Greg Abbott, well known for doing everything wrong, is already sitting in seat 1A on the Crazy Train to 2022.  Because he has primary opponents to his right (if that’s even possible), he’s desperately trying to get farther right and has already targeted women, minorities, women who are minorities, children, the poor, the sick, and anyone not in perfect health.  As part of this targeting, Abbott had the great idea of taking immigration at the southern border away from the feds and empowered local law enforcement and state police to arrest anyone they suspected of crossing the border and being on private property.  The charge?  Trespassing.  The scheme includes not bothering with constitutional rights by quickly convicting, then jailing the immigrants.  When their sentences are served, they are then sent to the Border Patrol for deportation.  It’s illegal as hell, and Abbott knows it, but doesn’t care.

About 1,300 people have been prosecuted under Abbott’s scheme, and apparently that’s not enough, so apparently what’s happening is that when local law enforcement finds someone crossing the border on federal or federal land, the walk them to a ranch or other private property, THEN arrest them for trespassing.  The Val Verde County prosecutor just dropped trespassing charges against 11 men who claim they were apprehended, marched to a private ranch and ordered to climb a fence onto the property when they were promptly arrested.  Conveniently, there was no police body cam video from any of the officers involved in the arrest.  The case was so sketchy that the prosecutor determined the arrest was not prosecutable.

As anyone who is paying attention knows, the problem here is not fixed at the border.  It’s fixed in countries south of the border by forcing (and funding) countries in Mexico, Central and South America to root out corruption and crime as well as providing economic opportunity in these people’s home countries.  We also simply must stop allowing immigration to be a once every two years wedge issue and reform the system of entering the country into a workable system rather than allowing chaos to reign.  There is a solution to this problem, and politicians like Abbott are the wrong people to find it.

UPDATED: Oh, this is good…

White House press sec. Jen Psaki: "We don't take our advice or counsel from former Pres. Trump on immigration policy." https://t.co/kdimldYgxN pic.twitter.com/ohsrECEXfZ

— ABC News (@ABC) March 5, 2021

UPDATE: There have been questions who the reporter was.  It wasn’t an actual reporter, but one of the propagandists for Trump on OAN (One America News) which is not really news.  Her name is Chanel Rion (actually Chanel Nmi-Dayn Ryan. She changed her name when applying for credentials in the Trump WH).  Here’s the whole thing with the Rion video:

REPORTER: Americans are saying immigrant surges are happening under President Biden's watch

PSAKI: Who are the Americans?

REPORTER: The former president

PSAKI: Former President Trump?

REPORTER: Yes

PSAKI: We don't take our advice or counsel from former President Trump pic.twitter.com/I5d0utFNs9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2021

In one of the latest entries into the Encyclopedia of Gleeful Cruelty and Dickishness, Trump announced last week that he is stopping immigration at the southern border because “the country is full; sorry”.  He can’t do that, of course, and the courts will stop him (again), but this is his campaign strategy for 2020, keeping the entire country whipped up into a lather while Heinrich Himmler Stephen Miller cooks up more nasty things to do to innocent people trying to save themselves and their families from the violence caused (or made worse) by US foreign policy in Latin America.

New York Times

Not only is this yet again new policy completely unnecessary and gaslighting of the worst kind,  Trump’s declaration is 100% false.  The country is not full; as a matter of fact, the work force is shrinking in many parts of the country.  As the country ages, the economy will suffer from lack of workers.  The NY Times published a story about this just this am.  This just another lie piled onto the Mount Everest of lies that Trump has built the the GOP has allowed to happen.

C’mon 2020.

In a wide ranging interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network today, Franklin Graham answered questions on North Korea and other subjects of interest to viewers.  His answers were as you would expect until the very end, when he was asked about the US government’s new policy of ripping immigrant families apart at the border.  Shockingly, he said the practice was shameful and disagreed with it completely.  He also placed the blame for this problem directly where it belonged, which is with the politicians in Washington who have just kicked the can down the road for 30 plus years on our immigration crisis.

Clearly Graham has been abducted by aliens, replaced by an avatar that was somehow mis-programmed into being humanly compassionate.  I’ve never actually ever heard Graham utter a word that wasn’t hateful and exclusionary.  It’s weird to hear the opposite.  Have a look:

Lucian Winterish, the White House correspondent for the ultra-right Gateway Pundit, took to Twitter and had himself a cute little hissy fit about those damn brown people.

Look again.  Those people are native Americans.  Remind me again who it was who broke into this country and took their resources and then did crap like declaring them illegal?  I forgot who did that, Lucien.  Can you help me remember who that was, Lucien? Lucien? Help me, dude.

Thanks to Mike for the heads up.

Oh y’all, at the rally last night, Trump said that legal immigrants who enter the United States should not be eligible for welfare benefits for five years.

Sounds like a good deal to me, because BILL CLINTON PASSED THAT LAW IN 2006.  (Sorry for hollering but my forehead hurts from banging it on the desk every damn day.)

Yeah, that’s been the law since 1996.

“The time has come for new immigration rules which say that those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years,” Trump told a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the U.S. Cellular Center.

The president said his administration would be “putting in legislation to that effect very shortly.”

So, is he going to claim that he time-traveled back to 1996?

I can’t take it.