The Common Ills: Chump's attacks on immigrants and the United States

We noted masks put ICE at risk (they could be shot not knowing their ICE) and put others at risk. We noted how it could end up like a scene in a recent Liam Neeson film where women were taken advantage of by posers. Now Ava Blando and Simone Jacques (MS. MAGAZINE) report:

Multiple men have been arrested in at least three states since President Donald Trump’s inauguration for allegedly posing as immigration enforcement officers to perpetrate sexual violence against immigrant women.

Across the country, so-called “ICE impersonators” are on the rise as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) itself has been violently arresting people without warrants, sometimes in plain clothes using unmarked vehicles. Nearly impossible to distinguish between real and fake agents, men have allegedly lied about their identities to intimidate, kidnap and rape women with precarious immigration statuses, according to survivors’ accounts:

In Prince George’s County, M.D., police arrested 26-year-old Victor Antonio Reed, who they say raped a Latina woman while posing as an ICE agent.
In Raleigh, N.C., an immigrant woman says 37-year-old Carl Thomas Bennett kidnapped and raped her while posing as a law enforcement officer and threatening to deport her. He is facing charges for kidnapping, second-degree rape and impersonating a law enforcement officer.
In Brooklyn, N.Y., a man told a 51-year-old immigrant woman that he was an ICE agent. She says he attempted to rape her, and he took her phone, purse and jewelry. At the time of publication, he has not yet been arrested.

[. . .]

ICE impersonators are not the only threat facing immigrant women (and all immigrants). Especially under President Trump, who is ushering in a harsh wave of militarized mass detention and deportation, ICE itself poses grave risks to women’s safety, bodily autonomy and human rights.

In mid-March, ICE detained a pregnant mother of five named Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus. In ICE custody, Monterroso-Lemus says she endured hunger, abuse and medical neglect; her food had cockroaches in it, and her only prenatal care was 12 unidentified pills a day.

When she was five months pregnant, Monterroso-Lemus gave birth alone, shackled and under armed guard. She experienced a stillbirth in custody after officials allegedly refused to provide medical care while she begged for help. After she gave birth to a stillborn child, ICE deported Monterroso-Lemus to Guatemala, separating her from family in the United States.

In May, ICE detained Paola Clouatre—the wife of an American Marine Corps veteran—after her appointment for a green card. Immigration officials sent Clouatre to a facility hours away from her children, including her 3-month-old breastfeeding daughter.

These are just two of many stories. Tragically, too many women have suffered in ICE custody to include every story here.

Additionally, women who are deported often face abuse in other countries. Many came to the United States to escape gender-based violence, which is prevalent in many parts of Latin America and around the world.

ICE may stand for “Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” but it spells danger for immigrant women and their families.

These are horror stories and they exist because of Donald Chump. Here's another, Wendy Fry (CALMATTERS) reports:

A deaf Mongolian man has spent more than four months in a Southern California immigrant detention center without the opportunity to communicate with anyone who understands Mongolian Sign Language, according to his civil rights attorney.

“He’s basically been in solitary confinement because he has not had one person actually speak to him in Mongolian Sign Language for the entirety of the time that he’s been in proceedings and detained,” said his attorney, Alegría De La Cruz, director of litigation for the Disability Rights Legal Center.

U.S. Southern District of California Judge Dana Sabraw this week ordered officials at the Otay Mesa Detention Center to provide him with a Mongolian Sign Language interpreter.

The judge also directed immigration authorities to redo two assessments that could affect his request for asylum. One would examine his mental health, and the other would evaluate whether he has a credible fear for his safety if he returns to his country.

Need another? Chabeli Carrazana (19TH NEWS) reports Nicolle Orozco Forero and her family have been deported from Seattle:

It was supposed to be a routine meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Orozco Forero and her husband had been to all their monthly meetings for the past year and change, since their asylum charge was denied in April 2024.

The family — Orozco Forero; her husband, Juan Sebastian Moreno Acosta; and their two sons, Juan David, 7, and Daniel, 5 — fled Colombia two years ago. Moreno Acosta, a street vendor, had been persecuted by gangs who target vendors for money.

After arriving in the United States, they sought the help of a lawyer with their asylum claim, but when they couldn’t pay his full fee ahead of their hearing, he pulled out. They represented themselves in court and lost the case. With no knowledge of the U.S. court system, they didn’t know they had 30 days to appeal the ruling, either. Ever since, ICE has been monitoring them, requiring they wear a wrist tracker and meet with an immigration officer once a month, sometimes more, according to a family member. (The 19th is not naming the family member to protect their identity.) It’s unclear why ICE has allowed them to stay in the country all this time, though it’s not necessarily uncommon; ICE typically prioritized immigrants with felonies for deportation.

Orozco Forero had seen the reports of undocumented immigrants being rounded up at their immigration appointments. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort has led to the detention of about 30,000 migrants with no criminal record, like Orozco Forero, who now make up about half of those detained. Her husband does have a misdemeanor reckless driving conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol on his record, but he completed a court-mandated alcohol course for that and has no other convictions.

