Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

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Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:53 am

Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

Fintan O'Toole Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 05:00

To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

Moral boundaries

But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.

People have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group
It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.


Image
Children and workers at a tent encampment recently built in Tornillo, Texas: the blooding process has begun within the democratic world. Photograph: Joe Raedle

To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

‘Devious’ infants

And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious? Second, the hardcore fans loved it: 58 per cent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.

Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors

This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fint ... -1.3543375
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby dada » Fri Aug 17, 2018 2:42 pm

I think O'Toole is providing a valuable service by shining his light on the dark, evil thing that is brewing in the ideological sewers. Colonial cancer. He makes a good case for how easy it is to fall head-first into straight-up fascism.

Again, the emotions generated threaten to engulf. But I want to keep a clear head when facing this enemy, don't want my vision clouded by "seeing red." So I keep some numbers in the back of my mind as I read. Rough estimates. A hundred million American voters abstained last Presidential election. The approval rating of fifty percent of Donald's party works out to about an eighth of the American voting population. And overall approval rating of forty percent is arrived at how. Gallup method is 1,500 phone interviews a week, which are then extrapolated by identity categories like age, gender, color of skin. I personally don't know anyone who ever answers the call from Gallup, maybe you do. And clearly identity demographics don't take into account the realities of personality and individual experience. And we all know how surprising the difference between polling predictions and results can be.

Still, this is very, very bad news. And the media is feeding this bad news, every day. Media comfort and aid, media inflation for growth and support. Amplifying the drumbeat of the fascist tendency. Some media do it because they are it. Others are entirely cynical, capitalizing on any opportunity to generate ratings is just good business. And anyway if you didn't do it, you'd be out of a job.

But one other thing, my usual one other thing nowadays, it seems: The nazis have been defeated before. That defeat rings out forever, it will always be in the back of their minds, and ours. Giving us strength to draw upon, and undermining their power at the core. The inescapable voice of history's judgement, nagging at the back of their visions.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby liminalOyster » Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:56 pm

There's a pretty perverse irony in negatively invoking both "savagery" and "tribalism" as descriptors *of* racist/fascists rather than the underlying logic of racism itself.
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 30, 2018 2:41 am

Image


More Than 500 Migrant Children Are Still Separated From Their Families

Lisa Ryan@lisaryaAug. 24, 2018
Protesters.
Protesters. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Although the deadline to reunify immigrant families separated at the border passed weeks ago, the Trump administration has still not reunited more than 500 children with their parents, according to new court documents.

As HuffPost reports, a status report filed Thursday shows that as of August 20, 528 migrant children were still in government-contracted shelters. The court-ordered deadline to reunite these children with their parents was July 26, nearly one month before the filing. An official previously said of the children still being kept from their parents, 23 were under the age of 5 — and 343 had parents who had already been deported from the U.S., HuffPost reports.

The affected migrant children were separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s cruel and inhumane “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which ripped families apart at the border. Nearly 3,000 children were separated from their parents under the policy. After public outcry, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending his own policy. Trump’s compromise was to instead detain entire families together.

The status report filing comes shortly after a New Yorker report, in which an administration official told writer Jonathan Blitzer that the administration had been surprised by the public’s reaction to its family-separation policy. “The expectation was that the kids would go to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, that the parents would get deported, and that no one would care,” the official said.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/family-s ... dline.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:29 pm

More Than 400 Immigrant Children Remain Separated From Their Parents
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2018/sep/06/g ... -children/



What is #WhereAreTheChildren
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41086
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 11, 2018 9:28 pm

Government to expand, extend Texas tent shelter for children


HOUSTON (AP) — The U.S. government will expand its tent shelter for immigrant minors crossing the southwest border to 3,600 beds and keep it open through the end of this year, an agency spokesman said Tuesday.

The facility at Tornillo, Texas, which originally opened with a 360-bed capacity for 30 days, is being expanded based on how many children are in the care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, agency spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said in a statement.

Wolfe said the announced expansion was not due to the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, which led to the separations of more than 2,500 children from their parents. Three months after enforcement of the policy officially ended, more than 400 children remain in government care, away from their parents, many of whom were deported.

Those previous family separations “are not driving this need,” Wolfe said. He said 1,400 of the beds will be placed “on reserve status.”

Department officials have visited military bases and other properties in Texas, Arkansas, and Arizona that could host more beds for immigrant children, but “no decision to use any of these properties has been made,” Wolfe said.

While the government has stopped large-scale separations, thousands of immigrants continue to arrive at the southwest border each month, mostly from Central American countries roiled by gang violence and poverty.

The U.S. Border Patrol said it apprehended nearly 4,000 children unaccompanied by an adult at the southwest border in July, the most recent month for which figures are available. That represented a decrease from May and June, but border crossings historically tend to rise as the summer heat gives way to cooler temperatures in fall.

In Texas, the state with the longest segment of the U.S.-Mexico border, 5,168 children were being held in government facilities in early August, about 500 children short of capacity, according to figures released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The Tornillo facility is at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection port of entry about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of El Paso. The Tornillo port of entry had previously been used to shelter children in 2016.

Reporters were allowed to tour the facility in June , shortly after it was re-opened in the wake of family separations.

At the time, more than 320 children ages 13 to 17 were being held in air-conditioned tents. A facility administrator told reporters that the main complaint he hears from children on site is that the tents sometimes get too cold.

Reporters were not allowed to enter any tents holding children. Two girls who stopped briefly in front of reporters said that they were doing well.
https://apnews.com/c14ed40d6c48434a8828 ... SocialFlow



DHS transferred $9.8M Dollars Transferred from FEMA to ICE

for deportations and detentions

interment camps
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:59 am

Fifty-Six Days of Separation The Scars Left Behind by U.S. Migration Policy

A mother and her six-year-old son fled to Texas from the violence in their homeland of Honduras. When they arrived, young Samir was ripped out of his mother's arms. Two months later, they found each other again, but something had changed.

Marian BlasbergSeptember 11, 2018 01:06 PM
It's 1 a.m. when Levis Osorio Andino bolts out of a dreamless sleep. A warden is standing next to her bunkbed inside the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas and shaking her arm. "Wake up 494," she says. "It's time."

Levis sleepily packs her bag and stumbles through the neon-lit corridors. It has been 56 days since she last saw her six-year-old son Samir, who used to hang on her more than any of her other children. In early June, they crossed the Rio Grande after weeks spent fleeing their homeland of Honduras, and the Texan border guards immediately pulled her child out of her arms.

Levis' arrival corresponded with America's effort early this summer to pursue a zero-tolerance policy to illegal immigration, a policy which called for families to be separated at the border. Now, though, the government is trying to fix the chaos that ensued.

The last thing that Levis had heard about Samir was that he no longer wanted to leave the home in Phoenix, to which he had been taken.

"Surprise," the warden says and pushes Levis into a windowless room. "Samir just went to the restroom briefly." She slumps onto a chair, trembling. Then, there he is, standing in the doorway, hand-in-hand with a social worker, his hair close-cropped, the smile frozen on his face showing the gap between his front teeth.

"Samir, my darling," Levis stammers. "How are you?"

"I don't know who you are."

Levis takes a step toward Samir, but he recoils. She tries again and he starts trying to kick her.

"Samir," she says, "I love you."

"You aren't my mother."

Such is the scene related by Levis as she sits exhausted in front of a plate of rice a couple of hours after her reunion with her son. Born 26 years ago in the Honduran city of El Porvenir, Levis is a pretty woman with almond-shaped eyes. She struggles to find words to describe the nightmare she is living. She keeps having to fight back tears as Samir sits next to her, engrossed in the fantasy world of a smartphone game.

If you ask him how he's doing, he briefly looks up and says: "I'm made of steel."

