I've always said that ICE's lawless excesses would inevitably become too big for Americans to ignore, and while that day may not be here yet this report should get us there a little faster. This goes *so* far beyond immigration enforcement
You should already care that ICE constantly lies to the public and the courts about the people it rips from their families, detains in terrible conditions, and violently deports. But a lot of US citizens don't + never will, so let's say you're one of them. This report is for you
Read this paragraph, and then read it again, and then read it out loud to someone nearby and start a conversation about why an immigration agency has any right to conduct warrantless surveillance on all of us in the course of enforcing non-criminal statutes
"small government conservative" or "person who supports ICE"
If you can read this and think that ICE should not only still exist but should be expanded, you're not a "conservative." You're a fascist.
I welcome the support of everyone who has been yelling about "states rights" since the Alito draft leak in the struggle to #abolishICE. Surely if the states can deny women healthcare they can try to mitigate this unaccountable surveillance state, who's with me
Fascism always starts with claims of threats to the nation's borders which justify extralegal measures, usually before letting border cops loose in the interior and identifying domestic threats among us.
This has all happened before elsewhere. It's already here, now.
If you haven't already, please read @BuddJenn's take on the existential threat DHS poses to our future
1/ The especially frustrating thing about the right-wing opposition to #KeepingFamiliesTogether is that I sincerely believe that even most MAGAs would be fine with it if they only understood what it actually is and why it is necessary.
2/ "If only they knew" is not something I would usually say. I am of the opinion that you can't fact-check bigotry, but even a lot of bigots could be persuaded on this one because it is
(1) definitely legal and (2) addressing a very real (but little understood) problem
3/ Immigration through marriage to a US citizen is, famously, one of the easiest ways in. So long as you originally came on a visa (typically as a tourist) you can live/work in the US unlawfully for decades and still have a fairly easy path to residency through your spouse.
Me, a very clever human: write a @alyankovic parody in the form of a 15th century madrigal about the collapse of FTX and the crypto market
*two seconds later*
#OpenAI: alas tis a lamentable day, the visions of riches have become mere wishes, etc
A notably less weird Al here but otherwise am I the only one who thinks this is all kind of terrifying
I will not print it here but it cheerfully spit out an '80s party rap anthem denying the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust just because I asked it to.
The word "orgy" was consistently censored out of my prompts though so I guess we're looking out for what really matters
N. B.: the author of this fascist manifesto is not some Roman statue "Western chauvinist" account with 76 followers. He is the senior editor of the closest thing the American right has to a journal of record.
"save the country"
"rebuild and in a sense re-found"
"getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it"
"compromise with the left is impossible"
when I say this is fascism I mean this literally, it is literal fascism
Very few people outside the system know this, but you need to:
US asylum law knowingly & intentionally requires the deportation to certain death of people who have been on the wrong side of the criminal legal system.
First: I didn't know her, but this is the only publicly available news re: the murder of Melissa Nunez--and more importantly, her life. She was, among other things, a determined advocate who loved horses and traveling and dreamed of living in Puerto Rico
From information available online, I gather she was convicted on charges brought from defending herself against anti-trans violence. This conviction constituted an "aggravated felony," a class of offenses which bar someone from receiving asylum.
This @ similar questions from the @MarshallProj sheriffs survey linked below get to one of the most fundamental problems holding back progress today: a belief that past (white) immigrants had it harder & had to do more to "earn" a place than today's. It's exactly backward
It's only human to want to believe that your ancestors were better and smarter and worked harder than today's immigrants, because that kind of generational progress is such a fundamental part of the golden era American immigrant story. Which is to say the *white* immigrant story
But the reality is that it was hardly any trouble at all to immigrate before 1965--& absolutely no effort before 1921--& the system had nothing at all to do with today's. We are in NO WAY doing anything to make it easier now, only much much harder