The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

After a Seattle immigration judge dismissed the deportation case against a Colombian man — exposing him to expedited removal — three people sat with him in the back of the courtroom, taking his car keys for safe-keeping, helping him memorize phone numbers and gathering the names of family members who needed to be notified.

When Judge Brett Parchert asked why they were doing that in court, the volunteers said Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers were outside the door, waiting to take the man into custody, so this was their only chance to help him get his things in order. “ICE is in the waiting room?” the judge asked.

As the mass deportation campaign of President Donald Trump focuses on cities and states led by Democrats and unleashes fear among asylum-seekers and immigrants, their legal defenders sued this week, seeking class-action protections against the arrests outside immigration court hearings. Meanwhile, these volunteers are taking action.

A diverse group — faith leaders, college students, grandmothers, retired lawyers and professors — has been showing up at immigration courts across the nation to escort immigrants at risk of being detained for deportation by masked ICE officials. They’re giving families moral and logistical support, and bearing witness as the people are taken away.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project was inundated by so many community members wanting to help that they made a volunteer training video, created “Know Your Rights” sheets in several languages and started a Google sheet where people sign up for shifts, said Stephanie Gai, a staff attorney with the Seattle-based legal services non-profit.

“We could not do it without them,” Gai said. “Some volunteers request time off work so they can come in and help.”...

These are Americans acting in the best traditions of this country, in vivid contrast to the actions of the masked paramilitary goons of the Department of Homeland Security (see "The ugly," below).

The bad:

Five months after taking over the federal agency responsible for the health of all Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation’s childhood immunization system.

Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic.

In his crosshairs is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system designed to provide fair and quick payouts for people who suffer rare but serious side effects from shots — without having to prove that drugmakers were negligent. Congress created the program in the 1980s when lawsuits drove vaccine makers from the market. A special tax on immunizations funds the awards, and manufacturers benefit from legal protections that make it harder to win big-money verdicts against them in civil courts.

Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccination group and previously accused the pharmaceutical industry of inflicting “unnecessary and risky vaccines” on children for profits, has long argued that the program removes any incentive for the industry to make safe products.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Kennedy condemned what he called corruption in the program and said he had assigned a team to overhaul it and expand who could seek compensation. He didn’t detail his plans but did repeat the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and suggested, without citing any evidence, that shots could also be responsible  for a litany of chronic ailments, from diabetes to narcolepsy.

There are a number of ways he could blow up the program and prompt vaccine makers to stop selling shots in the U.S., like they did in the 1980s. The trust fund that pays awards, for instance, could run out of money if the government made it easy for Kennedy’s laundry list of common health problems to qualify for payments from the fund.

Or he could pick away at the program one shot at a time. Right now, immunizations routinely recommended for children or pregnant women are covered by the program. Kennedy has the power to drop vaccines from the list, a move that would open up their manufacturers to the kinds of lawsuits that made them flee years ago...

We have to wait to see what Brainworm actually does in the end (and if he's able to get away with his plans), but potentially driving vaccine makers out of the U.S. would be one more blow to not only public health, but to our national security.  That would certainly align with other actions the Malignant Fascist's regime has taken to ruin America "one shot at a time."  Meanwhile, Brainworm looks after his fraudster friends.

The ugly:

Immigration officials on Tuesday arrested a 38-year-old Iranian father who is in the process of obtaining a green card, while he was dropping off his child at a preschool in Oregon.

He has been identified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as Mahdi Khanbabazadeh.

Tyler Burns, whose two daughters also attend Guidepost Montessori preschool in Beaverton, Oregon, described the arrest as "super aggressive" to Newsweek and said immigration officers broke Khanbabazadeh's car window outside the school.

Maris Mendes, CEO of Guidepost Global Education, called Tuesday's arrest "deeply upsetting" in an email to Newsweek, saying, "It is not lost on us how frightening and confusing this experience may have been for those involved—especially for the young children who may have witnessed it while arriving at school with their parents."  [snip]

Around 8:30 a.m. local time Tuesday, Burns was entering the school's parking lot to drop off his daughters and noticed it unusually full. He described seeing officials, some in masks, in "unmarked" cars and noted a sense of "aggression" in the way they approached.

He said he went inside to the head of school's office, who was "unaware that police were there." After dropping his daughters off in their class, Burns came back outside, saw between five to 10 cars, "heard screaming," and described the officers actions as "super aggressive."

"Then I heard the glass break of them breaking his window. And then, I saw them pull him out of his car and they put him up pretty aggressively against his car and handcuffed him," Burns said.

Burns added, "He wasn't resisting, he was in shock and he was trying to communicate to his wife," who Burns said was with him at the time. He said Khanbabazadeh's child was not with his parents at the time of the arrest.

Khanbabazadeh is now detained in the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, according to the ICE detention database.

Caroline Keating Medeiros, who is also a parent at the school as well as an immigration attorney, said that Khanbabazadeh came to the U.S. on a valid student and graduated in March 2021. He then transitioned to optional practical training (OPT), which is temporary employment.

"He married a US citizen that July and filed both the I-130 and I-485," she said, noting, "The I-130 has been approved, and the I-485 is still pending. They had their green card interview four months ago and were waiting on the final decision when all of this happened."

An ICE spokesperson told local outlet OBP that he lawfully entered the U.S. in 2017, but overstayed his student visa.

Khanbabazadeh works as a chiropractor in the area, with his Instagram account stating he treats "headache, neck and low back pains," as well as "auto accident and work related injuries."...

The irony can't be lost on us that this peaceful, productive, non- criminal is being targeted and rounded up by masked paramilitary goons at the direction of a convicted sex abuser and felon.  The DHS goons have a daunting "quota" of 3,000 arrests per day of undocumented immigrants (or just any immigrant, ffs), so they have every incentive to grab anyone they can.  But if they're really looking for criminals to deport, they can start with the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.!