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

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

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 21, 2019 9:44 am

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Julie Hirschfeld Davis & Michael D. Shear: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration

October 18, 2019


When considering Trump’s immigration policy, it's hard to get past the headlines. But Hirschfeld Davis & Shear's story offers an incredibly useful way to consider the entire Trump presidency and address central questions: Who are we, and what is America?Between the alligator moat revelation and horrendous, inhumane taking of children from their parents, when considering Donald Trump’s immigration policy, it can be hard to get past the headlines.

But it turns out, the immigration story serves as an incredibly useful way to consider the entire Trump presidency: Obsession, chaos, fear, depravity, and yet – meaningful, important, and potentially-lasting change that has shifted not only how the world views America, but how we view ourselves.

The story has been told – through a combination of clear context, incredible detail, and expert storytelling by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear in their book, “Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration.”

As you’ll hear in our conversation, Davis and Shear bring us inside the rooms –uncomfortable places, really – as extreme ideas about immigration move directly from the collective minds of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions into the campaign and then presidency of Donald Trump. You’ll hear how Miller outmaneuvered generals and cabinet secretaries to seize control You also hear about the key player who might be most confounding of all: Former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. In fact as you hear more about these policymakers – and as you read Hirshfeld Davis and Shear’s book –it all seems to lead to the central questions of our time: Who are we, and what is America?

Some background on Julie and Mike who, as far as I can tell from what is admittedly quick research, seem to have covered every important Washington D.C. story in the last 25 years. Julie is Congressional Editor at The New York Times; she also serves as a CNN political analyst. Michael is a White House Correspondent for The New York Times, and you can also catch him frequently on CNN.
https://chrisriback.com/julie-hirschfel ... migration/
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 26, 2019 1:38 pm

Anti-immigrant activist laughed at by ‘green shirt guy’ in viral video is arrested for identity theft
Sky Palma
BySky Palma
Posted on October 26, 2019
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The leader of an Arizona anti-immigrant group was arrested by the Surprise Police Department on suspicion of identity theft, AZCentral reports.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sgt. Bryant Vanegas said that Jennifer M. Harrison, 42, was arrested and booked into jail this Thursday on one count of taking the identity of another, which is a class-4 felony. She was released from custody on Friday morning.

Harrison is the founder of the right-wing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim group AZ Patriots. As AZCentral points out, the charges brought against Harrison are commonly used against undocumented immigrants who use fictitious identities to obtain jobs in Arizona. She’s best known as the person being laughed at by Alex Kack, also known as “Green Shirt Guy,” in a video that went viral back on August.


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Scene inside a Tucson City Council Meeting. Officials voted to put a "Sanctuary City" measure on the November ballot
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Police say Harrison stole “the identity of another by accessing an elderly victim’s hotel points” on September 30 to make a hotel reservation in northern California to attend a music festival. According to court documents, she claimed to be innocent after her arrest and did not cooperate with police.

“Jennifer created a scene at the [police department] and in the booking room because she believes she is above the law and does not want to be treated like a criminal,” court documents say. According to police, she kicked over a trash can at one point.

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Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office

According to freelance journalist Nick Martin, Harrison has been at the forefront of an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim movement in Arizona for the past two years. “She’s also at times embraced symbols used by white nationalists,” Martin wrote in a series of tweets.

As AZ Central reports, a federal judge in September ordered Harrison and three other AZ Patriots members to stop trespassing at several churches in the Phoenix area that had provided assistance to asylum-seeking migrant families who had been released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A lawsuit accused members of AZ Patriots, and a related group, Patriot Movement AZ, of threatening, harassing and intimidating church members.
https://deadstate.org/anti-immigrant-ac ... ity-theft/



Number of Children Separated at Border Exceeds 5,400

ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 25, 2019
SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. immigration authorities separated more than 1,500 children from their parents at the Mexico border in the Trump administration, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday, bringing the total number of children separated since July 2017 to more than 5,400.


A Central America toddler runs down a hallway after being sent from an immigration jail center to a shelter in San Diego. (AP file photo/Gregory Bull)
The ACLU said the administration told its attorneys that 1,556 children were separated from July 1, 2017, to June 26, 2018, when a federal judge in San Diego ordered that children in government custody be reunited with their parents.

Children from that period can be difficult to find because the government has inadequate tracking systems. Volunteers working with the ACLU are searching for some of them and their parents by going door to door in Guatemala and Honduras.

Of those separated during the 12-month period, 207 were younger than 5, said attorney Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, which sued to stop family separation. Five were under a year old, 26 were 1 year old, 40 were 2 years old, 76 were 3, and 60 were 4.

“It is shocking that 1,556 more families, including babies and toddlers, join the thousands of others already torn apart by this inhumane and illegal policy,” Gelernt said. “Families have suffered tremendously, and some may never recover.”

The Justice Department declined comment.

The count is a milestone in accounting for families hurt by Trump’s widely maligned effort against immigration. The government identified 2,814 separated children who were in government custody on June 26, 2018, nearly all of whom have been reunited with their parents

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s internal watchdog said in January that potentially thousands more had been separated since July 2017, prompting U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw to give the administration six months to identify them. The ACLU said it received the last batch of 1,556 names one day before the Friday deadline.

The administration has also separated 1,090 children since the judge ordered a halt to the practice in June 2018 except in limited circumstances, such as threats to child safety or doubts about whether the adult is really the parent.

The ACLU said authorities have abused their discretion by separating families over dubious allegations and minor transgressions, including traffic offenses. It has asked Sabraw to more narrowly define circumstances that would justify separation, which the administration has opposed.

With Thursday’s disclosure, the number of children separated since July 2017 reached 5,460.

The government lacked tracking systems when the administration launched a “zero tolerance” policy in the spring of 2018 to criminally prosecute every adult who entered the country without proper documents from Mexico, sparking an international outcry when parents couldn’t find their children.

Poor tracking before the spring of 2018 complicates the task of accounting for children who were separated. As of Oct. 16, the ACLU said, volunteers could not reach 362 families by phone because numbers didn’t work or the sponsor who took custody was unable or unwilling to provide contact information for the parent, prompting the door-to-door searches in Central America.

Since retreating on family separation, the administration has tried other ways to reverse a surge in asylum-seekers, many of them Central American families.

Tens of thousands of Central Americans and Cubans have been returned to Mexico this year to wait for immigration court hearings, instead of being released in the United States with notices to appear in court.

In September, the administration introduced a policy to deny asylum to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. border with Mexico without seeking protection there first — virtually ending political asylum in the United States.
https://www.courthousenews.com/number-o ... eeds-5400/
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 28, 2019 8:23 pm

Boston Police Had a One-Man 'Task Force' That Helped ICE Track Down Immigrants, Emails Show
"Happy hunting," reads one email from an ICE agent. By Gaby Del Valle Oct 28 2019, 11:58am

Hundreds of pages of emails and other documents show how the Boston Police Department helps ICE find and arrest undocumented immigrants. The department even has a liaison responsible for fielding requests from the federal agency, though he was removed from the position Friday.

The documents, obtained by the ACLU of Massachusetts, show close collaboration between ICE agents and some of the police department’s officers, including “task force officer” Gregory Gallagher. He even offered to cover shifts for special agents within the Department of Homeland Security, which his federal training allowed him to do, according to WBUR, which reviewed the emails.

ICE also regularly sent Gallagher requests for police reports and other information on immigrants it was looking to arrest and, in some cases, asked him to detain people until ICE could pick them up — a practice the city outlawed five years ago, with a few exceptions.

In one email sent in March, an ICE agent sent Gallagher an email that read “happy hunting,” with a request to detain an immigrant attached.

Gallagher was removed from the position and reassigned to another role Friday. A Boston Police Department spokesperson told VICE News that he’d worked for the department for 32 years but could not immediately confirm how long he had held the task force officer position.

“Basically, [Gallagher] is a liaison to this unit, which is not uncommon,” said Boston police Sergeant Detective John Boyle. “[W]henever [DHS/ICE] have involvement in the city of Boston with certain incidents, [Gallagher] gets involved and assists," a spokesperson told WBUR.

The Trust Act, passed by the Boston City Council in 2014, bars the city’s police officers from honoring ICE requests to detain undocumented immigrants for additional periods of time unless a judge tells them to. The law doesn’t forbid officers from working with ICE in other ways, but Boston mayor Marty Walsh has suggested that Boston is a sanctuary city — a jurisdiction that limits its cooperation with federal immigration agencies — in the past.

Gallagher could take on the liaison role because the city has an agreement with ICE and one of its divisions, Homeland Security Investigations, that lets certain department employees work “as customs officers,” according to documents reviewed by WBUR. And Walsh said on Saturday he doesn’t expect the agreement with the immigration agency, known as a “memorandum of understanding” to end, though he added that the emails raised “a lot of questions” over the department’s cooperation with ICE.

“My responsibility as mayor and the police department's responsibility is to make sure people are safe, and there's a role there to play in making sure that we share and get information, really, from federal immigration officials,” Walsh told reporters on Saturday. He added that he’s a “pro-immigrant mayor” and called Boston a “pro-immigrant city,” and said the city’s immigrant community shouldn’t worry about the relationship between the police department and ICE.

Walsh’s office had already began looking into the police department’s cooperation with ICE after an undocumented construction worker sued the company he worked for, saying his boss retaliated against him for filing a workers’ compensation claim by reporting him to ICE. The man’s lawsuit said two detectives from the Boston police department helped ICE carry out the arrest.

Together, the lawsuit and the emails suggest that Gallagher wasn’t the only Boston police officer working with ICE. Another officer, detective Juan Seoane, wrote to Gallagher in February asking him to help verify a person’s immigration status and place of residence. “He wants to join team America, but think he was part of a scam with his documents,” Seoane wrote. “Let me know, nothing urgent, thanks.”
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne85 ... mails-show


The Trump administration just imposed another roadblock on low-income immigrants
Immigrants on public benefits won’t get help paying for their citizenship and green card applications anymore.

Nicole NareaOct 25, 2019, 5:50pm EDT

An uninsured woman takes her children in for a medical check-up at a low-cost clinic run by the Rocky Mountain Youth Clinics on July 28, 2009, in Aurora, Colorado.
John Moore/Getty Images
The Trump administration just threw another obstacle at low-income immigrants by narrowing who can qualify for waivers of expensive fees associated with their applications for green cards, US citizenship, work permits, and dozens of other benefits.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Friday that, starting December 2, it will no longer consider use of certain public benefits in determining whether an immigrant is eligible for a fee waiver.

That means that fewer immigrants will be able to afford to pay the hefty fees for citizenship applications and green cards — which are typically $725 and $1,225 respectively — especially if they want to apply on behalf of multiple family members.

Legal aid groups say it could affect tens of thousands, or up to two-thirds, of applicants annually who seek fee waivers.

The policy change is one of many ways the Trump administration has recently sought to prevent low-income immigrants from entering and remaining in the US. And it reflects the philosophy that acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli once described, amending Emma Lazarus’s famous poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.”

Immigrants could previously qualify for fee waivers based on any one of three criteria: If their annual household income was 150 percent of the federal poverty line or lower, if they could prove financial hardship, or if they receive certain public benefits for those in poverty known as “means-tested benefits.”

Those kinds of public benefits — which include Medicaid, CHIP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) — are primarily reserved for naturalized and US-born citizens, green card holders, refugees, and asylees.

By eliminating waiver eligibility for immigrants using these benefits, the administration will instead force them to prove that they are facing financial hardship, which is a much more difficult process requiring substantial documentation and usually the help of an attorney.

USCIS defended the move Friday as a way to cut costs and standardize the criteria for who is eligible for a fee waiver, given that means-tested benefit eligibility varies substantially from state to state. But advocates have called it another attack on legal immigration.

“Once again, the administration is using every lever it can find to restrict legal immigration,” Doug Rand, a former White House official who worked on immigration issues in the Obama administration, said in a statement. “The obvious purpose of this latest action is to make it more difficult for low-income green card holders to apply for U.S. citizenship, in a way that sidesteps the typical rulemaking process where [the administration] has been so often frustrated in court.”

It’s one of several policies the Trump administration has pursued recently targeting low-income immigrants.

The administration’s “public charge” rule, published in August and recently blocked in federal court, would have given immigration officials much more leeway to turn away immigrants applying to enter the US, extend their visa or convert their temporary immigration status on the basis that they are likely to end up depending on public benefits. Researchers estimated it could have affected more than 382,000 people.

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation earlier this month barring immigrants who do not have health insurance and cannot afford to pay medical care costs from getting visas of almost any kind to enter the US.

And he issued another executive order in September allowing states that do not have the resources to support refugees in becoming “self-sufficient and free from long-term dependence on public assistance” to turn them away.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ship-uscis
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Nov 03, 2019 12:44 pm



A Federal Judge Temporarily Blocked Trump’s Plan To Block Immigrants From Entering The US Without Proving They Could Get Health Insurance
“Today’s decision highlights the urgency of blocking this health care ban before it causes irreparable damage to our community and those we serve,” said a plaintiff in the case.
Hamed Aleaziz
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on November 2, 2019, at 8:01 p.m. ET

Jim Watson / Getty Images
A federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked a Trump administration policy Saturday that was set to bar the entry of immigrants applying for visas who could not prove that they would be able to obtain health insurance within 30 days of entering the United States.

Federal Judge Michael Simon issued a temporary restraining order that stops the administration from implementing the order as planned on Sunday. Trump’s proclamation applied to those who apply for immigrant visas abroad and do not have health insurance set up within a month after their entry or the financial means to pay for medical costs.

“Today’s decision highlights the urgency of blocking this health care ban before it causes irreparable damage to our community and those we serve,” said Carmen Rubio, executive director of Latino Network, a plaintiff in the case. “We know that our fight is far from over, we will be steadfast in our work to ensure that we end family separation, ensure the dignity and rights of our community are respected, and hold this administration accountable to our nation’s constitution.”

