In a quote from the article one legislator lied saying this: We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust,’” Middleton said in a news release following Tuesday’s vote on the school prayer bill. The fact is in god we trust was not the original motto of the nation. E pluribus unum (“Out of many, one”) was adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782 as the motto for the Seal of the United States and has been used on coins and paper money since 1795. The modern motto of the United States of America, as established in a 1956 law signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is “In God we trust”. Want to know why? Because it was a slap at the godless communist of the USSR. Not that we were really a theocratic nation we just wanted to prove to ourselves and kids we were better than the heathens because we have the Christian god. Same shit is going on below.
Here is what it truely is about. “Other bill supporters and lawmakers said that there was a moral and spiritual imperative to introduce children to Christianity. Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, cited a study that found around 25% of children have been to church. Other lawmakers similarly invoked declining Christian participation as a reason to support the bills. “There is eternal life,” said Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels. “And if we don’t expose or introduce our children and others to that, then when they die, they’ll have one birth and two deaths.”” Forcing more kids / people to be Christians. Specifically forcing people to live by a strict regressive religious view of life. As less people are religious the donations to the church get less and funds dry up, churches have to close. The horror of it, then these people do deviant stuff like living normal lives enjoying sex.Hugs
The vote comes amid a broader push by conservative Christians to infuse more religion into public schools and life.
The Ten Commandments Monument is seen at the Texas Capitol in Austin. A Texas Senate panel on Tuesday advanced a bill Tuesday that would require schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Credit: Joe Timmerman/The Texas Tribune
The Texas Senate on Wednesday evening passed a bill that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
Senators passed Senate Bill 10 along party lines on a 20-11 vote.
A day prior,the Senate gave final approval to Senate Bill 11, which would allow districts to provide students with time to pray during school hours, on a 23-7 vote. All Republican senators and three Democrats — Royce West of Dallas, Judith Zaffirini of Laredo and Juan Hinojosa of McAllen — voted for the bill.
Both proposals, which are on Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s list of priority bills this session, are now headed to the House for consideration.
The votes are the latest sign of confidence by conservative Christians that courts will codify their opposition to church-state separation into federal law and spark a revitalization of faith in America.
That much was clear during the debate on the Senate floor. Several Democrats criticized both bills, saying they would infringe on the religious freedoms of Texans who are not Christian.
“Most Texans are religious,” Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, said on the floor Wednesday evening. “But I would venture that Texans do not want religion crammed down their throat by their government. Texans don’t even want their own religion crammed down their throat by their government.”
Both the school prayer and Ten Commandments bills drew sharp rebukes from Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, as well. On the Senate floor Wednesday evening, he read aloud a letter directed to the Texas Legislature and written by 166 faith leaders in the state — including those from Sikh, Baptist, Jewish and Buddhist communities — calling on lawmakers to reject bills requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms.
“We do not need to — and indeed should not — turn public schools into Sunday schools,” wrote the letter, which was issued Tuesday.
Republican Sens. Mayes Middleton of Galveston and Phil King of Weatherford, who authored the bills, have expressed confidence that their legislation would survive in the courts. Religious conservatives see recent court rulings as a sign that legislation putting more religion in public schools will survive legal challenges — though critics of these proposals aren’t so convinced.
“Our schools are not God-free zones. We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust,’” Middleton said in a news release following Tuesday’s vote on the school prayer bill. “Litigious atheists are no longer going to get to decide for everyone else if students and educators exercise their religious liberties during school hours.”
Middleton also thanked President Donald Trump for “making prayer in public schools a top priority.”
Similar arguments to those made on the Senate floor were also echoed during a Senate committee hearing on March 4, as supporters and some lawmakers argued that the legislation would reverse what they see as decades of national, moral decline.
The vote comes amid a broader push by conservative Christians to infuse more religion into public schools and life. In just the last few years, state Republicans have required classrooms to hang donated signs that say “In God We Trust”; allowed unlicensed religious chaplains to supplant mental health counselors in public schools; and approved new curriculum materials that teach the Bible and other religious texts alongside grade-school lessons.
Last month, Texas senators also approved legislation that would allow public taxpayer money to be redirected to private schools, including parochial schools.
Those efforts have come as the Texas GOP increasingly embraces ideologies that argue America’s founding was God-ordained, and its institutions and laws should thus reflect fundamentalist Christians views. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers and leaders have continually elevated once-fringe claims that the wall between church and state is a myth meant to obscure America’s true, Christian roots. The argument has been popularized by figures such as David Barton, a Texas pastor and self-styled “amateur historian” whose work has been frequently debunked by trained historians, many of them also conservative Christians.
Barton and his son, Timothy Barton, were both invited to testify in favor of the bills on the March 4 hearing. Citing old documents and textbooks that mention the Ten Commandments, they argued that Christianity is the basis for American law and morality, and that their inclusion in classrooms would prevent societal ill such as gun violence.
“It used to be there was a very clear moral standard that we could point to,” Timothy Barton testified, calling it “ironic” that children can be arrested for breaking the law — and thus, he said, the Ten Commandments — but that they should not be able to read them in schools.
Other bill supporters and lawmakers said that there was a moral and spiritual imperative to introduce children to Christianity. Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, cited a study that found around 25% of children have been to church.
“It’s absolutely horrific, and something we all need to work on to address,” he said.
Other lawmakers similarly invoked declining Christian participation as a reason to support the bills. “There is eternal life,” said Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels. “And if we don’t expose or introduce our children and others to that, then when they die, they’ll have one birth and two deaths.”
Texas is one of 16 states where lawmakers are pursuing bills to require the Ten Commandments in classrooms — pushes that supporters say have been enabled by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. In 2019’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, for instance, the court ruled in favor of a Washington state football coach, Joe Kennedy, who argued that his employer, a public high school, was violating his religious rights by prohibiting him from leading prayers on the field after games.
Kennedy was among those who testified in support of the Texas bills on March 4. He was joined by Matt Krause, a former state House representative and current lawyer at First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based law firm that represented Kennedy and other high-profile plaintiffs in lawsuits that have allowed for more Christianity in public life.
The Kennedy case, Krause testified, was a “huge paradigm shift” that allowed for the Ten Commandments to be in classrooms because of its historical significance to American law and history. Asked about the recent court decision that blocked a similar Louisiana law, Krause said he expected the Texas bill would be upheld if it were taken to the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and, after that, the U.S. Supreme Court.
The bills have been strongly opposed by religious history scholars and some Christian groups, who argue that they are based on mischaracterizations of early American history and amount to a coercion of religion upon students. Opponents also say that the Ten Commandments bill diminishes a sacred text by stripping it of its religious nature, and that introducing more Christianity into schools will exacerbate tensions and isolate Texas’ growing number of non-Christian students.
“Since 2021, this Legislature has used its authority to impose increasingly divisive policies onto school districts, banning culturally relevant curriculum, forcing libraries to purge undesirable books and putting teachers into the crosshairs of overzealous critics,” said Jaime Puente of the nonprofit Every Texan. The bills “are two giant pieces of red meat that will further harm our schools.”
Christian opponents also testified that the bills would erode church-state separations — a cause that has historically been championed by Baptists and other denominations that faced intense religious persecution in early America.
“All Baptists are called to protect the separation of church and state,” said Jody Harrison, an ordained minister and leader of Baptist Women in Ministry. “Is it really justice to promote one type of Christianity over all schoolchildren?”
Harrison’s comments were strongly opposed by Campbell, the senator. “The Baptist doctrine is Christ-centered,” she said. “Its purpose is not to go around trying to defend this or that. It is to be a disciple and a witness for Christ. That includes the Ten Commandments. That’s prayer in schools. It is not a fight for separation between church and state.”
Disclosure: Every Texan has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Mother Jones illustration; Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/Getty; Photos courtesy Génesis Lozada, Joseph Giardina, Arturo Suárez, and María Alvarado
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On Friday, March 14, Arturo Suárez Trejo called his wife, Nathali Sánchez, from an immigration detention center in Texas. Suárez, a 33-year-old native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained that his deportation flight had been delayed. He told his wife he would be home soon. Suárez did not want to go back to Venezuela. Still, there was at least a silver lining: In December, Sánchez had given birth to their daughter, Nahiara. Suárez would finally have a chance to meet the three-month-old baby girl he had only ever seen on screens.
But, Sánchez told Mother Jones, she has not heard from Suárez since. Instead, last weekend, she found herself zooming in on a photo the government of El Salvador published of Venezuelan men the Trump administration had sent to President Nayib Bukele’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. “I realized that one of them was my husband,” she said. “I recognized him by the tattoo [on his neck], by his ear, and by his chin. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew it was him.” The photo Sánchez examined—and a highly producedpropaganda videopromoted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House—showed Venezuelans shackled in prison uniforms as they were pushed around by guards and had their heads shaved.
The tattoo on Suárez’s neck is of a colibrí, a hummingbird. His wife said it is meant to symbolize “harmony and good energy.” She said his other tattoos, like a palm tree on his hand—an homage to Suárez’s late mother’s use of a Venezuelan expression about God being greater than a coconut tree—were similarly innocuous. Nevertheless, they may be why Suárez has been effectively disappeared by the US government into a Salvadoran mega-prison.
Mother Jones has spoken with friends, family members, and lawyers of ten men sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration based on allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua. All of them say their relatives have tattoos and believe that is why their loved ones were targeted. But they vigorously reject the idea that their sons, brothers, and husbands have anything to do with Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration recently labeled a foreign terrorist organization. The families have substantiated those assertions to Mother Jones, including—in many cases—by providing official documents attesting to their relatives’ lack of criminal histories in Venezuela. Such evidence might have persuaded US judges that the men were not part of any criminal organization had the Trump administration not deliberately deprived them of due process.
On March 14, President Donald Trump quietly signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act—a 1798 law last used during World War II. The order declared that the United States is under invasion by Tren de Aragua. It is the first time in US history that the 18th-century statute, which gives the president extraordinary powers to detain and deport noncitizens, has been used absent a Congressional declaration of war. The administration then employed the wartime authority unlocked by the Alien Enemies Act to quickly load Venezuelans onto deportation flights from Texas to El Salvador.
In response to a class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Democracy Forward, federal judge James Boasberg almost immediately blocked the Trump White House from using the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport Venezuelans, and directed any planes already in the air to turn around. But in defiance of that order, the administration kept jets flying to El Salvador. Now Suárez and others like him are trapped in the Central American nation with no clear way to contact their relatives or lawyers.
Suárez, whose story has also been reported on by the Venezuelan outlet El Estímulo, is an aspiring pop musician who records under the name SuarezVzla. His older brother, Nelson Suárez, said his sibling’s tattoos were intended to help him “stand out” from the crowd. “As Venezuelans, we can’t be in our own country so we came to a country where there is supposedly freedom of expression, where there are human rights, where there’s the strongest and most robust democracy,” Nelson said. “Yet the government is treating us like criminals based only on our tattoos, or because we’re Venezuelan, without a proper investigation or a prosecutor offering any evidence.” (All interviews with family members for this story were conducted in Spanish.)
“Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” the ICE agent reportedly said. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”
The Justice Department’s website states that Suárez’s immigration case is still pending and that he is due to appear before a judge next Wednesday. Records provided by Nelson Suárez show that Arturo has no criminal record in Venezuela. Nor, according to his family, does Suárez have one in Colombia and Chile, where he lived after leaving Venezuela in 2016. They say he is one of millions of Venezuelans who sought a better life elsewhere after fleeing one of the worst economic collapses in modern history. (Just a few years ago, Secretary Rubio, then a senator from Florida, stressed that failure to protect Venezuelans from deportation “would result in a very real death sentence for countless” people who had “fled their country.”)
The stories shared with Mother Jones suggest that Trump’s immigration officials actively sought out Venezuelan men with tattoos before the Alien Enemies Act was invoked and then removed them to El Salvador within hours of the presidential proclamation taking effect.
“This doesn’t just happen overnight,” said immigration lawyer Joseph Giardina, who represents one of the men now in El Salvador, Frizgeralth de Jesus Cornejo Pulgar. “They don’t get a staged reception in El Salvador and a whole wing for them in a maximum-security prison…It was a planned operation, that was carried out quickly and in violation of the judge’s order. They knew what they were doing.”
Arturo Suárez performing and speaking with his baby daughter from detention.Courtesy Arturo Suárez
The White House has yet to provide evidence that the hundreds of Venezuelans flown to El Salvador—without an opportunity to challenge their labeling as Tren de Aragua members and “terrorists”—had actual ties to the gang. When pressed on the criteria used for their identification, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed to unspecified “intelligence” deployed to arrest the Venezuelans she has referred to as “heinous monsters.” Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has insisted—without providing specific details—that the public should trust ICE to have correctly targeted the Venezuelans based on “criminal investigations,” social media posts, and surveillance.
Robert Cerna, an acting field office director for ICE’s removal operations branch, said the agency “did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone.” But Cerna also acknowledged that many of the Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act had no criminal history in the United States, a fact he twisted into an argument to seemingly justify the summary deportations without due process. “The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” Cerna wrote. “In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. It demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
The relatives who talked to Mother Jones painted a vastly different picture from the US government’s description of the men as terrorists or hardened criminals. Many said their loved ones were tricked into thinking they were being sent back to Venezuela, not to a third country. (The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a detailed request for comment asking for any evidence that the Venezuelans named in this articlehave ties to Tren de Aragua.)
Before leaving for the United States in late 2023, Neri Alvarado Borges lived in Yaritagua, a small city in north central Venezuela. His father is a farmer and his mother supports his 15-year-old brother, Nelyerson, who has autism.
Neri Alvarado with his brother Nelyerson in 2023.Courtesy María Alvarado
Alvarado’s older sister, María, stressed in a call from Venezuela that her brother has no connection to Tren de Aragua. She said her brother was deeply devoted to helping Nelyerson—explaining that one of his three tattoos is an autism awareness ribbon with his brother’s name on it and that he used to teach swimming classes for children with developmental disabilities.“Anyone who’s talked to Neri for even an hour can tell you what a great person he is. Truly, as a family, we are completely devastated to see him going through something so unjust—especially knowing that he’s never done anything wrong,” María said. “He’s someone who, as they say, wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”
Still, Alvarado was detained by ICE outside his apartment in early February and brought in for questioning, Juan Enrique Hernández, the owner of two Venezuelan bakeries in the Dallas area and Alvarado’s boss, told Mother Jones. One day later, Hernández went to see him in detention and asked him to explain what had happened. Alvarado told Hernández that an ICE agent had asked him if he knew why he had been picked up; Alvarado said that he did not. “Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” the ICE agent replied, according to Hernández. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”
The agent then asked Alvarado to explain his tattoos and for permission to review his phone for any evidence of gang activity. “You’re clean,” the ICE officer told Alvarado after he complied, according to both Hernández and María Alvarado. “I’m going to put down here that you have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.”
For reasons that remain unclear, Hernández said that another official in ICE’s Dallas field office decided to keep Alvarado detained. María Alvarado said her brother told her the same story at the time.
Hernández spoke to Alvarado shortly before he was sent to El Salvador. “There are 90 of us here. We all have tattoos. We were all detained for the same reasons,” he recalled Alvarado telling him. “From what they told me, we are going to be deported.” Both assumed that meant being sent back to Venezuela.
