Morning all. Last night the Senate passed a two week extension (Continuing Resolution) of funding for DHS and 5 separate appropriations bills. Funding has run out for a great deal of the US government as of this morning, for Mike Johnson, The Cowardly Speaker, once again choose to keep his Members home rather than let them do their jobs. House Members return late Monday when they are expected to take up both packages.
In my late morning post yesterday we reviewed some of the the ideas Congressional Dems are proposing to rein in ICE. Taken together they would make meaningful reforms to DHS, CPB, and ICE. Our highest priority these next few weeks is to fight alongside our Dem leaders to get as good a package of reforms as we can.
In my post yesterday I argued there is one important piece missing from the emerging Congressional proposals, and that’s clarifying ICE’s mission and targets. The NYT has reporting that shows how important this is - ICE is arresting and shackling legal immigrants to the US without warning, detaining them for weeks in Texas, and then releasing them without facilitating their trips back home. Just read this excerpt from a NYT article, They ‘Had Done Everything Right.’ ICE Detained Them Anyway. It’s harrowing:
Selamawit Mehari, an Eritrean single mother of three, was starting her day when federal agents showed up at her apartment in St. Paul, Minn., on a recent morning. As her 13-year-old son wailed and her older daughter produced paperwork proving her mother was in the United States lawfully, the agents shackled Ms. Mehari and took her away.
“They didn’t explain anything,” recalled her daughter, Yosan, 21, who described the encounter to The New York Times. “We didn’t understand. We had done everything right.”
The next day, chained at the wrists, waist and ankles, Ms. Mehari, 38, was shuffling up the steps of a plane bound for Texas, tears streaming down her face in the frigid wind.
More than 100 refugees with no criminal record from about a dozen countries have been arrested in Minnesota by immigration agents in recent weeks and flown to detention centers in Texas for interviews, according to lawyers, family members and faith leaders. At least some, including Ms. Mehari, were eventually released in Texas, leaving them to find their own way home.
Late Wednesday, a federal judge blocked the government from continuing to detain refugees until a lawsuit against the policy has been decided on the merits. But the ruling has done little to quell the fear gripping refugee communities, especially in the Twin Cities, where agents have arrested thousands of immigrants as part of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The Trump administration has signaled it will appeal the court order and aggressively defend its policy. “We look forward to being vindicated in court,” the Homeland Security Department said in a statement in response to a request for comment.
It described the decision as “an activist order from the federal judiciary.”
Before being approved for resettlement in the United States, refugees often wait years in camps and undergo extensive vetting by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies. They arrive on flights coordinated with the U.S. government. The process is radically different from that of asylum seekers who have shown up at the border and been allowed to remain in the United States only if they win their cases in immigration court.
The Trump administration announced early this month that it would “re-examine thousands of refugee cases through new background checks.” Officials said they would focus on people who had arrived in the United States in recent years and were yet to obtain green cards, or legal permanent residency, starting with 5,600 refugees in Minnesota.
The announcement, by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, did not say that refugees would be rounded up and jailed for the review to take place.
Last night DHS failed to comply with a judge’s order to provide a list of these refugees to the court:
In the last few days 5 journalists in the US have also been arrested, detained and then released by a judge. The process for legal immigrants and citizens - not criminal migrants - is now becoming the same - arrest, detain, humiliate, disrupt, terrorize, release. This ain’t and never been about “criminal migrants.”
Another way Trump-Vance-Miller are targeting legal migrants - not criminal migrants - is by abruptly ending what’s called TPS - Temporary Protected Status - for millions who’ve fled countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, and Venezuela. I am going to do another long excerpt from a new NYT article for it’s important to understand the gravity and inhumanity of what’s happening here. On Tuesday the regime is ending TPS for 330,000 Haitians living in the US:
Vilbrun Dorsainvil was a physician in his native Haiti, but after fleeing his troubled country he couldn’t practice when he arrived in the United States. Determined to stay in medicine, he retrained as a registered nurse and now works in the cardiac unit of the only hospital in Springfield, Ohio, a city grappling with a shortage of health care workers.
He monitors patients after procedures, administers medication and comforts families during difficult moments. “Being in health care was my dream,” said Mr. Dorsainvil, 35, who came to the United States five years ago. “It hurt a little not to practice as a physician, but I was blessed that I could stay in health care.”
That blessing has an expiration date. On Feb. 3, Mr. Dorsainvil and more than 330,000 other Haitians in the United States could lose their right to work here, potentially destabilizing the health care industry in places like Springfield, where a large influx of Haitian immigrants has settled in recent years and helped fill critical health care roles.
Mr. Dorsainvil lives in the United States under a legal designation called Temporary Protected Status, which can be provided by the U.S. government to people from countries experiencing armed conflict or natural disasters. The protection allows those already in the United States to remain for a specific period of time, and it can be renewed if the U.S. government considers conditions in the country unsafe for people to return.
Haitians have been eligible for T.P.S. since an earthquake devastated the country in 2010, and the protection has been renewed because of other crises. But the Trump administration announced last year that it was terminating the status for several countries, including Afghanistan, Venezuela and Haiti.
By seeking to end T.P.S. for Haitians and many other foreign nationals, the Department of Homeland Security is vastly expanding the number of people who could be expelled from the country as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Officials have argued that T.P.S. was intended to offer only temporary relief but has become an indefinite benefit for tens of thousands of people.
Mr. Dorsainvil is one of several health care workers named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to preserve the protected status for Haitians.