The judge is expected to hear the full merits of the case in the near future.

Trump’s proclamation cited the same provision of law he used in the 2017 travel ban to block people from coming into the US from certain countries and a later ban on asylum-seekers who crossed into the country without authorization. It was set to apply to US citizens' foreign national spouses who want to live in the country.

The proclamation would not impact refugees, asylees, children of US citizens abroad, those who already have been issued immigrant visas, and those who helped the US government in Afghanistan.

“We applaud the court’s ruling; countless thousands across the country can breathe a sigh of relief today because the court recognized the urgent and irreparable harm that would have been inflicted in the absence of a TRO,” said Jesse Bless, an attorney on the case and director of federal litigation at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “This proclamation would permanently separate families and damage employers; it is a clear violation of the constitution. The president simply does not have the authority to rewrite the law by proclamation.”



Yahoo News
@YahooNews
· 21h
EXCLUSIVE: At a White House Halloween party, children were encouraged to help “Build the Wall” with their own personalized bricks

3A65EA62-0629-4FD6-A177-936DCEFAFB7F.jpeg

https://mobile.twitter.com/YahooNews/st ... 5579044864
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 07, 2019 12:12 pm

The Plot Against Immigrants
https://plotagainstimmigrants.com/network/


interactive at website
plot.jpg
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Re: Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 14, 2019 10:10 am

Stephen Miller’s Affinity for White Nationalism Revealed in Leaked Emails
November 12, 2019
Image
Michael Edison Hayden
In this article

Miller shares link from white nationalist site
Miller recommends ‘Camp of the Saints’ to Breitbart
McHugh says Miller told her to aggregate from American Renaissance
Confederate flag removals upset Miller after church murders
Miller focuses on racial identity of killer with ‘alt-right’ beliefs
Miller says he reached out to anti-Muslim extremist Pamela Geller
Miller forwards Infowars link to aid McHugh’s reporting
Miller backs immigration policies Hitler once praised
Miller posits conspiracy theories about immigration
Exploring Miller’s reported ties to white nationalist figures



In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.

The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency. These policies include reportedly setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said is causing “intense trauma” in children.


In this, the first of what will be a series about those emails, Hatewatch exposes the racist source material that has influenced Miller’s visions of policy. That source material, as laid out in his emails to Breitbart, includes white nationalist websites, a “white genocide”-themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in “Mein Kampf.”

Hatewatch reviewed more than 900 previously private emails Miller sent to Breitbart editors from March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016. Miller does not converse along a wide range of topics in the emails. His focus is strikingly narrow – more than 80 percent of the emails Hatewatch reviewed relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration. Hatewatch made multiple attempts to reach the White House for a comment from Miller about the content of his emails but did not receive any reply.

Miller’s perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States. Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.

Miller has gained a reputation for attempting to keep his communications secret: The Washington Post reported in August that Miller “rarely puts anything in writing, eschewing email in favor of phone calls.” The Daily Beast noted in July that Miller has recently “cut off regular contact with most of his allies” outside the Trump administration to limit leaks.

Miller used his government email address as an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions in the emails Hatewatch reviewed. He sent the majority of the emails Hatewatch examined before he joined Trump’s campaign in January 2016 and while he was still working for Sessions. Miller also used a personal Hotmail.com address in the emails and did so both before and after he started working for Trump. Hatewatch confirmed the authenticity of Miller’s Hotmail.com address through an email sent from his government address in which he lists it as his future point of contact:

“I am excited to announce that I am beginning a new job as Senior Policy Advisor to presidential candidate Donald J. Trump,” Miller wrote from his government email on Jan. 26, 2016, to an undisclosed group of recipients. “Should you need to reach me, my personal email address is [redacted].”

Katie McHugh, who was an editor for Breitbart from April 2014 to June 2017, leaked the emails to Hatewatch in June to review, analyze and disseminate to the public. McHugh was 23 when she started at Breitbart and also became active in the anti-immigrant movement, frequently rubbing shoulders with white nationalists. McHugh was fired from Breitbart in 2017 after posting anti-Muslim tweets. She has since renounced the far right.

McHugh told Hatewatch that Breitbart editors introduced her to Miller in 2015 with an understanding he would influence the direction of her reporting. For that reason, and because Miller would have regarded her as a fellow traveler of the anti-immigrant movement, McHugh sometimes starts conversations with Miller in the emails, seeking his opinion on news stories. Other times, Miller directly suggests story ideas to McHugh, or tells her how to shape Breitbart’s coverage. Periodically, Miller asks McHugh if he can speak to her by phone, taking conversations offline.

“What Stephen Miller sent to me in those emails has become policy at the Trump administration,” McHugh told Hatewatch.

Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller, White House senior adviser, watches as U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, speaks during a June 2018 event at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington with families who have lost relatives to crimes caused by illegal immigrants. (Photo by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Miller shares link from white nationalist site

Miller sent a story from the white nationalist website VDARE to McHugh on Oct. 23, 2015, the emails show. White nationalist Peter Brimelow founded VDARE in 1999. The website traffics in the “white genocide” or “great replacement” myth, which suggests that nonwhite people are systematically and deliberately wiping white people off the planet.

McHugh started the email conversation by asking if Hurricane Patricia could drive refugees into the United States. The hurricane battered parts of Central America, Mexico and Texas, and the media heavily covered the storm. Miller replied to her by underscoring the possibility that Mexican survivors of the storm could be given temporary protected status (TPS), a George H.W. Bush-era policy that would enable them to live and work in the United States for a limited stay:

McHugh, Oct. 23, 2015, 6:10 p.m. ET: “This being the worst hurricane ever recorded, what are the chances it wreaks destruction on Mexico and drives a mass migration to the U.S. border?”

Miller, Oct. 23, 2015, 6:12 p.m. ET: “100 percent. And they will all get TPS. And all the ones here will get TPS too. That needs to be the weekend's BIG story. TPS is everything.”

McHugh, Oct. 23, 2015, 6:22 p.m. ET: “Wow. Ok. Is there precedent for this?”

Miller, Oct. 23, 2015, 6:31 p.m. ET: [VDARE link]

The VDARE story by Steve Sailer, an anti-immigration activist who traffics in discredited race science, focused on instances in which the United States offered refugees temporary protected status. The article was posted the same day Miller shared it with McHugh.

In September, the Trump administration denied temporary protected status to residents of the Bahamas fleeing the destruction of Hurricane Dorian despite widespread destruction.

“I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States, including some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers,” Trump said of Bahamians on Sept. 9.

The ethnic makeup of the Bahamas is more than 90% black, according to statistics from the CIA. The administration has also attempted to cut TPS for residents of other countries, including Honduras and Nepal. Sailer mentioned both Honduras and Nepal in the context of TPS in his VDARE story.
Image
Camp of the Saints cover
Emails show that White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller recommended racist French novel "The Camp of the Saints" to conservative website Breitbart News in 2015.
Miller recommends ‘Camp of the Saints’ to Breitbart

Miller recommended in a Sept. 6, 2015, email that Breitbart write about “The Camp of the Saints,” a racist French novel by Jean Raspail. Notably, “The Camp of the Saints” is popular among white nationalists and neo-Nazis because of the degree to which it fictionalizes the “white genocide” or “great replacement” myth into a violent and sexualized story about refugees.

