From San Diego to El Paso, Political Theater at the Border Continues
California National Guard Redeployed, Trump & Beto O'Rourke at Competing Rallies in Texas
The big news today is Gov. Gavin Newsom's announcement about the withdrawal of most of the California National Guard troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border, saying the state needs them to prepare for wildfires and fight drug trafficking rather than bolster President Trump’s response to a “manufactured” immigration crisis.
Media reports say Newsom will declare during his address that “California will not be part of this political theater,” and will announce “a new mission” for the soon-to-be relocated soldiers: “They will refocus on the real threats facing our state.” Those threats will reportedly include anti-drug cartel work, and efforts to fight California’s deadly wildfires.
“This is our answer to the White House: No more division, xenophobia or nativism,” Newsom plans to say, according to prepared remarks. His action follows a similar move last week by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico.
As the cutoff date for negotiations in Congress over dedicated funding for a border wall approaches, Trump has ordered nearly 4,000 additional troops to the border. The initial deployment In October occurred just one week before the midterm elections, as Republicans sought to depict Democrats as being complicit in various hallucinations about threats posed by refugee caravans from Central America.
The border states conceded on the initial deployments (they were done under Title 32) because the administration said it was a compromise instead of using of active duty troops, which would have likely set up a confrontation over the posse comitatus act, barring the use of troops for enforcement of domestic policy.
Several thousand active duty National Guard were deployed across a number of border states, where they’ve primarily made themselves useful by setting up concertina wire, and not much else.
Under federal law, the troops are paid by the federal government but are under the control of the governor. Whether federal financing for the troops would continue after Gov. Newsom’s redirection order remains to be seen.
As election results and polling have indicated, voters were not particularly energized by the President’s actions. Illegal border crossings have been sharply declining for years--not that facts matter..
Nonetheless, Trump has embraced the “wall” as the leading issue as the 2020 elections come into view.
Down in the West Texas Town of El Paso, Trump Shows his Love for a Border Wall...
The president will hold his first political rally of the new year tonight in El Paso, TX, alongside a portion of an existing fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Given that the city isn’t thrilled about the event, I’ll bet the crowd will be bussed in from other parts of Texas.
From the New York Times:
Ahead of President Trump’s scheduled rally in this West Texas city aimed at building support for his proposed wall on the border with Mexico, people from across the ideological spectrum in El Paso had a message for him on Sunday: Don’t speak for us.
“The president is just wrong about the wall and wrong about El Paso,” said Jon Barela, a lifelong Republican and chief executive of the Borderplex Alliance, an organization promoting economic development in a cross-border industrial hub with a combined population of more than 2.7 million, taking in the cities of El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and Las Cruces.
Mr. Barela disputed Mr. Trump’s widely discredited assertion that border fencing had cut violent crime in El Paso, pointing to F.B.I. data showing that the city has ranked for decades among the safest urban areas its size in the United States — long before American authorities started building some fencing along the border about a decade ago.
The president’s visit to El Paso has energized local activists, who’ve invited former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke to appear at a nearby March for Truth, in opposition to Trump’s hard-line message on immigration.
From the Washington Post:
“We will meet lies and hate with the truth and a vision for the future from the U.S.-Mexico border,” O’Rourke said Saturday, in a video message alongside his daughter, Molly. “Everyone is welcome.”
March for Truth is being sponsored by several nonprofit groups — including Border Network for Human Rights and Women’s March El Paso — as well as more than 60 local musicians, organizers said. Protesters are encouraged to wear white. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.), who won O’Rourke’s former congressional seat, will also speak at the event.
“Trump’s fixation on a border wall and his distortions of life in El Paso and along the border are unacceptable,” march organizers wrote on a Facebook page for the event. “Our communities will always stand to include immigrants, oppose racism, and defend the truth. All of us must make a choice about whether we stand up for the truth or allow Trump to degrade our dignity and rights.”
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Today’s Union Tribune offered up coverage confirming what’s been common knowledge among border activists for weeks now, namely that human rights workers and journalists covering the border in the San Diego area have been subjected to harassment by Customs and Border Patrol agents.
“It’s a very tricky area of law, because it’s developing, and we’re seeing a highly aggressive series of behaviors,” said Mitra Ebadolahi, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego.
The way journalists and humanitarian activists described being targeted by CBP could be infringing on their constitutional rights under the First Amendment, she said.
Rodrigo, a volunteer and photographer who didn’t want his last name used because he worried about retaliation from CBP, said he hasn’t gone back to Tijuana since he was stopped at the border.
In case it isn’t obvious, an agency with the US government is seeking to simultaneously suppress news coverage and humanitarian aid.
The Intercept ran with a big picture story about what’s going on at the border:
Nineteen sources described law enforcement actions ranging from the barring and removal of journalists and lawyers from Mexico, to immigrant rights advocates being shackled to benches in U.S. detention cells for hours at a time. Multiple sources, including members of the press and advocates, described being forced to turn over their notes, cameras, and phones while plainclothes U.S. border officials pumped them for information about activists working with members of the caravans.
Secondary screenings in the San Diego area have become so routine, one source said, that he has taken to leaving several hours early for his cross-border trips, anticipating being held by U.S. border guards. The freelance photojournalists swept up in the dragnet, meanwhile, have been left to worry about whether they will be able to freely continue their profession, or if state interference — in some cases from their own government — will prevent them from documenting some of the most important stories of the Trump era.
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In other local news about refugees and immigrants, the usual gaggle of right wing nativists are madder than wet hens about the County’s decision to allow a vacant court building in downtown San Diego to be used as a refugee shelter.
Pushback efforts, as outlined on a local Facebook page (sorry, I don’t link to wingnuts), include trying to conflate the refugee, human trafficking, and homeless crises via a demonstration in downtown.
The various locations used for temporary shelters for refugees applying for asylum were kept secret because of past experiences with these creeps showing up harassing people as they came to wait for relocation their final destinations.
The publicity surrounding the downtown property has already led to a group of these right wingers attempting to enter the (still closed up) building with video cameras.
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Cover photo credit: Gary Goodenough / Flickr