“It seems really clear to us that this is an escalation of retaliation”
January 17, 2018 10:28 AM   Subscribe

 
So much of this is just theater of cruelty, and it breaks my heart. Not just (though primarily) for the victims, but for the people who are so spiritually debased that something like the Garcia family breakup gratifies them.
posted by praemunire at 10:44 AM on January 17, 2018 [22 favorites]


Relatedly: Feds planning massive Northern California immigration sweep to strike against sanctuary laws

Id also point out that NYC New Sanctuary Coalition is currently saying that Ravi's being moved back to a NY area facility from Miami where he was taken after his check-in, and that his deportation is no longer imminent. (Cold/temporary comfort that that news may be).
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:44 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


Magneto was right.
posted by signal at 10:47 AM on January 17, 2018 [20 favorites]


Any non-violent crime is more defensible as an income source than working for ICE. Relatives working for ICE should be disowned. If democracy ever works again, ICE itself must be dissolved and prosecuted as a criminal organization.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:04 AM on January 17, 2018 [50 favorites]


The US needs to undergo Denazification.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:11 AM on January 17, 2018 [44 favorites]


I feel like the Bustle article on Jose Garcia failed to delve into why Garcia's marriage to an American citizen didn't save him from deportation. This isn't meant to be a nit pick or an effort to cast doubt on Garcia's story, but I do think that the American population has a misapprehension that "A Green Card Marriage" is a cure-all for all kinds of immigration status irregularities, and is an easy ix.

Jose Garcia was given conditional permanent residency after getting married, then lost that status because USCIS determined that the marriage was entered for the express purpose of gaining citizenship and was therefore fradulent. They decided this despite the fact that he's now been married for 15 years and had been married for 6 years when USCIS ruled against him.

I've known my wife for 20+ years. We met in college. We broke up and we stayed friends. We got back together again as adults, and fell in love. When we started talking about marriage two years ago, I specifically had to put "Getting my Green Card" as a milestone that I had to cross on my own before we could get married, because the last thing I wanted was to deal with Immigration throwing shade at my marriage. Thankfully, my wife understood and was willing to wait, and also I was reminded that employment based Green Cards do not get interrupted by a wedding, but it was just reassuring to have it first.

and just to be fair, the prosecuter working against Garcia was Loretta Lynch and the administration that chose to deport him was Obama's.
posted by bl1nk at 11:40 AM on January 17, 2018 [24 favorites]


Yeah, the unfortunate thing here is that the Obama administration was pretty shitty on immigration too, definitely paving the way for Trump.

As I have mentioned elsewhere here, someone in my extended social circle had a cousin who had fled Mexico because his life was in danger from a gang. He was in his teens or early twenties, he was here illegally, he was deported and he was instantly killed on his return to Mexico. And it was the Obama administration which did that.
posted by Frowner at 11:43 AM on January 17, 2018 [19 favorites]


The US needs to undergo Denazification.

You jest, but being a Republican elected official complicit in Trumpism should really be a bar to future elected office, if not by law, then by God the ballot.

"“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...”

They're breaking that oath daily.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:48 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


God, I can't even think of anything to say.
posted by Samizdata at 11:48 AM on January 17, 2018


They decided this despite the fact that he's now been married for 15 years and had been married for 6 years when USCIS ruled against him.

Not to mention that every green card marriage in my circle of friends has concluded with a divorce just fine a year or two after the GC was granted.
posted by rhizome at 12:07 PM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


> rhizome:
"They decided this despite the fact that he's now been married for 15 years and had been married for 6 years when USCIS ruled against him.

Not to mention that every green card marriage in my circle of friends has concluded with a divorce just fine a year or two after the GC was granted."


The one green card person, I know, my best friend (who immigrated from Canuckistan) has had his for a few years, and is still married, with no signs of it ending and a rather functionally inspiring father.
posted by Samizdata at 12:36 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


They decided this despite the fact that he's now been married for 15 years and had been married for 6 years when USCIS ruled against him.

Is that the same guy? It says he’s from the Dominican Republic.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:09 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]




They decided this despite the fact that he's now been married for 15 years and had been married for 6 years when USCIS ruled against him.