The novel’s apocalyptic plot centers on a flotilla of Indian people who invade France, led by a nonwhite Indian-born antagonist referred to as the “turd eater” – a character who literally eats human feces. In one section, a white woman is raped to death by brown-skinned refugees. In another, a nationalist character shoots and kills a pro-refugee leftist over his support of race mixing. The white nationalist Social Contract Press plucked the 1973 book from relative obscurity and distributed it in the United States.

At the start of the email chain in which Miller touts the novel, he sends McHugh and Breitbart editor Julia Hahn a National Journal article on Iowans debating immigration at 8:03 p.m. ET on Sept. 1, 2015. McHugh replies:

McHugh, Sept. 1, 2015, 8:49 p.m. ET: “‘Next America.’ We’re being invaded and talked into tolerating it.”

Miller, Sept. 1, 2015, 9:01 p.m. ET: “It’s treated as organic. No mention of voluntary policy which can be shut off.”

Miller returns to the subject of nonwhite immigration on Sept. 6, 2015. He sends McHugh a link to a tweet from conservative pundit David Frum that reads, “Half of all violent crime in Germany committed by ‘foreign youths.’” (Hatewatch reached out to Frum for more context about his tweet but did not receive any response.) McHugh responds to Miller’s email about Frum’s tweet with a follow-up remark about Europe, and Miller sends a link to a Vox.com article suggesting that SAT scores have dropped in part because of the inclusion of more “poor and nonwhite students” than in previous years. Miller then suggests Breitbart take a look at “The Camp of the Saints.”

McHugh, Sept. 6, 2015, 3:34 p.m. ET: “[Breitbart editor] Neil [Munro], Julia [Hahn] and I are going to do a series of stories on [nonwhite SAT scores] to break it down. Neil says it’s easier for people to digest that way and change their minds.”

Miller, Sept. 6, 2015, 3:41 p.m. ET: “On the education angle? Makes sense. Also, you see the Pope saying west must, in effect, get rid of borders. Someone should point out the parallels to Camp of the Saints.”

Hahn wrote a Breitbart story on Sept. 24, 2015, headlined “‘Camp of the Saints’ Seen Mirrored in Pope’s Message.” The article ran 18 days after Miller’s email on the same theme. Hahn is now an aide to Trump.

While “The Camp of the Saints” was relatively obscure then, websites such as VDARE and the white nationalist American Renaissance helped make it a fixture in the white nationalist community. VDARE created an entire searchable tag called “Camp of the Saints.” At the time Miller flagged the book to Breitbart, VDARE had run more than 50 posts under “The Camp of the Saints” tagline, including some referring to Pope Francis’ rhetoric about accepting refugees. Sailer, who authored the VDARE post Miller had shared earlier, ran a story on the pope’s statements about accepting refugees on the same day Miller raised the issue with Breitbart.

Elizabeth Moore, a spokesperson for Breitbart, responded to Hatewatch’s request for comment about Miller's relationship with editors at the website with the following statement:

The SPLC claims to have three- to four-year-old emails, many previously reported on, involving an individual whom we fired years ago for a multitude of reasons, and you now have an even better idea why we fired her. Having said that, it is not exactly a newsflash that political staffers pitch stories to journalists – sometimes those pitches are successful, sometimes not.

It is no surprise to us that the SPLC opposes news coverage of illegal-immigrant crime and believes such coverage is disproportionate, especially when compared to the rest of the media, which often refuse to cover such crimes.

No one in our senior management has read the book, “Camp of the Saints,” but we take The New York Times at their word that it is a “cautionary tale,” and the National Review at theirs that “the central issue of the novel is not race but culture and political principles.”

The Trump administration has said it will cap the number of refugees allowed into the United States at 18,000 in the coming fiscal year, drastically reshaping America’s role as a haven for people fleeing devastation and war. The White House has also said it plans to allow state and local governments to block refugee resettlement in their areas.

Jared Taylor
American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor (Photo by Pete Marovich for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
McHugh says Miller told her to aggregate from American Renaissance

Miller suggested McHugh draw information from an American Renaissance article in early July 2015, she told Hatewatch. McHugh’s recollection is backed up by emails appearing to refer to that article, which focused on a favorite topic of Miller’s in the emails – interracial crime.

McHugh told Hatewatch that Miller called her on a workday afternoon to discuss a story on “AmRen,” shorthand for American Renaissance among the site’s readers.

“It was after lunchtime. I was sitting at my desk with my MacBook, and as Miller was speaking, I was looking away … to better concentrate on what he was saying,” McHugh recalled to Hatewatch. “Miller asked me if I had seen the recent ‘AmRen’ article about crime statistics and race. I responded in the affirmative because I had read it. Many of us [on the far right] had read it. I remember being struck by the way he called it ‘AmRen,’ the nickname.”

The article was published on American Renaissance on July 1, 2015, and called “New DOJ Statistics on Race and Violent Crime.” McHugh identified the story as the one flagged by Miller when Hatewatch presented it to her. The American Renaissance article by white nationalist Jared Taylor celebrates the Department of Justice reporting Hispanics in a separate category on crime statistics “rather than lumping them in with whites.”

Hatewatch identified the email chain that led to the phone conversation McHugh relayed. The conversation started July 7, 2015, when Miller contacted McHugh, then-Breitbart head Steve Bannon and editor Matthew Boyle in an email with the subject line, “A data point worth adding to any coverage of the crime issue.”

In the opening email, Miller discusses “Shapiro’s piece,” which likely refers to a July 7, 2015, Breitbart story by pundit Ben Shapiro called “Is Trump Right?” McHugh replies, sharing a National Review article by Heather MacDonald, a conservative essayist and researcher:

McHugh, July 7, 2015, 3:19 p.m. ET: Wow. We’ll likely never see any stats on interracial crime come from the DOJ ever again, but they have added “Hispanic” as a category rather than classifying them all as “white.” [National Review link]

Miller then removes Bannon and Boyle from the thread to converse privately with McHugh. He asks if they can get on the phone to speak and sends her two links to FBI crime statistics.

Miller, July 7, 2015, 3:35 p.m. ET: “Let me know when you can talk re: immigrant crime. Have some thoughts.”

McHugh, July 7, 2015, 4:45 p.m. ET: “I can chat now if you’re free.”

Miller, July 7, 2015, 5:03 p.m. ET: “What's your best #? [FBI crime link 1] [FBI crime link 2]

The fact that Miller addresses McHugh privately immediately after she shares MacDonald’s National Review story is noteworthy: Taylor’s American Renaissance post, which is focused on crime statistics, analyzes the MacDonald story and links to it in its opening line.

Miller appears to refer to the phone conversation again nearly two months later in an email with the subject line “touching base”:

Miller, Sept. 1, 2015, 2:38 p.m. ET: “Hey Katie, Hope all is well. Was curious to see if you were still planning a story with the DOJ crime victims' data.”