No Moral Compass

The sun is shining onto the cafeteria tables of the Basilica Hotel, a hostel operated by the Catholic Church in Rio Grande Valley. A prison bus dropped Levis and Samir off here in the night, a place located at the very southern edge of the United States, not far from where they landed with their raft two months ago. They are now free, but they don't know where to go. In October, Levis says, her asylum case will be considered -- and at the very least, she won't be deported before then.

The hostel is normally used by pilgrims, but it has become a transfer station for many of the some 3,000 families that America gradually began reuniting at the end of July. It is a place of humanity in a country that has lost its moral compass.

Nuns hand out donated clothes in the lobby. They help people find their family members and organize bus tickets. They reconnect Levis with her lawyer for the first time in weeks and over the phone, he promises to find her a place to stay, a place to start healing the wounds that this country has inflicted.

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For years, the U.S. was a country whose borders were more open than elsewhere. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," reads the poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. It is a principle that has seemed immovable ever since the country declared independence in 1776 as a country of immigrants.

But the 45th president is currently in the process of unleashing a wrecking ball on this foundation. In the eyes of the former real estate magnate Donald Trump, people like Levis, who are fleeing from the violence and poverty endemic in Central America, are criminals first and foremost. He calls them drug dealers, rapists or "bad hombres." Trump believes there are too many of them, and to keep them away, he has promised his followers he will build a border wall.

The zero-tolerance policy announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April was basically a precursor to that physical barrier, something like an invisible wall. It was a way to scare people away, and much cheaper than a vast concrete barrier. Starting in mid-May, thousands of parents were locked up and their children scattered across the country. Some of them were put into homes while others ended up with foster parents or even in empty Walmart stores.

But it quickly became clear that Trump had broken a taboo. To many, it looked as though the president was taking the children hostage in order to blackmail Congress into funding his wall. The American public, it quickly became clear, wasn't particularly troubled by the introduction of tariffs on aluminum imports, but traumatized children were beyond the pale.

Just the Start

Even as Levis, despite being locked in a cell, was doing all she could to locate Samir, an increasing number of Republicans began joining the chorus of those who were loudly criticizing the family separation policy. And on June 20, Trump did something he doesn't do often -- he grudgingly corrected a grave error. "This is going to make a lot of people happy," Trump said as he joylessly signed a decree ending the policy of family separation.

When a judge ordered 10 days later that all families be reunited by July 26, it looked as though the chaos caused by the policy would soon be coming to an end. In reality, though, it was just the start.

Still today, more than a month after the expiration of that deadline, hundreds of children are still in government custody. There is no trace of dozens of fathers and mothers because they have already been deported. Officials are unable to match children with their parents because different agencies are responsible for them. Prior to her release, Levis had to undergo a DNA test to prove that she was Samir's mother. It is crazy, but sometimes it seems as though it is part of a larger strategy.

One morning in August, five days after their reunion, Levis and Samir are lying in a double bed in a church library listening to songs from Honduras. The library is located in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York, and Levis is singing along with the music. Eventually, Samir's quiet voice joins in. Tall shelves of books mute the sound. Their lawyer said they can stay here for a few days.

Some parishioners cook for them while others took them out to show them Times Square. Every few minutes, someone pokes their head in to ask if they need anything. Thank you, Levis says each time with a sheepish smile.

She has tied her hair into a knot on her head and is wearing a black sweatshirt printed with the word "Blessed" in gold lettering. Samir is wearing new Batman shoes. They are getting to know a different, friendlier America -- but their nightmare is only just getting started.

"Samir has changed," says Levis when he briefly leaves the room.

When she carefully tried to pull him toward her on that first night, he just turned away. It was only at dawn the next morning that Samir put his small hand on her cheek like he used to. When he began speaking to her for the first time the next morning, he told her all the English words he had learned in the home: orange, apple, cherry. A short time later, he had a tantrum and began throwing toy cars.

'Immigrants Are Ugly'

The next evening just before bedtime, he tried to bite her. "I hate you!" he screamed. "I want to kill you!"

He has frequent mood swings, says Levis. He is courser than he used to be, but she avoids getting angry with him. She doesn't ask about what he went through during their separation, in part because she's afraid of what he will say.

"Samir, where in your body is love?" she asks him while lying on the bed this August morning. When he hesitates, she takes his hand and taps on his heart for so long that he finally starts laughing.

It will take time for him to develop trust again, she is told by Catalina, an energetic midwife who is taking a walk with them that afternoon on the clean sidewalks in the neighborhood where they are staying -- a neighborhood full of apartments that cost a fortune because of their views of Manhattan. Sometimes, when Samir is off playing in a playground, they sit down on a bench. It's the kind of life that Levis always dreamed of. From the banks of the East River, Catalina points to the Statue of Liberty, holding up her torch out on the water.

"Look," she says. "She wants to say that immigrants like you are welcome."

"Immigrants are ugly," says Samir, squeezing his eyes shut. It sounds as though he might have heard that sentence quite often recently.

The contrast between Brooklyn Heights and her hometown could hardly be greater. Honduras is the second-poorest country in Central America, one of the places Trump described in January as "shithole countries." A large amount of the cocaine that ends up in the U.S. travels through Honduras. Violent youth gangs demand protection money and they recruit children into their ranks who are often not much older than Samir.

El Porvenir is a humid place at the foot of a rainforest-covered range of hills. The two-hour drive from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa leads through a sparsely settled area where banana trees grow and a handful of cattle graze. Men holding Kalashnikovs can be seen standing in front of gas stations and restaurants along the route.

Lilian Maradiaga, Levis Andino's mother, is a warm-hearted woman in her 50s. She wears a bracelet on which the name of her only daughter is embroidered. She hasn't spoken with Levis for weeks, Lilian says as she prepares food for her two grandchildren. On this morning in July, Levis is still sitting in custody.

A Dead End

Luz, her three-year-old daughter, is chasing a couple of chickens in the yard while Jarends, who will soon be nine, naps in a hammock beneath a mango tree. They both now call their grandma "Mommy."

In the evenings, Lilian lies in bed with Luz and says prayers for "Mommy Levis." Then she helps Jarends with his homework. Lilian is a teacher in the only elementary school in El Porvenir. Levis also wanted to become a teacher, she says, preferably a music teacher. She even went to university in Tegucigalpa for a few semesters, but then she got pregnant after being raped by a drunk man at a party.

Levis began taking anti-depressants and went back to university. But then Samir was born after a one-night stand and a few years later, his sister Luz followed. Levis ceased her studies and stayed in El Porvenir. Her life, says Lilian, had reached a dead end. There are a few shops in the town center, but no jobs. Making matters worse was the gossip about her -- a woman with three children but no husband.

One evening, Levis took Lilian aside and told her that she wanted to give her small son something better -- and Lilian knew immediately what she was talking about. Two of her sons live in Nashville and Levis even visited them in 2015, shortly after the birth of Luz. She worked in a burger restaurant for 18 months and managed to send some money home, which Lilian used to buy a children's bed. Then, she was deported. Levis said that she wouldn't meet the same fate a second time.

On March 1, she packed a Bible, her best cloths and a few stuffed animals in an old suitcase. She hoped that her brothers would take her in again, even though they fought frequently the last time she was there. She took Samir along because he had suffered so much when she had been gone the last time. When her night bus disappeared into the darkness, Lilian remained behind.

"I would constantly look at my mobile phone," she says. "I knew the stories about women being forced into prostitution on the journey or of cartels kidnapping children for ransom money." Sitting in her living room, Lilian puts on her glasses and opens WhatsApp.

She ultimately received incomplete glimpses from a long journey. City names from Guatemala and Mexico, photos showing Levis and Samir puckering their lips for the camera. The last message came on June 1: Mamita, Levis wrote, I'm going to the river. I won't be answering anymore.

