Police State America

“Tonk” is defined by agents as “the sound heard when a ‘wetback’ is hit over the head with a flashlight.”  By Tim Dickinson Rolling Stone (6/13/19) In the days before he allegedly struck a 23-year-old undocumented Guatemalan man with a government-issued Ford F-150, Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen sent a text to a fellow agent. In the exchange, which federal prosecutors now claim offers “insight into his view of the aliens he apprehends,” Bowen railed against unauthorized migrants who’d thrown rocks at a colleague as “mindless murdering savages” and “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling for a fire.” The…

‘Sea Rescues Have Been Criminalized’ As Heroic German Boat Captain Faces 20 Years In Prison For Saving Refugees “That she faces 20 years in jail in 2019 for saving refugees lost at sea, indicts the EU for hypocrisy and abetting crimes against humanity for allowing Italy to conduct a show trial.” By Eoin Higgins Common Dreams (6/11/19) A German boat captain faces a long and costly trial in Italy for charges targeting her humanitarian efforts on behalf of refugees. Captain Pia Klemp, 35, told Basler Zeitung on June 7 that her upcoming trial in Italy for years of efforts with the civilian lifeboat “Iuventa”…

By Rachel Levinson-Waldman The Hill (5/29/19) In June 2018, more than 400,000 people protested the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border. The following month saw a host of demonstrations in New York City on issues including racism and xenophobia, the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the National Rifle Association. Given the ease of connecting online, it is unsurprising that many of these events got an organizing boost on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. A recent spate of articles did bring a surprise, however: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been watching online too. Congress should demand…

“This is a practice that exposes detainees to real psychological and physiological harm.” By Spencer Woodman, Maryam Saleh, Hannah Rappleye & Karrie Kehoe International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (5/20/19) DULCE RIVERA LIVED for the one hour a day she was allowed outside, to pace alone on a patch of concrete encased in metal fencing. They called it “the yard,” but it was really a metal cage. Still, it was far better than the misery she endured the other 23 hours a day, locked alone in a cell with no one to talk to and nothing to distract her from her increasingly dark thoughts. Rivera, a 36-year-old transgender…

Downplaying the dangers militias pose carries significant risk — risk that will be borne by vulnerable migrants in remote places in the desert.  By Ryan Devereaux The Intercept (4/23/19) LAST WEEK, American vigilantes captured hundreds of migrants — including women and small children — along a darkened stretch of the border in New Mexico. The group, calling itself the United Constitutional Patriots, or UCP, uploaded video of its score to Facebook. Illuminated by the fluorescent glow of flashlights, the shaky footage showed weary mothers, fathers, and toddlers kneeling in the dirt, heads bowed, as the armed men circled around them. The migrants’ captors summoned…

The United Constitutional Patriots are just one in a long line of anti-immigrant groups who try to terrorize the border areas. By Raul A. Reyes NBC News (4/22/19) It speaks volumes about today’s political climate that anti-immigrant domestic terrorists have begun calling themselves border militias, holding unarmed people at gunpoint and feeling so emboldened that they post videos of their activities on social media, including Facebook and YouTube. Luckily, the hubris of at least one group didn’t impress law enforcement: On Saturday, the New Mexico attorney general’s office announced that Larry Hopkins, the leader of the United Constitutional Patriots (which had been detaining migrants…

  Corporations profit from millions of people and their families subjected to unaffordable bail amounts. By Andrea Woods & Alex Rate ACLU (4/17/19) Around 9:20 p.m. on Sunday, April 23, 2017, Eugene Mitchell, Shayleen Meuchell, and their four-year-old daughter were in bed at their home in Lolo, Montana, when they heard a violent crash. “It sounded like a truck had driven straight into our house,” Mitchell later said. In a surreal flash, armed bounty hunters kicked in the front door, broke into the bedroom, pointed assault rifles and pistols at the family, and shouted at them not to move. The bounty…

  By Abby Zimet Common Dreams (4/13/19) Unimaginably, the lows keep going lower. In Texas, Laura Maradiaga-Alvarado, an 11-year-old girl who fled death threats in El Salvador with her terrified family, may now be deported alone thanks to an immigration court’s administrative error, an evil narcissist’s pointless government shutdown, and the prevailing cruelty of his inept regime. Laura, her 15-year-old sister Adamaris, and her mother Dora arrived at the U.S. southern border in October; gang members had begun kidnapping and killing their family members after one relative witnessed a murder and testified in court, and one member of MS-13 had threatened to…

The former homeland security secretary deployed the cynically calculated skills of a careerist technocrat in the cause of Trump’s inhumanity. By Richard Wolffe The Guardian (4/8/19) Of all the charlatans, sycophants and moral sellouts surrounding Donald Trump, no one comes close to Kirstjen Nielsen. Not Steve Bannon, the neo-fascist strategist who glued a thin veneer of ideology on top of the particle board flakes that fill the cranium of a bankrupt property developer. Not Paul Manafort, the ostrich jacket-loving former campaign chairman now serving seven years for being a liar and fraud after servicing a motley crew of tyrants. The Department…

ICE only gets a legit, judge-authorized warrant in 2 of 12 arrests; the rest are illegal. By Abbey Zimet Common Dreams (3/28/19) In the last few days we’ve witnessed the sickening spectacle of hundreds of destitute, powerless, terrified migrants crammed into concentration camps, aka “transitional shelters,” corralled behind razor wire, and forced to sleep on the ground under a bridge in El Paso. This, while our so-called president, bloated with vengeance and hubris, chose to mock those same people for fleeing for their lives, thus confirming he is “genuinely one of the worst human beings in the history of US public life.” Because these are monsters who can…

