Final notes from my reporting in Latino communities during the election:

80% of Latinos are working class. Their experience of the economy the past four years—Covid shutdowns, inflation, gas prices, housing costs—was rough. That puts the incumbent Dems at a disadvantage. 🧵1/9 Trump smells the blood in the water. Republicans are organized, funded, and ambitious in Latino neighborhoods this year, especially in South Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Dems, meanwhile, keep prioritizing the most likely voters, in whiter, college educated suburbs. 2/9

In the last two years, the Mexican states that border the RGV in Texas—Nuevo León and Taumalipas—have accounted for 1/3 of the USAmericans who go missing in Mexico, according to official numbers. These disappeared, largely Mexican Americans, rarely get national attention. 1/6 For example: Just weeks before the now-infamous attack on South Carolinians in Matamoros, three women from Piñatas, Texas went missing while driving to a pulga in Nuevo León. There names are Marina Perez Rios, Maritza Trinidad Perez Rios, Dora Alicia Cervantes Saenz 2/x

One of the more toxic aspects of US politics that the overdose epidemic/fentanyl are being portrayed as a border issue. That spin sidesteps any actual political will to invest in treatment and communities; instead it becomes a shallow talking point about “securing the border” Across the country, especially in Republican-controlled districts, people are dying from fentanyl overdoses. But Republican politicians’ only response is to talk about the border; and now Democrats won’t talk about it at all because they don’t want to talk about the border

Looking over Biden's current list of transition plans, I don't see any planned action on ICE detention, the "Remain in Mexico" plan, or the CDC asylum ban. That could of course change in the weeks to come, but right now thousands of lives are in the balance. Thread: 1/7 Right now, thousands of people have spent months locked in extended, indefinite ICE detention because *they have no where else to go.* Many countries aren't accepting deportation flights. If Biden doesn't take action, thousands of people will remain in Covid-ravaged detention 2/7

BREAKING: Immigrants detained in the Mesa Verde detention center just announced a labor strike:

"Mesa Verde runs off of our labor. We are the ones who prepare and serve the food, who clean the bathrooms and the dorms. We are paid $5 per week for our official jobs..." 1/x , and the rest we do for free. ​We will not work and we will not collaborate with @GEOGroup. We refuse to make it easier for you to continue unnecessarily caging and murdering us.​” 2/x

The majority of families locked in the Berks ICE family detention center are Black, according to @BridgetCambria8.

I'm live tweeting @RAICESTEXAS's FB live stream, "Immigration is a Black Issue." 1/x Black families locked in the Berks family jail face structural disadvantages. An example @BridgetCambria8 gives: Not a single employee in the facility speaks Haitian Kreyòl, a major barrier for Haitians families getting the services they need

🚨People detained by ICE in the Mesa Verde detention center began a hunger strike today in honor of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor:

"Almost all of us have also suffered through our country's corrupt and racist criminal justice system before being pushed into the hands of ICE.” Many of the hunger strikes organized in ICE detention centers across the country in the last few months—and last few years—have been organized by black immigrants.

I just spoke to a Salvadoran mother detained with her 8-year-old son in a family detention center in Texas. She described how, yesterday, ICE offered her an awful choice: Stay in detention with her son, or agree to being separated, and have him released to a sponsor. 1/5 She said ICE agents gathered all the women and told them that, 1 by 1, they were going to ask them some questions. It began simply: "What's your address?" and questions like that. Then came the question of her child: "Sign this form affirming what you want to happen to him." 2/5

🚨BREAKING: Attorneys working with immigrant families detained with children in the South Texas FRC and Karnes FRC confirmed to me that ICE is requesting families sign a binary choice form: the choice bw indefinite detention and family separation. 1/3 Court ruling prevents the government from detaining families for more than 21 days. In recent years, the Trump admin floated "Binary choice" as a loophole: Give parents the choice between remaining detained as a family, or letting their child be released to a sponsor. 2/3

Hi, I'm a reporter: Are you a landlord whose tenants missed rent, and so you're now trying to figure out how to evict them this month? If so, please get in touch. It's not for a story, I just want to beat your ass Folks in my mentions defending landlords, uh, *evicting people during a pandemic* should know that bootlicking can spread the virus

After the fifth migrant child died after spending time in U.S. custody, I wanted to write a thread challenging one of administration's key narratives: That it's the journey through Mexico endangering these kids.

Here's evidence that these children's deaths were preventable: 1/9 When 7-y/o Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, the 1st child to die in custody, was apprehended by CBP, agents had her father sign an English-language form saying she was okay. She was held in a detention facility for hours, and then transferred by bus to another det facility 2/9