San Francisco Labor Day 2025

The San Francisco Labor Council, which organized the holiday event, made the choice to gather in a real working class neighborhood (the Mission at 16th Street), offer a short march route to Dolores Park, and enjoy the fortunately sunny day. 

The result left an impression of slightly chaotic, but determined and happy, crowds celebrating each other and denouncing everything the Trump regime stands for.

This was a very urban little march of several thousand determined people, in a fine coalition style.

 

Not for this year, the distinct contingents from particular locals or even the dockworker marching band.

Instead, we're in this together. Close together.

We know what matters ...

...and what's true.

We know who we blame.

We even, broadly, know what we want ...

The San Francisco Chronicle published a short report which caught the flavor of the event:

Bayview resident Diana Oertel said she is not typically active on labor issues, but “it was time to get out again.” She said she didn’t know whether the demonstrations against the Trump administration were having much of an impact.

“You’d have to be cruising at 20,000 feet to know that,” she said. “All we can do is keep chipping away. We don’t work for the president. He works for us.” 

Of course resistance lives. The people do their thing.

The major media aren't headlining this, but people in the directly occupied areas of the our country where Trump has implanted our soldiers and his ICE goons are finding ways to oppose the regime. The story is still out there; you just have to look around.

Los Angeles saw the first of the Orange Pretender's martial assaults. It's good to know that people have figured out what to do. They are determined and creative:

How LA is uniting to provide mutual aid for those impacted by ICE raids 

... Through fundraisers, grocery deliveries, “adopt a corner” initiatives, rapid response ICE watch committees and more, the community in Los Angeles has been coming together with volunteers to support and uplift their neighbors.

“It’s really a beautiful city that comes together during hard times, and from the fires we’ve seen it, and now with the raids,” said Janet Martinez, co-founder and vice executive director of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, an Indigenous women-led organization that is bringing visibility and resources to the Indigenous migrant communities.

Martinez said that CIELO has worked with a network of about 30 volunteers to pack and deliver about 1,200 boxes of groceries to Indigenous immigrant families in Los Angeles that are afraid to leave their homes due to the ongoing raids. Her organization has always supported immigrant communities, but their work stepped up following the raids.

... the NDLON (National Day Labor Organizing Network) created an “adopt a day laborer corner” that trains and encourages non-vulnerable people to support their local day laborers who are at risk of being targeted and kidnapped by ICE. Their trainings have been attended by more than 800 volunteers across the country who would reach out to NDLON asking how they can help.

While NDLON has only worked with day laborers in the past, they are realizing that solidarity is needed, especially at a time when day laborers, including those at Home Depot corners and worker centers, are being kidnapped by ICE. She said they have more than 25 corners in the different Home Depots in Los Angeles where groups of people go almost every day to support their neighbors and create community by physically standing with them, alerting them of nearby ICE activity and bringing them food and coffee. 

... “We go by a saying ‘solo el pueblo salva al pueblo’ — ‘only the people save the people,’” Figueroa said. “We haven’t worked with non-vulnerable people before, but we are realizing that that is really needed. This attack is actually intense and unprecedented, so we are listening to people that want to step up and support, and then trying to work with them too.” ...

Do read all of this story of people taking their lives, families, and communities in their own hands. Even with 10000 more ICE thugs being hired, LA is too big and too united for the fascists to triumph over its people. By definition, these are survivors.

 • • •

Meanwhile in occupied Washington DC, the people aren't cowed. 

The Resistance is Active in DC—You’re Just Not Looking Closely Enough 

... While it’s accurate to say there hasn’t been anything close to a modern-day March on Washington since Trump brought in the National Guard to address DC’s purported crime problem, the DC locals who are wrestling with the increased presence of law enforcement say that’s for good reason. 

Megaphones and mass demonstrations are unlikely to mollify the hazards of a heightened police state—and these tactics may even exacerbate what Trump-opposing locals fear most: bigger dispatches of law enforcement, which could target more immigrants and other vulnerable populations.

“Being a middle-aged white man, I can be outside and keep an eye on what’s happening,” says Andrew Hall, a DC resident of 19 years who lingered around the corner of 14th and U St NW around 9:30 p.m., after a concert protesting the National Guard presence ended. “It’s not safe for others to be out in public, or even go to the grocery store right now.”

... an array of ordinary DC residents [are] documenting what’s happening in their neighborhoods and mobilizing pop-up actions based on the information being shared.

In the densely populated Northwest DC neighborhood of Columbia Heights on Tuesday, for example, locals noticed about a dozen Homeland Security personnel outside a metro station. “ICE go home!” some 150-plus people chanted at the agents, several of whom had their faces covered with masks. The growing crowd and their handheld cameras were apparently enough to deter the ICE agents from the area, which has a high population of Black and Hispanic residents. ...

 • • •

Local District television WUSA9 reports from street concerts under the occupation: 

... Go-Go music, a homegrown genre in D.C., served as both a cultural and emotional centerpiece of the rally. As TOB played live, residents chanted and held signs denouncing what they called an overreach of federal power.

