Government transparency wanted

 

Border agencies are out of control

A special Customs and Border Protection unit used sensitive government databases intended to track terrorists to investigate as many as 20 U.S.-based journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter, according to a federal watchdog.

Yahoo News, which published an extensive report on the investigation, also found that the unit, the Counter Network Division, queried records of congressional staffers and perhaps members of Congress.

Jeffrey Rambo, an agent who acknowledged running checks on journalists in 2017, told federal investigators the practice is routine. “When a name comes across your desk you run it through every system you have access too, that’s just status quo, that’s what everyone does,” Rambo was quoted by Yahoo News as saying.

  AP

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jesus wept

“Border Patrol Agents Rescue Woman in Labor,” the release from Customs and Border Protection read on Friday.

What border officials didn’t mention was that, just hours after their purported rescue, they separated the Honduran immigrant from her newborn and detained her pending possible removal, according to lawyers and advocates.

Border agents responding to a 911 call Wednesday night found the woman shortly after she’d delivered her baby alone in a field in Eagle Pass, Texas. The officials first transported mother and child to a nearby hospital, then the child was airlifted to a neonatal intensive care unit in San Antonio, hours from where they held her mother in custody.

(The Customs and Border Protection release incorrectly said the call came Thursday, as appeared in earlier reporting, and agents apparently provided the hospital with the wrong date of birth.)

“They told her she was going to be sent back to Mexico without her baby,” said Amy Maldonado, who is legally representing the mother.

[...]

After The Times story published, Customs and Border Protection released the mother, who Saturday morning reunited with her newborn in the San Antonio neonatal unit, lawyers and advocates confirmed.

[...]

Hours later, Austin Skero, chief patrol agent for the Del Rio sector, responded in a tweet to The Times, saying that agents had to separate the mother and baby due to the San Antonio hospital’s COVID-19 policy for the neonatal unit, which the hospital immediately disputed.

[...]

“That is definitely not the hospital policy,” [Leni Kirkman, spokesperson for University Hospital in San Antonio,] said. “We do not separate babies and parents.”

[...]

“To ensure a safe care environment, University Hospital is currently permitting one visitor per day between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. with the exception of individuals deemed necessary to the patient’s care. Visitors deemed necessary to the patient’s care include:

1-2 parents or guardians for pediatric and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients
1 support person for labor & delivery/postpartum patients”

[...]

Amy Cohen, a child psychiatrist and executive of nonprofit Every Last One, who first learned about the case from a friend of the family, said the hospital informed her that the baby has to be in the hospital for another seven to 10 days and was “in distress” when born. The mother has since received medical care at the San Antonio hospital as well; Customs and Border Protection “had her sleep on the floor at the detention center,” Cohen said.

[...]

Almost exactly three weeks ago, Cohen responded to a similar case of a mother who had an emergency birth for a ruptured uterus, and Customs and Border Protection kept her apart from her baby for roughly four days, Cohen said. She’s since been released from detention.

[...]

The Honduran mother, whose name was not released, had sought asylum at the border in south Texas earlier this year with her older child, who is 6 years old, but border officials put them into the controversial “Remain in Mexico” program.

[...]

The mother, like hundreds of other parents waiting in refugee camps along the border, sent her 6-year-old child across alone to seek asylum three weeks ago, according to Maldonado and Cohen. The mother and her child had been kidnapped and held at gunpoint for two weeks in Nuevo Laredo, Cohen said. Advocates and experts have documented more than 1,000 cases of asylum seekers put into Migrant Protection Protocols who then have been kidnapped, raped and assaulted in Mexico while waiting for hearings in the U.S.

That child was released this week from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Health and Human Services agency tasked with the care of unaccompanied children, and is with the cousin in Sacramento, Cohen said. The mother and newborn, once medically cleared, are expected to join her other child and family in California.

“She was desperate,” Maldonado said of the mother’s decision to cross later herself.

[...]

The Homeland Security inspector general has [...] opened an investigation into the department’s treatment of pregnant women.

  LA Times

Disappear the witness

Another tinpot move by the Trump administration.

The U.S. government late Monday deported a crucial witness in an ongoing investigation into allegations of sexual assault and harassment at an El Paso immigrant detention center, the witness’ lawyers said.

