Tag Archives: california

Trump’s pick for CIA director tried to weasel out of questions on climate change.

by JeffryBueche Posted on January 13, 2017

The Obama administration announced on Thursday that it will create national monuments at three sites that are important in the history of African-Americans in the South and it will protect two areas on the West Coast to bolster climate resilience.

Two of the sites are in Alabama and will commemorate terrorist attacks by segregationists on African-Americans and civil rights activists. Another, in Beaufort, South Carolina, honors the history of African-American educational advancement during Reconstruction.

These are just the latest of the Obama administration’s many acts to celebrate locations of civil rights struggle and advancement. Last year, Obama created a national monument at the Stonewall Inn in New York City to honor gay rights history. Earlier this week, the Department of Interior established Harriet Tubman National Historical Park, where the Underground Railroad conductor lived in Auburn, New York.

Obama’s announcement on Thursday also included expanding the California Coastal National Monument, where increasing the expanse of undeveloped land on shorelines will help the area better cope with rising sea levels and more severe storms. And the president is expanding the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon.

Obama has protected more land under the Antiquities Act than any other president, by far.

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Trump’s pick for CIA director tried to weasel out of questions on climate change.

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We’ll Never See These Animals Again

by HalleyCtg939072 Posted on December 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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If 2016 was a rough year for the animal kingdom, 2017 could be worse. Most scientists agree that we are experiencing a sixth mass extinction, but unlike the previous five that extended over hundreds of millions of years and occurred because of cataclysmic natural disasters, humans are responsible for this one.

Climate change, agricultural expansion, wildlife crime, pollution, and disease have created a shocking acceleration in the disappearance of species. The World Wildlife Fund recently predicted that more than two-thirds of the vertebrate population—mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles—would be lost over the next three years if extinctions continue at the current rate. A 2015 study that appeared in the journal Science Advances suggests that the rate of vertebrate extinction has increased nearly 100 times. Paul Ehrlich, a professor of population studies at Stanford University and a co-author of the study, notes half the life forms that people know about are already extinct. Another study, published in the journal Current Biology, observes that some species are likely becoming extinct before scientists have a chance to discover and classify them. Researchers looking at Brazil’s bird populations found some already so threatened when they were discovered, they went extinct almost immediately. “That we have these examples,” the authors write, “may be by good luck: we will surely have missed many others.”

Scientists have cautioned against making sweeping overall estimates, rather than talking about risks for specific populations. As Duke University professor of Conservation Ecology, Stuart Pimm, observed, even though animal populations are “declining precipitously,” pinpointing exactly how many animals will be gone and the timeframe for their extinction doesn’t capture the complexity of the problem. “It’s bird populations in Europe, it’s fish in the Pacific,” Pimm says. “You can’t add those together and come up with a number that makes any sense.”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has tried to show the scope of the problem in its Red List, a comprehensive roster of threatened species. Here are some of the highlights, including three species that went extinct last year and others to watch out for in 2017:

The Bramble Car melomys: This small Australian rodent that resembled an ordinary mouse was confirmed as extinct in 2016. It is the first known mammal to go extinct as a result of human-caused climate change. Its habitat on an island in the Great Barrier reef was assaulted by the rise of sea levels, coastal erosion, and flooding—all driven by climate change.

Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog: In 2016, the appropriately named Toughie died in the Atlanta Botanical Garden. He was at least twelve years old, though his exact age is unknown. Toughie and another Rabb’s fringe-limbed tree frog were collected from Panama in 2005 for research on chytrid fungus, a deadly fungus that has been ravaging amphibian populations in the region. Amphibians, like Toughie, have the highest rate of endangerment, with a third of known species being at risk of extinction. Toughie became the face of the amphibian extinction crisis as visitors to his enclosure knew they were looking at the last of his kind.

Dolphins and porpoises: There has been a lot of alarming news about the ocean recently: A UN report found that ocean acidification is up around 26 percent, and more than half of the sharks and rays in the Mediterranean are at risk of extinction. But, in 2016, with a population of only three, the Irrawaddy dolphin in Laos was declared “functionally extinct.” The announcement came after a World Wildlife Fund survey of Cambodia and Laos determined there were not enough mating pairs for the species to survive. Resembling Flipper—except with a bulbous face instead of a bottle nose—this sea faring mammal’s extinction is blamed on gill nets, a type of netting used by commercial fishermen that trap fish by their gills. Dolphins are caught in the nets and drown.

Vaquita, or “Little cow” in Spanish, is the smallest species of porpoise, and the remaining few live in the Gulf of California. Vaquita are so rare that some people who live on the Gulf don’t believe they exist, according to a recent Vaquita documentary. In May, a Conservation Biology acoustics survey found that there are only 60 left. Now, some have dropped the estimate to fewer than 50. Like the Irrawaddy dolphin, they are victims of gill net fishing.

African Grey Parrot: In December 2016, the International Union of Concerned Naturalists revealed that 11 percent of newly discovered bird species were already threatened and changed the status of others, such as the African Grey Parrot, from “vulnerable” to “endangered.” Highly intelligent and capable of mimicking human speech, the African Grey Parrot’s population has shrunk by as much as 99 percent in some places because of habitat loss and trapping. Perhaps the most famous member of this species was Alex, the subject of intelligence studies at Harvard and Brandeis universities who, when he died in 2007, knew more than 100 English words.

Giraffes: Bad news for the planet’s tallest land creature was announced before the end of 2016: Giraffe populations are plunging in what scientists call a “silent extinction” due to poaching and habitat loss. (The extinction is “silent” because we had largely failed to notice their plummeting population.) Previously, the IUCN’s Red List had given them a “least concern” rating. News that their populations have dropped by as much as 40 percent since 1985 has caused their status to be changed to vulnerable.

Jaguars and most large cats: The protection of all big cats will be important in the coming years, as populations continue to plummet. The African lion population, for example, has dropped 90 percent. At the end of December, a study from the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that the fastest land animal on earth, the cheetah, now only has a worldwide population of about 7,000. That’s down from its population of about 100,000 a century ago. The study attributed the drop to habitat loss: Cheetahs have lost 91 percent of their range.

Large cats are also endangered in our own backyard. “El Jefe,” who was named by Arizona school children, is the only known wild jaguar in the United States, but it is an elusive animal whose exact whereabouts are often unknown. In February, the Center for Biological Diversity released a video of the enormous cat slinking through the mountainside in the Santa Rita mountains outside of Tuscon. Randy Serraglio, a biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity who tracks El Jefe, suggests the animal has likely migrated to Mexico in search of mates. Once there, it faces other dangers from ranchers, who kill jaguars for sport or out of concern for their livestock, Mexican newspapers reported. Back in the US, a Canadian mining company might threaten El Jefe’s habitat by developing a massive open pit copper mine through its territory in Arizona. On top of all that, should Donald Trump actually make good on his proposed border wall, jaguar migratory patterns would be disrupted.

Rhinos: These massive mammals have long been hunted for their horns, which are erroneously believed to have healing properties. The western black rhino is already extinct and there are only three northern white rhino left. There is still a small population of Javan Rhinos in Indonesia, but two other subspecies, one in Vietnam, have also gone extinct. In 2016, numbers showed that the previous year was the worst year ever for rhino poaching. Given the trends, scientists predict that the entire wild rhino population will go extinct between 2021 and 2031. Many of the horns already on the market are fake, and some companies are trying to deal with the crisis by flooding the rhino horn market with 3-D prints of rhino horns, under the dubious assumption that this will make poaching less lucrative. However, some conservationists argue that it could actually make things worse by removing the stigma about using the horn and making it harder for law enforcement officers to track poachers.

