Extra context added because this headline is wildly misleading.
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ICE’s Unseen Toll in Minneapolis: Suicide Helpline Calls More Than Doubled During Surge
(theintercept.com)
More than six months after federal agents descended on Minnesota, the toll of the immigration crackdown on the Twin Cities continues to mount.
The latest revelations about the far-reaching and deeply felt impacts of the campaign known as Operation Metro Surge come in a Human Rights Watch report published Thursday.
Based on more than 130 interviews, video analysis, and government arrest data, the report documents a dizzying array of abuses over the multi-month siege of Minneapolis and St. Paul — from lethal violence to free speech violations, unlawful detentions, and more.
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While many of the abuses are well-known — including the killings of Minnesota residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents — others occurred in the shadows of the infamous campaign.
Among the most troubling accounts are those provided by healthcare and mental health professionals.
According to the report, the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Minnesota saw a 120 percent increase in calls and a “significant increase” in the number of people struggling with suicidal thoughts or actions during Metro Surge. One medical provider knew of at least three teenagers who attempted to take their own life after their parents were detained in the crackdown, with one of the adolescents doing so on a “frequent” basis.
“One goal of the report is to bring light back to the full scope of the harm, and not only the harm that we saw in terms of violence in the streets, in terms of abusive detentions,” Reagan Williams, the author of the new report, told The Intercept, “but also the effects that that had for aspects of daily life for everybody here — the impact it had on people’s ability to leave their homes, to go to doctor, to go to school, to go to work.”
Human Rights Watch found the combination of violence and racial profiling that defined the crackdown caused many Minnesotans to forgo medical care.
The day after Good was killed, nearly a third of one healthcare provider’s patients — mostly Somali or Spanish-speaking immigrants — did not show up for pre-scheduled appointments. Another provider said the number of in-person visits at their office dropped by as much as 50 percent.
When Williams arrived in the Twin Cities, her focus was the kind of violent interactions documented in viral videos proliferating from Minnesota. She soon learned those weren’t the only issues community members were desperate to discuss.
“People that we talked with expressed emotions of exhaustion, fear, frustration, immense stress,” she said. “They expressed particular concerns for children, medical providers in particular, the impact of missing school, of knowing violence is happening in their communities — for immigrant children and children of color, the fear of having a parent taken, of themselves being taken.”
“Children are particularly vulnerable to long-term impacts of this kind of acute violence and stress,” Williams added. “Those are impacts that will continue on.”
“Near-Total Impunity”
Described by Trump administration officials as the largest immigration enforcement operation in history, the crackdown in the Twin Cities began in December and stretched into February. Thousands of officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol conducted roving arrest operations throughout the area.
More than 4,000 immigrants were arrested during Metro Surge. At roughly 100 arrests per day, it was the highest per capita arrest rate in the country; 64 percent of immigrants arrested in the campaign had no criminal record.
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“In Minnesota, US citizens and immigrants alike were racially profiled in the ordinary course of their day — approached by federal agents while driving, while at work, or while shoveling snow,” the report said. “Minnesota residents of Somali and Latin American descent were notably targeted, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of these communities are US citizens or have green cards.”
A hotline run by the National Lawyers Guild recorded 524 cases of the U.S. citizens detained during the surge, though the figure is believed to be a significant undercount. A survey by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego earlier this year found that nearly a third of Minneapolis residents experienced an interaction with federal agents; of those interactions, nearly half occurred “at or near a school, healthcare facility, childcare facility, courthouse, or place of worship.”
The new report follows a fresh tally from Minneapolis officials, announced last week, estimating that Metro Surge cost the city nearly $700 million. A nonprofit serving tenants in Minnesota described the economic fallout as a “crisis,” the Human Rights Watch report said, with an 85 percent increase in people seeking rent payment assistance.
“If I told you every time ICE was near a school, you’d stop reading my messages.”
In one Minnesota school district, attendance dropped by nearly a third during the government operation. At least 14 incidents of immigration enforcement reported at or near campuses, including the arrest of a preschool teacher, a special education staff member, and a parent at a school bus stop.