The 35-year-old woman has been held in the facility, which is overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for about a year and told lawyers about a “pattern and practice” of abuse there, including that guards systematically assaulted her and other detainees in areas that were not visible to security cameras.

[...]

Last Friday, lawyers filed a habeas petition in federal court asking that the woman be freed on supervised release and held in an immigrant shelter in El Paso.

They said in an interview that guards and inmates had been making intimidating comments to her following her accusations and that she felt unsafe.

She gave investigators a tour of the facility, showing where the assaults occurred in security camera blind spots, her lawyers said. Shortly after she quoted one guard telling her: “You need to watch out for yourself.”

[...]

Three days after her habeas was filed, DHS’ inspector general reversed its earlier position and told ICE that the agency could deport the woman and investigators would further interview her by telephone from Mexico if necessary, her lawyers said.

Within hours, she had been sent back even though she says she fears persecution from drug cartels there. A high-ranking cartel member sexually assaulted her and threatened her after she reported the attack to police, according to statements she gave the U.S. government. The inspector general requested that ICE not deport the woman and the FBI interviewed the woman extensively, according to her lawyers. Her attorneys also sent a complaint to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas and the El Paso County District Attorney’s Office, warning of a potential criminal investigation.

[...]

“If she behaved,” she said one guard told her, “he would help her be released.”

[...]

At least two more women have since come forward with similar allegations of assault.

[...]

The government “allowed their most powerful witness to be deported,” Corchado said. “How can we possibly take this investigation seriously now or ever pretend that it ever was from the outset?”

  Texas Tribune

A step in the right direction

Greyhound, the nation’s largest bus company, said in a statement to The Hill that it will notify the Department of Homeland Security that it no longer consents to warrantless searches on its buses and terminal areas that are not open to the public. It will also give drivers and other employees updated training regarding the policy.

"Our primary concern is the safety of our customers and team members, and we are confident these changes will lead to an improved experience for all parties involved," the company said. "We plan to begin the implementation of these changes immediately."

[...]

Greyhound’s announcement comes after a Border Patrol memo was leaked saying that agents cannot board private buses without the company’s consent. Greyhound had previously said it had no choice but to allow warrantless searches under federal law.

  The Hill

New revelations from the concentration camps at the border

Immigrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails around the US received medical care so bad it resulted in two preventable surgeries, including an 8-year-old boy who had to have part of his forehead removed, and contributed to four deaths, according to an internal complaint from an agency whistleblower.

The allegations appear in an explosive Department of Homeland Security memo, obtained by BuzzFeed News, containing reports of detainees being given incorrect medication, suffering from delays in treating withdrawal symptoms, and one who was allowed to become so mentally unstable he lacerated his own penis and required reparative surgery.

[...]

The allegations were laid out in a March 20 memorandum signed by Cameron Quinn, DHS’s officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and sent to top ICE leadership. The memo describes the whistleblower as someone within the ICE Health Service Corps, or IHSC, which provides medical care and oversight for detainees in the agency’s custody. BuzzFeed News does not know the person’s identity.

  

the Trump cabal will be trying to out that person.

This internal memo is one of a trove of remarkable secret documents — including emails, briefing materials, and draft reports — BuzzFeed News has obtained throughout 2019 uncovering how the Trump administration’s immigration policies were formed and executed, and how those policies confused or harmed people who sought to immigrate to the US.

[...]

The memo describes what happened to 17 different immigrants who were held at nine facilities across six states, from Georgia to Washington.

One of the claims in the memo:

That IHSC leadership was unresponsive or even dishonest when confronted. They “failed to take appropriate action” when told of policy violations in 10 of the cases; “did not respond” to concerns about one case in which a detainee with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma died under “deplorable” conditions; and were “erroneous” and told others to “hold off” when looking into several cases.

[...]

ICE has expanded the number of people it detains to record levels under Trump. Thousands of immigrants in its custody had passed their initial asylum screenings, a practice that in the past generally led to release from custody.

[...]

To pay for it all, DHS had to transfer money earmarked for disaster relief and other efforts. In recent weeks, it has dipped to around 44,000 people in custody, still above the numbers during the Obama administration. In the 2019 fiscal year, eight people died in ICE custody. The highest number of deaths in recent years came in the 2017 fiscal year, which included the end of the Obama administration, when 12 people died in ICE custody.

