By my dogs that love gravy I like this man’s message. I enjoy listening to him as he asked everyone including the Christians to love each other, to be kind to each other. He reaches even a complete atheist like me. The fact is you can gain more converts, more adherents to your view with kindness and joy, than you will ever be able to do with anger, hate, and force. This man will bring far more people to Jesus and to the principles that Jesus taught than the Christian nationalist hate preachers ever will even if they get their way. No law forcing a person to sit in a pew can ever make them believe the stuff that is against the inborn idea of fairness, kindness, respect for others … or as someone said treat others as you would like to be treated. Period. The saying was not treat others the way you want to be treated only if they are like you, only if they believe as you do, only if they are the same skin color or the same sexual orientation. Treat everyone as you would like to be treated. Hugs
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)
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
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.
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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.
If it can happen to them, being held without due process. It can happen to any of us. We know it has happened before with US citizens of Mexican heritage that were not allowed any due process but just deported. We know tRump had unmarked black bag groups just adduct people off the streets during the BLM protests. They were held with no charges, interrogated by people who did not identify themselves, and had their items take and phones searched. In some cases they never got their phones back. It can and will happen to any of us if it is not stopped now. Hugs
A man being held by ICE at the KROME detention center in Miami is posting videos to TikTok about the inhumane conditions and treatment.
Gill, the son-in-law of notorious cultist Dinesh D’Souza, ran a fleet of clickbait fake news sites and promoted D’Souza’s debunked “2000 Mules” film before being elected in 2024.
Earlier this month Gill introduced a resolution that would replace Ben Franklin with Trump on the $100 bill.
Last month Gill earned national headlines when he called for deporting Rep. Ilhan Omar over of a fake Russian video promoted by Elon Musk.
Gill first appeared here when he called for Trump to seize Greenland and Panama by military force.
His tweet below currently has over 34 million views thanks to it being shared by Elon Musk to his 220 million followers.
Alawieh, who had worked and lived in Rhode Island previously, was detained at least 36 hours, through Friday, and was going to be sent back to Lebanon, the complaint said. Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist, was to start work at Brown University as an assistant professor of medicine.
“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a Trump ally who agreed to house about 300 migrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.
Prince is the most famous mercenary of the contemporary era and the founder of the now defunct private military company Blackwater. For a time, it was a prolific privateer in the “war on terror,” racking up millions in US government contracts by providing soldiers of fortune to the CIA, Pentagon and beyond.
Now he is a central figure among a web of other contractors trying to sell Trump advisers on a $25 billion deal to privatize the mass deportations of 12 million migrants. Prince also has the ear of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and was a character witness for her Senate confirmation.
Politico first reported on Prince’s deportation pitch to the Trump administration late last month.
Prince, the brother of former Education Sec. Betsy Devos, appeared here in 2023 when he went on trial in Austria for arms trafficking.
In 2022, he appeared here when he told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he could have prevented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Also in 2022, he told Steve Bannon that the US should be supporting Putin because he hates LGBTQ people.
Later that year, Prince was exposed for having spied on progressive groups.
In 2021, Prince was charging Afghan refugees $6500 for seats on planes doing evacuations.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller “orchestrated” the process in the West Wing in tandem with Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem. Few outside their teams knew what was happening.
A federal court’s jurisdiction does *not* stop at the water’s edge. The question is whether the *defendants* are subject to the court order, not *where* the conduct being challenged takes place.Were it otherwise, the government could act lawlessly overseas and courts would be powerless to stop it.
Canada is furious at tRump for the bullying treatment they are receiving. But Canada is not a small country that tRump can bully with impunity. The border is a treaty. tRump has no legal authority to violate it, especially for his personal gain. Ask yourself why tRump and crew want Canada to be only one state? It is made up of thirteen administrative divisions: ten provinces and three territories. Why not bring all of them in to one big country. Because that would wipe out the republicans, they wouldn’t win elections. Canada is far more progressive than the US. But again why does tRump want Canada. Because they have a much higher standard of living, longer life expectancies, the government works much better for the people than in the US. It would stop people in the US from pointing to the north and saying … “see they understand how to do it, why can’t we”. Now tRump is on to something great he is just too stupid to realize it. I would love to see the three major countries in the Americas join as one state, with equality and inclusion of all. Something like the EU but closer. Eventually it could include the lesser nations. Think of the ways these countries could help build a better future for all if it could be one country. But tRump doesn’t want Mexico because those people are mostly brown in his mind, Canada is white in his mind. He should have watched more Star Trek. Hugs
Stop the testing tRump demanded during his first term. If we don’t admit the bad thing exists we can pretend it doesn’t hurt us. Right. Tell that to every frightened child. The free tests are very important to people on a limited budget and it is a way to keep co-workers safe. If these people can test themselves before they go to work then they might not spread what they have to their friends, family, and fellow workers. In the story after this one is about a pregnant Texas woman unvaccinated who had measles and never told the hospital staff when she went in to deliver her baby. She exposed every one of the newborns there, she exposed all the woman who gave birth, their families and the staff. All of them should sue her if any of the newborns have issues or die. These people are so stupid. The US used to have massive infant / child mortality over measles. If it did not kill you, like covid it can leave lasting organ damage. It will make the other newborns getting their vaccinations in question. Selfish people who have not lived through the horrifying consequences of these preventable diseases, so they ignore history and science. How many children need to needlessly suffer for them to wake up? Hugs
The Governor and Lt Governor have referenced “measles’ on their Twitter 0 times. Dan Patrick has however posted about renaming the New York Strip the Texas strip, served with Gulf of America shrimp, 5 times”.
