Khaleda Rahman (NEWSWEEK) reports:
Among President Donald Trump's slew of immigration-related executive orders signed in his first week is mention of an 80-year law that went largely unnoticed.
In seeking to tighten border security, Trump invoked a rule requiring immigrants to carry identification proving their status — something civil-rights groups who spoke to Newsweek say is all but certain to end up with American citizens being detained by police. "The act itself is called the (ARA), and so it's easy to think on the face of it: 'Well, this is not a concern for a U.S. citizen, I'm not a non-citizen, I was born here, or I naturalized here, so this doesn't affect me at all'," Anthony Enriquez, vice president of U.S. advocacy and human rights at RFK Human Rights, told Newsweek.
"In fact, that's not the real question. The real question is, well, are police going to believe that you actually are a U.S. citizen when they stop you and they say: 'where's your document?'"
Immigration and deportation are key topics in this week's Tennessee legislative session, and a local nonprofit group is helping residents prepare for possible deportation.Nationwide, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports more than 900 arrests since the Trump administration has started following through on its promise of a "mass deportation."
Luis Mata, a communications officer for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, called for immigration reform while criticizing President Donald Trump's immigration executive order that expands detention. He added that they are helping Tennessee's 400,000 immigrants prepare, not panic. "Communities across the state are prepared to protect ourselves and our families," he said, "and we're doing that through continuing to build our robust network of organizations, community leaders, community members, who are ready to step up and make sure that we all have what we need to build the good life and to live up to Tennessee values."
Mata argued that mass deportation would lead to labor shortages and hurt businesses already struggling to build a reliable workforce.
The mood of residents in migrant neighborhoods on the outskirts of Chicago as a result of the Trump administration’s offensive against illegal immigration ranges from fear to dismay to paralyzing panic. In Hermosa, where the population is predominantly Hispanic, there is not a soul on the streets, not a single pedestrian — those new pariahs of civilization who lack a car in a country built for the automobile. Equally empty are the bus stop shelters, the few existing public parks, with their grass worn and scorched by the snow, and the local businesses: the taquerias and pupuserias where you can see right through the deserted storefront windows. Maria, a Mexican woman without legal papers despite having lived in the United States for 30 years, confesses that she goes grocery shopping and to the laundromat very early in the morning, and that for the past week she has avoided shopping malls and “places with large crowds, because the ICE agents [the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement] focus on those places.” Each ICE precinct, 25 across the country, has been ordered to make at least 75 arrests a day. Trump’s first week in the White House has resulted in more than 3,500 arrests, of which 1,179 were made in 24 hours.
[. . .
Maria says that ever since Trump’s election victory, neighborhood networks have been buzzing with information about searches at this or that house, advice on how to avoid an encounter, or the suspicious presence of cars in the neighborhood, “because in some places the agents don’t come in marked vans, but in small, discreet black cars,” she says. That explains the advice that if someone asks for directions from the back of a dark vehicle at dusk, you should walk away quickly. The few migrants who do venture out onto the streets do so by way of back roads and alleys.
Two blocks away from where Maria lives, Pastor Marvin del Rios of Starting Point Baptist Church says he would have no choice but to obey the law if one day an ICE patrol showed up at his church looking for a suspect. “But only with a court order, and with the explicit name of the person they are looking for. I am not going to allow a general random search, much less let them through if they show up without a warrant he says. Pastor Del Ríos’ church, which offers bilingual services and a specific one for migrants, is also a shelter now holding 17 people, all men. It is one of the shelters that relieved the pressure from the city government when migrants from the border began arriving in Chicago, a sanctuary city governed by Democrats, in the spring of 2022. “In 18 months, about 70 have passed through here, and now 17 of them with various backgrounds and ages are living with us.”
THE HILL runs a dumb column by idiot podcaster Derelick Hunter who wants you to believe his lie that the US is not a country of immigrants. We believe the only ones who came make that claim, Derelick, are the Native Americans. Everyone else here is an immigrant. See, this is why the MAGA nuts like Derelick want to erase history. They can't lie if people know history. They can't lie and get away with it, at any rate. The truth has never been on MAGA's side -- and that is the truth.
That's why Moms For Bigotry failed. It's why in the 90s Newt Gingrich failed. You can fool people but you can't fool them forever. And right now the media's largely in bed with Donald Chump. But that honeymoon's not going to last. We've been here before and it's been worse. We can stop this we just have to use our voices. (Again, some are hurt and harmed by the 2024 betrayals and to those people, especially Black women, take whatever you need. The left has taken from us and spit on us repeatedly. If you're attitude is, I'm on a vacation, take that vacation and take care of yourself. None of our comments here should be read as an order to anyone to get to work. For those who are able to participate right now, you are who we're speaking to about using our voices.)
What's taking place is horrific. And it is a stain on the human condition. There are not outrageous statements or claims. They go the heart of any real education. They are natural outcomes.
Yes, Chump has tremendous power right now. But the people rule in a democracy. And we're still a democracy for now. Cowards like Chump run and we can see to it that Fat Boy's on the run.
In the meantime, we can just call out him and his lying minions like Derelick who wants to pretend that the Native Americans don't predate everyone else on US soil today.
A group of Democratic lawmakers is demanding immediate action to halt what they describe as "unconscionable" harassment of Native American citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
On Wednesday morning, nine congressional Democrats sent a letter seen by Newsweek to President Donald Trump urging him to direct ICE agents to "stop harassing" Native Americans. The letter detailed an incident in New Mexico in which an ICE agent reportedly stopped a Tribal citizen at a convenience store and questioned their U.S. citizenship.
Navajo Nation officials told CNN that federal immigration enforcement operations had stopped, questioned or detained at least 15 Indigenous individuals in Arizona and New Mexico during immigration raids that began last week.
Of course they have. They're led by Chump and cheered on by the Derelicks. They don't know history. They don't know anything. We need to drive that home. Native Americans are just one more group to target for the MAGA bullies, one more group to lie about, one more group to destroy.
If you step back and take a breath and look around, what you see is that MAGA is targeting all of us. We outnumber them. Yes, we were betrayed on the left by loser like Jill Stein and backstabbers like Rashida Tlaib. That let Chump squeak back in -- as did the voter purges that Greg Palast has yet again documented. But we outnumber them. And we will be out in larger numbers next time. Because we'll be smarter and because we won't watch blindly as Amy Goodman brings on one Socialist after another while passing them off as Democrats and letting them attack whomever the Democratic Party candidate is. It's the same con game FOX "NEWS" plays and people are onto Amy. One of her groupies that wanted to argue on BLUESKY actually did the work required and sent a note acknowledging she was completely tricked by Amy. Of course she was. In most areas of the left, whenever you find a single White person who did it all his or herself, you find a liar. Salim Muwakkil is only one of the many Black men Goodywhore disappears to make herself look so grand and wonderful.
We are wise to them and we will only grow wiser. Black people were on to Amy in real time.
We will not let the tricksters fool us again.
In the meantime, in the right now, those of us who can speak out have got to speak out. And we say that knowing that a lot of people aren't as fortunate as we are. Very little can be done to us. But a lot of people can push back and that's what those of us lucky enough to be in that situation should do. (Remember earlier qualifier.)
