Compare this reality to the simple, straightforward prose of the Pledge of Allegiance. How can anybody recite "...with liberty and justice for all" without gagging?
People dying in the desert and drowning in the rivers did not move the emotions of those on the right. Now we have a regime that revels in those tragedies. No more pretense of decency. Just unapologetic cruelty to the very population that made sure our crops were picked and the meat was processed to feed us. Covid taught Republicans nothing of gratitude or kindness.
They jumped on the TRump Train, and the thieving portion of them jumped on the gravy train. We must keep exposing who the real "welfare queens" are---they are the corporations and individuals with the TRump family connections, fat government contracts, and business grants based on lies.
The 2025 ICE custody death toll is 30, so far. The grift and corruption is unprecedented along with the sadism. Thanks for the history lesson, Thom. This smash and grab TRump syndicate is not going away and neither are those of us fighting back. See you in the streets.
I don't know it as a fact, but besides government liability, companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic have insurance coverage and have been paying claims.
I never claimed to be an expert, but i know this, neither are you.
Your head is so far up your own ass, that you can't see what is goving on around you.
And yes, you can try to sue ICE and CBP, but they claim sovereign immunity.
My wife was a building official and sovereign immunity protected her as well.
Now Mr Expert, Cite some cases against ICE and CBP,
where the complainant prevailed.
A Wisconsin judge, Hannah C. Dugan, was recently tried and convicted of felony obstruction for helping an undocumented immigrant evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in April 2025.
ICE obstructs representatives from visiting detention centers, ICE arrested
The U.S. Representative arrested and charged by federal authorities in connection with an incident involving ICE agents is Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), charged with impeding federal officers during a May 2025 protest/oversight visit at a Newark detention center, alongside Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, whose charges were dropped, while McIver faces ongoing federal prosecution, reports NJ Spotlight News and ABC
Tell me again about how the law protect us. In your dreams Daniel, maybe once, but no longer. Live in the present not the past Daniel.
The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346, 2671-2680, provides for monetary damages on account of damage to or loss of property, or personal injury or death, allegedly caused by the negligent or wrongful act of a federal government employee acting within the scope of his or her employment. Claims made to an agency under the FTCA are referred to as “administrative claims,” and must be received within two years of the date the claim accrued. Within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor is responsible for processing administrative claims made against the agency.
Filing a Claim
If you believe you have suffered personal injury or property damage due to an alleged act or omission by an ICE employee, you may complete and sign a Standard Form 95, Claim for Damage, Injury or Death. Alternatively, you may provide written notification (such as a letter) detailing: 1) the allegation(s), 2) sum certain (total dollar amount claimed in damages), and 3) an original signature of the claimant(s). You should also include all documentation supporting your claim.
Completed and signed forms or other written notification, along with the documentation supporting your claim, should be submitted to:
How long will this process you describe last - months to years, years to decades? Now add in not speaking English or having enough money to afford in a competent immigration lawyer, maybe access to a phone, maybe not being able to work to help other members of your family. Will each family member have to file their own claim.? Can immigration parents sue American Maga families for (illegally) supposedly adopting their children? And who knows how they were vetted in the mad rush to remove the children? If other people had to go thru the process you're describing they'd probably go nuts.
Again, you quote the law, I asked for examples of people who have filed suit and prevailed, you provided none.
The law provides for redress, but sovereign immunity covers their ass.
Yeh, I am an asshole Daniel, I don't bow to self claimed authority. Maybe you have been able to bully and bullshit your way around, but not with me Daniel.
Many of us saw and heard the propaganda for privatization drum beat. I say social democracy is our path forward. If we can have a collective memory drum beat to let the young voters know it doesn't have to be this direction away from democracy to dictatorship in America. The Democratic Leadership MUST evolve and accept a new platform! We have a 2 party system so the Democratic Party must be united. Reject the RepubliCONS and CONservatives! Call BS on the SCOTUS for their legalizing BRIBERY. We the People must have our VOTE stay strong.
