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[Photo: Emily Morter via Unsplash]

Chickens on ICE Raid: The Odd Luck of Peco and Koch Foods [UPDATE-2]

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[NB: Note the byline, thanks. Caveat: This post contains speculative content. Updates at the bottom of this post. / ~Rayne]

I have to run an errand, can’t take the time to follow this line of inquiry further. But something about ICE raids conducted in Mississippi today set off my hinky meter.

Why Mississippi, which long-time community member earlofhuntington describes as “so reliably Republican”? Why wouldn’t ICE conduct raids in blue states as they’ve intended to twice this year in order to rattle the Latinx and other brown-skinned voters?

Why wouldn’t they conduct a raid closer to the Mexican border since the Trump administration and its state media organ Fox News have drummed up a manufactured ‘invasion’ crisis?

Why pick established businesses in a deep red state only days after mass shootings of Latinx Americans in El Paso?

This raid was planned, though, they don’t just sweep in. The two businesses, Peco Foods Inc. and Koch Foods Inc. were on somebody’s radar, earmarked in advance.

But why these two over any other businesses — say, golf courses competing with Trump org courses which likely hire undocumented personnel the way Trump’s courses did?

Would golf courses be too obvious and yield too few results? Would such raids piss off the same class of customers who frequent Trump’s courses?

There’s some other reason not obvious to the public.

Perhaps the companies are owned and operated by people who don’t fit Trump and Trump’s minions political ideology? But this is where I have to leave it to run an errand.

I’ll leave you with this (already posted in comments and on Twitter):

And with this:

What do you think? I haven’t had time to look at the other five companies raided today, including PH Food Inc., MP Food Inc., and Pearl River Foods Inc.

Does this also suggest Mississippi is at risk politically if the administration had to pick “so reliably Republican” a state, in spite of a 130-year-old state law preventing black Mississippians from holding elected statewide office if they don’t win 55% of the vote?

UPDATE — 11:10 PM EDT —

Add in unionization of workers as another factor in selection of businesses to raid:

And while some folks note unhappily the workers have been detained and owners/management haven’t been arrested, I’m not certain that won’t yet happen. Somebody might be very happy to see a Democratic donor (or two) behind bars before the 2020 general election primaries begin.

UPDATE — 11:15 PM EDT —

Yeah, Mississippi is undergoing a political tectonic shift; statewide races may be in play.

This is an open thread. Bring all the stray cats and dogs here.

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Angry Mom: Hiding the Trumpian Genocide’s Records

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When I think can’t get any angrier at this miserable excuse for governance, the Trump administration proves there isn’t a limit to how low they will go.

Sleazy, unlawful executive action without adequate oversight followed by a fog of obfuscation and prevarication is bad enough. The administration will now double down now to hide what it’s done and hope like hell nobody notices.

It doesn’t help that members of Congress, journalists, and the public still haven’t grasped the true nature of the crimes before them.

The Trump administration hasn’t merely ignored or broken existing U.S. laws on handling of asylum seekers. See 8 U.S. Code § 1158:

(a) Authority to apply for asylum
(1) In general
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.

(2) Exceptions
(A) Safe third country
Paragraph (1) shall not apply to an alien if the Attorney General determines that the alien may be removed, pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement, to a country (other than the country of the alien’s nationality or, in the case of an alien having no nationality, the country of the alien’s last habitual residence) in which the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and where the alien would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection, unless the Attorney General finds that it is in the public interest for the alien to receive asylum in the United States.

(B) Time limit
Subject to subparagraph (D), paragraph (1) shall not apply to an alien unless the alien demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence that the application has been filed within 1 year after the date of the alien’s arrival in the United States.

There’s more but the key part in boldface above. The “zero tolerance” approach to border protection violated this code. Asylum seekers do not have to apply from outside the country; they can apply once inside the country. I’m not a lawyer but I don’t see anything here that indicates asylum seekers are suddenly not eligible to apply for asylum because they crossed the border.

And nothing in the entirety of 8 U.S. Code § 1158 indicates the government may take custody of asylum seekers’ minor children with or without force.

Note also where the asylum seekers may apply — they are NOT limited to designated ports.

