Justice Dept Attempts to Suppress Evidence: Border Patrol Targeted Humanitarians - Polidicks

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/16/border-patrol-no-more-deaths-prosecution-arizona-immigrants/ FOUR VOLUNTEERS WITH a faith-based humanitarian group drove onto a remote wilderness refuge in southern Arizona last summer hoping to prevent an unnecessary loss of life. A distress call had come in, a woman reporting that two family members and a friend were without water in one of the deadliest sections of the U.S.-Mexico border. For hours, the volunteers’ messages to the Border Patrol went unanswered. With summer in the Sonoran Desert being the deadliest time of year, they set off in a pickup truck, racing to the peak where the migrants were said to be. Once on the refuge, the volunteers were tracked by federal agents, beginning a process that would lead to federal charges. Now, more than a year later, they each face a year prison, and Trump administration prosecutors are fighting to keep the communications of law enforcement officials celebrating their prosecution from becoming public. The legal wrangling began this week, when the volunteers’ attorneys filed a series of motions urging Arizona Magistrate Judge Bruce G. Macdonald to dismiss the charges against them, citing allegations of selective enforcement and violations of international law, due process, and religious freedom. Attached to the motions were several exhibits, including text messages between federal law enforcement officials. The exhibits include text messages between a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee and a Border Patrol agent, in which the Fish and Wildlife employee declares “Love it” in response to the prosecution of the volunteers. Within hours of the exhibits being submitted Monday, Trump administration lawyers called on Macdonald to seal the text messages, on grounds that they contain “sensitive law enforcement information.” In addition to the exhibits the government would like to have sealed, the motions filed this week provide the latest evidence that law enforcement actions taken against No More Deaths, an official ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Tucson, are part of a campaign targeting the organization. In a sworn declaration, Robin Reineke, a cultural anthropologist and director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, an internationally renowned organization that repatriates the remains of migrants who die in the desert, described a meeting last summer in which a senior Border Patrol agent angrily told her that because of the bad press No More Deaths stirred up for his employer, the agency’s plan was to “shut them down.” Big story; it's worth reading the whole thing.

The FBI anonymously mailed a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. to try to get him to kill himself, this isn't new

By seeking to imprison a group of humanitarian volunteers over their efforts to save three people in the desert, the state had entered into dark territory reserved for the worst regimes, the attorneys contended. Nothing further to add. “Common decency requires that a government do what it can to prevent unnecessary death and suffering inside its borders,” the lawyers argued in the motions filed this week. “To actively thwart efforts of its citizens to assist those in need through the provision of the most basic necessities — emergency food and water — is cruel and shameful behavior. And to threaten to imprison citizens for searching for distressed migrants stranded in highly dangerous locations — generous, humane actions the government should encourage and applaud — is unconscionable. It violates the universal sense of justice.” Holy fucking shit, on the road to being a fasict, authoritarian state there, well done being the lowest of fucking lows, Trump and GOP.

I'm beginning to be concerned that we already are in parts of our government and we, the public, just haven't found out yet.

Anyone attempting to cover this shit up needs to be convicted of obstruction and thrown in prison. But since nobody's watching the watchmen, that isn't going to happen.

"law" and "order" until people stop believing strongmen with simple solutions can fix all our problems and realize that immigration is more than 2 words we will be stuck with these demegogs every other cycle

I know this isn’t going to be a popular opinion here, but it’s supposed to be Border Patrol’s job to provide humanitarian aide for people crossing the border. There are highly visible emergency stations set up near the hazardous remote parts of the desert to summon Border Patrol agents on the spot and provide medical attention within an hour. Also the beacons are already within our country’s border, so anyone activating them cannot just be turned around and thrown back into Mexico on the spot. Before Trump’s retardation, I believe most people would usually be released pending a court hearing to decide if they should be allowed to stay within the country, which could take over a decade. The problem is no one wants to be processed by Border Patrol once they get there, so what these humanitarian groups are actually doing is just undercutting and obstructing Border Patrol operations. By providing supplies which allow people to dodge the authorities, they are aiding and abetting illegal activities (like human trafficking) and encouraging people to endanger themselves through hostile terrain. On top of that, if they somehow do get through the border without being detected, there’s no way to tell if they’re a danger to society or not. At least if people cross the border through legal means but stay in the country illegally or get detained at the border, they can be screened and just be issued a court summons at a later date if they aren’t a threat to public safety or a flight risk. The problem here is that Trump fucked up everything even worse somehow. To my knowledge, being detained at the border didn’t always result in gross human rights violations 90% of the time like it does now.

It is common practice and is well documented that Border Patrol sabotages volunteer water stations and lets them spill out into the desert. People are going to try to cross, period. These organizations save lives. Border patrol slashes their water barrels all the time.

It's been happening since the days of COINTELPRO COINTELPRO (Portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) (1956–1971) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive, including the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement or Black Power movement (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), feminist organizations, independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left. The program also targeted white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and nationalist groups including Irish Republicans and Cuban exiles. The FBI also financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts. Recently, documents show that the FBI still engages in COINTELPRO behavior by surveilling Black Lives Matter.[

Some authority figure suddenly declaring it to be the case doesn't make it so. We entered this territory long ago, some rando lawyer declaring it to be true shouldn't be necessary in determining this for ourselves.

It seems that any time the US gov. does something shady,borderline illegal and/or abuses human rights people just come in and say that it's nothing new and that it was always the case ,while doing absolutely nothing to stop it these past 60 years.

J. Edgar Hoover was the person behind COINTELPRO, he was director of the FBI for 37 years across many presidents of both parties, and was actually able to intimidate said presidents. In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute people for their political opinions, most notably communists. Some of his aides reported that he purposely exaggerated the threat of communism to "ensure financial and public support for the FBI."