Hernández, a US citizen who moved to the United States from Venezuela nearly three decades ago, searched desperately for Alvarado when he didn’t show up in his home country that weekend. He was nearly certain that Alvarado was in El Salvador when he first spoke to Mother Jones on Thursday. “I have very few friends,” he said. “Very few friends and I have been in this country for 27 years. I let Neri into my house because he is a stand-up guy…Because you can tell when someone is good or bad.” Later that day, on Alvarado’s 25th birthday, Hernández got confirmation that his friend was in El Salvador when CBS News published a list of the 238 people now at CECOT.
A centerpiece of Bukele’s brutal anti-gang crackdown, CECOT is known for due process violations and extreme confinement conditions. Last year, CNN obtained rare access to the remote prison, which can hold up to 40,000 people. The network found prisoners living in crowded cells with metal beds that had no mattresses or sheets, an open toilet, and a cement basin. Visitation and time outdoors are not allowed. A photographer who was allowed into the prison as the Venezuelans arrived earlier this month wrote for Time magazine that he witnessed them being beaten, humiliated, and stripped naked.
The Trump administration has indicated in court records that the El Salvador operation was weeks, if not months, in the making. In a declaration, a State Department official said arrangements with the Salvadoran and Venezuelan governments for the countries to take back US deportees allegedly associated with Tren de Aragua had been made after weeks of talks “at the highest levels”—including ones involving Secretary of State Rubio—and “were the result of intensive and delicate negotiations.”
As part of the deal, the US government will pay El Salvador $6 million to hold the Venezuelan men for at least one year. Calling the agreements a “foreign policy matter,” Rubio has claimed the outsourcing of deportees’ detention to Bukele’s “excellent prison system” is saving money for US taxpayers.
It is unclear if, or when, anyone sent to CECOT will be able to return to Venezuela. A Human Rights Watch program director noted in a declaration that the organization “is not aware of any detainees who have been released from that prison.” During an appeals court hearing on March 24, the ACLU’s lead counsel Lee Gelernt said, “We’re looking at people now who may be in a Salvadoran prison the rest of their lives.”
Neri Alvarado working at the bakery and the autism awareness tattoo with his brother’s name.Courtesy María Alvarado
Joseph Giardina’s client Frizgeralth de Jesus Cornejo Pulgar thought he was set to return to Venezuela on a deportation flight. Carlos, Frizgeralth’s older sibling, said his 26-year-old brother called their sister, who lives in Tennessee, from the El Valle detention center in Texas. He said Frizgeralth told her he was going to be deported to Venezuela later that day. “He was happy that he was going to be here with us,” Carlos said from Caracas in a video call with Mother Jones.
But Frizgeralth never arrived. Eventually, the family heard from the girlfriend of another Venezuelan set to be deported on the same flight as Carlos. She had identified him in videos shared on social media of the men who had been sent to the prison in El Salvador. On March 19, Carlos started scouring the internet and spotted his brother in a TikTok video. In it, Frizgeralth has his freshly shaved head pressed down, a rose tattoo on his neck peeking out from under a white t-shirt.
“We felt very powerless and in a lot of pain,” Carlos said. “To see how they mistreat a person who doesn’t deserve any of that. It’s not fair.”
“I never imagined being imprisoned just for getting a tattoo.”
Frizgeralth arrived in the United States in June 2024 after crossing the Darién Gap and waiting several months in Mexico for a CBP One appointment. The Biden-era program, which the Trump administration has since terminated, allowed migrants to schedule a date to present lawfully at a US port of entry. Carlos said Border patrol agents let Frizgeralth’s girlfriend and their other brother, as well as two friends, through but they held Frizgeralth back. He ended up detained at Winn Correctional Center, an ICE facility in Louisiana.
In messages to his family from detention, Frizgeralth expressed concern he was being investigated because of his tattoos. He explained that none of the 20 or so images—including one on his chest of an angel holding a gun—he has tattooed on his body have any connection to gang activity. He also described feeling discouraged from hearing stories in detention of Venezuelans who had recently been redetained and said ICE agents picked them up over suspicions about their tattoos.
Frizgeralth even had a declaration from his tattoo artist confirming the harmless nature of the artwork. “I never imagined being imprisoned just for getting a tattoo,” Frizgeralth, who owns a streetwear clothing brand with Carlos, wrote. “I never imagined being separated from my family. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, not even my worst enemy if I had one. It’s horrible, it’s mental torture every day.”
Like Suárez and Alvarado, Frizgeralth had no criminal record in Venezuela, documents show. Giardina said his client also had no known criminal history in the United States. Nor did he have a final deportation order. During his preliminary court hearings, the US government never claimed or presented evidence that Frizgeralth had ties to Tren de Aragua. “He was doing everything he was supposed to do,” Giardina said. “He got vetted and checked when he came into the country. He was in detention the entire time. It’s insanity.” If anything, Giardina said, his client had a strong claim for asylum based on political persecution. He said Frizgeralth was being targeted by the colectivos, paramilitary groups linked to the Maduro regime.
About a week prior to his deportation, they moved Frizgeralth to Texas. His next hearing, which is scheduled for April 10, still appears on the immigration court’s online system. “To detain them in this maximum security prison with no access to lawyers, no charges, just because you’re saying they’re terrorists…,” Giardina said. “I mean, what the hell?”
