I aspire to show you that nuanced is not an antonym of clear. Because the public has a right and a duty to understand immigration policy. Now @immcouncil.
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Apr 29, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The core of policy journalism HAS TO BE that statements like “the government is doing X to accomplish Y” are not based solely on what the government tells you.
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Either X will actually accomplish Y, and the debate is about whether X is feasible; whether Y is desirable; or whether there are costs Z that are greater than the benefit Y; or
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Aug 10, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I also think about this story a lot—mostly in the context of discussions about whether, when and why it is important for _journalists_ to label things racist, which can often be a deontological argument masquerading as a consequentialist one.
Saying “is racist” in the hed successfully ensured the exact same reaction being described in the article. OTOH a less declarative locution wouldn’t have gotten as much attention among liberals. (From a clix perspective, for a young reporter at a new outlet, not a hard q.)
Sep 25, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
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FIA: gotta revamp the regs after 2021 to end this Merc/Red Bull hegemony
2021: Race winner Esteban Ocon! McLaren 1-2 finish! 2 podiums for Russell! Merc starts P4/P7 at SOCHI with Hamilton behind a Carlando front row and a Williams!
I promise I will thread any other F1 tweets this weekend behind this one, so the people who follow me for The Subject I Actually Cover Professionally can mute this conversation and not worry about it!
Sep 24, 2021 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
Good morning! This tweet (tho I think it should be “deporting those same”) makes a good point, so I’m going to do a little disambiguation in a 🧵.
(I use immigration doves/hawks instead of left/right, because that’s the relevant viewpoint here.)
First, on numbers. Thousands of Haitians are getting expelled (not quite the same as deported, I’ll address this in a bit). Thousands more—probs ultimately a greater number—are being released. @Anna_Giaritelli’s sources (usually insider hawks) have this estimate:
"Fakhruddin Akbari is allowing his full name to be published because he is certain he is going to die."
On the hundreds of Afghans who won the "visa lottery" in May 2019, and became some of the unluckiest people alive.
propublica.org/article/these-…
The FY2020 diversity visas—whose applicants were picked by lottery in 2019—were supposed to be cleared out or expire by 9/30/20.
Then came a Trump ban.
A judge just told US to process some of the 40K remaining visas...2 days after Kabul fell. propublica.org/article/these-…
May 14, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Sure, new POTUS etc. But border officials still have super broad authority to stop/question—& the people doing that work are the same.
Oh, and? The current head of Border Patrol was running San Diego when SD was the hub of this operation. propublica.org/article/docume…
Also, like, the fact that when I asked CBP for comment, they reached back to the old chestnut about investigating "assaults on border patrol agents" in San Diego — without _any_ explanation of what a couple of lawyers in El Paso had to do with that — hardly shows change.
Mar 22, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The null hypothesis for "Did team Biden's 'messaging' encourage people to try to enter the US" isn't "what would have happened if Trump had been reelected." It's "what would have happened if Biden had been reelected but said different things/not said anything."
Some folks appear to believe they have enough evidence to show that that null hypothesis would result in something different from what we're seeing now. I don't, because, as I've been saying, what we know about migration deterrence doesn't suggest it works that granularly.
Mar 20, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I’m seeing a LOT of confusion and mischaracterization (from Biden admin and critics on right and left) about this so I want to shout something real quick:
THERE WAS NO CHANGE IN WHETHER UNACCOMPANIED KIDS ARE ALLOWED INTO THE US FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.
Since November, the US has allowed unaccompanied kids to enter the US (and be placed in deportation hearings where they could seek legal status).
Feb 23, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If you’re focusing on the (re)opening of individual facilities you should also be aware of the broader context—the HHS agency responsible for housing unaccompanied migrant kids had to reduce capacity HUGELY bc of COVID precautions, and it could be a problem as kids keep coming.
The Biden administration could be expelling these kids under the CDC order, as Trump admin did before court order stopped them, but after order was lifted Biden chose not to resume kid expulsions.
Feb 3, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
To the extent that the phrase "kids in cages" refers to specific facilities, they're this sort of facility Biden admin now reopening.
They appear to be choosing to do this instead of expelling children under CDC order (court ruling stopping kid expulsions was reversed last week)
I do, FWIW, think the first clause of that tweet is important. "Kids in cages" was a meme that referred to several different specific policies/events/periods, and also served as a catch-all for the ~feeling~ that Trump admin was abusive toward asylum seekers.
Feb 3, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I don't doubt this, but it's interesting that "morale" is only explicitly invoked when it's down. I don't recall the Trump admin, or its supporters, explicitly saying during his presidency that morale at ICE was up, or high. (The people saying that were generally criticizing it.)
To be clear the “morale is only invoked when it’s down because the line employees don’t agree with the policies” thing is also 100 percent true on the dovish side of the bureaucracy, e.g. refugee and asylum officers under Trump.
Feb 2, 2021 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
It deserves saying explicitly, both because it’s not the way things have gone for the last four years and because it’ll help with critical news consumption: we’ve had very near 24 hours of talk from the WH _about_ what’s in these EOs, but we haven’t actually seen text yet.
That means not just that reporters don’t have ability to assess likely efficacy of EOs, or notice anything the WH doesn’t want to draw attn to, but that we can barely even use our own words and be sure we’re describing them accurately—which means it’s very hard to de-spin them.
Feb 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
-Staff journalists don’t get paid to tweet, but to produce content for our brands.
-There are lotsa downsides to breaking news by tweet (but contextualizing it means getting “scooped” by someone just tweeting it out)
-Non-journos are out here tweeting like they’re journos anyway
I limited replies to this bc last bullet point is guaranteed, on this hell site, to get misconstrued as snooty credentialism. That’s not what I mean. I mean specific folk who act as if they’re breaking news, w/o any structure for accountability for if they are wrong or spinning.
Jan 24, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
80 pages of introduction and Emily Wilson failed to prepare me for just how much I would want to punch Telemachus in the nose
The thing about hearing Nestor say that Telemachus talks like Odysseus, before we’ve heard from Odysseus directly, is that I’m starting to wonder if Odysseus really is as clever as y’all say
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)
Jan 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
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/
Oct 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
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/
Oct 29, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
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._
Oct 29, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
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.
Jun 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
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)
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