The horror of the particular egregious cases is reported in the article, if you care to read about it all.

Children dying in camps. Families living in fear. We have seen this before. We won’t let it happen again. Never again is now. Thoughts and prayers won't save lives; it is our actions that matter.

We will be the allies that our Jewish ancestors needed in Germany, before it was too late. We will take relentless, bold direct action and we will not stop until ICE is shut down, the camps are closed, and immigrants no longer live in fear. Are you in this with us?

[...]

WE ARE NOT FUCKING AROUND.

We are not going to sit at home while people are dying and families are being rounded up. We are not going to wait and see what happens. We are going to keep building this movement of Jews and allies until we’re strong enough to make it impossible for ICE to function and for the camps to stay open. We owe it to the immigrants we’re in this fight with, and we owe it to our ancestors who gave us a sacred mission: Never Again for Anyone.

  Never Again Action

Donate here:

Like flies

Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security secretary, is leaving President Trump’s administration, making the lawyer and former Obama official the latest departure in a long purge of leadership from the U.S. government’s third-largest department.

McAleenan leaves the Department of Homeland Security in turmoil, at war with the White House and itself over the Trump administration’s aggressive drive to restrict immigration, prioritizing it above the department’s other responsibilities, such as counter-terrorism and disaster response.

[...]

The president [said] he’d be naming McAleenan’s replacement at Homeland Security next week. “Many wonderful candidates!”

  LA Time

Running smoothly! Things are great!

Actually, what he said was he'd be naming a new acting secretary. He doesn't want directors. They get in his way.

Despite withstanding months of public sniping from the administration and clear policy disagreements with the president, McAleenan also proved an effective implementer of some of Trump’s most extreme initiatives to crack down at the border.

In a tweet following Trump’s, McAleenan referenced these results, and thanked the president. He reportedly submitted his resignation earlier Friday.

[...]

A close McAleenan aide confirmed his resignation [...] citing micromanagement from the White House, according to Axios.

[...]

Ultimately, McAleenan’s efforts weren’t enough for Trump. This reality was recently underscored when Trump refused to back down from a misstatement on Hurricane Dorian, forcing McAleenan, whose department also oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to hold up a doctored chart forecasting the storm’s path for cameras in the Oval Office.

[...]

Under McAleenan, Homeland Security has been beset by political infighting and frustration between border and immigration officials over the ever-changing directives from the White House and a surge in migrants at the U.S. southern border, current and former officials told the Los Angeles Times.

"Under McAleenan." Under anybody. It comes from the top.

A Border Patrol agent who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly said morale has suffered as the department struggles to respond to the surge on the border this year. He did not fault McAleenan.

Low morale is the byword for a number of agencies, and the White House itself.

As U.S. Border Patrol stops more migrants at the border than it has in almost a decade, the administration has pulled Border Patrol agents from front-line patrols to keep watch on migrants at hospitals and overcrowded detention facilities, and pushed for agents to be trained on how to screen asylum seekers.

McAleenan’s department has also reassigned Customs and Border Protection officers who support and screen billions of dollars in commerce at airports and ports of entry, and sent the officers to support Border Patrol on the southern border.

Under intense pressure from the White House, a number of asylum officers at Citizenship and Immigration Services are quitting or refusing to implement policies that have forced some 50,000 asylum seekers back to Mexico to await their U.S. cases.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and administration officials are also anonymously criticizing Homeland Security leadership in the press. They blame McAleenan in large part for being forced to cancel a nationwide operation in June targeting thousands of families for deportation, though it was Trump who tweeted about it first. ICE soon after conducted the largest single raid in the agency’s history, in Mississippi — without giving advance notice to the White House, so the operation wouldn’t be foiled.

[...]

The Defense Department recently approved tapping into $3.6 billion among 127 projects to construct parts of the wall along the southern border. And yet, despite the president’s promises, Customs and Border Protection officials confirmed that no new miles of wall have been added to the roughly 700 total linear miles of existing border barrier since Trump took office.

[...]

McAleenan is expected to ultimately be replaced by Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, or immigration hard-liner Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Vacancies Act prevents both from immediately stepping in to head the department ahead of other ranking officials.

