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In 2011, a researcher estimated that 1.0-1.5% of detentions per year were US citizens.

In 2017, the Deportation Research Clinic (the only group in the country specializing in relief for deported US citizens) reported that over 1000 US citizens were deported or otherwise removed 2011-2017; that's out of people who made it into an immigration court hearing and got the defense of US citizenship onto the record, a small fraction of the total number of deported people with a citizenship claim.

In 2020, the same researcher updated her stats in an interview: 1.0-1.5% of detentions and 0.5% of deportations per year continued to be US citizens.

The human rights disaster in progress has been in progress for your entire lifetime and mine. When immigration justice activists were begging the voters not to hand this system over to an avowed authoritarian, it was because we knew exactly how it was already being used, and how easily it could be scaled up.

I'm going to quote Janet Stevens, the researcher mentioned above and the person who has been tirelessly advocating for detained nd deported US citizens for decades with very little thanks or recognition, in her 2018 groundbreaking work laying out the case for open borders involving the abolition of birthright citizenship:

"By failing to question a society’s prerogative to rely on birthright membership as the paradigmatic membership rule for constituting the group that will regulate future membership, [liberal immigration policy advocates] disregard how the status distinctions on which they rely for their analyses are every bit as flawed as investigations into the possibilities for morally acceptable versions of patriarchy or slavery, whose conventions also rely on the authority of those creating a status to unilaterally and unaccountably define the conditions of those occupying these subject positions."

In other words: If we create categories of 'citizen' and 'noncitizen' based on birth, and then only give full civil rights to the people in the 'citizen' category, we will always have a system that can attack, exploit, torture, and violate the rights of anyone just by alleging they are a 'noncitizen.'

I'm not angry at anyone who is only realizing this now. I understand that it's easier to accept this kind of truth if you see it being done by a person you hate, or a government that you don't feel affiliated with. I understand that many of you were very young in 2011 or even 2020 and you're newly arrived to this fight. I understand that many others of you have been engaged in aligned but different fights that are now exploring the intersections with border abolition, and I'm very grateful for that.

What I am asking is that, instead of catastrophizing, we contextualize.

Is this administration increasing the proportion of US citizens it's detaining and deporting? Possibly, but actually it's too soon to tell: the increased national focus on the abuses of the immigration system may very well simply be shining a new light on the same thing that has been happening this whole time.

Are the connected tactics that are intended to bypass the immigration courts in removal proceedings (expanding expedited removal, intentionally overloading the immigration court dockets by pulling cases back out of administrative closure, firing immigration judges, ignoring orders for stays of removal) going to lead to more US citizens not having a chance to ever raise their citizenship as a defense? Absolutely. Is that one of the goals, or just a side-effect of the overall project to remove people without giving them a chance for any type of defense? Who knows; I don't spend my time trying to read the minds of the white nationalists.

Do US citizens need to be more concerned about being targeted for detention and removal now, versus before Jan 2025? We don't know yet. But we know who will have the best vantage point and the most experience in how to respond: the ones who've been dealing with this the whole time. Muslim, Arab, and Southeast Asian US citizens have known since 2001 that their citizenship means very little in terms of civil rights when faced with the "anti-terrorism" apparatus; Latine US citizens, especially those in any proximity to the US-Mexico border, already take all the same precautions as someone without citizenship; Black US citizens already know that as part of being disproportionately targeted by cops, they're also disproportionately referred to ICE for detention, where they face higher rates of solitary confinement and higher bond fees than any other group; a higher proportion of Asian-American citizens report being told to "go back to their home country" than Asian-American non-citizens.

No one in any of these groups that I advise about their rights is ever surprised or confused when I warn them that citizenship doesn't necessarily protect them from immigration enforcement. They know.

Now that you know, too, what can you do about it? Work to resist and dismantle the immigration apparatus as a whole. Join a local ICEWatch or immigration court accompaniment group; defund the cops, fight surveillance projects, and curtail police presence in your communities; volunteer with a mutual aid project that gives people the resources to avoid getting on ICE's radar in the first place. More suggestions here.

Thank you for caring. Your fear, your anger, your grief, are all appropriate responses to what's happening. Don't let those things push you over the line into paralysis or overwhelm: we've been working and living through this reality this whole time, finding ways to move forward and take care of each other and reduce harm, and you can too.

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Thank you so much for lifting this up and supporting these organizations Dr. Tingle.

Many immigrant families in the US have their own version of The Talk. Parents sit down with their children and say, "If I don't come home some day, here's who's going to take care of you." Sometimes they might explain that if that day comes, it will probably be decades before they see each other again; sometimes they have to find a way to explain that any hope of reuniting will rest on the children, on their ability to find legal counsel and a path to citizenship and enough financial resources to sponsor their parents some day.

Kids are living with that terrifying, crushing future hanging over them every time their parents leave the house. They are growing up under the shadow of a spiteful, cruel system that entices people here to use their bodies and their labor, but keeps them on constant probation that promises immediate retribution if they start to suggest they might deserve equal rights.

Living under that constant threat does so much harm. I know it doesn't feel like much, or enough. But creating pockets of safety and community matters hugely right now.

ICED OUT

this morning my UNMASKED self helped out at school arts department here in LOS ANGELES. this is not usually something i talk about to protect privacy of my other creative life but given whats happening in LA i think its worth the mention because ICE raids hurt these kids in so many insidious ways

they have NOTHING to do with how they arrived here and right now the fear hangs over them in a way that effects everything they do. yes, they could LITERALLY get snatched off the street, and some do, but even outside of the physical threat THE THREAT ITSELF is so harmful

the strange vibes and mysterious absences hung over everything at the start of the day, but when i popped in after helping i watched the assembly i saw something really beautiful: kids having fun. they were with their buds, they were in community, they were forgetting the threat for a moment.

there are so many ways to help. you can march in the street, you can volunteer, you can use art to urge others to do the same. you can CREATE spaces like an assembly auditorium full of cheering kids. today i am suggesting a donation. here is post of suggestions im trottin

i am going to be donating my own sum as well, and DOUBLE the profits of all tinglers sold today. so if you need a reason to check out the tingleverse now is your time. LETS TROT BUCKAROOS LOVE IS REAL

FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE BLUESKY I WILL LIST SOME OF THE DONATION LINKS HERE AS WELL:

amnesty international

we are casa

chirla

immigrant defenders law center

al otro lado

mid south immigration advocates

the young center

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The last time the National Guard was deployed without the consent of a state Governor was in 1965, during the Civil Rights Movement; not only is this yet another dubiously-constitutional power grab, it's a huge reaction to a very small instance of resistance.

Meanwhile, this is actually a really important change on the part of establishment Democrats like Newsom: he did invite in the National Guard in 2020 in response to BLM demonstrations, and they brutalized people. The fact that Newsom is publicly saying right now that he doesn't want them there suggests that maybe that's not going to be an acceptable tactic for Democrats to use while there's an open authoritarian in the presidency.

Hey fun fact so the national guard is under the jurisdiction of governors primarily soooo Gavin fuckibg Newsom, one of many wannabe faces of the Democratic party, sicked soldiers on his constituents to aid in the disappearing of migrants, immigrants, and political dissidents. The US is currently storing these prisoners in prisons made of converted shipping containers in fucking djabouti. thats not even niche information or whatever, here's an NPR article about it

We cannot rely on the democratic party to save anyone. Trump is launching his policies off runways built by Biden, Obama, and Clinton

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"Average public interest lawyer in the U.S. has a mental breakdown every week" actualy just statistical error. Average public interest lawyer in the U.S. has a mental breakdown every 2 years. Time period since January 20, 2025, in which average public interest lawyer in the U.S. has a mental breakdown twice a day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

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once these 15 million different stressful situations resolve themselves I’m gonna be so normal again. I can be normal and not exhausted

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From an immigration lawyer: welcome to the (terrible) club and I'm so sorry.

National Lawyers Guild has good risk assessment and digital security tools. ACLU chapters have stepped up a lot for class actions and rapid response habeas petitions. If you're not already part of a state or regional Signal chat of aligned lawyers, it's a good idea to get that together, because we are each others' best early warning systems.

If you're planning on traveling outside the US, please have an emergency plan in place for the possibility that you may not get back in.

Fellow public defenders,

Starting to feel it too, right? Feels like we might be targets this time.

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There's a second half to this story too: wages, working conditions, environmental protections, and labor laws are not worse in colonization-impacted ("""third world""") countries by accident. The same multinational corporations that withdrew their capital and production from the US in response to unions and the EPA are concretely, specifically, and intentionally shaping the laws of other nations to prevent the same thing happening there.

Sometimes the mechanism is these corporations using the US military to foment coups and assassinations of activists and legislators[1]. Even more often, though, it's them using economic and political pressure to force countries to shape their laws and trade agreements in a way favorable to the corporation's continued exploitation of their workers and environment[2].

One of the biggest tools that corporations use to control the legal landscape of a nation is the threat of withdrawing their resources: "if you improve your worker protections, we'll just pick up and move, and your economy will crash." That's why the nations that have been most successful at corporate regulation do so as a bloc, like the European Union: they're using the same principal as labor unions, that collective bargaining is the way to fight back against capitalists' unequal bargaining power.

(Which is why the US has been one of the main nations undermining any attempts by the United Nations to participate in corporate regulation, or to push the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It's also why the US intervened so harshly and comprehensively in Latin America and the Middle East in the mid-to-late 1900s: Latin American nations were seriously considering of developing their economic policy and international law as a bloc [3], and Middle Eastern nations were using OPEC to fight back against US-back private companies exploitation of their oil resources[4].)

Wherever the nodes of the global supply chain go, these tactics to render nations and their people continuously vulnerable to extraction and exploitation follow, backed significantly (though not only) by the economic and military power of the United States. As the US is now destroying its own economic power, we'll need to see how that changes the capacity of other nations to successfully work together and collectively resist corporate shaping of their political economies.

People straight up do not realize that part of the reason manufacturing is not returning to the United States in massive waves is because we have things like “OSHA” and “environmental laws” and “minimum wages.”

It’s not even just about fair wages. It’s literally about the fact that you can’t dump industrial waste in a river here anymore.

Our cheap goods are so cheap because South American and Asians environments are being destroyed so you can buy a $40 pair of shoes every 3 months.

Cutting granite countertops has lead to a rapid increase in silicosis in the lungs out in California. All the working men and women in my family have died from pulmonary fibrosis. They were carpet layers, Post office workers, floor tilers. Staying safe in manufacturing jobs is annoying but also very, very expensive. Real manufacturing factories belch smoke and dust and grime that causes asthma and birth defects in surrounding communities. Everyone wants their manufacturing jobs back until they realize their kids are living directly under the Asthma Plant.

There will come a time when the workers in these countries rise up and demand better and things will start to even out, but if you want to honestly “do your part,” you gotta stop buying cheap shit for no reason.

Not every event needs to be celebrate with a baseball cap or a coozie or a t shirt or a keychain. Not every wall in the house has to have a picture or a cute phrase on it. The knickknacks are killing people.

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I genuinely and affectionately enjoy "fake marriage for the green card" fics but I can't read them often or I get stressed because I need. I need you all to understand. please. PLEASE. that:

between putting in the application for the marriage visa and receiving an interview appointment

the average processing time in the United States

is 18 months

Do you understand. Do you see why I am clarifying this point of the timeline. The way it works is that you get married, in a state process that doesn't inquire about your motivations because outside of literal duress, no other legal system in the US other than the immigration system cares what yours reasons for marriage are. You then exhaustively document your marriage photographically and financially, you submit a binder full of vacation photos and family trips and a really invasive level of information about your bank accounts and auto loan, and then you wait for over a year! While continuously collecting stupid evidence about your relationship during that time! And making sure to post regularly on a variety of social media about your relationship, because "why aren't you marked as 'In a relationship' on Facebook" is a real, actual question USCIS asked a couple and then proceeded to use to mark their 20-year marriage, with biological children, as fraudulent.

While you're doing all that, you're also prepping for an interview in which you'll be asked what color toothbrush your spouse uses, and to recall from memory the layout of your house, the specific, minute details of their work schedule. Oh and don't forget to write down what restaurant you went to for your last anniversary! Better make a note of that, because if you disagree about the name, your spouse might end up in removal proceedings.

Meanwhile, USCIS will be reviewing your marriage petition for red flags, such as *checks notes, and by notes I mean a whistleblower leak from 2012* oh. hahaha. whether your marriage has an age gap? Or an "unusual" number of children??? Or too many cultural differences????? Or whether the non-citizen spouse has less money????????

But don't worry: once you've passed that screening, and the interview that people who have also survived genocide have told me was one of the most traumatic experiences of their lives, you only need to worry about being flagged for a "provisional" green card and a follow-up interview 2 years later, where you go back and do it all again or they take the green card away.

It's a good thing these government employees are out there putting hundreds of thousands of people per year through invasive and traumatizing processes with the threat of family separation in order to protect us all from the scourge of people who--oh. wait. all of this is because the INS Commissioner lied to Congress and falsified data about widespread marriage fraud that wasn't occurring? And "The INS Commissioner cited [IPFS, the fraudulent survey] to Congress in 1985 to support the need for [these marriage screening measures] even though high ranking officials in the INS Central Office [...] knew that the IPFS was not a valid or reliable survey of marriage fraud"???

wow hahaha it's almost like the US immigration system is an evil, white nationalist project or something lol

....so yeah there are a lot of AUs set in my field of work and they're very cute and charming and also I can't read them too often. For my health.

would you read a fanfiction au set at your job? i.e if you're a barista would you read a coffeshop au for any media, hospital au if you're a doctor (?? i guess??? you get the point)

yes and i've actively sought it out

i wouldn't mind it but i'm not seeking it out specifically

no my job is boring and/or wouldn't work as a setting

no i hate my job and don't want to think about it in my spare time

it's nuanced

unemployed button

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maybe its because im an asylum seeker but i am of the opinion that even if immigrants and asylum seekers contributed nothing to a nation that nation should not have the right to deport them.

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I got too mad so I wrote fanfic to cope

BREAKING: Luthor Administration Vacates TPS Designation for Krypton (AO3)

"In its second week of existence, President Luthor's newly-formed Department of Homeland Security has published a memorandum vacating Kryptonian Temporary Protected Status (TPS)."

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This is a good article that alerts the reader, accurately, to the use of this case as a test by the administration of targeting political activity. And: immigrants have been arrested for their political speech alone this whole time. That reality is important to understand, even as it doesn't take away the heightened danger that we are all, including immigrants, now in.

Here's the quote that, without fail, makes at least one law student per year start crying in introductory Immigration Law courses:

‘‘Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned’.’

The Supreme Court said that in 1950 when it upheld the decision to permanently exclude a Czech Jewish Holocaust survivor from the US. The decision was based on a lie made up by a man she refused to sleep with. The Supreme Court said that that was a valid basis for an immigration decision. It's still "good law": the constitutional right to due process does not exist at the US borders. (United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U.S. 537 (1950)). It has not existed since 1889.

Now, Mr. Khalil is not at the US borders. As a Lawful Permanent Resident, he has procedural due process rights before being deprived of his property (his green card). That's better, right? Except:

"[this] Act authorizing his deportation many years after his Communist membership [is intended] to punish in every way possible anyone who ever made the mistake of being a Communist in this country or who is supposed ever to have been associated with anyone who made that mistake. [...] A basic constitutional infirmity of this Act, in my judgment, is that it is a part of a pattern of laws all of which violate the First Amendment out of fear that this country is in grave danger if it lets a handful of Communist fanatics or some other extremist group make their arguments and discuss their ideas. This fear, I think, is baseless. [...] It is an unworthy fear in a country that has a Bill of Rights containing provisions for fair trials, freedom of speech, press and religion, and other specific safeguards designed to keep men free."

In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that a law deporting anyone who had ever been a member of the Communist Party, even during the years when membership was not illegal in the US, was constitutional. The plaintiff hadn't even been trying to fight his own deportation directly: he only went to the Supreme Court trying to get his Social Security benefits, which he'd paid into for 19 years, to go to his US citizen wife. He lost. He was a green card holder with no other alleged violations of his status. (Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960)). The US has been taking away people's green cards based only on their ethnicity or political speech for over 100 years.

It's absolutely right and appropriate to respond to Mr. Khalil's detention and removal proceedings as a crisis, and as an indicator of heightened fascism. I'm really glad that people are mustering outrage and resistance to the abuses of our white nationalist immigration system. In order to respond appropriately, I want to make sure that we understand the history of this system, and the context that Mr. Khalil and his lawyers will be working in. This administration has handed them a strong case to argue and inshallah they can defend him effectively and maybe even set some precedent for the rest of us, but getting the US courts to defend immigrants' constitutional rights is never easy or straightforward, no matter how clear-cut the case looks to people who aren't used to the shit the immigration system pulls.

(This is a gift article)

Due process is a cornerstone of democracy and the rule of law. Without it, anyone can be arbitrarily deprived of life or liberty. Leaders who aspire to absolute power always begin by demonizing groups that lack the political power to resist, and that might be awkward for the political opposition to defend. They say someone is a criminal, and they dare you to defend the rights of criminals. They say someone is a deviant, and they dare you to defend the rights of deviants. They call someone a terrorist, and they dare you to defend the rights of terrorists. And if you believe none of these apply to you, another category might be “traitor,” the label that Trump and his advisers, including the far-right billionaire Elon Musk, like to give to anyone who opposes them.

I would add that as this article went up, the Trump administration released a statement explicitly saying that Khalil is not being accused of any illegal activities and is being targeted because of his speech.

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Elon Musk attacked democracy defender and superstar court lawyer Marc Elias as “undermining civilization,” taunting him by asking if he suffered “generational trauma.”

Elias’s response was brilliant and worth amplifying:

Mr. Musk,

You recently criticized me and another prominent lawyer fighting for the rule of law and democracy in the United States. I am used to being attacked for my work, particularly on the platform you own and dominate.

I used to be a regular on Twitter, where I amassed over 900,000 followers — all organic except for the right-wing bots who seemed to grow in number. Like many others, I stopped regularly posting on the site because, under your stewardship, it became a hellscape of hate and misinformation.

I also used to buy your cars — first a Model X and then a Model S — back when you spoke optimistically about solving the climate crisis. My family no longer owns any of your cars and never will.

But this is not the reason I am writing. You don’t know me. You have no idea whether I have suffered trauma and if I have, how it has manifested. And it’s none of your business.

However, I will address your last point about generational trauma. I am Jewish, though many on your site simply call me “a jew.” Honestly, it’s often worse than that, but I’m sure you get the point. There was a time when Twitter would remove antisemitic posts, but under your leadership, tolerating the world’s oldest hatred now seems to be a permissible part of your “free speech” agenda.

Like many Jewish families, mine came to America because of trauma. They were fleeing persecution in the Pale of Settlement — the only area in the Russian Empire where Jews were legally allowed to reside. Even there, life was difficult — often traumatic. My family, like others, lived in a shtetl and was poor. Worse, pogroms were common — violent riots in which Jews were beaten, killed and expelled from their villages.

By the time my family fled, life in the Pale had become all but impossible for Jews. Tsar Nicholas II’s government spread anti-Jewish propaganda that encouraged Russians to attack and steal from Jews in their communities. My great-grandfather was fortunate to leave when he did. Those who stayed faced even worse circumstances when Hitler’s army later invaded.

That is the generational trauma I carry. The trauma of being treated as “other” by countrymen you once thought were your friends. The trauma of being scapegoated by authoritarian leaders. The trauma of fleeing while millions of others were systematically murdered. The trauma of watching powerful men treat it all as a joke — or worse.

As an immigrant yourself, you can no doubt sympathize with what it means to leave behind your country, extended family, friends and neighbors to come to the United States. Of course, you probably had more than 86 rubles in your pocket. You probably didn’t ride for nine days in the bottom of a ship or have your surname changed by immigration officials. Here is the ship manifest showing that my family did. Aron, age three, was my grandfather.

[see image in comments]

As new immigrants, life wasn’t easy. My family lived in cramped housing without hot water. They worked menial jobs — the kind immigrants still perform today.

Some may look down on those immigrants — the ones without fancy degrees — but my family was proud to work and grateful that the United States took them in. They found support within their Jewish community and a political home in the Democratic Party.

I became a lawyer to give back to the country that gave my family a chance. I specialize in representing Democratic campaigns because I believe in the party. I litigate voting rights cases because the right to vote is the bedrock of our democracy. I speak out about free and fair elections because they are under threat.

Now let me address the real crux of your post.

You are very rich and very powerful. You have thrown in with Donald Trump. Whether it is because you think you can control him or because you share his authoritarian vision, I do not know. I do not care.

Together, you and he are dismantling our government, undermining the rule of law and harming the most vulnerable in our society. I am just a lawyer. I do not have your wealth or your platform. I do not control the vast power of the federal government, nor do I have millions of adherents at my disposal to harass and intimidate my opponents. I may even carry generational trauma.

But you need to know this about me. I am the great-grandson of a man who led his family out of the shtetl to a strange land in search of a better life. I am the grandson of the three-year-old boy on that journey. As you know, my English name is Marc, but my Hebrew name is Elhanan (אֶלְחָנָן) — after the great warrior in David’s army who slew a powerful giant.

I will use every tool at my disposal to protect this country from Trump. I will litigate to defend voting rights until there are no cases left to bring. I will speak out against authoritarianism until my last breath.

I will not back down. I will not bow or scrape. I will never obey.

Defiantly,

Marc Elias

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It's a concrete action that doesn't involve picking up a phone!

It's not just removing the 'x' gender marker, it would also change the forms to ask for sex assigned at birth. If you scroll down the pages it details the proposed changes. Here are those links:

Passport Application Comment Form

Passport Renewal Comment Form

Name Change Comment Form

Just click the green "submit a public comment" button. Here's also a link to a reddit post that includes those links and some discussion of how to best phrase your comments. Deadline is March 17th.

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Another aspect of this economic dynamic is that it goes the other way too: people come to the US for work because of how much purchasing power US dollars have in countries whose currencies and economies have been sabotaged or disadvantaged globally. (That money is called "remittances" and it makes up over 25% of some countries' GDPs because of the types of currency inequalities that OP is excellently explaining.) US wages, even from a below-minimum-wage job, may have strong purchasing power when people send them back to their family and loved ones....but no one warned them they that don't have strong purchasing power in the US.

It is often a profoundly nasty shock to people who immigrate to the US for economic opportunity that they cannot work a job that affords them the basic necessities of life.

The propaganda that the US puts out globally about what life is like here creates a bait-and-switch situation, where people frequently bet their entire futures on immigrating, only to discover that they cannot achieve any kind of workable quality of life here. This locks them into a role where they struggle to survive and to navigate the immigration system, while their loved ones in their country of origin depend heavily on their remittances for survival and often do not know or understand why that money does not create security and stability for the person earning it.

It's isolating, it destroys people's bodies and mental health, and it makes them feel profoundly ashamed despite them often being extremely competent, skilled, and dedicated people.

None of this is to detract from OP's excellent point, just to add on to it regarding a way this currency inequality, and the intentional efforts to stop its true details from becoming well-known, harms people globally.

just saw a really stupid post on tumblr where someone showed the prices of vegetables in china and how, when converted to US dollars, only costs a couple of cents, and the post was like, "ugh why must us americans suffer such high prices when the rest of the world doesn't !!!" and it's like. you are aware that you come from a country with an extremely strong currency, yes ? and that, just bc a loaf of bread costs R20 (or 1.06 USD) here in south africa, that doesn't make it affordable to the average working class south african, just bc it seems cheap to you, yes ? u are aware that many ppl around the world make wayyyyy less than even the minimum wage american, yes ? that, even though you may be struggling financially in ur country, ur dollar still has significant power over the majority of the currencies around the world. yes ?

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Hope you don't mind me piggybacking on your post op! Cosigning all of this, AND:

Please consider becoming familiar with administrative policy, and in particular, the Notice and Comment process. Legislators draft and pass bills that become laws; administrative agencies (the ones currently experiencing the brunt of the attempted coup) draft and pass policies that distribute resources and enact power just like laws do.

Remain in Mexico (the shutdown of the US-Mexico border and blanket expulsion of asylum-seekers in 2018-19) was a policy, not a law. DACA was a policy, not a law. The regulations of greenhouse gasses are policies, not laws. Admin agencies make the regulations that have the most direct and immediate impacts on our society and economy, and they operate faster and with a much higher volume of changes per day than Congress.

Right now everything is happening via Executive Order instead of admin agency regulations because the coup isn't complete. Most agencies are being led by interim heads because the presidential appointees aren't in yet, and the career civil servants who do the day-to-day work haven't been successfully purged. So we haven't seen a lot of rulemaking yet. But we will.

And when we do, it will be time for everyone to become familiar with my close and personal friend the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. MSN called her "obscure" and "wonky" recently (rude), but they also accurately reported that she is one of our best, most powerful tools in obstructing and reversing the fascist and genocidal agenda we're up against. If an admin agency doesn't follow the APA, their attempted action gets erased. Thanks for playing, try again from start.

So where do you, a person who is not an administrative law professional, come in here? My girl APA has a super annoying (complimentary) requirement for a lot of admin rulemaking: the Notice and Comment process. When an admin agency proposes a rule, they have to post that proposed rule in the Federal Register, and everyone gets to comment on it. Then, they have to review the comments, and in their final rule, adequately address the feedback. If they don't follow that process, and if their final rule doesn't adequately respond to the comments? APA lawsuit. Probably from one of those exact orgs that OP named above, who drafted the lawsuit and had it ready to go after the saw the proposed rule, and were just waiting for them to slip up procedurally somewhere.

So when you contribute to a comment pool on a proposed rule with a unique comment that raised specific problems with it, you've helped in a couple ways. First, someone has to read your comment. They have to aggregate it with others, collate the feedback, and give it to the rulemaking team. That takes time. It takes longer the more unique comments with unique criticisms they have to go through. Second, someone has to address the feedback. The more feedback, and the more unique things they have to address, the longer it takes. Third, your comment is the fuel in the lawsuit. Even if they manage to successfully follow the Notice and Comment procedure, APA also says that rulemaking can't be "arbitrary and capricious": it ostensibly has to have some kind of basis in some kind of evidence and logic. Your comment is evidence for the lawsuit that says that the rule makes no damn sense, and as proof, here's all these comments listing why.

When you see a news story or press release about some new horrible proposed policy that concerns something you care about, please take a little time to click through to the actual policy itself in the Federal Register and write a comment. It can become just as low-effort a habit as calling your legislator about a proposed bill, and it's another way to help.

Ok darlings.

The bad bills are coming and here.

It is good to fight them. DO!

But it seems like a lot of you are not thinking about opposition to bad bills outside of calls to reps. YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY CONTACT YOUR REPS.

But also there are loads of orgs like the ACLU and 350 who fight clearly corrupt and damaging bills. AGs fight bad bills. Mayors and judges. Hell, that bad anti-psych-meds bullshit? You know who’s gonna fight that? The American pharmaceutical industry. And there’s more money in American meds than there is in foreign oil. They are a powerful lobby. Often a powerful lobby up to bullshit but they do not want to loose out on those med sales. They will be front row fighting.

I’m not saying we as people living here shouldn’t call/email/protest. We need to do that.

But I am baffled by how many posts I see on here act like that is the only dam against the rising bullshit tide.

Vote in your local elections. Support good orgs when you can. And try not to spread misinformation that leads to panic and despair.

Look around for who else is fighting.

[open-the-universe]

I know so much better than to fall into the trap of trying to correct immigration system misinfo on the internet but just really really quickly:

A non-US-citizen is eligible for a Social Security number if they are a) a green card holder, b) authorized to work in the US, or c) have a non-work-related need for an SSN, usually connected to receipt of state-based public services. People in categories b) and c) may or also be under the "undocumented" umbrella in some respect, for example if they don't have a current status but have parole/deferred action/another kind of "non-status" that provides a work permit, or have a pending but not yet approved application for status. Undocumented is not the same as without an SSN.

Having an SSN means that someone's wages pay into social security, but it doesn't mean they can receive social security. In all three categories above, a huge number of people working with an SSN are paying into social security, but aren't allowed to claim SSI themselves.

This is because of "PRWORA", a 1996 piece of legislation that did widespread damage to the social welfare system in general, but targeted immigrants in particular, and made receipt of federal benefits much harder and almost impossibly complicated. Along with decreasing health insurance rates among immigrants by at least 10%, PRWORA made people ineligible for SSI benefits unless they were green card holders, asylees, refugees, or a couple other small categories, and made even those people mostly ineligible for the first 5 years after they entered the US.

So, to summarize: some undocumented people have SSNs and are paying their wages into social security, but all undocumented people, and the majority of immigrants with status including a large percentage of green card holders, cannot receive social security benefits. Immigrants are subsidizing your benefits, and all of the other government programs that are "borrowing" those SSI funds, while being locked out of receiving those benefits themselves.