Fascism with an American face. Actually there is a perfectly good model for profiting from human suffering. It's one of the oldest industries in history, and it is called slavery. Putting people in chains and paying them (at most) a pittance for their labor is a story that goes back to antiquity. The refinement here is middlemen getting paid just to incarcerate them rather than acting as traders. And for another analogy that I've brought up before, the terrible 1850 Fugitive Slave Act basically allowed catchers to take anyone suspected of being a runaway and drag them off the streets. But at least then there was some minimal legal process they had to follow. I doubt if anybody in the current administration knows their history, but rotten policies often lead to the same terrible methods.
And right about the phony excuse of being more "efficient". Under Trump (and yes, Biden did some of this too) the total number of flights made to deport people has surpassed 1700. and now the government is buying its own little airline from bankrupt Spirit. Plus you have the costs of bribing countries to take the passengers. Where is the savings in all this?
Here in Baghad By the Sea, during the Eisenhower administration's Operation Wetback, we deported some Cubans to Mejico because officers couln't tell the players without a scorecard.
Right, and Hispanic U.S. citizens were also rounded up and thrown out. The U.S. seems to go through periodic episodes of fearing foreigners. You can go back to the innuendos against the Irish in the 1830s, the mass murder of Chinese in Western towns in the late 19th century, and the Red Scare after World War I. We are in a particularly bad time with a well-organized governmental effort, the worst since the Japanese-American internment camps. Hopefully there will be enough push back against it, though right now things are getting worse. There are plans to begin the denaturalization of 100 to 200 citizens a month. It's actually a quota, and ridiculous since between 2017 and 2025 there were a total of 120 cases. It's a slick way to try and stifle dissent, and it's also both mean and sick.
Reading this seems to be a recap of what you and others have been saying for a long time. As I wrote this, you came on the Velshi program with Michael Green. Until this description of our capitalism, our culture, is on every legacy channel, every day, we will continue to destroy our system of governance. I heard nothing new today that I hadn't already read many times before, but I was intrigued by Michael Green's stats. I can only hope that every American citizen reads The Last American President. Thank you for your unending efforts!
There is no depravity in the way the Democrats treat the American people. As a matter of fact, aside from the Republican Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party has done nothing to promote or enact Civil Rights statutes, women’s rights or LGBTQ rights. No doubt that there are oligarchs in the Democratic Party but they seem less malignant, still playing by the few rules that remain. I just wish that the Dems had realized a frail looking candidate, even if still in office, would have a difficult time getting elected. And a racist, sexist populace will not be so accepting of a candidate forced upon them w only 90 days of campaigning. There is no reason, aside from the vanity, hubris, and candidate/office loyalists, for us to be in this mess, this existential crisis of purpose. There is plenty of blame to go around aside from the kleptocrats surrounding trump.
Actually Grant did everything he could to implement Reconstruction and insure that formerly enslaved people had full civil rights. But as we know that effort failed when he left office. And Teddy Roosevelt was as racist as his times, but at least was a little open to recognizing people of color. And you are right that Biden shouldn't have run again. As I mentioned yesterday, this has happened before with a rapidly sickening Roosevelt winning in 1944, and then being in no shape to oppose Stalin at Yalta. But apparently nobody learned from that.
Actually Mitch. All civil rights acts, including the 19th Amendment were passed during Republican administrations at state and federal level.
That all changed with LBJ he had power and used it to pass the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and Great Society Program, at that point the racists and right wingers fled to the Republican Party.
Crime pays, immorality pays, bribes work, actually legalized payoffs for profit. Environmental regulations be damned, kill everything for money, call truth a hoax. Bob Dylan sang what I'm feeling, "There must be some way out of here said the joker to the thief there's too much confusion I can't get no relief". I believe that Trump and crew will die of their own vicious stupidities. Or am I giving the American people more credit than they deserve?
Last night, my spouse and I watched the new movie Nuremberg staring Russell Crowe as Herman Göring. Not only was the acting superb, but the production of the Nuremberg trials evolved in a way that discussions of the devolution of Hitler's rise were clearly in synch with Donald Trump's rise to power.
Whenever the question of how the German people could support the hideous crimes under Hitler, the answers were similar to when I asked German WWII survivors the same question - nonchalance. We had businesses to run, families to feed. It was all gradual. The movie even addressed the mass of concentration camps all across Deutschland. Viewers cannot help buy notice that America's SS, ICE, is doing the same thing right now!
Toward the end, when confronted by the Holocaust and other war crimes, Göring was asked how he could have led that. He asserted that it was his patriotism. The Nazi party was about restoring Germany's Post-WWI greatness in the world. MGGA???
Trump’s cruelty is only possible due to the precedent set by Democrats in their maltreatment of immigrants and their support for the creation of and inhumanity of ICE and CBP. My Substack is not monetized but I urge impartial Thom Hartmann readers to consider learning about the pre-Trump realities of how Obama and Biden contributed to this moment and how Biden even used Trump-era anti-immigrant policy to deny migrants their right to asylum. https://barryjkaufmando.substack.com/p/youre-next-the-blowback-for-the-spiritual
Oh yes, history is very rarely a case of just good guys versus bad guys, though in our current situation it's clear which group is at least somewhat more oriented towards civil rights and the middle class. (Nobody is helping the poor, though the genius of Trump was to appeal to them.) Post-Carter Democrats have a lot to answer for (Clinton once said that fiscally they had become Eisenhower Republicans) and to my mind brilliant candidate Obama turned into sellout president Obama. But a corrupted system corrupts people. Change that and we might start moving forward again. Meanwhile getting the worst of them out and beginning to repair the damage have to be starting points.
Compare this reality to the simple, straightforward prose of the Pledge of Allegiance. How can anybody recite "...with liberty and justice for all" without gagging?
Aspirational, not literal, never was, can never be, regardless of the form of government
Nowadays not so much aspirational as counterfactual.
Both are true, there is no contradiction there.
Ditto "land of the free, home of the brave".
Smash and grab.....
People dying in the desert and drowning in the rivers did not move the emotions of those on the right. Now we have a regime that revels in those tragedies. No more pretense of decency. Just unapologetic cruelty to the very population that made sure our crops were picked and the meat was processed to feed us. Covid taught Republicans nothing of gratitude or kindness.
They jumped on the TRump Train, and the thieving portion of them jumped on the gravy train. We must keep exposing who the real "welfare queens" are---they are the corporations and individuals with the TRump family connections, fat government contracts, and business grants based on lies.
The 2025 ICE custody death toll is 30, so far. The grift and corruption is unprecedented along with the sadism. Thanks for the history lesson, Thom. This smash and grab TRump syndicate is not going away and neither are those of us fighting back. See you in the streets.
Agreed, excellent comments. Maybe its time for the white bird to smile up ... maybe protests need to be a bit more ah hmm ... assertive.
I don't know it as a fact, but besides government liability, companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic have insurance coverage and have been paying claims.
In essence, we hire them, pay them, and pay for that insurance. That sucks.
Appreciate the information, Daniel, as always.
Maybe states can use their sovereign right to use corporate charter laws and ban for profit detention systems?
States and local governments often are in competition for the business.
State entities like pension funds that hold corporate stock can bring suit.
The families of victims like Jakelin Caal Maquin may have the right to sue....
Sovereign immunity.
1. Private companies don't have sovereign anything.
2. Governments, limited in civil cases.
You are an expert in NOTHING.
The child died in government possession.
I never claimed to be an expert, but i know this, neither are you.
Your head is so far up your own ass, that you can't see what is goving on around you.
And yes, you can try to sue ICE and CBP, but they claim sovereign immunity.
My wife was a building official and sovereign immunity protected her as well.
Now Mr Expert, Cite some cases against ICE and CBP,
where the complainant prevailed.
A Wisconsin judge, Hannah C. Dugan, was recently tried and convicted of felony obstruction for helping an undocumented immigrant evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in April 2025.
ICE obstructs representatives from visiting detention centers, ICE arrested
The U.S. Representative arrested and charged by federal authorities in connection with an incident involving ICE agents is Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), charged with impeding federal officers during a May 2025 protest/oversight visit at a Newark detention center, alongside Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, whose charges were dropped, while McIver faces ongoing federal prosecution, reports NJ Spotlight News and ABC
Tell me again about how the law protect us. In your dreams Daniel, maybe once, but no longer. Live in the present not the past Daniel.
YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE.
