letters from Boston:

For every negative action that happens in the politics of our nation, there is a more positive reaction. In Miami-Dade, one reaction took place last week.

It was the courage of Judge Milton Hirsch. The judge who blocked efforts by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez to turn his local police department and jail into a drag-net for mindless deportations. Judge Hirsch ruled that such an abdication of local policing functions to federal authorities is unconstitutional and a violation of the Tenth Amendment.

He wrote: “States cannot cede their reserved powers to the federal government — no, not even if they wish to do so." He continued, "Miami is not and has never been, a sanctuary city. But America is, and has always been, a sanctuary country.” Read the rest of this week's blog entry below.



Yours truly,

Martin

PS - Click HERE to sign the petition telling your Congressmember to boycott Trump's St. Patrick's Day Party. Our leaders should not share shamrocks or green beers with the immigrant-bashing, Muslim travel banning Donald Trump.





Letters from Boston: We Shall Overcome
For every negative action that happens in the politics of our nation, there is a more positive reaction. The bad things are underway. The immigrant round-up, Mr. Trump says, “is a military operation.” Military operations within the United States are generally prohibited by federal law. It’s an American thing.

The reaction of good people will follow, soon, if we are still a great nation.

In Miami-Dade, one reaction took place last week.

It was the courage of Judge Milton Hirsch. The judge who blocked efforts by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez to turn his local police department and jail into a drag-net for mindless deportations. The Mayor was apparently afraid of Trump’s threat to keep millions in federal money from going to Miami-Dade. (Most mayors across America are vowing to fight and resist.)

Judge Hirsch ruled that such an abdication of local policing functions to federal authorities is unconstitutional and a violation of the Tenth Amendment.

He wrote:

“States cannot cede their reserved powers to the federal government — no, not even if they wish to do so.”
“Miami is not and has never been, a sanctuary city. But America is, and has always been, a sanctuary country.”
Score one for liberty. Well done, Judge Hirsch. You’ve made our immigrant ancestors smile.

Hopefully, this battle will inspire Mayors across America to hold strong.

How easy it is to order our federal government to do bad things, for a time, when one is entrusted with the power of the Presidency.

In a new low for the office of the Presidency, Trump used this year’s State of the Union address in our House of Representatives to falsely represent immigrant people as an enormous criminal threat to the rest of us. The truth is immigrants actually commit far fewer violent crimes than the supposedly pure-blooded white “rest of us.”

Turning immigrant people into a massive collective threat makes it easier for Mr. Trump to dehumanize them and desensitize the rest of us from feeling any sympathy for moms, dads, and the children who are being torn apart, sent back to death gangs, or caged like animals in the growing network of for-profit internment camps that are now expanding across the southwestern United States.

Once Presidents “turn on” switches like for-profit immigrant internment camps, it is hard to turn them off. Check out how dramatically the stocks of for-profit prisons have sky-rocketed since the election. Already John Lafferty, Chief of the Asylum Division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirms having secured 20,000 additional beds — a 500% increase from current capacity.

A new DHS memo released last week proposes immigration prosecutors cage parents apart from their children unless they drop their applications for asylum and leave our country.

“The ‘handcuffs’ have been taken off of immigration enforcement,” the President says. And “really bad ones are being taken away.”

And who are these supposedly “really bad ones” that our government drags from their homes and often times from their American-born children?