Levis and Samir were part of a vast influx of immigrants. Tens of thousands of Hondurans flee to the U.S. every year, with American officials estimating that some 400,000 of them are currently living illegally in the country. To avoid attracting attention to themselves, most strictly obey the law. They work in construction, like Levis' brothers, they care for the elderly or for children, or they work in landscaping. They ensure that the lifestyle of the largely white middle class remains affordable.

Page 2 of 2
There was a time when Donald Trump also saw the benefit of such people. During the construction of the Trump Tower in Manhattan, he employed 200 Polish workers who were in the country illegally. For the construction of his luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., he used cheap labor from Central America. It isn't totally clear when Trump began seeing these people as a danger, but during his campaign, he must have realized that his hateful tirades against immigrants had struck a nerve.

In addition to the construction of a wall along the Mexican border, he also demanded that the estimated 11 million people who live illegally in the country be quickly removed by way of mass deportations. Then he became president and his rhetoric became policy. In early 2017, Trump blocked the issuing of travel visas to citizens from seven Muslim majority countries. He then implemented stricter border policies and ditched an Obama-era program protecting 700,000 immigrant youth, most of them from Latin America, from deportation.

It isn't always easy to differentiate between what Trump has only said he was going to do and what he has actually done. The idea of blocking the influx of immigrants by separating families first made its way into the media in March 2017. John Kelly, who was secretary of homeland security at the time, mentioned it on CNN. Then the issue disappeared again. But in the Texan city of El Paso, a secret program began -- one which looks a lot like a kind of blueprint for what the zero-tolerance policy would later become.

All migrants who illegally crossed the border near El Paso between July and November found themselves the subject of criminal charges. Prior to that, illegal border crossings were often treated as a minor infraction and ignored. Under Obama, it was standard that families, after a brief period of imprisonment together, would be freed to await their asylum proceedings or they would be immediately deported. But the Trump administration realized that filing criminal charges opened up an opportunity. The law allows the state to separate parents from their children for the duration of the proceedings.

The El Paso experiment proved successful. An internal government report noted that illegal border crossings had dropped by 64 percent as a result of the family separation policy.

'We Have to Give Your Son a Bath'

Lying on her bed in the shelter in New York and recalling the moment when Border Patrol agents led her into an interrogation room on the morning of June 2, Levis says she knew nothing of these things. The initial reception facilities in Texas are known among migrants as "hieleras," or iceboxes, because of the low temperatures at which they are kept. She didn't understand that the guards took her shoelaces because a father had hanged himself a short time before after his children were taken away from him. She was surprised, though, by a cell door on which was written "6-12 years."

Samir sat on her lap crying.

"We've made it," she told him, her voice calm. "Soon we'll be free."

Border guards had intercepted them not far from where her traffickers had dropped them off. They had spent the night in a metal cage wrapped in aluminum foil blankets. Levis was exhausted and could hardly pay attention to the questions.

How old are you? Where are you from?

Suddenly, a guard came in and grabbed Samir's arm. The boy clutched Levis' T-shirt.

"Ma'am," the man said. "We have to give your son a bath."

Levis tried to stall him. "I'll do it myself later," she said.

"Ma'am," he insisted. "You can't go into a washroom where other boys are showering."

Then, Levis says, he tore Samir out of her lap. And Samir screamed louder than he ever had before.

"The kid is spoiled," the guard hissed. "He has mommyitis."

Levis stares emptily at the bookshelves. "It all went so fast," she says. "I couldn't even say goodbye."

Levis only began to realize that it was intentional three days later as she was sitting in leg shackles in one of those mass court proceedings that had become a daily occurrence on the border. Dozens of migrants, brought before a judge in a darkened courtroom in the city of McAllen, stood up to tell their stories. One of the mothers in the group said that her child had been ripped straight from her breast during feeding. A father said that his handicapped son was no longer there when he returned from the restroom.

"They were afraid that we would try to defend ourselves," Levis says.

She was then taken to a different detention center, located some 170 miles (270 kilometers) to the north on the arid outskirts of Laredo. All her hopes were now invested in a flyer that a court-appointed defense attorney had given her as she was being led away. "Dial 699 if you want to find out more about your child," it read.

Levis' attempts to call the number proved fruitless. The line was constantly busy, and when she did manage to get through, a slightly annoyed voice told her that it could take some time until the system was able to locate her son. When she heard several days later that Samir was in a home, the voice said: "I am not authorized to tell you in what city he is."

Howling Like a Coyote

There was no internet in the prison where she was held and when the news came on the TV, an invisible hand would quickly change the channel to a soap opera. Levis was completely cut off from the world outside. It was so cold in her cell that she stuffed scraps of paper into the slats of the air conditioning unit. When she would break into tears at night, the guards would laugh at her, saying she howled like a coyote.

She began wondering if she had done the right thing by promising Samir more and more great adventures as they traveled from city to city on their way north. Or by pretending that the migration prison they landed in for awhile in Mexico was actually a hotel. Had she expected too much from him?

"When I first sat across from Levis, separated by a pane of glass and speaking over the phone," says lawyer Ricardo de Anda, "it broke my heart. There was nothing else I could do but promise to find Samir."

One morning in June, de Anda is sitting in his legal practice in the center of Laredo wearing a cowboy hat and a pin-striped suit. Below the window is a cowhide sofa while the walls are adorned with pictures of Che Guevara and Abraham Lincoln. In his Twitter bio, de Anda describes himself as an "enemy of the white-right."

Shocked by reports of the mass criminal proceedings like the one in McAllen, de Anda had left a business card at the prison gates. Levis was one of the first to call him. Dozens of women followed, and the only clue they could provide him with to help him find their children was a so-called "Alien Number" each migrant is assigned upon entry to the U.S.

De Anda found children in Texas. He found them in New Jersey and New York. He tracked down Samir in Phoenix. When the whole thing started becoming too much for him, he issued an appeal on Twitter -- one that would catapult him to a whole new level.

De Anda is 62 years old. For the vast majority of his career, he was a small-time, border town lawyer who spent most of his time taking care of his ranch. But now, he suddenly had Michael Avenatti on the phone asking him if he needed a partner.

"Wooowwww," says de Anda.

My Prince, My Fighter

Avenatti has become one of America's best-known lawyers, propelled into the limelight by representing the porn star Stormy Daniels in a legal complaint filed against Trump. He has more than a half-million followers on Twitter, where he wages his own private war against the president. It is possible that Avenatti saw the family separation issue primarily as a source of fresh ammunition, but de Anda needed the help.

When they visited Levis the next day, they pushed a sheet of paper through the slot beneath the pane of glass and asked her to write a letter to Samir. Levis sat down on the floor and wrote.

Samir, love of my life,

I hope you are doing well. I am so sorry about what happened. My soul hurts, but I want you to know that I didn't leave you. I know you are suffering, but soon we will once again sing and pray together. When we get out of here, we'll go to the zoo like I promised. You always wanted to see the animals, the dolphins and fish, the penguins, even if you always said that you were afraid they would eat you. Oh, and the Spiderman toys that I promised, you'll have those soon too. You are my prince, my fighter.

I love you.

Two days later, de Anda and Avenatti flew to Phoenix.

"When we told Samir that we had a letter from his mother," says de Anda, "he didn't believe us. I assured him that Levis loved him, but he insisted it wasn't true. Only when he saw the bus that she had drawn on the border of the letter did he begin to thaw. At the end, we asked Samir to draw something. He sketched a woman with muscles and a wand who was the protector of three figures depicting him, his brother and his sister. When I later showed the drawing to Levis, she broke down in such a way that I simply didn't know what to do."