Génesis Lozada Sánchez said she and her younger brother Wuilliam are from a rural Venezuelan “cattle town” called Coloncito near Colombia. Following Venezuela’s economic collapse, both she and Wuilliam lived in Bogota, where her brother saved up for the journey to the United States by making pants at a clothing factory. After he reached the border last January, Wuilliam was detained for more than a year, Génesis said.
On Friday, March 14, he called a cousin in the United States to say that he was about to be deported to Venezuela. “But to everyone’s surprise, that’s not what happened. They were kidnapped,” Génesis said. “Why do I say kidnapped? These people have no ties to El Salvador. They haven’t committed any crimes there. And they’re not even Salvadoran. They don’t even cross into El Salvador after going through the Darién Gap on their way to the United States. So, it’s a kidnapping. They tricked these guys into signing papers by telling them they were being sent to Venezuela.”
Like other men sent to El Salvador, Wuilliam has tattoos. But Génesis said that they have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua and that her brother has no criminal record. His goal had been to make enough money in the United States to help support their parents and to save up enough to hopefully open a clothing factory back home.
Other reporting and court briefs further support the families’ suspicions that their loved ones were primarily targeted for deportation because of their tattoos. In one instance, a professional soccer player, whose attorney said had fled Venezuela after protesting against the Maduro regime and being tortured, was accused of gang membership based on a tattoo similar to the logo of his favorite team, Real Madrid.
John Dutton, a Houston-based immigration attorney, said that he started noticing ICE officers detaining Venezuelans during check-ins due to their tattoos earlier this year. “If they notice they have a tattoo, they’re just taking them into custody,” he explained. “No more questions to ask.” Dutton estimated he now has about a dozen clients who have been arrested because of tattoos.
One of his clients, Henrry Albornoz Quintero, was due in court for a bond hearing last Wednesday after being taken into detention at a routine ICE check-in. “I show up. The judge asked me where my client is,” the Houston lawyer said. “I asked the same question to the DHS attorney. She looked at her notes, shuffled papers around as if she’s gonna find the answer in there, looks up, and said, ‘Judge, I don’t know.’”
Dutton told the judge that his client might be in El Salvador; his relatives had recognized him in one of the images of people at CECOT. The judge then decided not to hear the case on the grounds that he no longer had jurisdiction. “You could tell he wanted to help me,” Dutton added. “He just couldn’t. There’s nothing he could do.”
The next day, Albornoz’s name appeared on the list of people imprisoned in El Salvador. So far, Albornoz is the only one of Dutton’s clients to be sent there. His wife is nine months pregnant with their first child.
“They didn’t just deport these people and then set them free,” says Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. “They sent them to El Salvador, where that country, at the behest of the United States, is incarcerating them for at least a year in their prison system.This is not just deportation without due process. This is imprisonment without due process in a foreign prison system that has terrible conditions. That’s a pretty blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, which says that you can’t take away people’s life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
Until Thursday, March 20, Barbara Alexandra Manzo still wasn’t sure if her brother Lainerke Daniel Manzo Lovera was among those sent to El Salvador and transferred to CECOT. The family hadn’t heard from him since that Saturday, when he called from El Paso, Texas, to say they were deporting him to Venezuela or Mexico. Her confirmation also came when she saw his name on the CBS News list.
Barbara Alexandra told Mother Jones that Lainerke didn’t even have a tattoo before he left Venezuela in December 2023. He got one—a clock on his arm—while living and working in Mexico, waiting for a CBP One appointment. It was a gift from a roommate who had been given a date before he did. Last October, Lainerke showed up at the border and was sent to ICE detention; first in San Diego, then briefly in Arizona. He had a court hearing scheduled for March 26.
“My son went to look for a better future, the American Dream,” his mother Eglee Xiomara said in a video. “And it didn’t come true. That was the worst trip he has ever made in his life.”
Lainerke has yet to meet his six-month-old daughter, who was born in the United States. “He’s never been in prison,” Barbara Alexandra said. “[We’re wondering] if he’s ok or if something is happening to him. And we’ll never know because we have no recourse.”
Nelson Suárez fears that he, too, could meet the same fate as his brother Arturo, the Venezuelan musician. Even during the first Trump administration, the fact that Nelson has Temporary Protected Status and a pending asylum case would have been enough to protect him from deportation. But there are no guarantees that it will be now. If Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order is lifted or overturned, he could be immediately deported to Venezuela, or sent to El Salvador, without due process. He doesn’t know if he will walk out of a scheduled check-in with ICE in May free or in chains.
“I’m really scared,” he said last week. “My three daughters are here with me. My wife is here. My kids are in school. I don’t know what could happen. Since this happened to my brother, I really haven’t been able to sleep. I have no peace, no sense of calm. I’m afraid to go out on the street. But at the same time, we have to go out to work and get things done.”
As most know I have had a rough few days. And I decided as I worked around the house and did stuff I needed something very not news in my head. I told my computer to find me coming of age young people figuring out they were gay. There are great short movies out there by people who lived through it and while some have the same trope, some have really good takes. I never got that chance in my life so I enjoy those movies and cheer for the kids that come together and find themselves at the end. Ok it is not Picard but it is also the kind of things you don’t need to watch as you work to enjoy the story. Then life decided to kick me in the balls.
