#undocumented destinations

[portalwalker]

Sometimes it was good to listen to music. It brought back nostalgic memories of more innocent times. Sure, they were tainted into a bittersweetness now, but there was something nice about thinking back.

Which is why Maria's smile is almost sad and mostly wistful as she is nodding her head along to an unheard tune, humming something under her breath. She doesn't have earbuds or headphones, but she's keeping the beat to what sounds like a route or location theme from a Pokemon game.

Was she aware enough beyond the song to react if a passerby came up and talked to her? Or was she lost in her own little world?

[portalwalker]

Maria hummed. "That sounds reasonable."

The android didn't doubt that Ichisada had not only seen the effects of alcohol in others, but also in herself, whenever she indulged.

"I know it can affect memory and overall mood the following morning -- plenty of fiction talks about being unable to remember the previous night, and there are all kinds of 'hangover cures' that are...debatable, in whether or not they work. Some of them, anyway."

Of course your body's gonna get you back for drinking something it doesn't want or need. That didn't surprise Maria in the least. It was what happened during the drinking she was a little less certain of.

@portalwalker || x

"Yeah, not being able to turn off that feeling sounds like hell. You probably made the right choice." Ichisada nods. "You want me to describe it to you? I won't use words that make it sound way better than it actually is. I promise."

Ichisada wasn't going to pressure Maria into trying anything she didn't want too, or hear what she didn't want too. Her honor as a bartender and brewer would be revoked if she pressured someone into drinking something they didn't want too.

[blood-in-retroflex]

It shouldn't be a controversial or unique idea that it is a fundamental human right for a person to have membership in the society into which they are born.

[i-eat-mold]

just here to say that gertrude robinson is the single funniest character. she is THE character. she dies before the show even starts. shes an old lady that adopted an edgy teen and traveled the world. She is the avatar of one of the fourteen elditch horrors that feed on primordial fears, she had basically infite knowledge of everything and her plan to stop one of the rituals of a cult of another one of said list of eldrich horrors was to blow it up with a bunch of c4. we only find out about this because she stored all of the explosives in a random storage unit and the aforementioned edgy teen with mommy issues (who by the way, is dead, but when he died she sneaked into the morgue to put him inside a book) speaks through the book to the woman's succesor who, by the way, has no idea what the fuck is going on because neither she nor anyone else has bothered to explain shit to him, and tells him that she kept something important in the unit. we only find out about this after 100 episodes of the show. She feeds her subordinates to an all consuming monster/god, but its ok i guess. Later on (earlier on? at the same time? in a different timeline? after?) the literal end of the world and the end of the end of the world shes back and still has to deal with this stupid teenager who at least doesnt spend half his life focused on dyeing his hair and the other half about finding murder books (not as books about murder but as in, books who actively murder). She is a well experienced arsonist despite having no affiliation with the actual official arsonists club that is yet another cult to yet another one of the previously mentioned eldritch horrors. She is, however, metaphysically tied to the Chosen One, the Messiah of said cult, or some shit. She is absolutely terrible at her actual office job (on purpose). She dismembered a guy (who was her assistant) and probably commited several undocumented crimes against humanity. Once again, she has all seeing abilities and barely noticed her favorite assistant was torturing a coworker. She dares her murderous boss to kill her and gets surprised when he does so. When asked what to do about a literal Monster Pig, her advice is to encase it in cement. She was such a bitch. Her plan B was always to set things on fire. Her plan A was often to set things on fire. One of these instances was approved by her boss (the one who killed her). It is canon that the reason she started all this shit in her life was because the fire cult killer her cat. She sacrified another one of her assistants who became an avatar of the literal concept of Insanity but it was just a other thursday for her. She knows on a first name basis pretty much every person and monster affiliated with the eldritch horrors that she tries to keep at bay on the daily. She stopped a ritual for The Lonely by making the place a tourist destination. She has an ebay account. Instead of performing a ritual for the God that she was affiliated with, she wanted to destroy it and planned to 1. blind herself, and 2. set fire (yet again) to her workplace. It didnt work, because and her boss, who was also the one who was going to perform the ritual, finds her right before and kills her after she says he has no balls to do so. Also she is voiced by the mother of the main character's voice actor (who he named with his own, full, legal name) and the series' writer, which are the same person. Shes the worst, shes the best, i love her, we will never get anyone like her again, we need more characters like her.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum and Noel Sims at Popular Information:

President Trump nominated Emil Bove, his former personal attorney, to be a federal judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals — one of the most powerful judicial roles in the country. Announcing his nomination on May 28, Trump described Bove as "SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone." But an explosive new whistleblower disclosure released Tuesday alleges that, in his current position as a senior official in the Department of Justice (DOJ), Bove is willing to ignore federal law to give Trump what he wants.

