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Border groups renew demands for Abbott to end Operation Lone Star

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EAGLE PASS, Texas — Calling it a financial failure and threat to the lives of asylum-seekers, a coalition of border groups on Tuesday renewed their demands for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to end Operation Lone Star.

The state has spent $4.5 billion in the past two years to deploy Department of Public Safety troopers and the Texas Army National Guard to the Texas–Mexico border. The state also has placed razor wire, and empty shipping containers on the north side of the Rio Grande and recently deployed a 1,000-foot-long string of buoys south of Eagle Pass.

The state has earmarked an additional $5 billion to continue the anti-illegal immigration op for another two years.

“It’s wasted money. What could they spend the money on besides this political stunt that Abbott is carrying out here?” said Juanita Martinez, a member of the board of directors of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition. “Eagle Pass is a beautiful town. We are not under attack by immigrants, we are not in danger. We are fine. We want Abbott out of here. We want the concertina wire to be gone.”

Grievances were aired at Shelby Park, a few feet from where the state is storing spare buoys, patrol boats and more than a dozen government vehicles and assorted gear. It was the first public event at the park since the city decided against designating it as private land so state officials could have free reign there.

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said Operation Lone Star is not only a symbol of hate against migrants fleeing poverty or persecution but is also killing and injuring people. He cited drownings in areas where the operation is ongoing, and a Saturday incident in which a Texas state guardsman allegedly shot a Mexican man across the Rio Grande.

“We are calling on the State Department to launch a criminal investigation not only of that incident, but also multiple incidents under Operation Lone Star,” Garcia said. “The buoys at Eagle Pass are part of that campaign of violence against our immigrant communities. I am glad the people of Eagle Pass are resisting.”

Grassroots activists from El Paso to Brownsville, Texas, joined Martinez and Garcia in calling for the termination of Operation Lone Star and said their communities don’t support it.

[…]

Julia Young, a historian of migration, Mexico and Latin America, and Catholicism at The Catholic University of America in Washington, told OSV News that such campaign promises [i.e. DeSantis' promise to send U.S. special forces into Mexico to take out fentanyl labs, etc.] "are very typical of politicians who speak about complex issues such as immigration, U.S.–Mexico relations and narco-trafficking during campaign season."

"They generally offer simplistic, headline-grabbing solutions to very complex problems," she said. "In this case, DeSantis seems to think that taking out cartels would be easy and a solution to the drug problem."

Young said that even assuming a hypothetical President DeSantis "could get congressional approval and popular support to send troops into Mexico, attacking the cartels would be extremely complicated both politically and militarily."

"It would certainly be considered an act of war by Mexicans, who are keenly aware of the many times that the United States has invaded that country in the past," she said. "Given that there are multiple cartels, and they are are decentralized organizations whose operations are both hidden in very remote rural terrain as well as embedded in large cities and towns, it would also be a very challenging military exercise, impossible to carry out on 'Day One.' "

[…]

Young also noted that "attacking cartels in Mexico does nothing about the fact that fentanyl is now largely produced in China and other countries, in addition to Mexico."

"Disrupting the activities of the cartels in Mexico might slow, but certainly would not stop, the fentanyl trade," Young said. "Finally, attacking Mexico does nothing about the fact that demand for narcotic drugs still exists in the United States. Without addressing demand, supply will just move to other places, but it won't disappear."

Young said "this not to say that politicians should try to do nothing about the fentanyl problem, which is both terrible and terrifying."

"Rather, Catholics and all other voters should be aware that talk is cheap, and simple solutions can rarely address such complex problems," she said.

Wosbald wrote: 07 Sep 2023, 09:55 +JMJ+

Title: Experts warn of ‘simplistic’ rhetoric on the campaign trail when discussing drugs and migration
Source: Detroit Catholic / OSV News
Link: detroitcatholic DOT com/news/experts-warn-of-simplistic-rhetoric-on-the-campaign-trail-when-discussing-drugs-and-migration

The Money-Quotes:

Julia Young, a historian of migration, Mexico and Latin America, and Catholicism at The Catholic University of America in Washington, told OSV News that such campaign promises [i.e. DeSantis' promise to send U.S. special forces into Mexico to take out fentanyl labs, etc.] "are very typical of politicians who speak about complex issues such as immigration, U.S.–Mexico relations and narco-trafficking during campaign season."

"They generally offer simplistic, headline-grabbing solutions to very complex problems," she said. "In this case, DeSantis seems to think that taking out cartels would be easy and a solution to the drug problem."

Young said that even assuming a hypothetical President DeSantis "could get congressional approval and popular support to send troops into Mexico, attacking the cartels would be extremely complicated both politically and militarily."