“Every resistance step is a good step,” said Dean Hunter, a longtime resident. “There’s absolutely no circumstance that would justify this policing invasion of Washington, D.C.”

Ty Hobson-Powell, another speaker at the event, emphasized the importance of civic resistance. 

“It is the most American thing that we can do — to push back against the overreach of government,” he said. "Now is a moment for dc to come together. We are a resilient city, that we are a community oriented city. We are a city that has its problems, sure. But a city that can solve them all on its own."

... President Trump, in a recent statement, defended the federal presence in D.C., saying: “This place was emblematic of it... They had horrible crime. It was worse than ever. I think right now it’s better than it has been in years.”

D.C. leaders disagree.

“He’s not based in truth, and I don’t believe a word he says,” said D.C. Councilmember Robert White. ...

Once upon a time ('80s, '90s?) there was a little lefty group that styled itself "No Business as Usual." Though the group is long gone, perhaps we are coming into a time when our Orange Aspiring Despot needs to be met with a national movement adopting that slogan. Just saying ...

Oh, solidarity!

So Wednesday morning, news spread like wildfire (well, like text and other social media) that ICE (or associated masked men) at the San Francisco downtown immigration offices had disappeared a protester on Wednesday who was impeding their removal of their latest immigrant captive. 

The first call on Thursday was to join the crowd outside the immigation offices, but then the San Francisco Labor Council moved the call to the old federal building on Golden Gate with a half hour to rally time. 

Who was going to get there amid changes like that?

Within an hour about 50 people gathered, just in time to learn that ICE's catch (a citizen!) had been released on bond.

Solidarity means showing up and having each others' backs.

• • •

Mission Local has the story: 

A protester arrested by federal agents outside the San Francisco immigration court on Wednesday has been charged with two federal misdemeanors: destruction of property and assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer. 

Bay Area attorneys say this is the first time they can remember such charges filed against a citizen arrested by Department of Homeland Security authorities in San Francisco. While protesters have been charged by federal agents in Los Angeles, moving the practice north is a sign of “escalation,” said Angela Chan, the city’s assistant chief public defender. 

The protester, a U.S. citizen who asked to be identified by her first name, Angélica, was arrested around 10 a.m. yesterday during a chaotic street scene: Video showed ICE agents tackling several protesters to the ground after a crowd tried to stop ICE from transporting an asylum-seeker whom agents had arrested that morning. 

Angélica, a trans woman from an immigrant family, was one of those filmed being zip-tied and led away, her head wrapped in a keffiyeh and held down by officers. Angélica was brought into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters at 630 Sansome St. without a cellphone, her partner Renee said. A day passed before her family heard from Angélica again. 

Holding a citizen at an ICE building is “unheard of,” Chan said. Earlier this month, ICE agents detained two protesters in downtown San Francisco for the first time in recent memory. ...

Thursday morning whichever feds were responsible for Angélica's abduction produced her for arraignment. The crowd a mile away at the federal building cheered the news of her release.

Angélica comes from a union family: her mother is in SEIU Local 1021, her father belongs to UFCW Local 8, a brother is a Teamster. On this occasion, unions and workers proved they knew what to do.

Good neighbors in Redwood City

 

A loud and cheerful little posse of anti-ICE protesters offered "a swig of community action" on the streets of downtown Redwood City Tuesday evening. There can be joy while speaking truth.

ICE is a masked, undemocratic secret police force that gives due process the finger and answers only to Donald Trump.

We will not stand by and do nothing while they disappear our community members, leaving nothing but trauma and despair behind. Let's show everyone in Redwood City and San Mateo County that we stand with our immigrant brothers and sisters in their time of need and we will resist ICE with everything we have.

They'll be back next Tuesday.

Federal workers know who they work for ...

... they work for the Constitution and the people of these United States. Not the Donald. They rallied along with friends in San Francisco's UN Plaza on Wednesday.

 

They don't work for ICE either. 

Their union leaders were on hand.

So were the janitors who care for their buildings.

So were their friends from the City by the Bay. 

Federal workers are a patriotic bunch, which means these days that they have no time for that felon in office. In this moment of mass layoffs of loyal civil servants, many choose to speak out.

He speaks for himself ... did he have a premonition?

By way of the journalists of ProPublica:

José Manuel Ramos Bastidas entered the U.S. with an appointment with border officials made via the CBP One app, which the Biden administration used to try to bring order to the soaring numbers of migrants attempting to enter the country, but he was immediately detained. An immigration officer and a judge determined he did not qualify for protection in the country. 

For almost a year, he waited in detention to be sent back home to Venezuela. In February 2025, when the Trump administration began a mass deportation campaign and news of the first immigrants being sent to a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, started trickling in to detention centers, Ramos panicked and asked his wife, Roynerliz Rodríguez, to record a message, “Just in case something happens to me,” he said. 

A month later, he called again. More upbeat, he said U.S. authorities told him he would be sent back to Venezuela. His family planned to bake him a cake and cook his favorite meal. 

But Ramos never arrived. Instead, he ended up being one of the more than 230 Venezuelans sent to the notorious prison in El Salvador known as CECOT on March 15. ...

Journalists are working to figure out who these men are. More here. 