Yellow-faced honeybee: Seven species of Hawaii’s yellow-faced bees made it onto the endangered species list last year, but more than a quarter of the bee population in the US is also in trouble. This has potentially devastating consequences for the planet’s food supply: Bees are responsible for pollinating more than a third of the world’s food.

The African elephant: The Endangered Species Coalition reports that the population of the largest land animal in the world—once 10 million strong—has fallen to about 400,000. The Great Elephant Census, a pan-African census that collects data using small planes, reports that the Savannah elephants have lost nearly a third of their population in the last seven years. The population drop is attributed to ivory poaching and loss of habitat. If poaching continues at its current rate, there will be no African elephants in 20 years.

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We’ll Never See These Animals Again

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Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Doesn’t Think Workers Should Get Breaks

by LynIrvin725 Posted on December 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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The US Department of Labor exists to “foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners and job seekers,” and to “improve working conditions” and “assure work-related benefits and rights.” Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the department, has not exactly embodied those values in his career as CEO of CKE Restaurants, parent company of fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. He’s a staunch and vocal opponent of minimum-wage hikes, and his company has had to pay out millions of dollars to settle overtime claims (more here).

And now, thanks to OC Weekly‘s Gabriel San Roman, we know what Puzder thinks of worker breaks. Spoiler: not much.

San Roman got to digging into the archives of Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History, where he found a 2009 interview (not available online) with Puzder. According to San Roman, Puzder “complained about regulations and overtime laws, claiming workers are overprotected.” San Roman adds, quoting from the interview:

“Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant and the employees are sitting and you’re wondering, ‘Why are they sitting?'” Puzder asked. “They are on what is called a mandatory break emphasis his.” He shared a laugh with the interviewer, saying the so-called nanny state is why Carl’s Jr. doesn’t open up any new restaurants in California anymore.

Now, anointing a burger tycoon who openly disdains worker rights as labor secretary might seem like a quintessentially Trumpian move. But it’s worth remembering that Puzder is very much an establishment Republican. A major donor to GOP political campaigns, he served as an economic adviser and spokesman for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, and as a delegate to the 2012 Republican National Convention and as chairman of the Platform Committee’s Sub-Committee on the Economy, Job Creation, and the Debt.

In late 2014, as the 2016 presidential race was about to heat up, Puzder listed his top three choices for the Republican nomination: Romney, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (now Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Energy), and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. That same year, Puzder and then-Gov.Perry even appeared together at a Carl’s Jr. event in Austin, to roll out the burger chain’s “Texas BBQ Thickburger” and raise funds for a veterans’ charity, along with Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Hannah Ferguson. Puzder declared Perry “America’s best governor.”

And now they’ll both be in the Cabinet. Trump ran hard against the GOP establishment, only to hand it the keys to power.

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Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Doesn’t Think Workers Should Get Breaks

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Void – James Owen Weatherall

by Myrna Posted on December 24, 2016

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Void

The Strange Physics of Nothing

James Owen Weatherall

Genre: History

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: November 22, 2016

Publisher: Yale University Press

Seller: Yale University Press


The rising star author of The Physics of Wall Street explores why “nothing” may hold the key to the next era of theoretical physics James Owen Weatherall’s previous book, The Physics of Wall Street, was a New York Times best-seller and named one of Physics Today ’s five most intriguing books of 2013. In his newest volume, he takes on a fundamental concept of modern physics: nothing. The physics of stuff— protons, neutrons, electrons, and even quarks and gluons—is at least somewhat familiar to most of us. But what about the physics of nothing ? Isaac Newton thought of empty space as nothingness extended in all directions, a kind of theater in which physics could unfold. But both quantum theory and relativity tell us that Newton’s picture can’t be right. Nothing, it turns out, is an awful lot like something , with a structure and properties every bit as complex and mysterious as matter. In his signature lively prose, Weatherall explores the very nature of empty space—and solidifies his reputation as a science writer to watch.

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Void – James Owen Weatherall

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After Ghost Ship Fire, Tupac’s Old Lawyer Is Helping Artists Fight Eviction

by DMPKellevsd Posted on December 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the aftermath of the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland, California, that claimed 36 lives earlier this month, the inhabitants of live-work artist warehouses all over America have been receiving eviction threats and notices. In Oakland and San Francisco, residents of at least five such spaces are now facing eviction. Warehouses in Baltimore and Denver have been shuttered since the fire, and others are facing increased scrutiny in Nashville, Philadelphia, and Dallas, as well as Indianapolis, Indiana, and New Haven, Connecticut. Many worry that this activity is related less to safety concerns than to property owners’ desire to expel low-wage artists in favor of wealthier tenants.

Bay Area artists, at least, have a high-profile defender—the civil rights lawyer John Burris, who has stepped up to act as a liaison between tenants and local government code enforcers. Burris, whose name pops up in many a lawsuit regarding abusive practices by local police, is best known for representing Rodney King, Tupac Shakur, and the family of Oscar Grant—who was killed by a BART police officer, inspiring the movie Fruitvale Station. Standing up for low-rent artists seemed a little off the beaten track for Burris, so I reached out to him and his housing guru, James Cook, to see what was afoot.

Mother Jones: What inspired you to help artists facing eviction after the fire?

John Burris: My daughter lost two friends. I knew she has spent time in the Bay Area’s artist warehouses, so I called her immediately when I heard the news. She had two friends who were missing, later confirmed dead. I feel her pain, but I’m pained just as a community person as well. The loss of 36 lives is just outrageous. So we thought, how can we help?

MJ: How are you helping? Are you filing a lawsuit?

JB: No. It’s not clear that the city can be held liable for the fire. But the eviction issue came up very quickly. We invited people in the affected community to sit around our table and tell us their stories. That’s what we do in civil rights law—we hear stories, and the stories move us to action. We said we don’t think we can do what we would traditionally do, which is file a lawsuit, but maybe there’s something else. Now we’re facilitating communication between the city and the artistic community. Ultimately we’ll have to bring in real estate people as well, because they hold the aces. Our goal is to make sure people know their rights, and make policy adjustments if needed to protect people from eviction.

MJ: Why is it important to you that these artists stay put?

JB: We’re concerned that this may turn into a boondoggle for landowners and real estate interests, who will use this tragedy to evict artists and members of alternative communities—including LGBT people. We fear they will legally be able to put people out by saying they need to get a building up to code for safety reasons, and then turn around and rent it for a lot of money to someone else. This practice is not uncommon. Take African American communities—often developers will come in and renovate a neighborhood, driving up rents, and the city fails to take action on behalf of the community, which eventually has to move out. The African American population is declining in Oakland, as it has already declined in San Francisco. So the question is, will this particular event cause that process to occur with respect to the artistic community, here and elsewhere?

MJ: Doesn’t the city have a responsibility to enforce housing codes?

JB: The city has a responsibility to make sure a living space is not harmful. But that doesn’t mean it has to be up to every code, in which case landlords would have reason to put people out left and right. Basic requirements of safety have to be maintained, but we have to preserve the affordable housing stock, too, and respect people’s right to stay in their homes.

MJ: Why would cities want to stop gentrification?

James Cook: We use the term “legacy community” to talk about a community that’s part of a city’s cultural, historical, and economic fabric. For good reason, we have housing laws in many cities designed to keep legacy communities in place, and to create some sort of economic structure to help those communities survive. If you can maintain legacy communities, the theory is that cities will thrive economically, thrive politically, thrive intellectually, thrive culturally. In the Bay Area, artists and LGBT people are legacy communities that we want to sustain.

MJ: Do you think a city has a special responsibility to its current residents, as opposed to potential future ones?

JB: Yes, a community is defined by those who are already here, not those whom you want to attract.

JC: Housing is the next dimension of civil rights law. There’s actually a constitutional case to be made for this. The Constitution says you have the right to a notice and a hearing before your property can be taken away. Some people may say that if you’re a tenant and you don’t own your house, this shouldn’t necessarily apply to you. But housing rights advocates argue that the law applies because you own a stake in the property as a leaseholder. Across the country, we increasingly have laws that mimic the 14th Amendment for tenants.

MJ: Does protecting these artists have implications for other legacy communities?

JB: Yes. Decreasing one type of diversity usually leads to decreasing other types. So if rents go up because the artistic community is expelled, African Americans will suffer too. Forward-thinking leaders of cities value diversity for many reasons, including economic ones. So if something comes along that threatens that diversity, the city has a responsibility to do what it can to make sure that doesn’t happen.

John Burris, right, stands with Tanti Martinez, whose asthmatic son died while incarcerated in California.

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After Ghost Ship Fire, Tupac’s Old Lawyer Is Helping Artists Fight Eviction

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Tired of waiting on humans, microbes cooperate to clean up our messes.

by TriciaLee572 Posted on December 20, 2016

That’s according to a Reuters investigation that analyzed blood tests from state health departments and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over 1,100 of those communities have lead levels four times as high as those observed in Flint.

Nationwide, the exposure could be much higher: Data was only available for 21 states, accounting for 61 percent of the U.S. population.

The CDC estimates that 2.5 percent of children across in the United States have at least slightly elevated levels of lead, which can lead to lowered IQs, developmental delays, and learning difficulties, as well as miscarriage and premature birth. The local water supply is frequently the source of lead, but some communities are additionally plagued by industrial waste, lead paint, and lead pipes.

On the campaign trail, President-elect Trump vowed to address the nation’s crumbling infrastructure — including the lead crisis — but many of his cabinet picks have a history of combating legislation that protect public health.

Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, sued that very agency for using the Clean Water Act to prosecute waterway polluters. According to Pruitt, the Act threatens the “property rights of the average American.” He didn’t mention their brains.

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Tired of waiting on humans, microbes cooperate to clean up our messes.

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How Trump’s Deportation Plans Could Damage Our Economy

by Leatha5457 Posted on December 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order establishing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to apply for two-year work permits and exemptions from deportation. They initially were able to renew their DACA status for a second two-year period, which was later expanded to three years. The immigration plan that President-elect Donald Trump issued during his campaign for presidency calls for ending DACA, describing it as “illegal executive amnesty.” Now, a new report by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center outlines the possible economic effects that could occur if the Trump administration follows through on its proposed elimination of DACA.

As of June 2016, DACA has granted thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children the ability to get jobs legally, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Of the 741,546 people in the program, 87 percent are currently employed. A June 2015 survey of the economic and educational effects of DACA by a political scientist from the University of California-San Diego and the National Immigration Law Center showed that DACA both improved the lives of recipients and was good for the US economy. The higher wages that DACA recipients earn have translated into increased tax revenue and economic growth for the United States. According to a September 2016 study by the Center for American Progress, ending DACA would mean a $433 billion reduction of the nation’s GDP over a decade.

This week, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit resource center that provides legal trainings and other resources for immigrant rights, has published a report using data on the program until June, 2016 that outlines the possible economic effects on Social Security and Medicare, and the costs to employers, if DACA is completely abolished.

The total contributions to Social Security and Medicare would be reduced by a little more than $24 billion over a decade—$19.9 billion would be lost to Social Security and there would be a $4.6 billion drop to the overall contributions to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. (FICA requires contributions from both employees and employers for Social Security and Medicare, so the reduction of a significant number of employees overall would also mean a drastic drop in contributions.) Also, employers could potentially suffer. About 645,145 DACA recipients would lose their employment authorization, and those layoffs would cost employers at least $3.4 billion in recruitment and training costs for replacing those employees.

Trump has not backed off the idea of ending DACA. But he told Time that he would have a plan for undocumented immigrants “that’s going to make people happy and proud.”

