Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
I haven’t seen a family friend, Steve, for a few decades, but we’ve kept up a conversation over the past several years. Steve recently returned to Canada, where he had lived for many years after the Vietnam era. It struck me, while trying to make sense of all the political chaos around me, that it was my last visit to his homestead in Canada in 1971 when I considered moving there. Steve seems a fairly middle-of-the-road person. He supports Democrats too much for my liking, as many do who see the horrors all around us gather in Trump’s dictatorship. The Democrats have not provided anything near an adequate response to the extreme far right. Democrats paved the way to hell for Trump and his supporters, the oligarchs of the corporate elite. The reversals of the New Deal began almost immediately after the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Not surprisingly, attacks against workers and the insanity of McCarthyism began during the Truman administration. The Democrats have always been the patina over the political and economic systems in the US, which gave us empire, war, and the off-shoring of jobs that gutted the working class and large segments of the middle class. Income inequality and its discontents were among the factors that Democrats helped facilitate and the long decline that led in a direct line to today’s political, economic, and social debacles.
A few nights ago, I attended an informational meeting in a nearby city to learn how Massachusetts is reacting to the disaster which is the war against immigrants. It was part of my own education in preparing for more Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that have taken place in Massachusetts and are expected to continue. The shocks to human dignity and decency from the federal government’s attacks against immigrants seem to be nonstop. Last night, I received a message from the response team of which I’m a part that outlines a Trump plan to bait immigrant children 14 and over to get them to relinquish their right to remain in the US. The communication below was written by a lawyer according to the person who posted it at the response site:
We learned today that ICE will launch an operation reportedly named “Freaky Friday,” [October 3, 2025] targeting unaccompanied children aged 14 and older of all nationalities. What we’ve learned:
Children detained and released will be sent a “threat” letter from ICE threatening indefinite detention and immediate transfer to ICE upon age-out if they do not waive jurisdiction under the TVPRA [Trafficking Victims Protection and Reauthorization Act] and withdraw applications for relief.
Children will be offered $2,500 to return to their countries of origin.
If children do not comply with the “offer,” the letter intimates their parents
in the US will be arrested.
ICE plans to detain all age-outs, and they anticipate legal challenges.
There are indications that the age threshold for this threat letter may be lowered to 10 years old.
We understand they plan to first target detained children but will also target children released from custody.
Can you please contact the minors (and/or sponsors) to let them know what is going on? (This communication has been edited for clarity.)
A recent article at CNN Politics corroborates some of the information noted above (October 3, 2025) in “Trump administration prepares to offer money to unaccompanied migrant teenagers to voluntarily leave the US.”
The Department of Homeland Security is preparing to offer unaccompanied migrant teenagers in the United States the option to voluntarily leave the country and receive a $2,500 payment, according to three sources familiar with the plans and an administration memo obtained by CNN.
The Trump administration has already been offering financial incentives —including a $1,000 exit bonus— to undocumented adult immigrants in the US to depart the country. Administration officials have argued that self-deportation incentives are more cost effective, given the high price tag of immigrant detention and deportation.
A notice sent to legal service providers Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services, seen by CNN, said the administration “will provide a one-time resettlement support stipend of $2,500 U.S. Dollars to unaccompanied alien children, 14 years of age and older, who have elected to voluntarily depart the United States as of the date of this notice and moving forward,” adding that the “benefit is intended to support reintegration efforts following departure.”
The latest move appears to be an extension of ongoing efforts to repatriate migrant children in custody. In late August, the Trump administration prepared dozens of Guatemalan children to be sent back to their home country — a move that was temporarily blocked by a federal judge. Declarations from some parents of the children in Guatemala revealed that they were unaware their child was being deported and raised concern over their safety if returned. That case is ongoing (CNN).
Who here is not the heir of immigrants? These attacks against human decency are personal attacks. One response of a local rapid response team administrator was to label the plan to continue to target children as “pure evil.” We are living in a society where evil is being normalized for masses of people. That is what fascism is about. I cannot place the attacks against immigrants in my head along with the memories I have of my grandparents, all immigrants, from Eastern Europe. They all were hard-working and decent people.
The post Pure Evil appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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My app (Eternity) shows 72 copies of the image with the red hat, in different sizes I have to scroll for ages to reach the text.
If possible please remove 70 of them, as they remove focus from the rest of the post.
Shows in boost too
Its a bot tho so not sure if you’d get a reply