Tag: illegal immigrants
This Is How It Begins: Stephen Miller Planning Concentration Camps On The Border

This Is How It Begins: Stephen Miller Planning Concentration Camps On The Border

The first guy waited until he became Chancellor of Germany and used the Reichstag fire as a pretext to start rounding up enemies and building concentration camps. A front-page story in the New York Times tells us that our own Chancellor-in-Waiting, Donald J. Trump, isn’t waiting to be elected, or for a pretext. He has an SS team in place that is are already making plans to round up tens of millions of immigrants and house them in camps they plan on building “on open land in Texas near the border,” according to Stephen Miller, who Trump has appointed to be his own personal Heinrich Himmler to handle the matter of immigration if he is elected president next year.

I’ll get into the details of their plans in a minute, but what is remarkable about Trump’s blueprint for illegally rounding up immigrants and imprisoning them in concentration camps is that Stephen Miller and other close associates of Trump consented to be interviewed by the New York Times about the plans, Trump has apparently made a calculation that undocumented immigrants are sufficiently unpopular that he is running on this suff.

The use of concentration camps to intern undesirables and enemies of the state has a long and ugly history in the 20th Century. They were built by the German Empire in Southwest Africa during the Herero and Namaqua tribal genocide from 1904 to 1907. The German camps had a death rate of about 50 percent during that genocide. In 1915, Turkey used forced marches and concentration camps to kill more than a million Armenians who were considered an existential threat to the Ottoman Empire.

Hitler didn’t begin to build concentration camps until he became chancellor. In 1933, Hitler, feeling threatened by his political enemies, appointed Himmler to enact mass arrests and incarcerations of his political opponents in the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties. The first camp built on Himmler’s orders was Dachau, outside of Munich. From there, camps were built in Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald in 1936 and 1937. In 1938, new camps were constructed in Flossenburg, Ravensbruck, and Mauthausen. Himmler announced a roundup of nomadic Roma, the mentally ill, university professors, homosexuals, intellectuals, the homeless and unemployed, criminals, Freemasons, Jews, and what Himmler termed “asocials and organized elements of sub-humanity.” Czech and Austrian anti-Nazis were included after their countries were annexed by Nazi Germany.

You will no doubt note that Hitler and Himmler began their round-ups with unpopular elements of German society and expanded from there. One group after another became a target of Hitler’s plan to “cleanse” Germany of “vermin and undesirables.”

Trump got started in September, when he told a crowd at one of his rallies in Dubuque, Iowa, that if elected, he would “invoke immediately the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known or suspected gang members, the drug dealers, the cartel members from the United States, ending the scourge of illegal alien gang violence once and for all.” He also announced that he would “deny entry to all communists and Marxists to the United States.” He promised to expand his travel ban on citizens from Muslim countries to include other “undesirable” countries. He also promised to use a “massive shift” of law enforcement authorities from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives to help with immigration enforcement.

Gangs, criminals, drug dealers, illegal aliens…sound familiar?

Trump then gave an interview to Univision, the Spanish-language TV network, in which he promised to weaponize the FBI and Department of Justice against his political opponents. Referring to the Biden administration, Trump said, “What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box.” Switching quickly and referring to himself, Trump continued, “You know, when you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election.” Switching yet again to refer to his opponents, “They have done something that allows the next party … if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.”

I know, his verbiage is confusing, but the Washington Post reported last week that Trump has told aides that if elected, he will appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family, and he will order the Department of Justice to investigate others he considers traitors, such as his former chief of staff, John Kelly, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and former Attorney General William Barr. Trump also told Univision that he is considering the re-implementation the policy used early in his administration that separated immigrant parents from their children at the border. Stephen Miller, in his interview with the New York Times, also implied that a new Trump administration will separate families at the border.

Miller told the Times that a new Trump administration would attempt to overturn the Flores settlement, which set standards for the treatment, placement, and release of unaccompanied minors who are applying for legal status as asylum seekers. Miller said Trump will go after “Dreamers” and will seek to make deportations of any immigrants living within the borders of the U.S. “radically more quick and efficient,” by using what he called “the right kinds of attorneys and the right kinds of policy thinkers” to accomplish their goals. Miller said Trump will build “vast holding facilities” where immigrants will be held while awaiting deportation.