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How Trump’s Deportation Plans Could Damage Our Economy

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California Set a Bunch of Drug Offenders Free—and Then Left Them Hanging

by BurtonBrookshir Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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California’s experiment with releasing thousands of drug offenders from its prisons—a major step in the fight against mass incarceration—has run up against a big problem: Once they’re out, there aren’t enough social service programs to help these offenders overcome addictions and restart their lives.

At least 13,500 inmates have been freed in California since 2014, when voters passed a measure called Proposition 47 that reclassified simple drug possession as a misdemeanor rather than a felony. But the state has not yet invested enough money in treatment programs, according to a seven-month investigation by journalists at the Desert Sun, the Ventura County Star, the Record Searchlight, and the Salinas Californian. The end result: Thousands of addicts and mentally ill people have gone from incarceration to the streets, without a safety net to help them deal with substance abuse.

“Prop 47 was not a cure-all. It’s not a panacea,” Michael Romano, a Stanford law expert who helped draft the proposition, told the reporters. It succeeded in getting drug offenders out of overcrowded prisons and jails, he says, but that’s just “one piece in an extraordinarily complicated puzzle.”

It costs about $20,000 to send someone through inpatient drug treatment, which typically lasts six months to a year. It costs three times more to keep him in jail or prison for a year. Under Prop 47, the millions of dollars saved in prison costs were supposed to be earmarked for rehabilitation programs to help inmates restart their lives. The reporters—who filed 65 records requests, pored over thousands of pages of public documents, and interviewed dozens of policymakers, police officers, and former felons for their investigation—found that not a single cent had been spent yet on these programs. An agency has been working to allocate the money for a year and a half, but it just started accepting bids last month to give out its grants. During this fiscal year, which started in October, the state plans to spend $34 million of its $67 million Prop 47 fund on programs to help the mentally ill, addicts, and youth offenders.

In the meantime, drug treatment programs are struggling with long waiting lists. “People die waiting to get treatment,” David Ramage, an administrator at Impact Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center in Pasadena, which has a 90-day wait list, told the reporters.

At the same time, when new offenders land in drug court, where they have a choice of either going through probation or rehab, fewer choose rehab now—because a misdemeanor offense may be a quicker ordeal and less restrictive. The longest-running drug court program in Los Angeles has seen its enrollment drop from 80 people to just 4, the reporters found. For more, check out the full investigation here.

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California Set a Bunch of Drug Offenders Free—and Then Left Them Hanging

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How One Plan to Bring Undocumented Immigrants out of the Shadows Could Get Them Deported

by FrancisZxm Posted on December 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Since 2015, California has issued about 800,000 licenses to drivers who lack proof of legal residence. In Illinois, more than 212,000 people have received what are known as temporary visitor driver’s licenses. Connecticut has approved around 26,000 drive-only licenses for undocumented immigrants, and nine more states plus the District of Columbia have similar programs.

To date, these initiatives have been widely hailed as a reasonable way to try to improve public safety, by helping make sure that everyone behind the wheel was a competent driver. But now, with the incoming Trump administration seemingly committed to deporting undocumented individuals, there is worry among immigration advocates that the identifying data collected as part of these programs—names, addresses, copies of foreign passports—could be used by federal authorities looking to send people back to their home countries.

Last month, Trump said he would deport or incarcerate as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants who have criminal records. A 10-point immigration plan on Trump’s transition website lists “zero tolerance for criminal aliens,” along with a promise to “ensure that other countries take their people back when we order them deported.” The plan also calls for blocking funding for so-called “sanctuary cities” that historically have limited their cooperation with federal immigration agents.

“The discussion up to this point has been hypothetical or theoretical, and now it’s feeling very real,” said Jonathan Blazer, advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU. “People start to think, ‘Are things going to look completely different than they’ve ever looked before, in terms of what the federal government might try to do?'”

Nothing in federal law specifically entitles immigration agents access to state data on drivers who may be in the country illegally, according to Blazer. To get states to produce a list of these drivers, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—which includes the federal government’s deportation arm—might have to rely on its administrative subpoena power. Even then, states could refuse to provide the information, thereby forcing the federal government to sue for the driver data or narrow its request, Blazer and other legal experts said.

“If ICE just came and said, ‘Hey, give me all your driving privilege card holders, ‘I would say, ‘No,’ and they would have to take some sort of different legal action that is beyond my control,” said Scott Vien, the director of Delaware’s Division of Motor Vehicles, which has so far issued about 3,500 driving credentials to undocumented immigrants. Some of the records they maintain include copies of birth certificates, foreign passports and consular identification cards.

Uncertainty already surrounds the fate of more than 700,000 undocumented immigrants who first arrived in the United States as children, and who obtained temporary reprieves from deportation through a 2012 executive action of President Barack Obama. In applying to the program, these individuals submitted all sorts of personal information to the federal government, including home addresses and the names of family members. Immigrants and their advocates now fear that this information could be turned over to federal immigration officials after Obama leaves office, for use in tracking down undocumented individuals.

Driving records, it is now clear, constitute another vast store of data on US residents who may not be residing in the country legally. In all, more than 1 million licenses meant for people without proof of legal immigration status have been issued across the country.

There have already been some instances of ICE seeking to get and use driver’s license information in bulk from states that do not have the special programs for the undocumented—New Jersey among them. In 2012, ICE’s Newark field office obtained from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission a list of people who had applied for restricted licenses using valid but temporary immigration documents. An initial review “resulted in the identification of numerous foreign-born individuals who fall under ICE priorities,” according to an April 2012 letter from the field office director, who also requested that New Jersey continue to supply updated lists.

That same year, the Atlanta field office proposed gaining access to the names of foreign-born residents with temporary driver’s licenses, as well as lists of rejected license applications, as part of its efforts to achieve that year’s “criminal-alien removal target.” That DMV project was not implemented, according to an ICE official’s email from 2014, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Immigration Law Center.

The Illinois secretary of state’s office has said it cannot guarantee the safety of temporary license applicants’ information from federal immigration authorities. If the office receives a “legally valid request” for information on license applicants who lack proof of legal residence, it will comply, according to an FAQ published by the state earlier this year.

“If ICE did come to us with a subpoena, we’d probably have to go and get a legal opinion, from the attorney general,” said Dave Druker, a spokesman for the Illinois secretary of state’s office. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

The state has had a problem with protecting applicant information before. About three years ago, an employee of the secretary of state’s office alerted ICE about an undocumented immigrant who had applied for a temporary license. The applicant was then apprehended upon showing up at a state office for an appointment in February 2014. Due in part to outcry from immigrant rights advocates following the incident, the state has said it will no longer proactively volunteer information to ICE about temporary license seekers, as long as they do not have any records of felony criminal activity or appear on any terrorism watch list.

“In order to find out the legality, someone needs to be willing to sue, and because of data sharing and how it operates, a lot of times it’s going to require a political actor to do that—a state, a locality,” said Mark Fleming, the national litigation coordinator for the National Immigrant Justice Center. “That’s often a political decision for a lot of elected officials.”

ICE already enjoys limited access to basic state driver’s license information through a law enforcement data exchange network called Nlets. However, the information ICE can see wouldn’t necessarily give away someone’s immigration status.

In California, any driver’s license information that the state makes available to law enforcement agencies through data-sharing systems does not indicate whether the driver provided evidence of legal immigration status, according to Artemio Armenta, a spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

In the Illinois system, however, there’s a potential giveaway: Driver data for a regular license includes a Social Security number, whereas temporary license records will list a consular card or foreign passport number instead.

