Michael1942's Blog

Politics has become a dirtier business than any previous time. As a free country, we have in the past looked upon other countries with incredulity, scorn, and derision regarding the cheating in their governments. Fast forward to now, we have apparently fallen into the same abyss after years of being an example {of sorts) of what a good government should look like. The following cartoon is just an example of where we are now:

We have always been a bit suspicious of government, this is not a condemnation but it generates a measure of doubt that should lead to closer looks at laws and proposals that affect us as individuals and the country as a whole. This administration if nothing else has opened the doors to the real intent of the extremes on the right and left while the middle muddles

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The advent of Donald J. Trump has allowed the rise of the worst of us, all choreographed by 1 small-minded man: Stephen Miller.TOTUS is the instrument, Miller is the wielder of it.

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It is apparent that Stephen Miller is a small minded small man seeking absolution from  possibly his own life errors and just getting even for events in his life when he was denigrated. He is now attempting to get even with less fortunate because he can so far. MA

Nick Miroff 30 mins ago

Opinion: The latest Russia bombshell bolsters Democrats’ demand for…
The White House sought this month to embed immigration enforcement agents within the U.S. refugee agency that cares for unaccompanied migrant children, part of a long-standing effort to use information from their parents and relatives to target them for deportation, according to six current and former administration officials.Though senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services rejected the attempt, they agreed to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to collect fingerprints and other biometric information from adults seeking to claim migrant children at government shelters. If those adults are deemed ineligible to take custody of a child, ICE could then use their information to target them for arrest and deportation.

The arrangement appears to circumvent laws that restrict the use of the refu­gee program for deportation enforcement; Congress has made it clear that it does not want those who come forward as potential sponsors of minors in U.S. custody to be frightened away by possible deportation. But, in the reasoning of senior Trump administration officials, adults denied custody of children lose their status as “potential sponsors” and are fair game for arrest.
The new initiative has not been announced publicly. It was developed by Stephen Miller, President Trump’s top immigration adviser, who has long argued that HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement is being exploited by parents who hire smugglers to bring their children into the United States illegally. The agency manages a network of shelters that care for underage migrants who cross the border without a parent and tries to identify sponsors eligible to take custody of the minors — typically a family member.
Previous Trump administration attempts to give ICE more access to the refu­gee program have generated significant opposition, because it potentially forces migrant parents to choose between reclaiming their children and risking arrest. Administration officials acknowledge the arrangement will instill fear among migrant parents, but they say it will deter families from having their children cross into the United States illegally.
Officials at ICE and HHS said the information shared with enforcement agents primarily would be used to screen adults for criminal violations and other “red flags,” and that it would not be focused on capturing parents and relatives who come forward to claim what the government calls “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs.

