Government-sanctioned human trafficking

The latest anti-asylum-seeker depravity by the governors of Texas and Florida should result in criminal charges for human trafficking. Abbot and Desantis should go to prison, but they won’t for the same reason that Trump will never wear a prison jumpsuit that matches his complexion: they are all too powerful. Prison is for the little people.

“These persons have contacted US authorities and have initiated an appeal for asylum, which will then wend its way through the judicial system. They were in severe danger in their homelands, often dictatorships supported behind the scenes by the US government. Asylum-seekers are not undocumented immigrants– they are fully documented, it is just that their fate is as yet unknown. It is these traumatized and abused people from anti-US dictatorships such as Venezuela that these Republican governors trafficked for the sake of a sound bite.”

It’s not only that helpless asylum seekers (who are in the country legally while awaiting a decision on their applications) are being needlessly transported to places that weren’t notified beforehand. It’s that these people are given false location information and relocated far from their hearing sites, so they not be notified of their hearings and/or be unable to attend them, thus resulting in deportation. This is obscene.

“They are being taken far away from the jurisdictions where their immigration hearings would be heard, thus subjecting them to more confusion and logistical traps. As a result, they are being set up to miss mandatory appointments 1000’s of miles away, and subjected to deportation.”

The right-wing governors justify their kidnapping of asylum seekers and their deportation to blue states and to Washington DC as a protest of Biden Administration “open borders” policy. Setting aside the cruelty of using human beings as toys in a political game, the “open borders” claim is a lie:

“In recent years, moreover, 74% of attempted unlawful entries are estimated to have been intercepted by Border Patrol. Even so, in the fiscal year 2021, deportation officers from ICE arrested 74,082 immigrants and deported 59,011 immediately. They deported by airplane another 36,654. At the direction of the Biden administration, DHS has focused like a laser in targeting for expulsion those who successfully evaded Border Patrol who have criminal records. More tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants are under investigation and wearing court-ordered electronic bracelets.”

The mainstream media refers to GOP politicians and voters as “conservative.” Treating our fellow human beings as objects isn’t conservative. Abusing the hospitality of other states isn’t conservative. Lying about immigration isn’t conservative. Vilifying the “other,” be they brown-skinned asylum-seekers or pregnant women making personal health decisions isn’t conservative. True conservatives need to rise up against right-wing radicals like Abbot and Desantis who are dividing the nation and hijacking government to serve their personal political agendas.

https://www.juancole.com/2022/09/desantis-traffickers-pranking.html