Category Archives: Immigration

Are You Unfulfilled Because Your Career Isn’t Evil Enough?

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Don’t you know the devil wears a suit and tie

I saw him driving down the 61 in early July

White as a cotton field and sharp as a knife

I heard him howling as he passed me by

Rarely do I begin one of these posts with a song lyric, but this one speaks to me right now It’s a song by Colter Wall, a retelling of an oft-told yarn about bluesman Robert Johnson meeting the devil and learning his secrets… at a price.

In the case now before us, the devil isn’t howling down a country road in a Cadillac. He’s a bureaucrat with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, trying to recruit willing desk workers for the unconstitutional, illegal, and yes, evil work of ferreting out the undocumented for prosecution and deportation. VTDigger:

ICE plans to hire at least a dozen contracted workers for the effort at its National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, which is located in an unassuming business park in Williston. … [The contractors would] use sites such as Facebook, Instagram and X… to generate leads about “individuals who pose a danger to national security, risk public safety or otherwise meet ICE enforcement priorities.”

Yeah, because of course people who pose a clear and present danger to national security are out there openly sharing their nefarious plans on social media platforms.

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News You Should View, Emergency Dispatch

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Hats off to The Hardwick Gazette, not because of my association with it, but because they pulled off the scoop of the goddamn week. In the process, the doughty weekly showcased the importance of strong, active local news operations, especially as our daily papers have focused on their core communities and our statewide outlets just can’t cover all the gaps.

Last Friday, federal agents conducted “a coordinated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action that involved five vehicles” in the town of Hardwick, population less than 3,000, not exactly an epicenter of crime, not the place where Trump’s immigration crackdown could actually do anything to make our country safer. As The Gazette put the pieces together, what emerged was the apparent detention of nine individuals who all “worked for the same construction company,” which could not be immediately identified.

Rumors about this action reverberated around social media over the weekend. The Gazette’s editor, publisher, chief cook and bottle washer Paul Fixx put the pieces together in time for this week’s edition. And as far as I can tell, no other media outlet has reported on this coordinated action targeting people who may or may not have their papers in order, but who apparently held jobs in an industry desperately short of personnel.

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Return of the Ghost of Deals With the Devil Past

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When I was reading The Manchester Journal’s account of an ICE detainee being whisked away to a prison — oops, my mistake, a “processing center” — hundreds of miles away, it rang a faint bell in the back of my mind.

As The Journal reported, Davona Williams had been moved without notice to the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan.

North Lake… Michigan… why does that sound familiar?

Well, it happens to be a repurposed version of the North Lake Correctional Facility, operated by GEO Group, the for-profit incarceration giant. When North Lake was operating as a prison, the state of Vermont contracted with it to house hundreds of Vermont inmates. It’s located in what can fairly be described as the middle of nowhere; Baldwin is a town of 863 located roughly halfway between Grand Rapids and Traverse City. I can tell you as a native Michigander, that’s deep in the Michigan countryside. Not exactly an easy trip for a family wanting to visit their incarcerated relative. (A 13-hour drive from Montpelier, in fact.)

And that’s where Davona Williams now finds herself. Wonderful.

But there’s more, much more, to tell about the grubby history of the North Lake Name Your Penitentiary.

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It’s Such a Fine Line Between Prudence and Appeasement

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Gov. Phil Scott continues to tiptoe the line when it comes to the rank berserkitude of the Trump administration. He got a lot of press coverage for his refusal to approve Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s request for Vermont National Guard personnel for administrative assistance. Since then, it’s been pretty much prudence slash appeasement.

Frankly, I don’t give him much credit for the ICE decision. They only wanted 12 people to basically do secretarial work. (I guess someone’s got to fetch the coffee.) It was such a small-stakes request that I wondered why ICE even bothered. Were they trying to get a foot in the door for bigger asks down the line? Or were they doing Scott a favor by making a request he could safely refuse?

Whatever, Scott’s subsequent actions make it clear that we shouldn’t be giving him a membership card in The Resistance anytime soon. In context, the ICE decision looks more like a brief tactical pivot than a sign that he takes Trump seriously as an existential threat to democracy.

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About Los Angeles and Our Growing Police State

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I’m departing from my usual focus on Vermont politics because the scenes from Trump’s Battle Los Angeles cosplay adventure* in MacArthur Park really hit me, and made the Big Brutalist Bill’s funding of a massive immigration enforcement regime feel like the most fascistic element of a broadly fascist administration. I was in Los Angeles just a couple of months ago. One of my stops was MacArthur Park. And to see heavily-armed stormtroopers marching, for no particular reason, through a place I had recently visited was a real smack in the face.

*The movie, which features a gritty band of soldiers fighting an alien invasion, appears to be the narrative inspiration for Trump’s florid fantasy of an L.A. under attack. Looking at clips from the film makes me think Stephen Miller probably jerks off to it late at night after he can’t get it up in bed with his wife:

Ooh yeah, that’s the stuff.

I went to L.A. because Loyal Spouse was attending a conference there, so I could stay in the hotel room for free and bomb around the city. It was a fascinating, enlightening, fun, and occasionally frustrating experience.

For purposes of this blog, I won’t cover the Broad Museum, the La Brea Tar Pits, a great bike trail along the L.A. beaches, the Griffith Observatory, or a wonderful store in Los Feliz called Wacko that specializes in fringe culture of all kinds. I will write about how refreshing it was to be in a truly diverse space where I was often in the minority and I never quite knew which language I might hear on the street, on the train, or at a restaurant.