McHugh, Sept. 1, 2015, 2:56 p.m. ET: “Hi Stephen, yes, I’d like to. Can we touch base tomorrow morning/early afternoon after I write a couple of assignments?”

Miller, Sept. 1, 2015, 3:10 p.m. ET: “Absolutely”

Miller’s name also has appeared on American Renaissance as an author. On July 19, 2005, the white nationalist website republished a piece he wrote for the right-wing online publication FrontPage Magazine called “Santa Monica High’s Multicultural Fistfights,” regarding his high school alma mater. American Renaissance commonly republishes stories from other publications that fit into its racist agenda. Hatewatch reached out to American Renaissance for a comment twice about how Miller’s post came to appear on its website but did not receive any reply.

In the article, Miller blames the left for a variety of problems in the nation’s schools, including “excusing black and Hispanic misbehavior by holding those students to a lower standard.”

Confederate flag removals upset Miller after church murders

White nationalist Dylann Roof murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015. Roof’s attack triggered a national conversation about racial hatred in the United States. In response, Amazon.com and other retailers made efforts to pull the Confederate flag from their websites and stores.

Miller sought to create a counternarrative to this news through Breitbart, the emails show. He emailed McHugh with the subject line “defies modern comprehension” on June 23, 2015, following the news about the retailers, and highlighted a statistic about the deaths of Confederate soldiers with a link to history.com:

Miller, June 23, 2015, 3:10 p.m. ET: “‘22.6 percent of Southern men who were between the ages of 20 and 24 in 1860 lost their lives because of the war.’” [history.com link]

McHugh told Hatewatch that she and Miller spoke on the phone about the subject of Amazon yanking Confederate flag merchandise after the email. Miller appears to refer to that call in his next email and suggests that McHugh write about how Amazon was selling “commie flags.”

Miller, June 23, 2015, 3:31 p.m. ET: “That's a really, really, really good point.

Have you thought about going to Amazon and finding the commie flags and then doing a story on that? I think you've hit on something potentially profound.”

McHugh, June 23, 2015, 3:32 p.m. ET: “Yes, definitely. There’s all kinds of hammer and sickle merchandise, Che shirts, Stalin shirts… the list goes on and on.”

Miller, June 23, 2015, 3:36 p.m. ET: “I think that would be a very big story. Reveals just the stunning corporate hypocrisy that defines our modern culture.”

McHugh, June 23, 2015, 3:42 p.m. ET: “Yes, and extra lulz: [Former Obama White House press secretary] Jay Carney, who’s a senior advisor or something for Amazon, displayed Commie propaganda IN HIS HOUSE.” [Daily Caller link]

Miller, June 23, 2015, 4:33 p.m. ET: “This would be the perfect time to resurrect that fact. Brilliant.”

McHugh, June 23, 2015, 5:07 p.m. ET: “I’m going to go full Info Wars here: It’s not a coincidence that in the midst of pushing the US-ending trade deal, we’re seeing a historic artifact of real America be demonized and destroyed.”

Miller, June 23, 2015, 5:11 p.m. ET: “I betcha they also sell lots of che gueverra garb too.”

McHugh, June 23, 2015, 5:13 p.m. ET: “Oh they do. It took a long time to write a very short piece because I feel gripped with anger and despair. But if there was ever a time to stay cheerful, this is it!!”

Miller, June 23, 2015, 5:14 p.m. ET: “shoot me link when you have.”

McHugh and Miller continued to trade emails about the subject later that night. McHugh mentioned that “Confederate monuments [are being] vandalized in the US.” She sent Miller a link to the story she wrote based on their conversation, “Amazon takes down Confederate flag, continues to sell communist merchandise,” noting it was “leading Breitbart.”

Miller replied:

Miller, June 23, 2015, 10:34 p.m. ET: “what do the [Confederate monument] vandals say to the people fighting and dying overseas in uniform right now who are carrying on a seventh or eighth generation of military service in their families, stretching back to our founding?”

The emails show that Miller returned to the subject in subsequent days, tying the debate to immigrants and leftists. He sent an email June 24, 2015, with the subject line “story idea”:

Miller, June 24, 2015, 2:07 p.m. ET: “1. Should people of Spanish descent, especially those living in immigrant communities, be banned from displaying the Spanish flag given Spanish conduct in Latin America? 2. Should [Univision anchor] Jorge Ramos apologize for Spanish conduct in Latin America, and redress it by ensuring more people of indigenous backgrounds have hosting duties on his network? 3. Should the cross be removed from immigrant communities, in light of the history of Spanish conquest?”

Miller brought up the issue again one day later:

Miller, June 25, 2015, 10:38 a.m. ET: “When will the left be made to apologize for the blood on their hands supporting every commie regime since stalin?”

Preserving Confederate monuments has resonated with the far right, and Trump has repeatedly played to those views.

Following the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, for example, when white nationalists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protect a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, Trump appeared to defend them, saying that there were “very fine people, on both sides.” A man who marched with white nationalists at Unite the Right murdered antiracist demonstrator Heather Heyer in a car-ramming attack that Aug. 12. Five days later, Trump tweeted:

“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.”

Miller focuses on racial identity of killer with ‘alt-right’ beliefs

In his emails to Breitbart, Miller also discussed the coverage surrounding another killer who espoused racist beliefs. Chris Harper-Mercer, a student at Umpqua Community College, killed nine people at the Roseburg, Oregon, school Oct. 1, 2015.

The following day, newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times reported that Harper-Mercer espoused a combination of white supremacist and antireligious beliefs, which typically intersect with ideologies espoused by the “alt-right” movement online.

Before Harper-Mercer’s motivations became apparent, Miller’s response was to single out his race:

Miller, Oct. 2, 2015, 12:06 a.m. ET: “[Harper-Mercer] is described as ‘mixed race’ and born in England. Any chance of piecing that profile together more, or will it all be covered up?”

McHugh replied by sending Miller a story she wrote on Harper-Mercer that attempted to show he was connected to a person on MySpace who had praised Islamic terrorism. Miller replied with enthusiasm to it:

Miller, Oct. 2, 2015, 11:28 a.m. ET: “Your eds need to make that the LEDE.”


Miller says he reached out to anti-Muslim extremist Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller is a writer and pundit known for her extreme anti-Muslim views. Geller once said, “Muslim immigration is tied directly to Islamic terror.”

Miller claimed to be discussing story ideas with Geller in an email using the subject line “Sweden took my idea” on July 23, 2015. Miller shared a link to a Canadian blog called Blazingcatfur.ca about Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant party, planning a gay pride parade through a Muslim-dominated neighborhood. Leaders of the Sweden Democrats have struggled to shake their party’s reputation as fascist. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has called the Sweden Democrats “a neo-fascist single-issue party” with “Nazi and racist roots,” according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Miller sent the email to McHugh, Hahn and Bannon, then still head of Breitbart:

Miller, July 23, 2015, 11:37 a.m. ET: “[Link] I suggested Pamela Gellar do this to illustrate the absurdity of the Left's theory that you can't do anything which violates the tenets of fundamentalist Islam. What is more important to the Left: their ‘gay rights’ agenda, or appeasing Islamist immigrants?”