“If I told you every time ICE was near a school,” the district’s superintendent told Human Rights Watch, “you’d stop reading my messages.”
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Considering the sweeping impacts of the crackdown, Human Rights Watch is calling for an overhaul of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Border Patrol; congressional investigations into the actions of officials involved in the operation; legislation to prohibit immigration arrests at sensitive locations such as schools and hospitals; and a host of other reforms.
To date, the report said, “The many abuses committed by federal agencies during Operation Metro Surge have so far been met with near-total impunity.”
The post ICE’s Unseen Toll in Minneapolis: Suicide Helpline Calls More Than Doubled During Surge appeared first on The Intercept.
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Eddie Pells
Associated Press
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — A slice of golf history merges with a piece of American history whenever the U.S. Open returns to one of its most storied landscapes, Shinnecock Hills.
The golf course, a links-style masterpiece that was one of the USGA’s five founding clubs in the 1890s, lies across ancient burial grounds that once belonged to the Shinnecock Nation, whose own people built the course.
A Window on History: Native legacy shines at Shinnecock Hills
On Thursday, 156 players from around the world will tee it up for the sixth U.S. Open held on the site. Among those playing back in 1896 — the first time the USGA brought the Open to the outer reaches of Long Island — was John Shippen, the African-American golf teacher and club maker at the club who, as a 16-year-old, joined Shinnecock tribe member Oscar Bunn on the tee sheet.
Shippen was the first Black player to play in the U.S. Open; he and Bunn are believed to be the first two American-born players to play in America’s national championship.
Before the tournament, pros from Britain told USGA management they refused to play against the Black and Native American players. The USGA president, Theodore Havemeyer, told those pros the tournament would go on with or without them.
Though the decision flew beneath the radar during a fledgling time for golf in the U.S. and for professional golf anywhere — in that era, the amateur game, not the pro game, drew the best players — the precedent Havemeyer set looks better as the years pass in a sport with a checkered record of inclusion.
“You think of the word ‘pioneer,’ and it’s probably overused a little bit,” USGA historian Mike Trostel said. “But I think in the case of Shippen, his pioneering spirit as the first African-American professional” stands out.
Shinnecock shares history with a tribal land and its people
While there’s little debate about Shippen’s role as a largely unheralded pioneer, the history between the Shinnecock people and their surroundings is more complicated, and it involves much more than golf.
As detailed in a documentary, “The Land We Share,” that came out in the weeks leading up to this week’s Open, New York’s state legislature forced the Shinnecock to cede most of its territory to the village of Southampton in 1859. The nation’s boundaries now consist of about 800 acres located south of Montauk Highway — a short drive from the entrypoint to one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the country.
But it was members of the Shinnecock tribe who were brought over by the landowners to build this course and who, for decades, maintained it. Tribal member Peter Smith was the third generation from his family to serve as head of the Shinnecock grounds crew. He was widely praised for his setup of the layout when the U.S. Open returned here in 1986, then again in 1995.
Smith’s firing in 1999 — the reasons aren’t well laid out in the documentary and contemporaneous media reports say it was simply because the club was looking to take things in a new direction — created a rift with the Shinnecock that only recently has started to heal.
Smith’s nephew, Matthew, is an assistant on the grounds crew now and was a central figure in the documentary.
“My ancestors built that course, my ancestors died on that course,” Smith says in the movie. “There’s blood, sweat and tears on that course.”
The president of Shinnecock Hills, Brian Pickett, acknowledged in the movie that the course and the Shinnecock Nation share “a part of American history that you can’t hide from.” Tribal council chair Lisa Goree spoke about the realities of a poor tribe situated in the middle of “all this wealth and opulence.”
“There are so many people who pass right through the golf club, they have no idea where that name came from,” Goree said.
As first Black player in the US Open, Shippen made history quietly
Pretty much every telling of Shippen’s story acknowledges he wasn’t focused on the history he made when he played Shinnecock in 1896. The short version is that once he started working at the club and took up golf, he quickly became Shinnecock’s best player.