Trump forced out Kiersten Nielsen, who was doing a great job of dehumanizing immigrants at the border because she wasn't mean enough. McAleenan has been doing Trump's - and Stephen Miller's bidding since then. If that's not mean enough, what are they after? Those aligators in moats? Shoot asylum seekers?

In recent months, as tensions between the White House and McAleenan rose, so did friction between the acting Homeland Security secretary and Morgan, Trump’s acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner.

Morgan worked his way back into Trump’s graces in large part due to Fox News appearances in which he praised the president and took a harder line on immigration and border security that surprised some former and current colleagues.

[...]

For his part, Morgan acknowledged in an interview with The Times shortly after Nielsen’s ousting that Homeland Security secretary may be an impossible job in the Trump administration, given the heated politics over immigration.

“I think that anybody who takes on that role — especially in the border security arena — you’re in a no-win situation,” he said. “You’re not going to make anybody happy.”

You only have to make one person happy to keep that job.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Petty tyrants feeling free

It took a moment for Ben Watson to realize the officer was not joking.

Watson had just told the Customs and Border Protection staffer reviewing his passport that he works in journalism. Then the seemingly routine Thursday encounter at the Washington Dulles International Airport got tense.

“So you write propaganda, right?” Watson, the news editor at the national security site Defense One, recalled the CBP officer asking.

“No,” Watson says he replied. He affirmed again that he was a journalist.

[...]

Watson said he got his passport back only after agreeing with the “propaganda” charge.

[...]

After the second alleged query by the CBP officer, Watson explained that he covers national security “with many of the same skills” he used as a public affairs officer in the Army — and added: “Some would argue that’s propaganda.”

[...]

When the officer repeated his question a third time, Watson said, he paused.

His wife had already circled the airport for 20 minutes. He figured he could get stuck for hours if he tried to call in the officer’s supervisor. So he gave in.

“For the purposes of expediting this conversation, yes,” he recalled telling the CBP officer.

The officer made Watson agree one more time before letting him through, Watson said. He says he’s filed a civil rights complaint with DHS.

[...]

The incident comes amid rising hostility faced by journalists as the Trump administration continues to attack the media as “fake news.”

[...]

Watson said [...] he did not realize until sharing his experience at the Dulles Airport on social media just how many people in his field were reporting the same brand of harassment.

[...]

“We are disappointed and concerned that any U.S. official would question a journalist, or any citizen, in this way,” Kevin Baron, Defense One’s executive editor, wrote to The Post.

[...]

Walter Shaub, an attorney who served as director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics until 2017, tweeted that the incident should go to the DHS inspector general for review.

“A customs agent withholding the passport of a journalist until he agrees to say he writes ‘propaganda’ is actionable misconduct, even in Trump’s America,” he said.

This has happened to me coming back into the country too, last year - a pretty aggressive questioning about who I worked for and “fake news.”

  WaPo

I'm going to guess this happens a lot. I was given a hard time coming back in through Miami after visiting Venezuela way back in 2004, and I'm a white Anglo, non-journalist, who had never been anywhere on a passport before. I don't imagine things have gotten better.

A growing list of journalists say they have been startled by government officials’ harassment in a country that prizes freedom of the press. The encounters are raising fears that hostile rhetoric led by President Trump and his allies are damaging reporters’ ability to do their job unhindered.

Some journalists have been feeling it for a long time. Depending on what your writing about.

This spring, the World Press Freedom Index called journalists’ treatment in the United States “problematic” for the first time in its 17 years of assessments — and singled out “President Trump’s anti-press rhetoric and continuing threats to journalists” as driving the deteriorating conditions. The U.S. ranking on the index has fallen for the past three years.

The Obama administration was really hard on journalists. I guess he can at least say he didn't incite his supporters to violence against them.

US law allows border agents to confiscate and search everything, including journalists' electronic devices, and that law needs to change.

In February, CBP apologized to a BuzzFeed journalist questioned at a New York airport about his news organization’s coverage of Trump and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. A few months later, a freelancer said he was detained by CBP officials for hours at an airport in Texas.

Then, in August, British journalist James Dyer described an “unsettling experience” as he flew into California to cover a Disney event. The film and TV writer said a CBP officer at Los Angeles International Airport called him a member of the “fake news media” and asked if he had worked for CNN or MSNBC, two frequent targets of Trump’s criticism.