The home in Phoenix is a low, brick building with a welcome sign hanging next to the entrance. Surveillance cameras and high fences ensure that the 128 children who live here are unable to leave the premises.

Phoenix is one of 27 sites in the country where the organization Southwest Key Programs operates such homes. De Anda says the company is sitting on a goldmine. For the fiscal year 2018, the Trump administration signed a contract with Southwest Key Programs worth $458 million. To make room for the influx of children, they began buying cheap properties across the country.

The children are tended to by case managers, social workers and psychologists and go to school for six hours each day. In their free time, they can watch TV or play basketball. Former Southwest Key employees, who were no longer able to work there with a clear conscience, say they were not allowed to hug crying children to comfort them. In June, it was revealed that children with behavioral issues in Texas were medicated to calm them down. One 10-year-old boy from Brazil told the Washington Post that a five-year-old from Guatemala who was in the same home had been "vaccinated" several times a day.

Whether Samir was also given medications is unclear. But it is known that during his first week at the home, he cried nonstop. He would repeatedly cry out that he didn't want to stay there, and when he lashed out, his hands were bound to his chest. De Anda learned about these details from Samir's case manager, who insisted on using Samir's second name, Lloyd, when speaking of him -- almost as though he were trying to erase his identity.

'Not My Fault'

After 22 days, de Anda was able to arrange a telephone call between Levis and Samir for the first time. Levis shudders when recalling the conversation.

"Samir, are you okay?" "Yes." "What are you doing?" "Nothing." "Listen my angel, this isn't my fault."

Then Samir lapsed into a long period of silence. The next time Levis called, he held his hands over his ears before running out of the room. One time, when Levis' mother called him, he disavowed her.

"You know," a friendly woman's voice told Lilian, "when the children arrive here, they change."

Members of the Brooklyn Heights parish where Levis and Samir are now staying have promised to find a psychologist for Samir. Because as long as he doesn't open up, his experiences will remain a black hole that is only rarely penetrated by light.

One time when he comes into the library, he is wearing a hat and a large overcoat that he found in a closet. His upper body is bent over a cane. Later, while playing with Legos, he says the costume isn't just a game.

"We started a family in the home," Samir says. "There were mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. The other children called me 'abuelito,' grandfather, because I took care of the smaller ones. I even grew a gray beard, but I shaved it off."

When Samir now does something wrong or forgets something, he says: "After all, I'm old." The role of grandfather is his survival strategy, not unlike the fantasy world he invented and in which he spends hours at a time.

In that world, Samir is a spy, walking through the neighborhood with a magnifying glass scanning his surroundings for suspicious looking people. His enemies, he says, are all-powerful "sea agents" who wear green or blue clothes, just like the people who had control over his life over the past several weeks. These agents from Samir's fantasy world have set up surveillance cameras everywhere -- in the trees outside or in the library lamps. They kidnap mothers and their children and pull them down to the sea floor.

Chain-Link Cages

"Once," says Samir, "when they chained me up down there, Spiderman luckily came by and got me out."

In mid-June, the lawyer Michael Avenatti posted Levis' letter to Samir on Twitter and the tweet received 35,000 likes. Levis knew nothing about it, but she became something of a symbol of a deeply divided country.

"We need to make America America again," Avenatti said on CNN.

Newspapers began writing stories about an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, illustrated by photos showing children sitting inside chain-link cages. Human rights activists told stories of teenagers changing the diapers of small children. A recording was released on which young boys and girls could be heard crying for their parents.

Americans were disgusted. They began wondering what kind of country they wanted to be. And how much compassion they could afford to show at a time when millions were displaced around the world and the calls for a sealed border were growing louder.

When furious Americans began protesting in front of the homes, Trump said they had fallen victim to a media fairy tale. Just days later, though, he signed a decree putting an end to the family separation policy. "We don't like seeing families separated," Trump said with a forced smile.

But he didn't say anything about what should happen with people like Levis and Samir who had already been separated.

Trump's attention immediately turned to his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but a judge in San Diego ordered that parents must be allowed to speak with their children on the phone within 10 days. She then ordered that all families be reunited by July 26. It was an order that triggered a kind of disarray that many didn't think was possible in a country like the United States. There had been a plan in place for separating families. But there was never a strategy for reuniting them.

DNA and Birth Certificates

Whereas the parents were under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, a section of the Department of Health had been charged with taking care of the children. But the databases of the two ministries are not linked. It was left to people working long hours at non-governmental organizations to assemble lists and match up names that they had dug up themselves.

Biographies were analyzed, birth certificates verified, and DNA samples compared. At the end of July, the authorities said that around 1,000 parents were "not eligible" for reunification with their children. In one case, it was said that the mother suffered from a contagious disease. Many parents were the subject of criminal proceedings. Dozens could no longer be found because officials had forgotten to take down their contact details when they were released.

As if they were incorrectly addressed FedEx packages, children were repeatedly sent to the wrong prisons, even though their parents had long since been sent out of the country. Many of them had been forced to consent to their deportation, having been told that it was the quickest way to see their children again.

Levis said she refused to do so.

On July 3, she was transferred from Laredo to the Port Isabel Detention Center. When in the prison yard, she could smell the salty sea air. After she told a psychologist that she wanted to kick down a door, he threatened her with solitary confinement.

Even though Samir hadn't yet been cleared for air travel for the flight to his mother in Texas, Levis was officially released on the morning of July 17. She handed in her prison uniform and was transferred from Alpha tract to Bravo tract. Because her prisoner ID was no longer valid, her phone privileges had been revoked -- and because the computer system listed her as discharged, de Anda was no longer allowed to come in to see her. Levis remained in this limbo for 10 days; it seemed to her almost as though she no longer existed. Then, just hours after the official deadline for family reunifications had expired, the guard shook her awake in the middle of the night.

A 'Bad Hombre'

From March to May, Border Patrol agents arrested around 40,000 people per month along the Rio Grande. Then the numbers dropped slightly. It's difficult to say why -- whether it was the policy of family separation, the extreme summer heat in Texas or the deteriorating social climate in the U.S.

Even without Trump's zero-tolerance policy, illegal entries to the U.S. were at their lowest in over 40 years. The question then becomes: How high is the price for Trump's family separation stunt? What does it do to a country's self-image when its leaders inflict lifelong emotional scars on thousands of children? How damaging is it to a democracy when the governing elite treats a large minority in their own country as criminals? What does it mean for the rest of the West when such a thing happens in the U.S., of all countries?

The trauma of family separation didn't end with the expiration of the July 26 deadline. Children as young as four are still facing asylum judges on their own in court proceedings called to rule over their deportation. In August, de Anda and Avenatti flew to Guatemala to personally return a child to his mother, who had previously been deported. Trump is a "bad hombre," says Levis' mother Lilian. She hopes that her daughter returns home soon. Jarends, Levis' oldest son, asks frequently about Samir, with whom he used to imagine they were mighty pirates.

Levis and Samir now live around the corner in a new house belonging to the church, a home with a real bathroom. Levis has begun learning English and Samir is set to start school in September. They are the first steps into a new life, but nobody knows how long it will last.

