Tag Archives: enforcement

The Trump Deportation Regime Has Begun

by DelphiaHopwood Posted on February 10, 2017

Mother Jones

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Early Thursday, immigration attorneys in Los Angeles started getting calls from clients across the city. Some callers reported being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at their homes. Others were caught at their workplaces, including one man detained at a Target store. The first round of Trump-era deportation sweeps had begun.

The news quickly filtered back to immigrant rights activists, who confirmed the detentions and alerted their networks. According to Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), as many as 134 immigrants were detained in the sweep. Based on her conversations with lawyers, many of those detained had outstanding orders for deportation—and some were sent back to Mexico as early as Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday evening, activists held a vigil at ICE’s downtown Los Angeles field office. Later, an estimated 100 to 150 protesters blocked a nearby highway on-ramp:

In a Friday afternoon press release, ICE said 160 immigrants were arrested during what it called a “five-day targeted enforcement operation” in Southern California that was “aimed at at-large criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants, and immigration fugitives.” Of the 160, ICE claimed that 150 had criminal histories, and that 5 of the remaining 10 had final orders of removal or had been previously deported. While the release said “many of the arrestees had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses,” ICE did not give a full breakdown of those convictions.

Earlier Friday, an ICE spokeswoman told Mother Jones that “enforcement surges have been part of our operational play book for many years.” The subsequent press release echoed that line: “The focus was no different than the routine, targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis.”

The sweep was the second high-profile ICE action in two days. On Wednesday night, immigration agents in Phoenix found themselves swarmed by protesters when they attempted to deport Guadalupe García de Rayos, a 35-year-old Mexican immigrant with two teenage children who are American citizens. García de Rayos had been caught using a fake Social Security number during an ICE workplace raid in 2008.

García de Rayos’ deportation sent shock waves through the immigrant rights community and dominated Spanish-language media on Thursday. Ever since the 2008 raid, she had checked in annually with ICE to review her case—brief meetings that always resulted in her walking free, even though she had been convicted of a felony and later had a deportation order against her. This partly reflected the Obama administration’s emphasis on deporting serious criminal offenders. But her deportation to Nogales, Mexico, signals that the Trump administration plans to follow through with its plans to remove all undocumented immigrants who’ve committed “acts that constitute a chargeable offense”—which, as Vox‘s Dara Lind has pointed out, could include everything from entering the country illegally to driving without a license. (In a statement to reporters Thursday, ICE said it will “focus on identifying and removing individuals with felony convictions who have final orders of removal.”)

Indeed, social media was abuzz Friday with rumors of deportation raids throughout the country. On a conference call late in the day, Dave Marin, ICE’s LA field office director for enforcement and removal operations, confirmed that there were also operations in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York during the week. And Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) tweeted Friday afternoon about additional ICE activity in South and Central Texas:

“A lot of things have changed since January 20,” says CHIRLA’s Salas. She notes that during the Obama years, ICE would typically give groups like CHIRLA basic information such as names and the number of people detained following any large sweep or workplace raid. But Salas says she finds it troubling that following Thursday’s actions, there was little to no communication with the agency. “It’s important that we don’t get used to the idea that they don’t have to give out this information,” she says.

CHIRLA is currently focusing on educating immigrant communities on civil and constitutional rights. According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, greater Los Angeles is home to 1 million undocumented immigrants—second only to the New York City area, which is home to 1.15 million. On Friday, the group ran hourly know-your-rights workshops, and it’s also holding legal clinics where immigrants can get advice. Similar efforts have been happening nationwide: Earlier this week, for example, public school educators in Austin, Texas, handed out flyers to students in English and Spanish about what to do in an encounter with immigration officials.

Salas says that organizers’ next step is to continue to engage elected officials. Notably, Rep. Ruben Gallegos (D-Ariz.) and California State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León have criticized ICE on Twitter over the last day.

“We have to set the tone,” Salas says, “that this is not acceptable.”

This story has been updated.

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The Trump Deportation Regime Has Begun

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The First Big Fight Over Sanctuary Cities Pits a Latina Sheriff Against Texas’ Governor

by AmbroseHoneycutt Posted on January 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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In the Democratic hotbed of Austin, Texas, newly elected Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez announced last Friday that her department would join hundreds of counties around the country in reducing its cooperation with federal immigration officials. Unless presented with a warrant or court order, the sheriff’s department would no longer comply with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to hold inmates suspected of being undocumented or notify the agency ahead of their release.

Hernandez’s decision, which goes into effect February 1 and makes the county Texas’ first designated sanctuary, has prompted considerable backlash from Texas Republicans. And now, perhaps inspired by President Donald Trump’s threats to strip federal funding from “sanctuary jurisdictions,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has demanded that Hernandez reverse course—or risk millions of dollars in state funding.

In an interview on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, Abbott called Hernandez’s actions “outrageous” and vowed to ban sanctuary cities in Texas. He promised to cut off state grants to cities, pursue legislation that would remove officials that promote the practice, and impose criminal and financial penalties. The Texas Tribune reported on Friday that Abbott’s office had requested a list of federal and state funding to Travis County from the state’s budget office.

In a letter to Hernandez, the governor noted that the county sheriff department received $1.8 million in grant money from the state’s Criminal Justice Division in 2015. Still, Hernandez—who promised during her campaign to cut cooperation with ICE—has so far refused to stand down, telling the Texas Tribune that she would not let “fear and misinformation” dictate her actions.

This isn’t the first time the state government has had a rift with a county sheriff over immigration enforcement. In 2015, Abbott vowed to withhold state funds from Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez when she said she would assess ICE hold requests on a case-by-case basis. (She later said her remarks were taken out of context and promised to comply with federal immigration officials.) In November, state Sen. Charles Perry introduced a bill that required county jails to comply with federal immigration officials and effectively banned sanctuary cities in Texas. The bill is currently in the Senate Committee on State Affairs and slated for a public hearing on February 2; a similar attempt at enacting a ban faltered in 2015.) And in December, when students at several Texas universities called on administrators to establish safe havens for undocumented immigrants on campus, Abbott promised on Twitter that he would slash funding for state universities that became sanctuary campuses.

Just this week, Trump signed an executive order that would slash federal funding to cities and counties that opted not to cooperate with federal deportation efforts. In Austin’s case, that would amount to $43 million in federal grants. It’s unclear to what extent the White House will be able to carry out the order, which will likely face stiff challenges in court.

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The First Big Fight Over Sanctuary Cities Pits a Latina Sheriff Against Texas’ Governor

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The Feds Just Handed the Private Prison Industry a Big Score

by AmeeCoventry444 Posted on December 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Three months after the Department of Justice announced that it would phase out its use of private prisons, the Department of Homeland Security has gone in the opposite direction. In a report finalized on Thursday, a subcommittee of the DHS’s advisory council recommended that Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to use facilities run by private prison companies to detain undocumented immigrants.

The council, which was tasked with reviewing ICE’s use of for-profit facilities, noted concerns about the agency’s ability to oversee private detention centers as well as reports of substandard medical care in some private facilities. But it concluded that the already widespread use of privately run detention centers, combined with their lower cost made it unrealistic to seriously consider eliminating their use. ICE reports that it costs $144 per day to keep a detainee in a private detention center while it costs $184 per detainee per day in ICE facilities.

“Much could be said for a fully government-owned and government-operated detention model, if one were starting a new detention system from scratch,” the committee wrote. “But of course we are not starting anew.” ICE will review the report and implement any appropriate changes, according to a department spokeswoman.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson ordered the advisory council to undertake the two-month review in August, after the Justice Department declared that it would reduce or end its contracts with private prison companies. The DOJ announcement came on the heels of a Mother Jones investigation into a troubled Louisiana prison operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, the major private prison company that recently rebranded as CoreCivic. Private-prison stocks plunged following the announcement.

But the for-profit prison industry’s slump now appears temporary. The election of Donald Trump caused private prison stocks to soar, and CoreCivic has continued to sign lucrative contracts with both ICE and the Department of Justice. If Trump follows through on his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, it would require ICE to significantly expand its detention capacity, likely by turning to private prison companies.

According to the DHS committee’s new report, for-profit detention allows ICE to “respond to surges in migration flows” by expanding its detention capacity. “Capacity to handle such surges, when policymakers determine that detention will be part of the response, cannot reasonably be maintained solely through the use of facilities staffed and operated by federal officers,” the report stated. Last month, Johnson announced he had authorized ICE to acquire new detention space following a roughly 25 percent increase in undocumented immigrant arrests between August and October.

But the deals this fall were moving so quickly that some ICE officials worried there would be no time to ensure that the new detention spaces conformed to certain quality requirements or regulations adopted as a result of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported. ICE is now pursuing a deal with CoreCivic to reopen the company’s 1,129-bed Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico as an immigration detention center, even though the Bureau of Prisons shut down the prison this year following a series of inmate deaths and repeated citations for deficient medical care.

The DHS committee’s report comes less than week after the death of a 36-year-old Guatemalan woman at the Eloy Detention Center, a CoreCivic immigrant detention facility in Arizona. Raquel Calderon de Hildago was arrested near Tucson by Border Patrol officers the day before Thanksgiving. She died on Sunday after having a series of seizures. Calderon was third person to die in ICE custody in the last two months and the 15th person since 2003 to die after being held at Eloy.

Marshall Fitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and member of the DHS advisory council, disputed the council’s main conclusion that ICE’s continued use of private prison is inevitable. “The review undertaken by the subcommittee points directly toward the inferiority of the private prison model from the perspective of governance and conditions,” he wrote in a footnote in the report. “Any shift away from such reliance would take years, carry significant costs, and require congressional partnership…but I disagree that these obstacles require our deference to the status quo.”

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The Feds Just Handed the Private Prison Industry a Big Score

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Donald Trump Plans to Parachute Criminals Into Other Countries Whether They Like It Or Not

by LandonHotham1 Posted on September 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s big immigration speech contained few surprises. He spent a lot of time on illegal immigrants who are criminals, but his solution was pretty simple: Get rid of them. Period. End of story. And not just over the border, either. Way over the border so they can’t come back. And if their home countries don’t want them back, tough. Apparently planes full of murderous illegal immigrants are going to be landing all over the world whether anyone likes it or not.

But how about everyone else? Are we going to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, even the “good” ones? Here’s what he said:

Importantly, in several years when we have accomplished all of our enforcement and deportation goals and truly ended illegal immigration for good, including the construction of a great wall…and the establishment of our new lawful immigration system, then and only then will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain.

That discussion can take place only in an atmosphere in which illegal immigration is a memory of the past, no longer with us, allowing us to weigh the different options available based on the new circumstances at the time.

But no amnesty! So no amnesty and no legal status, but we’ll weigh all the other options someday in the far future. I’m not sure what other options there are, but I guess that’s an issue for our grandkids. Aside from this, the waffling Trump was gone, replaced by the hardline Trump we’ve all come to love over the past year.

Anyway, if you’re curious, here’s the nickel version of Trump’s 10-point immigration plan:

  1. Build a wall. Mexico will pay for it. It will be a physical wall, with drones and sensors as supplements.
  2. No more catch and release. If you cross the border, we’ll send you back. Way, way back.
  3. Triple the ICE deportation force. Deport all criminals instantly. The police know who they are. We’ll round them up and deport them on Day 1.
  4. Defund sanctuary cities.
  5. Cancel all of Obama’s executive orders.
  6. Suspend visas for visitors from undesirable countries. Send ’em to safe zones in their own countries instead and make the Gulf states pay for it.
  7. Force other countries to take back deported immigrants whether they like it or not.
  8. Complete the biometric entry-exit visa tracking system.
  9. Strengthen E-Verify and end all welfare benefits. “Those who abuse our welfare system will be priorities for immediate removal.”
  10. Reform legal immigration.

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Donald Trump Plans to Parachute Criminals Into Other Countries Whether They Like It Or Not

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Chelsea Manning Could Face Solitary Confinement for Her Suicide Attempt

by JustinFierro Posted on July 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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It has been a terrible month for Chelsea Manning, the transgender former US soldier serving a 35-year prison sentence for sharing classified information with WikiLeaks. Several weeks ago, the Army whistleblower tried to kill herself at Fort Leavenworth military prison, and on Thursday military officials announced that they were considering filing charges in connection with the suicide attempt.

“Now, while Chelsea is suffering the darkest depression she has experienced since her arrest, the government is taking actions to punish her for that pain,” Chase Strangio, one of Manning’s lawyers from the ACLU, said in a statement. “It is unconscionable and we hope that the investigation is immediately ended and that she is given the health care that she needs to recover.”

News of Manning’s suicide attempt was leaked to the media by a US official, while an unnamed source told celebrity news site TMZ that Manning had tried to hang herself. She was hospitalized in the early hours of July 5. After the incident, Stangio reported that Manning had experienced “past episodes of suicidal ideation in connection to her arrest and the denial of treatment related to gender dysphoria.” In 2015, the Army approved her request for hormone therapy after she sued the federal government for access to the medical treatment, but Strangio told Mother Jones that she continues “a challenge in court over the enforcement of male hair length and grooming standards.”

If convicted of the suicide-related charges, “Chelsea could face punishment including indefinite solitary confinement, reclassification into maximum security, and an additional nine years in medium custody,” the ACLU said in its statement, noting that Manning could lose her change of parole.

It wouldn’t be the first time Manning has been held in isolation. After she was first taken into custody in 2010, she spent nearly a year in solitary confinement. Following a 14-month investigation into Manning’s treatment—which included being held in solitary for 23 hours a day and being forced to strip naked every night—the UN special rapporteur on torture accused the US government of holding her in “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” conditions. There is a growing push in the United States to end or limit the use of solitary, since long stints in isolation have been shown to lead to disorientation, hallucinations, and panic attacks. Inmates in solitary are also more likely to engage in self-mutilation or to commit suicide.

Asked about the new investigation into the suicide-related charges, US Army spokesman Wayne V. Hall said he was looking into the matter but could not immediately comment.

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Chelsea Manning Could Face Solitary Confinement for Her Suicide Attempt

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The Real Story of the Syrian Family Who Donald Trump Said Might Be Terrorists

by GeorginaTindal Posted on May 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Matt Chase

The couple who had panicked the nation’s right-wing politicians and pundits sits on a couch in a spartan ground-level apartment on the outskirts of San Bernardino, California. Thirty-two-year-old Samer is in a blue sweatshirt and jeans, lounging next to his wife, Sara. He has a round face and relaxed eyes; she is more angular, her eyes more direct. They’re both wearing ankle monitors. Ever since they were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention two months earlier, they’ve kept a low profile. It took me weeks to contact them, and now they’ve agreed to tell their story. But they have some caveats: no real names, not too many details. They don’t want to stir up any more trouble than they’ve already been through.

Eight months before I met them, they were in Syria, on the phone with a smuggler. ISIS fighters were on the fringes of their small Christian village, firing mortars into it. Samer and Sara knew if the village fell there was a good chance they’d be abused or executed. There was no power, no work, and the price of food was punishing. Part of their home was blown up. Their little boys, two and five years old, were “afraid all the time,” Sara recalls. They almost never ventured outdoors. Of Syria, Samer says, “It is not a life.” So they decided to seek a new one—in America, where they hoped to join Samer’s parents and sister, who live in California.

The smuggler told them he could help, in exchange for everything they had—a valuable tract of land, the remains of their home, and all its contents. The smuggler’s network stretched across the globe, and he arranged to get them to Lebanon, then Turkey, where they waited three months before being supplied with expertly forged European passports—they won’t say which nationality—and plane tickets to Brazil. From there, they traveled north. The smuggler told them where to go, whom to meet, when to take a car, and when to fly. The passports worked at every checkpoint, border, and airport.

On November 17, Samer, Sara, and their two little boys walked across the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas, and turned themselves in to American immigration officials. Samer remembers, “I was so happy. I finally arrived here to have a safe life, a good life for my children.”

They didn’t realize they were stepping into a firestorm of anti-refugee hysteria. Four days before their arrival, ISIS-backed terrorists had attacked in Paris. After Samer and Sara entered the United States, the conservative website Breitbart proclaimed—falsely—that they and another Syrian family who had crossed with them were “illegal aliens” who had been “caught” sneaking into the country. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a link to the story. Ben Carson said their arrival could be a sign that “our worst nightmare may be unfolding before our eyes.” Trump tweeted that they might be terrorists: “ISIS maybe? I told you so. we need a big & beautiful wall!” In the days that followed, more than 30 governors said they did not want Syrian refugees settling in their states.

Almost immediately after requesting asylum, Sara and the boys were put in one ICE detention center, Samer in another. They went through the extensive asylum interview process and were determined to have “credible fears of persecution or torture” in Syria. Within two weeks they were approved for release. ICE officials told Samer’s family in California to buy airline tickets for them. But the day before they were set to depart, Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook slaughtered 14 people in San Bernardino. ICE told Samer’s family to cancel the flights to California, and Samer and Sara were denied parole. The only explanation was a vague declaration of “law enforcement interests.”

During their weeks of detention, Samer was allowed to speak to Sara only once on the phone. The boys cried every night, asking Sara where their father was. As Christmas approached, the children had been held for nearly 40 days, despite a mandate that most migrant kids should be released after three to five days. “The look on their face is a look of terror,” their lawyer, Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, told me after visiting Sara at the time. “The look and the panic of a person pinned down on a hospital gurney.”

“I definitely thought America would accept me,” Samer told the Guardian. “If I had known that it was so terrible here I wouldn’t have brought my family.” On Christmas Eve, the family was finally released, reunited, and put on a flight to California.

That’s where I meet them two months later, in the warm and tidy apartment where Samer’s parents live. A cross hangs above the kitchen doorway. We drink tea in the living room as Samer and Sara lay out the terms for sharing their story. They’re wary: They don’t want to be back in the headlines, and they worry more press could endanger Sara’s mother and sister, still trapped in Syria. “They didn’t have a chance to leave,” she says. ISIS is still on the outskirts of their village.

They talk about life before the war, of their town—a small community speckled with trees and fields of crops. Sara doesn’t want to dwell on how the war has changed it. “The way the village looks is not important,” she says. “It is like all of Syria,” a landscape of broken concrete and twisted rebar.

Their troubles aren’t over. The asylum process, as Ryan puts it, is “designed so that people fall into the cracks, lose their cases on a technicality that would drive any sports fan nuts.”

But for now, Samer and Sara are piecing together a normal life. “My son started school,” she says, beaming. “Preschool. Just five years old, but he is a big boy. He is starting to learn English.” The boys, who have been playing in the living room, disappear into the kitchen and return proudly carrying potted flowers. “They bought this flower for their grandma,” Sara explains. Next they walk out holding a bag of peanut M&Ms with pleading eyes, grinning and squirming. They can play outside now. But not today. “It’s too windy!” Sara says with a laugh.

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The Real Story of the Syrian Family Who Donald Trump Said Might Be Terrorists

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6 years after BP disaster, Obama administration thinks it has a way to prevent future spills

by graptorm Posted on April 14, 2016

6 years after BP disaster, Obama administration thinks it has a way to prevent future spills

By on 14 Apr 2016commentsShare

Next Wednesday marks the sixth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill, the BP gusher that killed 11 workers and released at least 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. On Thursday, the Obama administration finalized a set of regulations that will help ensure we never have to witness this kind of disaster again — or so the administration claims. But environmental experts have real concerns about the rule’s rigor and implementation.

The new rule — the result of years of investigations by the Department of Interior, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Academy of Engineering — will tighten standards for blowout preventers (the type of device that failed spectacularly in 2010). It will also strengthen the design of other offshore well elements, including wellheads and the steel casings used in construction.

Speaking to press on Thursday, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell cited the complexity of oil drilling technology as one of the reasons why the regulations took six years to compose. And learning from the blowout was a part of taking time “to do this right,” she said.

“As offshore oil and gas production continue to grow every year and our dependence on foreign oil continues to decline, we owe it to the American people to ensure we are developing these resources responsibly and safely,” said Jewell, who was once a petroleum engineer in Oklahoma.

Asked point blank on a press call if the blowout preventers will be fail-safe, Brian Salerno, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said he couldn’t give a conclusive answer. “We do believe this is a significant increase in the level of safety,” he said.

The new regulations incorporate several existing industry standards, produced by the likes of the American Petroleum Institute. API’s reaction to the announcement has been relatively calm.

But environmentalists have found much more to criticize.

A major concern is how rigorous the rule is around severing capability, the ability of blowout preventers to seal a pipe or wellbore by cutting through the pipe or casing in the event of a leak.

Liz Birnbaum, former director of the Minerals Management Service and an expert in offshore energy development, also pointed to the long phase-in periods that appear in the proposed regulations. “The rule says that they have three more years to set up real-time monitoring [of oil-well safety by onshore personnel],” Birnbaum told Grist. “Which is just insane.” She pointed to the fact that BP was able to set up real-time monitoring in less time than that after the Deepwater Horizon spill. “It doesn’t take three years.”

Environmental groups worry about providing too much flexibility for industry players, too. The only solution, Director of Environment America’s Stop Drilling Program Rachel Richardson said, “is to transition away from dirty fuels altogether.”

With respect to blowout preventers, Birnbaum argues that industry is being given too much temporal wiggle room to update their technology. In drilling operations, companies aren’t currently required to install parts that center the drill pipe during severing operations — which was exactly the problem during the Deepwater Horizon spill. The regulations would require them to do so, but not for another seven years.

Before the seven years are up, the Gulf of Mexico may be open for another 10 offshore leases, based on Obama’s proposed five-year offshore drilling plan. According to Birnbaum, “Another seven years is seven years too long.”

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6 years after BP disaster, Obama administration thinks it has a way to prevent future spills

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Breaking: At Least 14 Killed in San Bernardino Mass Shooting

by Cornelius37M Posted on December 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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At least 14 people are dead and 14 wounded after heavily-armed gunmen opened fire inside a facility that assists people with developmental disabilities, in San Bernardino, California, police confirmed in a news conference Wednesday afternoon. The area remains under lockdown, as a manhunt for up to three suspects continues.

The Guardian and the LA Times, citing police officials, report authorities are searching for an SUV that was used to flee the scene. Police confirm a suspect was seen wearing what is being described as “tactical gear.” The attackers used “long guns, not handguns,” San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said in the news conference.

.@SanBernardinoPD and other Law Enforcement agencies are evacuating people from the Inland Regional Center pic.twitter.com/kPU2dbWqV3

— Doug Saunders (@crimeshutterbug) December 2, 2015

“We do not know where the suspects are,” Burguan told reporters. “At minimum we have domestic-type terrorism situation.”

This is a breaking news post. We will update as more information becomes available.

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Breaking: At Least 14 Killed in San Bernardino Mass Shooting

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The Head of a Major Law Enforcement Group Described Nonviolent Drug Offenders As "Peddlers of Death"

by PiperThornton Posted on August 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last month, President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders detained in federal prisons. Given that 35,000 nonviolent inmates had applied for reduced sentences, some activists said the clemency grant did not go far enough. Apparently, not everyone agrees.

In an opinion piece Thursday, Jon Adler, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), blasted Obama’s decision by describing these nonviolent offenders as “peddlers of death.” Arguing that Obama ignored the risks of drug traffickers and instead chose to “perpetuate a narrative that these felons are harmless hippies,” Adler went so far as to compare the offenders to lions in an overcrowded zoo:

With limited space, rising labor, and lodging costs, which animals would the president let go? Using the president’s methodology, the lions would likely be set free. Why? They eat the most food and therefore cost the most to maintain. During the 10 years of their captivity, they haven’t eaten anyone or attacked their handlers. They have no known affiliation to any violent lion groups. They are totally safe to release into the public. The president’s rationale for release of these federal prisoners does not benefit the American public, nor keep it safe.

Adler’s FLEOA provides testimony at congressional hearings and represents more than 25,000 federal law enforcement officers from some 65 agencies. But his description of nonviolent drug offenders seems unfair for people like Antonio Bascaro, an octogenarian grandfather in a wheelchair who has been incarcerated for 35 years because he worked on a fishing boat used by Cubans to smuggle cannabis to Florida. Or what about John Knock, a first-time offender serving life in prison for conspiracy to traffic large quantities of weed that the government never even seized? (Neither man was granted clemency.)

In an investigation of weed lifers, my colleague Bryan Schatz writes:

Every year, more people are arrested for pot possession than violent crimes. Around 40,000 people are currently serving time for offenses involving a drug that has been decriminalized or legalized in 27 states and Washington, DC. Even as Americans’ attitudes toward pot have mellowed, the law has yet to catch up, leaving pot offenders subject to draconian sentences born out of the war on drugs. As David Holland, a criminal-defense attorney in New York City who filed a presidential clemency petition for marijuana lifers in 2012, puts it: “The world has changed, but these poor bastards are still sitting in jail.”