DHS Secretary Nielsen’s claim that border crossers had not applied through ports of entry is a lie because it wasn’t required of them.

What happens to the children appears to fit the description of kidnapping (18 U.S. Code § 1201), including section (a)(3), an “act against the person is done within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States as defined in section 46501 of title 49” for those children who are flown by aircraft to other destinations in the U.S. out of their parents’ physical custody. It’s no wonder carriers like United Airlines and American Airlines wrote and published letters yesterday telling DHS to stop using their services for moving the children across the country.

The conditions in which many of the children have been placed also appear to be abusive; based on the children seen so far there are reports of not enough food, sedation, restraints, disruption to sleep habits, etc.

But that’s not the end of it. The entire separation of children from their families appears to be genocide under The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which the U.S. has signed (1948) and ratified (1988):

Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious
group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

We have not yet seen evidence of child deaths, but section (b) is likely and (e) of Article 2 is definite — the children are now in custody of the United States government and disbursed to others’ care.

Wednesday’s executive order does nothing to remedy the situation. It doesn’t even stop the separation of children from families due to its murky wording. It exacerbates the problem by foisting some of the responsibility on the military, placing the Defense Department at odds with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S. Code § 1385) as the EO expects the military to perform a domestic function — DHS’ border patrol and immigration services — which is not in response to a natural disaster.

(Oh, this is definitely a disaster, but it is human made.)

Ordering the military to provide assistance also draws defense resources away from where they may be needed, potentially creating security risks.

And yet this is not enough insult. DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asked the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) last year if it could change its record retention practices, according to The Memory Hole:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has asked for permission to destroy all its documents about the deaths of detained immigrants in custody 20 years after a case is “closed.” (Deaths in ICE custody are almost always investigated by ICE itself. A minority are investigated by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General. [report])

Similarly, ICE wants to destroy all its documents about sexual assaults of detained immigrants in custody. The time frame is 20 years after a case is “closed.” (Again, ICE almost always investigates itself in these cases. The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General investigates around 1% of complaints/reports. [article]) NARA argues that this information is “sensitive,” implying that documents containing the identities of victims and the accused should not be kept indefinitely. ICE itself did not offer this (or any) justification.

Thankfully The Memory Hole followed up and asked for status on ICE’s request, to which NARA replied:

No final action has been taken on this schedule. NARA appraisal staff have reviewed the comments received, and held several meetings with ICE records management and program staff regarding the records being scheduled.

Proposed changes to the schedule are being reviewed internally by NARA stakeholders for internal concurrence, after which NARA will inform ICE of the required changes. NARA will then publish a follow-up Federal Register notice responding to the public comments we received. This notice will be open for public comment for 15 days from the date of publication.

But it is not yet impossible that records related to the current human-made disaster affecting thousands of children may be destroyed prematurely, depriving them of justice.

There’s simply no way that ICE should be allowed to change its records retention given the scale of the separated families disaster. And yet I have a horrible, angry feeling the Trump administration will do whatever it can to hide its role in this genocidal activity along the U.S. southwest border.

EDIT — 5:45 P.M. EDT —

I meant to add one more thing to this post. It’s imperative I add this now that the White House has tried to change the subject by using FLOTUS as a human shield with a target literally painted on her back. Do not be derailed by their bullshit. Keep asking:

Where are the girls?

Where are the babies?

Where are ALL the bodies???

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About Not Making Nice

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[NB: Check the byline – this is a personal essay by me, Rayne.]

Not long ago my mother told me about an incident she found puzzling. She has an odd habit of telling me certain uncomfortable stories in a casual manner, sandwiched between other day-to-day topics; it may take some mental stuttering before I realize what it was she really told me.

Like the time she was talking about her shift in the emergency room and dropped in a passing remark that humans burnt to a crisp smell like chicken. She simply continued on, “Last night was so busy, there must have been a full moon…”

And of course I realized then as I picked my jaw up from off the floor that she needed to unload or run mad with PTSD. We share the horror she dumped on me but at least she was validated and she’s not alone with her burden.

This summer over lunch at a quaint little cafe she told me the refrigerator and stove in my parents’ Florida home needed to be replaced. My father went to the local Big Box Hardware Behemoth to replace them using the store’s credit card.