Claims Under the Federal Tort Claims Act
The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346, 2671-2680, provides for monetary damages on account of damage to or loss of property, or personal injury or death, allegedly caused by the negligent or wrongful act of a federal government employee acting within the scope of his or her employment. Claims made to an agency under the FTCA are referred to as “administrative claims,” and must be received within two years of the date the claim accrued. Within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor is responsible for processing administrative claims made against the agency.
Filing a Claim
If you believe you have suffered personal injury or property damage due to an alleged act or omission by an ICE employee, you may complete and sign a Standard Form 95, Claim for Damage, Injury or Death. Alternatively, you may provide written notification (such as a letter) detailing: 1) the allegation(s), 2) sum certain (total dollar amount claimed in damages), and 3) an original signature of the claimant(s). You should also include all documentation supporting your claim.
Completed and signed forms or other written notification, along with the documentation supporting your claim, should be submitted to:
Office of the Principal Legal Advisor
District Court Litigation Division
500 12th Street, SW, Mailstop 5900
Washington, DC 20536
https://www.ice.gov/about-ice/opla/ftca
How long will this process you describe last - months to years, years to decades? Now add in not speaking English or having enough money to afford in a competent immigration lawyer, maybe access to a phone, maybe not being able to work to help other members of your family. Will each family member have to file their own claim.? Can immigration parents sue American Maga families for (illegally) supposedly adopting their children? And who knows how they were vetted in the mad rush to remove the children? If other people had to go thru the process you're describing they'd probably go nuts.
Again, you quote the law, I asked for examples of people who have filed suit and prevailed, you provided none.
The law provides for redress, but sovereign immunity covers their ass.
Yeh, I am an asshole Daniel, I don't bow to self claimed authority. Maybe you have been able to bully and bullshit your way around, but not with me Daniel.
Many of us saw and heard the propaganda for privatization drum beat. I say social democracy is our path forward. If we can have a collective memory drum beat to let the young voters know it doesn't have to be this direction away from democracy to dictatorship in America. The Democratic Leadership MUST evolve and accept a new platform! We have a 2 party system so the Democratic Party must be united. Reject the RepubliCONS and CONservatives! Call BS on the SCOTUS for their legalizing BRIBERY. We the People must have our VOTE stay strong.
Fascism with an American face. Actually there is a perfectly good model for profiting from human suffering. It's one of the oldest industries in history, and it is called slavery. Putting people in chains and paying them (at most) a pittance for their labor is a story that goes back to antiquity. The refinement here is middlemen getting paid just to incarcerate them rather than acting as traders. And for another analogy that I've brought up before, the terrible 1850 Fugitive Slave Act basically allowed catchers to take anyone suspected of being a runaway and drag them off the streets. But at least then there was some minimal legal process they had to follow. I doubt if anybody in the current administration knows their history, but rotten policies often lead to the same terrible methods.
And right about the phony excuse of being more "efficient". Under Trump (and yes, Biden did some of this too) the total number of flights made to deport people has surpassed 1700. and now the government is buying its own little airline from bankrupt Spirit. Plus you have the costs of bribing countries to take the passengers. Where is the savings in all this?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/us-signs-boeing-trump-deportation-deal
Here in Baghad By the Sea, during the Eisenhower administration's Operation Wetback, we deported some Cubans to Mejico because officers couln't tell the players without a scorecard.
Right, and Hispanic U.S. citizens were also rounded up and thrown out. The U.S. seems to go through periodic episodes of fearing foreigners. You can go back to the innuendos against the Irish in the 1830s, the mass murder of Chinese in Western towns in the late 19th century, and the Red Scare after World War I. We are in a particularly bad time with a well-organized governmental effort, the worst since the Japanese-American internment camps. Hopefully there will be enough push back against it, though right now things are getting worse. There are plans to begin the denaturalization of 100 to 200 citizens a month. It's actually a quota, and ridiculous since between 2017 and 2025 there were a total of 120 cases. It's a slick way to try and stifle dissent, and it's also both mean and sick.
I never thought, when I was young, that I would say this, but being an octogenairan is a blessing.
Well documented, disturbingly frightening analysis. Corruption has been made legal.
