Wednesday, February 4, 2026

Heather Cox-Richardson again.

Cox-Richardson commented on a judges ruling that barnyard barbie, also known as Noem, could not unilaterally end Haitian Temporarily Protected Status

“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Reyes wrote as she decided against the Trump administration. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither…, she pounds X ([formerly known as] Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”

In today's post from Cox-Richardson she also wrote this.

"Republicans are trying to regain support by seeming to back off their extremism, although they are not backing far: not a single Republican showed up for a public forum held today in Washington, D.C., by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA) and other Democrats on ICE violence. At the hearing, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen shot five times by federal agents, told her story; so did Aliya Rahman, another U.S. citizen detained by ICE; and so did the brothers of U.S. citizen Renee Good, killed by federal agents.

Representative Garcia showed a picture of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is a key instigator of the ICE attacks, and said: “There’s probably no single person in this government [who] has done more damage…and more harm to people across this country, immigrants and U.S. citizens…than this man right here, and it’s our job…to hold him responsible for the crimes that are happening to United States citizens.” A new Data For Progress poll shows that 51% of American voters think Miller should be removed, while only 33% think he should not."

Takk for alt,

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Banal!

Being an old, white, male in an old folks home insulates me from the trauma of our streets. Given the heart rendering dramas being played out with the barbaric siege of the city my life sees banal by comparison.

There is significant resistance to ICE emanating from the OFH. There is a new ISAIAH Core Team that's active. The OFH Social Justice Committee has been active all the while I've been here. At the last nationwide protest Friday inmates of the OFH gathered in vigil on the skyway.(See photo below) Much of the energy for the resistance work comes from the "other" building. That is all independent living apartments and they tend to be younger than the denizens of this building.

Apparently many of the entertainers who were awarded prizes at the Grammy's last night spoke out against ICE and orange man. Minnesota is garnering a lot of attention. We'd be happy to pass on that if the barbarians would leave.

Takk for alt,

BREAKING: Federal judge SMACKS DOWN “ICE Barbie” — uses Kristi Noem’s own ugly rant to stop her deportation crusade.

In a delicious case of poetic justice, a federal judge just took Kristi Noem’s own words, wrapped them in constitutional law, and slammed them right back in her face.

Noem’s plan to rip legal protections away from 350,000 Haitian immigrants was frozen this week by Judge Ana C. Reyes, who issued a blistering 83-page ruling that made one thing crystal clear: screaming on X is not governing.

Back in December, Noem proudly posted that she was recommending “a full travel ban on every damn country,” sending “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” to the U.S., punctuating it with the chilling MAGA mantra: “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” Haiti was squarely in her sights just days earlier, when she moved to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians who have lived and worked legally in the U.S. since the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Judge Reyes was not amused.

“Noem does not have the facts on her side,” Reyes wrote. “She does not have the law on her side. So instead, she pounds X.”

Ouch.

The judge reminded Noem that while she’s free as a private citizen to spew insults, as homeland security secretary, she is bound by the Constitution and federal law. TPS, Reyes explained, isn’t charity — it’s a lawful program that allows disaster survivors to live and work here, generating $5.2 billion a year in taxes.

And then came the mic drop.

Reyes directly quoted Noem’s own “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” line to prove Haitians have every reason to fear rapid deportation. In other words: Noem’s own bigotry became Exhibit A against her.

The plaintiffs Noem tried to erase? A neuroscientist. A software engineer. A registered nurse. A lab assistant. An economics student. Not “leeches.” Not “killers.” Just people with lives, careers, and roots in America.

The judge also pointed out the obvious hypocrisy: the U.S. State Department still warns Americans not to travel to Haiti for any reason, completely undercutting Noem’s claim that the country is suddenly “safe.”

The ruling blocks Noem — and Donald Trump — from ending Haiti’s TPS nationwide while the case proceeds.

Noem’s response? A tantrum about “activist judges” and promises to appeal. But for now, ICE Barbie’s cosplay tough talk has collided with reality — and the law won.

Monday, February 2, 2026

To be brown in Minneapolis....

Here's an example of the danger of being brown in Minneapolis with the Federal Government's ongoing invasion.

"t's a video many saw on social media soon after it happened: Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, dragging a woman out of her car and forcing her to the ground.

The woman in the video is Aliya Rahman, a Bangladeshi American and a U.S. citizen. The day she was arrested, Rahman was on her way to the doctor when she came across an ICE operation and a group of people protesting. She said the ICE officers told her to move her car, but the scene was chaotic and she received multiple instructions at once.

The Department of Homeland Security said in an earlier statement they arrested Rahman because she "ignored multiple commands." But Rahman, who is autistic and also recovering from a traumatic brain injury, says it sometimes takes her a moment to understand auditory commands. Before she knew it, the officers were carrying her away by her limbs."

How long? how long? how long?????????????

Takk for alt,

Sunday, February 1, 2026

Life for racial minorities in White Supremist America.

Kao Klia Yang is one of my favorite authors. Her Hmong parents escaped Laos and she was born in a Thai refugee camp. They settle in Minnesota and today her article appeared in the Minneapolis Star/Tribune. Her article speaks for itself.

Takk for alt,

Opinion | What I told my children to do if I’m taken by ICE

Writer Kao Kalia Yang shares her fears as a naturalized citizen after seeing others like her being swept up in the immigration crackdown.

January 31, 2026 at 4:59AM

ICE agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 28. "I find myself wondering if I still have a home here in Minnesota, in America," writes Kao Kalia Yang, "in the world of the people who get to decide who is valuable and who is not, who belongs and who does not, who lives and who dies." (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Star Tribune opinion editor’s note: This article, written as a “letter from Minnesota,” first appeared on Literary Hub’s website earlier this week.