Bryan Cox, an ICE spokesman, said his agency will help HHS make sure children are not placed with sponsors until they are thoroughly vetted, a review process that includes using biometric data. Cox said his agency has more powerful screening tools at its disposal than HHS, “including better capabilities to identify fraudulent documents or documents obtained by fraud.”
After the Trump administration began a similar information-sharing initiative last year, which predictably led to fewer sponsors coming forward and created a massive backlog of children in U.S. custody, Democrats fought to put a firewall between ICE and ORR. Language in the 2019 funding bill specifically prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from using child sponsor data — addresses, names, phone numbers — to generate ICE target lists.
According to those provisions, no federal funds “may be used by the Secretary of Homeland Security to place in detention, remove, refer for a decision whether to initiate removal proceedings, or initiate removal proceedings against a sponsor, potential sponsor, or member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor of an unaccompanied alien child.”
HHS officials have generally tried to keep ICE at a distance, insisting their agency’s mission is to safeguard children and not to facilitate the arrest of their relatives.
Cox defended the legality of the program, citing the technical wording of the law: When a potential sponsor’s application is rejected, “that individual is no longer considered to be a sponsor or potential sponsor,” and is therefore open to ICE arrest, he said.
While acknowledging the program could leave children in government custody for longer periods, Cox said better screening “should take precedence over speed of placement to what may ultimately be an unsafe environment for the child.”
ICE officials said their enforcement priority would be adult sponsors with criminal records.
Mark Weber, a spokesman for HHS, which oversees ORR, said in a written response that no ICE personnel are currently stationed at the agency, and there were “no plans for ICE personnel to be placed at HHS.”
Weber did not address questions about the legality of the new information-sharing agreement with ICE.
Three officials familiar with Miller’s plan said it was part of his broader effort to chip away at congressionally mandated barriers between ICE and the refugee program.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment Friday. One senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the Trump administration — which was widely denounced for separating thousands of children from their parents last year under its “Zero Tolerance” border crackdown — is “in the business of protecting child welfare.”
“Smuggling children into our country is an abomination and horrible for child welfare, and under the system set up under the Obama administration, the level of child smuggling has been atrocious,” the senior administration official said.
By expanding ICE’s role at ORR “we’ll be able to significantly reduce the incentives for child smuggling, and protect thousands — thousands — of children.”
Some officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection have objected to past information-sharing efforts between ORR and ICE saying that they discourage adult sponsors from reclaiming children in U.S. government custody. When fewer adults come forward, more children must stay in shelters and border stations, and CBP has been faced with caring for infants and young children in austere facilities designed for short-term detention of adults.
As the migration crisis at the border has abated in recent months, Miller has once again worked to tear down the information wall between the refu­gee agency and ICE, according to those familiar with his efforts.
Miller arranged the new information-sharing plan through discussions with ORR Director Jonathan Hayes, according to two of those officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear termination.
As part of the plan, a senior official from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, Caleb Vitello, was supposed to be temporarily assigned to work inside ORR. But senior HHS officials rejected that part of the plan during a meeting Thursday, two administration officials said. White House officials have privately denounced HHS staff for having “sabotaged” attempts at implementing information-sharing agreements.
Vitello had previously worked with Miller at the White House on assignment to the National Security Council, according to three officials who have worked with both men.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar was not informed of Miller’s effort to place an ICE official at his agency, two officials said.
Azar has worked to keep his agency out of the maelstrom of immigration politics after the “Zero Tolerance” episode, which separated at least 2,700 children from their parents until Trump was forced to reverse course.
According to the latest ORR data, the government has approximately 4,300 minors in its care, down from 15,000 a year ago. Children spend an average of 69 days in ORR custody, down from 93 days a year ago but still far longer than in recent years.
Before Zero Tolerance, minors spent an average of about 50 days in government shelters, even though ORR had twice as many children in its custody at the time.
HHS also is seeing a growing number of cases they call “category four,” which mean the agency cannot find a parent, relative or other eligible adult to take custody. After several months, those minors are typically placed in long-term foster care. An HHS official said the agency does not have an available tally of the number of category four children.
Arrests along the Mexico border have fallen more than 70 percent since May, when 144,116 migrants were taken into custody amid a record influx of families and children from Central America.
The Trump administration has implemented a package of deterrent measures making it significantly more difficult for migrants who cross the border to qualify for U.S. asylum protections. Since the beginning of the year, border officials have sent more than 53,000 migrants back to Mexico to wait outside U.S. territory while their asylum claims are processed.
The government also has started sending asylum seekers to Guatemala, one of several new agreements that will allow Homeland Security officials to send those seeking safe refuge in the United States to the same crime-plagued region they are fleeing.
Those measures cannot be used to reject underage migrants who arrive and seek protection in the United States, so administration officials continue to view the ORR program as a “loophole” that allows migrants living illegally in the United States to send for their children.
The number of unaccompanied minors taken into custody increased 17 percent from October to November, to 3,321, while the two other demographic categories — family groups and single adults — continued to show declines, the latest enforcement figures show.
nick.miroff@washpost.com

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Henry Louis Mencken was a 20th-century journalist who wrote for the Baltimore Sun newspaper. There was a quote attributed to him which was brought to my attention:
Mencken wrote as follows about the difficulties of good men reaching national office when such campaigns must necessarily be conducted remotely:
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.^ Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920.”
We are now at that time when this prediction has become real.

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“Trump Signs Hong Kong Democracy Legislation, Angering China
The measure, which could lead to sanctions on Chinese officials for cracking down on the protesters, drew bipartisan support from Congress.”

Interesting That TOTUS can sign on to Hong Kong civil rights while doing very much the same thing on the Southern border. It appears that TOTUS and his crew will continue their outrageous actions against immigrants with no restrictions or objections from Congress (who really should be involved). Apparently, the State Department has lost sight of what our contributions to these South American countries did for their populations. Those contributions and our involvement made life for those now immigrants bearable, since the current administration has all but ceased these actions immigration has become a crisis. This border “wall” and the processing has put an extreme burden on Mexico, our nearest ally. This burden has had a ripple effect down the entire line of countries on the continent. If this additional burden is evaluated, it will show that the “Dictators” in certain countries are plying their trade which exacerbates an already bad situation. The answer could be that the  United States government along with Nato partners revisit what aid is given and how it is used in South and Central America. This going it alone guided by misinformation or no information is no way to run a country (or a business shown by Trump’s Enterprises).

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