In early June, Attorney General Sessions said that organized crime and domestic violence in countries like Honduras are not grounds for asylum. In all likelihood, the country that Levis has always dreamed of will soon deport her and Samir.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 26050.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby DrEvil » Wed Sep 12, 2018 6:11 pm

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... 1&start=80

Trump signs order authorizing “automatic” sanctions for election interference [Updated]

Process outlined for triggering sanctions outlined in announcement by Bolton and Coats.
Sean Gallagher - 9/12/2018, 8:08 PM

WASHINGTON—In a call with journalists today, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats outlined an executive order just signed by President Donald Trump that would result in automatic sanctions against any foreign entities found to have attempted to interfere in US elections. The order, not yet released, is meant as a deterrent against interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

The White House imposed a number of new sanctions against Russia in March for election interference, and the Justice Department filed indictments against 12 Russian intelligence officers in July. But these sanctions have apparently not deterred the Russian government and other countries with an adversarial relationship with the US from maneuvering to affect the outcome of some 2018 congressional races, according to Coats. While Coats said that "we have not seen the intensity of activity from 2016," the intelligence community has seen signs that there are efforts underway by a number of actors to manipulate the political process this year. "We have several that we are tracking," he explained, "and have seen signs, from not just Russia, but China, Iran, and North Korea."

Bolton had previously warned that there were signs of election meddling from China, North Korea, and Iran, though he offered no specific evidence. And evidence would not be forthcoming in the event that the White House considers sanctions under this order—the first word of any assessment would come with the sanctions themselves, Bolton told reporters. "These are sensitive, sometimes very dangerous operations, and we have to operate with respect to sources and methods," he said.

Lock them up

Bolton said that the executive order, entitled "Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election,” would "protect the US against interference in our elections and the political process more broadly." The order declares a national emergency, Bolton said, and requires DNI to make regular assessments of activities targeting the US electoral process, reporting findings to the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security. Bolton noted that the scope of the order included not just attacks on election infrastructure but also "the distribution of propaganda" intended to impact the electoral process.

Coats explained that the process outlined by the order called for a 45-day period within which the intelligence community was to assess whether election interference had occurred and who the actors behind that interference were. The finding would then be passed to the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, who would then make a determination within 45 days whether the interference took place and warranted sanctions. The 45-day period is based on when interference is believed to have happened and not specifically tied to Election Day. "We're looking at having evidence that interference has occurred," Bolton explained, "and that happens after the election but doesn't preclude there would be evidence in the course of the election."

If DOJ and DHS officials concurred with the director of national intelligence's report, sanctions would "automatically" be leveled against those determined to be behind the interference; the State Department and Department of the Treasury would then review the sanctions and determine whether they were sufficient and appropriate to the severity of the activity. Sanctions authorized in the executive order include blocking of assets, transfer of property, US investment in sanctioned companies, and restriction of travel.

Coats said that the administration acknowledges that there was interference in the 2016 election, and "we've learned our lessons. Our focus is, going forward, that we have the integrity of the election in place and we have the measures in place to deter and retaliate if necessary."

Cutting Congress off at the pass?

The executive order comes as bills in the House and Senate have gained support that would require sanctions against any government or person determined to have engaged in electoral interference. The Deter Act, proposed in January by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida), would mandate broad economic sanctions against Russian companies and require the White House to identify other countries that had been involved in electoral interference and provide proposed sanctions within 90 days. A similar bill is moving forward in the House.

Update, 2:30 PM ET: Van Hollen and Rubio issued a joint statement on the executive order, stating, "Today’s announcement by the Administration recognizes the threat, but does not go far enough to address it. The United States can and must do more. Mandatory sanctions on anyone who attacks our electoral systems serve as the best deterrent, which is the central tenet of the bipartisan DETER Act. We must make sure Vladimir Putin’s Russia, or any other foreign actor, understands that we will respond decisively and impose punishing consequences against those who interfere in our democracy." Van Hollen and Rubio urged colleagues in the Senate to quickly pass the Deter Act before the November elections.

Update, 3:30 PM: In a statement issued by the White House after the announcement, a White House spokesperson said that the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation will "host a live Election Day Watch at the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center to monitor and coordinate election-related activities" as part of the effort to ensure the security of the election. The executive order was positioned as part of an ongoing effort to shore up the security and integrity of the election system, including efforts last year by DHS to assist states in checking their information security and an August "National Election Cybersecurity Table Top Exercise" run by DHS to work on information sharing and working with state and local authorities on election security efforts.


Could be entirely innocuous, but the timing with the mid-terms coming up is a little fishy. Gotta lay down those narrative tracks for when it's time to dispute the mid-term results.

Also, Bolton is involved. Run away!
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 27, 2018 2:14 pm

Exclusive: Workers in tent city for migrant children are not getting FBI fingerprint background checks


EL PASO, Texas — Since June, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement has been housing hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children in an emergency tent city on the U.S.-Mexico border in Tornillo, Texas, as they await placement with sponsors in the United States.

VICE News has learned that more than 2,000 workers currently on staff at the Tornillo facility have not received ORR-mandated FBI fingerprint background checks for their work there.

HHS guidance explicitly requires FBI fingerprint checks as part of the minimum standards for facilities to ensure the safety of children in their care. The purpose of the checks is to ensure workers caring for children have no serious criminal histories, including neglect or abuse.

Ironically, fingerprints are part of the reason many kids are stuck in Tornillo. HHS has mandated FBI fingerprint checks for sponsors for the children, and delays in receiving those prints and processing them have contributed to lengthening the average stay for children at the camp, HHS spokesman Mark Weber told VICE News. HHS says it requires these checks to keep kids safe and out of the hands of traffickers.
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/gy7 ... und-checks
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby Rory » Tue Nov 27, 2018 2:21 pm

IMG_20181127_090125.jpg
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 27, 2018 2:23 pm

throwing tear gas at barefoot children is a trump thing
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:40 am

trump guy....happening now but someone wants live in the past I just wonder why



He’s Built an Empire, With Detained Migrant Children as the Bricks







He’s Built an Empire, With Detained Migrant Children as the Bricks

The founder of Southwest Key made millions from housing migrant children. His nonprofit has stockpiled taxpayer dollars and possibly engaged in self-dealing with top executives.

Dec. 2, 2018

The Austin, Tex., headquarters of Southwest Key Programs, which houses more detained migrant children than any other organization in the United States.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Juan Sanchez grew up along the Mexican border in a two-bedroom house so crowded with children that he didn’t have a bed. But he fought his way to another life. He earned three degrees, including a doctorate in education from Harvard, before starting a nonprofit in his Texas hometown.

Mr. Sanchez has built an empire on the back of a crisis. His organization, Southwest Key Programs, now houses more migrant children than any other in the nation. Casting himself as a social-justice warrior, he calls himself El Presidente, a title inscribed outside his office and on the government contracts that helped make him rich.

Juan Sanchez earned $1.5 million last year as Southwest Key’s chief executive.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times


Juan Sanchez earned $1.5 million last year as Southwest Key’s chief executive.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Southwest Key has collected $1.7 billion in federal grants in the past decade, including $626 million in the past year alone. But as it has grown, tripling its revenue in three years, the organization has left a record of sloppy management and possible financial improprieties, according to dozens of interviews and an examination of documents. It has stockpiled tens of millions of taxpayer dollars with little government oversight and possibly engaged in self-dealing with top executives.

Showing the ambition that brought him from the barrio to the Ivy League, Mr. Sanchez seized the chance to expand his nonprofit when thousands more unaccompanied children began crossing the border during the Obama era. When the Trump administration needed to house migrant children it had separated from their parents, Mr. Sanchez took them in.

As immigration intensifies as a flash point of the Trump presidency, with tear gas being fired at a migrant caravan and the price tag for separating families continuing to rise, Mr. Sanchez is central to the administration’s plans. Southwest Key can now house up to 5,000 children in its 24 shelters, including a converted Walmart Supercenter that has drawn criticism as a warehouse for youths. The system is nearing a breaking point, with a record 14,000 minors at about 100 sites — a human crisis, but also a moneymaking opportunity.

Though Southwest Key is, on paper, a charity, no one has benefited more than Mr. Sanchez, now 71. Serving as chief executive, he was paid $1.5 million last year — more than twice what his counterpart at the far larger American Red Cross made.