Members recognized that and paid his entry fee to the U.S. Open. He was part of a field of 35 and was tied for the lead after the first round of the two-round event. He got stuck in the sand on the 13th hole during the second round. He made an 11 there en route to a fifth-place finish and a $10 paycheck.
“I’ve wished 100 times I could’ve played that little par-4 again,” Shippen recounted in a 1969 interview with Tuesday magazine.
Were it not for that mishap, he might not only have been the first Black player in a U.S. Open but the first Black winner, as well.
It took 90 years for the USGA to return to Shinnecock — largely a product of its remote location on the south fork of Long Island. In between, the sport’s struggle with diversity has been a well-documented part of its story.
Players like Charlie Sifford (first Black player to earn a PGA Tour card), Lee Elder (first Black player in the Masters) and Calvin Peete (12 wins on the PGA Tour) are on the short list of African-Americans who pierced golf’s racial barrier.
Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997 to make the most pronounced breakthrough in the white-dominated culture of this country club sport.
Shippen’s contribution 101 years earlier — much like Shinnecock’s Native American heritage — still remains a footnote. Both, however, are revisited whenever golf returns to one of the more special and complex landscapes from its past.
“It’s complicated,” Pickett said. “To us, having had those relationships and talking about the complications is far better than not having the conversation at all.”
The post US Open host Shinnecock shares a complicated past with golf and American history appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
Before President Donald Trump threw his latest hand grenade into congressional negotiations over a key domestic spying law, two factions of Senate Democrats seemed to believe they were on the verge of a breakthrough.
Privacy advocates thought they had their best chance in years of passing reforms, including a warrant requirement for searching American communications collected abroad.
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Centrists allied with U.S. intelligence agencies, meanwhile, thought they were close to renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with only minor tweaks.
Then Trump, who had once already thrown the renewal process into chaos, announced on Wednesday that he wouldn’t sign it unless Congress passed an unrelated voter suppression bill.
Claiming that Democrats were poised to walk away from a spy law compromise, Trump said that “to add a slight bit of intrigue but, for the Good of the Nation, and the People of our Country, I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it.”
Trump’s surprise outburst on Truth Social on Wednesday scrapped the confirmation hearing set later in the day for Jay Clayton, a federal prosecutor in New York, to serve as the permanent director of national intelligence. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., had said that he hoped to quickly confirm Clayton.
Clayton’s impending confirmation had appeared to solve a problem — at least for some Democrats — that Trump created by tapping lapdog housing chief, Bill Pulte, as the Cabinet-level intelligence chief. It might also have opened a route for Congress to renew Section 702, the surveillance law that allows federal agents to conduct “backdoor,” warrantless searches of Americans’ communications collected abroad.
In a joint press conference on Wednesday, top Senate Democrats revealed the cracks in their coalition over next steps on FISA.
A key reformer, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he still hopes to pursue adding a warrant requirement to Section 702, while a centrist aligned with the intelligence agencies, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., expressed disappointment that the easiest route to renewal without major changes had been foreclosed.
“We had a path forward, as of yesterday, and today we don’t, and that’s because of this president.”
“This has become a complete debacle, and now it’s up to the White House to figure out a path forward here,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a member of the intelligence committee. “We had a path forward, as of yesterday, and today we don’t, and that’s because of this president and his advisers.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., remained cagey about what version of the law he would like to see ultimately passed. But in comments at the joint press conference, he sought to portray Democrats as the more responsible party when it came to Section 702.
“It’s on our Republican colleagues to work with us to find A) a capable director, not someone who is a menace, and second, then to work with us on renewing FISA. It is up to them,” Schumer said at the press conference. He said he was deeply concerned about Trump’s appointment of Pulte, who appears likely to step into the office on Friday.
Republicans “have got to have the courage to buck the president, who clearly doesn’t want a DNI director and doesn’t want FISA renewed,” Schumer said. “All he wants is Pulte.”
Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, claimed Sunday that Section 702 renewal was on a “glide path” before Pulte’s nomination. He also praised Clayton’s selection, while reserving the right to ask about Clayton’s views on election integrity.
Reformers said Thursday, however, that Section 702’s renewal was never as assured as Warner and Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have suggested in public comments.
Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats voted in recent weeks against advancing the law’s renewal in versions of the bill that do not include a warrant requirement.
“They don’t want to have to deal with people who want things like warrants.”
“They want that to be the narrative, because they don’t want to have to deal with people who want things like warrants,” said Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “At no point have they actually demonstrated that they have a deal that one, has 60 votes in the Senate, and two, has any chance of going anywhere in the House.”
Wyden expressed alarm about Trump’s actions at the joint Senate Democrat press conference. Wyden said that he always wanted to reform the law — not allow it to expire.
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“It is now even clearer than before that the only path to 60 votes in the United States Senate on intelligence is real reform, actual black-letter law, that addresses these issues,” Wyden said.
Privacy advocates argue that the way out of the congressional logjam is to allow members of Congress to vote on whether to add a warrant requirement, something that Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson have not been willing to allow so far. Even then, however, Trump could veto whatever version of the law emerges from that process.
The post Senate Democrats Aren’t Happy About Trump’s Spy Law Ultimatum appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
Humans create empires for the same reason they create egos. It’s all about the impulse to control.
We come into this world boundless and free with eyes full of wonder, but within a few years our minds create and solidify a sense of self around which our mental lives revolve.
We do this because we are helpless when we are born, and things happen which are uncomfortable or startling, so we naturally begin seeking out strategies to control what happens to us. Before you know it we’ve got vast spires of psychological architecture within us dedicated to using thought to promote the interests and security of an entirely symbolic me-character that we made up in our minds.
And from that point on we are cut off from the Eden of perception. Our attention rests no longer in the wonder of the senses but in the incessant babbling of the mind and its churning narratives about self and other, enemies and threats, attainment and lack, attachment and aversion, ambitions and deficiencies, unworthiness and shame. All because we were born helpless little creatures with nervous systems and a startle response in a world full of chaotic giants.
And then we have the capacity for psychological suffering. Whereas previously we were only able to experience discomfort from actual material forces like hunger or a diaper rash, or from being startled by a big dog or something, suddenly we have created the ability to suffer for reasons we created entirely inside our own heads. Stories like “I’m inadequate,” “I failed,” “I embarrassed myself,” “I made a mistake,” “I hate that person,” or “That person isn’t doing what I want” consume our attention throughout the day and make us miserable.
And it all arises from that initial impulse to control what happens in order to feel secure.
All social dysfunction has its roots in that impulse. Abusive relationships happen when one partner tries to exert extreme control over the other for their own sense of security. Economic injustice happens when one class exploits the other because they think they’d feel a bit more secure if they just had another billion in the bank. Tyrannical governments happen when leaders feel the need to control the thoughts, words and behavior of the populace to secure their ongoing rule. Empires happen when tyrannical governments feel the need to control what goes on not just in their own nation, but in surrounding nations as well.
That’s ultimately all that drives the US empire. People who have far too much interest in controlling other people, with far too much power to do so. It causes a horrifying amount of suffering, destruction, chaos and injustice, but at its root is that fundamental impulse to control what happens which emerges within all of us in early childhood. We’re basically ruled by emotional toddlers who never learned to rein in their egos. They’re trying to control the planet in the same way they tried to control their access to toys and candy when they were small.
It is possible for the human organism to liberate itself from its habituated creation of the ego through the process commonly referred to as spiritual enlightenment. It is also possible for humanity as a species to liberate itself from its large-scale control mechanisms in the same way.
That’s what a healthy humanity will look like. We will be free from all internal impulses to control, manipulate, exploit and dominate, and our systems for organizing society will no longer feature states which oppress their populations and try to rule the world.
We are still very, very far from achieving this potential as a species. Humanity is still deeply ensnared in its egoic delusions, on an individual level and at mass scale. But we’re waking up. Strangely, awkwardly, stumbling forward like a toddler, we are moving to become a conscious species.
____________________
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Colombian Presidential Candidate De La Espriella Accused of Corruption Within Health Sector
(orinocotribune.com)
‘Eulogy for globalist hypocrisy’: Netizens react to Canada PM’s speech on end of ‘rules-based order’
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