It’s important to note that the war on drugs has disproportionately affected black and Latino men. And Obama’s clemency last month went to a group of nonviolent inmates who had served more than 10 years in prison with good behavior, and who would not have received such severe sentences under today’s sentencing rules. “These men and women were not hardened criminals,” the president said, adding that 14 of the 46 nonviolent offenders had been given life sentences. “So their punishments didn’t fit the crime.”

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The Head of a Major Law Enforcement Group Described Nonviolent Drug Offenders As "Peddlers of Death"

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Looking for the Link Between Driving While Black And Police Shootings

by TristanQRC Posted on April 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division released the dashcam footage of the moments leading up to officer Michael Slager’s fatal shooting of Walter Scott. It opens with Slager following Scott, who was driving a Mercedes-Benz, into a parking lot. They stop, then Slager walks up to Scott’s window, asks for his license and registration, and informs him that he was pulled over because of a broken brake light. Slager returns to his car. Moments later, Scott opens his door and runs away. A chase ensues, culminating in Slager firing eight shots and killing Scott.

In the aftermath of Scott’s death, little attention has been paid to fact that it was precipitated by a traffic stop. But Scott certainly wasn’t the first such encounter to go wrong: Both of the two other fatal police shootings in South Carolina over the past year that led to criminal charges also began with traffic stops. One was for a suspected DUI. The other was for a busted tail light.

More MoJo coverage on police shootings:


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Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men


Congress Is Finally Going to Make Local Law Enforcement Report How Many People They Kill


Hereâ&#128;&#153;s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People

A search of news reports from the past decade turns up several other fatal police encounters that began with traffic stops: The deaths of Julio Eddy Perez in Los Angeles in 2008, DeCarlos Moore in Miami in 2010, Noel Polanco in New York City in 2012, Jerame Reid in New Jersey in 2014, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles in 2014, and David Kassick in Pennsylvania this February. (A 1976 traffic stop that nearly killed a black man prompted the Supreme Court to review—and approve—police officers’ use of chokeholds.)

So how often do traffic stops turn into police shootings? The short answer is that we don’t know. But there’s compelling evidence that black drivers are disproportionately likely to get pulled over. The Department of Justice’s 2011 Public-Police Contact Survey reported that black and Hispanic drivers were pulled over, ticketed, and searched at higher rates than whites. (It also found that cops used physical force against about 1 percent of drivers pulled over at traffic stops, but didn’t specify the drivers’ race.)

In 2014, three sociologists at the University of Kansas surveyed more than 2,300 drivers in and around Kansas City. They discovered that while stops over traffic safety violations showed little racial disparity, when it came to stops related to minor violations, like expired license plate stickers, black drivers were pulled over twice as often.

These “investigatory stops” provided what Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie describes as a “pretext for something more sinister”:

In these, drivers are stopped for exceedingly minor violations—driving too slowly, malfunctioning lights, failure to signal—which are used as pretext for investigations of the driver and the vehicle. Sanctioned by courts and institutionalized in most police departments, investigatory stops are aimed at “suspicious” drivers and meant to stop crime, not traffic offenses. And as the authors note, “virtually all of the wide racial disparity in the likelihood of being stopped is concentrated in one category of stops: discretionary stops for minor violations of the law.”

The difference between the two kinds of stops is dramatic. Where traffic safety stops are mostly painless (other than tickets), investigatory stops involve searches, impromptu interrogations, and occasionally handcuffs and weapons.

That Walter Scott was driving a Mercedes may not have helped. As the University of Kansas researchers found, an African-American man under 40 had a 36 percent chance of getting pulled over for an investigatory stop in a given year if he drove a domestic luxury car—versus 21 percent for if he drove a non-luxury car. (Scott was 50.)

And there’s a growing body of research showing that implicit bias likely played a role in Slager’s split-second decision to shoot Scott. But as Bouie points out, racial bias is hardly relevant when it comes to the traffic stop that started their encounter. “What matters is that this universal suspicion is baked into the culture of police departments across the country, such that all kinds of officers—black as well as white—engage in profiling”—an unknown number of which have turned lethal. And so long as that culture persists, Chris Rock’s selfies will keep coming.

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Looking for the Link Between Driving While Black And Police Shootings

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