Saturday, July 12, 2025

Chump's reign of terror aka his immigration 'plan'

Do you like Chinese food?  I do.  I could eat it constantly.  Lucky for me, I don't live in Syracuse.  Michelle Breidenbach (SYRACUSE.COM) reports:

Kong Xiong Wang was 18 years old when he arrived at Miami International Airport with a document U.S. immigration officials said was fraudulent.

In 1994, an immigration judge ruled that Wang must return to China, record show.

Instead, over the next decades, he made his way north to a small village on the Susquehanna River in Upstate New York’s Southern Tier.

In Owego, Wang is known as Roger Huang, age 50, a husband and father and the owner of Kam Fung Chinese restaurant for about 25 years.

His is the story of Chinese restaurant owners in towns all over America. Huang works all day in the kitchen while his wife serves General Tso’s chicken and egg rolls in the dining room. Customers have watched their two daughters study their way from restaurant countertops to college.

“This family sure knows how to make awesome food and a friendly atmosphere and it’s always family, theirs and yours,” one Google reviewer wrote a month ago. “Owego New York is blessed.”

Now, for the second time in recent weeks, an Upstate New York community has lost the patriarch of its beloved local Chinese restaurant family.


He was a threat?  He was a violent criminal?  He was a small business owner providing jobs and food. He was a part of the community.  And most being kidnapped on our streets by Chump's thugs are hard working parts of our community.  Melissa Goldin (AP) explains,  "President Donald Trump has pledged to deport “the worst of the worst.” He frequently speaks at public appearances about the countless “dangerous criminals” -- among them murderers, rapists and child predators -- from around the world he says entered the U.S. illegally under the Biden administration. He promises to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history to protect law-abiding citizens from the violent threats he says they pose. But government data around ongoing detentions tells a different story."  72% of those kidnapped by ICE are not violent criminals and have no criminal convictions. 

And then the ICE thugs aren't kidnapping immigrants, they're attacking American citizens.  Joey Safchik (NBC NEWS) reports on the arrest of 71-year-old Barbara Stone for the 'crime' of documenting ICE's actions in a San Diego courthouse. She was left bruised by the bullies, held for eight hours and her phone was not returned to her when she was finally released. That alone should bother every American; however, combine it with what THE GUARDIAN's Edward Helmore reported today, "Donald Trump has given 'total authorization' to federal immigration agents to protect themselves after a series of clashes with protesters, including during enforcement raids on two California cannabis farms."  In Thursday's snapshot, we noted:

People watch as a chaplain at  Cincinnati's Children's hospital is rounded up by ICE and they rightly think, "How is that man a 'violent criminal'?"  And they rightly conclude, "He isn't."  This does not have the support of the American people.  You see it in the polling and you see it in the rising sentiment against Chump personally.

 

The chaplain's name is  Ayman Soliman and, Friday, US House Rep Greg Landsman's office issued the following:

Cincinnati, OH – Today, Congressman Greg Landsman (D-OH-01) released the following statement regarding his ongoing efforts in support of Ayman Soliman:

We spoke at length today with ICE officials – making the case for why Ayman deserves to remain in our community.

We have been working on Ayman’s case for months – well before this became public.

We expect this to be a long process that he and his attorneys will be navigating. At every step of the way – before he was detained, afterward, and going forward – we have been and will continue working hand in hand with his legal team.

We have secured a commitment that Ayman will be able to stay in Ohio for the time being – prior to his next appearances before the immigration court.

While we cannot go into every detail, we are working to ensure Ayman receives due process, are pushing for him to be treated fairly, and are doing everything we can to keep him here at home. 

###


Yesterday saw the courts hand down a verdict finally opposing ICE carrying out racial profiling.  At THE INTERCEPT, Natasha Lennerd reports:


After weeks of brazen rights violations and outright impunity from America’s secret police force, a federal judge in Los Angeles on Friday issued a sharp rebuke of the racist tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong blocked ICE’s “roving” patrols in Southern California, halting agents from carrying out unconstitutional arrests based on racial profiling alone. Going forward, they’ll need to have specific grounds for believing someone to be undocumented before they can make an arrest. 

“Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status?” the judge wrote. “Yes, it is.”

While the temporary restraining order is a rightful recognition of the deportation machine’s racist operations, it is unlikely to hinder a border regime that holds racist exclusion as its organizing principle and unaccountable brute force as standard procedure. 