Who's that masked man? Frightened bullies fear shaming

With apologies to the Lone Ranger; yes, Donald and his ghoul Miller are inflicting the country with a made-for-TV movie of their violent fantasies. 

At the CalMatters news site, Michael Lozano has provided a useable guide to which agencies some of these masked thugs snatching up random brown people from the streets come from. This is what we are supposed to get used to.

 

 

Criminal justice journalist Radley Balko calls foul on the masking fetish.

The administration says the masks are to prevent “doxing,” and has cited a “700 percent” increase in assaults on ICE agents.

Both the defense and the statistic are nonsense.

First, unless they’re operating undercover, it is not illegal to publish or publicize the names of federal agents — nor should it be. They are state employees who have the power to arrest, detain, and kill. Of course their names and identities ought to be public information. Of course the people they stop, detain, arrest, or abuse should have names and badges to seek redress in court.

Second, the 700 percent figure is absurd. ... Don’t forget that the administration claimed that New York City comptroller Brad had Lander “assaulted” agents when video showed nothing of the kind. So there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical ...

I will not be surprised if, when ICE hires on its new army of thugs made possible by Trump's Big Ugly Bill, they don't even bother with this much identification. 

These big bullies should be ashamed of themselves. They hide their faces because whatever shred of decency they have left within them shames them as they carry out vicious, marginally legal orders.

• • •

Where government overreaches, not surprisingly Americans fight back. Hence the ICEBlock app which enables citizen sharing of ICE movements. Shades of the opening skirmishes of the historic national colonial revolt: "The British are coming..."

At the Intercept, Natasha Leonard explains: 

ICE watch groups and rapid-response networks have proliferated as a necessary response to Trump’s supercharged deportation agenda. Such efforts are not new but sit in the honorable tradition of the sanctuary movement of the 1980s to protect and shelter refugees, as well as local Copwatch networks, which have existed for over three decades as community efforts against law enforcement violence and impunity.

The agency’s response is itself in line with a storied tradition in U.S. law enforcement and broader efforts to shore up a white supremacist order. Namely, painting the oppressor as the victim and the real victim as the dangerous threat. ...

• • •

And now even ICE lawyers are refusing to admit their names in open court. Again from the Intercept: 

Inside a federal immigration courtroom in New York City last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to state the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney pressing to deport asylum seekers. 

“We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. ... It is unclear how many immigration judges are failing to say ICE lawyers’ names...

For shame!

Making more losers, but we do not have to be suckers

Click to enlarge

Taking a day away from this blog after an intense 10 day stretch. Leaving this chart about the effects of MAGA's Big Ugly Bill for anyone interested to ponder. Yes, this is bad. And notice the headline The Financial Times put on the information. Not where I'd expect that reference.

And then there is the money for ICE. Phillip Bump of the Washington Post [gift article] describes cogently what Trump's Homeland Gestapo is doing already with its funding. 

Much to do if this country is to have a future. 

Contemporary "slave catchers" at work in LA

The progressive journalist Harold Meyerson has long shared insights into his native Los Angeles even though he has decamped to DC. And leave it to Meyerson to usefully contextualize current events in the California Southland.

WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.

In the decade preceding the Civil War, the residents of Northern states resisted the efforts of the federal government to compel them to help Southern slave owners capture former slaves who’d escaped to the North. In 1850, the Southern-dominated Congress and a pro-Southern President Millard Fillmore enacted the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring not just Northern police officials but all Northern citizens to aid in the seizure of Blacks who’d successfully escaped chattel slavery.

The North actively resisted these efforts. Boston abolitionists formed the Anti-Man-Hunting League, which hid escaped slaves and sought to impede the slave-hunters and the federal troops whom Fillmore deployed to help them out. But the resistance wasn’t confined to the abolitionist minority.

According to historian H. Robert Baker, there were whole neighborhoods of Milwaukee, Chicago, and Boston that became “no-go zones for slave catchers,” so great was the level of local resistance. As I wrote in these pages seven years ago, “Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, and Wisconsin all enacted ‘personal liberty laws’ forbidding public officials from cooperating with the slave owners or the federal forces sent to back them up, denying the use of their jails to house the captives, and requiring jury trials to decide if the owners could make off with their abductees.”

In the 1850s, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the Constitution's Tenth Amendment, which gave states the power to enact laws not specifically preempted by federal authority. What Trump and his troopers are engaged in now is the same kind of violent enforcement at complete variance with the local, state, and regional sentiment. 

The Tenth Amendment, however, doesn’t reserve immigration issues to the states; they clearly fall under the purview of the federal government, as does the president’s right to declare an emergency enabling him to employ troops domestically—a consummation for which Trump and Miller have long devoutly wished.  

California governor  Gavin Newsom has gone to court to block the federal intervention in Los Angeles, essentially claiming this is no emergency except the one caused by Donald Trump's radical deportation agenda. The case is before Federal Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco. That's a familiar name in this household as Breyer was the judge in our no-fly list lawsuit early in the War on Terror era. We found him a careful, judicious guy.