Also how I never felt personally in danger, even though there was a LOT of poverty and homelessness. I walked along streets lined with tents, tarps, and other ad hoc shelters. There were plenty of sketchy characters on the streets and on mass transit. I kept my eyes open and my wallet secured, but even so I liked the overall experience. There are things in big cities — food, retail, museums, parks, botanical gardens, etc. — that you can’t find anywhere else. I don’t want to live in a big city, but I really like visiting them.

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Do We Really Want to Be in Bed with CoreCivic?

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The Democratic Legislature is looking at ways to limit, or end, an agreement allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (and other federal agencies) to house detainees at Vermont prisons. There’s a real itch for action because, well, Donald Trump’s enforcement regime is so thoroughly toxic, from the masks and the unmarked cars to the rank unconstitutionality of it all.

No argument there. But if you object to our complicity in Trump’s crackdown, what about our ongoing relationship with CoreCivic, the for-profit prison operator that’s making a fortune off Trump’s regime*? If we don’t want to be part of an arbitrary and punitive immigration enforcement system, well, isn’t CoreCivic an enthusiastic participant? Haven’t the company’s fortunes shot through the roof because of Trump?

*CoreCivic’s stock price basically doubled right after Trump’s election and has held its value since then. In spite of the Trump-triggered stock market swoon.

For those just tuning in, Vermont contracts with CoreCivic to house some of our inmates in a private prison in Mississippi. We’ve been doing this for years, with one for-profit operator or another. We’ve been told that we just don’t have enough space in our own prisons.

That may have been true in the past, but now? The numbers simply don’t add up.

So let’s end the contract, stop sending our inmates 1,400 miles from everything and everyone they know, and stop enriching an evil corporation.

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It was a Press Conference, a Rally, a Call to Arms

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A crowd big enough to attract the ire of any passing fire marshal jammed into the Statehouse’s normally placid Cedar Creek Room for an event that was inspiring, worrying, and kind of all over the place. (More on the curious backstory of this event later. Stick around if you can.)

Technically it was a press conference led by state Senate leadership, but about 300 people packed into the room to cheer on the speakers as they called for due process under law, freedom for Mohsen Mahdawi, unlawfully detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a fight by any nonviolent means necessary against Donald Trump’s assault on democracy and justice.

There were statements and there were questions from the press, like any normal press conference. But there was also an awful lot of enthusiastic response from the crowd. And for maybe the first time at such an event, the featured lawmakers acknowledged that working through the legislative process would be far from enough. “What it’s going to take is slowing ICE down and coming close to illegal interference,” said Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale.

State Sen. Becca White, pictured above, led the crowd in “an oath of nonviolence and peaceful protest.” The voices filled the room as she led a brief call-and-response:

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It’s Not Just Mohsen Mahdawi

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I attended this morning’s Statehouse press conference slash rally slash call to arms in a packed Cedar Creek Room, and I’ll be writing about it. But something else has come up, and I think it’s even more urgent.

While dozens and dozens of like-minded people backstopped a group of lawmakers and advocates at the Statehouse, something very different had happened 24 hours earlier on a Franklin County dairy farm. According to a press release from Migrant Justice, agents of the U.S. Border Patrol entered the farm on Monday and dragged away eight farmworkers. The advocacy group called it “one of the largest worksite enforcement actions in recent Vermont history.”

The eight were taken to Vermont’s Northwest State Correctional Facility, which is where Mohsen Mahdawi is being held, illegally, without any charges against him.

Your taxpayer dollars at work. Doesn’t it make you feel proud to be a Vermonter?

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Come to the Table, Talk to the Hand

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At his Wednesday press conference, Gov. Phil Scott was studiously noncommittal on the use of state prisons to house federal detainees. He unironically expressed the belief that it might be better for detainees like Mohsen Mahdavi to be kept in Vermont instead of being dragged off to Mississippi (where Vermont routinely sends its own inmates) or some other hellhole. But he left the door open to working with lawmakers on that issue and others, as the Legislature considers ways to manage state cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Behind the scenes, something very different is happening. The Scott administration appears to be stonewalling a legislative panel with jurisdiction over the prison contract.

This comes from Independent Rep. Troy Headrick, a member of the House Corrections & Institutions Committee, with additional input from fellow committee member, Democratic Rep. Conor Casey.

Headrick wrote a blogpost on April 16 detailing “executive obstruction” frustrating the committee’s work on the issue. “In committee, we have developed a tri-partisan consensus,” Headrick writes, “that Vermont has no business being complicit with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]’s repeated violations of due process, the First Amendment, and basic human rights.”

Unfortunately, he continues, this effort to end the feds’ use of state prisons to hold detainees has been “stalled… by direct interference from the Governor’s office.”

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Today I Learned Something on True North Reports

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I don’t make a habit of reading “True North Reports,” the right-wing “news” site bankrolled by the famously reclusive Lenore Broughton. But I do dip my toe in its clouded waters from time to time, just because you gotta keep an eye on those Fockers.

I just did so, and mirabile dictu, I found a nugget of news!

NEWS!

On True North Reports!

What is this nugget? Well, at a VTGOP meeting over the weekend, party chair Deb Billado announced that the party would file lawsuits against the cities of Montpelier and Winooski over their Legislature-approved charter changes allowing resident noncitizens to vote. “We’re not sitting still on that particular issue,” she told the assembled. “We believe that it goes directly against the Vermont State Constitution section 42 and we are moving forward with legal action.”

Yeah, that qualifies as news. Congrats to Mike Bielawski for being the first, and so far only, person to report that fact.

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