Immigration

Hartmann Report -   ICE is flagrantly violating the Constitution — and, thus, the law — all over the country, and apparently agents are getting a $30,000 bonus if they drag enough immigrants into their concentration camps. Most recently, a phone-video recorded by an 18-year-old American citizen who was traveling with an undocumented friend shows ICE officers brutally attacking the car full of teenagers. They bragged that, “You’ve got no rights here!” while making fun of their captives and discussing with each other whether they’d hit the threshold to get the $30,000. You can watch the video here.  

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is unambiguous: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” 

Increasingly, it appears that Trump is creating his own secret police force, with a network of beyond-the-law concentration camps (they’ve started deportation flights from “Alligator Auschwitz” without any apparent legal sanction), much as Hitler did in the early 1930s and Putin did about a decade ago. Some Democratic politicians are starting to wake up, but the party as a whole is way behind in reacting to the threat this represents.

POGO -  The Trump administration has granted ICE access to the data of all 79 million people enrolled in Medicaid. That data includes incredibly sensitive information like home addresses and ethnicities, and it will be used by ICE to target people for deportation — putting millions of people and families across the country in immediate danger. This historic and unprecedented violation of privacy should infuriate everyone. People should not have to worry about their privacy or fear for their safety when signing up for government services or seeking medical care. But the Trump administration has made it clear from their systematic destruction of privacy protections for American’s data that they do not care to abide the privacy laws that were made to protect you from abuse. This is warrantless mass surveillance under the auspices of immigration enforcement, and it will not stop there.