Another child has died in the custody of U.S. immigration officials. Felipe Alonzo-Gomez was taken to a hospital in New Mexico on Monday and released after treatment for a cold and fever. He was given antibiotics and ibuprofen. He was brought back to the hospital Monday night and died a few hours later. This is the second Guatemalan child to die in U.S. custody in December. Jakelin Caal, a 7-year-old girl died earlier this month.
Merry fucking Christmas.
CBP: 8-year-old Guatemalan child apprehended by CBP dies Christmas Day (Kelsie Blazier/ABC15.com) (Photo: CBPPhotos/Flickr) Read the rest
Government procurement data reveals that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Agency have each spent tens of thousands of dollars on products from Houston's Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC, which specializes in fake streetlight housings designed to conceal surveillance cameras.
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Most of America's 9,000 7-Eleven stores are owned by franchisees, many of them immigrants; the owners' contracts with 7-Eleven corporate allows the company to pull their franchises if they violate US law.
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In their 'No Tech For ICE' report, Mijente details how firms like Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir plan to profit from the detention and deportations of migrants. Read the rest
Despite an uprising of Amazon employees over the use of the company's AI facial recognition program ("Rekognition") in law enforcement, the company is actively courting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the hopes that it will use the wildly inaccurate technology.
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When wind blows over the snow of Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, the surface vibrates and produces a beautiful and eery drone. Colorado State University researchers deployed seismometers to explore the subsurface of the ice shelf and were surprised to learn that their sensors recorded the natural song of the terrain. The frequencies are below the threshold of human hearing and are sped up for audibility in the video above. From the scientific paper:
Ice shelves are the floating buttresses of large glaciers that extend over the oceans and play a key role in restraining inland glaciers as they flow to the sea. Deploying sensitive
seismographs across Earth’s largest ice shelf (the Ross Ice Shelf) for 2 years, we discovered that the shelf
nearly continuously sings at frequencies of five or more cycles per second, excited by local and regional
winds blowing across its snow dune-like topography. We find that the frequencies and other features of
this singing change, both as storms alter the snow dunes and during a (January 2016) warming event
that resulted in melting in the ice shelf’s near surface. These observations demonstrate that seismological
monitoring can be used to continually monitor the near-surface conditions of an ice shelf and other icy
bodies to depths of several meters.
More at Colorado State University News.
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Tech-sector workers have enormous market-power: companies find it easier to raise cash than to use it to hire qualified developers.
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This is completely insane. Trump's ICE squads are sending separated under-5 children back to countries of origin without telling the kids' families. This week, U.S. Immigration officials sent a 4-year-old separated child from the U.S. to Guatemala City, an extremely dangerous place, without even telling her relatives in Guatemala that she was coming home. Read the rest
As the Carolinas prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Florence, currently a Category 4 storm, Senator Jeff Merkley appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show with a document that shows $10,000,000 was diverted from FEMA's budget to pay for ICE detention centers.
It's believed the transfer of funds took place at the beginning of summer. You know, right before the start of hurricane season. And if that's not enough to make your blood boil, this video of Trump calling his administration's handling of Puerto Rico during and after Hurricane Maria "an incredible, unsung success" should do the trick.
I'm sure Carolinians are relieved the President of the United States considers 3000 dead Americans an incredible, unsung success. No worries, Outer Banks! He'll be there to throw paper towels at you soon.
Trump admin took millions from FEMA for ICE detentions [MSNBC] Read the rest
“America is at stage two Islamic Cancer,” says the founder of ACT for America. Why exactly is Thomas Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), speaking at their upcoming event in Washington, D.C.? And he only retired in June. Read the rest
ProPublica's Michael Grabell and Topher Sanders obtained police reports and call logs from more than 70 of the 100 shelters housing immigrant children.
What the documents reveal: “If you're a predator, it's a gold mine.” Read the rest
A 6-year old girl separated from her mom under Trump's "zero tolerance" policy was sexually abused inside a Southwest Key shelter in Arizona, reports The Nation. Read the rest
More horrifying news from Donald Trump's racist 'zero tolerance' war on brown asylum seekers. Read the rest
“I am requesting to reunite with my child...”
The Southern Poverty Law Center says this is a form some of their clients who have been detained under Donald Trump's racist “zero tolerance” program have been presented with, to request that ICE give back their children.
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James Schwab worked as federal employee for 17 years, serving in the military, at the Department of Defense and NASA. His last gig with the government was as a spokesperson for ICE under President Obama and President Trump. After close to 20 years in the trenches, many career government employees would have a thousand-yard stare fixed squarely on their retirement. Schwab? Not so much: he resigned from ICE three months ago, rather than be complicit in spreading significant levels of disinformation to the American people. Put an emphasis on significant: Schwab, like many PR pros, was comfortable with a certain amount of bullshit flowing out from between his lips. But as he outlines in this video, there are limits.
Three months after he resigned, two Department of Homeland Security investigators showed up at his front door, looking to question him, allegedly, to intimidate him into keeping quiet about what he was privy to while working for ICE. It just so happened that a CBS This Morning news crew was at Schwab's home, interviewing him when the investigators knocked on his front door.
The Investigators told CBS' Jamie Yuccas and a surprised sounding Schwab that they were there to investigate the leaking of information to the Mayor of Oakland about an ICE operation that took place earlier this year.
Not greasy at all. Nope. Read the rest
One of the more fascinating and horrible details in Reuters' thoroughly fascinating and horrible long-form report on Trump's cruel border policies is this nugget: ICE hacked the risk-assessment tool it used to decide whom to imprison so that it recommended that everyone should be detained.
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Last night, a group of culture jammers called Indecline improved a "1-800-GOT-JUNK?" billboard on a highway in Emeryville, California, just east of San Francisco. The billboard previously said "We make junk disappear" and they fixed it to read "We make kids disappear - ICE."
In a statement sent to the media, Indecline stated that the modification was a response to "President Trump's handling of the current immigration crisis, particularly, the separation of young children from their families."
Indecline also posted the following documentation of their work:
(SFGate) Read the rest
