Immigration

Thom Hartmann -   America stands at a moral precipice, and we’re about to tumble over the edge. The Trump administration is now planning to transport immigrants on U.S. military planes to detention centers in a warlord-controlled part of Libya, a decision that reveals how far we’ve strayed from our foundational values and basic human decency.

If this shocks you, it sure as hell should. The news broke this week that the administration is preparing to send migrants to Libya on military flights as early as tomorrow. And this isn’t just another policy announcement from the daily outrage factory; it’s the latest escalation in a deliberate strategy of cruelty that began during Trump’s first term.

The timing is no coincidence. Just last week, Saddam Haftar — yes, that’s his actual name — the son of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, visited Washington and met with Trump’s advisors including Massad Boulos (Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law) at the State Department. The younger Haftar commands eastern Libya’s land forces and represents his father’s self-styled “Libyan National Army” militia.

This isn’t even the official government of Libya that the Trump family is doing business with; it’s the half of the country that’s run by a warlord who the UN doesn’t recognize!

But let’s back up and ask the most fundamental question: Why the hell are we sending immigrants to prison at all, instead of simply deporting them back to their countries of origin like Obama did?

NPR -  The Trump administration plans to deport migrants without legal status to Libya, a country troubled by armed conflict, as early as next week. The U.S. military would conduct these deportations. In recent months, U.S. officials have been negotiating with various countries willing to accept individuals deported from the U.S. Earlier this week, Rwanda's foreign minister mentioned that his country is in discussions with Washington about accepting deportees.

One of the main goals of this plan is to send migrants farther away, so they can't cross back over U.S. borders, according to NPR’s Ximena Bustillo. A judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction blocking Homeland Security from removing migrants and sending them to countries they’re not originally from. The administration found workarounds to the injunction by using other agencies to remove people from the U.S. Last night, the same judge issued another order clarifying that Homeland Security cannot exploit a loophole. The order also says that no agency may deport individuals to a country they are not from without allowing them proper time to contest the removal.