The purpose of the U.S. deportation system is not merely to enforce immigration laws on the books; it is, more fundamentally, to construct an apparatus that generates humiliation, dehumanization, and the perception of the expendability of non-citizens, particularly non-white immigrants whose bodies, whether citizen or not, remain differentially excluded from the body politic.
I promoted this event on my Wednesday/Thursday show this week (Oct. 28/29). I was on solo for who knows why?
Sponsored by Indivisible Newport, all proceeds from this event will be divided between Centro de Ayuda, Arcoiris Cultural, and Conexion Fenix.
The recent increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement action across Oregon has had a significant impact on local Latino and Immigrant families. The three Latino/Mesoamerican service organizations in Lincoln County are dedicated to providing essential goods and services to families in need.
Cash donations to these organizations are vital in continuing to provide support. Eva Gonzalez Munoz, Board Chair of Centro de Ayuda, says,
“Through funds raised from community fundraisers, we have been able to provide essential food assistance to households who have stopped working due to fear, job loss, medical challenges, or immigration-related issues. Providing access to culturally specific foods has made a meaningful difference for many families. Even small items, such as familiar spices, can offer comfort and restore a sense of hope during difficult times.”
Alex Llumiquinga Perez, of Arcoiris Cultural, says,
“Thanks to the received funds, we have assisted members of the Guatemalan community with transportation costs and fees needed to obtain essential identification documents and passports. Additionally, we purchased food for our community pantry, ensuring we can continue supporting families facing financial hardship. These efforts have made a significant difference for the families we serve. We are truly grateful for the community’s generosity and for the opportunity to turn these donations into direct support for our neighbors.”
Detention and deportation have become keystones of immigration and border enforcement policies around the world. The United States has built a massive immigration enforcement system that detains and deports more people than any other country. This system is grounded in the assumptions that national borders are territorially fixed and controllable, and that detention and deportation bolster security and deter migration. Nancy Hiemstra’s multisited ethnographic research pairs investigation of enforcement practices in the United States with an exploration into conditions migrants face in one country of origin: Ecuador. Detain and Deport’s transnational approach reveals how the U.S. immigration enforcement system’s chaotic organization and operation distracts from the mismatch between these assumptions and actual outcomes.
Hiemstra draws on the experiences of detained and deported migrants, as well as their families and communities in Ecuador, to show convincingly that instead of deterring migrants and improving national security, detention and deportation generate insecurities and forge lasting connections across territorial borders. At the same time, the system’s chaos works to curtail rights and maintain detained migrants on a narrow path to deportation. Hiemstra argues that in addition to the racialized ideas of national identity and a fluctuating dependence on immigrant labor that have long propelled U.S. immigration policies, the contemporary emphasis on detention and deportation is fueled by the influence of people and entities that profit from them.
The city of Newport, Oregon, sought a settlement aimed at keeping a detention center out of the city. But federal officials pushed back deadlines and asked for more time to approve the agreement — much to the annoyance of Newport’s lawyers.
Friday’s settlement lays out that Homeland Security had planned a detention center in Newport and doesn’t necessarily block future plans, but only that the agencies must give 30 days’ notice should they plan a detention center in Newport.
“Under the settlement, ICE has stipulated that it currently has no plans to expand existing detention facilities or open new long- or short-term detention facilities anywhere in Oregon,” the city announced Friday. “The Department of Homeland Security has also agreed to provide the city of Newport with at least 30 days’ notice before issuing an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement for a plan to construct or operate a detention facility in Newport.”
The legal battle racked up fees with the city’s outside attorneys, and several municipalities, including Portland, Yachats, Ashland, and Benton County, have made contributions to its legal funds.
All of this came to mind when Austin Kocher talked to José Olivares from The Guardian today for the story that just came out this evening: “Man detained at Georgia immigration detention center dies as hunger strike continues.” In his comment to José, he emphasized what he saw as the embodiment of the central tensions within our deportation system’s dehumanizing mission.
Pause for a moment on the absurdity that ICE would force-feed hunger strikers who are protesting rotten food and malnutrition. Hunger strikes are a tactic that people use when they have nothing left to fight with other than the basic materiality of their own body — an indication that the person has already been reduced to a state ambiguously between life and death. Forced-feeding as an intervention is a way of taking away what little agency people have left, while refusing to address the substance of the underlying complaint. It’s as if ICE intends to send a message: “we will not let you escape humiliation by suffering or dying on your own terms when that suffering and death contain within them a clear political message.”
[At least 15 of them are women, and 13 of them are on a “dry hunger” strike, meaning they aren’t eating or drinking anything, not even water.]
“I’m a U.S. citizen, please help me.” A woman is detained for the third time in Key Largo, Florida, while driving a car registered to her partner, an immigrant.
“I’m literally a U.S. citizen. I’m literally a U.S. citizen.”
Citing ProPublica, Lawmakers Introduce H.R. 10826 to Help U.S. Citizens Sue ICE for Wrongful Detentions
We recently reported that more than 500 American citizens have been detained by immigration agents. Now, House members are moving to make it easier for those detained to seek justice through the courts.
Go over to ProPublica and read the reports. Go to your local news source, with online commenting, especially on Fuck You Book, and see how many deplorable human beings support ICE:
The optics, man, Glosser-Miller, saying?
In October 2026, a government contractor told NPR that a proposal for more humane, FEMA-style immigrant detention facilities was rejected by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The contractor alleged they were told that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wanted conditions to be harsh and cruel rather than comfortable.
