Public notice for HESTAFO jobs: 10,000 jobs for the taking

[This essay was originally published on Substack here]

It’s your time, pardoned patriots, constitutional sheriffs, militia bros, dudes, and other DEI victims. 

The big, beautiful bill has your back and your future. The act President Trump signed into law on the 4th of July with full-throated support from the Republican Congress is about to open up 10,000 jobs for you and others wanting to fulfill his perceived mandate for mass deportations. 

 Team Trump Instagram page 

As the Heritage Foundation's Lora Ries, one of Fox News’ experts, told viewers, this is not about “just the worst of the worst but any kind.” Gone is that old, tired game plan. 

“The game changer is the resources for ICE,” she proclaimed. ICE, with the HESTAFO (Homeland Security Task Forces) behind it, can now go after “any deportable alien, whether they’ve overstayed a visa,” anything - 10,000 more agents and 100,000 more detention beds. $30 billion dollars. 

“Congress said ICE can use the money to hire additional deportation officers and other staff; retain current personnel through bonuses; increase transportation assets supporting deportation efforts; and expand and facilitate agreements that allow state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws,” according to CBS News. After all, immigrants are trespassers and squatters, all illegals either when they entered the country or when they overstayed their visas. Paying taxes doesn’t take that away. 

Like other trespassers and squatters, they must face the consequences, be rounded up and deported. To anywhere. 

There are thousands of people needing jobs. Maybe they’ll be decent folks whose MAGA pedigree can be vouched for, are trained in law enforcement or the military, and will find it wearisome to have to pledge allegiance to a government that dehumanizes immigrants and deifies their leader. I pray that will be the case. 

They may be up against a culture of pardoned January 6th insurrectionists (there are 1,500 of them), hundreds of constitutional sheriffs whose oaths give them supreme power over shepherding God's land, according to Jessica Pishko, author of The Highest Law in the Land, countless MAGAs who feel deeply that immigrants and those favored by diversity, equity, and inclusion have grievously cut in line ahead of them and need to be returned to where they belong, more than a hundred statewide and local armed militias, not even counting the national poster militiamen like The Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, and regular Joes with histories of domestic abuse. 

No matter who’s hired, the mission is clear. Trump’s HESTAFO is committed to exponentially improving on its trumped up, grossly exaggerated, “preposterous,” and selective numbers of arrests and deportations. according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse’s (TRAC) report, Trump Claims on Immigration Enforcement: Rhetoric vs Reality, from May. 

The report came out weeks before Trump re-launched a tripled up trial balloon, pledging to deport 4 million people over four years. Fox News comforted its MAGA base that Trump directs ICE to expand deportation efforts in America's largest cities. For senior White House aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's immigration crackdown, do the math. It comes to 3,000 arrests per day. 

Trump is well aware that his drumbeat to dehumanize immigrants in order to ramp up mass deportations risks backfiring. “In general, Americans’ views of immigration policies have shifted dramatically in the last year,” Gallup’s most recent polling shows — “including among Republicans, who have become much more content with immigration levels since Trump took office but who have also grown more supportive of pathways to citizenship for people in the country illegally,” the Associated Press reported. 

A master of diversionary “look over there” techniques, Trump deployed the yearlong celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary to wrap immigrant farm workers, the farmers who hire them, and immigrant hospitality workers in the flag he hugs. 

Yuri Gripas/REUTERS [click here to go to CNN story] 

The Hill quoted Trump extensively: “I cherish our farmers. And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who were good, who possibly came in incorrectly. And what we’re going to do is, we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge,” Trump said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo. 

“The farmer knows he’s not going to hire a murderer.” During a speech in Iowa, the president warned that if the farmers do not do a “good job, we’ll throw them out of the country.” 

“We’ll let the illegals stay, and we’ll throw the farmer the hell out, okay? Get ready, farmer,” he said. 

Later in the month, the Hill reported, “Trump said during an interview on Fox News that a temporary pass would be issued to migrants in the hospitality industry and on farms to allow their employers to have more control.” 

Bunk, hokum. Or fast forward to now, a few weeks later, as undocumented farm workers feel “hunted like animals” amid Trump’s immigration raids. 

