Agreed. It’s kinda nuts. I was overseeing a program to tech transfer a pharmaceutical manufacturing process INTO Canada, meaning they would get the jobs. I sent 3 of the chemists to Montreal to show the staff there how it’s done. As they passed through customs, one of them responded to “purpose of your visit” with “I’m here for work.” Hoo boy, they spent 4 hours at the crossing, I got a call to verify that they really worked for me, and had to fax (email, probably) the agent a letter on company letterhead. It was insane.
I’m disappointed that the IRS is ratting on non-citizen taxpayers to the goons at ICE.
I didn’t click on the link, but in case that article doesn’t include this bit … you aren’t the only one who’s disappointed:
Should Ms. Krause expect a DOJ investigation? Time will tell.
I understand the reasoning behind resigning in protest, but I have to question its efficacy. Doesn’t that just make it quicker for a Trump loyalist to be installed, rather than making them fire you for non-compliance, then having you replaced?
I mean, I get that they wouldn’t have much of a delay in filling the position, but each day that you don’t quit is a day that they don’t have the position filled already, meaning you might actually be able to delay/prevent someone being deported, even for a day.
Melanie Krause, the acting IRS commissioner who resigned, was an existing IRS employee who was made acting commissioner during this administration. I would think she was already a Trump loyalist, though perhaps some things are too distasteful even for some people.
The New York Times reports that the administration is trying to cancel the Social Security numbers of people in the country legally with temporary legal status.
The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead.
They are, in effect, declaring them unpersons, like those in George Orwell’s 1984. (“Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not exist: he had never existed.”)
They still seem really confused about the difference between “having a social security number” and “receiving social security benefits”.
The article mentions why this is a problem for the victims.
As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identification that allows them to make and more easily spend money.
Without a Social Security number, the victims (who, again, have legal status in this country) can’t get a job, open a bank account or do many other things.
The article is paywalled. I don’t suppose it gives any indication of what criteria they are using for such non-persons? Actually, strike that: even if it says, don’t tell me. I’m worried enough about things that have already happened.
AFA the “illegals” who came here for economic reasons, maybe simply paying them to GTFO would be cheaper, and (unfortunately for the MAGAts) more humane.
I’ll bet there are also scenarios where they left the U.S. years ago.
If they are getting a monthly annuity — say as a life insurance beneficiary — it will stop. This will likely mess up many customers of U.S. banks that have worldwide offices.
Less important, but it will also mess up genealogists. They will think distant relatives are deceased when they are alive.
I’ll bet it will also cause confusion in some police investigations. Sarge, looks like our suspect is dead.
I don’t see that this has been posted here before, but in the case I was referring to upthread, where Trump’s goons mistakenly deported an innocent man to a notorious El Salvador prison, Trump was insisting that he be kept there and they had no obligation to bring him back to the US. Just incredible. And he appealed to the Supreme Court to let him do that. It was rejected unanimously.
nevermind.
Trump’s government was ordered by the SCOTUS to “facilitate” the return. Which leaves a huge amount of wiggle room, and NO defined time frame. It also included language supporting the authority of the executive in this area, so absolutely not a one-sided victory. Still better than the SCOTUS totally ignoring the extra-legal action by Trump, but not the smackdown I wished it had delivered.
Nope, I’d say that’s consistent with many things Trump has said. He truly seems to believe that accusation is the same as conviction (except when it applies to him, of course). He truly seems to believe (outside of a few exceptions) that all immigrants are felon-level criminal. Even if that innocent man is innocent Trump seems convinced that somehow he’s not really innocent, he just hasn’t been caught yet.
I expect to see more of this … well, I guess I’ll have to call it evil. I don’t know what other word would apply.
The fact that even THIS SCotUS voted unanimously against Trump says something.
Here is a court document Rumeysa Ozturk wrote of the bad experiences she has been having:
In the case of the wrongly deported man, I am expecting creative incompetence and malicious compliance (such as repatriating him from El Salvador but throwing him in jail in the US because El Salvador says he’s a gang member). Any other administration would have had him back home by now.
Rachel Maddow covered this in some detail last night. Eric Holder was her guest. The upshot is that SCOTUS ordered the man brought back so he could go through legitimate due process. He’s not out of the woods by any means.
While there’s no definite time frame ordered, there’s at least one reason for that, maybe two. One is that Trump’s appeal was “upheld in part” simply because the deadline set by the District Court had already passed, so it was moot. The other possibility – interpreted very charitably – is that they’re also conscious of setting precedent in terms of SCOTUS intrusion on the foreign policy powers of the Executive Branch.
In any case, in the actual ruling, Sonia Sotomayor used some pretty scathing words in her supplementary comments, including the order that the Trump administration should “promptly” interview the accused to determine his defense against the deportation, which seems to dovetail with the larger Court’s instruction to the Trump administration to say what steps they are taking to comply with the Court order to reverse the deportation. Since there was no dissent, I assume that Sotomayor’s part of the ruling also stands.
Yeah, but the cruelty is the point. They might argue paying them encourages more to come.