But he’s a film expert, too:
Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, lashed out at Robert De Niro during a Fox News interview, calling the Oscar winner “a sad, broken old man” who “has been degrading himself on camera with one horrific film after another.” Miller’s rant came days after De Niro appeared on MSNBC and blasted Miller as a “Nazi” while talking about how Trump “will not want to leave” the White House and will seek an unconstitutional third term as U.S. president.
“He set it up with, I guess he’s the Goebbels of the cabinet, Stephen Miller,” De Niro said, comparing Miller to Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist. “[Miller is] a Nazi! Yes he is, and he’s Jewish. He should be ashamed of himself.”
https://youtu.be/sgQMdNZTNcQ?si=O-O8SJ3rfdltne3E
The cruelty is the point.
2018: Nine Humanitarian Activists Face Federal Charges After Leaving Water for Migrants in the Arizona Desert
The group No More Deaths says the charges are part of a ramped-up effort to crack down not only on migrants, but on the groups that help them.
Seven years later:
- The Incident: On June 11, 2025, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility at 411 W. Cataldo Ave. in Spokane, Washington, after a social media post called for people to block a bus transporting two Venezuelan asylum-seekers.
- The Charges: Nine people were initially arrested and charged, including former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart. Six of the defendants took plea deals for lesser charges. Archer, Forall, and Mavalwalla went to trial.
- The Verdict: On May 28, 2026, a federal jury found the three guilty of conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers and related offenses.
- Potential Sentences: The felony convictions carry a maximum potential penalty of up to six years in federal prison and fines up to $250,000. No final sentencing date has been set.
Just remember, more than 140 million voted for Trump-Harris, and more than another 50 million voted for . . . . THEMSELVES:
Five months ago, an Eastern Washington jury found three Spokane protesters guilty of federal conspiracy charges for their roles in a protest last summer. Now, all three will soon be headed back to court as their lawyers have filed a slate of legal motions requesting the verdicts be overturned.
Jac Archer, Justice Forral and Bajun Mavalwalla II were convicted of the federal felony “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” for protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detainment of two young Venezuelan asylum seekers on June 11, 2025. The charge carries a potential maximum sentence of six years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine or both.
All three have spent the summer free but in legal limbo.
Now, the legal machine is grinding forward again as their legal teams filed a slate of motions asking the court to acquit them, grant a new trial or dismiss the charges entirely. Read more on the filings and what’s next at the link in our bio.
I guarantee that out of those 85.9 million and the 76.8 million, a huge percentage are nihilistic or deplorable or as unempathetic as a Gestapo recruiter or as soulless and witless as . . . . That’s 162 million in that camp, and you betcha out of the Harris camp, of 74.3 million, how many support Omar?
“This is what happens in a dictatorship. The leader identifies his political, ethnic and religious enemies, and his agents scramble to do his bidding and make him happy,” Zaynab Mohamed, a Somali immigrant who represents Minneapolis in Minnesota’s state Senate, told The Intercept. “Representative Omar is the latest subject where Trump identifies the target and his minions go looking for a crime. The cases always fall apart, and this one will, too.”
“Trump has conducted more drone strikes in Somalia than Bush, Obama, and Biden combined. And so many civilians have died,” historian Elizabeth Schmidt, the author of “Foreign Intervention in Africa After the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror,” told The Intercept. “They were often just young men living in an area where it was easy to label them jihadis. And it turns out they had nothing to do with terrorism.”
Those Deplorable Harris Voters:
Democrats should unite to stop Trump’s efforts to lawlessly deport a colleague based on a racist political witch hunt, but we can expect little congressional action beyond condemnatory statements. Indeed, all too many centrist Democrats have been happy to throw left-wing colleagues, particularly Muslims like Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., to the wolves. — Natasha Lennard
[A U.S. Border Patrol agent takes Central American immigrants into custody on January 4, 2017 near McAllen, Texas.]
“I think one of the things that we’re seeing is an escalation in tactics by on-the-ground agents that are emboldened by racist and dehumanizing policies of this administration,” said Genevieve Schroeder, a volunteer with No More Deaths. “It has really disturbing implications for emboldened actions that are being taken against people that are in the field, who have much less of a media platform than humanitarian aid workers or possibly sanctuary rights movement leaders.”
The Nobodies
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them–will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.
Stephen Miller runs his daily 10 a.m. conference calls—yes, even on Saturdays—less like a government adviser and more like a wartime general. His is the dominant voice, as he plays the role of browbeater, inquisitor, and bully. He accepts no excuses, entertains no dissent.
Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy ruthlessly pursues the president’s vision, especially when it comes to pushing immigrants out of the country, and he runs a tight, efficient meeting. Consensus is not the goal.
Instead, Miller demands progress reports on his mass-deportation campaign and issues orders to the full alphabet soup of federal enforcement agencies, including the FBI, CBP, ICE, HHS, and the DOD. One senior official who has participated in the calls told us that the intensity and urgency often veer into hectoring. “He pushes everybody to the absolute limit because he knows that the clock is ticking,” this person said. “He gets on the phone and he yells at everybody. Nobody is spared from his wrath.”
In May, Miller told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials that he wanted 3,000 immigration arrests a day, a nearly tenfold increase over the number they’d arrested on U.S. streets in 2024. He demands daily updates on the ICE hiring surge too; the administration had pledged to deploy 10,000 new deportation officers by this month—more than doubling the agency’s workforce. And Miller expects regular updates on detention capacity, deportation flights, and border crossings. —- Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, and Nick Miroff