The farm system Trump, Miller, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem are investing in is the HESTAFO, which is about to be rife with as many pardoned patriots, constitutional sheriffs, militiamen and aggrieved DEI victims as they can cram into 10,000 jobs in a hurry. 

The refugee resettlement program, in comparison, that Trump suspended in his first weeks in office after accusing the agency of failing to have proper procedures to vet applicants could typically take up to three years and involved interviews, background checks, biometric screening, medical screenings, and multi-stage vetting processes designed to ensure the security of both the refugees and the U.S. Another for instance: 

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) vetting process for police officer applicants includes a comprehensive background investigation, a written exam, drug screening, interviews, a polygraph exam, and a physical test. They must also undergo psychological and medical screenings before receiving a formal job offer. If hired, they do not wear masks. 

Apparently, unlike the Hestafo, Chicago police are safe on the streets. The criminals they arrest are compliant. Nothing like the HESTAFO. One year ago, from Jan. 21, 2024, to June 30, 2024, Homeland Security reported only 10 assault events. Now, only a year later, with ICE and other federal agents rounding up and arresting people from city to city on a daily basis and pledging to tally 3,000 arrests a day, they’re shocked, shocked to find out there are people resisting indiscriminate arrests. By Homeland Security numbers, they’ve recorded 79 assault events. 

Whoa baby, as Homeland Security will tell Fox News, and Fox News will tell you in bold and exclusive fanfare: DHS: Assaults on ICE now up nearly 700% over same time last year: Assaults on ICE officers up 690% this year, DHS reports to Fox News. [Added: Within a week, ICE spiked the numbers to 830% over the prior year.]

Take your time, Homeland Security. The Trump mandate is entitled to vetting befitting a refugee resettlement program or city police departments. We don’t want illegals slipping into the mix, or we could have law enforcement officers who violate federal campaign disclosure laws by secretly siphoning $80,000 into their own companies or people who falsify business records as part of a hush money scheme to influence an election or people convicted of disorderly conduct or trespassing or assault on or interfering with law enforcement officers. 

As Border Czar Tom Homan says emphatically, "If we don't show there's consequences,” the problems will never be fixed. 

The new 10,000 HESTAFO applicants will know going in that they’ve got pardons in their pockets. 

The jobs ad campaign writes itself. 

Applicants: You have the opportunity to work for a Homeland Security Secretary who cares about you and your opinions. When Kristi Noem was Governor of South Dakota, she asked her Instagram followers which of three photos of her on horseback should be hung as the official Governor’s portrait in the South Dakota State Capitol? 

[Cut to an AI version of Mae West saying, "Is that a pardon in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"] 

 Mae West

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A modest proposal for the Divided States of America for our 250th anniversary

[This essay was originally published on the 4th of July on Substack here]

Dear President Trump, Governors and Mayors— 

If I may borrow from the play, A Thousand Clowns, that Herb Gardner wrote more than 60 years ago, “I personally don’t feel that you’re gonna work out your problems with each other, but I’m glad you came to me because I think I can help you. Donald, the governors are not going to respect you because you threaten them. Respect will have to come gradually, naturally, a maturing process.” 
We have gone well beyond an angry, partisan kerfuffle over immigrants and into dangerous, hate-baiting that is rending asunder the country we purport to cherish and possibly irrevocably dragging the United States into quicksand. Blame each other if it makes you feel better. There is no high ground in quicksand. 
Donald, clearly you consider immigrants to be a drain on society, no matter how much research points to the contrary and to have violated laws to get or stay here. Some, yes; most, no. The tired, poor, huddled masses who accepted the Statue of Liberty’s invitation at the expense often of death-defying journeys, financial exploitation, and family breakups need to go. 
They’ve overstayed their welcomes, even if they’ve worked in America’s broad economy, paid taxes, raised kids, and become fixtures in their communities…for years. The U.S. born citizens of undocumented immigrants should go too. 
Your posts and pulsating drumbeats and dog whistles lead the MAGA and GOP way.