I love how people who never served in any branch of the military feel they know all about what it takes to do so. I love that people who claim to honor the Vet’s and then cut all funding that would actually help veterans and military people. It is like the pro-life crowd that claims they need to erase the LGBTQ+ people from society to protect the children then slashing all funds for feeding and caring for those very same children. Hugs
Study after study has been done by both serious military leaders and hate groups. It doesn’t matter who does a serious study of LGBTQ+ people in the military as they all show that LGBTQ+ are great assets for the military that increase military effectiveness. I have often told the story of how my sub unit begged me to reenlist when I was saying good by the site went down and I was the one that got us back on the bird. But the new company commandeer was a homophobe Christian and he told me he would destroy me if I reenlisted. The unit lost a grand technician with a great future in the military due to bigotry. Compare the personal life of Pete Buttigieg a gay man who was in the military, seen action in Afghanistan and is in a stable same sex marriage with children to the life of the new straight cis Christian Nationalist Pete Hegseth. Hegseth often called kegseth by late night TV hosts, has married and devoiced several times currently on his third marriage, he has been married three times, his first wife, who he admitted to cheating on five times, is Meredith Schwarz. He is also stepdad to Rauchet’s three children so Trump’s appointee for Secretary of Defense has four biological children and is stepdad to three. He is credibly accused of being a drunken jerk who harasses women, has committed domestic violence on one of his wives. Really a moral guy compared to the gay guy though right because he has the right religion and is straight cis. Hugs.
Read the full article. The Washington Times is a far-right outlet founded and owned by the Unification Church – which is better known as the Moonies. Surely homocons Scott Bessent and Richard Grenell are thrilled with a no-gays symbol.
My but all those pesky freedoms in the constitution being thrown away as fast as possible. Freedom to protest the goverenment, the freedom of the press. You know the very things keeping the government in check. Look the democrats said the project 2025 was designed to destroy democarcy and install a authoritarian dictatorship such as Russia or Hungry. Wake up and act because tRump / republicans want to make it illegal to do anything that is not supportive of the cult leader. Think about what is being protected in the stories below, it is the profits of the wealthy and the ability of the cult leader to simply ignore any law or normal decency that displeases him. Hugs.
I’ll be reposting this on many stories I’m sure… “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The setting was part of an effort to emphasize the power of the institution Mr. Trump controls through loyal and compliant appointees.
CNN’s Jake Tapper just noted on-air that in the same breath in which Trump raged about a “weaponized” justice system, he vowed to himself weaponize that same system against reporters and outlets that serve up anything other than lavish praise.
Think about this :
A convicted felon lectures the Dept. of Justice on what should or should not be ‘allowed’, – having just pardoned over a hundred other convicted felons.
Alice in Wonderland would be embarrassed.
All this is carefully planned and orchestrated.
Everything Trump is doing almost exactly mirrors what Orban did to take control in Hungary. In fact, it’s uncanny how similar the takeover is.
If you want to see what Trump does next, look to Hungary.
tRump has a problem. First he promised he could solve this before being sworn in to office. Now he talked tough and attacked Ukrainian leader Zelenskyy while saying he would hold Putin to the agreement with the strongest sanctions / efforts. Yet when Ukraine agreed to a cease fire and Russia did not … where was tRump’s big tough talk. He back tracked and demanded that Ukraine give in more. Now when Putin simply used the pause to attack and take over a large part of the region in the fighting, tRump is silent on his promises to make Putin agree to the cease fire. In fact again he attacks Zelenskyy as the real problem and the other countries supporting Ukraine. He guys if you just stop supporting Ukraine and agree with the US / Russia we can stop this war right way. He will not and never can say a bad thing about his boss Putin, he has been compromised and is desperate to change reality. Hugs
Along with the above, those that claim tRump is not a racist simply never worked with / for him and don’t watch what he says about people. Remember that he wants only white South Africans to be able to come to the US on a fast track, he wanted to annex Canada but not Mexico who he has accused of sending the US rapists and murders, he asked in a meeting why we can’t get more European white people to move to the US. His company was sued by the US government which won the case for not allowing black people to move into his apartment buildings. Any claim tRump is not a bigot or racist denies reality. In tRump’s mind and many of his racist white supremacist whites must always be in charge over those not white. Hugs
with Mr. Trump having accused Mr. Ramaphosa’s government of discriminating against South Africa’s white minority
Trump had already issued an executive order last month cutting all funding to South Africa over some of its domestic and foreign policies. The order criticized the Black-led South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.
How long before Trump calls for invading South Africa? Rather obviously, this was done as a favor to Elon Musk, who is wildly unpopular in his home country.
Read the full article. That Trump’s so-called antisemitism czar is merrily retweeting notorious anti-Semites is classically Trumpian. Terrell last appeared here in January when he declared that Los Angeles’s “DEI firefighters have no intention of putting out those wildfires.” Yesterday Terrell called for a new federal commission on “anti-white bias.”
Again look at what these countries have in common. Being not white is OK if you are wealthy but if you are not, being not white is a ban from tRumpstaia. Hugs
In those cases, affluent business travelers might be allowed to enter, but not people traveling on immigrant or tourist visas. Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.
This one is so clear. The criminal is demanding his crime files never be released. Why? If he was as innocent as he claims he is why not release the files for the public to see? Because he was guilty as hell and this judge was compromised and working with the tRump team to do everything possible to stall the case until possibly he could be reelected making the charges go way. He was guilty. Look the facts are clear, he had the files, he was asked to return them, he refused, then told the government he did not have anymore, the government went into his domicile and found he did have them. What never came out was why he wanted so badly to have these files that was reported he picked himself and why he was desperate to hold on to them. Everything I have written is fact! It is reality! So apparently there is so much more in those files that tRump is terrified will come out. Why? again if he is innocent then let the files show it. But he hides and wants the files hidden and destroyed. Hugs
