20 May 23
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The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
Across the state, Floridians indicated a desperate desire to join Disney in its departure, suggesting that an unprecedented exodus may soon be under way.
“When I think of Florida, I think of gun violence, draconian abortion laws, and book banning,” Carol Foyler, who lives in Boca Raton, said. “When I think of Disney, I think of teacups, princesses, and singing animals. I want to be where Disney is.”
“I’ve lived in Florida all my life and never considered leaving before,” Harland Dorrinson, a resident of Fort Lauderdale, said. “But, wherever Disney goes, Ron DeSantis won’t be there, and that’s good enough for me.”
Tracy Klugian, who resides in Tampa, expressed a sentiment echoed by millions of others in the state. “I’d rather live in Disney without Florida than in Florida without Disney,” she said.
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A demonstration in response to the death of Manuel Terán, who was killed during a police raid inside Weelaunee People's Park, the planned site of a "Cop City" project, in Atlanta. (photo: Cheney Orr/Reuters)
City council to vote on giving taxpayer money to controversial project as state characterizes opposition as work of ‘terrorists’
Atlanta’s city council will soon vote on giving taxpayer money to the controversial scheme, which is months behind schedule due to protests. The Atlanta Police Foundation, the organization behind it, is also apparently coming up short in sought-after $60m in corporate funding.
Meanwhile, the state’s second-highest law enforcement official successfully argued this week against granting bail to one of three people recently arrested for leaving fliers on mailboxes in a north-western Georgia town. The flier called a police officer who lived nearby a “murderer” for being involved in the shooting and killing of an environmental activist.
The incident pushed the Cop City project on to global headlines; the state says the activist, Manuel Paez Terán, known as “Tortuguita”, fired first and the case is with a special prosecutor.
Police have arrested dozens of protestors since the 18 January shooting, and the state has insisted on labeling those who oppose Cop City as part of a “domestic terrorist organization”.
If the council approves the funding as early as 5 June, it will be against the wishes of nearly 300 Atlanta-area residents who signed up for seven-plus hours of public comment on Monday – plus another 100 or so who attended the meeting but weren’t able to sign up in time.
Some read opposition letters signed by college faculty, union presidents, neighborhood residents and other local groups. The meeting set a record for civic participation in the city’s modern era, several people who have been involved with city politics for decades told the Guardian.
It’s unclear whether public opposition will matter. City councilman Michael Bond, a member of one of two committees charged with reviewing the funding proposal, said: “I appreciate their passion. But that doesn’t absolve us from serving public employees.” None of the other council members replied to the Guardian’s repeated requests for comment.
Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, landed an editorial in the city’s main daily, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the day after the meeting. In it, he invoked a recent mass shooting – in which four were wounded and one person was killed – as a reason for building the training center, since such incidents “show that when a crisis hits, we rely on all our first responders to be on top of their game”.
But Shannon Cofrin Gaggero, a personal friend of Amy St. Pierre – the person killed in the shooting – published an op-ed in the Atlanta Community Press Collective in which she lambasted Dickens for “us[ing] her death in an attempt to drum up support for the deeply unpopular police training center.”
She noted St Pierre, a healthcare researcher, opposed Cop City and supported “a safer, more just society by advocating for common sense gun laws and investments in housing, education, healthcare and social services”.
Gaggero also mentions that she submitted an editorial to the AJC countering the mayor’s, but received no reply. To date, the AJC has only run one editorial in nearly two years of public protest that even questions the project – written by Bernice A King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. In it, she encourages the city to “identify a more suitable location” for the training center.
Many of the hundreds of residents addressing the council’s 14 members invoked the city’s civil rights legacy, and its most famous son, King.
This included Atlanta-area Black residents mourning deaths of family members at the hands of police, such as Jimmy Hill, whose son Jimmy Atchison was killed by police in 2019. Hill asked city council members who will soon consider the funding: “What happened to integrity?”
The meeting also included scientists, human rights attorneys, reverends, college students, school teachers, university faculty, community organizers, gardeners, environmentalists and senior citizens. Some expressed concern about the environmental impact of locating the training center in a forest amidst a changing climate.
Amelia Weltner, 34, told the meeting about her grandfather, Charles Weltner, a Democrat who was the sole member of Georgia’s congressional delegation to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and declined to run for re-election after his party asked him to support segregationist Lester Maddox.
“I get that they have political ambitions,” Weltner told the Guardian. “But in the long term, where does that get you? How do people view you after you’re gone?”
In an interview with the Guardian, Bond – son of civil rights leader Julian Bond – acknowledged he had never seen as many members of the public come to a city council meeting for an issue that wasn’t yet up for a vote, since being elected in 1994.
But he added some of the comments made “were not factual, or incorrect … such as saying that we were doing this in response to the unrest of 2020 – that’s not true”.
Many of those opposed to Cop City, however, do draw a line from the historic Black Lives Matter protests to Atlanta’s plans.
But even if the proposed $31m goes through, documents obtained through open records requests by the local media group Atlanta Community Press Collective suggest the Atlanta Police Foundation has concerns about cutting costs that may point to corporate funding issues.
Will Potter, who studied environmental movements in his book Green is the New Red, compared Bond’s characterization of public opposition to Cop City to other activism he’s studied.
“In environmental movements, there’s a moving of the goal posts when it comes to the ‘proper ways’ for achieving social and political change. And especially if they’re successful in any way. There’s always something pointed to, always a way of invalidating.”
Potter added:“It’s hard not to get cynical. What conditions have to be met for people to be heard? What is enough? Will they ever be heard?”
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Donald Trump. (photo: Intercept)
An exclusive CNN report that appears to point to a core weakness in Trump’s case is reinforcing the possibility that the 2024 presidential contender is in a heap of legal trouble.
Possible evidence that Trump knew that his claims that he could simply declassify material on a whim were false highlight his characteristic belief that laws and codes of presidential behavior do not apply to him. This is a factor that made his White House term a daily test of America’s democracy and legal system and may become even more acute if he wins the 2024 election.
The latest glimpse into special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation also shows that while any charges against Trump for potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice might be justified in a purely legal context, they would come with a high level of responsibility to explain to the public why such a step in a potentially complex case was merited in the charged atmosphere of a presidential election.
On the one hand, there is nothing more sacred than protecting the country’s secrets, especially those that could harm allies, help US enemies and endanger covert operatives. But the proposition that inside Washington arguments about classified material represent a priority for millions of voters is yet to be tested.
And fierce controversies still raging around Trump over the 2016 election show how toxic campaign season probes can be to American unity and US political and judicial institutions – all of which sharpens the need for a strong national interest justification for any prosecution.
National Archives and Trump again at odds
The exclusive report by CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez and Paula Reid is another serious sign of Trump’s potential legal exposure in the documents case — one of a flurry of investigations that include Smith’s examination of the ex-president’s role ahead of his supporters’ attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and a separate probe by a local district attorney into his effort to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia. Trump has already been indicted in Manhattan over alleged business irregularities related to a hush money payment in 2016.
CNN reported that the National Archives plans to hand 16 documents over to the special counsel that show Trump knew the correct procedure for declassifying such material. This could be significant because it gets to the question of whether Trump had criminal intent, a building block of any case against him. If there is evidence that the ex-president knew he couldn’t just declassify documents by taking them away from the White House – or even with a private thought as he once suggested – his defense on the issue of records stored at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida becomes more difficult.
In a May 16 letter obtained by CNN, acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall wrote to Trump – “The 16 records in question all reflect communications involving close presidential advisers, some of them directed to you personally, concerning whether, why, and how you should declassify certain classified records.”
In a CNN town hall event last week, Trump falsely claimed of top-secret documents: “By the way, they become automatically declassified when I took them.”
But former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday that the latest CNN reporting surrounding the National Archives was a sign that Smith was taking steps that could signal he may soon move against Trump.
“I think this is ‘i’ dotting and ‘t’ crossing. I think that this case is ready to go,” Cobb said.
“The simple fact is there is a process … and (Trump) totally ignored that and believes that the mere fact he took them declassifies (the documents). That is not the law.”
Still, Trump’s attorney, Jim Trusty, said on CNN on Wednesday that Trump had done nothing wrong and argued that as president he previously enjoyed substantial powers to declassify documents, in a possible preview of any future courtroom defense.
“At the end of his presidency, he relied on the constitutional authority as commander-in-chief which is to take documents and take them to Mar-a-Lago while still President as he was at the time and to effectively declassify and personalize them. He talked about declassifying them but he didn’t need to,” Trusty said. He also argued that there was a wide grey area in the interpretation of the Presidential Records Act – which says that the government reserves and retains complete ownership, possession and control of presidential documents.
If Cobb is right and Smith could be moving toward an indictment, Americans could soon be wrestling with an increasingly familiar question: What is the appropriate way to hold to account a president and presidential candidate whose core political model is rooted in breaking all the rules but whose indictment could further inflame an already deeply polarized nation?
Where does the national interest lie in pursuing Trump?
The fresh insight into Trump’s allegedly cavalier handling of classified documents as president and afterward is the latest twist in a saga that shot to public attention with the stunning search of his resort last year by the FBI – the first time that such a search occurred at the home of a former president. Agents took away classified and top secret documents but Trump’s allies claimed he had a “standing order” to declassify documents he took from the Oval Office to the White House residence. Some of those files may have been moved to Mar-a-Lago.
But 18 former top Trump administration officials said they never heard of any such order being issued during their time working for Trump, telling CNN that the claim was “ludicrous” and “ridiculous.” And there is no power for ex-presidents to declassify of possess highly sensitive national security documents, so the exact treatment given to each piece of secret information found at Mar-a-Lago could get to Trump’s potential culpability.
More broadly however, the documents case reinforces the underlying question swirling around Trump that is becoming more acute as the next election approaches.
There is a clear national interest in protecting classified information and enforcing laws surrounding presidential conduct in order to prevent an erosion of the political institutions that underpin the democracy that Trump has tried so often to weaken. And there is also a national interest in proving that no one — whether they are a president or ex-president is above the law.
At the same time however, there is also a profound national interest in the peaceful conduct of a presidential election that all Americans see as fair. And Trump has already successfully cast deep suspicion on the motives of the Justice Department and the Biden administration – arguing, that he is the target of a coordinated campaign of political persecution.
Smith has an obligation to follow the law and the evidence where it leads, and to make decisions on potential indictments and prosecutions on the same basis. But this case cannot unspool in isolation given Trump’s previous role and current presidential campaign. It comes with an obligation – presumably for Attorney General Merrick Garland – to look at the wider potential consequences of putting a former president and current presidential candidate on trial.
This also begs the question of whether a case over the mishandling of classified documents – which could turn on complex legal arguments and questions of motivation – will be an easy sell to a wider public audience and could play into Trump’s claims that he is being victimized. These may be false, but they help brew the secret political sauce which his supporters love.
The case is especially sensitive because Biden also had his own classified documents problem over material found in an office he used after leaving the vice presidency and his garage. The cases are distinct because there is no sign that the president deliberately took the documents and, unlike Trump, made no attempt to prevent their return to the Archives when they were found. But it will be easy for the ex-president and his allies to fog the details of these cases and make a political case that legal double standards are at play and there is a political motivation.
How would multiple indictments weigh on Trump’s 2024 campaign?
The question of the political impact of prosecuting Trump already came up since his indictment in a case being prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg appeared to spike his popularity in the GOP nominating race. It also caused his potential rivals for the top of the ticket to condemn the move as politicized, complicating their own attempts to defeat the ex-president. The case, focusing on alleged violations of book-keeping, is also a complex one to boil down into an argument that might convince millions of Americans Trump is being fairly dealt with.
One big unknown of the current presidential campaign is whether future and multiple indictments would further embolden Trump and cause persuadable voters that he’s being unfairly targeted? Or could it cause his campaign to sink into an abyss of legal and criminal liability?
The release this week of a report by another special counsel – the Trump administration-appointed John Durham – gave Trump fresh political ammunition to argue he’s being victimized. Durham argued that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia in 2016 should never have started – even though officials who were serving at the time and many legal analysts disputed his findings. Trump immediately seized on the report to embroider his claims that he is the victim of politicized investigations, casting his argument forward to seek to taint the Smith probe, the Georgia case and the Manhattan indictment.
Wednesday’s new details about his apparently deeper-than-previously-known jeopardy in the documents probe only add to a profound issue clouding the 2024 election.
It may be contrary to the national interest to ignore huge affronts to the rule of law by a previously sitting president – including alleged mishandling of classified information – since questions fundamental to American democracy are in play. But a prosecution could again create a political inferno that could further damage confidence among millions of Americans about the country’s legal and election systems.
This is the treacherous brink to which Trump has again brought the nation.
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Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The absurd RICO allegations come after the Biden administration hit the activists with federal charges that carry a 12-year sentence
In addition to the federal criminal charges — which carry a sentence of 12 years in prison — Florida’s attorney general sued two of the activists for damages. Heartbeat of Miami, a “crisis pregnancy center,” is also absurdly alleging that all four activists were engaged in a conspiracy.
The purported crime, the conspiracy, the federal charges? Spray painting.
“The underpinning of these prosecutions is absolutely political, and Florida political specifically,” Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center and attorney for defendant Amber Smith-Stewart, told me. “It’s DeSantis political.”
In her filing, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody cited the conspiracy case filed by Heartbeat of Miami and requested that a federal court “assess damages and fines against the defendants of $170,000 each.”
The Heartbeat of Miami suit, which names “Jane’s Revenge” as a defendant, includes civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations charges in a groundless attempt to frame autonomous protesters using a shared slogan as some sort of criminal organization. Moody also hit on this theme, reviving an old far-right canard by describing the four defendants as “members” of “antifa” as well as “Jane’s Revenge” — both of which she describes as “criminal organizations,” though neither is an organization with members at all.
“The underpinning of these prosecutions is absolutely political, and Florida political specifically.”
Legal experts say the RICO civil charges have a low chance of sticking. “We’re looking at four people acting over the course of a month,” said Regan of the alleged vandalism. “That does not a RICO make. There are no facts underlying this situation which would warrant that charge.”
Of the four defendants, three are women of color: members of the very same demographics most harmed by the decimation of reproductive rights.
The activists’ legal ordeal is the product of blatant and shameless acquiescence to Republican political pressure. GOP lawmakers have for months been calling on federal law enforcement to use the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act against reproductive rights activists — and Democrats have followed suit accordingly.
In January, the Justice Department charged Caleb Freestone and Amber Smith-Stewart under the FACE Act for spray painting pro-abortion messages and the tag “Jane’s Revenge” on the outside walls of a fake abortion clinic in Florida, one of many so-called crisis pregnancy centers.
DeSantis praised the charges but said that the Justice Department “needs to do a lot more.” His wish was soon granted by Joe Biden. Two more women in Florida, Annarella Rivera and Gabriella Oropesa, now also face federal FACE charges related to the same alleged act of graffiti. The act should, at most, carry a state-level misdemeanor charge. Instead, the FBI raided Rivera’s home with a heavily armed SWAT team, causing the mother of two and ultrasound technician to lose both her home and her job in the fallout.
Like Freestone and Smith-Stewart’s indictments, these FACE Act prosecutions are an affront to the law’s spirit but not its letter. The legislation was originally forged to protect abortion providers amid a deadly campaign of far-right extremism, but its wording does apply to all “reproductive health centers.” Operating behind a veneer of medical legitimacy, fake clinics duplicitously claim this label, offering pregnancy tests and sometimes ultrasounds alongside misinformation and anti-abortion dogma.
With these prosecutions, the Justice Department is complicit in further legitimizing and elevating these dangerous facilities and their deceptive practices as genuine reproductive health providers, at the very same time the Biden administration baselessly positions itself as a defender of reproductive justice.
It is no accident that both the criminal and civil cases will be heard in the very same federal court: the extremely conservative Middle District of Florida.
“Forum shopping appears to be very much afoot,” said Regan. “They found the most conservative venue most likely to be favorable to them in the country.”