You want immigrants out. MAGA wants immigrants out. You embrace a mandate to do whatever you want to get them out. Call in troops, mask federal agents, build up a HESTAFO of Homeland Security Task Forces, handcuff a US Senator, if protesters “spit, we hit,” and make up allegations against immigrants to have them appear dangerous and criminal. MAGA and the GOP are behind you. They’re your mandate, your rock and salvation.
As you feverishly do their bidding, in California in particular so far, the governor, LA’s mayor, legions of No Kings-mandate deniers, and protesters who support immigrants, see what’s become obvious, and, traumatized by historical parallels, dread that we’ve come to this.
At one point, you vowed changes to your immigration crackdown to protect migrant farmers and hotel workers. That ruse disappeared, as migrants have. They might have been allowed to live their lives peacefully and productively.
You threaten sanctuary cities, question the citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate in New York City, the home you abandoned, deploying the same line of rhetoric you used for Barack Obama: “A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally.” This time you have power and seem inclined to deport a mayoral candidate, even if you have to denaturalize him.
You’re in the process of pulling the welcome mat out from under people who have been legally in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). As of Sept. 30, 2024, the U.S. is providing TPS protections to more one million people from the following 16 countries, according to the National Immigration Forum - Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen.

TPS status provides work authorizations and protection from deportation for individuals from countries experiencing ongoing armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary circumstances that have prevented their safe return. The status for people from eleven of the 16 countries expires by December. The other five expire next year. Homeland Security has announced that all will be terminated and has already written letters to those from Afghanistan, Cameroon and Nepal, and some from Venezuela. Hondurans were added July 7. The letters inform them of the termination on dates this summer, making them ineligible to work legally in the U.S. and subject to deportation immediately.

To me, the tapestry of peoples from all over the planet feels more like the spirit in an Olympic village than the crammed quarters of detention centers, “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Evergladers or the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador…for now.
Donald, if we take a closer look at the mandate you invoke to propel your immigrant clearance sale, current data from the Pew Research Center shows less of a mandate than a coin toss:

• Your use of state and local law enforcement in deportation efforts (50% approve, 49% disapprove)
• Offering money and travel funds to immigrants in the U.S. illegally if they leave voluntarily (49% approve, 50% disapprove).

Or a squandered and lost mandate:

• 60% of Americans disapprove of the suspension of most asylum applications (39% approve).
• 59% disapprove of ending TPS for immigrants who came to the United States escaping war or other disasters at home (39% approve).
• 54% disapprove of increasing HESTAFO raids on workplaces where people who are in the U.S. illegally may be working (45% approve).

That’s the national story, but there’s much to be learned from data that shows the USA is actually the DSA (Divided States of America) when it comes to immigrants:

• 78% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents approve of the administration’s approach to immigration, including 51% who strongly approve. Just 12% disapprove.
• In contrast, 81% of Democrats and Democratic leaners disapprove, with 63% strongly disapproving. Just 9% approve.

I’d like to suggest a modest compromise for you, our governors and mayors.
Donald, pull out your pen and issue an executive order that plays to your mandate of the 312 electoral votes you won. Homeland Security and HESATAFO should have little trouble arresting and deporting thousands of busloads of immigrants in states where you won by more than 30 percentage points - Wyoming (+46 percentage points), West Virginia (+42), Idaho (+37), North Dakota (+36), and Oklahoma (+34). No need for troops, masked agents, deputizing more HESATAFO. No mayors crying sanctuary.
Let the blue states have their immigrants. They seem to want them. There are 20 blue states - California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
Let them prove they want to keep immigrants, including TPS residents.
We had a chance to test that out a few years ago when during the Biden years, in 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis executed a plot to send immigrant families from Texas and Florida to blue states.
At the time, DeSantis issued a statement: "States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration."
Rather than pre-empting the clever grandstanding move by offering without prompting to welcome immigrants to help offset complaints from besieged red states near the borders, blue state mayors and governors backed into trying to make it work with little notice or resources.
Time to put up or shut up, blue states and mayors.
Donald, let the people in 20 states go…on to live in peace, without terror, and with a prospect for citizenship rather than deportation. If you’ve never gone to a naturalization ceremony, I recommend it. It’s where the Olympic village convenes.

2022 naturalization ceremony- Auditorium Theater, Chicago

I live in Evanston, Illinois, which is a Welcoming City. Trump received 8% of the Evanston vote in both 2024 and 2020. I damn well better support this compromise. And I do.