“He aggressively told me that journalists are liars and are attacking their democracy,” Dyer wrote in a viral tweet thread.

He said he was allowed to move on after explaining that he was just trying to write about Star Wars.

CBP’s response at the time was much like its statement on Thursday’s incident.

“Inappropriate comments or behavior are not tolerated, and do not reflect our values of vigilance, integrity and professionalism,” the agency said.

Yeah, they do, though.

I suggest all journalists cross the border with a story ready about just trying to write about Star Wars, or something similar until such time as this country gets straightened out.  So, maybe forever.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Defying a court order, the Trump administration is still separating families at the border

What do you do when you have a lawless executive branch if the executive branch holds the power to enforce (or not) court decisions?

Renato and Patti discuss recent news that the Trump Administration has separated over 900 children from their parents despite a court order prohibiting that practice. They are joined by Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, who brought that disturbing fact to light in a court filing.

In this episode of On Topic, you'll also hear what the Trump Administration is doing to deter immigration through inhumane policies and actions, what athey're hoping to hide from the public, and how and why things are the despicable mess they are.  And what you can (and can't) do about it.

Click the graphic above, or here to listen

Can we talk about Hitler and the SS yet?

America is failing.

A 9-year-old American citizen on her way to school was apprehended by U.S. immigration officials and detained for some 32 hours before she was released back to her family. Federal officials said later that the girl, who was carrying a U.S. passport card with her, gave “inconsistent information.”

  HuffPo

She's fucking NINE YEARS OLD! And why was she stopped in the first place?

Medina, her 14-year-old brother and two friends were being driven to school by the friends’ mom from their home in Tijuana to San Ysidro last Monday. Thousands of people travel through the Tijuana-San Ysidro crossing daily for school or work.

When traffic slowed to a crawl, the mom told the children to walk across the border so they wouldn’t be late. An official detained Medina, saying she didn’t look like the photo on her passport card.

[...]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that the girl, whom they confirmed is an American citizen, “provided inconsistent information during her inspection,” which they didn’t elaborate.

[...]

Officials had no explanation for why the process took 32 hours or why the 9-year-old was in custody the entire time.

Medina’s brother, who is also a U.S. citizen, said officials initially accused him of human trafficking and demanded he sign a paper saying that his sister was really his cousin.

“He was told that he would be taken to jail and they were going to charge him for human trafficking and sex trafficking,” Julia’s mom, Thelma Galaxia, told NBC.

Reprehensible. Hitlerian.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Impeach now

UPDATE:

Only because he had an advocate and publicity.  How many do we not even know about?

Nielsen was apparently clueless about more than her job

Ms. Nielsen had requested the meeting to plan “a way forward” at the border, in part thinking she could have a reasoned conversation with Mr. Trump about the role, according to three people familiar with the meeting. She came prepared with a list of things that needed to change to improve the relationship with the president.

  NYT

Had she never met the man?

Mr. Trump in recent weeks had asked Ms. Nielsen to close the ports of entry along the border and to stop accepting asylum seekers, which Ms. Nielsen found ineffective and inappropriate. While the 30-minute meeting was cordial, Mr. Trump was determined to ask for her resignation. After the meeting, she submitted it.

[...]

The president called Ms. Nielsen at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, such as blocking all migrants from seeking asylum. She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements and international obligations.

Those responses only infuriated Mr. Trump further. The president’s fury erupted in the spring of 2018 as Ms. Nielsen hesitated for weeks about whether to sign a memo ordering the routine separation of migrant children from their families so that the parents could be detained.

So I've got no sympathy. She could have taken notes from Jeff Sessions if she thought boot-licking would save her.

Multiple White House officials said she had grown deeply paranoid in recent months, after numerous stories about her job being on the line. She also had supported the Immigration and Customs Enforcement nominee Mr. Trump withdrew, Ronald D. Vitiello, and her support for him was described as problematic for her with the president.

HE nominates the guy, she supports the nominee, and then gets kicked in the teeth for it. I hope other administration folks are paying attention.

