No wonder Trump was so interested in Fort Knox:
I'm pretty sure those decorations are 3D printed...
I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There.
- Thread starter annabenedetti
- Start date
I'm pretty sure those decorations are 3D printed...
This is hilarious. Jasmine Crockett, who often codetalks as a ghetto ni66er, is struggling to speak normally in a congressional hearing. Even more hilarious is the fact that although she is apparently a holder of a juris doctorate and passed the bar, her grasp of the law is obviously pathetically weak as the person who is questioning her just absolutely beats her down silly. And it's even better that he's a white man.
If you want to learn more about due process, watch and learn.
7.3K reactions · 937 shares | Absolute reality check 😂😂😂😂 Follow @realtaylorsharp for more! #viralmeme #jasminecrockett #retarded #trumpmeme | Taylor Sharp 🇺🇸
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That last paragraph—you are just a small small person
You are not an American.
At 7:22 this morning, President Donald J. Trump posted on social media: “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024. People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”Trump has no power to change the timing of the U.S. Census, which is mandated by the Constitution to take place every ten years.He also has no power to declare that undocumented immigrants won’t be counted: the Constitution specifies that representatives “shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” MAGA turns sometimes to the Fourteenth Amendment’s exclusion of “Indians not taxed” from the count for representation as proof that lawmakers recognized that some people should be excluded from the census. But, in fact, “not taxed” identified a group of people who did not come under the purview of the United States government.Just a year after the Civil War, lawmakers looked at the crisis caused by southern enslavers who had wielded outsized political power because the Constitution had allowed them to count enslaved Americans for purposes of representation and worried that a similar system would develop in the new states in the West. When they wrote the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 (it was ratified in 1868), they explicitly excluded “Indians not taxed” out of concern that congressmen from the new western states would exercise more power than they should by counting the large numbers of Indigenous Americans who did not participate in the modern economy or have a say in the government. By excluding “Indians not taxed” explicitly, lawmakers demonstrated that they fully intended to include everyone else.The U.S. government has always included “all persons” when taking the census.Taking an accurate census suddenly is also not remotely possible. Setting one up takes most of the decade between them and costs close to $15 billion. Census officials are already working on the 2030 census.Trump’s announcement is revealing, though, in two ways.First, it shows how aware he and administration officials are that their program is deeply unpopular and that they expect to lose control of the House of Representatives in 2026 unless they rig the system. As Lisa Needham wrote today in Public Notice, “‘We stood aside so Trump could shutter vital agencies, take away your healthcare, and spend every last dime scooping up immigrants to help get Stephen Miller his 3,000 arrests a day’ is not exactly a rallying cry that will turn out voters.”Republicans in Texas are trying to redistrict the state; Republicans in Indiana, Florida, and Ohio are considering the same tactic. Today, Adam Wren and Andrew Howard of Politico reported that Vice President J.D. Vance brought an entourage of White House officials with him to Indiana to pressure lawmakers there to redistrict the state, indicating just how important administration officials think redistricting is to keep control of the House. Now Trump has simply blurted out that he plans to change the game altogether and rig it to win.But there is an even darker image behind destroying our democratic system. If undocumented immigrants aren’t counted, their districts will be shortchanged on representation and whatever federal monies are still available for states, for sure. But if undocumented immigrants aren’t counted, will they be easier to dehumanize? Already the government is taking people from the streets and denying their right to due process. Observers are describing human rights abuses in detention facilities where most of those incarcerated have no criminal record. If undocumented people are not officially recognized as existing, they could simply disappear.Yesterday Adam Taylor, Hannah Natanson, and John Hudson of the Washington Post reported that, according to leaked drafts of the annual report on human rights from the State Department, the Trump administration plans to back away from criticizing El Salvador, Israel, and Russia for their extensive human rights abuses. In 2024, the State Department reported government-sanctioned killings, torture, and “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions” in El Salvador; the new report says there are “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in the country. Last year’s report for Israel was more than 100 pages; this year it is 25.The State Department has also declared support for the end to presidential term limits in El Salvador. This change enables Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who allowed Trump to render Venezuelan immigrants to his infamous CECOT prison, to hold office indefinitely, establishing himself as a dictator. A spokesperson for the State Department said: “El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly was democratically elected to advance the interests and policies of their constituents. Their decision to make constitutional changes is their own. It is up to them to decide how their country should be governed.”It is a truism that democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint.But Americans are not simply accepting the administration’s reworking of American society. People congregating in the Indiana Statehouse today to protest redistricting met the news that Vance was in the building with resounding boos.Last night, Trey Parker and Matt Stone skewered Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and ICE on South Park, and comedian Stephen Colbert went scorched earth on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying, among other things, that his cuts to vaccine research are “bad news for fans of living.”The White House continues to try to put a lid on questions about the relationship between convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein and Trump but is having little luck. After vehemently denying they had plans for a meeting last night to discuss responses to the Epstein issue, White House officials met last night after all, MSNBC reported. Those officials included Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel.Just after 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time today, Trump’s tariffs of at least 10% on products from other countries went into effect. As Josh Boak of the Associated Press reported, while Trump and administration officials continue to insist that Trump’s economic policies will create “unprecedented” growth, “there are signs of self-inflicted wounds to the U.S. as companies and consumers brace for the impact of the new taxes.”Economic growth is slowing, job growth is stagnant, and prices are headed upward. Chao Deng and John Keilman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that rather than increasing as Trump claimed it would under his tariff regime, manufacturing activity in the U.S. has shrunk for most of Trump’s second term.The one thing that appears to be going according to Trump’s wishes is his remaking of the White House. Trump’s new patio where the Rose Garden lawn used to be is finished. It now has café tables with yellow striped umbrellas. Brian Glenn of right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice noted: “Very ‘Mar-A-Lago’ ish. Nice!”
Good for Trump.
Good for the rest of America too.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
What Impact Would Removing Undocumented Residents from Census Have?
The U.S. Constitution requires a national census every ten years for one fundamental purpose: to determine how political power is allocated among states in the House of Representatives. This process, called apportionment, is at the core of American representative democracy. Yet for decades, a...
The evolution of the census questionnaire tells a story about America’s changing relationship with immigration. The first several censuses were simple headcounts focused on age, sex, and race.
However, following a dramatic increase in immigration during the 1840s, the 1850 census added a question on “place of birth” for the first time. This wasn’t a coincidence—it was a direct governmental response to a major demographic shift.
Later censuses, particularly during other periods of high immigration, added even more detailed questions. The 1870 census noted male citizens over 21, and censuses from 1900 to 1940 asked directly about naturalization status, using codes like “Al” for alien, “Pa” for having filed “first papers” for naturalization, and “Na” for fully naturalized citizens.
This long and unbroken history of counting all residents and tracking immigration status is frequently cited in legal arguments as powerful evidence of the Constitution’s original meaning and intent.
The prevailing legal interpretation, buttressed by this historical practice, is that the term “persons” in the 14th Amendment is unambiguous. It’s understood to mean all human beings residing in a state, irrespective of their citizenship or legal standing.
. . . .
Political Control Reality Check
A central claim in the political arena is that including undocumented residents in the census count provides a massive, unfair advantage to the Democratic Party, with some pundits and politicians speculating it could shift as many as 20 seats in the House of Representatives.
However, rigorous academic research provides a starkly different conclusion.
A comprehensive 2025 study published in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS Nexus examined actual census and apportionment data from 1980 through 2020 to determine the real-world impact.
The study’s primary conclusion was that excluding undocumented residents from the apportionment base would have had a negligible impact on which party controlled the House of Representatives. Over the past 40 years, in any given election cycle, a maximum of two seats would have shifted between the two major parties.
This small number would have had no bearing on which party held the majority in the House.
The study explains that the partisan effect is muted for a simple reason: the seat changes don’t fall neatly along party lines. While a reliably Democratic-leaning state like California stands to lose seats, so do reliably Republican-leaning states like Texas and Florida.
The states that would gain seats are also a mix of “red” and “blue” states. This distribution across the political spectrum largely cancels out any potential net partisan advantage.
This reveals a profound disconnect between the political rhetoric surrounding this issue and the empirical reality. The narrative of a massive partisan power grab that could determine control of Congress isn’t supported by rigorous, data-driven analysis.
While the question of representation and vote dilution involves legitimate constitutional principles, the claim of a game-changing partisan effect appears to be more a tool for mobilizing political bases than an accurate description of the likely outcome.
A critical, often overlooked aspect of this debate is the inherent uncertainty in the data itself. The U.S. government doesn’t have a precise count of the undocumented population; all figures are estimates, generally hovering around 11 million people.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has explored complex and sensitive survey methods to try and improve these estimates, highlighting the difficulty of the task.
This data uncertainty was a key factor in the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Trump v. New York, as it was unclear if the administration could even produce data reliable enough to implement an exclusion policy.
Broader Consequences
The debate over apportionment is the most visible consequence of the census count, but its impact extends far beyond the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The total population count creates powerful ripple effects that shape the presidency, the flow of federal resources, and the drawing of every political map in the country.
Electoral College Impact
The census has a direct and significant impact on presidential elections through its effect on the Electoral College.
A state’s number of electoral votes is determined by adding its number of House seats to its two Senate seats. Because House seats are allocated based on the census population count, any change in a state’s representation directly alters its power in the Electoral College.
A state that gains a House seat also gains an electoral vote, and a state that loses a seat loses an electoral vote.
Just as with congressional control, the data suggests that excluding undocumented residents would have a minimal effect on presidential outcomes. The PNAS Nexus study found that such an exclusion would have changed the margin of victory in any presidential election since 1980 by a maximum of three electoral votes—never enough to have alteredwho won the presidency.
Federal Funding Distribution
Perhaps the most significant, yet least discussed, impact of the census count is its role in the distribution of federal funding.
Data from the decennial census and related surveys are a critical input for formulas that guide the distribution of trillions of dollars in federal funds every year. In Fiscal Year 2021 alone, 353 different federal assistance programs relied on census-derived data to distribute $2.8 trillion to states, communities, and tribal governments.
Federal agencies use a wide range of census data—including population totals, per capita income, poverty rates, age demographics, and urban/rural designations—to determine eligibility and allocate funding for essential services.
Major federal programs that rely on census data for funding allocation include Medicaid, the Highway Planning and Construction program, Title I grants for local education agencies, the Head Start program, the National School Lunch Program, and housing assistance programs.
This direct link to funding means that an inaccurate census has devastating financial consequences. Any policy that discourages participation and leads to an undercount—such as an attempt to determine immigration status—would cause affected communities to be denied their fair share of federal funds for the next ten years.
This directly impacts funding for local hospitals, schools, roads, and emergency services.
Redistricting Within States
After apportionment determines how many seats each state gets, the census data is used for a second critical process: redistricting.
The Census Bureau provides states with detailed, block-level population data, which is then used to redraw the boundaries for their own congressional districts, as well as for state legislative and local government districts.
This process is meant to ensure that each district within a state has a roughly equal number of people, thereby upholding the “one person, one vote” principle at the state and local level.
The Supreme Court has explicitly affirmed that states are permitted to use the total population count from the census as the basis for drawing these districts. In the 2016 case Evenwel v. Abbott, the Court rejected a challenge arguing that states should be required to use voter population instead, holding that using total population is a legitimate and constitutional choice.
The intense political focus on apportionment, while significant, can be misleading. The empirical evidence suggests that the actual impact on the partisan control of Congress and the presidency is minimal.
This indicates that the fight over excluding undocumented residents from the apportionment count may be, in effect, a high-stakes proxy war over far more tangible outcomes. The real battle may be over the allocation of trillions of dollars in resources and the drawing of every state and local political map in the country.
An attempt to exclude undocumented residents from the count, even if it ultimately fails for apportionment, can succeed in creating a climate of fear that depresses census response rates in immigrant communities. This depressed response rate leads to a general undercount of those communities, which directly impacts the formulas used for federal funding and the population totals used for local redistricting.
Therefore, the political battle over apportionment can serve as a powerful vehicle to achieve a different, more concrete goal: shifting resources and local political power away from areas with large immigrant populations.
Not election fraud. Trump is again utilizing political theater to energize the base, demonize the immigrant, deflect from Epstein in any way possible. Smoke and mirrors, while another step is taken in the direction of autocracy.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
A pro-life Christian comparing a woman having children into a loving and hard-working family to a parasitic insect? That's a new low, JR.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Definitely not. What Trump and his administration are doing is beyond anything we've seen in American history when it comes to avoiding, sidestepping, and defying the Constitution and the rule of law.
That's all or nothing, black or white. Our government isn't beyond repair. That the Constitution can be amended is a good thing. There is no perfect constitution, that's an unreasonable expectation.
Who takes the right to vote away?
Under the Constitution, the power belongs to the people.
Under the present administration, the power belongs to Trump.
Then you no longer have a democratic republic, you have an autocracy.
What Impact Would Removing Undocumented Residents from Census Have?
The U.S. Constitution requires a national census every ten years for one fundamental purpose: to determine how political power is allocated among states in the House of Representatives. This process, called apportionment, is at the core of American representative democracy. Yet for decades, a...govfacts.org
The evolution of the census questionnaire tells a story about America’s changing relationship with immigration. The first several censuses were simple headcounts focused on age, sex, and race.However, following a dramatic increase in immigration during the 1840s, the 1850 census added a question on “place of birth” for the first time. This wasn’t a coincidence—it was a direct governmental response to a major demographic shift.Later censuses, particularly during other periods of high immigration, added even more detailed questions. The 1870 census noted male citizens over 21, and censuses from 1900 to 1940 asked directly about naturalization status, using codes like “Al” for alien, “Pa” for having filed “first papers” for naturalization, and “Na” for fully naturalized citizens.This long and unbroken history of counting all residents and tracking immigration status is frequently cited in legal arguments as powerful evidence of the Constitution’s original meaning and intent.The prevailing legal interpretation, buttressed by this historical practice, is that the term “persons” in the 14th Amendment is unambiguous. It’s understood to mean all human beings residing in a state, irrespective of their citizenship or legal standing.. . . .
Political Control Reality CheckA central claim in the political arena is that including undocumented residents in the census count provides a massive, unfair advantage to the Democratic Party, with some pundits and politicians speculating it could shift as many as 20 seats in the House of Representatives.However, rigorous academic research provides a starkly different conclusion.A comprehensive 2025 study published in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS Nexus examined actual census and apportionment data from 1980 through 2020 to determine the real-world impact.The study’s primary conclusion was that excluding undocumented residents from the apportionment base would have had a negligible impact on which party controlled the House of Representatives. Over the past 40 years, in any given election cycle, a maximum of two seats would have shifted between the two major parties.This small number would have had no bearing on which party held the majority in the House.The study explains that the partisan effect is muted for a simple reason: the seat changes don’t fall neatly along party lines. While a reliably Democratic-leaning state like California stands to lose seats, so do reliably Republican-leaning states like Texas and Florida.The states that would gain seats are also a mix of “red” and “blue” states. This distribution across the political spectrum largely cancels out any potential net partisan advantage.This reveals a profound disconnect between the political rhetoric surrounding this issue and the empirical reality. The narrative of a massive partisan power grab that could determine control of Congress isn’t supported by rigorous, data-driven analysis.While the question of representation and vote dilution involves legitimate constitutional principles, the claim of a game-changing partisan effect appears to be more a tool for mobilizing political bases than an accurate description of the likely outcome.A critical, often overlooked aspect of this debate is the inherent uncertainty in the data itself. The U.S. government doesn’t have a precise count of the undocumented population; all figures are estimates, generally hovering around 11 million people.The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has explored complex and sensitive survey methods to try and improve these estimates, highlighting the difficulty of the task.This data uncertainty was a key factor in the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Trump v. New York, as it was unclear if the administration could even produce data reliable enough to implement an exclusion policy.
Broader ConsequencesThe debate over apportionment is the most visible consequence of the census count, but its impact extends far beyond the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The total population count creates powerful ripple effects that shape the presidency, the flow of federal resources, and the drawing of every political map in the country.
Electoral College ImpactThe census has a direct and significant impact on presidential elections through its effect on the Electoral College.A state’s number of electoral votes is determined by adding its number of House seats to its two Senate seats. Because House seats are allocated based on the census population count, any change in a state’s representation directly alters its power in the Electoral College.A state that gains a House seat also gains an electoral vote, and a state that loses a seat loses an electoral vote.Just as with congressional control, the data suggests that excluding undocumented residents would have a minimal effect on presidential outcomes. The PNAS Nexus study found that such an exclusion would have changed the margin of victory in any presidential election since 1980 by a maximum of three electoral votes—never enough to have alteredwho won the presidency.
Federal Funding DistributionPerhaps the most significant, yet least discussed, impact of the census count is its role in the distribution of federal funding.Data from the decennial census and related surveys are a critical input for formulas that guide the distribution of trillions of dollars in federal funds every year. In Fiscal Year 2021 alone, 353 different federal assistance programs relied on census-derived data to distribute $2.8 trillion to states, communities, and tribal governments.Federal agencies use a wide range of census data—including population totals, per capita income, poverty rates, age demographics, and urban/rural designations—to determine eligibility and allocate funding for essential services.Major federal programs that rely on census data for funding allocation include Medicaid, the Highway Planning and Construction program, Title I grants for local education agencies, the Head Start program, the National School Lunch Program, and housing assistance programs.This direct link to funding means that an inaccurate census has devastating financial consequences. Any policy that discourages participation and leads to an undercount—such as an attempt to determine immigration status—would cause affected communities to be denied their fair share of federal funds for the next ten years.This directly impacts funding for local hospitals, schools, roads, and emergency services.
Redistricting Within StatesAfter apportionment determines how many seats each state gets, the census data is used for a second critical process: redistricting.The Census Bureau provides states with detailed, block-level population data, which is then used to redraw the boundaries for their own congressional districts, as well as for state legislative and local government districts.This process is meant to ensure that each district within a state has a roughly equal number of people, thereby upholding the “one person, one vote” principle at the state and local level.The Supreme Court has explicitly affirmed that states are permitted to use the total population count from the census as the basis for drawing these districts. In the 2016 case Evenwel v. Abbott, the Court rejected a challenge arguing that states should be required to use voter population instead, holding that using total population is a legitimate and constitutional choice.The intense political focus on apportionment, while significant, can be misleading. The empirical evidence suggests that the actual impact on the partisan control of Congress and the presidency is minimal.This indicates that the fight over excluding undocumented residents from the apportionment count may be, in effect, a high-stakes proxy war over far more tangible outcomes. The real battle may be over the allocation of trillions of dollars in resources and the drawing of every state and local political map in the country.An attempt to exclude undocumented residents from the count, even if it ultimately fails for apportionment, can succeed in creating a climate of fear that depresses census response rates in immigrant communities. This depressed response rate leads to a general undercount of those communities, which directly impacts the formulas used for federal funding and the population totals used for local redistricting.Therefore, the political battle over apportionment can serve as a powerful vehicle to achieve a different, more concrete goal: shifting resources and local political power away from areas with large immigrant populations.
Not election fraud. Trump is again utilizing political theater to energize the base, demonize the immigrant, deflect from Epstein in any way possible. Smoke and mirrors, while another step is taken in the direction of autocracy.
I'm not interested in reading someone else's articles.
Respond with your own words please.
They can be loving and hard-working all they want to be.
But if they're not going to integrate into our society, they don't deserve to be here, and are no better than the insect laying its eggs inside another creature. They can be loving and hard-working in their own country, can they not?
Tiny, just tiny. And so frightened
Ahhh, well perhaps that is a part of your problem. No need for data, just bigotry
Reminder that this is a discussion forum, not a place to share only articles. Only sharing what other people have written, that's not discussion.
Yet you have no issue with people posting youtube or facebook etc videos. must be the extra time it takes to read that is the problem??
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
You laughed at the post using my own words, then didn't answer it. So, so much for that.
But - fair enough, I don't want to watch a 30 minute video either. But someone else will read that post of mine, which is more textbook explainer than article, and learn, like I did, things I didn't know. I'll continue to post articles, even if you don't read them.
Now here's your salient information, from the article, using my own words.:
Yes, the census was and is an intentional count of ALL persons, including "aliens." Census questions for 40 years, during the big early 20th. century immigration surge, knowingly and intentionally counted them, because they had a census question for what a census respondent's current status was: alien, in process, or naturalized.
So your allegation is simply not true.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace:
"I have to tell you, one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube these days are the court hearings where illegals are in court and ICE shows up to drag them out of court and deport them. "I can think of nothing more American today than keeping our streets safer by getting those violent criminals out of the United States of America, and we all have Donald J. Trump to thank for it."
She's entertained by cruelty, by fear, by grief. She's not alone, and she knows it. Trump's base is also entertained by cruelty.
The majority of those rounded up have no criminal record. They're not dangerous criminals. They're the backbone of our labor economy, working to take care of their families, paying taxes, with a lower crime rate than citizens. If they're being detained at the courthouse, it's because they're there attempting to follow their legal requirements for a court check-in. The government is now asking the judge to dismiss the cases because once they're dismissed, they're able to "drag them" out of the courthouse. It's not a criminal offense to seek amnesty.
"I have to tell you, one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube these days are the court hearings where illegals are in court and ICE shows up to drag them out of court and deport them. "I can think of nothing more American today than keeping our streets safer by getting those violent criminals out of the United States of America, and we all have Donald J. Trump to thank for it."
She's entertained by cruelty, by fear, by grief. She's not alone, and she knows it. Trump's base is also entertained by cruelty.
The majority of those rounded up have no criminal record. They're not dangerous criminals. They're the backbone of our labor economy, working to take care of their families, paying taxes, with a lower crime rate than citizens. If they're being detained at the courthouse, it's because they're there attempting to follow their legal requirements for a court check-in. The government is now asking the judge to dismiss the cases because once they're dismissed, they're able to "drag them" out of the courthouse. It's not a criminal offense to seek amnesty.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
What happened to small government?
Trump Is Building a Maximalist Government
In a series of actions this week, the president sought to expand the government’s reach.
Trump Is Building a Maximalist Government
In a series of actions this week, the president sought to expand the government’s reach.
When he was running for president last year, Donald Trump and his allies promised to increase the power of the presidency over the rest of the federal government. He has moved aggressively to keep that promise, clashing with courts and steamrolling Congress as he works to stamp out pockets of independence.
But it’s not just that Trump wants more power over the federal government. He is also trying to give the federal government more power over society itself.
Since Monday, the Trump administration has moved to assert new power over institutions like colleges and banks. He has ordered a surge of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., a city that ostensibly has home rule. He has dialed up pressure on state lawmakers across the country to further shore up his power through redistricting — a goal he is also pursuing with his efforts to redo the census in pursuit of a count that would be more favorable to Republicans.
It’s presidential maximalism in action. It’s also an extension of his efforts to punish companies for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and to crack down on law firms and universities.
“What this shows is that, it’s sort of soaking in, it’s permeating more and more deeply into various aspects of society,” said Daniel Farber, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who was written about presidential power.
The approach, Farber said, is “very contrary to the traditional small government view of conservatives.” Instead, he said, it’s “one that really aims to change both the sort of political system and the culture.”
Here are four areas where Trump sought to expand the government’s reach this week.
Spoiler
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
They have integrated into our society. What are you talking about, other than finding an excuse to rip these families apart. Some of them, their sons serve in our military. One father, taken from his lawnmower on his landscaping job, has three sons in the military. Another family, her two National Guardsmen sons escorted her to her court hearing to protect her. They have jobs, families, pay taxes, go to church. Many of them are refugees from our meddling policies in Central America. We actually created the refugees stream, from years of our regime interference. They roof our houses, pick our vegetables, do our road repair, clean our hotel rooms, wash our restaurant dishes. They deserve to be treated with human dignity. These are not gang members or violent criminals but what the country is doing to them is criminal.