By Julia Conley Common Dreams (3/25/19) Supporters of U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning are demanding she be released from solitary confinement, in which she has been held for 17 days since refusing to answer a grand jury’s questions. Chelsea Resists!, Manning’s support committee, released a statement over the weekend denouncing her treatment and invoking the United Nations’ own statements about the dangers and injustice of isolation in prisons. “The United States Government has already tortured Chelsea Manning for months. She attempted suicide twice while incarcerated. Now they’re torturing her again.”  “We condemn the solitary confinement that Chelsea Manning has been subjected to…

“I was scared. I was completely by myself,” says sobbing fourth-grader. By Mary Papenfuss HuffPost (3/23/19) A 9-year-old American citizen on her way to school was apprehended by U.S. immigration officials and detained for some 32 hours before she was released back to her family. Federal officials said later that the girl, who was carrying a U.S. passport card with her, gave “inconsistent information.” “I was scared. I didn’t have my mom or my brother. I was completely by myself,” Julia Isabel Amparo Medina told NBC-7 TV in San Diego. Medina, her 14-year-old brother and two friends were being driven to…

There are reports of drug smuggling, suicides, and mixing asylum seekers with convicted criminals. By Richard N. Williams Sojourners Magazine (March 2019 Issue) AT 146 CCA ROAD in Lumpkin, Ga., sits the Stewart Detention Center, one of the nation’s largest immigrant holding facilities. It’s also a multimillion-dollar revenue-generating business. The nearly 2,000-bed facility, originally built as a medium-security prison, is owned and operated by CoreCivic (formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America), the second largest private prison firm in the United States. Private detention centers, such as Stewart, are major sources of revenue for the private prison industry. CoreCivic is currently…

  By Chris Schiano & Freddy Martinez Unicorn Riot (3/6/19) Newly leaked chat logs from the alt-right group Identity Evropa show a continuing dynamic of racism and fascism, despite ongoing attempts to reform their public image following the deadly 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville. Since the violence in Charlottesville turned much of society against the alt-right, Identity Evropa (IE for short) has changed their strategy, focusing on presenting clean “optics” to the exclusion of most other considerations. The group today tries to present itself as entirely nonviolent, with its public appearances carefully groomed by its young leader, Patrick Casey, a…

Officer Unfriendly ***** Hardworking Teen Harassed, Threatened By Cops For The Audacity Of Shoveling Snow From Grandma’s Driveway Without A Permit Police Chief Michael Jannone noted that “We don’t make the laws but we have to uphold them.” By Matt Agorist Activist Post (1/23/19) Normandy, MO — Residents in Normandy, Missouri are questioning a new ordinance they are calling ridiculous which requires anyone who wishes to shovel snow for money—to have a permit. To be clear, this is not just for adults running businesses, but as the following case illustrates, it’s being enforced against children trying to earn some extra money. Charles…

  Democracy Now! (2/13/19) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is publicly accusing the owner of the National Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail,” weeks after the paper revealed details about his extramarital affair. Bezos had recently hired a private investigator to determine how the tabloid newspaper obtained private text messages between him and his lover, and whether the paper’s actions were politically motivated. The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media, Inc., responded to Bezos’s investigation by threatening to publish revealing photos of Bezos if he did not agree to publicly state that the Enquirer’s coverage was not politically motivated or influenced by…

By Julia Conley Common Dreams (1/17/19) Confirming the fears of human rights groups, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported on Thursday that thousands more children were separated from their parents at the southern U.S. border by the Trump administration, long before it first publicly unveiled the family separation policy last spring. “The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown,” reads the report, and the inspector general found that children were separated over a longer period of time as officials “observed a steep increase in the number…

“Everyone was suspicious of everyone. It was infuriating and debilitating for the movement.” By Alleen Brown The Intercept (12/30/18) JESSE HORNE STILL struggles to talk about the day he was kicked out of the anti-Dakota Access pipeline movement. It had been an intense week. Searching for direction and ideological fulfillment ever since Iowa’s stand against the pipeline wound down, the 20-year-old had reconnected with some of the state’s more radical pipeline opponents, and the group was now taking on drone warfare. After a protest outside a drone base in Des Moines in which Horne and several others were arrested, two of his…

  “That scarlet letter sits on these kids’ files forever. When that happens at the immigration level, it’s fatal.”  By Hannah Dreier ProPblica/New York Times Magazine (12/27/18) WHEN ALEX WALKED INTO SCHOOL on June 14, 2017, it felt as if summer had already started. He didn’t have regular classes, just a standardized math test in the late morning. The other immigrant students in the bilingual program at Huntington High were crowded in a hallway comparing their plans for the break — most already had jobs lined up — and promising to stay in touch. Classmates came up to greet him. At 19,…

While most of these statutory powers have never been used, we now have a President who clearly feels unconstrained by the rule of law. By Dartagnan Daily Kos (12/8/18) If the last two years have taught us one thing, it is to take nothing for granted, particularly regarding the stability and resilience of our Republic. We are now witnessing firsthand in Wisconsin and Michigan how one of our two major political parties has become wholly captive to corporate dominance, and how it will behave when its power is taken away by ordinary voters. Instead of accepting the verdict of the people, it will subvert and…