cover up, and bureaucratize what’s happening in the NAG. But, thanks to courageous reporters like Maria, the truth isn’t going to be suppressed. Read the rest of Maria’s report at the link.
Is this YOUR America? Is this the America you want YOUR children and grandchildren to read about and inherit?
Gee whiz, what were my parents and grandparents doing while neo-Nazis were invading the government and recreating the “Fourth Reich?”
And, when are the Article III Courts going to get some backbone to go with their lifetime sinicure and stand up for the Constitution and human decency before it’s too late? When good people stand by and do nothing, tyrants like Trump, Sessions, Homan, Bannon, and their corrupt supporters will have their way!
Tell your legislators:
NO to Tom Homan as ICE Director;
NO to funding for the NAG;
NO to funding DOJ’s corrupt defense of the NAG and Gonzo Immigration Enforcement;
NO to additional unneeded DHS Enforcement agents;
YES to legislative and criminal investigations of the unconstitutional activities of Gonzo, Nielsen, Homan, and their cronies and the human rights abuses they are knowingly creating by misusing the immigration laws;
YES to “Dreamer Relief” with “no strings attached;”
YES to immigration reform that legalizes law-abiding residents already here and provides additional legal visas for the future to end the “false criminalization” of needed workers and refugees!
Stand up for America as a Nation of Immigrants — Stand up for human decency — Stand against Trump, Nielsen, Sessions, Homan, Bannon, Miller and the other neo-Nazis promoting the NAG!
“Doug Jones, weeks away from taking office as Alabama’s first Democratic senator since 1996, is not done talking about his win. On Wednesday, as national TV cameras rolled, he spent 26 minutes talking about his goals for 2018. On Thursday, he talked to the hosts of “Pod Save America” — a tastemaking podcast for liberals — about how he won. And on Sunday, he will be interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox broadcast channel, and the show will be repeated later in the day on Fox News — a cable channel on which many Democrats refuse to appear.
So far, Jones has not made much news since his victory, ducking the Democratic fight over whether he should be seated in time to cast a vote on the GOP tax bill. (“We’ve still got a process in Alabama that we have to go though,” he said on “Pod Save America.”) He’s said more about how he won — as a “kitchen table” pragmatist and critic of Republican policy — and his hope that the South’s Republican dominance may start to crack.
“I believe we are on the road to having a competitive two-party state,” Jones said at Wednesday’s news conference.
Jones had been talking like that for months, though rarely before a national audience, and not in stump speeches. But as Republicans knew, and as they failed to exploit Tuesday, Jones did not run as a conservative and rarely took the Trump administration’s side on key issues. Most of Jones’s television ads, especially in the last month, portrayed the election as a choice between a Democrat who could “work with anybody” and a Republican who would engage in futile, embarrassing grandstanding.
In interviews, however, Jones often spoke of a different choice for Alabama — whether they wanted to send a new representative of the Deep South to the national stage. In an August interview with The Washington Post, before much national attention had driven toward his campaign, Jones said he would have theoretically opposed Jeff Sessions’s nomination for attorney general. He rattled off the reasons: Sessions was too harsh on voting rights and criminal-justice issues.”
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Jones might have added “bigot, racist, xenophobe, White Nationalist, homophobe, Islamophobe, bully, liar, theocrat, sexist, and “D-grade legal mind,” to the reasons. But, we get the point. Even in Alabama, Sessions’s obvious bias, retrograde views, and general lack of qualifications for high office were well known.
In other words, if you remove the pedophelia, the ridiculous leather vest, poor little pony, waving pistol, and totally obnoxious wife, then “Gonzo” is “Ayatollah Roy.”
Unfortunately, Gonzo has been able to do even more damage to our country, our Constitution, and our future (e.g.,our “Dreamers“) as an appointed official than he was in the Senate (perhaps because he was so, well, “Gonzo,” that even in his own party nobody took his “parallel universe” 1950’s segregationist view of America seriously). Probably happy enough to get rid of him as a colleague, the GOP inflicted him on the entire nation!
But, the majority of Americans who don’t believe in Gonzo’s “Apocalyptic Vision” don’t have to put up with this travesty indefinitey. Hopefully, working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and drawing on the abysmal record of “Gonzo in action,” Doug Jones will be able to use “the system” to work cooperatively with others to remove the most stunningly unqualified Attorney General since John Mitchell from office.
A woman holds up a sign outside the U.S. Capitol in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on Dec. 5. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
By Tim Cook and Charles KochDecember 14
Tim Cook is chief executive of Apple. Charles Koch is chairman and chief executive of Koch Industries.
The holidays are upon us, and families across the United States are coming together to celebrate. Yet for about 690,000 of our neighbors, colleagues and friends, this holiday season is marked by uncertainty and fear.
