Susie Haslett she/her/ella

HAPPENING NOW: The Trump administration withdraws its claim that parents of the Guatemalan children it tried to send back last month had requested their return.

DOJ says it has no basis for that claim now in light of contradictory info provided by the Guatemalan government.

Something more sinister in the future.

This is what happens when you do nothing about giving DC statehood: you make its residents a political punching bag while making the streets less safe and a ground zero for an authoritarian regime to railroad our Constitutional rights.

#TaxationWORep

Congress investigating D.C. police over crime data manipulation allegations D.C. officials have pointed to stats showing drops in violent crime to push back on Trump’s police takeover, now stretching into its third week.

ICYMI, DC’s criminal courts all have US DOJ attorneys who oversee the docket for all of the offenses in the District, including being the prosecutors assigned to those cases.

Congress should know that DOJ has the answer but are mounting another witch hunt, likely for….1/

wapo.st/45NaxWe

Someone keeps stealing, flying, fixing and returning this California man's plane. But why? Someone has stolen Jason Hong's 1958 Cessna Skyhawk plane at least four times, taking the red single-engine plane for a joyride, and then returned it at airports in Southern California. Hong, and poli...

This guy needs to put a camera and audio recording device in his plane, along with an AirTag.

Also, you know, maybe air traffic control can share any interactions w this mysterious baroness pilot…

www.latimes.com/california/s...

Two things both true:

The loved ones of Venezuelans are celebrating that they are no longer in CECOT; some are celebrating their return home.

And.

It is a violation of international law to cause someone to be returned where they’ll be persecuted. Most of them never got a chance to make that case.

If I had money, I would donate it to these folks – Immigrant Defenders. They represented Andry and other men in CECOT. They are ferocious advocates. At the border, every day, pushing.

They represented Andry and a number of other men sent to CECOT. www.immdef.org/support

Gay asylum-seeker sent to CECOT used as pawn in ‘political prisoner swap’ Andry Hernández Romero is no longer in El Salvador. But they sent him back to Venezuela from which he was seeking asylum for being gay.

He was here legally in the process for asylum that a judge was overseeing. We kidnapped him and sent him to CECOT. And we traded him for political prisoners

#andryhernandezromero #justiceforandry #lgbtq #asylum #asylumseeker

Good to know he's alive but it's important to recall that Andry fled Venezuela, seeking asylum in the U.S. due to sexual persecution. Sending him back there is almost as bad as being in CECOT.

The US govt did the heavy lifting to hand Maduro this win that will for sure hand him another term and rally the support that he was only grasping at up to this point.

En su afán de “DEPORTACIÓN MASIVA” Donald Trump, Marco Rubio y Nayib Bukele han legitimado a Nicolás Maduro

SIN DUDA — Maduro permitirá que todos estos hombres hablen públicamente sobre el maltrato y abuso que sufrieron a manos de ICE (EE.UU.) y CECOT (El Salvador)

On Feb. 15, José Manuel Ramos Bastidas called his wife from inside a Texas immigration detention facility.

He asked her to record a message, “just in case something happens to me.”

Thread 👇

ICE agents are harassing the courthouse volunteers who assist besieged immigrants "They want to be doing this with no witnesses."

“They don’t want anyone to see how they treat people. They want to be doing this”—their deportations—”with no witnesses.”

The sky in scenic locations: picture of a blank blue sky The sky at the grocery store: elaborately beautiful sunset with layers of orange and yellow clouds against a blue and purple background

Every great sky / sunset / sunrise pic I have ever gotten, has been taken from a parking lot.

#photography #nature #sky #clouds #witchsky #pagansky

ADVISORY: Statement, media avail. from unjustly detained U.S. veteran George Retes

Ventura County, CA—
Wed 7/16 at 3 pm PT, George Retes, U.S. citizen and Army veteran unjustly detained by federal agents during last week’s raid will hold a virtual press availability. 1/

I'm summing all this up to say: for whatever reason, we still have not cracked the proverbial code on what will finally compel a better dialogue on immigration.