Trump sh_t show comes to Martha's Vineyard

Last Tuesday, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) descended on Martha's Vineyard island, the place Erudite Partner and I sporadically call home. (No, we weren't there.)

This island off Cape Cod is a complicated place. In winter a tough population of about 20,000 -- white New Englanders, members of the indigenous Wampanoag tribe, Black descendants of slavery, Brazilian/Azorean migrants, and so many others -- work to scratch out a living and prepare for the summer influx of 100,000 beach-seeking tourists. It's not an easy place, though it offers a residence to many well-off people, such the Obamas, to give one famous example.

It's no surprise that ICE assumed they could find some out-status migrants in the construction and hospitality workforce. In this, Martha's Vineyard is simply normal for contemporary America.

The MVTimes reports that the ICE raid did not seem particularly targeted. Agents stopped work vans seemingly randomly.

Thiago Alves, owner of Rhode Island–based L&R Electrical Services, said his workers were stopped by ICE on Tuesday morning on the Vineyard, but were sent on their way after they showed their paperwork. 

Alves said that agents were stopping all work trucks, and that his business did not appear to be singled out: “It’s nothing against us.” 

Local immigration advocates responded:

The immigrant community on the Island has been reeling from the recent detentions, many calling out of work. There have been reports of empty lumberyards and construction sites, as well as housecleaners calling out.

“Everybody is so scared,” said Meiroka Nunes, a community organizer from Brazil who has lived on the Island for more than two decades. She has heard from one Brazilian whose husband was detained on Tuesday, and whose wife has not been able to reach him.

Nunes said that she worries about the mental health of Island immigrants who fear they or their family members will be deported. She noted that it’s especially scary on the Vineyard, because there is nowhere to run.

Meanwhile, some Islanders pushed back during the raid:  

One West Tisbury resident personally confronted federal agents in the field, demanding answers while recording a video that has gone viral.

Charlie Giordano, 58, used his phone to document the presence of the federal agents arresting people — some of whom live and work among us — to stand up for what Giordano believes is right at a time when legitimate fear can paralyze some from speaking out. 

“I don’t care for injustice. I don’t care for bullies. I think words are who you want to be, and actions are who you are,” Giordano said in an interview with The MV Times. “Everyone says they would’ve stood up to the Nazis back in the day. This is your chance. We have to safeguard democracy and prevent tyranny.

• • •

As with so much of Trump regime immigration enforcement, ordinary Americans were horrified by the thuggish masks and get-ups worn by the immigration police. This is not what they expect of their cops who are also their neighbors.

• • • 

The Martha's Vineyard raid set off a vigorous back and forth on island social media. The Trump regime does have defenders among the islanders, though these were swamped in the last election.

One writer offered a reminder to most all:

To all my island neighbors making sure our due process rights are protected—thank you.

To all my other neighbors who think due process doesn’t exist because of someone’s immigration status, I’d like to remind you: unless you’re a member of the Wampanoag Tribe, we’re all wash-ashores—I don’t care how many generations you’ve been here.

• • •

It was heartening to read the responses of the Reverend Stephen Harding, Rector at Grace Episcopal Church. as recorded in the MVTimes. This is our church on the island.

“We cannot be silent. If we are silent, we are complicit,” he said, noting that he was only speaking for himself and not others that signed [a religious leaders'] letter. He said that he was disturbed over how the federal agency conducted the arrests, particularly agents that covered their faces. “To do this, in this manner, is shameful. There is no honor. This masked, undercover stuff — they look like bums to me,” Harding said. “If you are going to pull someone out of their car to arrest them, have the integrity to show your face. There is no honor at all in being a bully.”

Harding also said that it didn’t appear that the agents had probable cause to make these arrests.

“It seems there is no probable cause except that they weren’t white,” Harding said. “The idea that anyone can be stopped, pulled over and detained. That is not good. I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but I don’t think that’s legal.”

 • • •

Attorney Jay Kuo has offered an insightful discussion of why Trump's minions wear those masks: 

Asked by CNN why officers have opted to use masks when detaining students, a DHS spokesman said this:

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as police while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers.”

In other words, they don‘t want to be doxxed.

Traditionally, agents have donned facial coverings only when the arrest is of some major kingpin or mob boss, where violent retaliation is a real danger. DHS has now taken that same logic and extended it to every official action, on the grounds that the “woke mob” will seek revenge.

 ... The sort of folks who affirmatively want to become ICE and CBP agents, especially under the leadership of ghouls like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, are nowadays often not true patriots wishing to protect the country.

Far-right militia groups share one thing in common with the DHS agents who are fanning out to detain immigrants: They love to wear face coverings...

The reason fascist zealots don face coverings is so that they can continue to exist anonymously in civil society and not get “canceled” (for example, fired from their jobs or have their businesses boycotted) for their white nationalist hate.

Part of fighting back against the Trump fascists will be to outlaw masks on legitimate law enforcement officers except in very limited circumstances.

Standing up for law and the Constitution against two-bit fascists

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, reamed Donald Trump's preening cabinet secretary Kristi Neom in a budget hearing last week. Apparently there is no part of her job she's actually doing -- except play acting tough girl for the cameras and Donald.