Bannon, July 23, 2015, 11:39 a.m. ET: “Wow!!!”

Miller, July 23, 2015, 11:50 a.m. ET: “This would have caused the american liberal media to collapse”

Hatewatch reached out to Geller twice for comment about any contact she might have had with Miller but did not receive any reply.

Miller forwards Infowars link to aid McHugh’s reporting

Miller forwarded a link from conspiracy website Infowars on July 21, 2015. Infowars is an antigovernment website that promoted a false story suggesting the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged, among much other misinformation.

The Infowars story was syndicated from CNSNews.com, a right-wing website, and Miller sent it with the subject line, “for your islam story.” The story highlighted comments by the Rev. Franklin Graham advocating an end to Muslim immigration to the United States.

Miller also forwarded multiple links to McHugh on Muslims from Refugee Resettlement Watch, an anti-immigrant, far-right website lauded by VDARE’s Brimelow.

Coolidge
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller cited President Calvin Coolidge in his emails to Breitbart News.
Miller backs immigration policies Hitler once praised

Miller refers to President Calvin Coolidge multiple times in emails to Breitbart. Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. The legislation was based on eugenics and severely limited immigration from certain parts of the world into the United States. White nationalists lionize Coolidge, in part for his remarks condemning race mixing.

“There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons,” Coolidge wrote in a 1921 magazine article, as quoted on American Renaissance. “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. … Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.”

In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler portrayed the U.S. law as a potential model for the Nazis in Germany. James Q. Whitman, the Ford Foundation professor of comparative and foreign law at Yale Law School, noted this detail in his book “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law.”

“Absolutely, Hitler talks about the law in ‘Mein Kampf,’” Whitman told Hatewatch. “He suggests that the U.S. was the only country making the type of progress the Nazis were trying to establish.”

Miller brings up Coolidge on Aug. 4, 2015, in the context of halting all immigration to America. Garrett Murch, who also was an aide to Sessions, starts the conversation by emailing McHugh, Miller and three other Breitbart employees, including Hahn, to note something he heard on a right-wing talk radio show:

Murch, Aug. 4, 2015, 6:22 p.m. ET: “[Show host] Mark Levin just said there should be no immigration for several years. Not just cut the number down from the current 1 million green cards per year. For assimilation purposes.”

Miller, Aug. 4, 2015, 6:23 p.m. ET: “Like Coolidge did. Kellyanne Conway poll says that is exactly what most Americans want after 40 years of non-stop record arrivals.”

Another example of Miller mentioning Coolidge happens Sept. 13, 2015, when he criticizes Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham for appearing too sympathetic to refugees. Miller sends an email to McHugh and Hahn with the subject, “Tucker asks McCain, Graham how refugees are good for Americans,” with a transcript of a discussion between the two senators and Tucker Carlson of Fox News.

Miller, Sept. 13, 2015, 7:53 p.m. ET: “this is a good chance to expose that ridiculous statue of liberty myth. Poem has nothing to do with it: [Link] Indeed, two decades after poem was added, Coolidge shut down immigration. No one said he was violating the Statue of Liberty's purpose. BTW: have you noticed how [Ben] Carson and [Carly] Fiorina are preening [Marco] Rubio-like daily in front of the media to show them how they are good and decent Republicans unlike Mr. Trump? Finally, speaking of refugees, did you see the expanded list I emailed of foreign-born terrorists on Friday afternoon?”

McHugh said the email exchange led to her Breitbart post called “Lindsey Graham: Pretty Poem Says USA Must Adopt Unknown Muslim Men from Jihad-Syria." McHugh’s Sept. 14, 2015, story treats Arab men as a danger to Americans in the suburbs: “Graham’s position is almost a threat: Boots on the ground in Syria, or your sleepy suburb gets a ‘diverse’ surprise.”

Miller cites Coolidge again in the context of Ellis Island on April 28, 2015, when he sends McHugh a New York Times article that the immigration museum there would be adding new galleries:

Miller, April 28, 2015, 11:38 p.m. ET: Something tells me there is not a Calvin Coolidge exhibit.

Miller also brings up Coolidge in the context of Immigrant Heritage Month on June 2, 2015. He sends a link from an MSNBC report about the start of the month:

Miller, June 2, 2015, 7:05 p.m. ET: This would seem a good opportunity to remind people about the heritage established by Calvin Coolidge, which covers four decades of the 20th century.

Miller’s comment about “four decades” refers to the time between the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, or Hart-Celler Act, which abolished racial quota laws for immigration. Miller’s vision on immigration equates “heritage” with a time in which American laws were dictated by discredited race science.

Miller posits conspiracy theories about immigration

Miller helped shape one of McHugh’s stories for Breitbart titled “Ted Kennedy’s Real Legacy: 50 Years of Ruinous Immigration Law,” the emails show. The story focused on the legacy of the Hart-Celler Act from the perspective that the removal of racial quota laws harmed the country. Miller flagged the story idea to McHugh:

Miller, March 30, 2015, 1:49 p.m. ET: “They opened the Ted Kennedy center today in Boston. Another opportunity to revisit the ’65 immigration law.”

After McHugh’s story was published, Miller emailed her, “The eds should make your piece the overnight lead.” He went on to suggest that the reason no other publication covered the anniversary of the law the same way Breitbart did was because elites wanted to keep the country in the dark about immigration. White nationalists typically argue that whites are being replaced in the United States because outside forces seek to do them harm.

Miller, March 30, 2015, 10:24 p.m. ET: “Just let this sink in: Kennedy was honored today, fifty years after pushing through this law, and you're the only writer in the country who published a piece even mentioning the law and what it did.”

McHugh, March 30, 2015, 10:31 p.m. ET: “That is … very disturbing.”

Miller, March 30, 2015, 10:35 p.m. ET: “Elites can't allow the people to see that their condition is not the product of events beyond their control, but the product of policy they foisted onto them.”

McHugh, March 30, 2015, 10:42 p.m. ET: “Right. Immigration is something that we can only vote to have more of — immigration ‘reform’ is a moral imperative — but it’s impossible, evil, racist to reverse immigration, and you don’t think that the government can deport 11 million anyway, do you?”

Miller, March 30, 2015, 10:44 p.m. ET: “They want people to feel helpless, retreat into their enclaves, and detach. Our job is to show people they can still control their destiny. Knowledge is the first step. Btw - Bannon was praising your work on this to me again.”