The prosecutors and plaintiffs will indeed have to rely on right-wing, sympathetic judges to have any chances of success. The criminal and civil cases are all extraordinarily weak; no previous FACE Act charges have been successful based on a set of facts as light as they are in these “Jane’s Revenge” cases. The notion that spray painting slogans as vague as “we are everywhere” and “if abortions aren’t safe, neither are you” could rise to the level of credible threat is risible, especially given FACE law precedent that sets a much higher standard.
As with any capricious and overreaching prosecution, however, the effect is chilling even if the charges don’t hold up. For Rivera, the FBI raid alone was ruinous. And the broader stakes are high: If successful, anti-abortion zealots who have pushed these cases will further elevate fraudulent “crisis pregnancy centers” as worthy of robust legal protection, while genuine reproductive health clinics struggle to stay open and face an increase in far-right, anti-abortion attacks.
In pursuing these weak cases, the Justice Department has given a gift to the Republicans and their agenda of fascist forced births. In service of a spineless twosidesism, the government is persecuting those fighting for reproductive justice, while upholding well-funded fundamentalist institutions.
Federal law enforcement interest in pursuing such cases extends beyond Florida. The FBI has on a number of occasions in recent months posted calls for information on activities related to minor property damage against other fake clinics and anti-abortion institutions in states from Iowa to Oregon to New York, offering bounties of between $15,000 and $25,000 for information on those involved.
Even as a political maneuver, the Justice Department’s attempted appeasement of Republican wishes is a fool’s game. Fascists won’t be sated. The Democrats’ refusal to learn this lesson can only be understood as willful at this point. On Tuesday, Republican lawmakers held a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing to specifically condemn the Biden administration’s use of the FACE Act against the religious extremists for whom it was intended, and who are responsible for all attacks on legitimate reproductive health clinics.
“We believe that the facts show the Biden administration has shown a clear double standard of enforcing the FACE Act in a way that protects pro-abortion activists and facilities while substantially ignoring attacks on pro-life advocates, facilities and churches,” said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., during the hearing.
The Republicans, of course, did not mention the fact that four young reproductive justice activists in Florida are facing a potential 12 years in prison for graffiti. Their trials are expected to begin in August or September.abortion
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While The Crossroads Hotel was housing several migrants, rooms remained available. (photo: TheImageDirect)
Using doctored receipts and offering cash payments, a N.Y. nonprofit duped lawmakers and conservative media into ginning up anti-immigrant outrage
On Friday, The Mid-Hudson News, which interviewed several of the “displaced” men, found that the nonprofit YIT Foundation had offered cash, food, and alcohol to a group of 15 homeless men from a local shelter to pose as evicted veterans.
The organization’s Executive Director Sharon Finch told The Mid-Hudson News last week that 20 veterans housed at the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, New York, were given a day’s notice to vacate their rooms, allegedly to make room for undocumented migrants from New York City. But in reality, Finch herself had allegedly participated in a scheme to dupe local officials and the national media in order to malign migrants who had yet to arrive in town.
“[Finch] told us to act like we were the veterans that had been displaced. And she told us that if asked, we were supposed to say we had been kicked out and Sharon found us rooms in Fishkill,” said one man, who added that they were told to claim they were “too traumatized to talk about it,” if asked for details.
The explosive claim quickly became national news. State Assemblyman Brian Maher (R) became a self-appointed spokesperson for the supposed veterans, appearing on Fox News to call the situation “an embarrassment, a slap in the face to veterans, who are cast aside to allow for asylum seekers to come here.” Outlets like Fox, The New York Post, and Newsmax hammered the story for days. Maher went so far as to introduce a bill in the New York assembly to prohibit the displacement of veterans in favor of migrants.
Things began to unravel when local reporters reached out to the hotel in question, which said no such veterans were ever housed there. According to a Wednesday report from The Mid-Hudson News, photos of a receipt provided by Maher that allegedly showed a $37,000 payment for the rooms the vets were staying in had been doctored. The hotel’s manager claims they have “no record of this transaction.”
The manager told The Mid-Hudson News that no veterans had been kicked off the property, because none had been housed there in the first place, and that while they were housing several migrants, rooms remained available. Furthermore, the report found that a second hotel to which the veterans had allegedly been moved to after their “eviction” also had no bookings associated with the YIT Foundation, and hadn’t for a long time.
