(I apologize for saying earlier today it would happen next week. That was what I was consistently hearing from people I trust.)
Per the memo sent within DHS, it doesn’t include those who weren’t in the US in November 2020–so, doesn’t apply to border apprehensions. But beyond that exceptions are VERY limited—no exceptions based on criminal record, for example. dhs.gov/sites/default/…
Moratorium does not apply to apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants, or to detention. That raises q’s, both about the use of detention in a pandemic (given that levels are currently at since-1999 lows) and about expedited deportation for eligible imms after the moratorium ends.
I don’t have very high hopes that this tweet will stop misinformation from proliferating, but: I’m seeing a lot of tweets about “this tells people to come to the US.” The memo is explicit that people who entered the US after 11/1/2020 are still subject to deportation.
The storming of the Capitol really highlighted how both @nytimes and @washingtonpost’s visual teams have come of age on second-draft-of-history stuff. Well done both.
(No I have not fully articulated the second-draft-of-history thing; seems like the kind of thing I would do in a paid talk, tho)
(Come to think of it, if someone forced me to do this it would probably force me to talk in public about my tattoo...just saying)
Something I wish I’d done more (at all) the last 4 years was write down the shower thoughts/kneejerk grumblings/etc of What It’s Like To Live Through History. 1/
Not like “this is happening and bad/good” blog posts, but a record of what I saw/felt from my particular positionality that wasn’t captured in public records. (SUPER petty eg: how spiteful it felt for Spicer to ruin a bunch of journalists’ Saturdays for no reason on 1/21/17.) 2/
I didn’t do this partly because of time/exhaustion and partly because of a bedrock belief that I am not the (type of) person who needs to be centered in telling of this era. Which is obviously true. But I wonder if having the record might be useful down the road, anyway. 3/
Miles Taylor's account of his role in family separation, in his Post interview, has a chronology I can't make sense of. washingtonpost.com/politics/anony… 1/
First, he says he started as deputy Chief of Staff "the week that Jeff Sessions announced zero tolerance." Technically that was the first week of April 2018, but maybe Taylor is referring to the speech Sessions gave in early May 2018 that coincided with DHS joining the policy. 2/
But then there's this, which says he didn't resign over family separation because "basically that same month, in August or September 2018," there were rumors of a DHS purge. 3/
I was thinking so much about this story as I wrapped up the piece we published yesterday. propublica.org/article/trump-… If you think of policy as "strategy" + "operation," this week's piece is about the former and the January piece the latter.
Increasingly, I believe that journalism in 2020 (at its best) isn't the first draft of history — social media and cameraphones mean we are _awash_ in primary documents — but the second draft: the effort to begin to move from simply bearing witness to taking _stock._
This stuff is kind of overstated. Stephen Miller did a campaign press call today! DHS has been doing a press-conference swing state roadshow! I think what has changed is that _Trump himself_ is more liable to hijack whole news cycles with tweets on other stuff, relative to 16.
There is also a willingness to treat the messages of urban unrest as credible, when in 2016 they were tried out but pretty totally ignored, and therefore used less often.
Oh, the other big big thing here is that Biden isn’t as actively seeking out a contrast with Trump on these issues as Clinton did.
This is, honestly, the thing about the "police abolitionists are asking for more places to be policed like white suburbia" take that throws me. White suburbia absolutely has a policing presence. It's just always, always understood to be protecting "you" from "them."
There is, in fact, a vision of policing that says that's what everyone should have! But it's a reformist vision that is focused on making police accountable and trustworthy to the communities they police. (2/3)