Reading this seems to be a recap of what you and others have been saying for a long time. As I wrote this, you came on the Velshi program with Michael Green. Until this description of our capitalism, our culture, is on every legacy channel, every day, we will continue to destroy our system of governance. I heard nothing new today that I hadn't already read many times before, but I was intrigued by Michael Green's stats. I can only hope that every American citizen reads The Last American President. Thank you for your unending efforts!
There is no depravity in the way the Democrats treat the American people. As a matter of fact, aside from the Republican Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party has done nothing to promote or enact Civil Rights statutes, women’s rights or LGBTQ rights. No doubt that there are oligarchs in the Democratic Party but they seem less malignant, still playing by the few rules that remain. I just wish that the Dems had realized a frail looking candidate, even if still in office, would have a difficult time getting elected. And a racist, sexist populace will not be so accepting of a candidate forced upon them w only 90 days of campaigning. There is no reason, aside from the vanity, hubris, and candidate/office loyalists, for us to be in this mess, this existential crisis of purpose. There is plenty of blame to go around aside from the kleptocrats surrounding trump.
Actually Grant did everything he could to implement Reconstruction and insure that formerly enslaved people had full civil rights. But as we know that effort failed when he left office. And Teddy Roosevelt was as racist as his times, but at least was a little open to recognizing people of color. And you are right that Biden shouldn't have run again. As I mentioned yesterday, this has happened before with a rapidly sickening Roosevelt winning in 1944, and then being in no shape to oppose Stalin at Yalta. But apparently nobody learned from that.
Actually Mitch. All civil rights acts, including the 19th Amendment were passed during Republican administrations at state and federal level.
That all changed with LBJ he had power and used it to pass the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and Great Society Program, at that point the racists and right wingers fled to the Republican Party.
Very good point William
Crime pays, immorality pays, bribes work, actually legalized payoffs for profit. Environmental regulations be damned, kill everything for money, call truth a hoax. Bob Dylan sang what I'm feeling, "There must be some way out of here said the joker to the thief there's too much confusion I can't get no relief". I believe that Trump and crew will die of their own vicious stupidities. Or am I giving the American people more credit than they deserve?
Last night, my spouse and I watched the new movie Nuremberg staring Russell Crowe as Herman Göring. Not only was the acting superb, but the production of the Nuremberg trials evolved in a way that discussions of the devolution of Hitler's rise were clearly in synch with Donald Trump's rise to power.
Whenever the question of how the German people could support the hideous crimes under Hitler, the answers were similar to when I asked German WWII survivors the same question - nonchalance. We had businesses to run, families to feed. It was all gradual. The movie even addressed the mass of concentration camps all across Deutschland. Viewers cannot help buy notice that America's SS, ICE, is doing the same thing right now!
Toward the end, when confronted by the Holocaust and other war crimes, Göring was asked how he could have led that. He asserted that it was his patriotism. The Nazi party was about restoring Germany's Post-WWI greatness in the world. MGGA???
Trump’s cruelty is only possible due to the precedent set by Democrats in their maltreatment of immigrants and their support for the creation of and inhumanity of ICE and CBP. My Substack is not monetized but I urge impartial Thom Hartmann readers to consider learning about the pre-Trump realities of how Obama and Biden contributed to this moment and how Biden even used Trump-era anti-immigrant policy to deny migrants their right to asylum. https://barryjkaufmando.substack.com/p/youre-next-the-blowback-for-the-spiritual
Hi Boris, still doing Vlad's work I see. Do you get paid or is it a labor of love.?
Putin's troll farms are quite busy, Thousands of fake accounts, clogging up social media.
Where you type Democrats, you should be typing Republicans, but you know that.
You have nothing to say about Republicans and nothing to say about that Genocidal, thieving war criminal Putin, except to blame America and NATO
Oh yes, history is very rarely a case of just good guys versus bad guys, though in our current situation it's clear which group is at least somewhat more oriented towards civil rights and the middle class. (Nobody is helping the poor, though the genius of Trump was to appeal to them.) Post-Carter Democrats have a lot to answer for (Clinton once said that fiscally they had become Eisenhower Republicans) and to my mind brilliant candidate Obama turned into sellout president Obama. But a corrupted system corrupts people. Change that and we might start moving forward again. Meanwhile getting the worst of them out and beginning to repair the damage have to be starting points.