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Prank Calls Brought ICE Hotline To a Standstill, Internal Emails Show (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the overwhelming-response dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: When ICE launched an immigration crime hotline last year, the Trump administration pitched it as a way to provide resources to victims, but activists saw something else: an attack on the immigrant community. The hotline was part of the Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office, an outfit established in February 2017. When the office first launched a line for its services the following April, protestors flooded the hotline to call in pranks and slow down response times. The plan picked up even more steam as the protestors shared the hotline number online, encouraging others to call in with fake tips.

According to internal emails and documents obtained by The Verge under the Freedom of Information Act, prank calls fully upended the system, leaving operators unable to answer more than 98 percent of incoming calls during the protest as the media relations team attempted to contain the narrative. In reports and emails produced in the first days of operation, ICE officials described an "overwhelming" amount of calls. The day after the launch, the office received more than 16,400. Of those, only a little more than 2,100 were placed into a queue, and only 260 answered. Callers in the queue waited as long as 79 minutes to reach an operator. An official noted that, should the rate of calls continue, they would need an additional 400 operators to field the hotline.

35 of 457 comments (clear)

  1. Enter AI? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now this sounds like a fun AI voice challenge: something to weed out the protesting trolls and drop them into queues where they think they're tying up the lines, while allowing people who really have a complaint through, using a mix of incoming phone number, question/response with caller and perhaps other input. Same thing with tips.

    1. Re:Enter AI? by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is actually a super-easy fix. Change the call-in to a "leave your number" system. Prioritize calls where the call-in number matches the caller ID. If crank callers want to leave their real phone number, more power to them.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:Enter AI? by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe they can, but they don't and they won't. Getting people to follow a social media meme by dialing a phone number is easy. Getting people to follow a social media meme involving the machinations of caller ID spoofing is not as easy. So your problem set is smaller, and your problem is easier to manage. Don't let perfection get in the way of progress.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:Enter AI? by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There is no national DL database

      That's not really true anymore. There is RealID, which is pretty much fully implemented at this point. There are a few states with waivers because they haven't given all of their citizens the new IDs yet, but database connections are one of the criteria for compliance.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    4. Re:Enter AI? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The only rise of fascism in America is the rise in labeling everything you don't like as fascism.

      Like a child repeating a word over and over again, until it becomes meaningless babble, the word "fascism" no longer means anything.

    5. Re:Enter AI? by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The whole protest was just to clog the phone lines, not get ICE dispatched. Do try to keep up.

    6. Re: Enter AI? by stealth_finger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Suddenly not wanting to be raped or killed is fascist now.

      No but blaming all society's ills on a bogeyman class is. In this case, immigrants.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
  2. I don't get it... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?

    If you are here in this country illegally, you have criminally trespassed. You should be deported.

    That is the current law.

    If folks don't like that, then start to put pressure on your congress-critters and have them change the laws.

    I agree we need to update and fix the immigration laws. It should be fair, and a more simple and less $$ process, BUT, it also should allow for control of who all gets to come in. I think we could look to encourage more immigration from those that are educated and can come to the US and help the workforce and economy right away.

    There will be some lower educated types too, as that all levels are needed, but the ratio needs to be controlled.

    But I just don't get these seemingly increasing number of folks in the US promoting full blown open borders, with no control of who gets in here.

    While it is noble to take our great wealth and resources to help others around the world, we can NOT support the whole world and cannot house or bring everyone and their goat into our country.

    If countries, such as in South America are having such problems,.....we can't bring everyone here, those people need to fix things at HOME and stay there.....

    ICE is the part of the federal government that helps control immigration and deports those that come here illegally. Why do we not support them?

    Hell, one of the few constitutionally enumerated responsibilities and powers of the federal government IS to protect our borders.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:I don't get it... by wbr1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?

      If you are here in this country illegally, you have criminally trespassed. You should be deported.

      That is the current law.

      If folks don't like that, then start to put pressure on your congress-critters and have them change the laws.