Fox publicly addressed the new developments in a televised update on Friday. “We’re now looking into new reports that a veterans’ advocate misled lawmakers and media outlets,” said the network.
On Friday, Maher admitted that he had been had by the foundation. “When Sharon and several veterans explained to me their situation, I believed them at their word,” he told The Mid-Hudson News. “I had absolutely no knowledge of any wrongdoing and believed that their stories were real until a phone conversation with Sharon yesterday afternoon when she explained to me that this did not happen the way she purported it to.”
The New York attorney general’s office said that it was aware of the situation and “looking into it.”
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A U.S. Border Patrol agent checks the passports of immigrants after they crossed the border with Mexico. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Mabel Alvarez Benedicks says eight-year-old daughter ‘cried and begged for her life’ but did not receive hospital care for influenza
Agents said her daughter’s diagnosis of influenza did not require hospital care, Mabel Alvarez Benedicks said in an emotional phone interview. They knew the girl had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia.
“They killed my daughter, because she was nearly a day and a half without being able to breathe,” Alvarez Benedicks said. “She cried and begged for her life and they ignored her. They didn’t do anything for her.”
The girl died on Wednesday on what her mother said was the family’s ninth day in border patrol custody. People are to be held no more than 72 hours under agency policy, a rule that is violated during unusually busy times.
The account is almost certain to raise questions about whether the border patrol properly handled the situation, the second death of a child in federal officials’ custody in two weeks after a rush of unlawful border crossings severely strained holding facilities.
Roderick Kise, a spokesperson for the border patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, said he could not comment beyond an initial statement because the death remained under investigation. In that statement, Kise’s agency said the girl experienced “a medical emergency” at a station in Harlingen, Texas, and died later that day at a hospital.
Alvarez Benedicks, 35, said she, her husband and three children, aged 14, 12 and eight, crossed the border to Brownsville, Texas, on 9 May. After a doctor diagnosed the eight-year-old, Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez, with influenza, the family was sent to the Harlingen station on 14 May. It was unclear why the family was held so long.
Anadith woke up her first day in the Harlingen station with a fever and had a headache, according to her mother, who said the station was dusty and smelled of urine.
When she reported her daughter’s bone pain to an agent, she said he responded: “Oh, your daughter is growing up. That’s why her bones hurt. Give her water.”
“I just looked at him,” Alvarez Benedicks said. “How would he know what to do if he’s not a doctor?”
She said a doctor told her the pain was flu-related. She asked for an ambulance to take her daughter to the hospital for breathing difficulties but was denied.
“I felt like they didn’t believe me,” she said.
Anadith received saline fluids, a shower and fever medication to reduce her temperature, but her breathing problems persisted, her mother said, adding that a sore throat prevented her from eating and she stopped walking.
At one point, a doctor asked the parents to return if Anadith fainted, Alvarez Benedicks said. Their request for an ambulance was denied again when her blood pressure was checked on Wednesday.
An ambulance was called later that day after Anadith went limp and unconscious and blood came out of her mouth, her mother said. She insists her daughter had no vital signs in the border patrol station before leaving for the hospital.
The family is staying at a McAllen, Texas, migrant shelter and seeking money to bring their daughter’s remains to New York City, their final destination in the US.
Anadith, whose parents are Honduran, was born in Panama with congenital heart disease. She received surgery three years ago that her mother characterized as successful. It inspired Anadith to want to become a doctor.
Her death came a week after a 17-year-old Honduran boy, Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza, died in US health and human services department custody. Maradiaga traveled alone.
A rush to the border before Covid-19 asylum limits known as Title 42 expired brought extraordinary pressure. The border patrol took an average of 10,100 people into custody a day over four days last week, compared to a daily average of 5,200 in March.
The border patrol had 28,717 people in custody on 10 May, one day before pandemic asylum restrictions expired, which was double from two weeks earlier, according to a court filing. By Sunday, the custody count dropped 23% to 22,259, still historically high.