•••

Today is Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. I got gas for the first time this year by myself. The gas station was mostly empty. I drove into the station, heart thudding in my chest. I did everything as fast as I could. The few people around, the dark-haired man putting air into the tires on his truck, the white woman who came into the station behind me, each of us quietly doing our business as fast as we can in the cold. I dared to venture out because federal agents killed Alex Pretti this Saturday — just as ICE showed up on our block and went to the house of one of my Karen neighbors, and because I know that Greg Bovino is leaving and Tom Homan is coming, and this is a period of transition, a little break from the escalating pressures pushing us down.

On Sunday, my white husband and I, a Hmong woman, talked to our three children: What happens if Mommy gets detained? If the children are with me and they are taken with me, then we try to stay together as long as we can, hold tight, don’t cry. If they take me and leave the children (as they left the other children on the east side of St. Paul when they took the parents away), then if the oldest of the children has her Gizmo watch and if it is able to make a call, she should call her father (my husband is a teacher and when he is in school, reception is not guaranteed), and if that doesn’t work, she should call one of her aunties, the one who answers her phone the most. If the Gizmo watch doesn’t work, if they are not home, they should go to the nearest gas station or an adult with a whistle and ask to use a phone. They should call the police. At the police station, they should tell the police that one of their aunties is a judge and give the police her name, and if that doesn’t work, then the children should give the names of their white grandparents and tell the police officers that the couple live in the senior co-op close to the lake. The children are scared. My 10-year-old sons put on brave faces. One looks only at his feet. The other has sucked in his lips so that his mouth is a line of folded flesh. The welling of liquid in my eyes falls from my 12-year-old daughter’s. I tell the kids, “It’s not your job to save Mommy or to protect her. I want you three to stay together and be safe. I’m the adult here. I’m a U.S. citizen. I’ve no criminal record. I am … afraid, too.”

I am afraid because I am a naturalized U.S. citizen. I came here at the age of 6 years old. I came as a refugee child whose whole world was a refugee camp right up until leaving for America. At 45, I am still the size of a child. Easy to shove, to push, to take. In my community and around me, I see ICE taking other naturalized citizens …

One, a grandfather, without a shirt or pants, just a pair of shorts and slippers, a man who has done nothing wrong. The snow white on the ground. The house, small, typical of the east side houses that I’m surrounded by. The neighbors gathering, shouting, whistling, screaming for help … help that is a message of love but like all love powerless to prevent the hurt from happening. A grandchild’s blanket thrown over his bare shoulders to keep the cuffed hands hidden, the Minnesota cold from biting into shoulders that have been pushed down by too many hands, too much force. Two agents on either side.

I remember a story my father told me about the moment he and my mother, with their one-month-old baby strapped to her front, walked into Thailand, after the crossing of the Mekong River and the years of starving in the jungles of Laos after the Americans had withdrawn their troops from a war that the world had declared over, how shreds of his skin fell from his sides like ribbons (because in the crossing, he’d tied the whole family to cuts of bamboo so that he could drag them, and the currents had been strong and the bamboo had sliced through his flesh), how he had on no shirt, no pants, no shoes, just a pair of underwear … how the Thai farmers on the road had gathered to look at the thin man and his thin wife and the baby that looked like a burlap sack in her arms, brown flesh sagging off bird bones, how one threw an old T-shirt at him, how it fell to the ground and how he picked it up, dusted the dirt, and tried to put it on, and then walked to the fenced compound where the Hmong were to register as refugees of war, how at its gate, his feet halted, and how a Thai soldier punched him and how he fell to the ground.

My father had said to me, “My heart hurt more than my body — the flesh can take blows, the heart suffers them. It was the first time I felt that there would be no other place like Phu Khao, the village where I was born. The soldier who hit me was an older man. I was like a prisoner. I stood still, and then I walked into the place they would keep me. And I kept thinking: I was a man, too. I had a wife and a child. But it didn’t matter because we had no home anymore.”

All my life, I’ve carried these words. Born a stateless child in that place where they kept my father, my mother, my older sister and countless other refugees. For the first six years of my life, I thought the whole world was a refugee camp. I saw people come in. I saw how we couldn’t leave. I saw how those who did never returned. I asked the adults around me where home was. With their words, they painted mountains far taller than I knew to imagine. With their words, they paved pathways across oceans to a place called America … where a little girl like me could go to school, become educated and do the work of building a better world. All these years, that has been my goal. As a writer, I’ve tried hard to tell the stories of my people and others who have fled their homes in search of safety and a future, and now all these years later, I find myself wondering if I still have a home here in Minnesota, in America, in the world of the people who get to decide who is valuable and who is not, who belongs and who does not, who lives and who dies.

So, today, now bright with frigid sunshine, I sit in the eerie silence of my house on the east side of St. Paul — alone until I sneak out to pick up my children from school — and hope to return with them once again. There’s gas in my car but I’ve nowhere to go, so I sit here, and I try to do what I’ve always only ever done: Look toward the far distant horizons for the rise of the mystical mountains of my people, for the invisible arms of my ancestors, to keep me steady for one more day.

I find myself thinking: Each day is another day for my three children to grow up a little more, for the one boy to learn how to wash his hair better, for the other boy to be able to put lotion on the eczema patches on his arms and legs, and for the girl to grow her arms a little bit stronger so she can hold her brothers — if there should come a day when I won’t be here to hold them all close, to pull their bodies into mine, to whisper to them, “You are safer here than anywhere else in the world because the arms that love you the most are holding you tight.”

I write the words I believe to be true even as I know how terribly strong the arms pulling us apart are, and how love, even the most powerful kind, cannot protect, how it bears witness only, how it remembers and carries the words on, until our breaths are no more, until the homes that we’ve been looking for our whole lives open their doors and invite us in.