This video touches just briefly on child abuse in that the republicans / clergy / highly religious do in the defense of the LGBTQ+ especially trans people accused of it. The Rev. Trevors is a real supporter of the LGBTQ+ and he doesn’t like it when Christians use his god / bible to harm others. Hugs
Does this keep us safe? What harm does washing her hands cause? What is more traumatic, a passing trans person in the bathroom washing their hands or the police barging in and arresting someone in the bathroom. I can see the mistake she made. She thinks they know in their hearts that it is wrong to make bans on trans people. No they are sure their god, one with the same name as her own god, but their god is the hateful vengeful fundamentalist Old Testament god while her is a loving Jesus. Hugs.
Left – Wikimedia Commons, Khrystinasnell // Right: Marcy Rheintgen, selfie
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When 20-year-old college student Marcy Rheintgen made her yearly spring break trip to her grandparents’ property in Florida, she said she felt at peace — until March 19, when police escorted her out of the bathroom of the State Capitol Building and placed her in handcuffs. Evidently, Rheintgen had violated a 2023 state law criminalizing trans people who use government-owned public restrooms that align with their gender.
Tampa Bay Times reporter Romy Ellenbogen accompanied Rheintgen to the Capitol. When they arrived, several officers were stationed outside the women’s restroom doors. They warned her not to enter the women’s restroom. Draped in a white, frilly dress and a pink bow, Rheintgen went in anyway and washed her hands.
That’s when police entered the restroom and told Rheintgen she was being detained. A devout Catholic, she had wanted to take a moment to pray the rosary, but she never got the chance.
After spending less than 60 seconds in the women’s restroom, Rheintgen said, she was charged with trespassing with a warning.
Meanwhile, her rosary was confiscated as an officer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement handcuffed and detained Rheintgen, searched her person and her vehicle, and then shuttled her to the Leon County Detention Facility, where she stayed overnight in the men’s ward. If convicted, she could spend up to 60 days incarcerated.
The FDLE did not respond to a request for comment.
About a week before her trek, she sent about a hundred and sixty print letters to Florida lawmakers announcing she would engage in the time-honored practice of civil disobedience: She would use the women’s restroom at the Florida State Capitol. She named her date and time.
The letter sent to Florida legislators. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I know that as a transgender woman, this means I will probably be arrested. I am violating laws because I personally believe it to be wrong.
“I’m not a political activist,” she told Erin in the Morning. “I’m just a normal college student who thinks this law is wrong.”
The letters included a photo of herself so that officials could identify her. “I understand I could go to jail for up to sixty days in a men’s prison, where if the statistics are true, I would likely be raped.”
She writes that going to jail would “uproot her life,” but this was a risk she was willing to take:
“I understand that if you’re receiving this letter, you’re part of the Florida Bicameral Legislature, which means you’re probably one of the people who wrote this law or voted for it. I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust. I know that you know in your heart that it’s wrong to arrest me and jail me for sixty days for simply using the bathroom. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and that you can’t arrest us away. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are no different from you or anybody else. I know that you know in your heart that the same people that go to church with you, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, root for the same sports teams, watch the same movies and pray to the same God as you cannot be all bad. I know that you know that I have dignity. That’s why I know that you won’t arrest me.”
Signing off, she added: “Pray for me.”
“I’m a really religious person,” she told Erin in the Morning. She’s a devout Catholic who describes herself as a political centrist, with an appreciation for “family values” but a soft spot for Dorothy Day, the prolific Catholic leftwing activist.
A police affidavit she shared with Erin in the Morning — with her deadname (blurred out below), and the wrong pronouns listed — otherwise corroborates most all of her story.
Photo Rheintgen’s affidavit, but her deadname has been blurred out for privacy. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
Rheintgen’s telling is also corroborated by reports from the Tampa Bay Times journalist who accompanied Rheintgen to the bathroom.
A selfie. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I actually wanted to move to Florida when I was older, growing up, but I don’t know if I can do that now, ” she said. She fondly remembers her favorite beaches and bologna sandwiches with her grandparents. But now, it seems, her “home away from home” isn’t safe for her.
“I don’t want attention. I just want people to see this law and how crazy it is to put people like us in jail. I was so terrified,” she said. She admits she hadn’t consulted legal or advocacy organizations before the endeavor; she didn’t know what to expect. “They were treating me like I murdered someone — but I just used the wrong bathroom.”
Rheintgen said she was motivated to act after seeing the anti-trans legislation surge throughout the United States, and when she read about Hunter Schafer, the Euphoria actress, who was issued a “male” passport despite being a woman. “She’s a personal hero of mine,” Rheintgen said. The fear and the vitriol she saw play out over the news cycle brought her to a breaking point.
While bills like bathroom bans and drag bans have been sweeping the country in recent years, the criminalization of gender diverse people is by no means new. Black and brown trans women, especially, have been routinely criminalized for decades under the guise of “solicitation” or “loitering” ordinances, even in a so-called liberal stronghold like New York. The phenomenon is so pervasive that it has been dubbed the “Walking While Trans Ban.”
Jon Harris Maurer, Public Policy Director of Equality Florida, emphasized that the bathroom bans are just the latest attempt by the state’s GOP to eradicate trans people from public life. “These are hard working, tax paying individuals who are our family, neighbors, and colleagues,” he told Erin in the Morning. “Weaponizing bathroom access in a place like the State Capitol is an antidemocratic effort to block them from directly participating in government while simultaneously stripping their rights behind closed doors.”
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OK again it is another old one. I should have saved the Disney board standing up to the hateful anti-LGBTQ+ anti-DEIA and the board voting to keep the policies and associations even as they did agree to end the idea of a trans character in a show and do more conservative story lines / characters. But think how tRump at every rally and in front of every courthouse claimed Biden was weaponizing the DOJ and government against him. Remember how bad it said it was that Biden was using the government against his enemies which meant every republican criminal. But now tRump is doing it and his maga cult that used to be called republicans are fine with it. Just like the debt and debt ceiling doesn’t matter now under tRump and did not matter under the first tRump term, but during Biden’s term those two things were constantly shouted by maga on every right wing media show. It is like the party who used to champion family values and law and order was never a believer in those things. Hugs
The US Federal Communications Commission is prepared to block mergers and acquisition proposals from companies that promote “invidious” DEI policies, according to chairman Brendan Carr.
The move could threaten billions of dollars worth of deals in the communications sector, with Carr specifically mentioning Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance Media, Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Communications, and T-Mobile, which is seeking to purchase US Cellular Corp.’s wireless operations.
“Any businesses that are looking for FCC approval, I would encourage them to get busy ending any sort of their invidious forms of DEI discrimination,” Carr said in an interview Friday.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is vowing to use every tool at his disposal to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs from the companies his agency regulates, and has enlisted the help of a high-profile conservative activist in the effort.
Carr met with activist Robby Starbuck on Wednesday to discuss ways the agency can use its enforcement powers to stamp out DEI in the telecommunications sector. The two discussed ways the agency can enforce existing civil rights laws along with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders targeting DEI in the public and private sectors.
“It’s my hope that this meeting is a wake-up call for businesses within the FCC’s purview that the days of violating the law with DEI are over,” Starbuck told Fox News Digital.
Robby Starbuck has successfully bullied multiple major firms into dropping LGBTQ support with threats of national boycotts.
Since becoming FCC chair, Carr has launched investigations into NPR, PBS, and the east coast flagship broadcast affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Carr first appeared here in 2022 when he supported Trump’s demand to ban TikTok. Trump famously reversed on banning TikTok once he found out that GOP megadonor Jeffrey Yass holds a $15 billion stake in the platform.
In 2023 Carr accused then-Rep. Adam Schiff of running a “secret and partisan surveillance machine.” He has also accused the World Health Organization of “beclowning itself” with COVID mitigation advice.