The 35-page letter was written by lawyers representing Erez Reuveni, formerly the DOJ's Acting Deputy Director for the Office of Immigration Litigation. In that role, Reuveni was tasked with defending the Trump administration's plan, under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), to summarily deport undocumented immigrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison known for torture and human rights abuses. During a March 14, 2025, meeting, Bove told Reuveni and others that "one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend" – meaning Saturday, March 15 and Sunday, March 16. According to the whistleblower disclosure, Bove stressed "the planes needed to take off no matter what." During the discussion, Bove raised "the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated." In that eventuality, Bove stated that the “DOJ would need to consider telling the courts 'fuck you' and ignore any such court order." On March 15, the ACLU "filed suit on behalf of five Venezuelan men facing imminent deportation under the AEA and moved for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to prevent their removal" and the removal of other similarly situated immigrants. During the hearing, two flights destined for El Salvador took off — one at 5:26 p.m. and the second at 5:45 p.m. After listening to arguments from both sides, the judge sided with the plaintiffs at approximately 6:30 p.m. Around 6:48 p.m., Reuveni emailed officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and advised them "the judge specifically ordered us to not remove anyone in the class, and to return anyone in the air." Over the next hour, Reuveni sent numerous emails with the same information to DOJ and DHS officials. He received no response. The court issued a written order "memorializing its TRO" at 7:23 p.m.

On March 16 at 12:23 a.m., Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign told Reuveni that Bove had decided the flights could continue to El Salvador and "no violation of the court order had occurred because the two planes left U.S. airspace before the court's written …order." Further, "Bove had advised DHS that under the court order, it was permissible to deplane individuals on the flights that departed U.S. airspace" before the written order was issued. An order from a federal judge is binding regardless of whether it has been issued in writing. Bove followed through on his threat to ignore the courts so that the Trump administration could complete its scheduled deportations.

[...]

A corrupt bargain

On September 24, 2024, New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on "bribery, campaign finance, and conspiracy offenses." The detailed indictment alleged that Adams "abused his power and position for nearly a decade, obtaining personal benefits and illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and others, giving them undue influence over him." In return for "illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel," the indictment alleges that Adams used his official position to benefit his patrons, including pressuring "the New York City Fire Department to facilitate the opening of a foreign government’s Manhattan skyscraper that had not passed a fire inspection." After Trump took office, Bove directed then-acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon to dismiss the charges against Adams. Bove suggested, without evidence, that Adams was indicted because he "criticized the prior Administration’s immigration policies." Bove said that, in exchange for the dismissal, Adams would provide support for the Trump administration's immigration policy. Sassoon refused to comply with Bove's directive. Instead, she submitted a resignation letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, stating that dismissing the charges against Adams was "inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts." Sassoon said Bove appeared to be arguing that "Adams should receive leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position and can use that position to assist in the Administration’s policy priorities."

A second federal prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, also refused Bove's order. In his resignation letter, Scotten wrote, "[O]ur laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way."

[...]

Purging DOJ staff who upheld the law after January 6

Bove issued two memos that described the successful prosecution of hundreds of people who participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a "grave national injustice." In furtherance of an executive order signed by Trump, Bove fired DOJ staffers who were involved in upholding the law.

Unethical Trump lackey Emil Bove has been nominated to a 3rd Circuit Court seat.

Call or email your Senators and tell them to reject the appointment of a dangerous MAGA judicial activist on the court!

See Also:

Talking Feds (Harry Litman): The Wrong Man for the Job

[globalnewscollective]

Jailed for Being a Tourist: How the U.S. Is Becoming a Nightmare Destination

What’s at Stake?

Traveling to the United States is supposed to be an exciting experience, but for some tourists, it’s turning into a nightmare. Recently, a group of German travelers found themselves in a terrifying situation: instead of enjoying their trip, they were thrown into solitary confinement, treated like criminals, and subjected to inhumane conditions—all because of an alleged visa issue.

According to reports, the tourists were detained by U.S. authorities, placed in a high-security prison, and locked up in solitary cells. They described the experience as "like something out of a horror film." Their crime? Entering the country with the wrong type of visa—an issue that could have been resolved with a fine or a warning in most other democratic nations. Instead, they were subjected to a level of punishment that would make any traveler think twice before visiting the U.S.

And this isn’t an isolated incident. Another recent case involves Becky Burke, a 28-year-old British woman who found herself in U.S. immigration detention after attempting to re-enter the country from Canada. When her visa was deemed invalid, she was immediately arrested, placed in deportation custody, and subjected to harsh conditions. Her father, Paul Burke, expressed his disbelief: “I don’t understand why they have to imprison my daughter and put her in an orange jumpsuit while checking her papers.”

Becky’s ordeal only worsened. Forced to share a cell, she survived on cold rice, potatoes, and beans while being denied basic comforts. Her only communication with the outside world was through restricted phone access and monitored conversations through a glass barrier. Her possessions were confiscated, and despite filing for voluntary departure, her fate remained in legal limbo. “She feels isolated and just wants to come home,” her father reported.

Why This Should Terrify You

The treatment of these German and British tourists isn’t just an unfortunate mistake—it’s a reflection of how dangerously aggressive U.S. border enforcement has become. If a simple visa issue can land someone in solitary confinement or deportation custody, what does that say about the state of travelers’ rights in the U.S.?

Here’s why this should alarm you:

Tourists are being treated like criminals. These were not drug smugglers or human traffickers—just visitors who may have misunderstood visa regulations. Yet, they were handcuffed, imprisoned, and treated as if they were dangerous felons.

Solitary confinement is psychological torture. Imagine being locked in a small, windowless cell, alone for hours, deprived of normal human contact. This form of detention is considered inhumane even for convicted criminals—yet it’s being used on tourists.

Mistakes can cost you your freedom. Visa errors are common, especially with the confusing U.S. immigration system. If this can happen to German and British travelers, it can happen to anyone.