Southwest Key’s 24 shelters are spread across Arizona, California and Texas.

Former Walmart

Capacity 1,410

Southwest Key has created a web of for-profit companies — construction, maintenance, food services and even a florist — that has funneled money back to the charity through high management fees and helps it circumvent government limits on executive pay.

The organization, sitting on $61 million in cash as of last fall, has lent millions of dollars to real estate developers, acting more like a bank than a traditional charity. It has opted to rent shelters rather than buy them, an unusual practice that has proved lucrative for shelter owners — who include Mr. Sanchez and the charity’s chief financial officer.

Marcus Owens, the former head of tax-exempt organizations for the Internal Revenue Service under both Republican and Democratic administrations, reviewed Southwest Key’s tax returns for The New York Times. Regulators, he said, seemed to be “asleep at the switch.” Describing the financial dealings of Mr. Sanchez and his colleagues, he said, “I think the word is ‘profiteering.’”

Mr. Sanchez defended his charity. It had to move fast at times, he said in an interview. But every act, he added, has been to help children.

“There are all these kids, they’re at the border, they’re in detention,” Mr. Sanchez said. “How do we get this thing done as quickly as we can so we can start serving those kids?”

Jeff Eller, a spokesman for Southwest Key, said on Tuesday that the charity was closely examining its management practices after questioning from The Times, and that there was “general acceptance” that the charity had made mistakes.

“Could we have done things better? Yeah. And should have? Yeah,” Mr. Eller said. “But there wasn’t a desire to game the system.”

Because of the substantial growth of migrant shelters, the federal government hired an accounting firm this year to review shelter grant recipients, said Mark Weber, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. He added that the department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees migrant shelters, had also created a new division to monitor shelters’ spending.

Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into another shelter provider, International Educational Services, for possible misuse of federal money, according to two people informed of the inquiry. The nonprofit’s founder, Ruben Gallegos, said he had no comment on the investigation.

Mr. Gallegos’s charity — which Mr. Sanchez helped create but cut ties with years ago — lost its federal contracts in February for renting shelters owned by charity officials and paying those officials well above the government salary cap from migrant-shelter grants.

Last year, Southwest Key paid eight people more than the federal salary cap of $187,000. In addition to Mr. Sanchez, they included his wife, Jennifer Sanchez, who earned $500,000 as a vice president, and Melody Chung, the chief financial officer, who was paid $1 million.

Robert Carey, a director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the Obama administration, said he found the salaries “appalling.” He acknowledged that his office was focused on providing adequate care for the children and had not examined Southwest Key’s finances. “When you think of how those funds could be used and should be used,” he said, “it doesn’t sit well.”

Mr. Eller said the charity had not done anything improper, adding that the federal government had prohibited the organization from discussing executive pay.

In recent months, Southwest Key has come under scrutiny after a series of abuse allegations.

In July, a worker at a Phoenix shelter was accused of molesting a teenage girl. In September, an H.I.V.-positive worker was convicted of sexually abusing seven teenage boys at another Arizona shelter. Southwest Key, which has relied on temporary workers to staff facilities as it has ratcheted up operations, then blew a deadline to submit proof of employees’ background checks in Arizona. (Mr. Sanchez called the missed deadline a “very small, minor thing.”)

Shortly after, the federal government temporarily shuttered a third Arizona shelter, in Youngtown, after Southwest Key staff members were accused of physically abusing three children. In a recent agreement with Arizona officials, Southwest Key was fined $73,000 and agreed to close that facility and another troubled shelter in Phoenix. Mr. Weber, the government spokesman, said there were “numerous red flags and licensure problems” with the two shelters.

“He likes to take chances,” Paula Gomez, a friend of Mr. Sanchez’s since childhood, said of him. “Juan’s that way — you can have a couple T’s that aren’t crossed and I’s that aren’t dotted.”

Mr. Sanchez wore a serape rather than a cap and gown when he graduated from Harvard with a doctorate in education. “It was just to make a statement that Latinos were here,” he said.
Mr. Sanchez wore a serape rather than a cap and gown when he graduated from Harvard with a doctorate in education. “It was just to make a statement that Latinos were here,” he said.
The Fighter

For much of his life, Mr. Sanchez has seen himself as an advocate for the vulnerable, but he also is an ambitious networker who sought to fit in with the powerful.

He met his first wife, Ellen, planning a protest against nonunion produce pickers; at the same time, he took up golf. His office features a portrait of Che Guevara, and his Harvard diploma. At his graduation ceremony, he wore a serape instead of a cap and gown.

“It was just to make a statement that Latinos were here,” he said.

Mr. Sanchez was ultimately accepted into influential circles: He joined the board of the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group, now known as UnidosUS. The Mexican government gave him its highest humanitarian award. He rounded up politicians to speak at Southwest Key celebrations and cultivated ties to government agencies.

Growing up in Brownsville, Tex., Mr. Sanchez and his four younger brothers had slept on the living room floor. Their father, a baggage carrier for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, suffered a heart attack driving Juan to his part-time job when he was 14. Juan grabbed the wheel of the car. His father died almost immediately.

Mr. Sanchez’s diploma hangs beside a mosaic of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Southwest Key office, which also features artwork of Che Guevara.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Mr. Sanchez’s diploma hangs beside a mosaic of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Southwest Key office, which also features artwork of Che Guevara.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Juan earned money for his family any way he could: selling newspapers, picking fruit alongside migrants from Mexico. He also became a fighter, a top flyweight — at 5-foot-6 and 110 pounds — in state boxing tournaments. He thought he might become a professional boxer; if not, a priest. His high school counselor thought he might make a good mechanic.

Some of Juan’s friends, who had dreamed of becoming football quarterbacks and scientists, started to get in trouble. They ended up in juvenile halls, in jail, or worse.

But he became the first in his family to go past high school, attending seminary before deciding against the priesthood. He graduated from college in San Antonio, earned a master’s degree at the University of Washington and his doctorate at Harvard.

In 1981, Mr. Sanchez, then 33, returned to Brownsville to run the Esperanza Home for Boys, a charity that housed juvenile delinquents. Six years later, he started his own charity to help children stay out of prison. He said he wanted to help kids like those he had known growing up.

A top flyweight in his youth, Mr. Sanchez thought he might become a professional boxer.The Brownsville Herald

A top flyweight in his youth, Mr. Sanchez thought he might become a professional boxer.The Brownsville Herald
“Southwest Key was, in essence, started to help my friends,” Mr. Sanchez recalled.

In its first year, the charity raised about $200,000 from a state grant to care for 21 juveniles on parole. Mr. Sanchez’s salary was $35,000. Southwest Key took out loans of $6,700 to buy a Konica copier and an IBM computer.

Early employees described a sense of mission and camaraderie. But it was clear who was in charge.

“Juan is very intense,” recalled Angela Luck, the former deputy executive director. “He can have a temper. He does have a huge work ethic and expects everybody to have the same one. He can also be funny and kind and intelligent. But it was not an easy gig working for him.”

The Esperanza Home for Boys in Brownsville, Tex.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

The Esperanza Home for Boys in Brownsville, Tex.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
In the late 1980s, a court settlement meant for the first time that migrant children were required to have their own shelters. The federal government asked if Mr. Sanchez could take in migrant children, he said. Instead, he helped his former gym teacher and an Esperanza board member, Mr. Gallegos, establish a nonprofit to house migrants in Brownsville — International Educational Services, the organization now under federal investigation.

It was not until 1996 that Southwest Key entered the shelter business, opening facilities in Coolidge, Ariz., and El Paso, Tex. That year, it pulled in $12.2 million, about $2.5 million more than the year before.