The store called her and asked her if she knew someone had the store card and was buying appliances with it. “Yes, my husband has the card,” she told the cashier. “How odd was that?” she asked me, before taking a bite from her salad and telling me about the new appliances.

Wait. Back the fuck up. I know my eyes must have bugged out of my head at this point. I asked her to repeat everything she said. My dad had a Big Box store credit card he opened to buy building supplies and appliances when they built their home a dozen years ago. He’s used it without problem up north. But now, in Florida this summer, he was told to wait until the cashier looked up his home’s hardline phone number and called the house to make sure he’s legit.

He had his fucking driver’s license and other forms of ID on him, mind you. And the cashier still called the house.

The nice white lady with the northern Midwest accent at the home number vouched for him.

The nice brown-skinned guy sporting a darker-than-usual tan because he’s been on the golf course a lot was cleared to buy appliances with his own goddamn credit card.

“Mom, that was discriminatory behavior. The cashier was racist. She just treated Dad like a second-class citizen,” I told her.

“No. Why would they do that?” She was in denial, but deep down she knew better or she would never have brought it up and slipped into our lunch chat like a rotten wedge of tomato eased onto the top of a salad.

The other person joining us for lunch gave me a side-eye and a nod. We both know my mom was both uncomfortable with what happened and yet unable to grasp the ramifications that her Asian-Pacific Islander husband, who looks like he could be Filipino or Latinx, was just treated like dirt while she wasn’t there with him to extend her invisible white privilege.

But that was just a single microaggression. There may be worse ahead.

After several reports that ICE has been randomly boarding public transportation and asking people for their identity papers, I’ve told my mother to make sure my dad carries his ID everywhere, all the time. I’ve told her to make sure her to make sure if he leaves the house he tells her where he’s headed and for how long, in case he suddenly disappears.

I can’t tell my father this. He’s a conservative, brainwashed into thinking this stuff only happens to other undeserving people, not a military veteran like him. This credit card thing was just a quirky one-off from his perspective. Never mind that the current occupant of the White House cast aspersions on the value of a birth certificate issued in Honolulu for more than a decade — which is the only kind of birth certificate my father has, born in what was then an American territory.

And never mind that ICE has picked up brown-skinned American citizens and detained them.

Mom struggled with my admonitions as much as she struggled with the idea of a racist cashier. She’s college educated, has multiple degrees in STEM fields, but she can’t see what’s in front of her, blinded by a lifetime of white privilege. She has to buffer it to accept it just the way she drops ugly things in the middle of the most innocuous conversations.

This summer my mother also dropped another nugget mid-chat; my kid brother was worried about the political environment especially because of his wife and kids. My brother is adopted, of AAPI heritage, and his spouse is of Latinx descent. They live in the Midwest near a large city, so they aren’t the only people of color in a sea of Caucasians. But they are still worried based on the little bit my mom wove into her download. Apparently my mom’s worried, too, even if she struggles to articulate what’s bothering her.

I’ve lived with the dull background noise of racism my whole life. I pass for white thanks to my mom’s StayPuft marshmallow-like genetics. My sister doesn’t pass, nor does my other brother by birth. My adopted brother definitely doesn’t pass. By passing I hear and see stuff my siblings don’t, the kind of racism white people have been reluctant to display openly but have no problem sharing when in a crowd they believe to be all white like them. This administration gave these closeted racists permission to come out and share their ugliness. They think they don’t have to spare anybody else’s feelings any more — literally, wearing t-shirts at Trump campaign rallies that read, “Fuck Your Feelings.”

With their newfound openness, I don’t need to take the time to make nice and get to know people who openly declare their belief I am not entitled to the same rights they have at best, and at worst lack the right to exist. I’m worried about family members, all Americans by birth, two of them military veterans, being detained and denied their rights simply because they are not white. I’m worried family members who are minors and in K-12 education are dealing with harassment which interferes with their learning.

Imagine how much worse this must be for African Americans. I have only just started to worry about my brother or father while their driving their car, only whether ICE will show up and nab one of them while they cut their grass, mistaking them for immigrants working as landscapers. African Americans have lived with this every day.

Making nice with racists to get inside their heads is a luxury some of us really can’t afford. Exit your denial; don’t mistake manners-as-survival-tactic for our acceptance of those who would rather see some of us dead.