Honestly, the whole thing where you're not allowed to get green card marriages when you are allowed to get any other marriage for gain is just super fucking problematic. They don't examine whether or not you're able to inherit money if you married for money, whether you're able to get healthcare if you married for healthcare. It's only citizenship, and the tests they go through my husband definitely could not pass. And he's a natural born citizen.
posted by corb at 3:35 PM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Private Prisons continue to send ICE detainees to solitary confinement for refusing voluntary labor

I seem to remember a phrase related to this...

Why aren't these being treated like the concentration camps they are? Maybe the action is underground - and understandably, for their own safety - but I hope someone's doing something other than depending on the court system and elections. I personally don't know what to do but I don't want to be living in an ethnostate 20 years from now and wishing to God I'd done something to stop it.
posted by AFABulous at 4:51 PM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


Actual forced labor camps, under threat of torture. Actual concentration camps.

And this:

US border patrol routinely sabotages water left for migrants, report says
posted by Obscure Reference 2 ½ hours ago [1 favorite +] [!]


Holy mother of God.

these are American Nazis, acting with impunity in their fiefdom.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:57 PM on January 17, 2018 [15 favorites]


Borders are immoral.

Anyway it’s horrifying. It’s one of the handful of things about the Obama administration that I just don’t get. In many ways his policies were just enforcing the law as written, which has been ignored for decades because it’s beneficial to have an underclass of workers who are discouraged from challenging labor abuse. But there’s no way he could really believe consistent enforcement would lead to legislative change. And now of course we have an explicitly anti-immigrant President whose attitudes are of course going to trickle down. The same thing happens in police departments.

It’s so very depressing. :(
posted by R343L at 5:16 PM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]




The BBC ran a piece on Pacific County, WA where the local Trump-voter sheriff was shocked, just totally flabbergasted, that his friend was deported to Mexico.

He just didn't seem to have any framework for understanding what had happened. And seemed honestly embarrassed about having supported Trump. I almost felt a bit sorry for him, he seemed so lost.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:34 PM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Is that the same guy? It says he’s from the Dominican Republic.
ARGH you're right. That case is for another immigrant who married an American citizen and was deported anyway named Jose Garcia, but the immigrant in the article is Jorge Garcia. I think I was thrown off as the story was still coming up on Google search results even with the misspelling.
posted by bl1nk at 7:10 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


It’s one of the handful of things about the Obama administration that I just don’t get.

I honestly believe it's some stupid horribly misguided "well the Republicans will say we're soft on immigration if we don't" 90s Democrat playbook bullshit that never in a million years would have stopped them from saying that anyways. Same for the hawkish defense stuff.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:25 PM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


It’s one of the handful of things about the Obama administration that I just don’t get.

Because he was the President of the United States of America, and that is what America is and what America does.

There's a joke in one of Heinlein's lesser novels, Methuselah's Children:
There is an old, old story about a theologian who was asked to reconcile the Doctrine of Divine Mercy with the doctrine of infant damnation. 'The Almighty,' he explained, 'finds it necessary to do things in His official and public capacity which in His private and personal capacity He deplores.


I'm sure that Obama deplored the deportations, and I'm also sure that while ICE seems to have been emboldened and become more vicious, the deportations would still have continued under Clinton. This is what America is.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:15 AM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


The one green card person, I know,... is still married, with no signs of it ending and a rather functionally inspiring father.

Me and my wife, too. I think the comment was using green-card marriage to mean a marriage entered in to solely for the purpose of getting a green card.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:46 AM on January 18, 2018


Practically everything that ICE does is an unconstitutional violation of due process. That it continues to exist and operate as it does is proof that we are bad, and we should feel bad.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:50 AM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


> Kirth Gerson:
"The one green card person, I know,... is still married, with no signs of it ending and a rather functionally inspiring father.

Me and my wife, too. I think the comment was using green-card marriage to mean a marriage entered in to solely for the purpose of getting a green card."


Didn't catch that first time through. I guess I think better of people as a default setting.
posted by Samizdata at 12:45 PM on January 18, 2018


The BBC ran a piece on Pacific County, WA where the local Trump-voter sheriff was shocked, just totally flabbergasted, that his friend was deported to Mexico.--BungaDunga

Found it.
posted by eye of newt at 8:35 PM on January 18, 2018


« Older Alive Inside   |   A Strategy for Ruination Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments