Tag Archives: border

Enviros get ready to throw down over Trump’s border wall national emergency

by MajorJeffcott Posted on February 15, 2019

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On Friday morning, President Trump declared a national emergency to secure funding for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Opponents of the wall argue the issue does not warrant national emergency status. In usual Trumpian style, the president told journalists exactly what many were already thinking.“I didn’t need to do this,” he said. “But I’d rather do it much faster.” Whoomp, there it is!

The wall isn’t just an expensive political maneuver; its construction poses a threat to Tohono O’odham Nation land and culture, as well as biodiversity, wildlife refuges along the border, and endangered species. Case in point: One study shows that the wall threatens 93 endangered species.

Elected officials and the environmental community came out swinging against the executive order mere minutes after it was announced, promising lawsuits and counter-bills.

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The Sierra Club vowed swift legal action against the declaration. “We are repulsed by this unprecedented attack on the borderlands and on our democracy, and we intend to resist it with every tool possible,” the organization’s executive director said in a statement.

The League of Conservation Voters, an organization that keeps tabs on how Congress votes on environmental legislation, called the wall “xenophobic, racist and environmentally destructive” in an emailed statement.

And the National Butterfly Center, home to “the greatest volume and variety of wild, free-flying butterflies in the nation,” has already filed a restraining order to keep federal workers from trampling all over the sanctuary and its delicate inhabitants as they plan out a wall that would cut directly through the property.

On the congressional side, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced on Twitter that she plans to introduce a bill with fellow Democrat Joaquin Castro to block the executive order. “[We] aren’t going to let the President declare a fake national emergency without a fight,” she said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement calling the order “unlawful.”

Meanwhile, Trump is preparing for battle. “I expect to be sued,” he told reporters. You got that right, buddy!

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Enviros get ready to throw down over Trump’s border wall national emergency

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The government has been separating children from parents at the border. Now the border is flooding.

by GracielaFitzwate Posted on June 20, 2018

Torrential rains flooded south Texas on Wednesday morning, the latest danger in an escalating crisis for the hundreds of child migrants detained near the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to radar estimates, more than 10 inches of rain fell overnight as severe thunderstorms swept through the area. That was enough to cause widespread flooding, with water entering homes and flooding wide streets in Weslaco, a town between McAllen and Brownsville.

The Associated Press recently reported that young children separated from their families as a consequence of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies were being housed in three shelters for infants and toddlers in the region. Trump announced Wednesday that he will sign an executive order to end the separations imminently. As the rain fell, hundreds of migrants were seeking entry into the United States at the border, according to CNN.

The town of Combes, site of one of the shelters, was included in severe thunderstorm warnings and flash flood emergencies issued by the local outpost of the National Weather Service. Local NWS guidelines say that a rainstorm of this magnitude over a 12-hour period has a less than a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year under a stable climate. The bulk of the rainfall Wednesday morning came in just an hour or two, according to radar.

The climate, of course, is not stable. Wednesday’s storm is the latest 100-year downpour in a state full of them in recent years. In Houston alone, there have been three 500-year rainstorms in the past three years. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, and increases the ability of routine thunderstorms to become downpours.

Wednesday is also World Refugee Day, so it’s worth mentioning that those who have crossed borders seeking a better life in the U.S. aren’t the only ones dealing with displacement and more extreme weather at the same time. There’s growing evidence that climate change is already leading to increased migration, and once migrants leave their homes, they are more vulnerable to the weather.

This is a global story. In April, for instance, heavy rains and flash flooding destroyed 750 homes and displaced thousands of people at a refugee camp in northern Kenya. And earlier this month, heavy monsoon rains hit the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh, washing away makeshift shelters.

These are the escalating climate consequences for people with little means to withstand them, perpetuating a cycle of injustice that now defines our warming era: Those who contributed the least to climate change stand to lose the most.

Organizations like the Red Cross are already working to make better use of weather forecasts for humanitarian purposes. But with climate change expected to produce a four-fold increase in the number of migrants worldwide over the next 30 years, they’ll have their work cut out for them.

