#charter flight deportation

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 27, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Yesterday, President Donald Trump began a trade war with Colombia after that country’s president refused to permit two U.S. military airplanes full of deportees to land in Colombia. As Regina Garcia Cano and Astrid Suárez of the Associated Press pointed out, Colombia and the U.S. had an existing agreement for deportations under former president Joe Biden, and it accepted 475 deportation flights from 2020 to 2024, accepting 124 flights in 2024 alone. But the Biden administration used commercial and charter flights, while as national security analyst Juliette Kayyem noted, Trump used a military plane that arrived unannounced.

As Tim Naftali of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs explained: “If a foreign country tries to land its military planes—except in an emergency—without an existing agreement that is an infringement of sovereignty.” Colombia rejected the military planes without prior authorization and offered the use of its presidential plane instead.

Colombia also asked the U.S. to provide notice and decent treatment for its people, an issue that had been raised and resolved in 2023 after migrants arrived in hand and foot cuffs. Colombian president Gustavo Petro noted that the U.S. had committed that it would guarantee dignified conditions for the repatriation of migrants. The plane of migrants landed in Honduras, where Columbia sent its presidential plane to pick them up.

Trump announced that Colombia’s “denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States,” and slapped a 25% tariff on products from Colombia, which include about $6 billion of crude petroleum, $1.8 billion of coffee, and $1.6 billion of cut flowers. In addition, he said, the U.S. would revoke the visas of all Colombian “Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.” He promptly deported Colombian staff members of the World Bank who were working for international diplomatic organizations in the U.S., and canceled visa appointments at Colombia’s U.S. Embassy.

Rather than backing down, President Petro threatened to levy a retaliatory tariff on U.S. products. Colombia imports 96.7% of the corn it feeds its livestock from the U.S., putting Colombia in the top five export markets for U.S. corn. According to a letter written by a bipartisan group of lawmakers eager to protect that trade, led by Senator Todd Young (R-IN), in 2003 the U.S. exported more than 4 million metric tons of corn to Colombia, which translated to $1.14 billion in sales. “American farmers cannot afford to lose such a vital export market,” the lawmakers wrote, “especially when access to the top U.S. corn export market, Mexico, is already at risk.”

By this morning the economic crisis appeared to be over, although U.S. visa restrictions apparently remain. With prior authorization and better treatment of migrants, Colombia is willing to accept the migrant flights. The White House declared victory, saying: “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation's sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”

The administration’s handling of the situation with Colombia reveals that their power depends on convincing people to ignore reality and instead to believe in the fantasy world Trump dictates.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced yesterday morning that “[d]eportation flights have begun.” In fact, nothing is “beginning.” In 2024, Colombia accepted on average more than two U.S. flights of migrants a week. And, as immigration scholar Austin Kocher noted, “everyone on this deportation flight was arrested and detained by the Biden administration.”

Over the past four years, Trump and MAGA Republicans repeatedly insisted that Biden had maintained “open borders,” while in fact, what the administration did was to try to address a situation made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.

As Katie Tobin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains, before the coronavirus pandemic, Venezuela, where the economy was particularly bad under rising authoritarian Nicolás Maduro, sent migrants abroad. By June 2022, 6 million Venezuelans had fled their country; by September 2024, that number was 7.7 million. South American governments welcomed the Venezuelan migrants and others, including Haitians fleeing their country’s political chaos.

But as economies collapsed after the coronavirus crisis, Tobin explains, migrant populations that had settled in South American countries were forced out. From 2019 to 2021, Colombia’s per capita gross domestic product fell 4.6%; Peru’s, 5.3%; Ecuador’s, 2.8%; Brazil’s, 11.7%; and Venezuela’s, 20%. As the U.S. economy grew by 8.38%, Canada’s grew by 13.1%, and Mexico’s dropped only by 0.7%, migrants headed north. In September 2021, when 15,000 Haitians who had originally migrated to Brazil arrived at the U.S. border with Mexico, countries throughout the hemisphere realized that they needed a new regional approach to migration.

After nine months of negotiations, 21 countries announced that they had created a new migration pact for the Western Hemisphere. It provided economic support for Latin American countries that were original destinations for migrants, expanded formal pathways for immigration, and increased border security across the region.

Canada and Mexico were the first countries to buy into the new agreement. The U.S. turned next to strong ally Colombia, which agreed in March 2022, after which Vice President Kamala Harris brought on board Caribbean countries. By June 10, when the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection was announced, twenty-one nations had signed on. U.N. observers were present to demonstrate their support.

The Biden administration insisted that countries begin immediate action, and they did. Tobin notes that Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru have made sweeping new offers of legal status to hundreds of thousands of migrants already living in their countries, while Colombia has offered legal status to 2 million Venezuelans and Brazil has welcomed more than 500,000. Mexico and Guatemala have offered legal pathways to workers.

Canada, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain, and the U.S. launched a virtual platform to enable migrants to apply for admission remotely. When Mexico agreed to accept Venezuelans who had crossed into the U.S. unlawfully and at the same time the U.S. announced a legal pathway for 24,000 Venezuelans, border crossings dropped 90% within a week. Biden and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador expanded that initiative to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.

By 2023, border arrests had fallen by about half. Although Congress failed to pass a strong bipartisan measure to increase border security and fund immigration courts, arrests fell by half again after Biden in June 2024 issued a proclamation that barred migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deemed the border was overwhelmed. By the end of Biden’s term, unlawful border crossings had plummeted to lows that hadn’t been seen since June 2020.

There are new challenges to managing migration as wars, climate change, and economic pressures push migrants out of various parts of Africa and out of China. Many of those migrants are finding their way to Latin America and from there to the U.S. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that 117 million people were displaced by the end of 2023.

Trump won election in part by vowing to shut down immigration, and as soon as he took office he canceled the CBP One app, the virtual platform that allowed migrants to apply for asylum. During the campaign, he vowed to deport those migrants he claimed were criminals, which many interpreted to mean he would only remove those who had committed violent crimes (which the U.S. has always done). But in his first term, Trump’s people considered anyone who entered the U.S. outside of immigration law to be a criminal, and this appears to be the definition his people are using now.

Daily deportation raids in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested a few hundred people in sweeps began almost as soon as Trump took office. Josh Campbell, Andy Rose, and Nick Valencia of CNN reported that the federal government has flooded the media with video and photos of agents in tactical gear, their vests bearing the words “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security” as they lead individuals in handcuffs. The journalists report that this is not an accident: agents were told to have their agency names clearly displayed for the press.

The presence of television talk show host Dr. Phil (McGraw) with an ICE team in Chicago reinforces the sense that these arrests are designed for the cameras. So does yesterday’s report by Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post that Trump is disappointed with the sweeps so far and has directed officials to ramp up arrests aggressively, providing quotas for ICE field offices. Today, new secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said the department will “shift” to “the defense of the territorial integrity of the United States of America at the southern border.”

Yesterday’s spat with Colombia’s president enabled Trump to declare victory, but Colombia has been the top U.S. ally in Latin America, a close partner in combating drug trafficking and managing migration. That relationship, which has taken years of careful cultivation, is now threatened.

Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy, posted: “I can’t think of many *worse* strategic blunders for the U.S., as it competes w/ China, than going nuclear against its oldest strategic ally & last big country in S. America where it enjoys a trade advantage…. Trump certainly expects that b[ecause] 1/3 of Colombian exports go to the U.S. Petro will be forced to back down. But Petro seems to welcome the fight & has already signaled wishes to deepen ties w/ China. Colombia will lose partnership on security it badly needs. Only China stands to gain from this.”

Indeed, China’s ambassador to Colombia promptly noted that “we are at the best moment of our diplomatic relations between China and Colombia, which are now 45 years old.”

Meanwhile, according to former ambassador Luis G. Moreno, the Trump administration has shut down 2,100 courses in the premier training facility for State Department foreign service officers, ostensibly because they are too associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Moreno adds: “Dismantling of a professional diplomatic corps is underway.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

More than 600 Brazilians deported by UK Home Office on three secret flights

Record number of deportees includes children who may have spent most of their lives in the UK

More than 600 Brazilians, including 109 children, have been secretly removed from the UK – on the three largest Home Office deportation charter flights in history – since the Labour government came to power, the Observer has learned.

The Home Office has never before removed any nationality in such large numbers on individual deportation charter flights. It is thought that children have never before been removed on these flights.

According to freedom of information data seen by the Observer, the three flights were on 9 August, when 205 people including 43 children were removed; 23 August, when 206 people were removed, including 30 children; and 27 September, when 218 people were removed, including 36 children. All the deported children were part of family units, and many of them would have been settled at school and are likely to have spent most if not all of their lives in the UK.

The returns were classed as voluntary and were likely to include people who had overstayed their visas. The Home Office offers incentives for voluntary returnees of up to £3,000 including for babies and children. The sweeteners are provided in the form of pre-loaded cards that can be activated once people touch down in their home country.

Continue reading.

[hybridmindthoughtsreloaded]

Since he's using military planes to help put on a show for the MAGA cult instead of charter flights like normal deportations, Trump is wasting even more tax payers money.

[futuretrendstoday]

Indian Restaurants in the UK Targeted in Immigration Crackdown

The UK government has intensified its efforts against illegal immigration, launching a nationwide crackdown that has significantly impacted Indian restaurants and other hospitality businesses. The operation, described as a "UK-wide blitz" by the Home Office, led to a record number of arrests and enforcement actions in January.

Increased Raids and Arrests

Under the supervision of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, immigration enforcement teams raided 828 establishments across the UK in January—marking a 48% increase from the previous year. Arrests also saw a sharp rise, with 609 individuals detained, a 73% surge compared to the same period last year.

The Home Office revealed that a significant portion of enforcement activity was focused on restaurants, takeaways, and cafes, as well as the broader food and beverage industry. One raid on an Indian restaurant in Humberside, northern England, resulted in seven arrests and four immediate detentions.

Government's Stance on Illegal Employment

"The immigration rules must be respected and enforced," stated Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. "For too long, businesses have exploited illegal migrants, while enforcement action remained weak. This crackdown ensures that illegal workers and their employers face real consequences."

Cooper emphasized that unchecked illegal migration poses broader risks, including fueling human smuggling operations and enabling the exploitation of vulnerable workers. The UK government has recently ramped up deportation efforts, using special charter flights to repatriate illegal immigrants, including individuals convicted of serious crimes.

Stricter Immigration Measures

Since Labour's return to power, nearly 19,000 foreign criminals and undocumented migrants have been deported. The government has also launched social media campaigns in Vietnam and Albania to deter illegal migration by highlighting the dangers of human smuggling and false promises made by traffickers.

The Home Office reported that from July 2024 to January 2025, illegal working crackdowns increased by 38% compared to the previous year. Over 1,090 civil penalty notices were issued to businesses found employing undocumented workers, with fines reaching up to £60,000 per worker.

Eddy Montgomery, Director of Enforcement, Compliance, and Crime at the Home Office, reinforced the government's commitment to tougher enforcement. "These figures show that we are serious about tackling illegal migration. Employers who break the law will be held accountable, and illegal workers will face removal.

New Border Security Legislation

The crackdown aligns with the Labour government’s Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill, which is set for its second reading in Parliament. The proposed legislation seeks to dismantle criminal networks involved in human trafficking and illegal migration. Key measures include giving law enforcement expanded powers to seize mobile phones from migrants entering the UK illegally and strengthening penalties against businesses employing undocumented workers.

The opposition Conservative Party has criticized the bill as "ineffective," calling for stricter measures to prevent illegal migration and limit access to permanent residency for all migrants. "Under new leadership, the Conservatives are proposing real reforms to cut immigration. Britain is our home, not a hotel," stated shadow home secretary Chris Philp.

As the UK government continues its aggressive stance on immigration enforcement, Indian restaurants and other businesses employing undocumented workers find themselves at the center of these sweeping changes. With stricter laws and heightened enforcement, compliance with immigration policies is more critical than ever for businesses operating in the UK.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, February 2, 2025

How the World Is Reeling From Trump’s Aid Freeze (NYT) In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down. In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers. In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter. In Afghanistan, 1,700 women have lost their jobs���and, thanks to the Taliban, have little hope of another one. Independent media outlets in Iran and Cambodia are struggling. Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already feeling President Trump’s sudden cutoff of billions of dollars in American aid that helps fend off starvation, treats diseases and provides shelter for the displaced. In a matter of days, Mr. Trump’s order to freeze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has intensified humanitarian crises and raised profound questions about America’s reliability and global standing. “Everyone is freaking out,” Atif Mukhtar of the Emergency Response Rooms, a local volunteer group in the besieged Sudanese capital, Khartoum, said of the aid freeze. “The U.S. government is not a charity,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week. Still, “we don’t want to see people die and the like.”

US military deportation flight likely cost more than first class (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump’s military deportation flight to Guatemala on Monday likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant, according to data provided by U.S. and Guatemalan officials. That is more than five times the $853 cost of a one-way first class ticket on American Airlines from El Paso, Texas, the departure point for the flight, according to a review of publicly available airfares. It is also significantly higher than the cost of a commercial charter flight by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A U.S. official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, estimated the cost to operate a C-17 military transport aircraft is $28,500 per hour. The flight back and forth to Guatemala, not including time on the ground or any operations to prepare the flight for takeoff, took about 10-1/2 hours in the air to complete, the official said. Trump, speaking at his Doral golf club to Republican lawmakers on Monday, vowed his unprecedented use of military aircraft for deportations would continue and any countries that refuse will “pay a high economic price.”

Sports gambling and young men (Guardian) Watching televised sports in 2025 can feel a little like sitting through one long gambling commercial, interspersed by occasional flashes of actual games. “Over the course of an NBA or NHL broadcast, the viewer will see the logo of a betting company or hear some reference made to gambling 2.8 times per minute, according to a study. ‘ESPN is a 24-7 casino ad right now,” says Dr Timothy Fong, an addiction psychiatrist and the co-director of UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program. “The normalization has gone so deep, so fast. [Sports] gambling has gone so viral that it’s beyond normalization. It’s endemic.” It’s turned into a highly effective machine for drawing and keeping customers, particularly young men. As one addiction expert says: “Gambling offers the false promise of spectacular success. The psyche of young men has not changed. But every societal touchstone is promoting gambling expansion.”

Trump’s Tariffs Would Reverse Decades of Integration Between U.S. and Mexico (NYT) When Dennis Nixon started working at a regional bank in Laredo, Texas, in 1975, there was just a trickle of trade across the border with Mexico. Now, nearly a billion dollars of commerce and more than 15,000 trucks roll over the line every day just a quarter mile from his office, binding the economies of the United States and Mexico together. Laredo is America’s busiest port, and a conduit for car parts, gasoline, avocados and computers. “You cannot pick it apart anymore,” Mr. Nixon said of the U.S. and Mexican economies. Thirty years of economic integration under a free trade deal has created “interdependencies and relationships that you don’t always understand and measure, until something goes wrong,” he said. Now that something is looming: 25 percent tariffs on Mexican products, which President Trump plans to impose as he looks to pressure the Mexican government to do more to curb illegal immigration. Mr. Trump is also expected to hit Canada with 25 percent levies and impose a 10 percent tax on Chinese imports. A longtime proponent of tariffs and a critic of free trade deals, Mr. Trump seems unafraid to upend America’s closest economic  relationships. Many businesses say ties between the countries run deeper than most Americans realize, and policies like tariffs that seek to sever them would be painful. Of all the world’s major economic partners, the United States and Mexico are among the most integrated—linked by business, trade, tourism, familial ties, remittances and culture.

Fear, disease and debt afflict Venezuelans released from prison after post-election arrests (AP) Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro labeled them as terrorists on national television. They were plucked from pharmacies, apartment buildings and other locations, and thrown in prison for months. Many then endured severe beatings, food deprivation and other forms of torture. Virtually all developed stomach infections and lost weight. Three died. More than 2,200 people were detained after Venezuela’s July presidential election, when civil unrest broke out over Maduro’s claim to victory. With dissent firmly squelched, the government has slowly released nearly 1,900 of the mostly poor, politically unaffiliated twenty-somethings. Tearful reunions with family, some as recently as Friday, have brought them an immense sense of relief, but it vanishes with the realization that they are not truly free, neither physically nor mentally. Former detainees suffer insomnia, cannot be among crowds and tremble at the sight of a police officer. They have heart conditions not typical of young adults. They are worse off financially than before the election and cannot find work partly because their IDs were seized during their arrests.

Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Suspected of Cutting an Undersea Cable (NYT) The authorities in Norway have seized a Russian-crewed ship that is suspected of damaging an undersea cable in an act of sabotage in the Baltic Sea, the Norwegian police said on Friday. They were acting on a request from the Latvian authorities and on an order issued in Norwegian courts, the police said in a statement, after an undersea cable that runs between Sweden and Latvia was damaged this week. It is the latest in a growing number of acts of damage or sabotage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, including to cables used for communication and for the distribution of electricity. In response to one such instance in December, NATO has stepped up its patrol and surveillance operation in the Baltic Sea.

German politicians signal to Syrian asylum seekers: It’s time to go home (Washington Post) A sharp turn toward a tougher line on migrants is beginning to play out in Germany, with leading politicians calling for mass returns, echoing President Donald Trump’s plan to expel undocumented migrants from the United States. Ahead of elections next month, what to do with migrants—including the nearly 1 million Syrian refugees living here—has emerged as issue No. 1 for German voters. The shift in attitudes and policies is striking. A decade ago, heeding a national rallying cry of “We can do it,” Germany opened its doors to Syrians fleeing a devastating civil war. But after the stunning fall of longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad last month, Germany was one of several European countries to put open asylum applications from Syrian nationals on hold. And now, a swath of German society is sounding a new clarion call: It’s time for them to go home.

Ukraine’s missing (BBC) The Russians came for Tetiana and Oleh Plachkov while they were sleeping, bursting into their home late at night. It was 25 September 2023 in Melitopol, south-eastern Ukraine, where the couple had grown up, fallen in love and married. Now their city was occupied by Russian forces. The men were armed and dressed in black. As some began searching the house, seizing devices and documents, others led Tetiana and Oleh away in handcuffs. The couple then vanished without trace. Ukraine has listed more than 61,000 people as missing since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, both soldiers and civilians. When troops go missing in action there is a chance they might eventually be included in a prisoner-of-war exchange. But civilians are returned very rarely: the Russians don’t usually admit to holding them. The suffering is shared by many thousands of Ukrainian families. At a hotline in Kyiv run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), most of the calls are from people searching for relatives lost in this war.

Egypt Fears Syria’s Revolutionary Fervor Could Be Contagious (NYT) Soon after Islamist rebels overthrew the authoritarian president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, a hashtag gathered steam on Egyptian social media: “It’s your turn, dictator.” The message for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt was unmistakable. But he hardly needed the warning. Since the ouster of Syria’s longtime dictator on Dec. 8, Egyptian leaders have watched events in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with grim-faced vigilance, knowing well that revolutionary fire has a tendency to spread.

Conflict in Congo (NYT) Rebels backed by Rwanda are seizing huge tracts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their progress has been swift and stunning. In a month, they have routed Congo’s underequipped army several times and caused more than half a million people to flee. On Monday, they captured Goma, a major Congolese city along the Rwandan border. Why are the rebels, known as M23, grabbing parts of eastern Congo? In their telling, they’re protecting ethnic Tutsis, the minority group massacred in a 1994 genocide, some of whom also live in Congo. But experts say the real reason is Congo’s rare minerals, which power our phones and devices. Congo’s mines are making the rebels—and their patrons in Rwanda—rich. You might not know much about Congo. But you could be holding a piece of it right now, inside the phone on which you’re reading this. The country is full of the minerals used to make our electronics. And everyone wants a piece: Washington and Beijing have been vying for access to minerals like copper and cobalt. Elon Musk gets most of the cobalt in Tesla’s batteries from a Congolese mine.

AI-written books (BBC) For Christmas I received an interesting gift from a friend—my very own “best-selling” book. “Tech-Splaining for Dummies” (great title) bears my name and my photo on its cover, and it has glowing reviews. Yet it was entirely written by AI, with a few simple prompts about me supplied by my friend Janet. It’s an interesting read, and very funny in parts. But it also meanders quite a lot, and is somewhere between a self-help book and a stream of anecdotes. It mimics my chatty style of writing, but it’s also a bit repetitive, and very verbose. There’s also a mysterious, repeated hallucination in the form of my cat (I have no pets). There are dozens of companies online offering AI-book writing services. My book was from BookByAnyone. When I contacted the chief executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he told me he had sold around 150,000 personalised books, mainly in the US, since pivoting from compiling AI-generated travel guides in June 2024. A paperback copy of your own 240-page long best-seller costs £26. The firm uses its own AI tools to generate them, based on an open source large language model.

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson

January 27, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 28

Yesterday, President Donald Trump began a trade war with Colombia after that country’s president refused to permit two U.S. military airplanes full of deportees to land in Colombia. As Regina Garcia Cano and Astrid Suárez of the Associated Press pointed out, Colombia and the U.S. had an existing agreement for deportations under former president Joe Biden, and it accepted 475 deportation flights from 2020 to 2024, accepting 124 flights in 2024 alone. But the Biden administration used commercial and charter flights, while as national security analyst Juliette Kayyem noted, Trump used a military plane that arrived unannounced.

As Tim Naftali of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs explained: “If a foreign country tries to land its military planes—except in an emergency—without an existing agreement that is an infringement of sovereignty.” Colombia rejected the military planes without prior authorization and offered the use of its presidential plane instead.

Colombia also asked the U.S. to provide notice and decent treatment for its people, an issue that had been raised and resolved in 2023 after migrants arrived in hand and foot cuffs. Colombian president Gustavo Petro noted that the U.S. had committed that it would guarantee dignified conditions for the repatriation of migrants. The plane of migrants landed in Honduras, where Columbia sent its presidential plane to pick them up.

Trump announced that Colombia’s “denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States,” and slapped a 25% tariff on products from Colombia, which include about $6 billion of crude petroleum, $1.8 billion of coffee, and $1.6 billion of cut flowers. In addition, he said, the U.S. would revoke the visas of all Colombian “Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.” He promptly deported Colombian staff members of the World Bank who were working for international diplomatic organizations in the U.S., and canceled visa appointments at Colombia’s U.S. Embassy.

Rather than backing down, President Petro threatened to levy a retaliatory tariff on U.S. products. Colombia imports 96.7% of the corn it feeds its livestock from the U.S., putting Colombia in the top five export markets for U.S. corn. According to a letter written by a bipartisan group of lawmakers eager to protect that trade, led by Senator Todd Young (R-IN), in 2003 the U.S. exported more than 4 million metric tons of corn to Colombia, which translated to $1.14 billion in sales. “American farmers cannot afford to lose such a vital export market,” the lawmakers wrote, “especially when access to the top U.S. corn export market, Mexico, is already at risk.”

By this morning the economic crisis appeared to be over, although U.S. visa restrictions apparently remain. With prior authorization and better treatment of migrants, Colombia is willing to accept the migrant flights. The White House declared victory, saying: “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation's sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”  (NOTE - AMERICA IS NOT RESPECTED, EVER SINCE11/5/2024!!!)

The administration’s handling of the situation with Colombia reveals that their power depends on convincing people to ignore reality and instead to believe in the fantasy world Trump dictates.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced yesterday morning that “[d]eportation flights have begun.” In fact, nothing is “beginning.” In 2024, Colombia accepted on average more than two U.S. flights of migrants a week. And, as immigration scholar Austin Kocher noted, “everyone on this deportation flight was arrested and detained by the Biden administration.”

Over the past four years, Trump and MAGA Republicans repeatedly insisted that Biden had maintained “open borders,” while in fact, what the administration did was to try to address a situation made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.

As Katie Tobin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains, before the coronavirus pandemic, Venezuela, where the economy was particularly bad under rising authoritarian Nicolás Maduro, sent migrants abroad. By June 2022, 6 million Venezuelans had fled their country; by September 2024, that number was 7.7 million. South American governments welcomed the Venezuelan migrants and others, including Haitians fleeing their country’s political chaos.

But as economies collapsed after the coronavirus crisis, Tobin explains, migrant populations that had settled in South American countries were forced out. From 2019 to 2021, Colombia’s per capita gross domestic product fell 4.6%; Peru’s, 5.3%; Ecuador’s, 2.8%; Brazil’s, 11.7%; and Venezuela’s, 20%. As the U.S. economy grew by 8.38%, Canada’s grew by 13.1%, and Mexico’s dropped only by 0.7%, migrants headed north. In September 2021, when 15,000 Haitians who had originally migrated to Brazil arrived at the U.S. border with Mexico, countries throughout the hemisphere realized that they needed a new regional approach to migration.

After nine months of negotiations, 21 countries announced that they had created a new migration pact for the Western Hemisphere. It provided economic support for Latin American countries that were original destinations for migrants, expanded formal pathways for immigration, and increased border security across the region.

Canada and Mexico were the first countries to buy into the new agreement. The U.S. turned next to strong ally Colombia, which agreed in March 2022, after which Vice President Kamala Harris brought on board Caribbean countries. By June 10, when the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection was announced, twenty-one nations had signed on. U.N. observers were present to demonstrate their support.

The Biden administration insisted that countries begin immediate action, and they did. Tobin notes that Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru have made sweeping new offers of legal status to hundreds of thousands of migrants already living in their countries, while Colombia has offered legal status to 2 million Venezuelans and Brazil has welcomed more than 500,000. Mexico and Guatemala have offered legal pathways to workers.

Canada, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain, and the U.S. launched a virtual platform to enable migrants to apply for admission remotely. When Mexico agreed to accept Venezuelans who had crossed into the U.S. unlawfully and at the same time the U.S. announced a legal pathway for 24,000 Venezuelans, border crossings dropped 90% within a week. Biden and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador expanded that initiative to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.

By 2023, border arrests had fallen by about half. Although Congress failed to pass a strong bipartisan measure to increase border security and fund immigration courts, arrests fell by half again after Biden in June 2024 issued a proclamation that barred migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deemed the border was overwhelmed. By the end of Biden’s term, unlawful border crossings had plummeted to lows that hadn’t been seen since June 2020.

There are new challenges to managing migration as wars, climate change, and economic pressures push migrants out of various parts of Africa and out of China. Many of those migrants are finding their way to Latin America and from there to the U.S. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that 117 million people were displaced by the end of 2023.

Trump won election in part by vowing to shut down immigration, and as soon as he took office he canceled the CBP One app, the virtual platform that allowed migrants to apply for asylum. During the campaign, he vowed to deport those migrants he claimed were criminals, which many interpreted to mean he would only remove those who had committed violent crimes (which the U.S. has always done). But in his first term, Trump’s people considered anyone who entered the U.S. outside of immigration law to be a criminal, and this appears to be the definition his people are using now.

Daily deportation raids in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested a few hundred people in sweeps began almost as soon as Trump took office. Josh Campbell, Andy Rose, and Nick Valencia of CNN reported that the federal government has flooded the media with video and photos of agents in tactical gear, their vests bearing the words “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security” as they lead individuals in handcuffs. The journalists report that this is not an accident: agents were told to have their agency names clearly displayed for the press.

The presence of television talk show host Dr. Phil (McGraw) with an ICE team in Chicago reinforces the sense that these arrests are designed for the cameras. So does yesterday’s report by Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post that Trump is disappointed with the sweeps so far and has directed officials to ramp up arrests aggressively, providing quotas for ICE field offices. Today, new secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said the department will “shift” to “the defense of the territorial integrity of the United States of America at the southern border.”

Yesterday’s spat with Colombia’s president enabled Trump to declare victory, but Colombia has been the top U.S. ally in Latin America, a close partner in combating drug trafficking and managing migration. That relationship, which has taken years of careful cultivation, is now threatened.

Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy, posted: “I can’t think of many *worse* strategic blunders for the U.S., as it competes w/ China, than going nuclear against its oldest strategic ally & last big country in S. America where it enjoys a trade advantage…. Trump certainly expects that b[ecause] 1/3 of Colombian exports go to the U.S. Petro will be forced to back down. But Petro seems to welcome the fight & has already signaled wishes to deepen ties w/ China. Colombia will lose partnership on security it badly needs. Only China stands to gain from this.”

Indeed, China’s ambassador to Colombia promptly noted that “we are at the best moment of our diplomatic relations between China and Colombia, which are now 45 years old.”

Meanwhile, according to former ambassador Luis G. Moreno, the Trump administration has shut down 2,100 courses in the premier training facility for State Department foreign service officers, ostensibly because they are too associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Moreno adds: “Dismantling of a professional diplomatic corps is underway.”THIS IS AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER FOR THIS COUNTRY.4 YEARS OF THIS IDIOCY, FROM WHICH WE MAY NEVERRECOVER, IS MORE THAN I CAN BEAR TO THINK ABOUT. 

[misfitwashere]

January 27, 2025

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 28

Yesterday, President Donald Trump began a trade war with Colombia after that country’s president refused to permit two U.S. military airplanes full of deportees to land in Colombia. As Regina Garcia Cano and Astrid Suárez of the Associated Press pointed out, Colombia and the U.S. had an existing agreement for deportations under former president Joe Biden, and it accepted 475 deportation flights from 2020 to 2024, accepting 124 flights in 2024 alone. But the Biden administration used commercial and charter flights, while as national security analyst Juliette Kayyem noted, Trump used a military plane that arrived unannounced.

As Tim Naftali of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs explained: “If a foreign country tries to land its military planes—except in an emergency—without an existing agreement that is an infringement of sovereignty.” Colombia rejected the military planes without prior authorization and offered the use of its presidential plane instead.

Colombia also asked the U.S. to provide notice and decent treatment for its people, an issue that had been raised and resolved in 2023 after migrants arrived in hand and foot cuffs. Colombian president Gustavo Petro noted that the U.S. had committed that it would guarantee dignified conditions for the repatriation of migrants. The plane of migrants landed in Honduras, where Columbia sent its presidential plane to pick them up.

Trump announced that Colombia’s “denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States,” and slapped a 25% tariff on products from Colombia, which include about $6 billion of crude petroleum, $1.8 billion of coffee, and $1.6 billion of cut flowers. In addition, he said, the U.S. would revoke the visas of all Colombian “Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.” He promptly deported Colombian staff members of the World Bank who were working for international diplomatic organizations in the U.S., and canceled visa appointments at Colombia’s U.S. Embassy.

Rather than backing down, President Petro threatened to levy a retaliatory tariff on U.S. products. Colombia imports 96.7% of the corn it feeds its livestock from the U.S., putting Colombia in the top five export markets for U.S. corn. According to a letter written by a bipartisan group of lawmakers eager to protect that trade, led by Senator Todd Young (R-IN), in 2003 the U.S. exported more than 4 million metric tons of corn to Colombia, which translated to $1.14 billion in sales. “American farmers cannot afford to lose such a vital export market,” the lawmakers wrote, “especially when access to the top U.S. corn export market, Mexico, is already at risk.”

By this morning the economic crisis appeared to be over, although U.S. visa restrictions apparently remain. With prior authorization and better treatment of migrants, Colombia is willing to accept the migrant flights. The White House declared victory, saying: “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation's sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”

The administration’s handling of the situation with Colombia reveals that their power depends on convincing people to ignore reality and instead to believe in the fantasy world Trump dictates.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced yesterday morning that “[d]eportation flights have begun.” In fact, nothing is “beginning.” In 2024, Colombia accepted on average more than two U.S. flights of migrants a week. And, as immigration scholar Austin Kocher noted, “everyone on this deportation flight was arrested and detained by the Biden administration.”

Over the past four years, Trump and MAGA Republicans repeatedly insisted that Biden had maintained “open borders,” while in fact, what the administration did was to try to address a situation made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.

As Katie Tobin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains, before the coronavirus pandemic, Venezuela, where the economy was particularly bad under rising authoritarian Nicolás Maduro, sent migrants abroad. By June 2022, 6 million Venezuelans had fled their country; by September 2024, that number was 7.7 million. South American governments welcomed the Venezuelan migrants and others, including Haitians fleeing their country’s political chaos.

But as economies collapsed after the coronavirus crisis, Tobin explains, migrant populations that had settled in South American countries were forced out. From 2019 to 2021, Colombia’s per capita gross domestic product fell 4.6%; Peru’s, 5.3%; Ecuador’s, 2.8%; Brazil’s, 11.7%; and Venezuela’s, 20%. As the U.S. economy grew by 8.38%, Canada’s grew by 13.1%, and Mexico’s dropped only by 0.7%, migrants headed north. In September 2021, when 15,000 Haitians who had originally migrated to Brazil arrived at the U.S. border with Mexico, countries throughout the hemisphere realized that they needed a new regional approach to migration.

After nine months of negotiations, 21 countries announced that they had created a new migration pact for the Western Hemisphere. It provided economic support for Latin American countries that were original destinations for migrants, expanded formal pathways for immigration, and increased border security across the region.

Canada and Mexico were the first countries to buy into the new agreement. The U.S. turned next to strong ally Colombia, which agreed in March 2022, after which Vice President Kamala Harris brought on board Caribbean countries. By June 10, when the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection was announced, twenty-one nations had signed on. U.N. observers were present to demonstrate their support.

The Biden administration insisted that countries begin immediate action, and they did. Tobin notes that Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru have made sweeping new offers of legal status to hundreds of thousands of migrants already living in their countries, while Colombia has offered legal status to 2 million Venezuelans and Brazil has welcomed more than 500,000. Mexico and Guatemala have offered legal pathways to workers.

Canada, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain, and the U.S. launched a virtual platform to enable migrants to apply for admission remotely. When Mexico agreed to accept Venezuelans who had crossed into the U.S. unlawfully and at the same time the U.S. announced a legal pathway for 24,000 Venezuelans, border crossings dropped 90% within a week. Biden and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador expanded that initiative to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.

By 2023, border arrests had fallen by about half. Although Congress failed to pass a strong bipartisan measure to increase border security and fund immigration courts, arrests fell by half again after Biden in June 2024 issued a proclamation that barred migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deemed the border was overwhelmed. By the end of Biden’s term, unlawful border crossings had plummeted to lows that hadn’t been seen since June 2020.

There are new challenges to managing migration as wars, climate change, and economic pressures push migrants out of various parts of Africa and out of China. Many of those migrants are finding their way to Latin America and from there to the U.S. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that 117 million people were displaced by the end of 2023.

Trump won election in part by vowing to shut down immigration, and as soon as he took office he canceled the CBP One app, the virtual platform that allowed migrants to apply for asylum. During the campaign, he vowed to deport those migrants he claimed were criminals, which many interpreted to mean he would only remove those who had committed violent crimes (which the U.S. has always done). But in his first term, Trump’s people considered anyone who entered the U.S. outside of immigration law to be a criminal, and this appears to be the definition his people are using now.

Daily deportation raids in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested a few hundred people in sweeps began almost as soon as Trump took office. Josh Campbell, Andy Rose, and Nick Valencia of CNN reported that the federal government has flooded the media with video and photos of agents in tactical gear, their vests bearing the words “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security” as they lead individuals in handcuffs. The journalists report that this is not an accident: agents were told to have their agency names clearly displayed for the press.

The presence of television talk show host Dr. Phil (McGraw) with an ICE team in Chicago reinforces the sense that these arrests are designed for the cameras. So does yesterday’s report by Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post that Trump is disappointed with the sweeps so far and has directed officials to ramp up arrests aggressively, providing quotas for ICE field offices. Today, new secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said the department will “shift” to “the defense of the territorial integrity of the United States of America at the southern border.”

Yesterday’s spat with Colombia’s president enabled Trump to declare victory, but Colombia has been the top U.S. ally in Latin America, a close partner in combating drug trafficking and managing migration. That relationship, which has taken years of careful cultivation, is now threatened.

Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy, posted: “I can’t think of many *worse* strategic blunders for the U.S., as it competes w/ China, than going nuclear against its oldest strategic ally & last big country in S. America where it enjoys a trade advantage…. Trump certainly expects that b[ecause] 1/3 of Colombian exports go to the U.S. Petro will be forced to back down. But Petro seems to welcome the fight & has already signaled wishes to deepen ties w/ China. Colombia will lose partnership on security it badly needs. Only China stands to gain from this.”

Indeed, China’s ambassador to Colombia promptly noted that “we are at the best moment of our diplomatic relations between China and Colombia, which are now 45 years old.”

Meanwhile, according to former ambassador Luis G. Moreno, the Trump administration has shut down 2,100 courses in the premier training facility for State Department foreign service officers, ostensibly because they are too associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Moreno adds: “Dismantling of a professional diplomatic corps is underway.”

—

[keithmosher2]

Government Waste

So the Felon President has ordered that the military use C17s and C130Es to repatriate deportees.

DHS Chartered flights, used during previous administrations, cost on average $8,577.00 per trip.

The C17s the Felon President is using cost $252,000.00 to transport 80 deportees. That 29 TIMES DHS Charter flights.

The C130Es the Felon President is using cost between $816,000.00 and $852,000.00 - per trip! More than 95 TIMES DHS Charters.

He said he was going to reduce government waste. Seems like he is creating it in a biggly way. That's our tax dollars down the drain.

[nj-stone]

meidastouch Insanity: The deportation flights Trump used military jets for—that Mexico refused to accept—cost the U.S. up to $852,000 per flight to attempt to deport just 80 migrants at a time. To compare, flights directly chartered by ICE cost just $8,577.

[cavenewstimes]

Just 6% of 2,400 deportation orders this year are enforced or confirmed

Some 155 (6 per cent) of the 2,403 deportation orders signed in 2024 have been enforced or confirmed, according to the Department of Justice, with charter flights to increase enforced removals expected to commence in “early 2025″. The number of deportation orders signed until December 20th stood at 2,403, an increase of 180 per cent when compared to the same period in 2023 (857), according to new…

[head-post]

Trump aims to deport thousands of Indian illegal migrants

US President-elect Donald Trump has promised to carry out the largest deportation in American history once he takes office on January 20, 2025.

In preparation for the event, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has compiled a list of about 1.5 million people to be deported. Among them, nearly 18,000 undocumented Indian nationals have made it to the list prepared by the US government and face imminent deportation back to India.

According to ICE data released in November 2024, 17,940 Indians are among the 1.5 million people on the list of undocumented people with a final order of removal from the US.

According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 725,000 unauthorised immigrants from India living in the US, making it the third largest population of unauthorised immigrants after Mexico and El Salvador.

In October, before the data was made public, the US used a chartered flight to deport Indian nationals in the country illegally.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the flight sent to India on October 22 was in co-operation with the Indian government.

Earlier, Trump said he might deport Chinese nationals of draft age from the US. The US President-elect himself said on NBC that he intends to fulfil his campaign promise of mass deportation of migrants.

The incumbent President Joe Biden after coming to the White House softened the policy on migration, the problem with which in the US persists. A rise in the number of people wanting to enter the country has been repeatedly recorded throughout 2023, with an influx particularly noted at the border with Mexico.

In May of this year, when special deportation rules introduced under Trump because of the COVID-19 pandemic ceased to operate, the Biden administration introduced new requirements, but their effectiveness is questionable.

Read more HERE

[andronetalks]

Homeland Security Deports Chinese Illegal Immigrants On Charter Flight

Zero Hedge BY TYLER DURDENSUNDAY, OCT 20, 2024 – 12:50 PM Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Thursday that it had deported a group of Chinese illegal immigrants on Oct. 15, the second removal flight to China this year. Read more…

[ronbe411]

US Deports Chinese Nationals on Charter Flight; Chinese Drones Halted at...