Custody capacity is about 17,000, according to a government document last year, and the administration has been adding temporary giant tents like one in San Diego that opened in January with room for about 500 people.
On Sunday, the average time in custody was 77 hours.
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A refinery explosion. (photo: iStock)
Three dangerous blazes in three weeks have struck refineries and a chemical plant, leaving one dead and over a dozen injured
The blazes in Deer Park, Galveston Bay and Corpus Christi follow a years-long string of explosions, fires and toxic releases in a region where oil refining and chemical production is highly concentrated, often close to residential neighborhoods. And while some residents have grown accustomed to the incidents, others are alarmed by how frequently they are hitting home.
“I have grown up here and watched neighborhoods near the refineries become too toxic to live in and people forced to leave their homes due to the toxicity,” Kristina Land, a resident of Corpus Christi, told The Washington Post.
On Wednesday, a fire broke out at the Valero West Refinery in Corpus Christi, sending smoke plumes into the sky and prompting emergency responders to mobilize. The cause of the fire is yet unknown.
Land, who is 45 years old, was in her home 20 miles from the refinery when she saw the black smoke on the horizon. She had to go on social media to find out what was happening.
She blames local officials for not encouraging more transparency.
“Our local government doesn’t ever want us to know how bad [the fires] really are, so we never truly know,” Land said. “They just sweep everything under the rug and never talk about it again.”
Refineries in the Lone Star State are regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which did not make officials available for an interview, but issued a statement.
Victoria Cann, a media specialist for TCEQ, said the three recent fires appear to be unrelated, “but investigations are underway into the cause, response, and clean up actions associated with each incident.”
She said the agency responded to each of them by deploying staff with monitoring equipment as appropriate and has “conducted surveillance to assess potential impacts to the local community.”
The first of the May refinery fires happened two weeks ago.
On May 5, heavy gas oil, gasoline and light gas oil ignited at Shell’s Deer Park chemicals facility in Deer Park, which sent 9 workers to the hospital. The plume from the fire, which occurred right outside of Houston, was visible for miles.
The fire, which started at 2:59 p.m., blazed on and off for days — after being reignited multiple times — before crews could completely neutralize it nearly three days later.
Emergency crews responded to the fire less than 19 hours after the TCEQ hosted a hearing to expand the Intercontinental Terminal Plant — a plant near Shell which blanketed the area with high levels of benzene, a chemical linked to cancer, in 2019.
Environmentalists say the accidents keep happening because the oil industry has little fear of penalties from regulators.
“Without a change from industry … communities are going to continue to feel the effects of these chemicals being spewed out by these facilities,” said Cassandra Casados, the communications coordinator at Air Alliance Houston.
A week after Shell’s fire was contained, a new plant fire erupted in Texas City, under 40 miles away, erupted. Galveston’s Marathon Petroleum confirmed that the fire caused the death of one employee and sent two others to the hospital. Emergency crews extinguished the fire — caused by a failed pump seal — in under four hours, according to city officials.
This is the second fatal incident to occur at Marathon’s Galveston Bay refinery this year. In March, a contract worker died after being electrocuted at the refinery.
Air monitoring at the state and facility level for all three sites is ongoing to determine the exposure risks to harmful levels of chemicals. Officials at the refineries and in nearby communities said the fires were not cause for concern:
- “There is no danger to the nearby community,” Shell Deer Park said in a post following the incident.
- Texas City Emergency Management stated that there was no need for a shelter in place following the fatal fire and that there was no threat to residents.
- Valero’s west refinery did not warrant any “action from the community,” the city of Corpus Christi said in a news release.
Over the last several years, the Environmental Integrity Project — a D.C. based watchdog group — has monitored refinery fires and emissions, in East Texas and elsewhere. Too often, local officials minimize the impact of these incidents and issue “all is well statements,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who directs the watchdog group.
Black plume smoke is usually indicative that fine particulate matter — too small to see generally — is lingering in the air, according to Schaeffer. When refineries catch fire, the chemicals from the plumes aren’t contained to the site: They drift into residential areas.
“You’re going to have a lot of pollutants released,” Schaeffer said of these incidents. “That’s probably the biggest concern for the residents.”
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