Murphy is unremarkable to look at, but he's prepared and knows his stuff. This is longer than clips I usually post, but absolutely worth watching as a lesson in how government is supposed to work. 

Not only that, Murphy is morally outraged by Noem's complicity in the Trump regime's disappearing unlucky migrants like Kilmar Abrego Garcia to foreign torture prisons. Worth your time!

It's time for religious leaders to emulate Oscar Romero

Bishop Evelio Menjivar, a Salvadoran-born priest, is an auxiliary bishop of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC. He is the first Central American to serve in such a role in the US Roman Church. 

His Holy Week sermon takes up the theme of Trump's rendition of Kilmer Abrego Garcia and other migrants to a Salvadoran torture prison.

The Church remembers Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus in a spiritual and sacramental way during Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, but some people actually experience the Passion in a tangible and personal way in their very lives. Among them are members of the immigrant and refugee communities today.

... while redemptive suffering is a grace, it would be better still if these injustices and infamies did not happen at all. ... It seems that no one is safe now from arbitrary nullification of his or her protected status, visa, or green card. This has left many terrified that they or their loved ones might be seized and disappear without warning.

... For example, the protected status of refugees and others granted asylum has been arbitrarily terminated without any wrongdoing on their part. Visa-holders and permanent residents have had their legal authorizations revoked and then been grabbed off the street by masked government agents, held incommunicado without access to their attorneys, and imprisoned pending deportation. University scholars and others have also been refused entry or detained at the border after traveling abroad. Even U.S. citizens are viewed with suspicion or subjected to ethnic profiling based entirely on how they look or speak. Those who are naturalized citizens might be wondering if they will be targeted next, whether some pretext might be contrived for secret revocation of their naturalization.

More than a few natural-born Americans are saying they do not recognize their country anymore, but many of us from other lands recognize all too well the terror of people being snatched by secret police and disappeared. We left our former countries precisely to get away from it. Yet, too many people are still remaining silent, perhaps out of fear, forgetting that the Holy Spirit gives us the grace of fortitude to boldly speak out for good. ...

El Salvador gave the America's Archbishop Óscar Romero, the 20th century bishop murdered for speaking up for the poor and marginalized. Bishop Menjivar continued: 

When I was growing up in El Salvador, there was a man who was not afraid to speak out. His name was Óscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador. It seems to me that we need more Óscar Romeros today. We need everyone of good will to follow his lead and demand that the government respect human dignity.

In his last Sunday homily on the day before he was killed, Saint Óscar Romero made a special appeal to government agents: “It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience and to obey your conscience rather than the command to sin,” he said. “We want the government to understand well that the reforms are worth nothing if they are stained with so much blood. In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise up each day more tumultuously toward heaven, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!”

I urge government officers and support staff in the present situation to heed these words which echo through history. It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience. What you are doing is worth nothing if it is stained with unjust cruelty. That is not what America stands for. You too can and should speak out against this terror and infliction of suffering on people. You can refuse to be involved in oppression and these grievous assaults on human rights and dignity.

True, if you do, there may be adverse personal consequences. Saint Óscar certainly paid a price for speaking against the state of siege in his country. It might even mean leaving your job, but that is better than being complicit with evil, and it will lead to something even greater. As this holy man said in his last words before his martyrdom, “If we have imbued our work with a sense of great faith, love of God, and hope for humanity, then all our endeavors will lead to the splendid crown that is the sure reward for the work of sowing truth, justice, love, and goodness on earth.”

The One Part of the Body report (download at link) on the impact of the Trump regime's migrant deportation policies gives some numbers about how many are now at risk of being thrown out of the country:

We estimate that, as of the end of 2024, there were more than 10 million Christian immigrants present in the United States who are vulnerable to deportation, including those with no legal status, as well as those with a temporary status or protections that could be withdrawn.

Furthermore, because many of these individuals live in households with U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, or others who are generally not subject to deportation, the impact on American Christian households goes well beyond those directly at risk of deportation. We find that nearly 7 million U.S.-citizen Christians live within the same households of those at risk of deportation. Most of these U.S. citizens are spouses or minor children of the immigrant at risk of deportation.

... 80 percent of all of those at risk of deportation are Christians. Sixty-one percent of those at risk of deportation are Catholic, 13 percent are evangelical and 7 percent are adherents to other Christian traditions.

And then there are all the others (non-Christians) and their families who might find themselves victimized by the Trump dragnet.

It is good to see religious authorities speaking out. And they are. Religious institutions are somewhat less vulnerable to threats to their mission than secular institutions. They can't sit the Trump regime out.

Trump's coup against law is not popular

Trump and his merry band of dictator's dupes think the American people share his hatred of migrants. We don't.

G. Elliott Morris is a data nerd. After a stint writing for The Economist, he ran the 538 poll aggregating site for ABC News -- until ABC bent the knee to Trump after the 2024 election. These days, like so many others, he writes a substack, Strength in Numbers, where he does what he has long done: try to understand opinion data.

And he is convinced that Trump and the mainstream media are misinterpreting what we the people feel about immigration.

