Reminder that I thoughtfully created a Leopard hijack thread. The rants here are topical there.
There’s also a thread for substantive discussion in GD, should your rant be sufficiently adaptable:
More Leopard news from a couple of weeks ago in the Economist. Background: Alligator Alcatraz is an immigration detention facility paid for by the state of Florida to the tune of $245 million. It was constructed by a firm with no experience in building such facilities and could very well become a death trap during hurricane season, depending in part on whether FL has made sufficient evacuation plans. A few Trump supporters are not happy. Emphasis added:
In Miami, where 70% of people are Hispanic, the deportation theatre is not going over well. Many expected the Trump administration to pick up gang members, but not cleaning ladies and Uber drivers. “Arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings” is “not what we voted for”, the co-founder of Latinas for Trump wrote on X in June. Conditions at Alligator Alcatraz resemble prisons in places their grandparents escaped. “Pick them up, throw them out, but don’t mock them,” one veteran Republican says of criminal immigrants. Another party strategist who “loves everything else Trump is doing” wonders how a country known for taking in “the poor and huddled masses” can also be “dragging them out to be tortured in the Everglades”.
A majority of Americans agree. In recent polling 52% said the government is trying to deport more people than they expected; 57% opposed building new detention centres. Last month Mr Trump’s net approval rating on immigration flipped from positive to negative.
Sub req: Alligator Alcatraz: an exercise in performative cruelty | The Economist