THE SET-UP: The Global War on Terror is back. This time the battlefield is contained within the United States. Rendition is happening. Some have cycled through Guantanamo Bay, and, like the original GWOT, others are spirited away to be held captive in another country. This time the “enemy” includes anyone who is not a US citizen … regardless of whether or not they are in the country legally. An enemy could be a graduate student who expresses ideas and opinions the regime doesn’t like. Or it could be a someone with tattoos. Enhanced interrogations have been refashioned into “enhanced vetting.” Government agents are poring over social media accounts and digital footprints to find mindcrimes. Due process has been suspended and court orders are being ignored. And much like the first go-round, the War on Terror is more accurately a War of Terror.
Terror seems to be the point.
Legal immigrants with Green Cards and work visas and student visas and Temporary Protected Status are getting the point, too. But even as the Trump regime turns away refugees who’d been vetted and approved to come to the US, including Afghans who, ironically, assisted the US during the GWOT … the regime is bending over backward to open the door to one group that wasn’t asking for refuge … White South Africans.
Under Phase One of the program, the United States has deployed multiple teams to convert commercial office space in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, into ad hoc refugee centers, according to the documents. The teams are studying more than 8,200 requests expressing interest in resettling to the United States and have already identified 100 Afrikaners who could be approved for refugee status. The government officials have been directed to focus particularly on screening white Afrikaner farmers.
By mid-April, U.S. officials on the ground in South Africa will “propose long-term solutions, to ensure the successful implementation of the president’s vision for the dignified resettlement of eligible Afrikaner applicants,” according to one memo sent from the embassy in Pretoria to the State Department in Washington this month.
The administration’s focus on white Afrikaners comes as it effectively bans the entry of other refugees — including about 20,000 people from countries like Afghanistan, Congo and Syria who were ready to travel to the United States before Mr. Trump took office. In court filings about those other refugees, the administration has argued that core functions of the refugee program had been “terminated” after the president’s ban, so it did not have the resources to take in any more people.
Meanwhile, the hardworking Haitians Trump demonized with a not-so-subtly racist lie that they were eating the beloved pets of God-fearing Americans are, according to Raw Story, in panic mode:
“The community is in a mode where people are panicking because of those decisions that this current administration has been taking lately to revoke people’s legal status,” said Viles Dorsainvil, executive director and co-founder of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center.
“A lot” of Haitian immigrants in Springfield have left the city looking for protection from deportation, Denise Williams, president of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP, told Raw Story.
“They were fearful that they would get deported back to Haiti based on my understanding,” Williams said.
Others are “concerned” amid this “time of uncertainty” but have chosen to remain in Springfield due to lack of safety in Haiti, Dorsainvil said.
“They still keep doing everything that they have been doing, even though they are afraid,” said Dorsainvil, who left Haiti himself in 2020. “But what should they do? They have to keep moving forward.”
The juxtaposition between the treatment of Afrikaners over there and the Haitians living and working here speaks volumes. The only thing missing is Trump hamming it up under a banner emblazoned with “Mission Accomplished.” - jp
TITLE: The Trump Administration Just Admitted It’s Creating a Black Site for Migrants
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/trump-administration-cecot-black-site-el-salvador.html
EXCERPTS: The Trump administration inadvertently revealed on Monday that it is attempting to trap Venezuelan migrants in a catch-22 that would effectively block them from challenging their deportation and detention in an El Salvador prison. In a court filing, the government acknowledged that it had deported at least one migrant to El Salvador due to an “administrative error”—but argued that the individual had no right to contest his imprisonment because he is in the custody of a “foreign sovereign.” This argument confirms what’s been clear for weeks: The government intends to treat the prison as a black site where migrants have no constitutional rights whatsoever and may be subject to any treatment whatsoever—including indefinite detention, forced labor, torture, or death.
But Monday’s filing illustrates another, more subtle problem that the Justice Department probably did not intend to admit: The government is trying to shunt migrants’ legal claims through a channel that is doomed to end in failure. It seeks to ensnare these migrants in a Kafkaesque trap from which there may be no lawful escape. And it is trying to sell this subterfuge to the federal judiciary as a legitimate opportunity for due process if any migrants have plausible objections to their treatment.