In early 2019, as the number of migrant families from Central American countries surged, the president’s fury at Ms. Nielsen did, too. He repeatedly demanded that she cut off foreign aid to Central American countries even though the funding was the responsibility of the State Department. She repeatedly deflected his demands.

He doesn't know who's supposed to do what. He just thinks he gets to call the shots and people do what he tells them to do.

One day after Ms. Nielsen traveled to Honduras to sign a regional compact with officials from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Mr. Trump cut State Department funding for the countries.

As I said, I hope other administration staff are paying attention.

The president said in a tweet that Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, would take over as the acting replacement for Ms. Nielsen, who became the sixth secretary to lead the agency in late 2017. But by law, the under secretary for management, Claire Grady, who is currently serving as acting deputy secretary, is next in line to be acting secretary. The White House will have to fire her to make Mr. McAleenan acting secretary, people familiar with the transition said. Ms. Grady has told colleagues that she has no intention of resigning to make way for Mr. McAleenan.

[...]

By naming Mr. McAleenan acting secretary, Mr. Trump is installing another veteran of previous administrations, not a loyal foot soldier of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

[...]

McAleenan [who is married to a Salvadoran immigrant] was also one of three Department of Homeland Security officials who had urged Ms. Nielsen to sign the memo authorizing the routine separation of migrant families at the border.

Trump doesn't know about McAleenan's spouse, does he? I wonder what she thinks of her husband's stance on southern border action.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Nielsen’s resistance [to Trump's family separation policy] strained her relationship with Trump, NBC reported, adding that the outgoing secretary told the president she could not reinstate the policy due to federal court orders and an executive order he signed last year ending it.

Trump reportedly first began urging the return of the policy in January amid a spike in undocumented immigrants crossing the border and is convinced separating families is the most effective deterrent from migrants seeking asylum.

[...]

On Monday morning, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin said Nielsen’s part in family separations would be her political legacy and that she would be remembered as “the woman who put children in cages.”

A portion of Nielsen’s testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in which she argues over whether the conditions in which migrant children are detained can be considered “cages” went viral last month.

  The Hill

Disugsting, dehumanizing, disgraceful

Welcome to America.






More than a little.  Why are they caged?

Customs & Border Patrol targeting journalists

Journalism is under attack in this country, as in all authoritarian regimes.  Here's one aspect:

In February, The Intercept published a report, based on 19 sources, revealing that U.S. and Mexican authorities worked together in a sprawling intelligence-gathering effort aimed at journalists, immigration lawyers, and migrant rights advocates in the Tijuana-San Diego area. Photojournalists on the ground described being approached by Mexican police who photographed their passports. When asked who they were taking those photos for, one of the police officers replied, “For the Americans.”

[...]

Revealed last week in documents obtained by an NBC News investigative team in San Diego, the [government’s secret list of border troublemakers] included 13 “organizers,” eight “instigators,” and 10 journalists with varying descriptions.

[...]

The documents, provided by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower, confirmed and advanced, in critical ways, the evolving story of joint U.S. and Mexican government intelligence-gathering operations on the border — though key questions remain. In a bipartisan letter released Monday, Sens. Ron Wyden and Chuck Grassley called on U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to provide an unclassified briefing on the operations by Thursday. The senators, who head the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, which oversees CBP, expressed particular concern about the press freedom issues at play.

“Unless CBP had reason to believe the individuals in question were inciting violence or physical conflict, it is deeply concerning that CBP appears to have targeted American journalists at our borders,” they wrote.

[...]

“Let’s be clear: This is unconstitutional,” American Civil Liberties Union staff attorneys Esha Bhandari and Hugh Handeyside wrote.

  The Intercept

That's the new America under Trump and Mitch McConnell.

It involved each of the major agencies of the U.S. border security apparatus — Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Border Patrol — working with Mexican counterparts and the FBI, under the umbrella of the controversial joint DHS-Pentagon border initiative known as Operation Secure Line (formerly known as Operation Faithful Patriot), which the Trump administration initiated in the run-up to the 2018 midterms.

Authorities compiled dossiers on journalists and advocates, and in some cases, restricted their ability to travel following multi-hour detentions in Mexico. As they attempted to cross back into the U.S., the government’s targets were subjected to extended interrogations about individuals working with the migrant caravans. [...] Journalists were presented with photo lineups of activists and asked who they knew. Their notes and electronic devices were searched. Agents were directed to send the intelligence they collected back to Washington, D.C.