In 2020, Carr told Fox News host Lou Dobbs that “far-left” social media platforms had “hopped from hoax to hoax to hoax” in attacks on Trump.
Carr is a vehement opponent of Net Neutrality and opposed efforts to block Elon Musk from purchasing Twitter.
Last year Carr wrote a full chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s book in support of Project 2025.
I know this is ten days old, but I had it open in a saved tab to share. Most of those I am deleting but this one is just too over the top stupid in a way to keep their maga cult base hyped up or enraged. This has to be one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled on the right. But remember Texas is run by a group of very wealthy fundamentalist religious leaders who demand society return to the 1950s society they remember and loved. They want a state / country that is white Christian male dominated and give unearned respect. They want Christianity, their version of the god worshiped by their church to be forced on everyone so they can get more donations, more forced white babies that are dragged to church by their parents, more butts in pews, more donations in the plate, more tithes. These are the kind of people that if they don’t feel that way, if they are not into something, then no one should be. They are straight cis people who think anyone not straight or cis is doing it as a choice because they are mentally ill and need to be fixed / cured. These are the people with no empathy who want conversion therapy torture done on children and young adults who are LGBTQ+. Hugs
A freshly filed bill brings the topic of furries in Texas schools to the House. The bill, Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act, pet-named the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, would ban students from observing “non-human behaviors,” which include, but are not limited to, meowing, barking and hissing; wearing a tail, collar, or ears; and licking oneself in a grooming manner.
The F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, filed by Rep. Stan Gerdes [photo], a Republican lawmaker from Central Texas, does not apply to any specific age group, and instead blankets all students at Texas schools, at the public and private level. The only exceptions are mascots, designated dress-up days and children participating in performances.
The bill follows a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that teachers were providing students who identify as cats with litter boxes. Indeed, a section of the bill explicitly prohibits “using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts.”
Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday resurrected debunked rumors that public schools were putting litter boxes in classrooms for students dressed as cats, amplifying right-wing criticism of some educators as he pushes for a statewide private school voucher program. The Texas Republican told a gathering of pastors at a Baptist church in Austin that the so-called furries trend is “alive and well” in communities across the state, and that lawmakers needed to ban it.
“In some small rural sections of school districts in the state of Texas, they have in their schools, what are called furries. Y’all know what this is?” Abbott asked the crowd, which responded with a smattering of “yeahs.” “Kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms,” Abbott said. Abbott referenced two rural school districts but did not name them in his address to the Texas Pastors Policy Conference.
No, there aren’t schools in Texas putting out litter boxes for kids to use. That’s internet garbage that naive people take as gospel. In fact, we can think of few more effective ways to spread “furry” culture than to tell the kids it’s against the law. Gov. Greg Abbott, repeating the internet hoax about litter boxes in place of school bathrooms, has either fallen for furry worry or knows there are enough gullible people among his electorate that he can play like a fiddle by plucking their fears.
Abbott has gone full batshit QAnon.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s furry fear in Texas schools is hiss-terical | Opinion https://t.co/39iratfJpV
Gov. Greg Abbott resurrected debunked rumors that public schools were putting litter boxes in classrooms for students dressed as cats, amplifying right-wing criticism of some educators as he pushes for a statewide private school voucher program. https://t.co/PnNhVBZH2Hpic.twitter.com/kqmheHHxDo
— San Antonio Express-News (@ExpressNews) March 16, 2025
The F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act to ban “Furry” behavior in our schools now has the support of Governor @GregAbbott_TX and Speaker @Burrows4TX, who recognize the importance of keeping distractions out of our classrooms.
They are not arresting people. They are vanishing them.
Rumeysa Ozturk wasn’t read her rights. She wasn’t told why she was being detained. She was walking to break her fast in Somerville, Massachusetts when masked men in an unmarked SUV pulled up, took her phone, slapped on handcuffs, and dragged her into a vehicle like she was some kind of national security threat.
