Monday, March 24, 2025
Sunday, March 23, 2025
The Trump Administration Doesn't Welcome ANY Visitors To The U.S.
You might have thought that only immigrants were unwelcome in the United States, but the Trump administration has broadened that to apply to ALL visitors - even tourists from our friendly countries and those with a work visa.
Take, for instance, Canadian Jasmine Mooney. She had been working in the United States on a B-1 visa. When her visa expired, she went to a facility at the southern border (because it was closest to Los Angeles - where she had been working).
But an ICE official decided that her renewal request was "fishy", and denied her entry back into the United States. Now, he should have dropped the matter right there since she was willing to go back to Canada (and pay her own way to do so), but he didn't. He has her put in handcuffs and arrested (even though she had committed no crime. She was then taken to a detention facility, and over the next couple of weeks was transferred to another two private detention facilities. Finally, after 12 days, she was allowed to fly back to Canada.
The same ordeal was imposed on a British woman and two German tourists - and who knows how many more. None of these people had broken any law and none had a record of lawbreaking. But the Trump administration doesn't seem to care. They seem to be trying to make it very hard for anyone to enter this country.
This has caused Canada and several European nations (all friends of this country) to issue a travel advisory for their citizens thinking of coming to the United States.
You might be thinking that these visitors had some rights that had been violated, but the only thing violated was common decency. The New York Times explains:
What rights do visitors have?
U.S. federal law gives government agents the right to search people’s property, including their phones and laptops, at border entry points. They do not need to be suspected of wrongdoing in order to be searched, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
All visitors have the right to remain silent. But the burden of proof rests with visa holders. For example, if an officer asks if someone plans to work on their tourist visa, and that person remains silent, the officer is likely to deny them entry.
If a person is found inadmissible during questioning, they can withdraw their intent to enter the country and may then be allowed to travel back to their home country. Their visa is canceled and they often get the next flight home. But an officer can deny the withdrawal, at which point the visitor is detained.
Because these confrontations occur technically outside the country, the rights outlined in the U.S. Constitution do not apply, and detainees are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer. The government has about 90 days to deport people. That period can be extended if detainees don’t cooperate by providing the correct travel documents, at which point they can be subject to criminal proceedings. Following an order of removal, people are barred from entering the U.S. for five years.
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Most Voters Unhappy With Trump On Economy And Musk On DOGE Cuts
The Texas Measles Problem Could Become A National Epidemic
The following is part of an article by Stephen Simpson in The Texas Tribune:
With its measles outbreak spreading to two additional states, Texas is on track to becoming the cause of a national epidemic if it doesn’t start vaccinating more people, according to public health experts.
Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has made a resurgence in West Texas communities, jumping hundreds of miles to the northern border of the Panhandle and East Texas, and invading bordering states of New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Based on the rapid spread of cases statewide — more than 200 over 50 days — public health officials predict that it could take Texas a year to contain the spread. With cases continuously rising and the rest of the country’s unvaccinated population at the outbreak’s mercy, Texas must create stricter quarantine requirements, increase the vaccine rate, and improve contact tracing to address this measles epidemic before it becomes a nationwide problem, warn infectious disease experts and officials in other states.
“This demonstrates that this (vaccine exemption) policy puts the community, the county, and surrounding states at risk because of how contagious this disease is,” said Glenn Fennelly, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Texas Tech University. “We are running the risk of threatening global stability.”
The measles outbreak — the largest in the state in 30 years — has spread from two cases in late January to more than 270 cases and now includes 11 counties, most of them in the rural South Plains region.
So far this year, there have been more than 300 cases of measles confirmed across 15 states, as of March 13. The Texas outbreak, which makes up the bulk of those cases, is only linked to cases in New Mexico and Oklahoma, where state officials said this month that someone associated with the Texas outbreak was exposed.Last month, Texas officials reported that an unvaccinated, otherwise healthy school-aged child died from measles, the first death from the virus in a decade. . . .
“This is a very multi-jurisdictional outbreak with three states involved and about seven or eight different local health departments, in addition to some areas where the state serves as the local health department. There are a lot of moving parts,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments. . . .
Wells said because the state can’t stop people from traveling, she fully expects this outbreak to last a year, and the surrounding states and the nation should prepare themselves for a potential spread.
“Measles is going to find those pockets of unvaccinated individuals, and with the number of cases and ability for people to travel, there is that risk of it entering other unvaccinated pockets anywhere in the United States right now,” Wells said.
Friday, March 21, 2025
46% Says Agency Cuts Have Gone Too Far - 17% Say Not Far Enough
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