Daily Memo breaks down daily immigration raids in Southern California and shares relevant news from around the nation. Below, you'll find links and references to topics discussed in our online video and more, allowing you to take a closer look at each topic. If you appreciate reporting like this, please consider becoming a member, buying some merch, or dropping a dime in our fundraiser so we can continue bringing you this vital information.
Either through willful ignorance or foolish naivety, our local governments are building the surveillance apparatus that ICE currently uses and will continue to use to persecute immigrants, people of color, and dissidents to Trump.
We already know that over 80,000 Flock cameras are tracking and sharing license plate data and vehicle patterns to the DHS. We’re seeing the effect of this in real time as we log hundreds of incidents in which ICE is targeting vehicles, a phenomenon that has increased significantly in our daily reporting. Los Angeles is now installing 125 new speed cameras on our streets, and Anaheim just approved 72 new automated license plate readers.
As 404 Media reports, “Data from a license plate-scanning tool that is primarily marketed as a surveillance solution for small towns to combat crimes like carjackings or finding missing people is being used by ICE.”
On top of that, California is getting ready to break its promise to over one million undocumented immigrants that it pledged to protect when approving driver's licenses for them.
According to CalMatters, “If state officials don’t turn over the data, the Department of Homeland Security may refuse to accept California licenses and IDs at airports, the advocates believe, following a briefing with the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the office of Governor Gavin Newsom earlier this month. State authorities confirmed they plan to share the data to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005, which set requirements for accepting state identification in federal facilities like airports.”
This is the surveillance state they are building, approving the very tools ICE uses to go after immigrants. Immigrants are the excuse to build, test, and grow a surveillance network that will eventually be used on all of you, if it's not already. And as our local governments pave the way for federal surveillance, the Trump administration continues to attack constitutional and civil rights on the federal level.
I’ve already discussed how a three-panel judge of the appellate courts sided with the Department of Homeland Security, weakening DACA protections. Trump is still currently trying to dismantle birthright citizenship in the courts.
The DOJ has ordered its embassies to deny any asylum seekers who answer yes to the questions, “Have you experienced harm or mistreatment in your country of nationality or last habitual residence?” and “Do you fear harm or mistreatment in returning to your country of nationality?”
Currently, thousands are out in Washington today waiting on the Supreme Court's decision on whether Trump and the Department of Homeland Security can remove the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of 350,00 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrian refugees. This decision could impact over a million immigrants from about a dozen nations.
According to The New York Times, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that the decision to end the program was racially motivated. A lawyer representing Haitian immigrants told the justices that the administration was discriminating against immigrants from nonwhite countries while allowing mostly white immigrants from another country, South Africa.
Without TPS, these immigrants will have to face the possibility of being sent to a concentration camp, deported to a third party country like the Congo, or worse, being sent back to the original country from which they fled, like the four Haitian women who were found decapitated just weeks after being deported.
And to secure all these changes, the Trump administration is doing everything possible to eliminate the voting rights of his opponents, and especially people of color.
Today, the Supreme Court nearly gutted a key component of the landmark Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination in voting on the basis of race. Trump’s six orange-nosed justices basically said representatives can’t use race-conscious data in redistricting to protect the voting power of minorities. This all happened because the GOP wanted to dismantle two majority-black districts in Louisiana held by Democrats. These districts will now be redrawn. ~ Memo Torres
RAIDS
[Tuesday, April 28. Day 327.]
- Pasadena: At the Pasadena Courthouse on 300 E. Walnut St. around 8:50 a.m. Confirmed ICE vehicles were seen parked in front of the courthouse.
- Camarillo: At the ICE Field Office on 321 Cortez Circle around 7:04 a.m. ICE vehicles were seen returning after seen scouting in Oxnard.
- Thermal: In an undisclosed neighborhood around 5:45 a.m. Community watchers confirmed that federal immigration agents took two people.
- Ventura: At the County of Ventura Government Center on 800 S. Victoria Ave. around 11:36 a.m. ICE agents were seen at the detention facility at the government center.
AT L.A. TACO
- Why Did Anaheim City Council Vote to Install Nearly $1M-Worth of License Plate Surveillance? by Izzy Ramirez
IN OTHER ICE-RELATED NEWS
- ICE continued its assault on Los Angeles, and is moving operations to the Deep South
- The Trump administration issued new rules for visa applications that could limit asylum claims in the U.S.
- ICE detains two high schoolers waiting for the school bus
- "‘A Betrayal:’ California to share data on immigrant drivers nationally" ~ LAist
- L.A. has approved 125 new speed cams with hefty fines ~ Los Angeles Times