[...]

In the wake of NBC’s reporting, Reps. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., and Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., who both chair committees on homeland and border security, sent a letter to McAleenan, the CBP commissioner, demanding that his agency turn over the documents referenced in the story. Those documents are also due to be delivered Thursday, per the lawmakers’ request.

CBP has said that its Office of Professional Responsibility has opened an inquiry into the reports. The DHS inspector general’s office has also opened an investigation into the matter.

Those ought to really get to the heart of the matter.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Something to hide

March 8, 2019 -- U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) today canceled a meeting with a coalition of press freedom groups--including the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the ACOS Alliance--one day after it postponed the long-scheduled meeting and two days after NBC San Diego reported on internal government documents that suggest that CBP maintained a list of journalists and activists with knowledge of the 2018 migrant caravan and singled them out for additional screening.

In a statement to news organizations yesterday, CBP claimed that it "has specific provisions regarding encounters with journalists." This contrasts with what CPJ and its partners were told in previous meetings when requesting any such protocols, which was that the public affairs office was not aware of any special provisions.

  Committee to Protect Journalists

That was before the leak.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Depends on what you mean by "new" - Update

From an earlier post:





As he notes, money has been appropriated for renovating.  I'm guessing this "new wall" is replacing an old section, and he's using it in that context without saying so.




UPDATE:  That's exactly what was going on:

And justice for some

Fascists at work

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reportedly accused New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the agency made the allegations in a letter obtained by the news service. It claims that de Blasio and his security detail violated Mexican and U.S. immigration laws by crossing the border on foot while the mayor made a visit near El Paso, Texas. The AP reports that de Blasio's office has denied the charge.

"The mayor crossed the border with the direct approval and under the supervision of the border patrol supervisor at this port of entry,” de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said in an email Tuesday night to the AP. “Any suggestion otherwise is a flat-out lie and an obvious attempt by someone to attack the Mayor because of his advocacy for families being ripped apart at the border by the Trump Administration.”

  The Hill

This is America

We torture. We abuse. We destroy families.

A blistering report released this week alleges that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents neglected and abused more than 100 migrant children who were in their custody.

The report, from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the University of Chicago Law School International Human Rights Clinic, is based on thousands of pages of records detailing accusations from 116 unaccompanied minors, many of whom were asylum-seekers, while in temporary detention centers.“Migrant children long have reported varied mistreatment in CBP custody, including sexual, physical, and verbal abuse, and the deprivation of basic needs such as food, water, and emergency medical care,” the ACLU said in a summary of the report.

Some children accused officers of punching or kicking them and running them over with vehicles. Others described being tased and verbally abused by officers.

Children also described being deprived of edible food and water, held in freezing cells, touched inappropriately by officers and threatened with rape or death.

The report accuses the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of violating federal law by not reporting the alleged abuses to the FBI.

  The Hill

Federal officials lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children last year after a government agency placed the minors in the homes of adult sponsors in communities across the country, according to testimony before a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

[...]

From October to December 2017, HHS called 7,635 children the agency had placed with sponsors, and found 6,075 of the children were still living with their sponsors, 28 had run away, five had been deported and 52 were living with someone else. The rest were missing, said Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary at HHS.

[...]

The Health and Human Services Department has a limited budget to track the welfare of vulnerable unaccompanied minors, and realized that 1,475 children could not be found after making follow-up calls to check on their safety, an agency official said.

  Time

And where do you imagine they might have ended up?

An AP investigation found in 2016 that more than two dozen unaccompanied children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay. At the time, many adult sponsors didn’t undergo thorough background checks, government officials rarely visited homes and in some cases had no idea that sponsors had taken in several unrelated children, a possible sign of human trafficking.

[...]

The number of children seeking refuge in the U.S. has not returned to the height of the surge starting in 2013, but spiraling gang and drug violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador continue to push children, teens and families to migrate northward.

Where they are abused and lost.

Esteban Pastor hoped U.S. Border Patrol agents would free him and his 18-month-old son after they were arrested for crossing the southern border illegally last summer.

He had mortgaged his land in Guatemala to fund his sick toddler’s hospital stay, and needed to work in the United States to pay off the loan.