She’s a doctoral student. A Fulbright scholar. A trauma researcher. But in Donald Trump’s America, she fit the profile: Muslim, foreign-born, sympathetic to Palestinians.
Now she’s locked in a for-profit detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her lawyer, after a federal judge specifically said she wasn’t to be moved.
They moved her anyway. Because rules no longer apply to those with badges — real or fake.
A MOVEMENT BUILT ON CHAINS AND COWARDS
Alireza Doroudi is gone too.
He’s a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, born in Iran, studying mechanical engineering. No criminal record. No warning. Just scooped off the grid.
ICE refuses to say where he’s being held. No public charge has been announced. His only crime appears to be existing in the wrong body, from the wrong country, in the wrong era.
Mahmoud Khalil was next — a Columbia student, arrested for leading pro-Palestinian protests. Trump labeled him a “radical foreign Hamas sympathizer” on Truth Social. Days later, he was gone.
Jeanette Vizguerra was taken from her Target shift in Colorado, chained at the waist.
Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer, was dragged from his car at dawn in Washington. His window was smashed by federal agents. His voice silenced.
These aren’t isolated incidents. These are deliberate acts of political intimidation.
They are testing the system — testing us — to see how many people they can disappear before we stop calling it democracy.
WHEN ICE IS A BADGE — AND A COSTUME
While the real ICE disappears scholars, organizers, and mothers, the fakes are circling like vultures.
In South Carolina, Sean-Michael Johnson posed as an ICE officer. He pulled over a van of Latino men, screamed slurs, jiggled their keys, and knocked a phone out of someone’s hand. “You’re going back to Mexico!” he shouted. He wasn’t an agent — but he played one with conviction.
In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett used a fake badge to sexually assault a woman at a motel. He told her if she didn’t comply, he’d have her deported. He held up a counterfeit ID and pretended to be the state.
And in Philadelphia, a Temple University student in an “ICE” shirt tried to storm a dorm building with two accomplices. They were dressed for the part, intoxicated by the illusion of authority, emboldened by the climate.
This is what happens when the state makes cruelty a brand. When a badge becomes a fetish object. When the line between enforcement and cosplay disappears altogether.
THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS THE CRIME
Let’s stop pretending this is a coincidence.
This is a unified strategy. The Trump administration is using ICE like a personal strike force — targeting international students, protest leaders, organizers, and mothers with surgical precision.
They invoke secret designations. They bypass due process. They manufacture pretexts out of thin air and rely on the fog of bureaucracy to hide the blood on the floor.
The point isn’t law enforcement. The point is deterrence. Spectacle. Control.
This is what political cleansing looks like when it’s dressed up in the language of national security.
They’re showing the world that resistance has a cost — and the cost is your freedom, your voice, your visibility, your future.
SILENCE IS CONSENT. AND WE ARE LOUD.
There is no middle ground here. No fence to sit on. No neutral position when people are being kidnapped in the name of the state.
ICE doesn’t need your applause. It needs your silence. Every time a student vanishes and the media shrugs, every time a woman is cuffed and the public looks away, the machine gets stronger.
They are daring us to ignore it. They are counting on our numbness. They are betting that we’ll keep scrolling.
We cannot let them win.
This is not border policy. This is not visa enforcement. This is not safety.This is authoritarianism with a PowerPoint presentation.This is fascism disguised as formality.
This is the state stripping people from the land and pretending it’s order.
Let the record show:
They took people.
And we did not look away.
We saw it.
We named it.
We raised hell.
And we did not stop.
(I didn’t write this. Credit goes to Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge)
The above is the tRump admin trying to get other countries with higher standards in their food to send us their eggs to protect tRump from the soaring prices.
This scares me because the fundamentalist and white cis straight male supremacists will demand it be used here. First on trans people to protect the children then expand it to the entire LGBTQ+ as they have been doing everything else they tried to use against trans kids / people.
