Saturday, March 29, 2025

At Trump’s Zoo

Someone tweets that it's all happening at his zoo

I do believe it
I do believe it's true

It's a dark and trembling journey
From Mara Lago to DC
Just a firm and fascist ramble
To Trump’s zoo

People disappear from street to bus
If it's raining or it's cold
And ICE will love it when they do
As they do, now

Somethin' tells me it's all happening at Trump’s zoo

I do believe it
I do believe it's true

His monkeys have no honesty
Lawmakers insincere
GOP elephants are cowards and they're dumb
Orange guy acts sadistically
With changes from his rages
And the defense guy is very fond of rum

The zealots are reactionary
All hell bent as missionaries
War hawks plot with no secrecy
And Musk turns out workers mercilessly
What a mess, can’t believe what you see
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo
At Trump’s zoo
At the zoo

https://www.doppeltlines.com/simon-answer-8.html

 

Song parodist: Jack Doppelt with enduring thanks to Paul Simon



Friday, February 28, 2025

Read their lips, tweets and releases: If you’re not a U.S. citizen, you’re probably an illegal immigrant and deportable

The other day, on Feb. 25, Kristi Noem, Trump’s head of the Hestafo (Homeland Security Task Forces), tried to make things as clear as possible. 

If you’re not a citizen, you’re probably an illegal immigrant and deportable. 

Don’t take my words for it, though I tried to make that known a month ago after 12 Senate Democrats collaborated with the Republican consensus to enact the Laken Riley Act, which along with Trump’s Executive Order Protecting the American People from Invasion signed nine days earlier meant that almost all aliens, including green card holders (lawful permanent residents), asylum seekers, refugees, even some students on F1 visas are illegal, according to Trump and Hestafo. 

I wrote then that it “can matter in nefarious and intended ways.” 

Few watchdogs noticed. Most glaringly the 12 Senate Democrats - Cortez Masto, Fetterman, Gallego, Hassan, Kelly, Ossoff, Peters, Rosen, Shaheen, Slotkin, Warner and Warnock – chose not to notice. 

Time to notice now and read Noem’s words. Warning: Watch out for slick double speak. Here’s her announcement:

Please take the time to note that the release opens with the familiar undesirables - “illegal aliens,” who go hand in hand with criminals, like those spelled out in the Laken Riley Act, “who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting” or those now called out on ICE’s official X account as “THE WORST FIRST.” 

Keep reading Noem’s pledge. Hestafo is seeking out aliens who “willfully fail to leave the U.S.,” who fail to register with the federal government and be fingerprinted,” who “fail to apprise the federal government of changes to their address.” 

If you’re thinking that applies only to “illegal immigrants,” you’re missing the slick trick. Those acts are what make ALL aliens illegal, and as Noem wrote, “For decades, this law has been ignored-not anymore.” 

It continues: “The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws-we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce.” 

With the reminder that they’re now illegal, aliens are being asked to leave voluntarily, or self-deport, now

That tends to change the message from THE WORST FIRST” gunslinger image to an OTHERS, HEAR ME: OUT NOW Hestafo message. 

The day after Noem's Feb. 25 message, she issued another one, boasting that under Trump, "more than 20,000 illegal aliens were arrested. That's a 627% increase in monthly arrests, compared to just 33,000 at large arrests under Biden for ALL of last year."
Seemingly out of the annals of Monty Python's British comedy routines, these numbers are a collection from the Ministry of Made Up Apples and Oranges data extracted from someone's butt to sound like they're well-oiled stormtroopers, not Keystone Kops. 

Dangerous though for DOGE-guided federal government agencies with badges and guns to make stuff up just as they emerge from hiding behind outdated daily stats last published on Jan. 31 on ICE's official X site that portrayed a different picture. That picture was accompanied by stories in the NewsNation: Tom Homan: ‘I’m not satisfied’ with number of ICE arrestsTrump says immigration arrest numbers are 'too f—— low' and in The New York Post that The Trump administration is demanding at least 1,800 arrests per day

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Saturday, February 1, 2025

ICE and Hestafo arrest tracker here [updated as of April 3, 2025]

[Read Enter the Hestafo and language resistance and Read their lips, tweets 
and releases: If you’re not a U.S. citizen, you’re probably 
an illegal immigrant and deportable]
---------------

Resistance to deliberate dehumanization

A must listen. It's haunting. The Sidewalk Where She Vanished

the White House highlighted 72 peopleICE had arrestedA Washington Post analysis reveals at least 36,
or half, were already in prison-
April 3, 2025-Washington Post

College students are the target du jour: 



UA [Univ. of Alabama] student reportedly detained by ICE-March 26, 2025-The Crimson White. The Iranian student was a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering. His F-1 student visa was revoked. A Hestafo spokesperson said only that the student posed  "significant national security concerns." 

Federal authorities detain Tufts student in Somerville: The university received notice that an international graduate student was detained off campusThe student is a Turkish national and doctoral candidate, and is being held in federal custody in Louisiana-March 26, 2025-Tufts Daily

Some Americans Have Already Been Caught in Trump’s Immigration Dragnet. More Will Be
Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in raids and sweeps-March 18, 2025-
ProPublica


ICE, and Hestafo should stick with deporting criminals. Stop making immigrants we all know into illegals by including lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, refugees, even some students on F1 visas if they’ve failed to register as aliens or failed to carry registration cards.