Trump is popular on "handling immigration," but not specifics

 ... there is a dramatic amount of nuance being washed over with the binary yes-no framing and use of such broad topics.  ...

You might take away from this, for instance, that Americans approve of Trump's actions to deport Abrego Garcia and refuse to bring him home. That would be wrong though, as the same Reuters/Ipsos poll even goes on to show.

The vast majority — 82% — of Americans believe Trump should obey court orders even if he disagrees with them, and 56% think he should stop "deporting people" ...

Click to enlarge

The only policy Americans really favor is deporting unlawful immigrants who have been accused of violent crimes.

If people opposed to Trump's policies speak out, including especially Democratic Party leaders, Morris believes they'll be expressing the public's opinion.

... Trump's critics have an easy opportunity to fight the president in the court of public opinion. Americans do not approve of abducting fathers who have been in America for decades and sending them to torture camps in the jungle; And, contra Trump's wishes, they also oppose the extrajudicial transfer of U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to foreign jails.

And while I generally try not to engage in partisan cheerleading here, the reality is that Republicans are united in support of Trump, and since we have a two-party system, Democrats are the only options for recourse on civil rights and the rule of law. This issue really isn’t about Trump or immigration at all anymore, it’s about the Constitution itself.

The Trump administration so far has gotten away with denying Abrego Garcia and other legal residents of the U.S. their constitutional rights of habeas corpus. Now, the Executive is asserting that it can violate court orders with impunity and that it wants to do the same for trouble-making U.S. citizens. If you stand for the constitution, the rule of law, majoritarianism, and just generally treating citizens with dignity, there is really only one option for you, even if you try to approach politics from an unbiased perspective, as we do here at Strength In Numbers.

So not only does the party currently have public opinion on its side, I think Democrats also have an obligation to speak out on moral and constitutional grounds. And, given the data, they have a clear opportunity to take bold action.

... Fighting is what democracy is for, after all. And if nobody is willing to fight for the Constitution, we don’t have a democracy anymore anyway.

 As an early and famous Patriot once wrote: "These are times that try [our] souls ... Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

Anxiety on the Island

Martha's Vineyard Island seems intent on accepting a state designation as a "Seasonal Community" in the hope of winning help from Massachusetts with providing more housing to the people who live and work here. The population booms about seven fold in the summer, then recedes for the winter.

It's easy to think of this remote bucolic place as just a summer playground, but for the year-round residents, it's simply home. And for this community, the horrors the Trump regime is inflicting on the nation are all too close by. A couple of mental health professionals spelled some of this out in the Martha Vineyard Times. (Yes, we have two little local newspapers!) Charles Silberstein and Laura Roosevelt explain: 

The immigrant community, estimated at 20 percent of the Island’s year-round population, is currently particularly prone to fear and sadness. Many of those I’ve spoken with are U.S. citizens, and still feel relatively safe. But almost all have family and friends who are undocumented and experiencing terror.

Recent rumors that ICE raids on the Island were imminent prompted many immigrants to stay home from work and school; many didn’t show up for appointments at Community Services and doctor’s offices, and generally kept off of the roads. I was told about a child who was so frightened that she stayed up most of the night crying.

One immigrant, a professional who arrived here just after 9/11 in 2001, told me that it was even more frightening then than it is today. ICE set up roadblocks, and if a person were caught, there was a likelihood of being sent immediately to an immigration center. Just seeing a police car or even an animal control vehicle could send his fellow immigrants into a state of panic.

After 14 years in limbo, he is now a citizen. He reminds himself and frightened members of the immigrant community that none of us know what the future will bring. He believes that immigrants need to decide either to return to a country where they feel more comfortable, or just learn to live with the threat without letting it dominate their lives. Living in a constant state of fear he says, is annihilation.

He shared a Portuguese saying with me: “We kill a lion today, and we tie up the bear to worry about tomorrow.” In other words, every day has its own problems, and we don’t need to add to them by worrying about tomorrow. ...

The island has long been a place that absorbed immigrant workers; locals knew what to do when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew a planeload of confused Venezuelans here in a political stunt in 2022. 

Silberstein and Roosevelt offer ideas for how to get by in the current terrifying moment: 

Many Americans are grieving the loss of the country as they knew it, and the collective ideals held in common with fellow Americans. ... [Some concrete suggestions] ...

• Take a deep breath, and then run toward the monster that has no teeth. Or, as the Rev. Cathlin Baker, minister of the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury, has advised congregants, “Do the good that is yours to do.” 

• Spend time with kids and pets. Connect with friends, and accept that you are unable to impact a crisis alone. 

• Remember that throughout human history, governments and political movements come and go. Nothing is permanent. Work on accepting that the future is always uncertain.

• If you are an immigrant, know that much of what you hear may be bluster or misinformation. Consider talking with an immigration lawyer who can gum up the deportation process if need be. Know your legal rights.

We're all in this for the long haul.

"Our brother Kilmar Abrego Garcia"

  

Sean McGarvey from the National Association of Building Trades Unions has a message for the Musk/Trump regime. These are not generally good people to piss off.