“I was all for it,” recalled Ofelia de los Santos, a former board member. “The money was so good, and there were so few programs like ours who knew how to run residential programs.”

A shelter in Conroe, Tex., that Southwest Key rents from a company in which Mr. Sanchez is a silent partner.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

A shelter in Conroe, Tex., that Southwest Key rents from a company in which Mr. Sanchez is a silent partner.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
The Salesman

Mr. Sanchez made little distinction between his professional and personal life, rewarding people he liked. He stacked his board of directors with longtime friends and served on it himself, a potential conflict of interest.

After his first marriage ended, he met his future wife, Jennifer Nelson, who was running a tiny nonprofit in Brooklyn. Southwest Key, by then based in Austin, took it over and hired her. Eventually, Mr. Sanchez’s daughter and brother-in-law would join his charity empire.

Mr. Sanchez also hired a childhood friend, Mera Champion, previously Southwest Key’s banker. Even after she was convicted of embezzling $5,300 from her bank, he kept her on.

“He founded Southwest Key, and in his mind, he owns it,” said Arjelia Gomez, the charity’s former chief operating officer. “I always had a problem with that.”

The lines grew blurry at times between the charity’s interests and his own. Ms. Chung, Southwest Key’s chief financial officer, introduced Mr. Sanchez to a friend, Ruth Hsu, a real estate broker. In 2005, she formed a limited partnership, Conroe CHS. Hers was the only name on the documents. But Ms. Chung and Mr. Sanchez were silent partners.

Conroe CHS (for Chung, Hsu and Sanchez) paid almost $950,000 for former boarding school dormitories and neighboring land in Conroe, Tex., near Houston, leasing the site to Southwest Key as its eighth shelter. Since then, the charity has paid the partners almost $3 million in rent, including about $275,000 last year.

Charities are not supposed to make deals that excessively benefit leaders, and shelter grant recipients are prohibited from pursuing their “private financial gain,” and even the appearance of it, according to government rules. Mr. Sanchez said the government knew of his ownership of the Conroe shelter and was “O.K. with us doing that.” Mr. Eller, the charity’s spokesman, also said that the Southwest Key board had been told, and that the rent was low compared with other shelters.

At least one board member, Ms. de los Santos, said she was never informed about the arrangement. Mr. Weber, the government spokesman, declined to comment specifically on Conroe, but said that the outside accounting firm was reviewing all shelter leases and that their findings would “inform future program decisions.”

Two days after The Times asked Mr. Sanchez about his ownership of the shelter, Southwest Key disclosed it publicly. A few weeks later, Southwest Key said Mr. Sanchez and Ms. Chung would seek to sell their stakes.

Mr. Sanchez invested in almost 475 acres of undeveloped land near Troy, Tex., with a colleague and others. Southwest Key also put money in the deal.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Mr. Sanchez invested in almost 475 acres of undeveloped land near Troy, Tex., with a colleague and others. Southwest Key also put money in the deal.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Ms. Hsu purchased another shelter near Brownsville in 2012 to rent to Southwest Key — using the charity’s address instead of her own on the deed. Ms. Chung and Mr. Sanchez joined her in buying almost 475 acres of undeveloped land near Troy, Tex., as an investment. The charity also put an undisclosed sum into the deal, mixing its money with that of the executives.

Mr. Sanchez and his wife built a real estate portfolio of six residential properties with the help of Ms. Hsu, under a company called Sueños Grandes Properties, or Big Dreams.

Ms. Hsu’s company also donated to Southwest Key’s new headquarters in Austin. To raise money for the building, Mr. Sanchez hustled like a door-to-door salesman, forging new connections and leveraging old ones.

He persuaded a local philanthropist to donate land. He was friendly with Austin’s first Latino mayor, Gus Garcia, as he pushed for city approval. He boasted of his credentials and promised jobs at the local branch of the federal Economic Development Administration.

“He was way out of the barrio,” said Pedro Ruiz Garza, then the federal agency’s regional director, who signed off on $4 million in grants to Southwest Key. “I don’t know how it is that he found his way to Harvard. That was very impressive.”

The new three-story glass building had a slide from the third floor to the second, showing the kind of corporate whimsy common in Silicon Valley. Everyone got a thank-you.

Mr. Garcia was named to Southwest Key’s board. Ms. Hsu’s company was recognized on a plaque in the lobby. When Southwest Key opened a 275-foot “walk of heroes,” with mosaics of people considered important to the charity, the first was Mr. Garza, the federal official. The second was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Sanchez at his charity’s headquarters in Austin.Tamir Kalifa for the New York Times

Mr. Sanchez at his charity’s headquarters in Austin.Tamir Kalifa for the New York Times
The Entrepreneur

In 2013, Mr. Sanchez took a “Juan Across America” tour, highlighting Southwest Key’s 25th anniversary. In a YouTube video, he arrived at a new San Antonio shelter. As “Hail to the Chief” played, Mr. Sanchez bowed; staff members applauded. “El Presidente’s in town,” announced the video. At 65, he was nowhere near retirement.

The shelter industry was poised to explode. Tens of thousands of migrant children began crossing the border without family members, more than ever before. Southwest Key, with its 15 shelters, became one-stop shopping for new beds. The government needed Southwest Key and Mr. Sanchez’s can-do attitude; he and his team worked closely with Obama officials to set up shelters.

“There were just kids all over the place,” Mr. Sanchez recalled. “The federal government got embarrassed.”

Southwest Key opened eight shelters in 2013 and 2014. These were no longer small group homes, the kind envisioned by advocates. They were large institutions, with room for 236, 300, even 420 children.

“It clearly had gone through enormous growth, and I think some of the growth was without a lot of scrutiny,” said Mr. Carey, appointed head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in April 2015.

Conservative critics said Southwest Key wasted taxpayer dollars and coddled illegal immigrants. In 2014, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, criticized the charity for requesting $316 per child per day from the federal government for a California shelter that had an organic garden and a petting farm with miniature ponies.

Casa El Presidente, a smaller Southwest Key facility that houses younger children in Brownsville.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Casa El Presidente, a smaller Southwest Key facility that houses younger children in Brownsville.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
As the shelters multiplied, so did executive pay. Mr. Sanchez earned $279,000 in 2012, and $682,000 in 2015. His wife earned $123,000 in 2012, and $275,000 in 2015.

Budgets and shelter costs, not executive compensation, were the administration’s focus. “Salaries at the top and salaries of individuals in the organization were not something that I was looking at,” said Mark Greenberg, then acting head of the agency overseeing the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

One reason the charity could pay so much was that it had diversified, operating for-profit companies and charter schools. Mr. Sanchez, who had stepped down from the Southwest Key board in 2007, opted to sit on the boards of the for-profits and the charters.

A holding company, Southwest Key Enterprises, oversaw eight for-profits, including those providing construction, maintenance and food services.

These aimed to create jobs and earn money for the charity through outside work. But they largely subsisted on government grants and contracts with Southwest Key for work at the charter schools and headquarters. The charity also lent out employees to do work for the for-profits, charging the companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in management fees.

Regulating businesses can be tricky for a charity, especially when their major customer is the nonprofit itself and competitive bids are few. Ms. de los Santos, a lawyer, left the charity’s board around the time the companies began operating. “There would be more headaches and liabilities, especially with the for-profits,” she recalled.

Teo Tijerina, who ran the for-profits in 2014 and 2015, said they had to charge enough to help cover the charity’s overhead, making it tough to win bids for outside work. “We would always be undercut by the small guys,” Mr. Tijerina said.

Southwest Key also set up charter schools — an elementary school on the donated land at its headquarters and a secondary school nearby. It just opened two more, in Corpus Christi and Brownsville.