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The government has been separating children from parents at the border. Now the border is flooding.

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Against the Odds, Members of a Refugee Caravan Are Let Into the US

by NumbersSanborn Posted on May 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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Last weekend, dozens of refugees who participated in a caravan that traversed Mexico to seek asylum in the United States, presented themselves at the San Ysidro port of entry in Tijuana and were admitted into the United States. Planned by a coalition of Mexican and American organizers, the caravan began in early April at the Guatemala-Mexico border. Its goal was to raise awareness of the dangers migrants face while traveling through Mexico as well as the reportedly widespread practice of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents illegally turning back refugees at the border. The group reached Tijuana last weekend after suffering a variety of threats and setbacks during nearly four weeks on the road.

In total, 78 asylum seekers were admitted during the weekend border crossing. The group included men, women, and children, most of whom were fleeing violence in Central America. Alex Mensing, one of the caravan organizers and a paralegal at the University of San Francisco’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Law Clinic, says that several families were released on parole to family members and sponsors in the country, while the rest have been sent to immigration detention centers or are in the custody to of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Only one asylum seeker was turned away at the border, Mensing says. A child with US citizenship crossing with his Guatemalan father was sent back to Mexico when border patrol learned his mother was still there. “Once they found out the mother was in Tijuana, they called her and told her that if she didn’t come get her son, they would take the child away and put him in foster care.” (Under international law, separating children from their parents usually should be avoided, according to the detention guidelines outlined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.) There were also allegations of refugees receiving poor treatment in CBP custody. Los Angeles resident Dolores Ramirez, who had relatives traveling in the caravan, told the local news outlet KPBS that her relatives were “only getting 10 minutes to eat, they have no blankets, they’re sleeping on the floor in cells, they’re being yelled at… They shouldn’t be treated like animals, they’re not animals, they didn’t cross the border illegally, they’re seeking help.”

Cristobal Sanchez

Not all of the refugees who turned themselves in last weekend had traveled with the caravan. Several, having already been turned back by CBP multiple times, waited in Tijuana to cross with the group.

According to multiple human rights attorneys and a new report from Human Rights First, CBP has been turning away more asylum seekers since the election of President Donald Trump. “In the wake of the election and President Trump’s January executive orders relating to refugees, CPB agents have in some cases claimed the United States is no longer accepting asylum seekers,” Human Rights First reports. By blocking refugees, CBP may be putting them in direct danger. The report adds, “Cartels, smugglers, and traffickers—who control areas around border crossings and wait outside some ports of entry where they see migrants and asylum seekers as easy prey—have kidnapped, raped, and robbed asylum seekers wrongly turned away by the U.S. government.”

B. Shaw Drake, a fellow at Human Rights First and one of the authors of the report, has heard reports that CBP officers turned away two Eritrean refugees on the day after the caravan members turned themselves in. “We had hoped our report and all the media attention would have put them on notice,” Drake says. “But we continue to hear about those cases happening.”

Mensing says that while the caravan was by and large a success, he has concerns that the practice of turning back asylum seekers will continue unchanged. “There’s no doubt in mind that of those 78 people, most if not all of them would have had difficulty being processed if it had not been for the caravan. And clearly, if they were back to rejecting people on Monday, it was not a lasting thing, either.”

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Against the Odds, Members of a Refugee Caravan Are Let Into the US

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Senator Aims to End Phone Searches at Airports and Borders

by ElkeCulpepper Posted on March 29, 2017

Mother Jones

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More than a month after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) requested information about US Customs and Border Protection’s practice of searching cell phones at US borders and airports, he’s still waiting for answers—but he’s not waiting to introduce legislation to end the practice.

“It’s very concerning that the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t managed to answer my questions about the number of digital searches at the border, five weeks after I requested that basic information,” Wyden, a leading congressional advocate for civil liberties and privacy, told Mother Jones on Tuesday through a spokesman. “If CBP were to undertake a system of indiscriminate digital searches, that would distract CBP from its core mission, dragging time and attention away from catching the bad guys.”

Wyden’s request to DHS and CBP came on the heels of a February 18 report from the Associated Press of a “fivefold increase” in electronic media searches in fiscal year 2016 over the previous year, from fewer than 5,000 to nearly 24,000. It also followed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s suggestion that visitors from a select group of countries, mainly Muslim, might be required to hand over passwords to their social media accounts as a condition of entry. (That comment came a week after President Donald Trump first orderâ&#129; banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.)

The Knight First Amendment Institute, which advocates for freedom of speech, sued DHS on Monday for records relating to the seizure of electronic devices at border checkpoints. Wyden requested similar data on CBP device searches and demands for travelers’ passwords.

“There are well-established legal rules governing how law enforcement agencies may obtain data from social media companies and email providers,” Wyden wrote in the February 20 letter to DHS and CBP. “By requesting a traveler’s credentials and then directly accessing their data, CBP would be short-circuiting the vital checks and balances that exist in our current system.” The senator wrote that the searches not only violate civil liberties but could reduce international business travel or force companies to outfit employees with “burner” laptops and mobile devices, “which some firms already use when employees visit nations like China.“

“Folks are going to be less likely to travel freely to the US with the devices they need if they don’t feel their sensitive business information is going to be safe at the border,” Wyden said Tuesday, noting that CBP can copy the information it views on a device. “Then they can store that information and search it without a warrant.”

Wyden will soon introduce legislation to force law enforcement to obtain warrants before searching devices at the border. His bill would also prevent CBP from compelling travelers to reveal passwords to their accounts.

A DHS spokesman said in a statement that “all travelers arriving to the US are subject to CBP inspection,” which includes inspection of any electronic devices they may be carrying. Access to these devices, the spokesman said, helps CBP agents ascertain the identity and admissibility of people from other countries and “deter the entry of possible terrorists, terrorist weapons, controlled substances,” and other prohibited items. “CBP electronic media searches,” the spokesman said, “have resulted in arrests for child pornography, evidence helpful in combating terrorist activity, violations of export controls, convictions for intellectual property rights violations, and visa fraud discoveries.”

In a March 27 USA Today op-ed, Joseph B. Maher, DHS acting general counsel, compared device searches to searching luggage. “Just as Customs is charged with inspecting luggage, vehicles and cargo containers upon arrival to the USA, there are circumstances in this digital age when we must inspect an electronic device for violations of the law,” Maher wrote.

But in a unanimous 2014 ruling, the Supreme Court found that police need warrants to search cell phones. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that cell phones are “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” In response to a Justice Department argument that cell phones were akin to wallets, purses, and address books, Roberts wrote: “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”

The law, however, applies differently at the border because of the “border search doctrine,” which has traditionally given law enforcement wider latitude under the Fourth Amendment to perform searches at borders and international airports. CBP says it keeps tight controls on its searches and is sensitive to personal privacy.

Wyden isn’t convinced. “Given Trump’s worrying track record so far, and the ease with which CBP could change its guidelines, it’s important we create common-sense statutory protections for Americans’ liberty and security,” he says.

CBP provided data that confirmed the device search numbers reported earlier by the Associated Press but later told Mother Jones that the numbers are slightly off due to an “anomaly” in their tabulation. The agency has not yet provided corrected figures. “Despite an increase in electronic media searches during the last fiscal year,” the CBP spokesman said, “it remains that CBP examines the electronic devices of less than one-hundredth of one percent of travelers arriving to the United States.”

Sophia Cope, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has written extensively about searches of electronic devices, says that searches of mobile devices appear to be on the rise. “They realized that people are carrying these devices with them all the time, it’s just another thing for them to search,” she says. “But also it does seem that after the executive order that they’ve been emboldened to do this even more.”

Wyden says that the data collection creates an opportunity for hackers. “Given how frequently hackers have stolen government information,” he says, “I think a lot of Americans would be worried to know their whole lives could be sitting in a government database that’s got a huge bull’s-eye on it for hackers.”

This story has been updated to include CBP’s claim that the device search numbers are slightly inaccurate.