Then the trailer for the movie silenced came to my ears. I heard it, then rushed to my computers to see what was happening. I watched the trailer. Oh shit … my mind spiraled. Everything I was going through up until then crashed on me … and I clicked on the link. And watched even more screen takes.
While I was crying everything that happened next is entirely my fault. I looked up where you can watch this documentary. This documentary of kids being abused … and getting their day in court. That was what I desperately wanted to see. Them win in court. But sadly two days later I can not get there. And I doubt I ever will, not unless I can get past the abuse. Ron commented I did not seem like myself and have not seemed to be sleeping well, not like I have been for a while. The pictures in my head, the screenshots of memories repeating over and over … no I am not sleeping well.
See the movie beginning details the death of a 5 / 6 year old boy who walks out in front of a moving train, which if you watch long enough you find that the boy had watched his brother beaten for trying to protect him from rape, been repeatedly raped, then his brother raped. The movie makes it even worse because the bath the younger boy got while nude … I got that same damn bath. The soap, the hands, the attention paid … it is all too damn real to me.
And then goes on to mix the new teacher with flashbacks to the rape of a 6 yr girl he interrupted not knowing he had. He witnesses the repeated beatings of a boy that turns out to be the brother that killed himself and he was repeatedly being raped that the teacher finally stops using violence himself. Totally against their societal norms. The reasons for the beatings become clear. The boy tries to resist being repeatedly sexually abused.
At that point I checked out. Lost in time and space in my own mind. I came back to my own mind with the computer player paused and Ron knocking on my office door asking if I wanted supper. I told him no and did not tell him about the video. Then two nights of bad sleep, still have not told him.
I want to finish the movie, I want to see these kids win. But the court part of it which is next will have to include their abuse, the rapes, forced oral sex. Right now I can’t do that. I can’t. I am sorry I know it is a movie but it is a documentary and these kids did go through this. I went through this. So I closed the player a few minutes ago and won’t be opening it for a while. Back to listening to podcasts of news and watching videos of what tRump is doing. As weird as it is to say … it is far less stressful to me than that movie. Sadly now my YouTube feed has a few abuse videos so I have to ignore the suggested and only watch the ones on my subscribed listed. Now you know why the last few days have been a struggle for me. Hugs
As I was checking this Ron knocked on my closed office door. He came over and held his arms out and slowly reached around me to hug me. He asked me if I was OK, that I had been a bit strange lately. I told him I was fine and loved him, just a bit tired. He replied he couldn’t have done the work the last few days without me … which is weird as I can’t help much other than fetch needed tools and parts and the occasional flashlight. But when he came in the room I quickly turned this page to another tab. That means he knows something is wrong and I am not hiding it well enough. So I have to forget the documentary and everything in my past again as best I can.
What I wanted this post to be about was why the hell do I even read this stuff, watch these things. I have to know they will trigger me. Yet it is like a moth to a flame. It is why I had to leave the Male Survivor site. Every story I read and replied to became somehow ingrained in me because some aspect of what they wrote I went through. I started to describe the many ways those posts are me and what I went through … I got five or six sentences in when I realized I was spiraling down again. Let just say it was too many who had parts of my abuse and added together it becomes a whole, and I couldn’t keep putting myself there even to help others. I can not help others if I am wallowing in my own suffering. It was destroying me.
It is why I could listen to Kamyk and help him night after night after night, because our abuse was so different. He was a kidnaped victim for three months for ritualistic abuse. Mine was a long slog from when I was 3 until the last time one of the hell spawn raped me repeatedly at 24. So 21 years of violence and physical abuse. Anyway. I am tired. I am going to answer comments until Ron is ready for bed. Lately he has wanted to cuddle a lot which I really like. Be safe everyone. Hugs
During the same week as the president’s address to Congress, RepresentWomen held our annual Democracy Solutions Summit (DSS). This solutions-oriented event allowed us to imagine what our democracy could look like with better policies and better representation.
Here, women leaders, elected officials, advocates and experts discussed the problems facing our democracy and uplifted actionable solutions to improve women’s representation and strengthen our democracy overall. This year’s summit addressed the critical need for more women in local, state and federal leadership roles.
The Democracy Solutions Summit clearly contrasts with the uncertainty of Trump’s address to Congress. The DSS is the only democracy summit featuring only women speakers and panelists committed to actionable, data-driven solutions and building coalitions that bolster American democracy at this critical time. Furthermore, our research has found that when multiple structural solutions are combined, we can bolster women’s representation in every level of government.