      I agree we need to update and fix the immigration laws. It should be fair, and a more simple and less $$ process, BUT, it also should allow for control of who all gets to come in. I think we could look to encourage more immigration from those that are educated and can come to the US and help the workforce and economy right away.

      There will be some lower educated types too, as that all levels are needed, but the ratio needs to be controlled.

      But I just don't get these seemingly increasing number of folks in the US promoting full blown open borders, with no control of who gets in here.

      While it is noble to take our great wealth and resources to help others around the world, we can NOT support the whole world and cannot house or bring everyone and their goat into our country.

      If countries, such as in South America are having such problems,.....we can't bring everyone here, those people need to fix things at HOME and stay there.....

      ICE is the part of the federal government that helps control immigration and deports those that come here illegally. Why do we not support them?

      Hell, one of the few constitutionally enumerated responsibilities and powers of the federal government IS to protect our borders.

      I am liberal. I do not support 'wide open borders'. I do not know anyone that does.

      You do know that most of the problems in central america are US caused. In Hondouras we helped with the coup that created the current shitty government, high murder rate and poor conditions. We push the war on drugs that only enriches cartels in these countries.

      As to illegal immigrants. it is capitalists here that provide the opportunity. They are economically unwilling or unable to hire Americans and pay them a higher wage and taxes and instead hire illegals. Who should be punished in this scenario? The person looking for abetter life, or the businessman, farmer, construction company that exploits their labor to the detriment of citizens?

      Also, this caravan - if it comes to a border point - this is legal asylum seeking. The office of refugee resettlement spends about half a billion per year resettling asylum seekers. Trumps camps cost 2 billion in just a few months. Sometimes it is cheaper just being a decent person.

      This country has PLENTY. The only reason it does not feel like that to most is the artificial scarcity imposed by the oligarchy. This is the capitalism so many her slavishly and uncritically adore.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    2. Re:I don't get it... by mjwx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?

      Better update the Statue of Liberty then "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" needs to be replaces with "Fuck You, I got mine, go home brownies".

      Perhaps we should ask the native Americans what they think of these "blow ins" from across the sea.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    3. Re:I don't get it... by Smidge204 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > That is the current law.

      Except it's not that straightforward. People have the legal right to seek asylum, and even if they are here illegally without seeking asylum they are still entitled to due process and basic human rights under both the US Constitution and international laws.

      What we have here is not law enforcement, it's xenophobia and racism and abuse disguised as law enforcement. The ICE officers are in some ways more criminal than the people they're arresting.

      > But I just don't get these seemingly increasing number of folks in the US promoting full blown open borders, with no control of who gets in here.

      That's because such people do not actually exist. Literally nobody is seriously advocating this. Asking that families not be ripped apart and children as young as 3 years old be made to defend themselves in court without representation is not the same as advocating "open boarders."

      > Why do we not support them?

      For the same reason people should never have supported the Schutzstaffel.
      =Smidge=

    4. Re:I don't get it... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?

      They do care, that's why it doesn't make sense to you.

      What they want is a system that manages immigration. A system that is humane and gives migrants a path to citizenship that rewards being a productive member of American society. They see that when immigrants are given the opportunity they are often hard working and valuable, and being economic benefits.

      Of course there are some people with ill intent, but the same is true of society in general and it doesn't justify treating everybody badly.

      And of course at the same time they want efforts to be made to improve the situations in the countries that migrants are coming from. Rather than trying to make them pay for a wall, help them fix their problems and build up their economies.

      You may not agree with any of that, but if you can at least understand that they aren't saying just let everyone with no controls or intervention then it would be a better, less polarized discussion. They are actually not that far from you on that point.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:I don't get it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The caravan/army/mob is already here.
      It's the late arrivals coming after your great-grandparents that you have a problem with.

    6. Re:I don't get it... by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Please point to where Emma Lazarus' poem is enshrined in the Constitution, I must've missed that one in law school!

      Then how about the Declaration of Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." All men, not just Americans. Yet there is a growing portion of this country that seems to think those rights don't apply to people outside the US, that they are less than human.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    7. Re:I don't get it... by Nidi62 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      However, certain cultures in south and central america (and I assume others) are far, far more likely to have people who have no interest in becoming citizens and instead want the better life living here gives, while attempting to not integrate with the rest of society.

      So give them an easy process to apply for a work visa that expires after, say, 6 months, and a process and criteria to renew that visa (for example go home for a month between visas, stay out of trouble, etc). They'll still be picking vegetables, working in warehouses/meatpackers, and mowing your lawn, jobs Americans arent doing anyway. Will some people skip out? Sure. Others will jump at that opportunity, won't have to live in fear, can work jobs with reasonable pay and conditions without bosses paying them $5 an hour cash under the table and treating them like animals, don't have to worry about being easy crime victims, etc. Win-win for everyone.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    8. Re:I don't get it... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Insightful
      There are two parties committing a crime. And you focus on only one party.

      It is illegal to employ an illegal immigrant. There are people who employ them. All your anger seems to be at the illegal immigrant and not the employer.

      Logically the employer has a business, and has a lot to lose if prosecuted. Prosecution is civil not criminal. If we spend 10% of the resources spent on the border enforcement on the enforcing the criminal who employs these illegal immigrants, the jobs will vanish and the illegal immigration will stop. Cold.

      Just by employing that illegal immigrant the employer becomes criminal. Even if otherwise he/she is running a legitimate business and pays taxes. I am sure you will go through all kinds of justification why the criminal who employs the illegal immigrant should not be prosecuted.

      On the other hand, the life is so bad in their home country, the people are willing to risk death crossing hostile countries, criminal gangs, fatal desert to come to USA. You want to deter these people who have nothing to lose. How? How much effort would it take to stop people who are willing to die in an attempt to come here?

      Compare that enforcement effort with what it would take to round up the employers, fine them, make the cost of employing illegal immigrant not worth it.

      The criminal employers are largely white. Largely affluent. Politically connected. The criminal employees are largely hispanic. Largely poor. Other than the sporadic support from the powerless Democrats they are not much of a political force.

      I just report the facts. You decide if you are a racist or not.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    9. Re:I don't get it... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Insightful
      If you dont clean up the sugar spilled on the middle of the floor and spend all your time putting ant shield around the house you would be called an idiot.

      But... all the outrage shown by these people against illegal immigration is fake. They want cheap strawberries and cheap fast food and cheap lawn mowing and cheap home construction. If they are really against illegal immigration they will prosecute the employers.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    10. Re:I don't get it... by rickb928 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ah, 1968, halcyon days...

      On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.

      The Orangeburg Massacre on February 18.

      The Black Panthers emerged, with their own special brand of protests.

      Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on June 5.

      And the Democrat Party National Convention, a festival of peace and nonviolence. Not.

      Yeah, we need more of that like we need a new strain of smallpox.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    11. Re:I don't get it... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I am not melting into the melting pot.

      I came in legally. I will remain distinct. At least Latin America is Christian. I am a graven image worshiping heathen/pagan. But legal. 100% naturalized. I intend to exercise ALL rights granted to me under the constitution. Freedom of Expression,. Freedom of Relgion. And yes, second amendment too.

      America is a salad bowl, not a melting pot.

      English first? Our motto E Pluribus Unum is not English. It is Latin.

      Go back, learn about America and then talk to an immigrant like me.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    12. Re:I don't get it... by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My great-great-great grandparents came, stood in line, and asked for permission to immigrate. Then they found land in a difficult region, farmed, and prospered.

      On the other side of my family they came from England, carved a farm out of the woods, never met American Indians, and convinced the post-Revolution government to honor the land grant they received from the King of England. From then on they farmed hard, lumbered (both sides did this, odd), sent 19 sons and daughters to wars, smuggled booze, were actual sea pirates, and gave the town they lived in land for the town hall, fire station, high school and middle school, church, meeting house, and parsonage. And finally that line ended, 260+ years after they left England to first find success elsewhere, and then to become Americans. Both sides of my family exchanged the flag of their birth for a new one, and became Americans. Indeed, they left their native flags behind.

      And yes, those here before them certainly considered them invaders, eventually. So yes, I see this mob headed north through Mexico, and waving their native flags, and I see them as nothing but invaders. That they don't carry arms doesn't change that, but it will inform our response at the border.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    13. Re:I don't get it... by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So the country should no longer be guided by the very document that first created it? Good to know America has fallen so far.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    14. Re:I don't get it... by Gilgaron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah I don't see why we can't do a French Foreign Legion thing, let them enlist or sign up for a Depression style civil service and fix the infrastructure, get citizenship. There's plenty of work to be done, the robots haven't taken over yet. Certainly cheaper than these internment camps.

    15. Re:I don't get it... by dj245 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you dont clean up the sugar spilled on the middle of the floor and spend all your time putting ant shield around the house you would be called an idiot.

      But... all the outrage shown by these people against illegal immigration is fake. They want cheap strawberries and cheap fast food and cheap lawn mowing and cheap home construction. If they are really against illegal immigration they will prosecute the employers.

      As a concrete contractor who only hires legal workers, I welcome this wholeheartedly.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    16. Re:I don't get it... by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Oh, citations:

      https://twitter.com/banditelli...

      https://thehill.com/opinion/im... (this article quotes Keith Ellison repeatedly)

      Only two, I know. Like an iceberg...

      Then the implied and explicit support for open borders:

      https://theweek.com/articles/7... ( Zack Beauchamp exchange with a reader, Tom Stephenson, and later Zach states explicitly he is an open borders supporter)

      https://www.nytimes.com/2016/1... (Hillary Clinton 'dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere.')

      Hillary seems pretty mainstream Democrat unless you're trying to hide the details.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    17. Re:I don't get it... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In a majority of cases, the minors were not taken from mothers, but dubious/unverified family members

      Citation very much needed.

      Even if it were true, dubious/unverified by whom? Sounds very much like categorising anyone caught up in a drone strike as an enemy combatant because they happened to be near a bad guy.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re:I don't get it... by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?

      Just a guess, but are you one of those people the flyers coming from the Republican Party delivered to my door are aimed at? The ones that say you can't vote for Jack Johnson (D) because he wants to abolish ICE? The ones that are designed to make people think (actually, they usually say it explicitly) that abolishing ICE means abolishing immigration controls and not putting anything in its place?

      My sincere recommendation to you is read what the people you're arguing against are actually arguing. Relatively few are saying they don't care about citizenship or protecting our borders. What they're arguing is:

      1. ICE is full of inhumane shitheads and cannot be reformed. It needs to be abolished with its responsibilities transferred somewhere else, perhaps to agencies structured as they were before 9/11.
      2. Legal immigration, such as asylum, is being handled inhumanely, for example the permanent child separation policies of the current administration.
      3. Illegal immigration is being handled badly and the laws don't reflect the reality on the ground. People are being deported to places that have never been their homes. Others are being encouraged to enter on the sly by one set of forces and deported by another.
      4. Over-zealous enforcement of immigration laws is making it harder to enforce other laws. Women are being deported because they contacted the police after being beaten by their husbands. Entire communities are refusing to report crimes in their neighborhoods for fear of ICE attention. Local governments, with the support of local law enforcement, who have tried to overcome this by not cooperating with ICE (so-called "Sanctuary cities") have been vilified and, ironically, have been criticized as encouraging crime, when their aim was to prevent a focus on a minor crime from preventing them from taking action against serious crimes.

      The Republicans, who control every branch of government, have had two years to introduce humane reforms. If they believed ICE was reformable they could have done it. If they wanted to create a solution for Dreamers et al, they could have done it. They've refused, ideologically, to do so, with those in control of the executive apparently intentionally enforcing the laws in the most inhumane way possible, and with no attempt to change executive policy by Congress.

      Maybe this is what you want. Or not. But reforms that include abolishing ICE, enshrining Obama's Dreamers policy into law, and placing restrictions on the executive's ability to abuse the asylum process as a way to punish refugees are all important to us on the left.

      This is Slashdot so I'm expecting a response that'll ignore what I've written above, condemn me as not wanting borders or some other BS, and so on, but, hey, at least I tried.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    19. Re:I don't get it... by DarkOx · · Score: 3, Funny

      They don't under international law refuges lose their status as soon as they set foot in a nation where they are safe from whatever specific force they are fleeing.

      Unless you want to conceede Mexico is a failed state that cannot be accountable for protecting citizens there; than no non-mexican having passed thru Mexico can arrive at our southern boarder as a legitimate asylum seeker.

      They are therefore simply illegal immigrants. When they are organized even minimally, as they are in this caravan they become invaders! Mexico allowing an invasion force to proceed thru its territory on the way to our boarder is an act of war and it should be treated like it!

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    20. Re:I don't get it... by hey! · · Score: 3, Informative

      ...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?

      Let me give you a liberal perspective on this: you are raising a straw man. We have no problem with protecting the border, the problem we have is with using scapegoating and scare-mongering, and bullshit waste of resources like building a wall. If you want to see the source of our problems, it's rich guys buying politicians, not Mexicans sneaking across the border to pick crops.

      If you are here in this country illegally, you have criminally trespassed. You should be deported.

      No, "trespass" has a specific meaning in law, and an unauthorized crossing of the border does not match that, even if it feels like tresspassing. And even as it were, the law allows people to enter your land against your wishes under certain circumstances. If a neighbor goes on your posted land to hunt, that's trespass. If he goes onto your posted land to escape a home invader, it's not trespass.

      Treaties the US imposed on other people after WW2 also bind us when it comes to handling asylum seekers. We don't have to help them get here, but we do have to give them due process and administrative help when they get here, even if they sneak across our borders. It's actually the government that is breaking the law by turning asylum seekers away at the border without a hearing, which of course means they sneak across, which makes policing the border that much harder.

      But I just don't get these seemingly increasing number of folks in the US promoting full blown open borders, with no control of who gets in here.

      That was how we did immigration up until 1927. You showed up at Ellis Island, were checked for disease, promised you weren't an anarchist and they'd ship you over to the docks at Battery Park and let you go anywhere you wanted. The 1927 quotas were proposed by eugenicists, who were worried that the influx of Jews was lowering America's collective IQ.

      Now if you were Mexican, you weren't part of the quota system. You could still walk across the border until 1965. That was because business interests needed the cheap labor. What changed in 65 was the rise of the United Farm Workers. Now this *might* just be coincidence, but if you look at how the'65 restrictions were enforced, they did not stem the influx of immigrants, so much as put those immigrants outside the protection of the law and made it harder for them to organize. The government didn't go after farmers hiring Mexicans, they went after the Mexicans. And the Mexicans they deported would be immediately replaced by other Mexicans, because there was a job waiting for them.

      Now restrictions on employers have become stricter, but we still have a system which is dependent upon immigrant labor, but puts those laborers outside the protection of the law. That's the problem with the tip line; it's a tool for payback against people with no rights of due process. This is the problem of immigration in the US: the hypocrisy of the whole system corrupts things that would otherwise be a good idea.

      What good does building a wall do if you can just pay someone to wave you through? And yet the demand for immigration security theater has the agency relaxing screening standards that are supposed to catch cartel infiltrators, in an agency that already has a stunning 5% corruption rate. Immigration security theater undermines national security.

      Now change the immigration so it allows for the immigrant laborers we actually need and keeps the people who've been here for years peacefully

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    21. Re:I don't get it... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It is not a flood coming in indiscriminately. It is people seeking jobs, the way ants seek sugar.

      Prosecute the employers, who are criminal by the very act of employing illegal immigrants. Simple civil prosecution, fines, make cost of employing illegal immigrants more expensive than hiring legal immigrants and citizens.

      Ahhh. You wont do it. Because these criminals are white and affluent. You would rather fight the weak, poor, people willing work harder than any one for a pittance.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    22. Re:I don't get it... by crunchygranola · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oh, every one of your ancestors came through after 1891. Understood.

      Prior to the Immigration Act of 1891 all anyone (who was not Asian) had to do to immigrate to the U.S. was show up at the border (or any port). And prior to 1875 even Asians could immigrate freely.

      In 1891 the U.S. population was 61 million. Anyone who has even one ancestor who was resident in the U.S. in 1891 is descended from someone who only had to show up to get in - everyone was automatically "legal".

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    23. Re:I don't get it... by crunchygranola · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No one before 1875 needed "permission to immigrate" you only needed a boat ticket, and it was only Asians who were excluded then, Europeans just needed that boat ticket until 1891, when the first immigration system was set up. Since you specify ancestors five generations back you are specifying people who came through around 1860 or so.

      So this story you tell is founded on BS. And the bit about "never met American Indians" is fairly astonishing. You know that for a fact? How?

      So you self-justifying story of totally legal and approved ancestors who never did anything wrong is a fairy tale.

      And right, Europeans who came to the U.S. never celebrated their country of origin (cough, cough, NY St. Patricks Day Parade).

      What is that unarmed invading army of women and children (mostly) going to do when they reach the border? They are going to request asylum under U.S. law as they are legally permitted to do once they reach U.S. soil. OMG Invaders!

      Trump has already said he plans on calling out the military to deal with the situation - just as you seem to endorse. I guess rather than taking asylum applications, the plan is to open fire?

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    24. Re:I don't get it... by JackieBrown · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What's your point?

      They came in legally back then.

      How many other 1891 era laws do you want to go back to?

    25. Re:I don't get it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ellis Island received more than 250.000 immigrants in April 1907 alone. That seemed to work out ok.

  3. Re: Immigrant criminals! by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My home extends to my walls -- a country is just a plot of land cursed with a (generally bad) government. I don't see a country as my home, just a political unit that I happen to be unfortunate enough to live under.

  4. A poem by wbr1 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Home, by Warsan Shire (British-Somali poet)

    no one leaves home unless
    home is the mouth of a shark.

    you only run for the border
    when you see the whole city
    running as well.

    your neighbours running faster
    than you, the boy you went to school with
    who kissed you dizzy behind
    the old tin factory is
    holding a gun bigger than his body,
    you only leave home
    when home won't let you stay.

    no one would leave home unless home
    chased you, fire under feet,
    hot blood in your belly.

    it's not something you ever thought about
    doing, and so when you did -
    you carried the anthem under your breath,
    waiting until the airport toilet
    to tear up the passport and swallow,
    each mouthful of paper making it clear that
    you would not be going back.

    you have to understand,
    no one puts their children in a boat
    unless the water is safer than the land.

    who would choose to spend days
    and nights in the stomach of a truck
    unless the miles travelled
    meant something more than journey.

    no one would choose to crawl under fences,
    be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
    raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
    the boat because you are darker, be sold,
    starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
    be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
    make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
    stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
    and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
    with go home blacks, refugees
    dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
    sucking our country dry of milk,
    dark, with their hands out
    smell strange, savage -
    look what they've done to their own countries,
    what will they do to ours?

    the dirty looks in the street
    softer than a limb torn off,
    the indignity of everyday life
    more tender than fourteen men who
    look like your father, between
    your legs, insults easier to swallow
    than rubble, than your child's body
    in pieces - for now, forget about pride
    your survival is more important.

    i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
    home is the barrel of the gun
    and no one would leave home
    unless home chased you to the shore
    unless home tells you to
    leave what you could not behind,
    even if it was human.

    no one leaves home until home
    is a damp voice in your ear saying
    leave, run now, i don't know what
    i've become.

    but i know that anywhere is safer than here. (Painting: Holy Family Icon by Kelly Latimore)

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.