Stop running the country like a junta, ignoring judicial orders and dehumanizing people to stoke anger.

Homan talking tough guy: "I'm comin' to Boston. I'm bringin' hell with me."

They bolstered their wholesale mass deportation frenzy by getting a dozen paralyzed Senate Democrats to go along with the Laken Riley Act that fits into Trump’s goose step hopscotch that starts in square one with upping the illegal ante to crossing the border without authorization to shoplifting to being charged with any offense, even if not convicted, then to failing to register as aliens or failing to carry registration cards, two violations that heretofore haven’t been prosecuted. That goes for lawful permanent residents too.


If people are arrested and disappear into a system and detention centers without notice or hearings, mixed in with dangerous “worst, first” criminals and dispatched to who knows where (not the families), that’s the price of demagoguery. It comes in the following forms in the following locations. This is only two days worth and Trump is apoplectic that the roundups aren’t going faster:


New Hampshire-German man with green card ‘violently interrogated’ by US border officials: Berlin checking if US immigration policy has changed after Fabian Schmidt becomes third German to be detained-March 18, 2025-The Guardian.

New Mexico-Lawyers and advocates say 48 people are unaccounted for after ICE raid in New Mexico-March 17, 2025-NBC Real Change News

Midwest-Families impacted by ICE raids denounce Trump administration’s arrests, file emergency motion-March 18, 2025-Chicago Tribune

Going, going, gone. Not a criminal among them.


Click on photo to check out story and video
Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants 
even as a judge orders their removals be stopped


As Trump Broadens Crackdown, Focus Expands to Legal Immigrants and Tourists: U.S. border officials are using more aggressive tactics at ports of entry as the administration scrutinizes green card and visa holders who have expressed opposition to its policies-March 21, 2025-NY Times


Georgetown University researcher detained by immigration authorities, lawyer says…:

Indian national Badar Khan Suri was detained outside his Virginia home for spreading “Hamas propaganda,” DHS said. His lawyer said he was innocent-March 19-Washington Post

German man with green card ‘violently interrogated’ by US border officials: Berlin checking if US immigration policy has changed after Fabian Schmidt becomes third German to be detained-March 18, 2025-The Guardian



ICE arrests Columbia graduate student and activist, lawyer says - March 10                                                                His attorney said the "ICE agents who arrested him claimed his student visa had been revoked — even though he is a legal permanent resident and not in the U.S. on a student visa." DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the arrest in a statement on Sunday night. A Columbia University spokesperson issued a statement acknowledging “reports of ICE around campus.”

“I thought they were going to be targeting criminals. No one mentioned during the campaigning of Donald Trump that residents … legal residents … were going to have to go through this,” said Estefany Peña, 30, from Lincoln, California, who supported Trump for reelection. Her husband, who came to the country legally in 1999 and has a green card, went to an immigration office in San Francisco for a check-in in late January and still hasn’t come home, she said. “Everything just came crumbling down” when immigration officers wouldn’t let her husband leave. Cal Matters, Feb. 11

ICE and The Hestafo [Homeland Security Task Forces] have been unleashed. They've boasted that they've deported nearly 40,000 people during Trump's first month in office. The daily data on the ICE sites appear to be current only through Jan. 31. The official figures don't reconcile. The 37,660 people that ICE and Hestafo claim to have been deported, Reuters reported on Feb. 22, are below the monthly average of 57,000 removals in the last full year of Biden's administration.




DHS Seeks to Deputize IRS Officers to Help With Deportation Effort, according to The Wall St. Journal, Feb. 10, 2025
ICE posts immigration raid info, photos and tweets regularly on X and Instagram, 
but it doesn't disclose how many of those arrested are released, remain in detention, 
have been deported or how many are undocumented or have criminal records. 
The data stopped being current on Jan. 31. The sites showcase photos of raids and ID by name those it calls "The Worst First." 
They include the two at the bottom of this page, one for overstayingthe terms of his admission to the US, one for firearm possession and another for assault. 
"But you arrested non-criminals. Yah, damn right we did because you happen to be in our country illegally ,
which happens to be a violation of our law. Entering this country illegally is a crime and we're not gonna forgive it."
You can find ongoing coverage of immigrant raids from 2025 by location here [Note: some of the info in the stories is provided by ICE & Hestafo to show how successful their operations are. That info is seldom verifiable.]

Listen to the unauthorized raids on homes in Lyons and Elgin, IL  (WBEZ, Feb. 5, 2025)

ICE Raids, Arrests In Chicago, Suburbs: What We Know So Far - Jan. 30                                                                                      ICE officers arrest  Chicago man after wife drops child off at school in Little Village: VIDEO - Jan. 29

Guam.  ICE Raids Expand to Guam - Feb. 3

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday said more than 100 people were arrested during an operation the day before in a sprawling, majority Latino housing development outside of Houston — but only released information about one of the arrests.









Jan. 28
[Read Enter the Hestafo and language resistance
        
CBS 8 San Diego


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