Miller bragged that the camps would be built using Homeland Security and Department of Defense money so that a new Trump administration will not have to go through the normal route of getting the Congress to appropriate money to cover their cost. Trump used a similar scam to get around the Congress when he took money intended for the military and built portions of his wall after he took office in 2017. Miller said that Trump will order that enforcement officials from agencies other than ICE be used to implement the planned round-ups of immigrants, including deputizing National Guard soldiers supplied by Republican states friendly to Trump and his aims.

The Guard troops would be deputized under the Insurrection Act, which allows for “temporary” suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act that makes it illegal for U.S. military personnel to be used for law enforcement purposes within the United States. In this scenario, active-duty U.S. soldiers would be used to arrest and detain immigrants in broad round-ups at workplaces, gathering places, and within businesses established by immigrant families.

The way Stephen Miller described the plans, according to the Times: “Bottom line, President Trump will do whatever it takes.”

It is incredible to contemplate that Donald Trump has put his political finger in the wind and made a determination that the plans outlined by Reichsfuhrer Miller are a winning issue for him in 2024. Even his decision to go on Univision to talk about elements of his plans is astounding. Apparently, Trump has made a calculation that he can split the Latin vote in the next election by separating Latino voters into haves and have-nots and going after the “have” vote.

But to me, the most incredible thing of all are Trump’s plans for concentration camps. In Germany in the mid 1950’s, my family was stationed about 50 miles from Dachau. Patton’s Third Army liberated Dachau at the end of the war in 1945, and after my grandfather relieved Patton of command of the Third Army, General Dwight Eisenhower put him in charge of caring for the Holocaust victims of Dachau and other camps who made their way to Bavaria to be housed in displaced persons camps that Grandpa established at former German military bases.

As a boy, I grew up with the history of Hitler’s concentration camps all around me. Grandpa had a huge photo album that was given to him by the Third Army at the conclusion of his command in 1946. It was full of photographs of what the Third Army had encountered when they liberated Dachau. Grandpa ordered the publication of a book called “Dachau Diary,” based on the writings of a Holocaust victim that were discovered scrawled on scraps of paper when Dachau was liberated. The diaries were translated into English and the book contained photos of the horrors of Dachau taken by the SS administration before the camp was liberated. Grandpa also ordered that the book be published in German so it could be distributed to German libraries and schools as a record of what the Nazis had done in the name of the German people.

Grandpa never talked about Dachau. He didn’t have to. We visited the camp near Munich, with its buildings and fences still standing. It wasn’t yet the monument to the horror of the Holocaust that it is today, but rather a living relic of Hitler’s aim to rid the German nation of Jews and anyone he declared an enemy or an undesirable. The Alien Enemies act of 1798, which Stephen Miller said Trump will invoke on the day he takes office, allows the deportation of anyone from a country with which the United States is at war. Miller told the Times the act will be used to deport “suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process.”

When I read sentences like that in the New York Times, uttered by people who are known to be speaking for Donald Trump, I see in my mind’s eye the images of concentration camps I grew up learning about, and I see the expansion of Hitler’s list of enemies to include people considered to be mentally ill, the unemployed, the homeless, members of opposing political parties, university professors, journalists, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews,

I see the list of Donald Trump’ enemies.

I see you and me and our loved ones.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

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ICE Raid Leaves Kids In Streets, Without Parents

ICE Raid Leaves Kids In Streets, Without Parents

Children were left to wander the streets alone after a Wednesday ICE raid arrested 680 suspected undocumented immigrants in Mississippi.

Many children in Forest, Mississippi, were “left temporarily homeless” after the raid, according to WJTV.

“Children of those who were arrested are left alone in the streets crying for help,” Alex Love, a WJTV reporter, wrote on Twitter. Strangers, relatives, and friends took children to a local gym that was set up as a temporary shelter.

“Government please show some heart,” Magdalena Gomez Gregorio, an 11-year-old, cried. “I need my dad and mommy,” she told the news station.

In June, Trump boasted about forthcoming immigration raids, vowing to remove “millions” of undocumented immigrants. While his wish is on the way to being fulfilled, communities are left to take care of the children impacted by Trump’s zealous anti-immigrant vitriol.

While volunteers took care of the children Trump officials left homeless, many were “still devastated and crying for their parents and can’t eat,” Love reported.

The raid happened the same day Trump visited Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, claiming to be there to comfort victims of mass shootings that happened over the weekend. The mass shooting in El Paso, which left 22 people dead and more injured, was carried out by a white supremacist who mirrored Trump’s racist language toward immigrants.