If I don’t and if residents of other blue cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Madison, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Burlington, Detroit, Hartford, Oakland, LA, and NYC prefer to be subject to the Trump-MAGA immigration agenda, we can trigger a home rule referendum scheme and cue the handcuffs. Until then, let’s give immigrants hope rather than terror and dehumanization.

Deportations and self-deportations can be replaced with self-departures and left to the likes of Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan. Or what’s a 250^th anniversary of independence for?

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Immigrant disappearances in Chicago: How to heed the call?

 [Earlier version published at https://jackcdoppelt.substack.com/p/immigrant-disappearances-in-chicago]

If you’re like me, you’ll find it hard to believe this story. Yet, it happened here in Chicago earlier this week, it was painfully predictable, and it leaves a deep boot print of what’s afoot. 

The CBS News Chicago headline: “ICE agents detain several people at immigration supervision program site in Chicago” only hints at the state of affairs. 

I sought out the story after I heard a report on WBEZ. In it, a person who was interviewed referred to the incident as “shameful, chilling and dystopian.” That caught my attention. 

Both accounts report that the vigilantes were masked, that they wore gear that had the words POLICE or HCI or both emblazoned on their riot gear. Videos confirm it. 

HCI is synonymous with the Hestafo (Homeland Security Task Forces), Trump’s reconstituted storm troopers. 

How did the Hestafo know when and where to round up immigrants? Easy ploy. They used databases to text official messages to immigrants, instructing them to appear for routine appointments that had been set up as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance program that allows authorities to monitor those facing immigration proceedings without placing them in custody. Immigrants are summoned to the facility periodically to ensure they are complying with the conditions of their release from custody, and to make sure they appear in court when required. 

If they don’t appear? It’s an unforgiving violation of the law, making them subject to deportation. What would you do? 

Go on the lam and be a fugitive inching your way up the ladder to THE WORST FIRST criminal elements that ICE and Trump pretended they were after to make America safe or be duped into the trap they’d sprung for you as part of the evolving selective foreign eradication policies that are reinforced by increased aggressive policing and militarization of local law enforcement. Keep your eyes on the due processes that are the ones that now matter, as Trump: 

• transformed almost all aliens, including green card holders (lawful permanent residents), asylum seekers, refugees, and even some students on F1 visas into “illegal” immigrants. 
• ended temporary protected status for Afghans. 
• suspended the US refugee program the day Trump took office. 
• selectively grandrefugeed in South African whites for privileged admission into the US. 
• revoked student visas for international students, most notably at Harvard. 
• issued a travel ban on citizens from 12 countries - Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, along with restrictions on citizens from other countries. 

ICE is touting, through Fox News, more than 2,300 immigrant arrests per day en route to Trump’s proclaimed goal of 3,000+ daily arrests. Yesterday’s devious smoke-out in Chicago took place at 23rd & Michigan in the south Loop and disappeared about a dozen people. Who’s to know? Not their families or lawyers. 

Or Chicago police who seem to have been bamboozled into appearing like they were part of the action. They were not notified of the trick. Officers showed up at the scene, the CPD says, to ensure that the confrontation didn’t get out of hand. Hard to pierce the subterfuge. Hestafo’s gear says POLICE in bold letters. Clever way to undercut the city’s sanctuary laws, its Welcoming City ordinance and Illinois’ Trust Act, which prohibit local law enforcement agents from collaborating with federal officials to arrest and detain immigrants. 

Almost a year ago, before Trump’s election but when it seemed pre-ordained, I reflected on who I would be and how I would act if it came to this. Painfully predictable, yet now what? I anticipated I’d need to confront the real portent of resistance. 

It was abstract. Here’s how I left it: 

“It is not something I know how to engage in. I have no playbook. When I think about it, it seems like a dystopian fantasy or the musings of a savior complex. When it goes beyond organized peaceful protests or legal strategies, its actions can’t be publicly shared or disseminated. Texts, email and social media would be mostly off-limits. 

If peaceful protesters are arrested, would I and others join in to swell the ranks to make arrests less feasible? If immigrants are rounded up for deportation, would I and others hide people in our homes? Would I and others seek out churches, synagogues and mosques for sanctuaries, solidarity and moral guidance? Do undergrounds form organically? 

I’m in uncharted territory here.” 

And now it’s real.

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