These are the “dreamers” — children of undocumented immigrants who are working, in countless ways, to make the United States stronger. Unless Congress acts, this holiday season might be the last one the dreamers get to spend in the country they love and call home.
We must do better. The United States is at its best when all people are free to pursue their dreams. Our country has enjoyed unparalleled success by welcoming people from around the world who seek to make a better life for themselves and their families, no matter what their backgrounds. It is our differences that help us to learn from each other, to challenge our old ways of thinking and to discover innovative solutions that benefit us all. To advance that prosperity and build an even stronger future, each successive generation — including, today, our own — must show the courage to embrace that diversity and to do what is right.
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We have no illusions about how difficult it can be to get things done in Washington, and we know that people of good faith disagree about aspects of immigration policy. If ever there were an occasion to come together to help people improve their lives, this is it. By acting now to ensure that dreamers can realize their potential by continuing to contribute to our country, Congress can reaffirm this essential American ideal.
This is a political, economic and moral imperative. The sooner Congress resolves this situation — on a permanent basis — the sooner dreamers can seize the opportunity to plan their lives and develop their talents.
This extraordinary set of circumstances has brought the two of us together as co-authors. We are business leaders who sometimes differ on the issues of the day. Yet, on a question as straightforward as this one, we are firmly aligned.
As a matter of both policy and principle, we strongly agree that Congress must act before the end of the year to bring certainty and security to the lives of dreamers. Delay is not an option. Too many people’s futures hang in the balance.
Both of our companies are fortunate to have dreamers on our teams. We know from experience that the success of our businesses depends on having employees with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. It fuels creativity, broadens knowledge and helps drive innovation. For our nation to maximize progress and prosperity, we need more, not fewer, talented people at the table.
Another foundation of our country’s success is our consistent and equal application of the law. In a free nation, individuals must be able to trust that when our government makes a promise, it is kept. Having laws that are reliable is what gives people the confidence to plan their futures and to invest in their businesses, their communities and themselves.
The United States should not hold hard-working, patriotic people hostage to the debate over immigration — or, worse, expel them because we have yet to resolve a complex national argument. Most Americans agree. In fact, more than 8 in 10 Americans support a straightforward solution to allow dreamers to stay.
No society can truly flourish when a significant portion of its people feel threatened or unable to fulfill their potential. Nor can it prosper by excluding those who want to make positive contributions. This isn’t just a noble principle; it’s a basic fact, borne out through our national history.
Dreamers are doing their part. They have shown great faith in the United States by coming forward, subjecting themselves to background checks, and submitting personal and biometric data.
Now, the rest of us need to do our part. Congress should act quickly, ideally before year’s end, to ensure that these decent people can work and stay and dream in the United States. As a nation, we must show that the dreamers’ faith in our word and goodwill was not misplaced. And we should make clear that the United States welcomes their contributions as part of our national life.
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I agree with every word.
My only question: Why are Ol’ Charlie and his bro David (the “Koch Bros”) bankrolling a GOP that has been taken over by repulsive, dishonest, backward looking, fundamentally dumb, anti-American guys like Trump, Sessions, Bannon, Miller and their racist, White Nationalist, xenophobic, homophobic, religiously intolerant, exclusionary agenda of hate, fear, and loathing, which if followed to its logical conclusion, would destroy America and quite possibly the world?
Even though the Koch Bros are White, many of the employees they depend on to maintain their billionaire status aren’t White, Christian, straight, or U.S. citizens. They have no place in the Trump GOP’s vision of America. Trump and his band wouldn’t exempt the Koch Bros from their planned Armageddon just because of their Whiteness or past services to the party.
So, why keep supporting these heinous individuals and their anti-American agenda? The only reason we have this problem is because a minority of voters with incredibly poor judgement and total disregard for the common good, in an intentionally gerrymandered America, voted for the absurdly unqualified Trump rather than the clearly more qualified candidate. And, if the Kochs had supported Clinton, America would be closer to the place that Charlie Koch and Tim Cook describe in their article. Indeed, the whole costly, divisive, and totally unnecessary self-created “Dreamer Disaster” need never have occurred. What do you expect when you enable a racist xenophobe like Jeff Sessions (who doesn’t know much, if any, law either) to serve as our Attorney General?
At some point, decent folks (and, I’d be willing to admit the Kochs into that company even if I don’t agree with them on most things) who believe in America have to either 1) support Democrats, or 2) form an honest Third Party that excludes the White Nationalist haters. Today’s GOP is not that party.
Realizing that I actually have a fundamental area of agreement with the Koch Bros makes their overall conduct all the more inexplicable.
“For Democrats, a tough choice on DACA
By: Lauren Fox and Tal Kopan, CNN
With just two weeks until Congress is expected to leave town, the fate of roughly 700,000 young immigrants still hangs in the balance.