LE MONDE and AP add, "Immigrant advocacy groups filed the lawsuit last week, accusing Trump's administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people in southern California during its ongoing immigration crackdown. The plaintiffs include three detained immigrants and two US citizens, one of whom was held despite showing agents his identification."


Let's go back to Michelle Breidenbach (SYRACUSE.COM) report because maybe Chinese food doesn't impact you.  The article also notes, "All over Upstate New York, the U.S. government is arresting the people who repair roofs, landscape yards and raise chickens. Dairy farm workers are refusing to leave company-provided housing, where officers would need a warrant to enter."


You going to repair your own roof?  


All across the country. life is being disrupted (and worse) as Donald Chump pursues his war on immigrants.  Worse?  Olga R. Rodriguez (AP) reports, "A farmworker who fell from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic ICE raid this week at a California cannabis facility died Saturday of his injuries.  Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die in one of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration operations. Yesenia Duran, Alanis' niece, confirmed his death to The Associated Press."


This is a reign of terror pure and simple.  A functional government would have long ago ended it.  I don't give a damn what Rashida Tlaib or anyone else says ahead of next year's midterms or the 2028 presidential election.  We have got to get the Democrats back in power.  Those of who you f**ked around and voted for Chump or wasted your vote on grifter Jill Stein or just didn't vote at all when you had time and you had opportunity?  Do you get where you've put us?  Do you get that Chump's using social media to threaten an American citizen (Rosie O'Donnell) with losing her citizenship?  Do you get the hell you pulled us all into with your bulls**t 'purity' issue of Gaza?


We grasp that you dropped Gaza immediately because you're scared of what Chump might do to you.  Not only are Palestinians still being killed - your supposed primary issue -- but Chump had War Criinal Netanyahu to the White House.  Which is why cowardly CODEPINK protested . . . Congress.  


You dragged us into hell.  The whole country suffers because of your bulls**t.  Be nice if one of you could find the maturity to admit that you were wrong and ask the country for forgiveness. 


Terror.  We live under a reign of terror.  At SALON, Akina Cox shares:


A few weeks ago on a sunny Friday afternoon, my child’s preschool sent out an alert that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were nearby. I picked them up early from school, passing a Home Depot that had apparently been raided a few hours earlier, sending day laborers and street vendors fleeing. The following day, ICE was seen in the city of Paramount where my friend lives, and I checked for alternate routes to her graduation party held that evening. On Sunday morning, as I was looking for shoes and packing snacks, I heard a rumor that ICE was on the same block as my child’s playdate. I searched for concrete details, scrolling through images of the previous day’s protests in Los Angeles only a few miles away — cops shooting rubber-coated steel bullets at protestors, tear gas wafting down the street like morning fog.

By the end of the weekend I was agitated and frayed, unable to focus. That’s when it struck me: I used to feel like this all the time, when I was growing up in the Unification Church, a doomsday cult known for arranged mass weddings of its members. Founded by the self-proclaimed messiah Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Unification Church gained notoriety in the seventies when members known as “Moonies” became ubiquitous on city corners, selling trinkets and inviting passersby to a nearby center for a meal. Dinner would turn into a weekend at a rural property, and soon new members would vanish from their normal lives. Accusations of kidnapping were leveled on both sides, with distraught families claiming the Unification Church was keeping their children away from them, and the church alleging  families had hired deprogrammers to kidnap them back. Families were torn apart, a situation that was repeated again when church offspring like myself wanted to leave. 

While the reach of the Unification Church has diminished over the years, ICE is now on our street corners, arresting our neighbors and loved ones, disappearing them into a legally dubious network of prisons and holding facilities. In observing these actions, I can’t help but notice the numerous parallels between the church and the current administration. Allegations of brainwashing, tax evasion and sexual abuse hounded Reverend Moon despite his growing wealth and political influence. Today the news is filled with stories about President Donald Trump, another alleged tax cheat and sex abuser, and his unprecedented monetization of the presidency for himself and his extended family through dubious cryptocurrency and international real estate deals, and tawdry commercialism that includes selling a $250 Victory 45-47 fragrance. 

Most concerningly, both Trump and Moon have used scapegoats to distract their followers from their power grabs. Scapegoats are integral for a cult; they promote social cohesion, both by binding the in-group together over a common enemy, and by widening the gulf between members and outsiders. They cleave the world into a binary of us and them. Scapegoats are vilified as a tacit warning to cult members, an example of what could happen to them if they stray too far from the rest of the flock. The cohesion provided by the scapegoat places cult members in a position of further manipulation, when they don’t look past the easy answers and see their leaders taking advantage of them. 