There is no guarantee of fair treatment. These tourists were given no real opportunity to explain themselves or seek assistance before being locked up. Their stories only came to light because they spoke out after their release—how many others have suffered in silence?

Why This Matters to You

If you’re planning to visit the U.S., you need to be aware that even minor travel document mistakes can have devastating consequences. Tourists from Europe, Canada, and other allied nations are not immune to the harsh treatment that many assume is reserved for undocumented immigrants.

For young travelers, the risks are even more concerning:

Do you know your rights? U.S. authorities are under no obligation to be lenient with tourists, and you could be detained before you even have the chance to contact help.

Can you handle being imprisoned abroad? If you end up in a U.S. detention facility, you may be completely alone, with no clear timeline for release.

Do you trust the system to protect you? This case shows that travelers can be punished harshly, even when no crime was committed.

The Bigger Picture

The U.S. has long promoted itself as a top travel destination, but these incidents reveal a darker reality: its increasingly authoritarian approach to law enforcement extends beyond its own citizens and now threatens innocent tourists. If friendly visitors from Germany and the UK can be treated this way, what does that mean for the future of global travel?

This also raises important questions about human rights:

Why is solitary confinement being used on people who have committed no violent crimes?

Should border authorities have unchecked power to imprison tourists over minor paperwork issues?

Will more travelers begin avoiding the U.S. altogether out of fear for their safety?

What Can You Do?

Be Extremely Careful with Travel Documents – Double-check visa requirements before you travel. The U.S. does not take mistakes lightly.

Know Your Rights – Learn what to do if detained at the border. Demand access to your embassy.

Warn Others – Share these stories so that fellow travelers understand the risks.

Pressure Governments to Act – European nations should demand better treatment for their citizens abroad.

Consider Whether It’s Worth the Risk – With so many other travel destinations available, is a trip to the U.S. worth the possibility of being imprisoned over a paperwork mistake?

The United States is making one thing clear: visitors are not welcome unless they navigate its strict and unforgiving system perfectly. One mistake, and you could find yourself behind bars. The question is—do you really want to take that risk?

[lebowskismoney]

yuu is EXTREMELY undocumented immigrant coded

For starters, they’re not just similar to undocumented immigrants. They’re best comparable to undocumented immigrant children. When their parents bring them across the border, there’s usually an unknown possibility of returning. They don’t have a say in whether they come along, that decision is made for them without their knowledge. All they know is “this is for their greater good”.

Now compare that to Yuu’s entry to twst. They literally don’t remember anything other than entering the world via horse-drawn hearse. They wake up in a coffin, symbolizing the death of their previous life and the start of a new one in TWST. They weren’t even aware of their transmigration until the deed was done. Upon transmigrating, they were told to make a choice and stick to it for everyone’s sake, not being given an out.

They’ve been transmigrated with literally nothing of use. They don’t have a valid ID nor currency. Their world is inaccessible. They are told “it is up to you to find a way back.” And the job they’re given to support themselves while they search for a way home? Custodian, one of the occupations most often associated with immigrant workers.

People are anchored to their new countries in different ways. That tends to be via each other. If someone marries a citizen, they have a pathway to obtaining citizenship, and someone has an anchor if they have a child during their stay. In Yuu’s situation, they’re anchored by Grim. Grim and Yuu both attend NRC as one student. They don’t have the means to attend individually, and Yuu has the risk of being cast out onto the streets if they don’t cooperate.

Speaking of cooperating, Yuu has more obligations than “attend NRC” and “find your way back” (supposed to be Crowley’s task but yk what he does). They are often tasked with things that are not their responsibility. Things like investigating/dismantling attempts at sport event sabotage, blackmail, overblots, that’s not supposed to be their priority. But if they don’t do that, they risk going without room and board, literal homelessness and no chance of finding a way back.

This is similar to another experience migrant children go through: having to support their families in order to remain afloat. Often times this includes translating documents with elementary levels of the language they're learning or working alongside their parents to bring food to the table. They have no other choice, these are things that must be done in order to survive.

Imma go into another tangent that is a bit of theory crafting but honestly really worth delving into:

There’s also the problem of whether they can even go back home. Asylum-seeking immigrants and those with similar situations don’t always have a place to go back to in their home country. Their countries are not safe anymore; they wouldn’t have left if they had the ability to form a safe and stable life in their homeland. However, children aren’t always aware of that. They are taken to the destination country without the possibility of return. How does Yuu know they’ll be able to go back to their world? They’re in the same situation: they made the journey, but their return is unknown. It could’ve been a one-way ticket to TWST, leaving them stranded and with a new objective: establish an actual identity or find a way to become a citizen from square one.

On a final note, this is another reason why I love their friendship with Ace and Deuce, especially after book four. Those two received ONE ping from their friend indicating they were in danger and dropped EVERYTHING to help them. They know better than everyone how hard Yuu has it and went out of their way to make sure they were safe and sound. They look after Yuu time after time just as Yuu gets them out of dicey situations.

[mariacallous]

It’s April, and the US is experiencing a self-inflicted trade war and a constitutional crisis over immigration. It’s a lot. It’s even enough to make you forget about Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency for a while. You shouldn’t.

To state the obvious: DOGE is still out there, chipping away at the foundations of government infrastructure. Slightly less obvious, maybe, is that the DOGE project has recently entered a new phase. The culling of federal workers and contracts will continue, where there’s anything left to cull. But from here on out, it’s all about the data.

Few if any entities in the world have as much access to as much sensitive data as the United States. From the start, DOGE has wanted as much of it as it could grab, and through a series of resignations, firings, and court cases, has mostly gotten its way.

In many cases it’s still unclear what exactly DOGE engineers have done or intend to do with that data. Despite Elon Musk’s protestations to the contrary, DOGE is as opaque as Vantablack. But recent reporting from WIRED and elsewhere begins to fill in the picture: For DOGE, data is a tool. It’s also a weapon.

Start with the Internal Revenue Service, where DOGE associates put the agency’s best and brightest career engineers in a room with Palantir folks for a few days last week. Their mission, as WIRED previously reported, was to build a “mega API” that would make it easier to view previously compartmentalized data from across the IRS in one place.

In isolation that may not sound so alarming. But in theory, an API for all IRS data would make it possible for any agency—or any outside party with the right permissions, for that matter—to access the most personal, and valuable, data the US government holds about its citizens. The blurriness of DOGE’s mission begins to gain focus. Even more, since we know that the IRS is already sharing its data in unprecedented ways: A deal the agency recently signed with the Department of Homeland Security provides sensitive information about undocumented immigrants.

It’s black-mirror corporate synergy, putting taxpayer data in the service of President Donald Trump’s deportation crusade.

It also extends beyond the IRS. The Washington Post reported this week that DOGE representatives across government agencies—from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Social Security Administration—are putting data that is normally cordoned off in service of identifying undocumented immigrants. At the Department of Labor, as WIRED reported Friday, DOGE has gained access to sensitive data about immigrants and farm workers.

And that’s just the data that stays within the government itself. This week NPR reported that a whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board claims that staffers observed spikes in data leaving the agency after DOGE got access to its systems, with destinations unknown. The whistleblower further claims that DOGE agents appeared to take steps to “cover their tracks,” switching off or evading the monitoring tools that keep tabs on who’s doing what inside computer systems. (An NLRB spokesperson denied to NPR that DOGE had access to the agency’s systems.)

What could that data be used for? Anything. Everything. A company facing a union complaint at the NLRB could, as NPR notes, get access to “damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors.” There’s no confirmation that it’s been used for those things—but more to the point, there’s also currently no way to know either way.

That’s true also of DOGE’s data aims more broadly. Right now, the target is immigration. But it has hooks into so many systems, access to so much data, interests so varied both within and without government, there are very few limits to how or where it might next be deployed.

The spotlight shines a little less brightly on Elon Musk these days, as more urgent calamities take the stage. But DOGE continues to work in the wings. It has tapped into the most valuable data in the world. The real work starts when it puts that to use.

[probablyasocialecologist]

In Almería lies the world's largest concentration of commercial greenhouses, often referred to as ‘the sea of plastic’. This vast expanse of polytunnels, housing millions of kilos of fruits and vegetables mainly destined for export, stretches for hundreds of kilometers, a white panorama until the horizon. Also within this sea of plastic dwell the migrant workers who work to ensure Europe's supermarkets are stocked year-round. While they perform the vital task of ensuring Europe's all-season access to fresh produce, these workers often live in a state of physical and institutional vulnerability. This state of affairs remained largely hidden, until recent shocks like the Covid-19 pandemic and armed conflicts exposed the fragility of our food supply chains. Spain issues approximately 150,000 permits annually for seasonal laborers (European Parliament 2021). However, within just the province of Almería, there are more than 100,000 migrants working in greenhouses, 80% of them holding undocumented status in the country. This lack of legal recognition leaves the workers off official records, denying them universal rights such as labour rights and access to formal rental contracts. It is a dire situation that forces many to call the shanty towns surrounding the greenhouses their homes. During my research, I often heard how some workers pay up to 6,000 euros annually to greenhouse managers for the working contracts necessary to seek legal status in the country, turning the quest for legalization into a profitable business.  Almería serves as a primary entry point for migrants traveling from West and North African countries to Europe. For those who cross the Mediterranean without visas - the majority of greenhouse laborers - this work is virtually the only option for income generation on arrival. While informal greenhouse jobs provide financial support to workers and their families back in their home countries, they also perpetuate vulnerability in livelihoods and employment, highlighting and embedding a stark contrast between EU citizens enjoying affordable food and the undocumented migrant workers compelled to work in precarious conditions to provide it.

[gatheringbones]

[“You might be thinking that we seem to be talking about people smuggling rather than people trafficking, and that those two things are different. People smuggling is when someone pays a smuggler to get them over a border: in UK law, human trafficking is when someone is transported for the purposes of forced labour or exploitation using force, fraud, or coercion. It’s tempting to think of these as separate things, but there is no bright line between them: they are two iterations of the same system.

Let’s break it down. It is common for people to take on huge debts to smugglers to cross a border. So far, so good: clearly smuggling. But once the journey begins, the person seeking to migrate finds that the debt has grown, or that the work they are expected to undertake upon arrival in order to pay off the debt is different from what was agreed. Suddenly, the situation has spiralled out of control and they find themselves trying to work off the debt, with little hope of ever earning enough to leave. Smuggling becomes trafficking. The discourse of trafficking largely fails to help people in this situation, because it paints them as kidnapped and enchained rather than as trying to migrate. It therefore seeks to ‘rescue’ them by blocking irregular migration routes and sending undocumented people home— often the very last thing trafficked people want. Although they might hate their exploitative workplace, their ideal option would be to stay in their destination country in a different job or with better workplace conditions; an acceptable option would be to stay in the country under the current, shit working conditions, but the very worst option would be to be sent home with their debt still unpaid.

By viewing trafficking as conceptually akin to kidnap, anti-trafficking activists, NGOs, and governments can sidestep broader questions of safe migration. If the trafficked person is brought across borders unwillingly, there is no need to think about the people who will attempt this migration regardless of its illegality or conclude that the way to make people safer is to offer them legal migration routes. People smuggling tends to happen to less vulnerable migrants: those who have the cash to pay a smuggler upfront or have a family or community already settled in the destination country. People trafficking tends to happen to more vulnerable migrants: those who must take on a debt to the smuggler to travel and who have no community connections in their destination country. Both want to travel, however, and this is what anti-trafficking conversations largely obscure with their talk about kidnap and chains.

Our position is that no human being is ‘illegal’. People should have the right to travel and to cross borders, and to live and work where they wish. As we wrote in the introduction, border controls are a relatively new invention – they emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century as part of colonial logics of racial domination and exclusion. (ICE, the brutal American immigration enforcement police, was only created in its modern form in 2003; the previous iteration of it is as recent as the 1930s, an agency called Immigration and Naturalization Services.) The mass migrations of the twenty-first century are driven by human-made catastrophes – climate change, poverty, war – and reproduce the glaring inequalities from which they emerge. Countries in the global north bear hugely disproportionate responsibility for climate change, yet disproportionately close their doors to people fleeing the effects of climate choas, leaving desperate families to sleep under canvas amid snow at the edges of Fortress Europe. As migrant-rights organiser Harsha Walia writes, ‘While history is marked by the hybridity of human societies and the desire for movement, the reality of most of migration today reveals the unequal relations between rich and poor, between North and South, between whiteness and its others.’

A system where everybody could migrate, live, and work legally and in safety would not be a huge, radical departure; it would simply take seriously the reality that people are already migrating and working, and that as a society we should prioritise their safety and rights. Some journalists and policymakers argue that migration brings down wages. However, the current system, wherein undocumented people cannot assert their labour rights and as a result are hugely vulnerable to workplace exploitation, brings down wages by ensuring that there is a group of workers who bosses can underpay or otherwise exploit with impunity. Low wages and workplace exploitation are tackled through worker organising and labour law – not through attempting to limit migration, which produces undocumented workers who have no labour rights.

However, instead of starting from the premise of valuing human life, the countries of the global north enact harsh immigration laws that make it hard for people from global south countries to migrate. You don’t stop people wanting or needing to migrate by making it illegal for them to do so, you just make it more dangerous and difficult, and leave them more vulnerable to exploitation. Punitive laws may dissuade some from making the journey, but they guarantee that everyone who does travel is doing so in the worst possible conditions. Spending billions of dollars on policing borders actively makes this worse, without addressing the reasons people might want to migrate – notably, gross inequality between nations, which in large part is a legacy of colonial – and contemporary – plunder and imperialist violence.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[charlotte-of-wales]

a summary of the Monaco Tea, creds to the lovely anon who sent me the article <3

btw most of the information on the family was in article one, the latter were more just info on real estate + off shore accounts

again, this info is all coming from the former accountant of the family:

Prince Rainier III was seriously considering changing succession laws so Caroline would be the head of the family and Monaco as he found Albert to be weak. Albert is said to be the "despised member of the clan" who would stutter while speaking to his father. Rainier even looked into what this would mean to the Grimaldi name since Andrea - at the time 17 - obviously carries his father's name (Casiraghi) and not his mother's (Grimaldi). Rainier told the ones carrying the investigation that this was done in case Albert died.

the funds from Albert's state endowment and his private funds would be mixed all the time.

Albert would say yes to essentially everything his family asked for, including a $30 million apartment for Stephanie

Palmero (the accountant) would frequently buy things for the family to keep "their privacy". He bought Charlene's engagement ring and multiple properties for the Grimaldi's in France. He would pay property taxes for those properties and have the family pay him back.

Caroline and Stephanie would frequently make use of and sell family property (Rainier's cars, family jewelry and art, etc) without letting him know, even though they technically belonged to Albert.

Caroline is in charge of the family's castle in Marchais, which he had an issue with as she would always go off budget.

he makes a note to pay attention to Pierre Casiraghi as he is very ambitious and his dealings in real estate could create problems (spoiler alert: it did)

Caroline is said to hate Charlene

the allowance that Charlene, Caroline and Stephanie receive increases constantly, which worried Palmero. As of late, they were: 1,5 million euros for Charlene, 900.000 for Caroline and 800.000 for Stephanie yearly. This follows the family hierarchy.

 Jazmin Grace receives 86,000 dollars per quarter. In February 2010, Palmero had to spend $5,000 “extra for her birthday”. Albert also bought her a $3 million apartment in New York City.

Albert spends almost a million a year funding Nicole Coste's (the mother of Albert's second illegimate child) fashion business. It's all in Alexandre Coste's name as Nicole fears that Charlene might create issues when Albert dies.

loots about Charlene. She frequently demands high sums in cash, her personal chef is $300 a day, she has multiple undocumented people from the Philippines working in her staff, the celebrations for the birth and baptism of the twins was well over half a million euros, in eight years Charlene spent around 15 million euros when she received 7.5 million euros in endowment (the Palace didn't deny this and said that the accountant was simply told to pay the difference with the family's personal funds), she spent 965,000 on a villa in two and a half months, her office decoration cost a million euros, she requested 3 x 300,000 for her brother's house.

Palmero made sure to change Monaco's regency laws so in case something happens to Albert while Jacques is underage Charlene won't be regent. Instead, the principality will be ruled by a regency council.

Albert has a secret apartment in Monaco, bought by one of Palmero's secret companies. He also got rid of problematic photographs of Albert (hinted at blackmail).

there was a whole system for hiding sums used on "special missions". They were labeled DS (for special destinations) and with time were used to pay for an informal intelligence unit that operated within the police force of the principality. They'd collect information on those close to the family and even on politians of the principality. He would also pay journalists to paint a good picture of Monaco while Hollande was president in France and was constantly criticizing tax-havens.

the DS accounts would be used to hide over-budget situations, including budget for the children's nannies and the budget for the wedding.

they were terrified of the Panama papers, as a lot of money laundering funds go through Monaco and the family had accounts on Panamanian banks.

a link between a Russian billionaire and the Monegasque Minister of Justice was revealed in 2017 and the Minister was forced to resign. An investigation was launched by a French judge and there was fears that the palace would be involved: jurisdictional immunity was granted to members of the sovereign family by order. There was rumours that the French judge wanted to hear the Prince as a witness......he was told to leave the principality. He was accused of having, through his “behavior perceived as authoritarian and vexatious”, “endangered the proper functioning of the criminal justice system”.

the real estate market is a big point of collision here and a big focus of article 3. Nothing too interesting to report - Palmero says he tried mingling in the market to break down the monopoly of real estate owners in Monaco (centered around a bestie of the Casiraghi brothers) while Albert claims Palmero had close ties with some of the developers and tried mingling with things that were of interest of the government in order to make money. The real estate issue was what eventually led Palmero to be fired. Palmero and a former laywer of Albert who was his childhood bestfriend and is also now a persona non grata claims that Albert is now fully under the influence of the bestie of the Casiraghi brothers who now controls the real estate in Monaco.

Palmaro is STILL paying property tax on properties he bought for the family!! crazy!!

Palmero detailed a number of off-shore accounts that hold about 250 million euros of the family's fortune including a company created specifically for Charlotte Casiraghi. He passed on the information from that account to Albert's new accountant at a monitored meeting.

Albert's explanation is lowkey....pathetic. He claims he told Palmero to move all of his family's assets from off-shore accounts to Monaco but Palmero never did it and that was that. He claims he was never able to obtain a precise statement on the family assets due to Palmero's secrecy and Albert just trusted him. He claims Palmero would act in his name and refuse to delay his decisions.

[portalwalker]

Out in the Oregon woods, in a clearing just outside a small town, sat a larger-than-it-should-be wood cabin with a cursed sign on the roof -- no matter how many times it was fixed, "Mystery Shack" always turned into "Mystery Hack," which mostly amused the tourists who drove through every summer on road trips up and down the coast.

The tourist season was coming to an end as autumn approached, though, which meant that the people who lived in the large cabin could get to other business.

One of these inhabitants was sitting on the back porch with a brick of a laptop in her lap, one hand on her chin as she scrolled through something on the screen with her other hand. If it wasn't for the shift of energy that accompanied a portal opening, she might not have noticed the arrival of a familiar guest.

(( @white-fire-the-dragon ))

[portalwalker]

"...can't say I've ever wanted to? Considering how my parents always talked about magnets messing with tech growing up, I didn't want to find out how that'd mess with me. I might be more advanced than those old TVs, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious."

Maria's expression scrunched into something annoyed. "Although, there was one time where an energy burst made my ability to see color become inverted for a while. That happened in the middle of a fight a long time ago, so I can't say I enjoyed it. I needed to get a mechanic to reverse it."

"You think that's bad?" Maria rests her head in a hand, pretending to look forlorn. There's a spark of amusement in her eyes that says otherwise. "Some of us can't get drunk. Don't have the organic parts to mess with. At least I don't have a liver to kill." (portalwalker)

@portalwalker

"You ever try to get drunk? Like, putting a magnet on your head or spinning around a whole lot until you can't stand upright anymore? Y'know, for the experience of it all?"

[reimeichan]

I'm really starting to enjoy the stage of DID recovery I'm at. It's got a funkiness to it that I don't see others talk about all that much, where it's like... kinda hard to pinpoint what state my system is in at any point in time, but not distressingly so? And also not in a dissociative way like before. It's like, I'm able to feel all these bits of me flowing in and out of my consciousness and sense of identity and I lack any sort of solid definition of what this version of me wants to be or what my destination is. I'm just kinda going with the flow now instead of trying to steer us in any particular direction.

It's definitely a lot less stressful than it used to be and it feels like my brain has calmed down pretty significantly. It's less noisy in my head and I'm now realizing some of that was because there were parts of me who felt like they couldn't be heard before now don't feel the need to scream and bang on the walls to be noticed. And because we're less dissociated from each other, we can more immediately share thoughts and feelings instead of having to manually pass those things around to each other.

I've still got that ADHD buzz, but I'm now realizing the way I described it as being "50 trains of thoughts all at once" or "having 50 tabs open and all of them are playing different audio" no longer feels like it properly describes my experiences anymore. It's more like... I have a game running and that's the main thing I'm focusing on, but I also have a youtube video guide for something I'm trying to do in the game, while I'm also got notepad open to take notes, and another window open to crosscheck information. And maybe a couple random tabs open that are completely unrelated. Still got a lot of tabs and windows up, but they're more aligned to the same or similar purpose.

I do still have the different parts and alters and we still have new (as in unknown or undocumented) parts showing up pretty much daily, but they tend to get caught up to speed fairly quickly and even the ones who are very split off from the rest of the system don't feel as scary to handle (and feel less scared themselves) since we have such a strong support network and various other tools and resources at our disposal. I still feel like we're generally different and separate parts, but we also blend and fuse and influence each other in ways that feel a lot more fluid. Instead of having to purposefully communicate things with each other every time it's now a lot more instant and the hard barriers between each of us feel more and more arbitrary as the days go on. Kinda like looking at a map? Where you see the borders on the map, but at the end of the day you remove all of that and the landscape tells a different story and shows how all those "countries" are actually connected and one giant landmass. And those borders are still important to understand how they're there and why they exist, but it's not the whole story and can actually distract you from the bigger picture.

I dunno, I know I'm definitely in a transitional period of my healing and that's why things feel so vague and nebulous but I'm not complaining. If anything I'm pretty excited for what's to come.

[meret118]

How Americans Are Surveilled During Protests

https://www.wired.com/story/uncanny-valley-podcast-how-americans-are-surveilled-during-protests/

Internet Sleuths Slam Trump for Photoshopping MS-13 Tat on Deported Dad’s Hand

https://www.thedailybeast.com/internet-sleuths-slam-trump-for-photoshopping-ms-13-tat-on-deported-dads-hand/

DOGE Is Just Getting Warmed Up DOGE has tapped into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. Now it’s starting to put it to work.

But in theory, an API for all IRS data would make it possible for any agency—or any outside party with the right permissions, for that matter—to access the most personal, and valuable, data the US government holds about its citizens. The blurriness of DOGE’s mission begins to gain focus.

Even more, since we know that the IRS is already sharing its data in unprecedented ways: A deal the agency recently signed with the Department of Homeland Security provides sensitive information about undocumented immigrants.

. . .

The Washington Post reported this week that DOGE representatives across government agencies—from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Social Security Administration—are putting data that is normally cordoned off in service of identifying undocumented immigrants. At the Department of Labor, as WIRED reported Friday, DOGE has gained access to sensitive data about immigrants and farm workers. And that’s just the data that stays within the government itself.

This week NPR reported that a whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board claims that staffers observed spikes in data leaving the agency after DOGE got access to its systems, with destinations unknown. The whistleblower further claims that DOGE agents appeared to take steps to “cover their tracks,” switching off or evading the monitoring tools that keep tabs on who’s doing what inside computer systems. (An NLRB spokesperson denied to NPR that DOGE had access to the agency’s systems.)

What could that data be used for? Anything. Everything. A company facing a union complaint at the NLRB could, as NPR notes, get access to “damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors.” There’s no confirmation that it’s been used for those things—but more to the point, there’s also currently no way to know either way.

www.wired.com/story/doge-is-just-getting-warmed-up-data-immigration/

Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections

Now that Trump has installed election deniers throughout his Administration, he has been busy dismantling the guardrails protecting voting and voters.

. . .

As Marc Elias, an elections lawyer who litigates on behalf of Democrats, told me, “When Donald Trump says that he does not believe there should be voting machines, you should believe him. When he says there should only be voting on Election Day, you should believe him.”

. . .

“In claiming to fire a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, the president violates the law, the separation of powers, and generations of Supreme Court precedent.” He added that the F.E.C.’s commissioners “are confirmed by Congress to serve the vital role of protecting the democratic rights of American voters. As the only agency that regulates the president, Congress intentionally did not grant the president the power to fire FEC commissioners.”

Less than two weeks later, Trump issued an executive order that states, “No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law.”

In plain language, this mandate cancels the independence of independent agencies and, in the context of the F.E.C., gives the President the ability to make and adjudicate campaign rules to his advantage. The Democratic National Committee, along with the Democratic Congressional and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committees, is now suing Trump and Bondi’s office, on the ground that the order violates federal law, but for now it stands.

More at the link.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/trump-is-still-trying-to-undermine-elections

The Battle For American Thought If Trump can control what ideas are allowed to be discussed, he can reshape American life as we know it.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-control-american-thought_n_6802a7e9e4b0afffe5e780bf

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Paul Blumenthal at HuffPost:

Former President Donald Trump’s most significant policy plank in his third presidential campaign is to implement a system of mass deportation to remove up to 20 million noncitizens from the United States, a plan that apparently aims to not only remove people living here illegally but also to chase away ― or accidentally round up ― U.S. citizens as well.

He is promising to deploy the military and deputize local police officers to round up millions of people, detain them in makeshift camps and then ship them off to other countries ― whether or not the destination is the person’s country of origin. This plan is billed as targeting only those who have come to the country or reside in it illegally, with a special emphasis on supposed migrant gang members. It offers a story of those who deserve to be here and those who don’t. Those who are part of the national community and those who exist outside its bounds and, perhaps, its laws. But 79% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have been living and participating in American communities for more than 15 years. They have married U.S. citizens, hold jobs that prop up their local and national economies and have children and grandchildren who are citizens. Ripping these people out of the country and away from their families will ripple through every community in the country.

“Communities are like a fabric ― the way that the threads are interwoven,” said Heidi Altman, federal advocacy director for the National Immigration Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Fund, an immigrant rights nonprofit. “If you snip at one, eventually the whole of the fabric comes loose.” This plan to tear communities apart will also ensnare U.S. citizens, green card holders and others here legally, either by accident or with intent. Trump and his advisers are already saying that’s what they’ll do. Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was asked in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday whether there is a way that Trump’s mass deportation plan could remove undocumented people without separating them from their families. “Of course there is,” Homan said. “Families can be deported together.” What Homan is saying, without saying it directly, is that mixed-status families, with some family members who are U.S. citizens and others who lack legal status, can choose to self-deport if they wish to remain together.

There are currently 4.7 million mixed-status households in the U.S., according to the Center for Migration Studies. Among those households are 5.5 million U.S.-born children living with one undocumented household member and 1.8 million U.S.-born children living with two undocumented adults. In total, there are 9.7 million Americans who live in households with at least one undocumented resident. Trump and Homan propose an impossible choice: your citizenship and your home or your family. Similar mass deportations and detentions in the country’s history have done the same. The incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans during and after World War II ensnared citizens and noncitizens alike. So, too, did the imprisonment of Germans, Italians and people born under the Austro-Hungarian Empire during both world wars. Trump’s inspiration for his mass deportation program, President Dwight Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback, similarly resulted in the deportation of significant numbers of U.S. citizens to Mexico.

But none of those programs was of the scale or scope that Trump imagines. There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., according to the 2022 American Community Survey. Other surveys and estimates have found similar numbers. But Trump and his allies talk about deporting 20 million to 30 million people. There is no source for such a number. That would invariably mean targeting people with some kind of legal status, whether temporary or permanent. “They seem to be gleefully suggesting that they would include people here with some legal status in these roundups,” said Matthew Lisieki, a senior research and policy analyst at the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank that focuses on global migration. A deportation program that removes 11 million people or even more than 20 million would affect every single community in the country, invariably sweeping up even larger numbers of U.S. citizens and legal residents, taking them away from their families and putting them into jails, incarceration camps and, potentially, off to another country. As Homan’s answer on “60 Minutes” indicates, that’s a feature, not a bug. Trump has already proposed invoking laws that could be used to sweep up unnaturalized U.S. residents who have legal status.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which Trump says he will use, allows the president to effectively suspend due process for anyone of a particular nationality or national origin when the U.S. is at war or is invaded by that nation. Invoking this law may prove challenging since the U.S. is not currently in a declared war, much less one against any of the Latin American countries that represent the point of origin for most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. And though Trump claims that the migration of people into the country amounts to an “invasion,” federal courts since the 1990s have largely rejected efforts by states claiming that the word “invasion” in the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted to include the voluntary migration of people across borders.

Still, it is possible that the courts today would take a different approach and declare that the president’s invocation of an invasion by immigrants is a “political question” that the judicial branch will not interfere with. That could give Trump a free hand to implement a brutal and sweeping deportation program. “There are no explicit limitations on what kinds of regulations the president can promulgate under the law,” said Katherine Yon Ebright, a counsel at the progressive Brennan Center for Justice and author of a paper on the Alien Enemies Act. The law has been invoked three times during conflicts with actual foreign nations: during the War of 1812 and both world wars. In each conflict, the president has not only directed deportations and detentions but also promulgated restrictions on noncitizens who had come from the foreign belligerents.

[...]

When Trump was in office, immigration officials ramped up the use of these inaccurate gang databases to identify and deport undocumented residents. Considering Trump has falsely claimed in his campaign speeches that “migrant gangs” have “conquered” entire cities, such an effort would likely be radically scaled up. This could lead to removal of people with legal status as well as those who don’t. Residents who have legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program ― so-called Dreamers who were brought across the border by their parents as children ― have been incorrectly identified as gang members by local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would be one way to strip them of their legal status.

Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, has promised to “turbocharge” efforts at denaturalizing U.S. citizens. When in office, Trump ramped up denaturalization efforts with one Homeland Security budget document proposing up to 700,000 investigations into naturalized U.S. citizens. Civil denaturalization can be done to people who obtained their legal status illegally or are the child of someone who did so, who deliberately lied about a fact in their application for citizenship, obtained citizenship through military service but was then dishonorably discharged or by becoming a member of a subversive group. This last reason could implicate U.S. citizens incorrectly placed on gang databases or otherwise identified as gang-affiliated by law enforcement. Databases can only be used to identify the legal status of residents who have had interactions with law enforcement or certain government agencies. If Trump intends to ramp up deportations to the level he claims, his efforts would need to target workplaces and neighborhoods. This would, invariably, involve racial profiling by placing checkpoints or performing sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods or worksites. Such sweeps would undoubtedly ensnare U.S. citizens and inflict fear in everyone ― citizens and noncitizens alike ― within these communities.

Donald Trump’s diabolically fascistic plan of mass deportations is eerily reminiscent of the interning of Japanese-Americans in World II: a moral and economic calamity that would undo America.

Read the full story at HuffPost.