"It would certainly be considered an act of war by Mexicans, who are keenly aware of the many times that the United States has invaded that country in the past," she said. "Given that there are multiple cartels, and they are are decentralized organizations whose operations are both hidden in very remote rural terrain as well as embedded in large cities and towns, it would also be a very challenging military exercise, impossible to carry out on 'Day One.' "

[…]

Young also noted that "attacking cartels in Mexico does nothing about the fact that fentanyl is now largely produced in China and other countries, in addition to Mexico."

"Disrupting the activities of the cartels in Mexico might slow, but certainly would not stop, the fentanyl trade," Young said. "Finally, attacking Mexico does nothing about the fact that demand for narcotic drugs still exists in the United States. Without addressing demand, supply will just move to other places, but it won't disappear."

Young said "this not to say that politicians should try to do nothing about the fentanyl problem, which is both terrible and terrifying."

"Rather, Catholics and all other voters should be aware that talk is cheap, and simple solutions can rarely address such complex problems," she said.

Trump’s Menacing Rosh Hashanah Message to American Jews [Explainer, Opinion]

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SEPTEMBER 19, 2023 — Like most politicians, former President Donald Trump marked the occasion of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, by passing along holiday greetings to American Jews. Unlike most politicians, Trump used the opportunity to threaten them.

On Sunday evening, just as Rosh Hashanah was coming to a close, Trump posted a meme on his social-media platform, Truth Social, excoriating “liberal Jews” who had “voted to destroy America.” (Majorities of American Jews have voted for Democrats since before World War II.) “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake,” the caption continued, “and make better choices going forward!”

Trump’s Rosh Hashanah broadside was far from the first time that he had shared objectionable sentiments about Jewish people. But it was particularly ugly in the way it deliberately singled out a specific constituency during that constituency’s holiest season. As the conservative writer Philip Klein wrote in National Review, “Color me skeptical that Trump’s defenders would be so understanding if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer were to post a Merry Christmas message … blaming Christian conservatives for destroying America because they didn’t vote for Democrats.”

But while Trump’s message may be offensive, it is also instructive, because it reflects the way that many people think about Jews. Some anti-Semites treat Jewish people as a menacing monolith that suborns society to its sinister ends. But others divide the community into “good Jews,” who warrant respect and provisional protection, and “bad Jews,” who can be subjected to all manner of abuse. In this construction, the righteous Jews are those who affirm the bigot and support his worldview, while the unworthy ones are those who stubbornly refuse to get with the program. Like other minorities, the Jewish minority is expected to conform to the preferences of a dominant majority culture — whether that is political or religious — and those who dissent become fair game for denunciation and discrimination.

Sometimes, as in Trump’s case, this distinction between good Jews and bad ones is made along partisan lines. In other instances, bigots draw the line geographically between the Jews in Israel and those outside it, with one community venerated and the other denigrated. This is why former Republican Congressman Steve King pointed to his support for Israel when criticized over his sympathy for the white nationalists who assail Jews in North America. For the same reason, Ken Livingstone, the socialist former mayor of London and inveterate critic of the Jewish state, infamously insisted that “a real anti-Semite doesn’t just hate the Jews in Israel.” For a certain type of bigot, the fact that they deprecate only the right kind of Jews means they cannot be a bigot.

This Semitic sorting never ends well, because justifications for abusing Jews have a way of metastasizing. Permission structures for anti-Semitism are rarely restricted to their original target. Once a society starts accepting attacks on entire swaths of Jews — for being too liberal, too religious, too secular, too pro-Israel, too anti-Israel, too whatever — that acceptance will grow. And when Jewish existence becomes conditional on staying in the good graces of a non-Jewish actor or movement, it becomes an impoverished existence — provisional and precarious, forever looking over its shoulder.

This is why true friends of the Jewish people don’t pick which half of the world’s Jews are the good ones and which half are the bad ones, like some sort of anti-Semitic Santa Claus. They do not paint millions of Jewish people with Manichaean moral strokes, but rather grant them the dignity of their diversity and judge individuals as individuals, not as avatars for their group. Those who, like Trump and King, make lists of bad Jews or suggest that Jews aren’t proper Jews if they don’t adopt a certain ideology are not allies of the Jews. They’re the people laying the groundwork for persecution.

Wosbald wrote: 20 Sep 2023, 10:01 +JMJ+

Source: The Atlantic / Deep Shtetl
Link: theatlantic DOT com/ideas/archive/2023/09/trumps-menacing-rosh-hashanah-message-to-american-jews/675367/

Trump’s Menacing Rosh Hashanah Message to American Jews [Explainer, Opinion]