If you're ever up for listening in on what your local Deep State is up to, may I recommend one of my favorite eateries in #Boston: the cafe in the JFK fed. building. Decent, reasonably-priced food with a nice view and plenty of space to relax while waiting for #immigrationcourt
1/ Two VA managers are having a lunch meeting nearby, talking through how to deliver faster/better services to a 94-year-old veteran & review implementation of a new process.
A USCIS officer is having a quick salad before another round of immigration interviews. In + out in 10
2/ Friends, this is your actual "Deep State."
Career public servants who take pride in keeping their agencies on mission and making the best use of tax dollars doing it, no matter the President or policies. Dedication, commitment, and institutional knowledge. We can't lose them.
3/ Career federal employees trend conservative but, like the rest of us, many of them have (and are certainly entitled to) opinions about Trump. But they aren't conspiring against him, and really couldn't even if they wanted to.
4/ It can't be easy to be told (as USCIS officers specifically have been) that your agency is specifically no longer in the business of "customer service," and that it's time to drop the simple courtesies that define professional public-facing service.
5/ It has to be demoralizing to know that the struggling agency whose mission you believe in and are proud to carry out every day has to tolerate a cabal of the President's country-club buddies who just to want to try their hand at federal management
6/ But these essential public servants keep their heads down, their inboxes managed, & the complex business of their agencies humming through the latest chaos in the White House.
Give them a thought the next time you hear Hannity or whoever blathering on about the "Deep State."
7/ And please everyone just stop using this rock-stupid phrase.
Suggested alternative:
"Competent career technocrats who don't want to watch the entire federal government run off the rails and explode in a giant fireball."
I know, could be snappier. Will work on that.
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1/ One of the worst parts of the proposed new DHS "public charge" rule would resurrect a 400-yr-old idea, punish lower-income immigrants, AND deliver a massive new giveaway to Wall Street.
Not seeing much out there on this piece right now, so here's what you need to know:
2/ The idea of a "public charge bond" goes back to the earliest colonial days. If someone coming over from Europe didn't seem like they would be able to support themselves, the ship's captain would have to put up a given amount of money to keep them off the dole or take them back
3/ As part of the "Passenger Cases," SCOTUS struck down the city of Boston's attempt to collect public charge bonds from ship captains as unconstitutional in 1849, finding that only the federal government had this kind of power. But it didn't actually exercise it until 1882.
Not, like, step-by-step but generally what are the paths available under current law. If the answer is any variation on "get in line like everybody else," an automatic 6-month bar on any immigration rhetoric/legislation until finishing a mandatory US Immigration 101 course.
If you or your staff are not willing to take the time to understand the system we have, there is no place at the table for you in working toward a new one. None.
1/ Ten years ago this June a recent immigrant was sentenced to life for the vicious, violent, cold-blooded murder of his wife and infant daughter before trying to flee to his home country.
--@bostonherald didn't run an angry editorial blaming our imm. vetting processes
--No one used this tragedy to call for an end to all British immigration
--The media never used a booking photo; always images like this one to remind us of his wealth & whiteness
3/ Neil Entwistle shot his wife in the head, and then his infant daughter in the stomach as she lay sleeping in her mother's arms. He then withdrew every dollar they had and fled to London. Mass state troopers grabbed him on a tube platform.
Maybe *not* have a rogue, unaccountable, armed secret police force & threat of indefinite detention in a disgusting American gulag archipelago terrorizing immigrant communities in the name of enforcing civil immigration orders
BUT WE HAVE TO HAVE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
Coordinated internal immigration enforcement is a very new idea in US history. But apart from that: we've only been doing it this way for 15 years. If you are doing anything to make this model inevitable, you're on the wrong side
1/ Live-tweeting from the Boston immigration court's detained docket:
Detainee is on video. I can't see his face but he has a heavy Massachusetts accent--you'd never know he wasn't born here. He is seeking bond.
2/ He has a series of drug-related convictions together with a record consistent with an addiction. Judge leaves his bond at "no bond" without hearing from him.
3/ Like most people on the detained docket, he doesn't have and can't afford a lawyer. (No appointed counsel here.) He is now speaking for himself.
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BPD maintains a "gang assessment database" with the Boston Region Intelligence Center, "fusion center" which combines the worst information and impulses of local, state, and federal law enforcement. Their intel on suspected gang members is... well, it's bad. It's very bad.
The database gives BPD cover to "confirm" who is a "VERIFIED & ACTIVE" gang member. It's a serious allegation, something they'd be immediately sued for publicly suggesting about a white Bostonian. But determine that someone is young, male, & Salvadoran.... and here we are: