Immigration

By Lomi Kriel | – ( ProPublica) – The girls, 8 and 11, were alone in a rented room in a dangerous Mexican city bordering Texas. Their father had been attacked and abandoned on the side of a road and they didn’t know where he was. For seven months the children had waited with their […]

Climate Crisis

Anti-Immigrant Trump promotes Burning Fossil Fuels that will displace Millions toward US

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents findings that shocked the authors themselves. If the world (by which I mean you and me, dear reader) does not swing into prompt action to deal with the climate emergency, some 3.5 billion people are going to […]

Donald Trump

How Trump’s ICE sentenced an Acquitted Iranian Academic to Months-long Detention without Trial, and to Covid-19

ProPublica

By Yeganeh Torbati | – (ProPublica) – As the coronavirus spread this spring, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials shuttled Sirous Asgari between detention sites and eventually housed him in a central Louisiana prison, where he recently tested positive for the virus. Now, a federal magistrate judge has recommended that he be kept behind bars because […]

China

Medieval Guilt by Association? Trump/ Miller denied Stimulus Checks to US Citizens whose Partners lack SSN

Martin Powers

Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – According to the Chicago Sun-Times Trump is being sued for denying stimulus checks to U.S. citizens who file jointly with spouses lacking a social security number. Assuming the administration regards unregistered aliens as “illegal”, this would be tantamount to guilt by association for their spouses. Many legal immigrants […]

African-Americans

Trump admits that Easy Voting would Defeat Republicans. That’s because they’ve made Their Base White and Evangelical

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Colin Kalmbacher at Law&Crime surveys reactions to Trump’s admission in an interview on Fox News that a mail-in ballot program that made it possible for the public to vote with ease and increased turnout would keep Republicans from ever being elected again. Voter suppression has not always been a purely […]

Donald Trump

Trump bashed Immigrants, but Nearly 1/3 of US Doctors are Foreign-Born, on Pandemic Front Lines

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It turns out we need those foreigners after all, despite what Trump thinks. On Sunday British investigative journalist Iain Overton tweeted, The names of the first three doctors to die fighting COVID-19 in the UK Amged el-HawraniAdel el-TayarHabib Zaidi — Iain Overton (@iainoverton) March 29, 2020 The significance is that […]

Epidemics

Italy Coronavirus Deaths Pass 10,000: How Austerity and Anti-Immigrant Politics Created Europe’s Worst Crisis

Conn M. Hallinan

( Foreign Policy in Focus) As the viral blitzkrieg rolls across one European border after another, it seems to have a particular enmity for Italy. The country’s death toll has passed China’s, and scenes from its hospitals look like something out of Dante’s imagination. Why? Italy has the fourth largest economy in the European Union, […]

Donald Trump

Trumpandemic: Trump Spreads the Germs of Racial Hatred and Xenophobia

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – President Donald Trump has systematically focused on a xenophobic rebranding of COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus” to help cover up his disastrous response to the pandemic. In a mistake-filled, zombie-like Oval Office address last week, Trump looked into the camera with sickly eyes and warned Americans of an enemy […]

Donald Trump

“Children of Men” Come True: Trump Immigration Crackdown outdoes Cuaron’s Science Fiction Dystopia

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Like the dystopian nightmare imagined in the 2006 science fiction masterpiece Children of Men, Trump’s xenophobic efforts to terminate immigration result in death, suffering, humiliation, and destroyed lives. Under Trump, the speed of America’s plunge into casual barbarism is breathtaking. Along with the illusory border wall, the immigration clampdown […]