In his emails, Miller uses slang and rhetoric about immigration that would be familiar to people who read white nationalists discussing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. He refers to demographic changes brought about by immigration as “new America” multiple times in the emails. It’s a phrase VDARE sometimes uses. Here are some examples of Miller using similar language in emails to Breitbart over nearly a week in July 2015:

“The ruined city of L.A.,” referring to his hometown on July 9, 2015.
“New Charlotte,” pointing to an article about employers in Charlotte, North Carolina, hiring more bilingual staff on July 14, 2015.
“New English,” about then-current GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush speaking Spanish on the campaign trail on July 14, 2015.
“More lies about new america,” linking to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece from July 2015 that lays out the degree to which immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes.
Miller also discussed diversity in apparently mocking tones as America’s “national religion” on Nov. 23, 2015. He cited a story about a possible lawsuit from the family of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Muslim boy who was arrested after bringing a reconstructed digital clock to his Irving, Texas, high school in 2015.

Miller, Nov. 23, 2015, 5:07 p.m. ET: “[Link] Like the mystics of old, the one sure way to get rich in modern America is to offer yourself up as virtue signal to those seeking to prove themselves members in good standing of the national religion – diversity.”

Brimelow
Stephen Miller reportedly organized an event with white nationalist Peter Brimelow at Duke University in 2007. He referenced Brimelow's website VDARE in his emails to Breitbart. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Exploring Miller’s reported ties to white nationalist figures

Hatewatch re-examined Miller’s reported relationships with prominent figures from the white nationalist movement in light of information uncovered during its investigation into his emails to Breitbart.

Before entering into politics, Miller was in contact with Brimelow, the VDARE founder, and Richard Spencer, who went on to become arguably the most notorious white nationalist in America. Spencer helped build the alt-right movement and was a central figure of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Miller knew and interacted with these men while studying at Duke University as an undergraduate, according to a first-hand account and email evidence. The interactions with Brimelow occurred about eight years after he founded the white nationalist VDARE.

Miller and Spencer, while serving together as members of Duke’s Conservative Union, a politics-focused club for students, arranged for Brimelow to debate journalist and University of Oregon professor Peter Laufer in March 2007 on Mexican immigration to the United States.

Laufer told Hatewatch he ate dinner at a local restaurant with Brimelow, Miller and Spencer when he visited Duke. He described the atmosphere between him and the men as collegial despite their ideological differences. Laufer also called the interactions “gross,” given the others’ outspoken anti-immigrant beliefs.

The meetup was also confirmed through an email Spencer sent to Laufer that the journalist Michael Brown first obtained in 2017 for the nonprofit blog Electronic Intifada. Brown forwarded that email to Hatewatch in August. It lays out logistical details of the event and mentions Miller by name – just as Brown reported in 2017.

Hatewatch reached out twice to Brimelow to ask about Laufer’s account of the events but did not receive a reply. Hatewatch also contacted Spencer, who replied by email that he does not correspond with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Spencer has acknowledged his relationship with Miller before in Mother Jones:

“It’s funny no one’s picked up on the Stephen Miller connection,” he told the magazine in October 2016. “I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this because I don’t want to harm Trump.”


White House adviser Stephen Miller worked with Richard Spencer while studying at Duke University, according to a source who met the pair in 2007. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
HuffPost reporter Christopher Mathias, who writes about far-right events, told Hatewatch that Spencer made a similar remark to him in October 2017 when he was covering a speech by the white nationalist leader at the University of Florida. “I don’t want to get [Miller] in trouble,” Mathias says Spencer told him when he asked about his relationship with the White House aide.

Miller denied having any ties with Spencer to Mother Jones:

“I have absolutely no relationship with Mr. Spencer. I completely repudiate his views, and his claims are 100 percent false,” Miller said then.

Laufer’s account of the events mirror more closely to what Spencer has said:

“There is absolutely no question they were working together,” Laufer told Hatewatch. “We all perhaps have relationships in our college days that we’d like to forget. But to suggest [Spencer and Miller] weren’t working in concert to create this event is false. They were intimately involved in the planning of the dinner and the event. This was a partnership, and for Miller to suggest otherwise would be false.”

Hatewatch asked Laufer if he had any other impressions of the future White House adviser after having met him as a college student:

“It was evident to me Miller was not interested in a multicultural society,” he said.

Photo illustration by SPLC
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... ked-emails



US held record number of migrant children in custody in 2019

COMAYAGUA, Honduras (AP) — The 3-year-old girl traveled for weeks cradled in her father’s arms, as he set out to seek asylum in the United States. Now she won’t even look at him.

After being forcibly separated at the border by government officials, sexually abused in U.S. foster care and deported, the once bright and beaming girl arrived back in Honduras withdrawn, anxious and angry, convinced her father abandoned her.

He fears their bond is forever broken.


“I think about this trauma staying with her too, because the trauma has remained with me and still hasn’t faded,” he said, days after their reunion.

This month, new government data shows the little girl is one of an unprecedented 69,550 migrant children held in U.S. government custody over the past year, enough infants, toddlers, kids and teens to overflow the typical NFL stadium. That’s more children detained away from their parents than any other country, according to United Nations researchers. And it’s happening even though the U.S. government has acknowledged that being held in detention can be traumatic for children, putting them at risk of long-term physical and emotional damage.

Some of these migrant children who were in government custody this year have already been deported. Some have reunited with family in the U.S., where they’re trying to go to school and piece their lives back together. About 4,000 are still in government custody, some in large, impersonal shelters. And more arrive every week.

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This story is part of an ongoing joint investigation between The Associated Press and the PBS series FRONTLINE on the treatment of migrant children, which includes the film “Kids Caught in the Crackdown” premiering on PBS and online Nov. 12 at 10 p.m. EST/9 p.m. CST.

___

The nearly 70,000 migrant children who were held in government custody this year — up 42 percent in fiscal year 2019 from 2018 — spent more time in shelters and away from their families than in prior years. The Trump administration’s series of strict immigration policies has increased the time children spend in detention, despite the government’s own acknowledgment that it does them harm. In 2013, Australia detained 2,000 children during a surge of maritime arrivals. In Canada, immigrant children are separated from their parents only as a last resort; 155 were detained in 2018. In the United Kingdom, 42 migrant children were put in shelters in 2017, according to officials in those countries.

“Early experiences are literally built into our brains and bodies,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, who directs Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child. Earlier this year, he told Congress that “decades of peer-reviewed research” show that detaining kids away from parents or primary caregivers is bad for their health. It’s a brain-wiring issue, he said.

“Stable and responsive relationships promote healthy brain architecture,” Shonkoff said. “If these relationships are disrupted, young children are hit by the double whammy of a brain that is deprived of the positive stimulation it needs, and assaulted by a stress response that disrupts its developing circuitry.”

Younger children are at greater risk, because their biological systems are less developed, he said. Previous harm and the duration of separation are also more likely to lead to trauma.

One Honduran teen who was held in a large detention center for four months before reuniting with his mother said that, as each day passed, his fear and anxiety grew.

“There was something there that made us feel desperate. It was freedom. We wanted to be free,” he recalled. “There was despair everywhere.”

Another Honduran teen, who arrived in the U.S. at 16 and was detained in a series of increasingly secure shelters for more than a year, said he saw his peers harm themselves.

“They would cry sometimes, alone, or they would hit themselves against the wall,” he said. “I thought that was because of them being here for such a long time.”

The teens spoke on condition of anonymity out of concerns for their safety.

