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 March 8, 2025]

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Resistance to deliberate dehumanization

“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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