Abrego Garcia was a legally-employed sheet metal apprentice before Trump's immigration goons kidnapped him to El Salvador. He was here under a judicial order that forbade the government sending him to that country.

An even more demanding #MeToo

In 1970, when federalized National Guard troops shot and killed students protesting the US war in Southeast Asia at Kent State University and Jackson State, pop singer and bard Holly Near offered a haunting lament and call to action: 

It could have been me, but instead it was you

So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two

I’ll be a student of life, a singer of songs

A farmer of food and a righter of wrong

It could have been me, but in

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/holly-near-it-could-have-been-me-lyrics.html

It could have been me, but instead it was you

So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two

I’ll be a student of life, a singer of songs

A farmer of food and a righter of wrong

It could have been me, but in

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/holly-near-it-could-have-been-me-lyrics.html

It could have been me, but instead it was you

So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two

I’ll be a student of life, a singer of songs

A farmer of food and a righter of wrong

It could have been me, but instead it was you

And it may be me, dear sisters and brothers, before we are through.

But if you can work for freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom

 

If you can work for freedom I can too

There was so much action in that spring that hundreds of campuses and some cities were closed down.

 

Once again, we are tested. Can we too work for freedom?

In organizing people, we've learned that if we can connect our personal stories to broader (and usually disempowering) features of our lives, we can form connections which turn into collective action. 

The historian and journalist M. Gessen -- an immigrant and trans -- bravely takes this tack in the NY Times: 

... I became stateless when I was 14 and my family left the Soviet Union. In exchange for granting my parents, my brother and me exit visas, the U.S.S.R. stripped us of citizenship. For nearly a decade after we arrived in the United States, instead of a passport I carried a long rectangular booklet called a refugee travel document. Not being able to fill in the blank when asked for my nationality added a layer of complexity to some otherwise simple transactions, like opening a bank account, but I was young, white, female and, in the parlance of this country, “legal,” so the difficulties I experienced were not excessive. They were just enough to make me feel precarious.

In the decades since, life for noncitizens in the United States has grown much more difficult. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, have pushed immigrants to the margins of American society, cutting off access to public assistance programs, limiting pathways to legal status and ramping up deportations. The giant bureaucracy of “immigration courts” took shape, though it hardly resembles any court system that U.S. citizens would encounter.

Those of us who enjoy the privilege of not-yet-questioned US citizenship can be there with some of those whose status in the country is under threat. The weekend I attended a workshop by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity with Bay Resistance introducing "accompaniment." Accompaniment connects people trying to the navigate the immigration maze with others willing to just go along to appointments and court dates. Nobody should be alone. 

Gessen continues, describing the attack on their very being:

... The Trump administration’s barrage of attacks on trans people can seem haphazard, but as elements of a denationalization project, they fall into place. In his Inaugural Address and one of his first executive orders, President Trump asserted that only two sexes exist: male and female, established at conception and immutable. Trans people, in other words, do not exist. Executive orders aimed at banning any mention of transgender people from schools, banning trans athletes from women’s sports, ordering a stop to gender-affirming medical care for people under 19, and barring trans people from serving in the military followed. ...

The State Department stopped issuing passports with the “X” gender marker and began issuing passports consistent with the sex the applicant was assigned at birth, even if the person had legally changed gender. ...

... Living with documents that are inconsistent or at odds with your public identity is no small thing. It can keep you from opening a bank account, applying for financial aid, securing a loan, obtaining a driver’s license, and traveling freely and safely inside a country or across borders. ...

 Let's take on and take up Gessen's conclusion:

... You know how this column is supposed to end. I rehearse all the similarities between Jews in Germany in 1933 and trans people in the United States in 2025: the tiny fraction of the population; the barrage of bureaucratic measures that strip away rights; the vilifying rhetoric. The silence on the part of ostensible allies. ...

... It is undoubtedly true that the Trump administration won’t stop at denationalizing trans people, but it is also true that a majority of Americans are safe from these kinds of attacks, just as a majority of Germans were. The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others. It is happening to people who, we claim, have rights just because we are human. It is happening to me, personally.

Gessen is correct. But also, if we dare to pay attention, it is happening to all of us, personally.  We mostly just don't know it yet. The regime wants us all rendered less human, less humane. Nobody should be alone.

There's no secret about this ...

Eduardo Porter, late of NY Times economic journalism and now writing in the Wapo, goes for the gut in his explanation of the Trump regime's attempt to do away with birthright citizenship. People born in the USofA, are --simply -- citizens; MAGA wants none of it.

Here's the gist: 

Ending birthright citizenship won’t make America White again.

For a country seemingly proud of calling itself a melting pot, a country that is unquestionably a nation of immigrants, it is astonishing just how hard the United States has tried over the years to put an end to the process that has shaped it. ... 

... Trump’s urge to protect the homeland from alien races, religions and cultures taps into a feature of the American psyche that has been around for 100 years or more. ...

... Muzaffar Chishti from the Migration Policy Institute once told me that American tolerance for accepting new immigrants seems to hit a limit every time foreign-born citizens reach about 15 percent of the population. They reached that share when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882 and when the [restrictive] Johnson-Reed Act [of 1924] was signed into law. And they are nearing 15 percent today.

