Citrus Squeezer

We’re already seeing the impact of the new administration’s promise of mass deportations. The rhetoric has been all about the criminals entering the country illegally but the actual programs (and the intended fear created by them) is having more wide-ranging consequences. There are the concrete changes: Syracuse immigrants are put in ankle monitors, their passports taken in Trump’s first day. “The family, who has been in the country for two years while they seek asylum because they feel their lives are in danger in Ecuador, had an immigration court date in two months. They were not expecting to have to report to ICE in person before then.” And there are ripple effects. Central Valley farmworkers scared to show up to work over deportation fear. “The farm bureau said just the threat of deportation could be enough to deter many of the 55,000 migrant workers the valley needs to operate during harvest season. ‘They’re not going to show up for work and that means crops will remain in the field and not be harvested and probably lost at that point.'” A few years ago, under the same president, we all called these laborers essential workers.

+ “A federal judge in Seattle blocked, temporarily, President Donald Trump’s attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the idea spelled out in the Constitution that every person born in the United States is an American citizen.” The Reagan appointed Judge John Coughenour explained: “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order … Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the Bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” One assumes this question will ultimately make its way to a Supreme Court with a recent track record of boggling minds.