Complete recordings of the summit are available online, but here is a quick recap of all three days. (snip-More)
My question is who decides if a hair cut conforms to gender stereotypes / norms. I somehow doubt the 1970s /1980s long shoulder length but parted and swept back blow dried hairstyles for guys would pass the test if religious conservatives get to say what is acceptable? What about women with cancer who are taking treatments for that cancer and lost their hair or are growing it back? Can the doctor be sued who prescribed the treatments? It is like trans people using the bathrooms of gender identity, who decides if that woman is feminine enough for the girl’s bathroom or that man manly enough for the boy’s bathroom? I have told everyone while the hell spawn could have any hair they wanted including long hair I was required to have a crew cut or nearly bald hairstyle as punishment for even existing in a time when everyone was wearing their hair long. What about parents rights? You know the reason all media with LGBTQ+ content must be removed from schools and all libraries, because some parents complain their kids might see it? Do the progressives or the former hippies get to allow their boy children to have long hair or their girls short hair? See how this can’t work, can’t be allowed. People lose all autonomy and individual rights to express themselves as they want to. It is again an attempt to return to the straight cis white Christian male dominated society of the 1950s. Women were subservient to men and needed their permission for most things outside the home. Raping your wife, forcing her to have sex against her will was legal as she had to perform her wifely duties. Non-white people knew their place and stayed there. The entire LGBTQ+ were hidden in their closets too frighted to be found out to demand their equality and rights. That is the world they want and are trying to create using the cover of trans people are harming the children. It is why they attacked drag queens so violently, they violate that 1950s norms. They are desperate to enforce a nearly religious observance of their preferred way to live based mostly on religion. Look at the bios of nearly every one of the republicans pushing these things and you see they are from a fundamentalist conservative religious faith that wants to control how other people live. Not to bring others closer to their godlike Rev Ed Trevors does, but to make themselves feel better about things and the idea that if they make all the people they don’t like, all the acts they don’t like to go away their god will praise them, give them an afterlife life, and their god will be so please with them he will come back right away to get them. Their god is a god of anger and smiting. He is not a loving god who loves people as they are or want to be. Hugs
Republicans in the Arkansas state legislature have introduced legislation that would make it effectively illegal for hairdressers to give gender-based haircuts to people of the opposite gender. The bill would allow the hairdressers to be sued if the haircut given does not conform with the gender assigned to a person at birth. This is reminiscent of the government-approved haircuts in North Korea, and equally as oppressive. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.
Sam and Emma in the fun half. Normally there is only two ways to watch the fun half. You can be a member which they admit that some people can not afford which they have a way to get free membership if you need it. Or you can catch the first half while it is playing live and in the description box will be a link to the free fun half. If you click on that you can watch the entire thing. If you save it like I do for later you can go back and watch it at any time because if you don’t the link will disappear so you can’t see it. They make the second half private. Hugs
Watch the Majority Report live Monday–Friday at 12 p.m. EST on YouTube OR listen via daily podcast at http://www.Majority.FM …OR become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join
March 24, 1616 William Leddra was executed by the Charter government of Massachusetts for being a Quaker. He was the fourth and last of his religion to be hanged with the approval of Governor John Endicott. Though the court did not find him “evil,” he had sympathized with the Quakers who were executed before him; he had refused to remove his hat, and he used the words “thee” and “thou,” which, to Quakers, implied the equality of all people. (Check out the way the link works for this. Much better than the terrible transcription I read the other day.-Newsletter author) Contemporaneous letter describing Leddra’s and other Quakers’ persecution (starts p.58) =========================================== March 24, 1918 Native-born Canadian women over 21 (except native, or First Nations, women) won the right to vote in federal elections, but not to run for office for yet another year. Suffrage was not granted to women in Quebec provincial elections until 1940. Read about Thérèse Casgrain =========================================== March 24, 1964 In a sit-down against nuclear weapons at Parliament Square in London, England, 1,172 were arrested. ============================================ March 24, 1965 The first Teach-In on the Vietnam War was held at the University of Michigan a month after President Lyndon Johnson ordered bombing of North Vietnam. The U-M teach-in was among the first of a new form of campus protest that was to spread nationwide, as a means of mobilizing students to examine policies of their government that they previously had taken for granted. About the 1st Teach-In view original leaflets Very few Americans had ever heard of the country in southeast Asia, and the event was intended to educate the participants in the history of Vietnam and foreign aggression there. Young protester in Chicago march, photo Jo Freeman ============================================= March 24, 1967 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led an anti-war march for the first time in Chicago, opposing the Vietnam War by saying: “Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama . . . Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation The bombs in Vietnam explode at home—they destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America . . . .” Reverend King addresses rally at the end of the Chicago march, photo: Jo Freeman ============================================== March 24, 1980 The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was founded, electing as their first president Olga Madar, a vice president of the United Auto Workers. The convention adopted four goals: organize the unorganized; promote affirmative action; increase women’s participation in their unions; and increase women’s participation in political and legislative activities. CLUW history CLUW today ============================================= March 24, 1980 The archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was assassinated while consecrating the Eucharist during mass. Monseñor Romero had become a well-known critic of violence and injustice and, as such, was perceived in the right-wing civilian and military circles of El Salvador as an enemy, and criticized by the Roman Catholic church. Romero had exhorted the police and soldiers to disobey orders to kill innocent people, refusing to be silenced. Worshippers had interrupted, with ovations, his homilies condemning the terrorism of the state. The ongoing legacy of Monsignor Romero (The Fransiscans have scrubbed him away. Here’s another place to read about him) ============================================== March 24, 1989 The most environmentally damaging oil spill to date began when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, ran aground on Bligh Reef in southern Alaska’s Prince William Sound. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil (257,000 barrels or 38,800 metric tons) eventually leaked into the water.Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil nearly 500 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 1300 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and thousands of sea mammals were lost in the disaster. A dead murrelet, one of the hardest-hit sea birds in the Valdez spill. 25 years after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, read more
Mother Jones, c. 1910, marching in Trinidad, Colo. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # MMS Kerr Archives.