Famed Navajo Code Talkers Axed From Pentagon Sites
Yes I know that these were restored. But now tRump is demanding Vance who is on the board of the Smithson and the National Zoo to remove all illegal (purge) references to race, gender, the LGBTQ+ and so much more. He is demanding a national landmark the US government doesn’t control to toe the fundamentalist straight cis white supremacy Christians agenda to deny anything but them into history or society. We really are seeing a complete take over of society and we must do all we can to prevent the rollback of all rights and equality of anyone not white straight cis Christian males. This is horrifyingly scary. Because these hate groups have learned if they can control information, control education, control what is considered good or bad by their standards they can force the youngest people in the country to voice that belief and grow up to enforce it. It is what theocratic Islamic nations do. Are we now a nation taken over by theocratic Christian fundamentalist demanding a change in even the constitution to force everyone to follow their god and their rules? Please kill me first.
Every accredited organization except those directly driven by fundamentalist religiously motivated agree this is simply torture. The religious just simply refuse to believe sexual orientation is not a choice and no one wants to be like that no matter what has to be done to change it. Including electroshock therapy to the genitals. Think of yourself, gay straight, or any other orientation. If you are cis and straight, how much conversion therapy would it take to make you believe you were gay / lesbian and desire that. How could who you are attracted to be changed. That all comes from the idea that it is a mental illness and a sickness that needs to be cured. Which the majority of medical organizations reject, agreeing it is an inborn part of a fetus development. Plus if you could change a sexual orientation … look at my childhood. I was forced to please sexually both males and females. But the only rapes that totally crashed me in the military was the one by a woman with more rank than me who demanded I have sex with her … four times. The last time I was so upset and humiliated that I ran nude up the stairs of the housing unit for higher enlisted and pounded on my soon to be E-7’s door. I was sobbing incoherently. I have been raped all my life and was able to stand that. Why did what this woman force me to do reduced me to that state? Because it was against my very nature of who I was. I was having same sex relations with another young guy and loving it. What she was forcing me to do was against everything I felt inside. That is what the people of these gay conversions want to do.
Some of them think that being gay is a choice because … well when did they decide instead of men they would like to have sex with women? No they just felt it, but what gay / lesbian people feel is not valid and must be forced to change. The rest of this group feels their interpretations of their view of what their god wants must be enforced on everyone even those that don’t follow their god. Because it is their god and he must be pleased because their god hates what they hate. Even if it is not in the bible or they misunderstood it, their hate preacher told them it was so. They can not let others live their lives, everyone must live by their church dictates. Why??? Because only that way their god will love them? I am an atheist that is willing to let religious people believe as they wish as long as they don’t try to force their beliefs on others. You do you … but why can’t they do the same. They insist that no one can be different from them and their beliefs. That is scary just that they think like that and more that they are now running the US government.
PS. When James was a newly teen of 13 his parents went to the Florida Keys with a group of us. They always stayed apart even though they asked to be part of the caravan of RV going. Well I caused an issue. His … maybe abusive parents had lots of tattoos and were highly Catholic religious … even had a statue of the mother Mary in the entrance of their home. Yes the husband ruled the house and told the wife what she would do at all times. Which included the abuse of the child which is where we came in. In a year or so after this even the boy started staying at our home because he was not allowed home until the mother was there. I had seen a young kid come in with a Mohawk. The boy had his hair shaved on both sides of his head and long in the front and back. We had already talked to their son at our table because the parents they were trying to force the boy to get Christian tattoos.