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Senator Aims to End Phone Searches at Airports and Borders

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US Customs Agents Just Gave Airlines the Green Light to Ignore Trump’s "Muslim Ban"

by HollyMvxsckc Posted on February 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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(Reuters) – U.S. Customs & Border Protection has informed U.S. airlines that they can once again board travelers who had been barred by an executive order last week, after it was blocked nationwide on Friday by a federal judge in Seattle, an airline official told Reuters.

In a conference call at around 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT), the U.S. agency told airlines to operate just as they had before the order, which temporarily had stopped refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Individuals from those states who have proper visas can now board U.S.-bound flights, and airlines are working to update their websites to reflect the change, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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US Customs Agents Just Gave Airlines the Green Light to Ignore Trump’s "Muslim Ban"

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A Heartstopping Reminder Of Why We Have Asylum Policies

by Daisy49F7358 Posted on January 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order dramatically reducing the number of refugees the United States admits as early as today—a stark choice of timing, as it is also International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In 1939, American officials turned away a ship bearing more than 900 refugees, almost all of them German Jews. The St. Louis was forced to turn back, and 254 of its passengers died in the Holocaust. Today, the St. Louis Manifest account is tweeting the names of the victims.

See the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for more on the history of the St. Louis.

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A Heartstopping Reminder Of Why We Have Asylum Policies

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Republicans Are Afraid to Stand Up to Trump for Fear of Nasty Tweets

by SherriD48gt Posted on December 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at National Review, Tim Alberta ponders “Conservatism in the Era of Trump.” It’s not a pretty picture. There’s no one more conservative than the House Freedom Caucus, but they’ve already started to cave in to Trumpism:

Consider Trump’s stated intention to seek a $1 trillion dollar infrastructure package soon after taking office. At a conservative forum one week after the election, Raul Labrador told reporters that any such bill “has to be paid for” with spending cuts or revenues from elsewhere…But their thinking has shifted in the weeks since. According to several members, there has been informal talk of accepting a bill that’s only 50 percent paid for, with the rest of the borrowing being offset down the road by “economic growth.” It’s an arrangement Republicans would never have endorsed under a President Hillary Clinton, and a slippery slope to go down with Trump.

This is in addition to the tax cuts for the rich, which won’t be paid for at all. But why is the HFC already bending its adamantine principles against increasing the deficit? What are they afraid of? Rachael Bade tells us:

Since the election, numerous congressional Republicans have refused to publicly weigh in on any Trump proposal at odds with Republican orthodoxy, from his border wall to his massive infrastructure package. The most common reason, stated repeatedly but always privately: They’re afraid of being attacked by Breitbart or other big-name Trump supporters.

“Nobody wants to go first,” said Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who received nasty phone calls, letters and tweets after he penned an August op-ed in The New York Times, calling on Trump to release his tax returns. “People are naturally reticent to be the first out of the block for fear of Sean Hannity, for fear of Breitbart, for fear of local folks.”

ZOMG! Phone calls, letters, and tweets, oh my! Who would have guessed that militant conservatives were so spineless? Here’s some news: I don’t get many phone calls, but I get lots of nasty emails and tweets too. So does everyone who comments on or practices politics. That’s America these days.

People often comment about how easily groups like Nazis and fascists came to power. This is how. But hell, at least in Germany and Italy people were cowed by real threats of real violence. It’s not especially heroic, but it’s understandable. In America, we’re heading down that path because people are afraid of unpleasant tweets.

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Republicans Are Afraid to Stand Up to Trump for Fear of Nasty Tweets

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Forget the Wall. If You Want Less Illegal Immigration, Go After Employers.

by BrandyBergeron Posted on November 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Controlling illegal immigration has never seemed all that hard to me. The vast majority of those who are in the United States illegally—either by crossing the border or overstaying their visas—are here to find jobs. So if you want to reduce illegal immigration, you need to make it hard for employers to hire anyone who’s not authorized to work. But in the LA Times today, Wayne Cornelius says that’s not in the cards:

There has never been much public or congressional appetite for a harsh crackdown on employers, especially the small businesses that depend most heavily on workers in the U.S. illegally. They are pillars of their communities and campaign contributors. Besides, immigration agents have had higher enforcement priorities — tracking down immigrants who committed serious crimes or pose national security threats.

