#BORDER PATROL IS UNDERTRAINED

[initiala]

As someone who works in immigration and only recently found out that someone who was arrested for espionage went through my office for clearance (several years before I got here) if someone who wants to Do A Harm, they can absolutely get paperwork that looks and scans legitimate. I looked up the file and could not for the life of me find any illegitimacy that would have denied that person entry. And it’s my job to look for that kind of stuff.

passports…should not expire

[ramblingsandwhateverelse]

I have spent the past 24 hours ping ponging between varying extremes of emotion. I sat at my desk at work, and sometimes would spend 2 minutes holding back a blood-curling scream and crushing my water bottle in my fist. Sometimes my eyes would instantly water up and I would spend several minutes with my head tilted up, holding back tears and trying not to dry sob. I had to take frequent bathroom breaks as frequent waves of nasauea crept up on me without warning.

If you voted Democrat and are not just as scared or angry or miserable right now, it is for one of two reasons: you either do not fully understand the consequences of this election, or you do not truly care.

If you are in the second camp, there is no helping you. I hope you learn human empathy soon, but it won't be from me.

But to the first, this is not entirely an indictment of your character. American governance and politics are horribly messy, and our education system and media do a sub-par job at educating most Americans on either. What you need to immediately learn and understand is this: a presidential election is never solely about the singular president. If you do not believe that Donald Trump is truly evil or competent enough to cause the deterioration of human rights and living standards that others on the left expect, then that is fine. Honestly, you're probably right.

However, a president is never just one man- he is an entire Cabinet, hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, multiple media machines, millions of active combatants and agents, thousands of judges. During his previous presidency, Donald Trump did not ban transgender people from the military; those he appointed to the Department of Defense did. Donald Trump did not remove healthcare protections for LGBT people; those he appointed to the Department of Health and Human Services did. Donald Trump did not overturn Roe v Wade; those he appointed to the Supreme Court did. Donald Trump did not personally deny thousands of visas and asylum applications to migrants; those he appointed to the Department of State did. When a US president is elected, it is not the simple, singular election of one man to the office of the president; it is the welcoming of an entire political party and administration into a million-person machine that wields immense federal, state, and local power.

Furthermore, do not be fooled by the supposition that Trump's administration could not possibly enact all of the campaign promises they made. It is true that, between 2016-2020, his administration was never able to erect a wall along the US-MX border. However, his administration did deport record numbers of undocumented migrants, essentially freeze legal entry of asylum seekers and refugees, separate families of undocumented migrants, and hire tens of thousands of undertrained ICE and border patrol agents. Campaign promises are never truly important because of the actual content of the promise; they are important because of the ideals they uphold and strive to implement legislation in favor of.

Project 2025 is rife with campaign promises moderates have deemed too impossible to achieve, but Project 2025 should not be treated as an instruction manual the Trump administration will stick to word for word; rather, it is more of a Bible, a religious text that will oftentimes not be interpreted literally, but whose core beliefs will be espoused and followed faithfully. The underlying ideals of gender essentialism, heteronormativity, Jingoism and American supremacy, authoritarianism, social conservatism, and fiscal conservatism are what the Trump administration will prioritize and focus on. These will be the foundations of their legislation and political efforts.

You cannot pretend that everything will be fine simply because you can or did not perceive the differences and shifts that occurred between 2016 and 2020. You cannot look at the buffoon who will soon be Commander in Chief and honestly or intelligently believe that he is the sole person everyone is worried about. The time for coddled ignorance, willful or unwillful, is over. If you are reading this post, you have the phone battery and internet bandwidth to go educate yourself, so you have no excuse whatsoever anymore.

[askpetethelibrarian]

Oh, boy.

Here is a post from a librarian FB group I’m a part of. I’ve crossed out identities because, well, I don’t think they’re necessary. It may help you to know the OP and the second comment are the second person. 

I also want to say that I’m not 100% clear whether this is asking about a police ban or something else. The comment makes me think this is a police ban, so that’s how I’ll address it. 

Okay, let’s get into it. 

Let me start by saying that I don’t mean to share an opinion or idea on how justice can be attained or advocated for. I don’t have those answers, and I don’t want to pretend like I do. 

I also don’t think that advocating for justice is a bad thing on any level. However, this particular method has some issues beyond the immediately-apparent.

The obvious starting point is that we can’t do this. Barring someone from library use, libraries being a government-funded institution, because of their 100% legal occupation, also government-funded, might be a winner amongst some online, but it’s not going to be a winner in a legal/financial sense, and it’s not going to work. We could try, but I can just about guarantee that the best result is a legal case that costs us some minor amount of money and a significant amount of time. That’s the GOOD result. So, while a statement would be made, I estimate it would be a VERY costly statement, which is not a good use of taxpayer money at a time when library budgets are hurting (or, arguably, under any circumstances). To put this in perspective, libraries have lost more than one court case while attempting to bar white power groups from using public spaces for meetings in the library. If you can’t ban an outright white power group, there’s no way this one’s going to fly. 

The other obvious one, if we look at Philadelphia as an example, the math there is that there are over 1,000 black police officers in Philadelphia. So, barring police from the library in the interest of helping out with the campaign for black lives is leaving a group behind. This is likely an already difficult thing for the people in that situation, and I think cutting out their library access isn’t helpful to anyone on any side of the argument.

The last obvious one, if a library allows people access to information and ideas, I don’t see how creating an undereducated class (police, by the way, often being undertrained and undereducated) contributes to the cause, here. 

Let’s talk real world logistics:

These are some basic questions that need to be resolved before you could ban police from the library.

How will you identify officers, and how will you enforce the policy? Not to be too cute about it, but...who are you going to call to remove police officers who refuse to leave? A policy that cannot be enforced isn’t a good policy.

What will be the library’s response if there is a police protest of this? If this has the reverse effect of INCREASING the police presence at the library, as most libraries cannot prevent people from demonstrating outside, what’s the plan?

What is the security plan? Some libraries are pretty chill and do fine without calling on any type of security. Some definitely are not. I know many have spoken about reforms and bringing in psychologists and whatnot to these situations, and while I think there’s merit to those ideas, the library can’t just say, “Oh, we’ll wait until that’s ready.”

What will be the library’s response if the community, in majority, is against this policy? I understand there may need to be a way to look at this other than a majority vote, but I do think the community, as a whole, should be allowed to weigh in on this idea and express their ideas and concerns.

Is this an idea discussed with the black community, and what is their take on it?

What is the plan in the case that the promoted lack of police presence results in an uptick in problematic behavior to the point that something must be done? I’m not saying this will happen, and maybe everything will be fine. But those familiar with public service understand the need to prepare for this sort of possibility.

How will the library handle library users who call the police themselves? 

Can HR and insurance needs be accomodated? Can staff be asked to work in an environment where they do not have access to police? 

Okay, now let’s talk solutions

I don’t like to harp on someone else’s ideas without providing some possible solutions of my own. 

My solutions definitely water down the idea. I think this is necessary in this case, because I think without being watered down, it just won’t be successful. I don’t mean to water down the idea of campaigning for black lives, but to talk about methods that have a higher probability of being, well, real. 

Option: Ask officers using the library to come in plain clothes I have a friend who works with career fairs, and one of the controversial attendees is ICE and Border Patrol. Through various back and forth, they’ve essentially found that they cannot legally tell these folks that they are disallowed from the fairs. However, they have had a lot of success asking these folks to show up in regular clothes and without any weapons or tactical gear. These agencies were very receptive to this suggestion and have abided by it. I think it would be very reasonable to ask that police using the library come in plain clothes. 

Option: Reducing police presence To be harsh for a sec, most of the times that police are in the library, it’s because we’ve called them. I recommend training and the book by Ryan Dowd. His stuff deals with homelessness and libraries, but the principles of conflict resolution and de-escalation apply to a lot of situations, and he does a good job making it specific to libraries and library staff, who are often not physically intimidating people. Rather than banning police, why not see if we can learn to resolve conflicts in ways that prevent them from being called in the first place.

Option: Identify common areas of conflict When you have called the police in the past, what initiated that conflict? Do you have a policy against people sleeping or policies about people’s stuff in the library? Can those policies be removed or altered in such a way that they’re easier to enforce and easier on the people that violate them?

Option: Hiring security Now, this one’s dicey because you have to do it right. You can’t half-ass it and hire some security company that pays the guards minimum wage. Trust me on this, you will get what you pay for. Are you willing to look into the possibility of hiring and training your own security that’s better attuned to library needs and who are trained to work with patrons the way you’d prefer? 

Option: Who You Gonna Call? Do you have a number that allows you to call paramedics without police? How about the number of the nearest homeless shelter? Do you have a number for a counseling center, and do you have relationships with them that might help you come up with ways to deal with common problems that don’t involve police?

Overall

I think this idea comes from an overall good place, if I’m giving the benefit of the doubt. But I think this idea is also so rife with problems once it comes to application that it’s not even really worth discussing. What I do think is worth discussing is the idea that police presence can be greatly reduced by doing a few simple things that are well within the library’s control. 

The big thing here, you won’t get to crow about it. You won’t get to tell everyone how you did this thing, bravely standing between police and library users. The options I’m suggesting are slow and subtle. But I think they’re also effective. 

And that’s the question I’d pose: Do you want to be able to tell everyone what a good, big thing you did, or Do you want to do what’s most likely to help the most people?

[demimonde-semigoddess]

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-insulates-federal-agents-accountability-2022-06-10/

Another source on this for reference - I think this is one of the more damning phrases from the article summarizing the opinion:

The court further narrowed a more restrictive standard it established just five years ago, holding that courts can now dismiss lawsuits against federal officials if there “is any rational reason (even one) to think that Congress is better suited to ‘weigh the costs and benefits���” of allowing the suit.

Basically, the conservative SC believes the law doesn’t apply to federal officials, which includes undertrained border patrol agents who may have personal grudges.

More specifically, 2/3rds of all people living in the US can now be forcibly and legally searched for any reason.

Authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting searches on any person.