The 3-year-old Honduran girl was taken from her father when immigration officials caught them near the border in Texas in March 2019 and sent her to government-funded foster care. The father had no idea where his daughter was for three panicked weeks. It was another month before a caregiver put her on the phone but the girl, who turned 4 in government custody, refused to speak, screaming in anger.

“She said that I had left her alone and she was crying,” said her father during an interview with the AP and Frontline at their home in Honduras. ”‘I don’t love you Daddy, you left me alone,’” she told him. The father agreed to speak about their case on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

What the little girl didn’t, or couldn’t, tell her dad was that another child in her foster home woke her up and began molesting her, according to court records. As the days passed, she began urinating on herself and seemed unable to eat or drink, a foster parent said in the records.

“She’s so small for something like that to happen,” said her father, who found out about his daughter’s abuse while he was in detention. “I felt like I couldn’t do anything to help her.”

Desperate to see his daughter, he begged for a DNA test which, four months into his detention, proved their relationship. Still the government kept them apart. In June, he gave up and asked a judge to reunite him with his daughter and deport them. The government sent him back to Honduras alone. His daughter followed a month later in mid-August.

On an August afternoon in their hometown, the little girl had her hair tied up in pigtails. Her dress was a frilly lavender and her pink sneakers were decorated with bows. She played with her younger sister and snuggled up beside her grandfather, but ignored her father’s entreaties and refused to hold his hand, convinced he tried to leave her for good.

“When I wanted to cradle her in my arms she started to cry,” he said.

He didn’t know of any psychological support in their town to help her process the abuse she suffered.

“For now we’re going to try to give her more affection, more love and then if there isn’t a change we’re going to try to find some help,” he said.

The U.S. government calls migrant children held without their parents “Unaccompanied Alien Children” — UAC in bureaucratic jargon. Federal law requires the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to provide them food and shelter, and medical and mental health care. But the HHS Office of Inspector General found there aren’t enough clinicians or specialized care in shelters holding migrant children.

HHS spokesman Mark Weber said that, with the largest number of migrant children in their program’s history, “you must give credit to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the shelter network staff for managing a program that was able to rapidly expand and unify the largest number of kids ever, all in an incredibly difficult environment.”

In an urgent request to fund an emergency shelter earlier this year, HHS warned “Without a way to provide these services, there is an unacceptable risk that thousands of UAC would be without their basic human needs, which would result in injury/death of children.”

In the September issue of the journal Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatrics says migrant children who are detained “face almost universal traumatic histories.” The group recommends specific therapies to help children recover and reunite with their families, warning of serious consequences if left untreated. But few of the thousands of children separated from their parents are receiving therapy after being deported back to Central America. Many are from impoverished communities where there are few, if any, accessible mental health resources.

The U.S. is now being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars by some families who say their children were harmed by being held in detention, and on Nov. 5 a federal judge ordered the government to immediately provide mental health screenings and treatment to immigrant families traumatized by family separations. The judge found attorneys for separated families presented evidence that the government’s policy “caused severe mental trauma to parents and their children” and that U.S. government officials were “aware of the risks associated with family separation when they implemented it.”

Child trauma expert Ryan Matlow at Stanford University says toxic stress in children is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress syndrome, heart disease, cancer, and even early death.

“So we want to be a country that inflicts further trauma on individuals who are experiencing intensive adversity and are seeking refuge and help in a neighboring nation?” asked Matlow, who has met with detained migrant children inside several of the largest migrant detention facilities. “Are we ok with the implications of doing harm to vulnerable children - to 2 and 3-year-olds and to teenagers as well? Is that something that we can accept?”

This year President Donald Trump signed a law approving $2.8 billion for the government to house, transport and care for migrant children. Nine out of 10 come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, with fewer than 3% from Mexico. They’re fleeing Central America often to save their own lives, because violence and abuse, even murder, are committed with impunity under corrupt governments the U.S. has supported for decades.

While children have been arriving alone at the U.S. border for more than a decade, the number of children in government custody has grown sharply over the last two years, largely because they have been held for longer time periods. A few months after Trump took office, the federal agency was caring for about 2,700 children, reuniting them with awaiting relatives or sponsors in about a month. This June, that topped 13,000, and they stayed in custody for about two months.

U.S. immigration authorities have separated more than 5,400 children from their parents at the Mexico border, before, during and after a controversial “zero tolerance” policy was enacted and then ended in the spring of 2018.

Eskinder Negash, who heads the nonprofit U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, knows the trauma of separation and detention all too well, and has spent his life seeking solutions.

“I was a refugee, I know what they have gone through,” said Negash, who fled Ethiopia alone as a teen after his country was thrown into chaos by a military coup.

Negash also knows what it’s like to suddenly have to care for tens of thousands of migrant children caught at the border. He was heading the Office of Refugee Resettlement in 2014 under the Obama administration when more than 60,000 children surged over the border, mostly unaccompanied. Negash and his team scrambled to shelter them in a variety of situations, including on military bases. The fallout, at the time, was harsh: human rights advocates who today decry the way children are treated in government custody were, under Obama, frustrated with their care and urged that children be swiftly granted asylum.

Leaving government to head the nonprofit refugee support agency USCRI, Negash wanted to do better for children, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In El Salvador, USCRI now runs the Livelihoods project, teaching young adults who were deported from the U.S. skills to support themselves. On a recent visit, students clustered in small groups around workbenches to practice building circuits that would make small motors run. They learn everything from residential and commercial electrical installation to building substations and transformers. Other career tracks include auto mechanic, chef and bartender. Since 2016, about 400 young adults have graduated from the program, which is a partnership with the El Salvador government.

“I don’t think about migrating anymore,” said José Fernando Guillén Rodríguez, 21, who was apprehended in the U.S. at 18 and spent time in adult detention before being deported. Now he’s completed a year of daily electrical classes and works as an apprentice at an electrical construction company.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. this summer, USCRI also opened what Negash hopes is a model government-funded shelter in southern Florida, just down the road from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. Rinconcito del Sol, which translates to “A Little Corner of Sunshine,” is different than other facilities holding migrant children.

There is no uniformed security guard at the entrance. The residents, girls 13-17, can call their families as needed, staff say, and there are more therapeutic services — including intensive treatment for victims of trafficking and abuse — throughout the week. They sleep two to a room, and are free to wander in a large, outdoor area, or “shop” in a store filled with donated items. Case workers hustle to reunite them with family in the U.S. quickly, averaging four weeks. And costs to taxpayers are a third of the $775 per day costs at large, emergency shelters where kids sleep 100 to a room.

“Here, we change lives,” said shelter director Elcy Valdez, who worked as an ORR federal field specialist visiting a variety of facilities for six years. She saw a variety of operations, and took note of best practices. Today they hope to share their practices with some 170 shelter programs in 23 states.

“The girls come in very sad, nervous, not knowing what to expect, unsure what the future holds for them,” she said. “We give them that sense of security, of safety for the first time.”
https://apnews.com/015702afdb4d4fbf85cf5070cd2c6824
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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