Trump transformed his anti-immigrant rhetoric into policy over his term in office. Trump instituted a family separation policy in 2017 and 2018 that ripped thousands of children away from their parents. The conditions at detention facilities along the border are so horrendous one doctor compared them to “torture facilities.”

Such a massive raid operation “burns an incredible amount of resources to apprehend people, few of whom pose any threat to the U.S.,” John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE, told Buzzfeed News. “It’s for show more than for anything else.”

The latest ICE raid is the largest in a decade and left children to fend for themselves as volunteers scrambled to help.

“We’re going to have bedding available for them and we’re going to have food available for them, just to get them through the night,” Jordan Barnes, owner of Clear Creek Boot Camp, told WJTV. “And if they need transportation to school tomorrow, we’ll also take care of that.”

Those watching over the children are left to offer what comfort they can.

“This is heart-wrenching. They are scared,” Dianne, who is looking after the three of her fiance’s children after he and the children’s mother were arrested, told Buzzfeed.

“He said his mom is gone, that he’s upset with Trump, he said he just wants his mom back,” Christina Peralta, godmother of two children left without their mother after the raid, told WJTV.

“And they’ve been crying all day long since they got home from school,” Peralta added.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

What Is A ‘Crime’ For An Undocumented Immigrant?

What Is A ‘Crime’ For An Undocumented Immigrant?

Last week Donald Trump made waves by undermining perhaps the central issue of his nativist bid for the presidency,  his pledge to immediately begin deporting the 11 million people in the United States without proper documentation.

In a remarkable town hall hosted by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump tried to use a straw poll of the audience to publicly “pivot” on his position — that is, he completely flopped on national television, leaving his campaign surrogates to filibuster for days of desperate and unanswerable cable interviews, building up to terminal anticipation for a speech on immigration Wednesday night. It all made Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s invitation to Trump for a meeting, and Trump’s acceptance of it, all but inexplicable.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s actual immigration policy is a complete mystery. Central to that mystery: What is a “crime” for an undocumented immigrant?

The word can mean anything, and that’s why Trump loves it so much.

In his town hall with Hannity, Trump specified “killers” and “the bad ones, the gang members,” would be kicked out immediately. Trump has since referenced “criminal illegal immigrants” several times.

But deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies is the current the policy of the Obama administration: After suspected terrorists and spies, the Los Angeles Times reports, criminals are the highest priority for deportation. The president has deported around 2.5 million people during his two terms, more than any other president by far. He’s done more than enough to earn his “Deporter in Chief” moniker, and even Trump, in his “pivot,” praised the president for his enormous sum of deportations.

Then again, “criminal illegal immigrants” is redundant, and can be interpreted as such: Of immigrants deported from the U.S. with criminal records in 2013, the plurality of those — 31 percent, according to ICE data and reported by the LA Times — had records of immigration violation, including entry, reentry, false claims to citizenship and alien smuggling.

Yes: They were criminals by virtue of being undocumented — and so could many more millions of undocumented immigrants who are otherwise innocent of any crime.

Of course, if Trump really wanted to radically increase the number of yearly deportations, he would start with appointing more immigration judges. By law, even undocumented immigrants with criminal records have a right to appeal a deportation decision in front of a judge, and the wait for such hearings can last years, according to the LA Times.

Photo: Demonstrators hold placards during a protest against the visit of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, at the Angel of Independence monument in Mexico City, Mexico, August 31, 2016. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

Many Latinos Shun Obamacare For Fear Of Getting Relatives Deported

Many Latinos Shun Obamacare For Fear Of Getting Relatives Deported

By Soumya Karlamangla and Chad Terhune, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Lilian Saldana turned down Obamacare coverage once, and she might do it again.

With sign-ups set to resume Saturday, the 23-year-old Covina resident and her younger sister are hesitant to enroll because their parents are immigrants who are not citizens and therefore ineligible for benefits under the Affordable Care Act.

Saldana, an after-school tutor, admits she could put the insurance to good use for a checkup, but she worries about putting her parents at risk or creating a rift at home.

“We’ve always done things together as a family,” she said.

The Saldana sisters are among roughly 600,000 Latinos in California who remain uninsured — despite qualifying for subsidized coverage under the federal health law. Latinos outnumber whites and Asians among the 1.3 million Californians who are eligible for federal aid and lack private health coverage.