But every second passed w/o Dems reclaiming the terms of the debate, inches our democracy closer to the brink of losing it for good. END

100 years ago, the US's flavor of reactionary politics-turned-policy was the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which severely restricted immigration to the US.

And for years among countless conversations with colleagues I've alluded to this 100-yr mark, and how our present day strikes an eerie rhyme 20/

This has been the hardest part for myself, and I believe, for many of my colleagues in the space. We have come across as hyperbolic for years, staring down into the what ifs of reactionary politics turned into policies.

And now we are on the precipice of seeing that realized. 19/

The dark history of “gasoline baths” at the border Toxic chemicals — and Nazis — are part of US border history.

Why do I say that? For the simple reason that, in the 1920s the US used to fumigate Mexican workers crossing the border to clear them of any lice or disease bc they were seen as "dirty."

This is what inspired Nazi Germany's gas chambers.

www.vox.com/2019/7/29/89...

18/

5. Unfortunately, I think we have yet to see the worst that supercharging DHS with the $100B that came from the Fugly* Bill.

But I do *hope* what is to come will do service to repelling us away from the cruelty we are about to collectively experience at scale, for at least the next 100+ yrs

17/

Let's take the family-based system for starters.

There are different priority categories based on relation to your relative, and THEN, each country gets placed onto their respective list. This has meant disproportionate wait times, sometimes taking DECADES.

This is just one ex among many. 16/

We can't defend what we don't make visible, what is already in front of our noses, hidden in plain sight.

4. NOW go in and fix and fortify the current visa system for immigrants and nonimmigrants, and those who remain practically shut out of access to the system, the undocumented.

15/

In fact, this is literally the driver of that pendulum swing in the recent Gallup poll!

The countless posts, videos, stories, anecdotes of "Trump said he would go after criminals, not my [INSERT SPOUSE, FAMILY, COWORKER/BUSINESS OWNER/EMPLOYEE OF ANY PROFESSION]!"

14/

Those econ arguments are helpful for gathering and organizing those grasstops leaders, it is valuable for sure.

BUT -- We need the IRL perspective of communities, tethered to the realities of how embedded immigrants already are, in their neighborhoods, workplaces, places of worship, schools...13/

Also turns out, ICE's street kidnappings are illegal as recently ruled in a district court, against 4th&5th amdmts.

3. There is a time and place for economic arguments, but we grossly silo this set of arguments in a grasstops business leaders, glossy paper kind of way....

12/

2. Stop with the arguments and qualifiers of criminality. This is exactly what the opposition is exploiting, painting everyone with the same broad stroke of "illegal is illegal."

75% of the men sent to CECOT in El Salvador had NO criminal record. They are collateral damage to serve a narrative 11/

1. Defend the policies for the most vulnerable people like hell -- this includes asylum, visas for domestic violence and trafficking victims, visas for juvenile immigrants.

You cannot have an honest discourse by throwing out the very values that our immigration system needs to be legitimate 10/

the absence of that person from wherever they were going -- to work, to pick up their kid from school, to a family gathering, a laundromat, to get groceries, etc.

So this yo-yo has to stop. The way it stops is for Dems not giving up their power to dictate the terms of the debate. How to do this? 9/

while not wrong, is so fundamentally (in my mind anyway) esoteric -- like, I literally cannot comprehend how much money they are getting away with not having to pay, let alone their net worth. But I can understand what ICE is doing, kidnapping ppl off the streets without any discretion, and...8/

That is to say, these historic cuts from our social safety net will come at the expense of the human lives who depend on these programs, in EXCHANGE for more human devastation funneled to deport people and separate families.

Instead, the message was about the Billionaires' taxcuts, which...7/

It happened just recently yet again, this time with the Fugly* bill. Dems were informed by pollsters to avoid talking about the $100B for ICE and DHS, and focus on healthcare, economy.

And frankly, this was a lost opportunity to tie in, NOT JUST the massive cuts, but the collective human cost 6/