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Yellowcake In the Soles of His Shoes

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Splash page of alibaba.com, where it would appear that Patrick Campbell became Cassim and was unable to exit with his treasure.

Splash page of alibaba.com, where it would appear that Patrick Campbell became Cassim and was unable to exit with his treasure.

Last night, The Smoking Gun and then CBS reported on the latest sting carried out by our government to keep us safe from people too stupid for their own good. This time, instead of the FBI setting up the security theater sting, it was an undercover agent for ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security. The criminal complaint (pdf) filed yesterday is written by an ICE Special Agent working out of Miami (I’ll return later to the ironic job position she holds).

Once again, as we see repeatedly in the government’s adventures in security theater, we appear to have ensared a small-time hustler but will undoubtedly play this up as a major interdiction of international terrorism. The hustler this time is one Patrick Campbell, who stands accused of brokering a deal to sell U3O8 to Iran. Campbell apparently was promising to ship 1000 tons of the processed uranium ore, but was arrested in New York yesterday Wednesday when he entered the country from Sierra Leone, where he reportedly lives.

How was Campbell caught? Here is how the complaint describes the elaborate trap ICE devised:

alibaba ad

 

Yup. Everybody knows that Iran absolutely would go shopping for uranium on alibaba.com. Note that ICE does not appear to be able to get their high-tech document production equipment to produce subscripts. There really is no such thing as Uranium 308 or U308. Writing it that way makes it look like they are referring to a uranium isotope. The naturally occurring isotopes of uranium are listed here, where we see that the atomic masses range from 232 (= U-232) to 238 (=U-238). The isotope of interest is U-235, which occurs in nature as only 0.7% of the uranium atoms. Uranium is mined as raw ore which is chemically treated to produce U3O8, which is otherwise known as yellowcake. For further processing, the yellowcake is then converted to UF6 gas and then put into gas centrifuges where the mixture is selectively enriched for the U-235 isotope. Low-grade enriched uranium has the U-235 enriched from the naturally occurring 0.7% to the range of 3-5%. Iran has also produced mid-grade uranium at 20% U-235 for its research reactor used to produce medical isotopes, but this still falls short of the 90% or so U-235 needed for a nuclear weapon.

It would appear that ICE ran this scam on such a short budget that they wouldn’t even front Campbell the money for travel to the US from Sierra Leone. In his negotiations with the undercover agent, Campbell demonstrated a pitiful level of awareness of operational security. The complaint notes many communications with Campbell by email, telephone and Skype. There is no indication that any of the communications were encrypted. The extent of his op-sec appears to be his brilliant use of an acronym to refer to the transaction:

MEUS

 

Campbell finally made it to New York yesterday Wednesday, where he was promptly arrested. Here is how The Smoking Gun opened their report:

A foreigner who agreed to sell undercover Homeland Security agents 1000 tons of yellowcake uranium for shipment to Iran was arrested yesterday when he flew into the United States with uranium samples hidden inside the soles of shoes in his luggage, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Wow. He tried to hide his yellowcake samples in the soles of his shoes, which he then put into checked baggage.

This whole episode is stupid and wasteful on a wide range of levels.

First, Iran purchased huge stockpiles of yellowcake back in the days of the Shah. Read more →

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DHS Inspector General Fluffs the Success of Secure Communities

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Last Friday, DHS’ Inspector General released two reports purportedly written in response to an April 28, 2011 request from Zoe Lofgren to determine whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement and DHS more generally were lying about the Secure Communities program, and if so, if doing so was criminal.

As a threshold matter, the completion of two reports, rather than just the one, seems to be a bit of a smokescreen. Lofgren asked if government officials lied. In response, DHS’ IG decided to answer two questions:

  • Whether Secure Communities was effective in identifying criminal aliens and prioritizing cases for action
  • Whether ICE clearly communicated to stakeholders the intent of Secure Communities and the expectation of States’ and local jurisdictions’ participation

In addition to reframing Lofgren’s question to avoid fully considering why people had misinformed Congress and localities (and also, given the scope of their work, to avoid inquiring whether DHS, rather than ICE, had decided to do so), DHS IG first decided to see whether Secure Communities was effective. According to the list of major contributors included with each report, with the sole exception of Communications Analyst Kelly Herberger, two entirely different teams conducted the reviews. The report that at least sort of responded to Lofgren’s questions was issued on March 27, whereas the non-responsive efficacy report was issued April 5, though both were apparently sent out Friday together. ICE responded to both reports on the same day–February 23, 2012–so it seems the different release dates comes because the efficacy report was revised in some way (the date on the conveyance letter for the efficacy report is in a non-standard sans serif font, which sort of makes you wonder…).