And, it could be up to Senate Democrats now to decide whether they will make protections for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients a condition of their support for a must-pass spending bill or punt the issue to next year when they still have months to work it out.
There’s a whole host of issues that must be dealt with by the end of the year including reauthorizing a spying program, funding disaster relief and paying for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which has all sparked questions about whether Democrats will insist DACA also be included in that list of year-end spending priorities.
“There’s no reason it can’t get done, but there’s a lot that needs to be done in the next 10 days,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a member of the Senate Democrats’ leadership, said about DACA on Monday evening. “We have the CHIP re-authorization, we need the budget numbers, we have to have some decisions on a number of things.”
Asked if Democrats would reject a spending bill that punted DACA to January, independent Maine Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats, said, “I can’t answer that.”
Republican leaders have thrown cold water on the idea that a DACA deal could get attached to a year-end spending package, leading to questions about whether Democrats — under pressure from their base — would shut down the government over a program that doesn’t begin to expire fully until March. Activists and some Democratic members point out that the must-pass spending deadline could be the party’s best opportunity to exert pressure on Republicans who don’t want a government shutdown to occur when they control all levers of government.
“That’s a complex question that’s not amenable to a simple answer. There’s a whole lot of things that are not resolved right now. Republicans control the whole government — House, Senate and White House. We are what, 69, 70 days past CHIP authorization. I’ve got folks pressing every day on wildfire relief, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico … CHIP and Dreamers,” said Sen. Chris Coons of Deleware, a Democrat. “I think we ought to be able to fix all of that, and if it takes another week or two to resolve all of those, I think folks will forgive us. But I don’t think we should go home or close out the year without a clear path to resolving it.”
Most Democrats in the Senate say they are optimistic that an immigration bill will be passed by the end of the year or close to it and that they’ll never be forced to decide between funding the government or giving certainty to DACA recipients. But, with fewer than two weeks until Congress faces its spending deadline and no real, concrete compromise on DACA at this point, it’s unclear how Democrats will proceed if they are faced with no solutions for young immigrants.
“There’s still some negotiations going on between some Democrats and some Republicans about how to get this done,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire. “I’m hopeful that will produce a positive outcome.”
Talks have circled for months on a fix to DACA, but sticking points remain. Working groups and bipartisan negotiations have formed and faltered in both chambers, with some continuing under the radar even as leadership focuses on bigger picture issues like tax reform and spending cap negotiations. On the House side, rank-and-file members in the Problem Solvers Caucus are trying to reach a bipartisan compromise, while Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois continues to negotiate with a range of Republicans interested in a deal on the Senate side.
Pressure has been increasing on leadership from both sides as the end of the year looms. Democrats on the left, especially Congressional Hispanic Caucus members in the House, have pushed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California to hold firm on wanting something by the end of the year. Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez said it would be a “betrayal” to push the fight until January, and just last week Pelosi pledged to not go home for the year without a fix.
Moderate Republicans have also sought to push their leadership for a fix by the end of the year, with nearly three dozen House Republicans urging House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to come up with a solution by then. But on the other side, conservatives like the House Freedom Caucus have also threatened a political price if Ryan were to attach a deal to a spending package.
In private, Democratic staff have been concerned about being able to reach a compromise by the end of the year, and whether Republicans will cave in the face of a potential shutdown, potentially forcing Democrats’ hand. Still, at least one Senate Democratic aide on Monday remained optimistic, saying back room talks were making more progress than public posturing might indicate.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, who has been working on a DACA deal, said he wouldn’t negotiate publicly about what Democrats will do if a deal isn’t reached by the end of the year, but that his group continues to work.
“It should have been done five months ago,” the Vermont Democrat said.
Throughout the entire process, President Donald Trump has remained the mystery. Lawmakers know that his blessing could allow a deal to happen rapidly — while his public opposition to a deal could prove its death knell. The President had spoken favorably in September about DACA recipients and pushed Congress to reach a deal, but in recent weeks ne has taken to hardline rhetoric on illegal immigration and blaming Democrats for crime.
Republicans — who do support a fix to DACA — say that it’s still an open question whether a deal will come together by the holiday, but that no matter what, they hope to see Republicans and Democrats come together to keep the government funded.
“I support marrying up DACA reform to border security and a break in chain migration on the spending bill,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. “I support that. I’m not going to shut down the government over it.”
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What’s going to happen with DACA was a major area of concern on the Spanish language radio programs I did in Richmond, VA last Friday. As I said on radio, I remain “cautiously optimistic” on an eventual legislative solution for “Dreamers.” But, probably not before the end of this year. Stay tuned! And many thanks to Tal & Lauren for staying “on top” of this story which is so important for so many!