Instead agents imprisoned the 28-year-old in July for coming back into the country after having been deported, a felony. They placed the toddler in a federal shelter, though where, Pastor didn’t know. Three months later, in October, the father was deported — alone. His child, he said agents told him, was “somewhere in Texas.”

“I cried. I begged,” he said. “No one could tell me anything.”

[...]

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has defended the practice, saying children are taken from any criminals imprisoned for breaking the law.

  Houston Chronicle

And this is the woman Trump doesn't like?

Previously most parents with children weren’t prosecuted for crossing the border illegally, a misdemeanor for first offenders, but deported or freed together to pursue their civil immigration cases under a practice called “catch and release.” The crime of illegal entry swamps federal dockets at the border and prosecutors typically prioritized serious offenders.

[...]

After they are removed from their parents, children are deemed "unaccompanied" and placed in the custody of Health and Human Services, which houses minors in federal shelters until it can release them to relatives or provide long-term foster care.

All this time I thought "unaccompanied" referred to children who crossed the border without a parent.    (It used to be.)  This is like Obama defining all males over a certain age present in an area where the US was "combatting terrorism" as enemy combattants.

Patrick Fisher, a spokesman for that agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement in charge of migrant children, said in a statement that the agency works with Homeland Security and other authorities to find parents. He said it has done so in about 700 cases between October and April where parents were in DHS custody. The agency couldn’t say how many were reunified, saying that data is not “in a reportable format.” It didn’t track separations before that period.

[...]

Miguel "Andy" Nogueras, a federal public defender in McAllen, said he recently represented a woman who was prosecuted for illegal entry last fall and had her child removed. She was coming back to find her this month when she was imprisoned for returning.

Jesus wept.

The boy was crying as federal agents ordered him into the government vehicle. Tell your mother goodbye, they said.

It was late October, and Blanca Vasquez and her 12-year-old son, Luis, had only been in the United States for a few hours. They had crossed the Rio Grande near El Paso, giving themselves up to Border Patrol agents to ask for asylum. A gang in El Salvador had murdered her husband, a military sergeant, and she said they were now after Luis.

[...]

Vasquez figured she and Luis would be detained, or even released, while she fought for asylum. A 20-year-old federal settlement that bars the extended detention of migrant children would ensure they stayed together.

But that was then. This summer, the practice changed.

Under orders from President Donald Trump's administration, the federal government would begin broadly prosecuting parents who enter illegally, forcing the removal of their children. That enables the administration to detain parents until they are deported or win asylum, rather than freeing them with their children to wait for their cases in the backlogged civil immigration courts, a practice known as "catch and release" that Trump has vowed to end.

  Houston Chronicle

Catch and release. Already treated like animals.

Such a practice of family separation is "so fundamentally unconscionable it defies countless international and domestic laws on child welfare, human rights and refugees," according to a complaint advocacy groups, including the Women's Refugee Commission, filed with the Department of Homeland Security in December.

It defies laws of humanity. It is reminiscent of Nazi treatment of Jews.

These agents would be right at home in Hitler's Germany.

Here's Chris Hayes' report:



Support the ACLU.





UPDATE:

The nerve.



UPDATE:

Border Patrol Agents have cost a bundle in lawsuits against them

The US government has paid out more than $60m in legal settlements where border agents were involved in deaths, driving injuries, alleged assaults and wrongful detention, an analysis of more than a decade of official data reveals.

[...]

All told over the 12-year period studied, the treasury department cut a check to settle a claim against CBP every 32 hours on average, for a grand total of more than $177m, when $116m in claims related to employment or property are taken into account.

However, while the data studied by the Guardian is extensive, it still does not give a full picture of all settlements. Provided by the US treasury department, the data only represents payments made from the federal government’s Judgement Fund, which pays out when an agency does not have funds available to compensate a claim for damages.

  the Guardian

I wonder what the breakdown is per year, since Trump has telegraphed that law enforcement agents should stop being careful in their treatment of suspects.

Imagine how many incidents there are that never get reported.

The agency’s Use of Force Review Board has investigated 30 significant incidents since June 2015. Each of its 17 reports made public have considered the use of force compliant with agency policy.

Well, there's a surprise.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.