When I spoke up and said there is …. next hair cut … it will look grand on him. His stepdad exploded and said he wouldn’t ever allow the boy in the house with that and he would hold him down and shave all his hair off. As anyone can imagine I got triggered, I had been held down and had my hair cut. I flew up from the table as Ron was grabbing at me and yelled you want him to have tattoos which is against the bible but a simple haircut which can be changed or grow back and has no mentioned in the bible upsets you so much you’re threatening the kid. I loudly said, “What the fuck is wrong with you”! They took the boy from our table and left his meal uneaten. I was furious. Others who did not know of my childhood tried to calm me down. The family of the boy left that day from our group at the campground. Next time the boy came to our home his hair was cut short and the parents never went on another trip with us. Hugs
Again an attempt to turn the country into a while male cis straight only nation. How much clearer can it be. And all these republicans or most of them are fundamentalist Christians who were funded by their church in a steal run to get elected. This not what the publican wants. But these republican fundamentalist groups understand … politicians can force change in public opinion if they support something loud and forcefully enough. Which is one why Kamala Harris l think lost the election, the democrats refused to respond to the attacks on trans people fearing it would hurt them. That is how you bring people along to a new understanding. The republicans are doing it in reverse of what the progressive movement did with government support in the early 2000s. Now that democrats have retreated only the hard right republicans are getting their voices heard returning the countries view to pre-rights for LGBTQ+ people. Hugs
I was not going to post again tonight, and in fact had thought to place some videos in a scheduled post for tomorrow. But this is FAR TOO IMPORTANT TO WAIT! When I told Ron about this, he remembered the Portland protests where tRump had security from prisons in unmarked vans and blacked out uniforms snatch people from the street. Is this them. Or as Ron asked me, is this just his brown shirt thugs trying to enforce his positions on the street? How to know because he sent them after drag queens and drag queen story hours. How far down the authoritarian road have we traveled already? How much farther before we can’t come back. Want to know her crime. She is a legal student here from Turkey and she wrote a pro-Palestinian op-ed. For that she got black bagged and sent to a location no one can contact her as even her lawyer says he has heard nothing and has no way to contact her. Even after a judge told ICE / tRump not to do this, they did it. Oh and why are they snatching these students and others then sending them to Louisiana? The appeals court for that area is notoriously right wing. They want as much good press and legal writing as they can get before it hits the SCOTUS. Even if a judge in the proper district tells them to do something they don’t want they just ignore it trying to force the judge to sanction tRump and his administration for using his core power which the SCOTUS tRump seems to feel has made him immune from any consequences of even an illegal act. We will soon see if he is correct. Seems Justice Sotomayor was correct. Hugs. Hugs
Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.
Video of the international student at Tufts being arrested by "federal authorities" in Massachusetts has been released and it's terrifying. They're not even uniformed officers. Just secret police thugs in hoodies and masks. From WCVB: youtu.be/PuFIs7OkzYY
A longer version of the Tufts announcement about the abduction of an international graduate student by federal authorities, circulating on Twitter and Reddit.
"An emergency rally has been called for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Powder House Square in Somerville to protest a Tufts international graduate student being taken into custody Tuesday by federal authorities."
I want to thank Allison Gill for this report. I got it from her daily beans podcast that I listen to while I brush my teeth, shower, and if she goes long while I dress. Her podcasts are very informative with three different segments of news and what is happening. Often I write down what I can remember to talk about. Then I realized she gives a transcript of each show, and that transcripts with links is bringing you this post. She has a substack which I also follow where she reports the news giving tips on how to get involved. https://www.muellershewrote.com. What follows is horrifying and triggered me because the abuse these people went through was some of what I did. But remember most of the people on these flights are not gang members. This all comes from a slum lord not wanting to deal with a protest on his apartment complex that was getting really dangerous for the people living there. He went to the news claiming a gang called … had taken over and was shaking down him and residents. Yes they did go to a few residences and demand the money, the money promised to help fund their fight against the landlord. Many right wing outlets selectively edited the videos to make the protesting people seem very sinister. TYT also pushed the scenario hard. As you will read the people in this foreign prison for at least a year held in commutation black out are not gang members, many came to the US in legal ways, some had green cards. They can not access lawyers, can’t call friends or family, they are held for a year in horrific conditions like in a Russian gulag because tRump and crew don’t care about the constitution or the people. All they want is all non-white people removed from the US. Some of those deported by the way, luckily not to this place are US citizens that are fighting for their rights. Hence the sending them to El Salvador that has no laws of rights and agreed for a huge price per detainee to keep them from accessing any outside person. They could kill them tomorrow and no one would know. The tRump people are grabbing anyone they can and sending them there knowing they can not get any help. Sadly I just watched a clip on Tim Pool a low info moron who clearly thinks this is great no matter how many innocent people get caught up in it. It doesn’t matter they broke no laws, and entering the US illegally to ask for asylum is not a criminal offense despite what the white supremacist say it is a protected right under US laws and the treaties, That makes it legal. Again not that tRump and crew care. By any definition that torture is against the US Constitution. An impeachable offense. Hugs
Holsinger is an American photojournalist based out of Nashville, Tenn.