Still, Orozco Forero wasn’t worried when she headed to her appointment on the morning of June 18. If ICE planned to detain her, Orozco Forero thought, they would have asked her to come with the boys, right?

And she had been doing everything right: She’d gone to all her appointments, taken documentation to show she was going to school at Green River Community College taking courses in English and early childhood education. She had completed a child care internship that trained her to open her own licensed in-home day care. Her licensure approval was set to arrive any moment, likely that same week, and the day care was just about ready to go.

But that morning, her family was still wary, asking her to share her location just in case.

Shortly after 10 a.m., Orozco Forero texted her family member: “They are going to deport us”

“Nicolle what happened? Nicolle answer me,” they texted back. “What do I do?”

“I can’t speak I feel like I’m going to faint,” Orozco Forero replied. And then: “I’m sorry it wasn’t what we expected.”

One of her children's sick and they've all been deported. And this impacts families in Seattle since she was a childcare provider.

In other news, AFP reports:

President Donald Trump urged his political base on Saturday to stop attacking his administration over files related to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a case that has become an obsession for conspiracy theorists.

Trump's Department of Justice and the FBI said in a memo made public last week there was no evidence that the disgraced financier kept a "client list" or was blackmailing powerful figures.

They're not forgetting. For more on that, see Ava and my Media: Reality slaps Chump upside the head"." I'm sorry, we just posted it. We're not going to rewrite it like we did our piece last week -- three times -- while we waited for other content to be ready. It's up and we're done with it. David McAfee reports:

Donald Trump isn't just losing MAGA influencers over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, but also his "core" loyalists, according to a former insider.

Trump's former "trusted operative," Lev Parnas, on Sunday reported that Trump is furiously pacing in the White House, insulting his own MAGA base over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The purported development comes as MAGA influencers and other supporters have been targeting Trump's attorney general, Pam Bondi, for purportedly mishandling the release of files related to the disgraced financier and pedophile.

As Parnas put it, "Yesterday, the volcano erupted."

"Trump made what may be the biggest mistake of his political life—his cover-up of the Epstein files. His own MAGA base isn’t just fracturing—it’s overflowing, erupting with anger and betrayal. I’ve spoken directly with people who were once among his most loyal defenders, and they are livid," according to Parnas. "Furious about his silence. Furious about what they see as his protection of pedophiles. Furious that he broke the one promise he embedded into their identity for the past six years: exposing the Epstein list. In their words, this was never just about politics—it was about rooting out the evil of the so-called 'deep state.' And now, to them, Trump has become part of it."

He's bleeding support everywhere. Martha McHardy (NEWSWEEK) reports middle class American voters are breaking with Chump, "In the latest YouGov/Economist poll only 42 percent of Americans in the $50,000 -- $100,000 income bracket approve of Trump, while 56 percent disapprove -- pushing his net approval among the middle class back down to -14 points." Once it starts to fall apart, it generally all starts falling apart. Michael A. Cohen (MSNBC) explains:

One truism of modern American politics is that politicians and voters love to trash the federal government…until they need the resources and expertise of the federal government.

For months, President Donald Trump and his administration have floated the idea of doing away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” he told reporters in his first week back in the Oval Office. The president said his administration would “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of” the agency altogether.

Within a month, the Department of Homeland Security fired 200 employees from the already understaffed agency. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem declared at a Cabinet meeting in March that one of her goals was “to eliminate FEMA.” In April, CNN reported that “about 20% of FEMA’s permanent full-time staff — roughly 1,000 workers — are expected to take a voluntary buyout” before hurricane season.

That was then.

After devastating rains led to flash floods in the Texas hill country, leaving at least 120 dead and scores missing, the White House is singing a different tune. “Administration officials say abolishing the agency outright is not on the agenda,” the Washington Post reported Friday, with one senior official telling the Post that “changes in the agency will probably amount to a ‘rebranding’ that will emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response.”

Noem, who apparently had not received the new White House talking points, was still talking about scrapping FEMA this week, when she claimed the agency is “slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis” and should be “remade into a responsive agency.”

But, in the Texas disaster, the problem wasn’t FEMA. It was, in part, Noem.

“Noem now requires that all agency spending over $100,000 be personally approved by her, according to current and former FEMA officials,” NBC News reported earlier this week. CNN reports that this restriction led to delays: FEMA officials were unable to pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews, who specialize in searching for victims during catastrophic weather incidents. Noem failed to authorize the crews’ deployment until Monday, 72 ho'urs after flooding began. The same day, according to NBC, “FEMA officials created a task force to speed up the process of getting Noem’s approval.”

Kat's "Kat's Korner: Dusty Springfield, Cynthia Erivo, Counting Crows, Bob Mould" went up earlier today and the following sites updated: