Tag: immigration

The System is Finally Working

No Comments

Indian body shops are complaining because H-1B visa applications have been rejected at unprecedented rates.

Good.

The H1B visa system is SUPPOSED to companies’ need for skills that are simply unavailable nationally, but the reality is that it’s used for cheap and marginally skilled labor.

The fact that this law is actually being enforced is an unalloyed good:

Denial of work visas to employees of India’s largest IT services exporters has risen to an all-time high, according to data sourced from a US-based research foundation.

The country’s big four software services exporters — Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies and Wipro — have seen around half of their work visa applications rejected in the past year as the Donald Trump administration pushed for more employment and higher wages for American workers.

The visa denial rate for TCS has gone up from 6% in FY15 to 37% during the first quarter of FY19 (October-December 2018), according to a report by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). NFAP sourced data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that follows a October-September financial year. 

If Speaker Pelosi Does Not Want to Use the Congress, I Would like to Borrow It for a Time

No Comments

In a talk to the Congressional Progressional Caucus, Chuck Schumer revealed that he completely was blindsided by Nancy Pelosi’s capitulation on the immigration bill.

He expected the Speaker to but forward a better bill, and make a reasonable compromise in conference committee, not complete capitulation:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ventured across the Capitol complex on Tuesday afternoon to meet privately with House members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Schumer’s attendance at a House meeting was unusual, and a handful of CPC members, including Reps. Jared Huffman and Barbara Lee of California, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, took the opportunity to press Schumer on the Senate’s performance during the fight late last month over an emergency spending bill related to the border crisis.

House Democrats broadly considered the Senate bill to be far too weak, handing President Donald Trump billions of dollars with no real requirements that the federal government improve conditions at the camps where migrants are concentrated. Many House Democrats worried that, under the Senate bill, Trump would be able to siphon money away from humanitarian relief toward policing migrants. The House, in response, passed an alternative bill that mandated that contractors improve conditions or lose contracts. The Senate took up a vote on the House bill and rejected it, instead sending its own version over to the House.

………

Schumer, in response to questions, told the Progressive Caucus members that the Senate had always expected the House to pass a stronger bill, after which the two chambers would negotiate a compromise — either informally or through a conference committee. Instead, House leaders simply waved through the Senate bill without letting him know they planned to cave. Schumer “truly didn’t expect the House to pass the Senate bill unamended,” said one person in the room — a recollection that was confirmed by multiple others.

“He said he was surprised the House didn’t ask for a conference committee. It could have,” said another member in the room. “But he also gave a somewhat lame answer on Senate Dems actions.”

……….

The House bill, which was strengthened after negotiations with the CPC, required detention center contractors to meet certain humane conditions or have their contracts revoked, among other mandates. That bill passed the House but failed in the Senate, and House leaders have blamed the lopsided Senate vote against the House version as forcing their hand.

The House still had the opportunity to move to conference, but elected not to do so. Schumer’s analysis maps with that of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who made a similar point at the Netroots Nation conference last week. “The complete assumption on the Senate side was that Speaker Pelosi would take it to conference, and she didn’t,” said Merkley.

Seriously, Pelosi is not even trying any more.

Clapping ironically and hippie punching does not make a political leader.


You Remember That Racist Group that the Border Patrol Management Just “Discovered?

No Comments

Yet again the old proverb, “A fish rots from the head,” is spot on:

When news broke that thousands of current and former Border Patrol agents were members of a secret Facebook group filled with racist, vulgar, and sexist content, Carla Provost, chief of the agency, was quick to respond. “These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see — and expect — from our agents day in and day out,” Provost said in a statement. “Any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.”

For Provost, a veteran of the Border Patrol who was named head of the agency in August 2018, the group’s existence and content should have come as no surprise. Three months after her appointment to chief, Provost herself had posted in the group, then known as “I’m 10-15,” now archived as “America First X 2.” Provost’s comment was innocuous — a friendly clapback against a group member who questioned her rise to the top of the Border Patrol — but her participation in the group, which she has since left, raises serious questions.

Provost is one of several Border Patrol supervisors The Intercept has identified as current or former participants in the secret Facebook group, including chief patrol agents overseeing whole Border Patrol sectors; multiple patrol agents in charge of individual stations; and ranking officials in the Border Patrol’s union, who have enjoyed direct access to President Donald Trump. (It is technically possible that someone else posted in the group using the individuals’ accounts.) The group’s existence has already generated at least two investigations from lawmakers and internal Department of Homeland Security oversight bodies.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to the DHS Inspector General’s office last week specifically requesting that investigators examine whether Provost and Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan knew about or had previously addressed the problem of government personnel posting “violent, racist, misogynistic comments and pictures” in the “I’m 10-15” group. 

CBP needs a thorough cleaning, from top to bottom, or, to paraphrase Aliens, “Nuke the entire agency from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”

Trump Caves

No Comments
He declared defeat in his effort to put a citizenship question on the censue, though he has promised to use government records to terrorize brown people:

President Trump on Thursday abandoned his quest to place a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, and instructed the government to compile citizenship data from existing federal records instead, ending a bitterly fought legal battle that turned the nonpartisan census into an object of political warfare.

Mr. Trump announced in the Rose Garden that he was giving up on modifying the census two weeks after the Supreme Court rebuked his administration over its effort to do so. Just last week, Mr. Trump had insisted that his administration “must” pursue that goal.

“We are not backing down on our effort to determine the citizenship status of the United States population,” Mr. Trump said. But rather than carry on the fight over the census, he said he was issuing an executive order instructing federal departments and agencies to provide the Census Bureau with citizenship data from their “vast” databases immediately.

Even that order appears to merely reiterate plans the Commerce Department announced last year, making it less a new policy than a means of covering Mr. Trump’s retreat from the composition of the 2020 census form.

This is definitely a cave by Trump, though he is trying to cast it as another stalwart attempt to promulgate his war against minorities.

Speaking of Law Enforcement Misconduct

No Comments
You’ve probably read about a secret racist Facebook group that almost half of the members of CBP belonged to.

They did things like posting bigoted memes and jokes about shooting immigrants.

It was a blockbuster when ProPublica revealed this a week ago, and management was shocked, and promised a thorough investigation.

Well, in news that surprise no one,  Customs and Border Protection knew about this for years, and never did anything about it.

When you consider the scope of the Facebook group, particularly when juxtaposed to the gratuitous brutality of the organization, this is not a surprise:

Customs and Border Protection officials have been aware for up to three years that a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents was posting offensive messages — far longer than previously reported.

Border Patrol leadership knew about photos posted to the group as far back as 2016, when agents reported them, according to a current Homeland Security official. The images — several of which were provided to POLITICO — show agents engaging in conduct that includes simulating sex acts and taking selfies while defecating. A former DHS official said he was aware of the Facebook group during the past year.

Neither official knew of any serious punishment ever leveled at members of the Facebook group.

ProPublica reported Monday that comments in the “I’m 10-15” Facebook group posted as recently as last week mocked the death of a 16-year-old detained Guatemalan migrant, made bigoted remarks about throwing a burrito at two Latina congresswomen, and posted obscene and misogynistic illustrations of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). The group’s name refers to the code used to signal “aliens in custody.”

………

But screen shots provided to POLITICO and interviews with the two DHS officials indicate that the agency wasn’t blindsided by ProPublica’s report. Staffers in CBP’s public affairs office monitored the Facebook group over the past year “as a source of intelligence” to see “what people are talking about,” according to the former DHS official.

“We were not talking about ‘10-15’ as a liability or an asset or as an item of concern,” the former official said.

………

The DHS inspector general’s office — the department’s internal watchdog — has launched an investigation into the recent Facebook posts, officials said Tuesday. 

Nearly half of DHS was in this group.

Anyone who was in this group should have their clearances pulled until it can be shown that there has been no wrongdoing.

Trump Is Still Not the Deporter in Chief

No Comments

There has been a lot of outrage over how DoJ Lawyer Sarah Fabian has been saying that children in detention do not need mattress, or soap, or toothbrushes or real blankets in detention facilities kept so cold that they are nicknamed “Refrigerators”.

Well, it turns out that she’s done worse things.

In particular, she argued for putting children in solitary confinement under the Obama administration:

………

The United States’s loathsome argument—that it is “safe and sanitary” to confine children without soap, toothbrushes, dry clothes, and on concrete under bright lights—is morally indefensible. It’s also a spectacularly foolish argument to raise in the famously liberal Ninth Circuit, where the United States should have expected exactly the reception that it got. And even though the litigation began under the Obama administration, it was the Trump administration that elected to bring this appeal and ask the court to bless these inhumane conditions as “safe and sanitary.” That’s an extremely aggressive legal argument, and one that suggests that the disturbing conditions being reported at confinement centers are intentional, not a sign of mere neglect.

It is right and fit to condemn the Trump administration for its argument and its treatment of children. But it’s wrong to think the problem can be cured with a presidential election. Trump will depart; the problem will not depart with him. This administration is merely the latest one to subject immigrant children to abusive conditions. It’s been 35 years since Jenny Flores was strip-searched in an adult facility. Before Sarah Fabian defended concrete floors and bright lights for President Donald Trump, she defended putting kids in solitary confinement for President Barack Obama.

Remember, the UN has defined solitary confinement as torture, and the DoJ, and ICE, and CBP asked the courts to allow them to torture children with solitary confinement in 2015:

The Department of (in) Justice recently submitted a motion in opposition to a lawsuit filed by mothers and their children who want ICE to stop torturing their children by placing them in solitary confinement.

The DOJ now can be called the DOIJ for its monstrous defense and advocacy for the following policy:

ICE also has family residential standards that govern discipline and cover, among other things, a situation where a resident has participated in the offense of “insurrection,” which is defined as “[p]articipation or encouraging another to participate in unauthorized activity such as protesting or rioting.” See ICE/DRO Residential Standard, Discipline and Behavior Management, at 17, attached hereto as Exhibit O.6

The ICE disciplinary standards state that their purpose is to “provide a safe and orderly living environment” at ICE family residential facilities, and to “manage discipline and behavioral problems in a manner that ensures the safety and welfare of staff, residents, and visitors.” Exhibit O at 1. “Insurrection” is considered a major offense at ICE family residential facilities, and under the standards requires separation from the general population. Id. at 16-17. Medical observation rooms may be used to facilitate this separation.

In other words, if a mother protests or encourages another to protest, DOJ,  led by the lawyer-warrior in favor of locking up toddlers and children, Sarah B. Fabian, ICE has a right to punish the mothers’ children with solitary confinement.

I would note that the pace of deportations under the Obama administration are still outpaced by those of the Obama administration.

There is a special place in hell for both of them.

They Are Concentration Camps

2 Comments
From any reasonable historical perspective, the ICE detention facilities are concentration camps, as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has stated. (Above link to a Jewish historian saying same)

The Germans adopted the term “Concentration Camp” for their camps, which were better described as death camps, because it put a civilized gloss on what was a barbaric enterprise.

This week, conservatives weaponized Jewish suffering to divert discussion from the massive human rights abuses occurring at our border.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the man who called torture “enhanced interrogation,” scolded Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for using the term “concentration camp” to describe the growing civilian detention system, including the reopening of Fort Sill, previously a Japanese American internment camp, to hold children.

Since then, Jews have split on whether it’s appropriate to use “concentration camp” outside the context of the Holocaust. There are those who find the term too emotionally charged, or who believe the sheer scale of the Nazi Final Solution bars any possible comparison.

Though I disagree, I understand. My father turned seven on June 22, 1941, the day the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. I was raised with the story of how my grandmother saved my dad and aunt with her quick thinking and a cramped spot on a cattle train leaving Odessa for Siberia. Those who remained were shot. As a Jew, I bear witness to the memory of those who did not survive.

I’m also a legal historian, and my research on genocide and crimes against humanity has made clear that while the Holocaust is unique in its scale and implementation, the perpetrators and motivations are not. Genocide is a human crime, not a German one. In the wake of World War II, human rights laws were written in the hopes of preventing future tragedies, not for labeling the past.

You can also listen to George Takei, who spent much of the World War II in US concentration camps:

I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 19, 2019

I have not yet had the opportunity to discuss this with a relative who spent much of WWII in a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines, but I hope to.

This is Pathological

No Comments

One of the people on Trump’s short list for “Immigration Czar” is Kris Kobach.

The New York Times has gotten its hands on his demands in order to accept position, and, Even by the Standards of the Trump Administration, he has shown himself to be a psychopathic narcissist:

Access to a government jet 24 hours a day. An office in the West Wing, plus guaranteed weekends off for family time. And an assurance of being made secretary of homeland security by November.

Those were among a list of 10 conditions that Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, has given to the White House if he is to become the administration’s “immigration czar,” a job President Trump has been looking to create to coordinate immigration policy across government agencies. The list was described by three people familiar with it.
………

The list was submitted by Mr. Kobach in recent weeks as he discussed his interest in the job. Other conditions included having a staff of seven reporting to him, “walk in” privileges to the Oval Office, a security detail if deemed necessary and the title of assistant to the president.

He would need access to the jet, he said, for weekly visits to the border and travel back to Kansas on the weekends. The existence of the list has become known among officials in the Trump administration, some of whom were taken aback by what they regard as its presumptuousness.

(emphasis mine)

Seriously, there is something deeply and profoundly wrong with this guy.

Another Migrant Caravan

No Comments

No, not Central American’s fleeing violence and poverty, it’s Americans who are going to Canada to flee extortionate drug prices:

A “caravan” of Americans living with Type 1 diabetes made its way across the U.S. border into Canada over the weekend in search of affordable medical care in a country where they can get the “exact same” life-saving drugs for a dramatically lower price.

“We’re on a #CaravanToCanada because the USA charges astronomical prices for insulin that most people can’t afford,” tweeted caravan member Quinn Nystrom as she shared updates on the journey.

Nystrom was among a group of Minnesotans who piled into cars on Friday to make the 600-mile journey from the Twin Cities to Fort Frances, Ontario, where she said insulin, the hormone patients with Type 1 Diabetes rely on to regulate their blood glucose levels, can be bought for a tenth of what it costs in the U.S.

The caravan was organized as part of a campaign launched under the banner “#insulin4all” to call on the U.S. government to regulate the cost of life-saving drugs, including insulin, and make medication affordable for anyone who needs it.

Insulin has been public domain for nearly 100 years.

The fact that Pharma has still found a way to charge exorbitant rents, and that our government facilitates this, is an indication of a deep and systemic problem.

Cue Queen

No Comments

Another One Bites the Dust

And Kirstjen Nielsen has resigned as Director of Homeland Security:

President Trump announced Sunday that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will leave her post, ending a rocky run as the top official in charge of implementing the president’s hard-line immigration policies.

The decision, which Trump announced on Twitter, comes just two days after the president abruptly pulled back his nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement because he said he wants “to go in a tougher direction.” The moves signal that Trump is seeking to shake up his team amid frustration over the spike in migrant families crossing the southern border.

Trump tweeted that Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, will lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on an acting basis until a permanent replacement for Nielsen is chosen.

………

In her resignation letter, Nielsen wrote that she had “determined that it is the right time for me to step aside.”

I don’t know what led to this, but it further reinforces the fact that the Trump administration is a complete sh%$ show.

Listen to Admiral Ackbar

No Comments

This is not a good faith offer. May is incompetent, and her only governing principle is her repeated attempts to appeal to racists for political advantage. (See the Windrush scandal)

She has lost all credibility, and most of her influence with, her own party.

She literally has nothing to offer, and the only reason to do this is as part of an attempt to somehow paint Labour in the most vile and racist manner.

Listen to Admiral Ackbar.

Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday broke with her own party, appealing to the opposition to work with her on a plan in a move that could keep Britain closely tied to the European Union after the country leaves the bloc.

Mrs. May made the announcement after her cabinet had met for seven hours, amid a growing sense of crisis. With only 10 days left until Britain is due to leave the European Union, she also said she would ask leaders of the bloc for an extension.

A seven hour cabinet meeting?  That doesn’t sound good.

………

Her overture to the Labour Party could mark a turning point in Brexit, as Britain’s exit from the European Union is known, ending months of stalemate between Mrs. May and Conservative hard-liners, who have adamantly refused to support the deal she negotiated with the European Union.

……….

The prime minister said the withdrawal agreement must stand, even though Parliament has rejected it three times already. European leaders have insisted upon this.

Under the withdrawal agreement, Britain would remain in the European Union customs and trading system until at least the end of 2020.

………

Mrs. May’s plan had envisioned eventually severing ties with the bloc’s customs and trading system, and taking control over immigration from continental Europe.

Until now, she has refused to consider softening any of these so-called red lines.

She’s trying to make Corbyn her patsy.

Rule 1 of Trumpland: Trump Will Always Choose the Dick Move

No Comments
Rule 2 of Trumpland is: See Rule 1.

Trump has announced his intention to declare a state of emergency to fund his border wall:

President Trump will declare a national emergency as early as Friday to bypass Congress and build his long-promised wall along the nation’s southwestern border even as he agreed to sign a spending package that does not finance it, White House officials said Thursday.

The announcement came just minutes before voting began on the spending measure, which then cleared both houses, ending a two-month war of attrition that closed much of the federal government for 35 days and threatened a second shutdown on Friday. The Senate passed it 83 to 16, and the House followed later in the evening, 300 to 128.

But if he declares a national emergency to access billions of dollars for his wall, Mr. Trump could instigate a constitutional clash over who controls the federal purse and test the bounds of presidential authority in a time of divided government. Democrats and some Republicans instantly condemned the move, with some vowing to challenge it through legislation and lawsuits.

I expect this to find its way to court, but given that 5 of the 9 Supreme Court justices are big supporters of the “Unitary Executive Theory” when the President is a Republican, so I expect another corrupt 5-4 decision supporting Trump.

Don’t worry about checks and balances though, they will reverse themselves as soon as a Democrat is back in office.

Wangdoodle

1 Comment
It is impossible to secure 1,900 miles of real estate without a barrier. I don’t care what you call it. Call it a wall, infrastructure or even a wangdoodle! No matter what you call it we have to have some kind of physical barrier to secure our border. pic.twitter.com/vQHWUmmv10

— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) January 31, 2019

Roll Tape!

We now have a name for the wall, courtesy of Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), who suggested “Wangdoodle”.

One of these days, I want to see the Great Wangdoodle of China.

Trump is Being Owned by Pelosi Right Now

No Comments

Trump has blinked, making an offer to extend DACA status and TPS status for 3 years in exchange for wall funding.

Pelosi turned it down flat:

President Trump on Saturday offered Democrats three years of deportation protections for some immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in border wall funding, a proposal immediately rejected by Democrats and derided by conservatives as amnesty.

Aiming to end the 29-day partial government shutdown, Trump outlined his plan in a White House address in which he sought to revive negotiations with Democrats, who responded that they would not engage in immigration talks until he reopened the government.

Trump proposed offering a reprieve on his attempts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants from some Latin American and African nations, in exchange for building hundreds of miles of barriers on the southern U.S. border and hiring thousands of new law enforcement agents to be deployed there.

………

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dismissed the proposal as a “non-starter” and vowed that Democrats would pass legislation in the coming week to reopen the government, putting the onus on the Republican-led Senate to follow suit.

“The president must sign these bills to reopen government immediately and stop holding the American people hostage with this senseless shutdown,” Pelosi said. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also said he opposed the plan.

It’s pretty clear who is the tougher negotiator.

Pelosi knows the political dynamics of this situation, and she knows to count to 218, and Trump can do neither.

Snark of the Day

2 Comments
I am not a fan of Nancy Pelosi.

Whatever her personal politics, it is clear that as speaker she is hostage to the big dollar donors in her official capacity as Speaker, and her obsession with “pay-go” is a disaster for the party and the country.

That being said, her characterization of Trump’s wall proposal as a, “Beaded Curtain,” is brilliant:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joked in a recent interview that President Trump‘s proposal for a wall along the southern border has shifted from a cement structure to a “beaded curtain.”

“First of all, the fact … that he says, ‘We’re going to build a wall with cement, and Mexico’s going to pay for it’ while he’s already backed off of the cement — now he’s down to, I think, a beaded curtain or something, I’m not sure where he is,” Pelosi said in an interview with USA Today published Tuesday.

I love it.

Oh, the Horror!!!

No Comments

The powers that be in the UK are freaking out over a proposal to set a minimum wage of £30,000 for immigrants admitted as “Highly Skilled”.

By way of perspective, at the current exchange rate, that translates is about $38,000 a year, or a bit over $18/hour, or about 3 bucks more than Bernie’s proposed minimum wage here in the US.

Econ 101: if you pay a decent wage, they will come:

Proposals for a minimum annual wage could see the UK without tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and teachers.

Industry leaders have stressed ‘high skills do not equal high pay’ as the government seeks to curb immigration after Brexit.

………

Mr Javid confirmed the Government would be scrapping the current 20,700 annual cap on ‘highly skilled migrants.’

It will now set a minimum salary for workers applying for five-year visas and they would need to be sponsored by a company.

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) have recommended a £30,000 threshold.

………

The starting salary for nurses, midwives and paramedics is £23,000. Junior doctors start at £27,000 while healthcare assistants are at £17,000.

Most scientific researchers also earn below the proposed threshold.

I think that I may have identified a significant problem in the UK:  They have set up an economy where the City of London (finance) is impoverishing the rest of the nation.

American Business Management in a Nutshell

No Comments
7-Eleven has been trying to institute changes in its policies which would benefit the corporation at the expense of its franchise holders.

The franchise holders have been organizing to oppose these changes, so corporate has been sending complaints about illegal workers to ICE to allow it to pull the franchises of people it finds difficult:

Most of America’s 9,000 7-Eleven stores are owned by franchisees, many of them immigrants; the owners’ contracts with 7-Eleven corporate allows the company to pull their franchises if they violate US law.

The current CEO of 7-Eleven is Joe DePinto, a West Point grad who got the job in 2005 and has spent his tenure slowly tightening the screw on franchisees, demanding business practices that return more profit to corporate HQ at the expense of the independent operators. As the franchisees have felt the sting, they’ve fought back, suing the company over DePinto’s policies.

DePinto has become legendary for his dirty tricks campaign to get rid of his least-favored franchisees, from hiring private eyes to making secret recordings.

Now the franchisees allege that DePinto has started snitching on his own franchisees to ICE, directing government immigration raids against 7-Eleven stores. If these franchise owners are found to have illegally hired undocumented immigrants, DePinto can cancel their franchise agreements and kick them out of the business and take over their stores.

Obviously, some 7-Eleven stores have probably hired illegals, but using INS to settle scores so that you can cheat your franchise holders?

That’s just evil.

Blaming Trump for This One

1 Comment

Trump has made bigotry fashionable in large segments of society, and he has demonized immigrants and refugees, and now we have a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh:

Eleven people are dead and six more are wounded — including four police officers — after a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood Saturday morning.

 The shooter, who officials said had an assault-style rifle and three handguns, is in custody, Pittsburgh police report. Officials have confirmed he is Robert Bowers, 46, of Baldwin Borough. He is in Allegheny General Hospital in fair condition with multiple gunshot wounds, officials said.

………

Gunfire erupted shortly before 10 a.m. as a baby-naming ceremony was getting underway, officials confirmed.

………

The Anti-Defamation League said it believed it was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the U.S. history.

There was an initial confrontation in which two officers were injured, Mr. Hissrich said. Two more who are members of SWAT were injured in a later confrontation, Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert said at the news conference. Officials said they believe the suspect was acting alone.

It appears that his actions were a juxtaposition of antisemitism and anti-immigrant bias, making hime the very modern model of the modern Trump Republican:

Someone posting under the name Robert Bowers on the social media site Gab.com, wrote on or around Oct. 10: “Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us? We appreciate the list of friends you have provided,” and included a link to the website for HIAS National Refugee Shabbat, formerly the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society.

HIAS was founded in 1881 to help Jews fleeing Eastern Europe. In the 2000s, it expanded its work to include non-Jewish refugees, including those fleeing Afghanistan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Tunisia and Vietnam.

HIAS led events held last weekend and billed online as “a moment for congregations, organizations, and individuals around the country to create a Shabbat experience dedicated to refugees.” Jewish Family and Community Services is listed on the HIAS website as a partner of the organization. The website indicates that JFCS and three Pittsburgh congregations were participating in the group’s awareness campaign last weekend: Beth Shalom, Dor Hadash and Makom HaLev.

Robert Bowers on Gab.com indicated a week ago that he “noticed a change in people saying ‘illegals’ that now say ‘invaders’ I like this.” He also called one other poster on Gab.com a “deceptive little oven dodger” in response to a post debunking a rumor that trucks marked with the Star of David were bringing Central American migrants to the U.S.

This is a direct result of Donald Trump and his rhetoric.

The right wing has been weaponizing bigots and the mentally ill to intimidate the rest of us since at least the Reagan administration.

We’ve seen it with mass shootings, the assassination of Alan Berg, violence against abortion clinics, etc.

There is an entire domestic terrorist infrastructure that the right wing has built, and it needs to be taken down.