Martha Cotera, a school board member and friend of Mr. Sanchez, said she had grown suspicious over school spending, mostly because the board was given no choice about awarding work to Southwest Key for-profits.

“They were sold to us as economic development enterprises for the community, but I saw that as very self-serving,” Ms. Cotera said.

The businesses have charged the two Austin schools more than $4.4 million for food, maintenance and janitorial services since 2009. The charity has also charged the schools more than $6.3 million in rent and unspecified services.

Around the time Ms. Cotera quit the board, Ms. Hsu, the real estate broker, joined.

Casa Padre, a former Walmart in Brownsville, can shelter more than 1,400 migrant children.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Casa Padre, a former Walmart in Brownsville, can shelter more than 1,400 migrant children.Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
The Investor

Southwest Key’s shelters transformed the institutional landscape in towns near the Mexican border, replacing a psychiatric hospital, a nursing home, college apartments.

Mr. Sanchez built the shelter operation on a network of real estate investors. Instead of buying buildings, he engaged in complex rental transactions that charity experts said raised concerns.

Southwest Key asked friendly developers to buy properties to rent to the charity. Mr. Sanchez said he did not want to be stuck with empty shelters if children stopped coming. “It’s just not worth it for us to be purchasing buildings,” he said.

The investors were well rewarded. Over the past five years, a group based out of Mesa, Ariz., has earned more than $28 million in rent for properties that cost roughly $16 million. Others who benefited included a former New Mexico state cabinet secretary, a former adviser to a Mexican presidential candidate and two brothers who ran gas stations in Matamoros, Mexico.

In one case, Southwest Key paid inexplicably higher rent than the prior tenant. The charity paid $117,000 a month for a building in Mesa where the previous renter, trying to sublet, had advertised a rate of $30,000 a month.

The charity’s most unusual relationship was with a pair of Brownsville developers, Ryad Bakalem and Rafael Chacon. Mr. Sanchez said he could not recall how he met the men, whose companies bought two former medical centers in 2012 and 2013 to rent to Southwest Key. Since then, the charity has lent almost $9 million to the developers’ companies, for two shelters and a charter school.

Though it isn’t illegal, charities rarely lend money for real estate deals. The arrangement — with no government watchdog, no bank — can hide kickbacks or other improprieties because no outsider is monitoring whether the loans are repaid on time, and who might benefit.

The biggest of those deals was the shuttered Walmart in Brownsville. Mr. Sanchez worked closely with the Obama administration to develop a shelter that could absorb an influx of children.

How Southwest Key Acted as a Bank

Charity experts questioned why the nonprofit — now sitting on $61 million in cash — did not buy a former Walmart that it turned into a shelter. Instead, the charity lent millions to property developers to buy the building. With no bank or government watchdog, such an arrangement can hide kickbacks and other improprieties.


1. Southwest Key loaned $6 million to a shell company called Chacbak, run by Rafael Chacon and Ryad Bakalem, to buy and renovate the shuttered Walmart in Brownsville, Tex.

2. Mr. Chacon and Mr. Bakalem then formed a separate company called Randr Ventures. With the aid of a $10 million loan from an Arkansas bank, Randr bought the Walmart from Chacbak, essentially selling the property to themselves.

3. Randr Ventures used the loan to help pay for more renovations. Then the company rented the property back to Southwest Key, at a rate of almost $5 million a year — more than the property itself cost.

Arkansas-

based

bank

$4.5 MIL.

Loan to buy

building

$1.5 MIL.

Loan to

remodel

$10 MIL.

Bank loan

$400,000

Monthly rent

Both owned

by Rafael

Chacon and

Ryad Bakalem

Southwest Key lent $6 million to a company run by Mr. Bakalem and Mr. Chacon to buy and renovate the building. Mr. Sanchez said that the nonprofit lent money to the developers because bank financing took too long, and that it also collected interest on the loans.

The former superstore reopened as Casa Padre in June, capable of housing more than 1,400 children. Only a tent city built this summer in the Texas desert holds more migrants. The Walmart — where dorm-style bedrooms replaced racks of clothing — was controversial from the start, with advocates calling it unsuitable for children.

Southwest Key pays $5 million a year in rent for the former Walmart.

With the family separations came intense scrutiny, jeopardizing the charity’s future. After Southwest Key failed to submit proof of employee background checks in September, the state of Arizona sent a letter threatening to revoke the organization’s shelter licenses. It accused the charity leaders of “an astonishingly flippant attitude.”

Mr. Sanchez dismissed the letter as “pretty dramatic,” calling the failure to submit employee fingerprints a paperwork issue.


A record of political donations made by Mr. Sanchez and his wife.

But on Oct. 17, Mr. Sanchez donated $5,100 to the Arizona Republican Party, which controls the state’s government. His wife gave another $5,100. (Their previous political donations totaled no more than $2,100, made only to Democrats and liberal causes, records show.) A week later, the state agreed to a settlement that kept most Southwest Key shelters open.

Unbowed, Mr. Sanchez still wants to expand. “We would love to be twice as big as we are,” he said, “because then we could serve twice as many kids as we serve now.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/us/s ... UJF2nCJ1rl
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 14, 2018 12:02 pm




'Indefensible': 7-Year-Old Child's 'Horrific' Death in DHS Custody Prompts Outrage

"If this isn't the America we want to be, now is the time to be loud about it."

Julia Conley, staff writer
Published on

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Activists, including childcare providers, parents and their children, protested against the Trump administration's immigration policy at the New York offices of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The ACLU blamed a "lack of accountability and a culture of cruelty" at the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agency (CPB) for the death of a seven-year-old girl who was in immigration custody last week, calling for an in-depth investigation into the child's fate.


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ACLU Border Rights Center Retweeted The Washington Post
This tragedy represents the worst possible outcome when children are held in inhumane conditions.

We call for a rigorous investigation into how this tragedy happened and serious reforms to prevent future deaths.ACLU Border Rights Center added,


After crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with her father and 163 other asylum seekers, the child was taken into CBP custody in New Mexico on December 6. She began having seizures hours later, and was taken to a hospital after she was found to have a 105.7 degree temperature. She died 24 hours later at the hospital of dehydration and shock, according to the Washington Post. The Post reported that it wasn't clear if the girl had been given food and water after being taken into custody.

The ACLU called the child's death "indefensible" and urged Americans to stand firmly against the Trump administration's inhumane immigration policy, which has included the separation of thousands of children from their parents and guardians as well as prolonged detentions for families.



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ACLU Retweeted The Washington Post
This is a horrific, indefensible tragedy. What’s worse is that it is far from the first death at the hands of DHS.

If this isn’t the America we want to be, now is the time to be loud about it.

As the news of the child's death was reported, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provoked shock and outrage as it released a statement essentially making an example of the seven-year-old, noting that her fate should serve as a reminder that crossing the U.S. border is dangerous for refugees and suggesting that her father is to blame for her death.

"This is a disgusting statement dripping with cruelty, contempt, and inhumanity," MSNBC journalist Chris Hayes said. "Everyone who worked on it should be ashamed of themselves."

On Twitter, Reveal reporter Aura Bogado, who has extensively covered the effects of the U.S. government's immigration policies on children and families, criticized much of the corporate media's coverage of the child's death and shared the conditions asylum seekers face in DHS custody:

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7-Year-Old Migrant Girl Dies Of Dehydration In Border Patrol Custody: Report

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mi ... 0b8b5cb03b



7-year-old immigrant girl dies after being arrested by border agents

https://news.yahoo.com/7-old-immigrant- ... 24891.html



Shelters holding nearly 15,000 migrant children near capacity

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/politics ... index.html



Concerns raised about 'traumatized' immigrant children still in custody

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/29/politics ... index.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 14, 2018 3:54 pm

Her name Is Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 14, 2018 7:07 pm

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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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