In short, the submission of these two reports together stinks, though it presumably had the desired effect, as the NYT reported “mixed reviews” for Secure Communities. HuffPo and LAT were less compliant, focusing instead on the communications report instead.

That said, the purported “good” efficacy report doesn’t actually prove that Secure Communities is working all that well. Here’s the summary of their results:

We performed this audit to determine if Secure Communities was effective in identifying criminal aliens and if Immigration and Customs Enforcement appropriately prioritized cases for removal action.

Secure Communities was effective in identifying criminal aliens, and in most cases, ICE officers took enforcement actions according to agency enforcement policy. Under Secure Communities, the agency expanded its ability to identify criminal aliens in areas not covered by its other programs. In addition, it was able to identify criminal aliens earlier in the justice process, some of whom it would not have identified under other programs. Secure Communities was implemented at little or no additional cost to local law enforcement jurisdictions. Although ICE was able to identify and detain criminal aliens, field offices duplicated the research associated with their detention, and officers did not always sufficiently document their enforcement actions. To improve the transparency and thoroughness of its processes under Secure Communities, the agency needs to eliminate the duplication of research and ensure that officers fully document their actions.

One of the ways they quantify that success is with a claim that they had identified 692,000 “criminal aliens.”

According to ICE, as of September 30, 2011, it had spent most of the $750 million and identified more than 692,000 criminal aliens.

Now, the graphics they provide to back up this claim do show 692,788 “IDENT” matches in the last 3 fiscal years.

Never mind that the program has become less efficient over the years. In FY2009, ICE had 1,087 fingerprint matches for each activated jurisdiction, in FY2011 ICE had 372 matches. To some degree that’s expected–jurisdictions along the southern border joined in first–but  also suggests getting every jurisdiction in the country involved has diminishing returns.

More troubling, the report also reveals that some of the people–it doesn’t say how many–in IDENT are citizens.

Individuals with fingerprints in IDENT include persons with an immigration history, such as aliens who have been removed but have reentered the country, immigration visa applicants, legal permanent residents, naturalized citizens, and some U.S. citizens.
IDENT includes two categories of U.S. citizens:

  • Citizens who have adopted a child from abroad (which involves U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), participated in a trusted traveler program, or may have been fingerprinted by immigration officials for smuggling aliens or drugs across U.S. borders;
  • Individuals who were not citizens at the time that their fingerprints were collected, but subsequently became citizens through naturalization, legal permanent residency, or immigration.

So if you’ve adopted a kid from China? You’re in this database too. Read more →

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Obama Promised Admin Would Not Indefinitely Detain American Citizens without Trial, But Continues to Deport Them

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On New Year’s Eve, President Obama promised that his “Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.”

But his Administration continues to deport them.

Consider the example of Jakadrian Turner, the 15 year old African American girl who spoke no Spanish but was deported to Colombia in April.

[After running away from home in Dallas] Jakadrien somehow ended up in Houston, where she was arrested by Houston police for theft. She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Columbia, who had warrants for her arrest.

So ICE officials stepped in.

News 8 has learned ICE took the girl’s fingerprints, but somehow didn’t confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.

“She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was,” Turner said.

Now some might blame this girl for giving the cops a false name–though pictures suggest she still looks like a teenager, so that itself is problematic.

But what this demonstrates is how low the due process requirements are on ICE deportations. Not her fingerprints, not her lack of identification, not her youth, not even basic common sense prevented her from getting deported to a country to which she had no tie.

And for all the solace that Defense Authorization supporters took (naively, I maintain) in habeas corpus, in a country where citizens can be deported based on gross error, in a country where this is not an isolated incident, that doesn’t amount to much.

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