Terror. 

We've repeatedly noted here of ICE that your choices are to remain working for them and face a future that's either drug addiction (self-medicating to deal with the guilt) or suicide.   That's not me putting a curse on them, that's me noting that this outside of acceptable human behavior and that these are the two responses/possibilities for most people when they transgress the bonds of humanity.  Friday, Billal Rahman (NEWSWEEK) reported:


A government attorney resigned over what he called a shift in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) mission from safeguarding the nation to chasing deportation numbers.

Adam Boyd, a 33-year-old attorney, quit the ICE legal department last month, The Atlantic reported.

"We still need good attorneys at ICE. There are drug traffickers and national-security threats and human-rights violators in our country who need to be dealt with. But we are now focusing on numbers over all else," Boyd told the outlet.
[. . .]
Stephen Miller, who is the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem set a daily arrest quota of 3,000, piling up pressure on ICE agents to deliver historically high figures.

Boyd said he ultimately felt he "had to make a moral decision" to leave after watching the agency's priorities change under mounting political pressure.
"It became a contest of how many deportations could be reported to [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller by December," Boyd said.

According to Boyd, ICE lawyers were increasingly frustrated as legitimate cases were dismissed so that officer teams could arrest immigrants in courthouse hallways and push them through fast-track deportations—tactics that he says padded statistics at the expense of due process.

Boyd added that many ICE attorneys share his concerns and are biding their time until their student loans are forgiven before they, too, resign.

THE ATLANTIC article noted above is by Nick Miroff and morale has been destroyed as one ICE agent after another reveals.  For example, one notes that they're supposed to be going after violent criminals but instead they're tasked with "arresting gardners" and another states, "Even those that are gung ho about the mission aren't happy with how they are asking to execute it -- the quotas and the shift to this low-hanging fruit to make the numbers."

That's why they have to wear masks -- because even now they're ashamed of what they're doing.  When the true scope of what they've done is revealed years from now and they see how their own actions, their own individual actions, were illegal and destroyed lives, all they'll have is suicide or drugs to self-medicate and try to erase the memories.

They need to quit.  For their own souls, they need to quit.  This is not something that will be less painful for them as the years go by.  

 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have become a more and more common sight across America during Trump’s second term, especially after the administration reportedly set a goal to increase immigration arrests to 3,000 per day. The federal agency has been whisking people off the streets, sparking protests with raids on businesses in Los Angeles, including a clothing wholesaler downtown, and even arrested (and released hours later, reportedly without charges) New York City comptroller Brad Lander at an immigration courthouse on June 17. These actions have begun to sow anxiety and even panic in communities nationwide. And ICE’s power will likely grow: President Trump’s newly-signed budget legislation allocates roughly $170 billion to immigration and border enforcement through 2029, nearly $30 billion of which is earmarked for ICE operations, including hiring and training new personnel. The way many of the current agents are dressing is only adding to the controversy.

In photographs and footage from recent raids in Nebraska, California, New York, Florida, and other states, ICE agents are often either decked out in military-style gear, including tactical vests and helmets, or seem to be dressed as civilians, with few, if any, apparent identifying markers. ICE, like some other federal law enforcement agencies, does not have a standard uniform for its agents. Many in these images wear gaiter-style masks, which the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, said in May are “for personal protection and to prevent doxing,” or being identified online. (An ICE spokesperson tells GQ via email that its officers have faced “a nearly 700% increase in assaults.” The Department of Homeland Security reportedly recorded 79 assaults against officers from the start of Trump’s second term through the end of June.)

Some of these agents have reportedly refused to identify themselves as ICE, raising concerns over the agency’s accountability and oversight of its actions. According to the ICE spokesperson, during enforcement operations all of its agents “wear badges designed to be easily identifiable and to signify their authority as law enforcement officials.

 
I believe the real assaults they are facing are assaults from their own conscience.  And they should be paying to attention to those.  Things you do wrong and feel bad about today do not get easier to stomach as time goes on which is why so many turn to drugs (which includes booze) or self-harm (suicide). 


Why might your conscience be nagging you?  Because your job is not one that your faith can forgive or that your belief system can stomach.  Ailia Zehra notes:

46-year-old Chris Landry, a Canadian-born legal U.S. resident who’s lived in New Hampshire since age 3, supported President Donald Trump in the last election. But on Sunday, things took a sharp turn. Returning from a family vacation with three of his children via the Maine border, Landry learned his green card — granted in 1981 — had been revoked.
He was warned he’d be arrested if he attempted to reenter without approval.