President-elect Trump has called for full implementation of an electronic employment eligibility verification system called E-Verify….E-Verify, however, is no panacea. It does not prevent immigrants who are ineligible to work from getting jobs by providing valid information pertaining to other people (borrowed documents). And as long as penalties are weak, requiring employers to use E-Verify will not significantly reduce violations.

Will Congress approve crippling fines or even prison sentences for business owners who ignore E-Verify rules? Will lawmakers direct the Justice Department to make these scofflaws a top priority? Unless and until that happens, many employers will continue to view hiring those in the U.S. illegally as a low-risk, high-reward crime. In 2014, the probability that one of the nation’s 6 million employers would be investigated for violating immigration laws was 0.03%.

I don’t personally care all that much about the level of illegal immigration. The current numbers strike me as reasonable. But obviously a lot of people do care, and most of them are Republicans. They talk tough, they build walls and fences, and they promise to hire lots of border enforcement agents. But this is all a sham. If the economic incentives continue to exist, so will illegal immigration.

The problem is that Republicans can’t come to grips with their two main constituencies. Social conservatives generally hate undocumented workers and want to deport them all. Business conservatives want no such thing. So Republicans thunder on TV that borders are borders, and by God we need to control them. Then they quietly go back to their jobs and do nothing.

The obvious way to cut down on illegal immigration has always been to go after employers. Not only does this attack the root of the problem, but it’s practically self-funding. You hire lots of ICE auditors and then pay for them by levying big fines on employers who break the law. As the problem diminishes, you collect less money but you also need fewer auditors.

E-Verify isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But it could be made good enough. And once that’s done, enforcement could be made pretty widespread and the fines could be made pretty high. If you do that, you can forget about the wall. It’s just a distraction.

Bottom line: Anyone who claims to be fiercely opposed to illegal immigration but doesn’t support strong employer sanctions is just lying to you.

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Forget the Wall. If You Want Less Illegal Immigration, Go After Employers.

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Donald Trump Has Killed Off Support for a Border Wall

by Monty5006709 Posted on August 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’ve been bemused for a while by the support for Donald Trump among hard-core anti-immigrant pundits. Mainly this is because I wonder why they think he’s serious about his wall. Pretty much everything he says and does is a con job of one kind or another, and there’s no real reason to think he’d stick to his guns about the wall if he became president. Instead, since he doesn’t actually care one way or the other about this, he’d probably cut a deal with Paul Ryan for some kind of comprehensive immigration reform—and it would have a far better chance of actually passing than it would if Hillary Clinton proposed it. For the anti-immigrant dead-enders, Trump is likely to be the worst possible choice.

More recently, though, I’ve also begun to think that Trump will be bad for the anti-immigrant crowd even if he loses. For starters, it’s never good to have your signature policy associated with a loser. More to the point, though, we all know that public support for specific policies depends a lot on who they come from. When President Obama supports something, Republicans suddenly hate it. When Trump supports something, people who dislike Trump suddenly hate it. Since Trump is dropping in the polls like a rock, this suggests that support for getting tough on immigrants might be dropping too.

Michael Tesler reports that this is exactly what’s happened:

A number of studies have found that Trump performed best in the primaries among the most anti-immigrant Republicans. But now, in the middle of the general election campaign, Trump is easily the most unpopular major party nominee in modern times. And his historic unpopularity may have also eroded support for the border wall.

The Pew Research Center gauged support for the border fence before and after June 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy. The percentage supporting the border fence was the exact same in 2007, 2011, and 2015: 46 percent. However, that dropped to 36 percent in March 2016.

In CBS/New York Times polls, public support for “building a wall along the US-Mexico border to try to stop illegal immigration” also dropped….The results from the RAND Corp’s Presidential Election Panel Survey (PEPS) are even more telling….The PEPS data reveal who was particularly likely to shift to opposing the border wall: people who did not like Trump in 2015.

….It appears, then, that Trump’s strong support for the border wall has made this policy considerably less popular with the American public.

Supporting Trump was always a high-risk strategy for supporters of a border wall. They put all their money on snake eyes, and it turns out the dice were not their friends.

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Donald Trump Has Killed Off Support for a Border Wall

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Meet the VIPs for Trump’s Big Speech Tonight

by PhilMcNish51795 Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the leaked version of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech, he rails against special interests, big donors, and elite media figures as the puppet masters behind Hillary Clinton. But waiting backstage and seated in the luxury boxes at the Quicken Loans Arena as he delivers his big address will be the very type of people he denounces.

According to a copy of the speech obtained by the Washington Post, Trump will blame America’s problems on special interests, as he has done throughout the campaign:

…These interests have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit. Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place.

They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does.

She is their puppet, and they pull the strings. That is why Hillary Clinton’s message is that things will never change.

But an official guest list for the VIP boxes at the fourth and final night of the Republican National Convention, first published by Bloomberg on Thursday afternoon, includes billionaire mega-donors such as Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson, Wisconsin roofing supply mogul Diane Hendricks, and the Amway scions of the DeVos family. (If Trump’s puppet master line sounds familiar, it’s because he once mocked Marco Rubio as “a perfect little puppet” of Adelson, who was believed to prefer the Florida senator.)

Adelson, Hendricks, and the Devoses will be situated in Suite 125 at the Quicken Loans Arena, located directly behind the podium where Donald Trump will make his acceptance speech, where they will be joined by:

Joe Craft, the CEO of coal company Alliance Resources.
Wilbur Ross, a billionaire leveraged buyout king who owned the coal company involved in the Sago Mine disaster.
Woody Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune and owner of the New York Jets who was the finance chairman of Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign.
Anthony Scaramucci, a New York hedge-funder who leads Trump’s outreach to Wall Street.
Steve Mnuchin, a banker and Trump’s campaign finance chairman.
Todd Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs, who was a major bankroller of the #NeverTrump movement. (A source told Bloomberg that Ricketts was attending as a supporter of the party, not Trump.)

This luxury box will also include a handful of Trump’s closest political allies, such as governors Chris Christie and Rick Scott.

In another suite, hosted by Mnuchin, key Trump business and political allies will huddle. The list includes Phil Ruffin, Trump’s partner on his Las Vegas hotel; billionaire Andy Beal, a banker, mathematician, and poker player; Tom Barrack, the Los Angeles billionaire investor who is heading an effort to raise money for a pro-Trump super-PAC; Harold Hamm, a natural gas fracking mogul who Trump is said to be considering for Energy secretary in a potential Trump administration; and…Nacho Figueras, an Argentinean model and polo player.

In another suite, Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge fund billionaire (and former Ted Cruz backer) Robert Mercer. The leaked documents show Mercer (and a bodyguard) will be joined by five guests, including Steve Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, Matt Boyle, the conservative website’s Washington editor, and other Breitbart staff.

If Trump starts to rail against NAFTA, another suite may fall a little silent—one invitee is Dennis Nixon, CEO of Laredo, Texas-based International Bank of Commerce, whose website hails him as “instrumental” in the passage of NAFTA. Nixon’s guests include IBC executive Eddie Aldrete, vice-chairman of the National Immigration Forum, an immigration reform group, as well as Noe Garcia, a Washington D.C.-based lobbyist who represents the Border Trade Alliance.

The final VIP suite includes Annie Dickerson, a key advisor to hedge funder Paul Singer, who has made his dislike of Trump very clear. Dickerson led the unsuccessful fight last week to include more pro-LGBT-friendly language in the RNC platform, a major issue for Singer, who strongly supports LGBT rights. Dickerson’s listed guest is former Bush adviser Dan Senor, who made news last week when he tweeted about recent conversations with Indiana governor Mike Pence where Pence complained about Trump. (Senor says he won’t be attending.)

The full guest list for the VIP suites is below.

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Meet the VIPs for Trump’s Big Speech Tonight

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