California officials, sensing continued reluctance from people such as the Saldanas, are tackling the immigration fears directly for the first time in new TV ads. One commercial shows documents flying into a vault as a Latino man tells viewers their information is “confidential and private.”

This is part of $95 million the Covered California exchange will be spending on marketing and outreach in the months ahead. California accounted for 15 percent of enrollment nationwide during the initial launch, and the Obama administration is counting on the Golden State to deliver another big turnout.

Open enrollment runs from Saturday to Feb. 15.

But it will be a hard sell to many Latino families of mixed immigration status.

People living in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for coverage under the health law. For that reason, some residents are nervous about answering detailed questions about family members who aren’t applying, and they worry that turning over this information could lead to deportation for spouses, siblings or other relatives.

Those fears were heightened this year when a wave of Central American children crossing the border illegally sparked angry protests and President Barack Obama backed off immigration reform in the fall amid stiff opposition.

Despite repeated government assurances that no information is shared with immigration authorities, some Latinos are willing to gamble with their health rather than risk having their family torn apart.

“This is a very big deal in California,” said Catherine Teare, senior program officer for health reform at the California HealthCare Foundation. “It’s really hard for Covered California or anybody to make those concerns go away.”

Compounding the problem, the state has often fumbled its outreach to this crucial demographic. Covered California opened last fall with no application in Spanish, bland advertising and a shortage of enrollment counselors in Latino neighborhoods.

State officials say they learned from their mistakes and expect to build on a late surge of Latino enrollment last March and April. There’s little margin for error because the upcoming open enrollment lasts three months, half the time before.

“We have to address this issue of immigration status head on,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California. “We need trusted voices saying it’s safe.”

Overall, about 3.4 million Californians have gained health insurance in the last year through private insurance or an expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s low-income health plan. The percentage of Californians who are uninsured was cut in half to 11 percent by June, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that studies health policy.

By mid-February, Covered California wants to sign up 500,000 more people to private health plans, in addition to the 1.2 million who did so during the first open enrollment.

Statewide, 62 percent of those who remain without insurance are Latino, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

About half of those people aren’t U.S. citizens or legal residents, so they can’t get insurance through the exchange or Medi-Cal. Among those who are eligible, 37 percent said they were at least somewhat worried that signing up for health insurance would draw attention to their family members’ immigration status.

Hugo Ramirez, who manages Covered California outreach for nonprofit group Vision y Compromiso, remembers a man who called a radio talk show that Ramirez was appearing on last year. The caller said he was a U.S. citizen but his wife was not.

“I’m afraid that if I give this information it’ll be used against her,” Ramirez recalls the man saying.

A Latina in Bakersfield, in a recent consumer survey, told the California HealthCare Foundation she felt Obamacare might be a trick to get undocumented immigrants to apply and identify themselves.

In March, Obama went on the Spanish-language TV network Univision to assure Latinos that information would not be turned over to immigration officials. The federal government has deported more than 2 million people since Obama took office.

During the first open enrollment, the exchange urged outreach workers to carry a letter from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement echoing Obama’s promise. But that agency letterhead merely made some people more nervous, Lee said.

This time, Lee said he’s drafting letters on immigration bearing the names of Covered California and immigrant-rights groups that are well respected in the Latino community.

Covered California had already altered its advertising to promote in-person assistance at local clinics and churches because Latinos weren’t always comfortable discussing immigration issues over the phone or online.

The exchange credited that shift in marketing for a boost in enrollment. The exchange had signed up 75,000 Latinos by the end of December, drawing criticism from state lawmakers and other health-law supporters. The state’s total grew to 367,000 by mid-April.

Bigger penalties for the uninsured might also be a motivating factor in the months ahead. The fine for going without coverage increases next year to $325 per adult or 2 percent of household income, whichever is greater.

Another challenge is enrolling Californians who have grown accustomed to living without health insurance. They may pay cash at local clinics or travel to Mexico for care.

Nearly half of the remaining uninsured in California have been without coverage for two years or more, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Saldana family has learned to cope without insurance, said Lilian Saldana, and she recently took her mother to a neighborhood clinic for a physical. But she worries about what will happen if either of her parents suffers a serious illness.

“My family’s being held back whether I apply for it or not,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

MCT Photo/Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times

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