Tell their stories

[deminks]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/29/trump-s-border-patrol-defies-judge-u-s-senator-at-dulles-airport-at-his-first-constitutional-crisis-unfolds.html

(snip)

Time ticked. Protesters chanted. CBP officials were invisible; for hours, lawyers didn’t know if CBP officials at Dulles had even acknowledged Brinkema’s ruling existed.

Lawyers wrung their hands. And then, slowly, detainees started trickling out, one or two at a time. One woman who had been detained doubled over sobbing as she walked through the crowd. She nearly collapsed onto a loved one. Another man who was detained, Javad Fotouhi, calmly fielded questions from a scrum of reporters about the four hours he spent in secondary. When CBP finally let him go, he said, they didn’t say why.

“We saw elderly people and disabled people,” he said.

Then two wheelchair-bound people—an 88-year-old man and his 83-year-old wife, both of whom have green cards, according to their granddaughter—came out. Their granddaughter, Pegah Rahmani (an American citizen who lives in Fairfax, Va.) doubled over to hug them. She told The Daily Beast that her grandmother had recently had a stroke and her grandfather was legally blind.

(snip)

At the end of the night, there was at least one traveler still detained: a Syrian woman, who had a J-2 non-immigrant visa. Her husband is a doctor working at a hospital in D.C., and she had come to try to be with him. Her lawyer, Rob Robertson—a tall, large man with a pinkish chambray shirt, cargo pants, and a snowy white goatee—told The Daily Beast that he expected her to be taken to an ICE facility on Sunday, where an ICE agent would interview her to assess if she was truly afraid of going back to Syria. Robertson, who was representing her pro bono, said she would pass that interview process with no trouble; if she went back, she could be in serious danger.

(end snip)

great reporting, I regret I cannot paste it all here.

[Ms. Toad]

1. I started to do just that on my FB page this morning

I have always used facebook for people connections. Although they are disproportionately liberal, my friends do run the gamut of political thought.

I share my own experiences - about, for example, living as a lesbian, effectively married for more than 35 years, with no legal recognition of my marriage until recently. Or about my daughter ($40,000 - $60,000 in medical expenses a year) and the ACA. Or about being a poll watcher for Obama and Clinton.

I engage in political conversations as they come up - and have had some moderately productive conversations even with some of the most conservative of my friends on issues such as abortion.

I have not, before now, expressly posted non-personal political things.

That has ended this week. This morning I posted a comment on the ban, and started a list of stories of those whose lives have been disrupted by this ban. I will add to it as I collect them.

I am also contemplating posting a warning that conversations on my wall are about to change . . .

[mnhtnbb]

2. Sen. Booker attempted to get the CBP to comply and allow detainees to meet with attorneys

They refused.

From the article:

Booker stayed back there for about half an hour, and then he pushed through the crowd of roaring protesters and—flanked by glowering policemen—addressed the crowd. After a few opening words, he held up a copy of Brinkema’s order.

“I am now of the belief that though this was issued by the judicial branch, that it was violated tonight,” he said. “And so one of the things I will be doing is fighting to make sure that the executive branch abides by the law as it was issued in this state and around the nation. This will be an ongoing battle.”

The crowd cheered.

“We see tonight what I believe is a clear violation of the Constitution,” he continued.