“I was definitely all for ‘Make America Great Again’ and having a strong, unified country and a bright future for my five American children, but now I feel a little differently,” he told NBC Boston, in a report published Wednesday. “I’ve been torn from my family. My life has been disregarded completely.”
He says he was held for three hours and questioned about long‑past offenses, including marijuana possession and driving with a suspended license — with convictions dating back to 2004 and 2007. He paid all fines and received suspended 60‑day sentences for each, and asserts he has stayed out of trouble since.

Still, he felt his treatment at the hands of border agents was heavy-handed. “I never expected that I wouldn’t be able to go back home,” he told Manchester, New Hampshire ABC affiliate WMUR.

Lives are being destroyed.  And the press it gets today?  In 20 years, you'll be watching documentaries on this.  It will be one of the key and telling factors about the Chump administration.  ICE agents who think, "It was twenty years ago, I can live my life," will instead be triggered on a weekly if not daily basis because these stories will be told -- a huge number of stories, many more than are known and shared today.   


The American people grow more appalled each day.  Thursday, Gallup released the results of their latest poll:


Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.

These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups.

With illegal border crossings down sharply this year, fewer Americans than in June 2024 back hard-line border enforcement measures, while more favor offering pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

These findings are based on a June 2-26 Gallup poll of 1,402 U.S. adults, including oversamples of Hispanic and Black Americans, weighted to match national demographics.

The same poll finds many more Americans disapproving than approving of President Donald Trump’s handling of immigration. Trump’s 21% approval rating on the issue among Hispanic adults is below his 35% rating nationally, with the deficit likely reflecting that group’s low support for some of the administration’s signature immigration policies.


Winding down, an e-mail asked about earlier today when this went up here:


  • Diana Ross - Paradise -EXOTIC remastered rework...

  • Diana Ross - Paradise [Shep Pettibone Desert Islan...


    • They went up at the same time and are both mixes of Diana Ross' number 11 on the dance charts hit "Paradise" (from WORKIN' OVERTIME).  I was trying to decide which one.  I liked the mix of the vocals best on the EXOTIC mix and I liked the mix of the music best on the Desert Island version.  So in the end, I just posted them both because I had like 30 seconds before it had to go up.


    Another e-mail on the music asked where were the men?  On every other site I believe.  When we started, it was male, male artist, male artist male artist, male artist, male artist . . . At every website.  They noted male singers and actors and directors and never seemed to grasp that women matter.  Even PUMA, the 2008 wave that was pro-woman and, for many, feminist, was no better.  I watched as they turned to entertainment on Saturdays and did posts about great movies . . . 

    I didn't see ALL ABOUT EVE.  I didn't see MAHOGANY.  I didn't AGNES OF GOD.  I saw one post after another about some male buddy caper or some male action film that a woman was on screen for about fifteen to twenty minutes in.  


    We have to do our part to create the world that we want.  We can't just complain.  We do note male singers here.  Not on Saturdays unless it's a duet with a female.  I can't control what other sites do.  I can make sure that women matter at this site.  I was hoping to note Carly Simon today but didn't have room.  I mention that because people often e-mail that I hate their favorite singer because she's never noted here. They're usually wrong.  Even ones that I might dislike personally can be noted here and have been.  There are only two women who are banned because they're backstabbing bitches to other female artists.  One's dragging her tired ass around still while the other will soon be gone.  


    I'm more than happy to amplify talented women -- whether I like them or not -- but those two women deserve to be forgotten, they've worked overtime to destroy other female singers (at one point, both targeted Anita Baker, for example) and I'll do nothing ever to advance or promote them. 


    If it's a slow morning and I have time to really select and listen, you'll find Sarah Vaughan in the mix because she's probably my all time favorite singer.  But there are so many great singers and not enough slots on every Saturday to note Cher (who we always kick off with the morning), followed by Diana (who gets at least four videos each Saturday), Sade, Carly Simon, Jody Watley, Vanessa Williams, Janis Joplin, Cass Elliot, Nina Simone, Odetta, Judy Henske, Raye, Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Betty Wright, Heart, Alicia Keys . . .  If I'm choosing favorites to post and not rushing, besides Sarah, you'll also get a lot of piano playing women -- Ashford & Simpson for Valerie, an Aretha performance where she's at the piano, Carole King, etc.  


    The following sites updated:





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