The Trump administration's brazen propaganda game has always been strong, and always finds impressive new ways to out-horrible itself.

So this is really just the latest example of dehumanizing language presented in an official context.

Of course Border Patrol isn't going to let a random group of radical political activists show up and start injecting people with drugs. https://t.co/k8e9hYSOSy

— DHS Press Secretary (@SpoxDHS) December 10, 2019

The Washington Examiner article linked to in the tweet is hardly objective, but even it still holds back from this kind of labelling.

Left-wing organizations that have called for the closing of immigrant detention facilities said they were turned away from a Border Patrol facility in Southern California after showing up to provide what they said were flu vaccines for detainees.

Members from Doctors for Camp Closures, Families Belong Together, and Never Again Action arrived at the Chula Vista Border Patrol Station in San Ysidro, California, Monday saying they wanted to vaccinate adults and children in temporary custody. The organizations said employees from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who oversee station operations, turned them away.

Which part of this is "radical," exactly? Is it the belief in vaccines? Treating immigrants like human beings? Trying to prevent disease from spreading? Or handing out free healthcare?

I'm even willing (begrudgingly so) to overlook the CBP policy that allegedly required these Border Patrol agents to turn the doctors away. Maybe there's a reason for that policy that's not inherently xenophobic and authoritarian (maybe); the Examiner article does note that, "Detainees at Border Patrol facilities are not supposed to be kept for more than 72 hours, and people can get flu vaccines after they are transferred out of CBP custody to other agencies." Read the rest

Two of documentary film groups are suing the administration of President Donald Trump for requiring foreigners to hand over their social media account IDs, even pseudonymous ones, to U.S. officials when applying for a visa. Read the rest

In 2003, artist Tom Kiefer took a part-time job as a janitor at a Border Patrol facility in Ajo, Arizona. It was just something to subsidize his creative work. But he watched first-hand as things got more crowded, and policies became more cruel. He saw canned food taken away from migrants and donated to a food pantry, then later thrown away entirely, even though it was still good. The same thing happened with water bottles. Then there were the personal possessions deemed "non-essential" — the toothbrushes, rosaries, medication, and toys. Some things — like shoelaces — were thrown away as potential weapons.

So Kiefer began to collect these discarded items and photograph them. He gathered more than 100,000 items over the course of a decade or so, and saved them in his studio to photograph.

He's barely made it through the pile. But now the photographs are on display at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, providing a compassionate insight into migrant lives, and how the things that we discard might matter to some people.

You can learn more in the video, or check out the gallery website below.

 

El Sueño Americano | The American Dream: Photographs by Tom Kiefer at the Skirball Cultural Center Read the rest

We're number one. In the racist, eugenicist, genocidal theft of infants, toddlers, and tender-age children from undocumented and mostly indigenous migrants who are fleeing violence in Guatemala and other Central American failed states. Read the rest

Positive stories about Latin American immigrants and the United States are difficult to come by right now. But at least Pedro X. Molina and his family have found a happy ending.

Molina is an award-winning political cartoonist, whose scathing satire has been syndicated all across the world. Originally from Nicaragua, Molina was on staff at the Confidencial when their offices were raided and ransacked by police in December 2018. Like most dictatorial leaders, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was none-too-pleased with the Confidencial for doing such terrible things as, well, reporting the truth about his brutal and inhumane actions—you know, like ordering a violent police raid on journalists who dared to criticize him. Read the rest

On Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court declaring opposition to efforts by Donald Trump’s administration to end the federal 'Dreamer' program which protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants who brought into the country as kids. Read the rest

Asian Boss went to the streets of Tokyo to interview people from Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, who moved to Japan to become convenience store staffers, fast food employees, farm workers, translators, and blue collar workers. Read the rest

The administration of Donald Trump is pulling $270 million from the Department of Homeland Security, including $155 million of FEMA disaster relief funding, to pay for all migrant concentration camps, according to DHS and a leading congressional Democrat.

Money will also reportedly be taken away from the budget for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System, and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard.

Everything is awful, and getting worse.

From Reuters:

The money, which was also set aside for the U.S. Coast Guard, will be used to pay for detention facilities and courts for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS officials say they have been overwhelmed by a surge of asylum-seeking migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.

The Trump administration is seeking to circumvent Congress and move money originally designated for other programs. This will allow the administration to continue to house immigrants arriving at the border, part of President Donald Trump’s promise not to “catch and release” migrants and allow them to await hearings outside of custody.

The administration plans to take $115 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster-relief fund just as hurricane season is heating up in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a letter from U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the congressional panel that oversees Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending.

The letter also details that money will be taken for planned upgrades to the National Cybersecurity Protection System and new equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard, Roybal-Allard said.

Read the rest

Several injured when black pickup truck drove into protesters at Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility on Wednesday night.

A Federal appeals court today upheld an order that requires Trump immigration authorities with the US Customs and Border Patrol to provide detained migrant kids with the humane basics: food, water, bedding, toothbrushes, soap, and conditions in which children can be expected to sleep.

“Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” said the court.

A lot of ICE agents are gonna haz a sad tonight, as will Donald Trump's White House concentration camp advocate Stephen Miller. Read the rest

Working with The Hamilton Project, the BBC has drawn six charts that serve as both a snapshot of the state of US immigration and provide historical context for migration today versus US immigration in both the recent and distant past. Read the rest

• The change is expected to be a massive expansion of the government's power to seize, detain, and abruptly deport.

• Previously, “expedited removal” was limited to undocumented immigrants caught within 100 miles of the U.S. border who had been in the U.S. for less than two weeks.

The Trump administration's extrajudicial 'Expedited Removal' of undocumented immigrants will be radically expanded to apply everywhere within the United States, not just within 100 miles of the Mexico border, after the new rule is published in the Federal Register on Tuesday. Read the rest

Peek inside this corporate report to see how private prison companies make money from migrants in ICE concentration camps.

The long-running kids' publication 'Highlights for Children' condemned the Trump administration's policy of separating children from families at the US-Mexico border in a statement published on social media. Read the rest

Cruelly detaining kids in Border Patrol camps will cost taxpayers more than it would to put the families up together in high-end hotels.

Most kids moved to another Border Patrol station, a “temporary site with roll-out mattresses, showers, medical facilities and air conditioning.”

One thousand more single migrant adults are being detained by U.S. border protection each week in 2019, with the detention system at "serious risk of exceeding safety standards on a regular basis," documents reported today by Newsweek show. Read the rest