On March 22, 1914, Mary “Mother” Jones was arrested on a train in southern Colorado for her work in fighting for the coal miners on strike that area. This was her second arrest in this conflict, as she had previously been detained by the state militia in Trinidad and then sent to Denver. Upon release in Denver, she immediately went back to the coal fields, daring the mine owners and their bought police forces to arrest her again. Her work here was typical of the sacrifices this iconic organizer made in the second half of her life as she fought for the miners so badly exploited in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America.
Mother Jones is one of the most fascinating characters in American history. An Irish housewife who had little connection to political activism for much of her adult life, she emerged in middle age as a fiery agitator after her husband and all four of her children died of yellow fever in Memphis and her dress shop burned in the Chicago fire of 1871. She quickly became the voice of the mineworkers, especially in the coal country of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. She bridged generations of activism, being extremely close friends with Terence Powderly while also hailing the rise of the United Mine Workers and radical activists that Powderly could barely understand at his peak in the 1880s. She said she was much older than she actually was, which had both rhetorical powers and helped cement her in our historical memory, as she claimed to be 100 years old the year she died when in fact she was probably 93.
By 1897, she was known as Mother Jones, wearing out of style Victorian black dresses and using the mantle of motherhood as central to her organizing prowess. Calling her “mother” both established her as a maternal figure among the miners but also centered her emphasis on childhood and motherhood in organizing. For instance, she opposed women’s suffrage and ultimately believed that women should be taking care of their children rather than getting involved in politics. Her own life story made this stance not hypocritical. She also used children in her organizing, including the 1903 Children’s Crusade, a march of miners’ children from Pennsylvania to Theodore Roosevelt’s home in Oyster Bay, New York, where the children carried signs reading, “We want to go to School and not the mines.” Roosevelt refused to meet with them. She worked for the UMWA but attended the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 and worked as an organizer for the Socialist Party in the late 1900s, returning to the UMWA as a paid organizer in 1911.
Though all of these actions, Mother Jones became known as “the most dangerous woman in America,” a title given to her by a district attorney in West Virginia named Reese Blizzard. During a 1902 trial where she was charged with ignoring injunctions against miners holding union meetings (First Amendment in the coal fields indeed!), Blizzard pointed at her, saying, “There sits the most dangerous woman in America. She comes into a state where peace and prosperity reign … crooks her finger [and] twenty thousand contented men lay down their tools and walk out.” That wasn’t true and served the interests of the owners to say that their employees were actually good people but stupid and easily led astray by outside agitators, instead of admitting their employees had a bloody good reason to go on strike. Anyway, the nickname stuck and this attitude from employers was something Jones reveled in.
In the fall of 1913, Mother Jones traveled to Colorado to participate in mineworkers’ organizing in the coal fields in the southern part of that state. Conditions in the coal fields were all too typical of the time: complete industry control over a workforce that was polyglot and desperate. Working conditions were horribly dangerous. Between 1884 and 1912, 1,708 workers died in Colorado coal mines (over 42,000 nationwide). Companies controlled not only the mines but housing, stores, and education. Union organizing was met with brutality and murder. Effectively, the coal companies controlled workers’ lives in Colorado as they did in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. These were Mother Jones’s people.
The companies did not welcome Jones’s presence. She was thrown off company property several times. She was arrested twice. After the first arrest, she was placed in a comfortable hospital for a month. After all, she was an elderly woman and a bit harder to crack the whip on than the miners themselves. But on March 22, 1914, she was arrested again. This time, the companies were less kind. They threw her into the Huerfano County jail in Walsenburg. This was no nice hospital. She spent 23 days in the jail.
The United Mine Workers tried to capitalize on Jones’s arrest. They issued a pamphlet describing (and perhaps exaggerating a bit) the conditions this old woman had to suffer through as she lived her faith of defending the miners. The pamphlet discussed the filth, the rats in the cell, the snow pouring in a broken window, a guard jabbing her with a bayonet. On the other hand, the mine owners and their friends accused Mother Jones of having been a prostitute in a Denver brothel in 1904 and said her support for Coxey’s Army had consisted of procuring women for sex. On both sides, Mother Jones elicited strong opinions.
After her second release, Mother Jones went to Washington DC to testify on the conditions in the coal country. A few days later, the Colorado coal wars would see their most violent incident, with the Ludlow Massacre. Between Ludlow and the aftermath when enraged miners went on a rampage against anyone associated with the coal companies, up to 200 people died in this strike, possibly the most deadly in American history. John D. Rockefeller Jr. agreed to meet with her about the conditions of the miners as part of his public relations effort when he was savagely attacked for his role at Ludlow.
Mary Jones died in 1930. Earlier that year, on the day she supposedly turned 100, Mother Jones was filmed with sound about workers’ rights.
FURTHER READING:
Elliott Gorn’s The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
Thomas Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.
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