Other states that offer driving privileges to undocumented individuals include Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Vermont. In Washington state, no resident has to provide evidence of legal presence or citizenship to obtain a standard license. Even so, many immigrants who lack proof of legal residence face a dilemma in deciding whether or not to take advantage of these programs and apply for driving credentials.

“People can’t be afraid to get the license that would enable them to learn the rules of the road and hold them accountable for driving,” said Tanya Broder, a senior staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center. At the same time, “we’ve told people that if they’re at high risk, if they don’t want to be seen or found, that the DMV database makes them easier to find.”

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How One Plan to Bring Undocumented Immigrants out of the Shadows Could Get Them Deported

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Potential Trump Pick for Homeland Security Wants to Send up to 1 Million People to Gitmo

by RoccoMcChesney Posted on November 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump was scheduled to meet Monday with Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr., a Trump supporter and surrogate during the campaign who is now reportedly being considered to head the Department of Homeland Security. Clarke is known for his extreme views on policing—including his conviction that there is a war on cops but no police brutality—and for his attacks on Black Lives Matter. One of his most out-there positions: suspend the constitutional rights of up to a million people, and hold them indefinitely at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Clarke’s extremist approach to homeland security is no secret. In his upcoming memoir, Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime and Politics for a Better America, he advocates treating American citizens suspected of terrorism as “enemy combatants,” questioning them without an attorney, and holding them indefinitely, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Their cases would be handled by a military tribunal rather than a traditional court.

But a year ago, Clarke went further and called for rounding up Americans who sympathize with terrorists and shipping them to an offshore prison. During a December 2015 segment of his show, The People’s Sheriff, on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze radio network, Clarke suggested that any person who posts pro-terrorist sentiments on social media be arrested, deprived of the constitutional protection against unlawful imprisonment (known as habeas corpus), and sent to Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. He estimated the number of people who could be imprisoned under his proposal could reach 1 million. Presumably, this would include American citizens. (The Democratic research group American Bridge caught Clarke proposing this idea.)

“I suggest that our commander in chief ought to utilize Article I, Section 9 and take all of these individuals that are suspected, these ones on the internet spewing jihadi rhetoric…to scoop them up, charge them with treason and, under habeas corpus, detain them indefinitely at Gitmo,” Clarke said.

Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution allows the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus only “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Clarke added that locking up suspected terrorists in American prisons and jails would turn those facilities into “terrorist recruitment camps.” That’s why these people would have to be packed off to Guantanamo.

“We have no idea how many people out there have pledged allegiance or are supporting ISIS, giving aid and comfort, but I would suggest hundreds of thousands, I would suggest maybe a million,” Clarke said. “It’s just a guess. And then you take the known terrorists that are here, and you think we’re going to arrest all these people and put them in jails and then sentence them to prison? It’s idiotic. Take them to Gitmo and hold them indefinitely under a suspension of habeas corpus. We’re at war. This is a time of war. Bold and aggressive action is needed.”

Clarke is prone to exaggerations and extreme talk. Last year, for example, he predicted on Twitter that “before long, Black Lies sic Matter will join forces with ISIS to being sic down our legal constituted republic. You heard it first here.”

It’s unclear what kind of comment or act would land an American citizen indefinitely in Guantanamo under Clarke’s plan. In the radio segment, he said he was not suggesting indefinite detention for “some innocuous statement, I’m not going to go that far.” He pointed to “the woman out in San Bernardino” as an example, referring to the female shooter in the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, who pledged allegiance to ISIS on Facebook shortly before murdering 14 people. “That’s beyond the pale,” he said. But he also said anyone who has “pledged allegiance or are supporting ISIS, giving aid and comfort” would qualify. He did not say how tweets and Facebook posts would be policed or how 1 million people would be arrested and incarcerated in a prison that has up to now held fewer than 800 prisoners.

Listen to Clarke’s comments here:

Listen to the full episode here:

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Potential Trump Pick for Homeland Security Wants to Send up to 1 Million People to Gitmo

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