————————————————————————————————————–
On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival.
For more than a year, I have been embedded throughout El Salvador’s society, working on a book chronicling the country’s transformation. From the huts of remote island fishermen to the desk of the President, from elite homicide detective units to elementary school classrooms, I have interviewed government officials and everyday people, collecting stories that would shock Stephen King. I’ve stood in classrooms full of happy students which not long ago were empty, because children here once learned early that schools were places to be raped or recruited. I’ve interviewed killers in prison and sat with them face-to-face.
As I stood on the tarmac, an agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ICE Special Response Team told me that some of the Venezuelans had weakly attempted to take over their plane upon landing. It wasn’t unusual for detainees to try to make a last stand, the agent said, guarding the doorway to the plane at the top of the gangway stairs. “They began to try to organize to overthrow the plane by screaming for everyone to stand up and fight. But not everyone was on board,” the agent said, cautioning me to be careful because some of the Venezuelans would fight once they were offloaded
Philip Holsinger
PHILIP HOLSINGER
Philip Holsinger
Even if not fighting, almost all the detainees came to the door of the plane with angry, defiant faces. It was their faces that grabbed me, because within a few hours those faces would completely transform.
The Venezuelans emerging from their plane were not in prison clothes, but in designer jeans and branded tracksuits. Their faces were the faces of guys who in no way expected what they first saw—an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army assembled to apprehend them.
Philip Holsinger
Philip Holsinger
One of the alleged organizers of the attempted overthrow fought the U.S. agents on the plane, cursing the Americans, the Salvadorans, President Nayib Bukele himself. El Salvador’s Minister of Defense, René Merino, who had been standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the gangway, rushed aboard, dragged the guy to the gangway himself, and flung him into the waiting hands of black-masked guards.
Philip Holsinger
The transfer from the plane to the buses that would carry them to prison was rapid, yet it might as well have been the crossing of an ancient continent. I felt the detainees’ fear as they marched through a gauntlet of black-clad guards, guns raised like the spears of some terrible tribe. I walked the line of buses waiting to depart, photographing faces. A guard noticed one of the detainees turned toward the window and wrenched his head back down into his chest.
Philip Holsinger
Around 2 a.m., the convoy of 22 buses, flanked by armored vehicles and police, moved out of the airport. Soldiers and police lined the 25-mile route to the prison, with thick patrols at every bridge and intersection. For the few Salvadorans, it was a familiar landscape. But for a Venezuelan plucked from America, it must have appeared dystopian—police and soldiers for miles and miles in woodland darkness.
The Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT, sits in an old farm field at the foot of an ancient volcano, brightly lit against the night sky. I’ve spent considerable time there and know the place intimately. As we entered the intake yard, the head of prisons was giving orders to an assembly of hundreds of guards. He told them the Venezuelans had tried to overthrow their plane, so the guards must be extremely vigilant. He told them plainly: Show them they are not in control.
Philip Holsinger
The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster.
The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear.
Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.
Philip Holsinger
After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair.
They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts.
Scottie's Playtime 