I would, however, propose another numerical tipping point, one that has no precedent in American history: when the non-White share of the population approximates one half of the population. The fact that the United States is approaching this milestone underscores how, in that long battle between the nation’s demand for foreign labor and the entrenched mistrust of foreigners, so far the economic imperative has won. Xenophobia today is punching back. ...

... [The immigration reform of 1965 was managed by] Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) who promised that the new legislation “will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.” As he signed the act in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Johnson assured the American people that it would not change much of anything.

Artist Yolanda Lopez

But migration didn’t proceed according to plan. Europeans, as it happens, no longer wanted to come, as Europe was growing like gangbusters. Mexicans, on the other hand, did. They had been supplying labor in the fields and pastures of the American West even before the Bracero Program had formally invited them in from the 1940s to the 1960s. And they were untouched by the 1924 quotas. When limits were imposed as part of the 1965 reform, they kept coming to work anyway.

The story of immigration over the next several decades was largely a Mexican affair. By 2000, Mexicans accounted for 30 percent of the foreign-born population, up from 6 percent 40 years earlier.

That, in a nutshell, is why Trump so vehemently wants to do away with the birthright citizenship guaranteed by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment: The Mexican immigrants had babies.

Read the whole article (as a gift). It's the history of immigration that our media seldom teaches.

This is what Trump's immigration policies look like

 

By way of @leighcreates.bsky.social. Is this real? I see no reason to disbelieve it. Even if the various flavors of immigration cops largely mean to follow legalities, there are plenty of individuals among them who equate dark skin and accents with candidates for deportation. Just like their bosses, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.

UPDATE: Just have to add this by way of the San Francisco Chronicle: 

“The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

Why am I skeptical?

The MAGA wish list is BS

They want us to be afraid as the dreaded MAGA inauguration comes. "Us" here means newcomers to the USofA, Brown people, and their friends who can be confident about our citizenship status; we're all in this together. They will give us plenty of reasons to fear, some of those reasons genuine. They can do bad things.

But not all that is threatened is possible. But they can't do everything they want without friction. Our job is to enhance that friction.

Perhaps most people shouldn't focus on the cruel possibilities the Trump immigration threats make possible. After all, inciting the fears is part of their playbook of forced deportations. But those of us who can bear knowing the possibilities can recognize the gamut these threats run.

David J. Bier [@davidjbier.bsky.social], Director of Immigration Studies at the pro-immigration, libertarian Cato Institute summarizes what Trump's immigration agenda might look like in the approximate order we might see it. In addition to what Trump has been saying about his plans, this list largely derives from Project 2025.

1) cancel the 2023 Biden-initiated Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) parole processes for refugees which have channeled 30,000 people/month into legal channels 

2) ban scheduling appointments for lawful entry from Mexico using the 2023 Biden-initiated CBP One app

3) suspend the refugee program for 100+ days & cut cap from 125K to 20K 

4) impose a visa/travel ban on a dozen countries 

5) impose new "extreme vetting" requirements on all countries 

6) possibly suspend all visas globally for 30 days

7) declare a national emergency at the border 

8) deploy the national guard to the border

9) redirect military funds to build detention camps

10) restart border wall construction 

11) invoke Title 42 health authority to expel migrants [legal ruse used during COVID]

12) restart family detention

13) declare an invasion 

14) invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport without due process 

15) use the military to enforce Alien Enemies Act 

16) revoke prioritization of criminals & security threats for deportation

17) let state/local police conduct immigration arrests & deportation

18) restrict federal funding for sanctuary cities 

19) conduct public raid in a sanctuary city 

20) instruct review of birthright citizenship 

21) review of public charge rule reinstatement 

22) review of TPS and DACA

For all MAGA's anti-migrant hysteria, this list of cruelty and stupidity is not going to happen in a day. In fact, most of it will never happen at all, because it is either illegal, impossible to implement, or they are too inept to mobilize a whole country around their hateful plans.

For all Donald's posturing, as recently as last July, Gallup found that most Americans appreciate the contributions of newcomers to the country.

Click to enlarge

Yet hard-pressed individuals and families who are very much part of our lives at going to be at risk under the Trump regime. Republicans have made promises of prosperity and stability they cannot and will not keep, especially while implementing an anti-immigrant panic. Who is going to harvest our food and wash the pans in the local fast food chain? For that matter, who is going to write computer code for the Musks and Zucks?

The first six months will be the worst; I still believe our fellow citizens will recoil as excesses pile up. Most of us like our neighbors and appreciate them. The job for those of us not currently at risk is to support vulnerable people and throw whatever sand we can conjure up into the gears of the deportation machine. Let's support the lawyers who care for the people. We know how to do this.

A national directory of non-profit, low cost immigration legal services.

Immigration law is rat's next of mysterious byways and dead ends. Several articles which communicate some of the horror which our politicians have made of immigration:

Dara Lind explains What ‘Mass Deportation’ Actually Means

Aaron Reichin-Melnick interviewed at Radly Balko's The Watch

Adrian Carrasquillo writes a column called Huddled Masses at The Bulwark. He has wide sources.