To see how hollow that promise is, just look to the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. A native of El Salvador, Abrego Garcia came to the United States in 2011, fleeing gang violence. Although he entered the country without authorization, an immigration judge granted him protected status in 2019, finding that he would likely face persecution if sent back to his home country. Federal law prohibits his removal to El Salvador. The Trump administration targeted him anyway, pulling him over while he was driving with his son, who is 5 years old and intellectually disabled. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents falsely claimed that his “status has changed,” arrested him, and threatened to turn over his son to Child Protective Services if his wife did not arrive within 10 minutes. His wife, a U.S. citizen, was able to appear in time, but ICE refused to provide any information about her husband’s arrest. She did not know where he had been taken until she saw a news photo of alleged Venezuelan gang members in CECOT, a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison, kneeling on the ground, their arms raised above their shaved heads. One man, she realized, was her husband.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation was unambiguously illegal, and his lawyers swiftly filed suit demanding his return. On Monday, the DOJ responded with a bombshell admission: Abrego Garcia did have a right to remain in the U.S. and was shipped off to CECOT only because of an “administrative error.” The DOJ then declared that there was nothing the plaintiff or the government could do to fix this confessed mistake. Abrego Garcia, it wrote, would need to file a writ of habeas corpus, the traditional procedure for challenging unlawful detention. Indeed, it argued, Abrego Garcia’s claims “can proceed only in habeas”—he has no other way to fight his imprisonment. And yet, the department concluded, no federal court can hear his habeas claim, because he is “not in United States custody.” He thus has no remedy whatsoever and must remain in CECOT indefinitely.
[T]he Trump administration is transforming CECOT into a black site to which migrants can be disappeared forever. It is even worse than Guantánamo Bay, because that facility is at least under American control—a key reason why the high court ruled that its inmates have habeas rights. CECOT, by contrast, is run by El Salvador, so the U.S. government disclaims any authority over its operations. Once a migrant is locked up there, the government says it has no power to demand his return, let alone any say over his treatment behind bars.
TITLE: Rubio Orders U.S. Diplomats to Scour Student Visa Applicants’ Social Media
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/student-visas-social-media.html
EXCERPTS: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered diplomats overseas to scrutinize the social media content of some applicants for student and other types of visas, in an effort to ban those suspected of criticizing the United States and Israel from entering the country, U.S. officials say.
Mr. Rubio laid out the instructions in a long cable sent to diplomatic missions on March 25.
The cable described the broad parameters that diplomats should use to judge whether to deny a visa. It cited remarks that Mr. Rubio made in an interview with CBS News on March 16: “We don’t want people in our country that are going to be committing crimes and undermining our national security or the public safety,” he said. “It’s that simple, especially people that are here as guests. That is what a visa is.”
The cable specifies a type of applicant whose social media posts should be scrutinized: someone who is suspected of having terrorist ties or sympathies; who had a student or exchange visa between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024; or who has had a visa terminated since that October date.
The dates specified by Mr. Rubio in the cable indicate that one of the main aims of the social media searches is to reject the applications of students who have expressed sympathy for Palestinians during the war.
The cable also states that applicants can be denied a visa if their behavior or actions show they bear “a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles.)”
A State Department spokesperson said in an email in mid-March that “all available technology” was being used to screen visa applicants and visa holders. The spokesperson was replying to a question from The New York Times about whether the department was using artificial intelligence to scan databases and social media posts to find holders of visas that, in the eyes of Trump aides, should be revoked.
Last week, a half-dozen federal agents clad in black, some wearing masks, snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, off a street in Somerville, Mass., and took her to a detention center. Mr. Rubio said afterward that he had revoked her student visa.
Ms. Ozturk wrote an essay for a student newspaper last year calling for university support of Palestinian rights and divestment from Israel.
TITLE: Cornell activist self-deports, drops free speech lawsuit against Trump
https://ithacavoice.org/2025/04/cornell-activist-self-deports-drops-federal-lawsuit-against-trump/
EXCERPTS: Cornell University graduate student and pro-Palestine activist Momodou Taal said Monday he decided to self-deport and leave the U.S. after the Trump administration initiated deportation proceedings against him. Taal was also one of three co-plaintiffs in a now-dismissed federal lawsuit that aimed to block two of the president’s executive orders.
The announcement comes less than a week after the presiding judge in the federal lawsuit denied an order that would have blocked federal immigration officers from detaining Taal.
Taal’s lead counsel Eric Lee also filed a notice Monday to voluntarily dismiss the federal lawsuit. Lee had previously said that the suit would continue regardless of Taal’s presence in the country. He did not give a reason for the change of course.
In a post on social media, Taal wrote that he decided to leave the county Monday “free and with [his] head held high.” Taal is a dual citizen of both the U.K. and Gambia studying in the U.S. on an F-1 visa.
“This is of course not the outcome I had wanted […] but we are facing a government that has no respect for the judiciary or for the rule of law,” Taal wrote.
Looks to be the handiwork of Jr. Goebbels, Steven Miller. He is truly a despicable and vile POS, a NAZI with zero redeeming qualities.