Setting the Record Straight re: Freedom and Justice This July 4th
The right-wing echo chamber's latest cause célèbre — vilifiying a rare humanitarian gesture toward wrongly deported asylum seekers — is an outright fabrication
The National Book Tour for Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands has, to date, realized sixteen events in five cities. It is now on its way to Washington, DC (July 8), and Takoma Park, MD (July 9). Both events are free and open to one and all. All we ask is that you…
Today’s post starts with a question…
Q: How much incriminating evidence does it take for US Department of Homeland Security agencies and offices to admit wrongdoing and bring back to the US someone they previously exiled by the US deportation machine, aka ICE Enforcement and Removals Operations (ICE ERO), aka ICE Air?
A: A lot. It almost never happens. And decisions are made one painfully slow application at a time.
By example, as I brought Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands to a close in late March 2024, the National Immigration Justice Center had succeeded in reunifying six families under its Chance to Come Home campaign. Six, out of tens of thousands of families ripped asunder by ICE raids on people targeted not for their unlawful acts but for their unlawful presence in the US, under the auspices of an initiative launched over three years ago in early 2021.
Another group that has been negotiating with Homeland Security as well as the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to develop processes for returning people it has not just wrongly, but egregiously, expelled is the Unified US Deported Veterans. That’s right. Even members of our armed forces have been expelled in chains from our shores for lacking the proper papers — even after offering up their lives in service to the US nation.
“And nobody really talks about the civil and human rights being violated by depriving US-citizen children the chance to grow up with their parents,” states Robert Vivar, co-founder of the organization.
As Crossing the Line went to print in early April 2024, Robert’s program, called ImmVets, had realized the repatriation of 105 wrongly deported US veterans. One hundred and five, since the so-called immigration reform acts of the Reagan and Clinton eras.
On US Independence Day it bears stating: that isn’t just unpatriotic.
It plain just isn’t right.
American Families United, as I wrote about in my last Substack newsletter, has been working tirelessly to reunite the now hundreds of thousands of parents and children unjustly pulled apart, particularly under the hoped-for single term of the Convicted-Felon/Rapist-in-Chief.
Undocumented parents of US-citizen children still in the US have now been granted a Hail Mary by the Biden administration. But Biden, et al., have yet to take steps to return parents, like Cecilia Rochester, exiled not for unlawful acts but for her unlawful presence in the US.
Now Joseph Simonson, a reporter for the ultra-right-wing, pro-MAGA propaganda mouthpiece, the Washington Free Beacon, writes that the “Biden admin alarms immigration officials by reversing deportations of some Cameroonians.”
Simonson’s article, now bouncing around the MAGAverse echo chamber without any pushback from the mainstream press, is chock full of lies and disinformation. He bases his so-called news on “interviews with Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff and internal agency memos.” Yet he names no names.
He refers to a “program, which has not been announced to the public.” Yet, there is no program.
He states that said “program” appears to be a response to a February 2022 Human Rights Watch report about dozens of Cameroonians deported between 2019 and 2021. Yet, if Simonson had deigned to read the report, he would have discovered that this, too, is fake news.
The Human Rights Watch report details, in no uncertain terms, the egregious and illegal mistreatment, by officials in the employ of the US federal government, of an estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians on two ICE Air flights in October and November 2020 — both “mass deportation flights,” aka in-flight Abu Ghraibs, the likes of which a second Trump administration promises, in its bone-chillingly fascistic Project 2025, to make a regular occurrence.
Indeed, Joseph Simonson’s reporting is so bad that he didn’t even manage to find and crack open my book! Available to the public from June 18, 2024, in print, e-, and audiobook formats, Crossing the Line recounts the real story behind what took place in the lead-up to and during those two torture chambers in the sky — just two examples of what takes place nearly every day under the rogue agencies of ICE and ICE ERO, courtesy of the US taxpayer.
The truth is, even ICE top brass couldn't deny the myriad of US and international laws broken and human rights conventions violated by their agents when the preponderance of evidence was brought to their attention. Even then, it took ICE and US Citizen and Immigration Services waaaaaay too long to do the right thing. They refused to create a program, as they did for ImmVets, in fact. The only pathway to justice for the wrongly and egregiously deported Cameroonians was through the legal framework of humanitarian parole, already available to justice seekers, one arduous application at a time.
To date, a mere 26 of the 80-90 people forced to endure the horrific experience of ICE Air’s Boxcars In The Sky — documented in Chapter 32 of Crossing the Line — have been given the chance, finally, to pursue their right to request asylum in the US. Twenty-six.
What are you so afraid of Joseph Simonson? The fact that they are Black? Is that who you and the Free Beacon identify as “enemies of freedom”?
The propaganda rag called the Free Beacon claims it is “covering the enemies of freedom in a way that the mainstream media won’t.” From what I can tell that is code for vilifying those of us working in defense of democracy and the rule of law through dangerous lies and the flouting of journalistic ethics. All to say, their reporting isn’t journalism at all. It’s outright fabrication.
On this US Independence Day, 2024, as our nation teeters on the razors’ edge of being taken over by a racist, fascist, wanna-be king, I wish to point out to you and your colleagues of the disinformation machine, Joseph Simonson:
Your work isn’t just unpatriotic. It plain just isn’t right.
Be critical readers, folks. The disinformation machine feeds the misinformation ecosystem such that even CNN sounds more and more like Fox News all the time.
Also, I’m happy to report that Crossing the Line can now be called “award-winning,” having received a Gold Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association.
More in a future post.
Happy 4th,
Sarah