Rulings are expected in a matter of days in two lawsuits, including Mr. Dorsainvil’s, contesting the termination of T.P.S. for Haitians. Yet, even a favorable decision may offer little relief; the Trump administration is expected to appeal immediately, prolonging the uncertainty for both Haitian workers and their employers.
At least 50,000 migrants with protected status work in health care, an industry struggling to fill positions in small cities and rural areas as an aging America requires more long-term care. The industry also continues to recover from the strains created by the coronavirus pandemic, when nursing homes and senior residential facilities shed more than 400,000 employees.
People from Haiti are a particularly familiar presence in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes in states with large Haitian communities, including Florida, New York and Massachusetts. Haitians filled about 111,000 health care positions in the United States in 2023, according to an analysis of census data by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
“In a health care system facing so many disruptions, it’s shortsighted to make such policy changes” that further erode care, said Leah Masselink, an associate professor of health policy management at George Washington University. “These immigrants are highly qualified, and in positions that are hard to fill.”
Rachel Blumberg, who runs a senior care center in Boca Raton, Fla., said she was bracing for the loss of 30 Haitian employees with Temporary Protected Status who would have to be let go and could be immediately deported.
“These are individuals who have been with us five, six, seven, 10 years,” said Ms. Blumberg, chief executive of Toby & Leon Cooperman Mount Sinai Residences. “They do work that many Americans won’t do.”
It is critical that Democrats force the regime, and their Republican in allies, to make clear what the real plan is here. For here is a list of the potential targets for a super-charged ICE and what Greg Sargent has called their ethnic cleansing campaign:
That’s 60 million people, or 18% of the current total population of the United States.
Of the 34 million immigrants who are not citizens, estimates are that between 500,000 and 1 million people have criminal records. We should be able to, with existing capacity, remove all those people in a few years without terrorizing communities and legal immigrants. So what is ICE doing exactly, and why does it need all this additional money?
We need to level set here for a moment. Miller’s goal this past year has been 3,000 deportations a day, or about a million a year. If the regime is in reality targeting, let’s say, all undocumented immigrants, TPS holders, and others legally here today but not yet green card holders that’s between 15 and 18 million people. At a million a year that means they are planning on having this terror regime in place across American cities for at least 15 years. Yes, at least 15 years.
Not only does the public not support ICE’s current brutal tactics, there is no public support for mass deportation beyond criminal migrants. In this poll, and it is consistent with public opinion going back 20 years, Americans oppose deporting long settled undocumented immigrants by 65%-22%, making it among the least popular policies Trump has pursued in the past year:
This is why in the coming debate about DHS and ICE we must force the regime to explain what their “mass deportation” strategy is. They’ve been lying again and again claiming this is all about pursuing criminals. It is a false, outrageous, malevolent cover story they keep repeating to mask their true intent, which I think is two fold - 1) to deport tens and tens of millions of immigrants, as many as they can, over a decade or more 2) build ICE into a government-backed militia loyal to the regime to attack and degrade their domestic political opponents, including journalists, similar to the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.
In the coming debate we must force the regime to explain why DHS needs all this extra money. Why we must spend for example $40b - $40 billion! - on detention centers (USAID’s annual budget was $30b)? Who is going to be detained there? Criminals? Long settled undocumented immigrants? Refugees? Green card holders? Democrats? Journalists like Don Lemon? Why do people have to be detained at all? Why did ICE arrest and fly those hundreds of legal refugees from Minnesota to Texas, or the young child we’ve seen? Why the expense of the flights and detention?
Yesterday we learned that ICE has already begun spending that enhanced detention money and is buying warehouse - yes warehouse - space across the US:
Yesterday Bernie Sanders introduced an amendment to the Senate package to claw back the $75b DHS received from the big ugly bill this past summer. It failed, 49-51, but two Republicans - Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski - did vote with us. Every Democrat in the Senate voted to claw back this money.
The ground has shifted on these issues in recent weeks. Approval for ICE and Trump’s mass deportation policies has plummeted. Look at this level of opposition YouGov found in its polling this week:
The Senate Democrats were successful in forcing the regime and Congressional Republicans into a sustained debate now about these incredibly dangerous, inhumane, and unpopular policies. We need to approach these next few weeks with confidence that we have the country behind us and must do everything we can to stop where we all know this is headed. We must rein in DHS and ICE, but we must also work to roll back the additional DHS funding from the big ugly bill - it is an extraordinary waste of money, equal to two years - yes two years of the ACA subsidies that Republicans refused to extend. For as I’ve been saying 2026 is a year for us to win the mid-terms but also a year for us to become far more effective at reining in Trump-Vance-Miller and stopping our accelerating slide into autocracy.
Keep contacting your Congressional reps and demand they rein in ICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Big week ahead!
Winning The Midterms - Support Our Candidates
Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $98,000 raised, $250,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)
Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $24,500 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer and learn more. Amazing start everyone!
Winning Ohio - $44,200 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party. Donate today and help us turn this critical 2026 battleground blue! | Watch my conversation with David Pepper, who does a great overview of the opportunities we have in Ohio this year. Note a generous donor has sent $21,000 worth of Hopium-infused contributions directly to the candidates which are not included in on-line goal tracker.
Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $72 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper and a new, terrific one with NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton
Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $117k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff
Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)
Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $343,100 raised, $500,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas. Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties
3 Campaigns Where We’ve Hit Our Goals, But Are Still Active - We have three campaigns where we’ve hit our goals but that folks can still participate in - Ken Martin’s New DNC, Anderson Clayton and the North Carolina Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party of Minnesota (DFL).
We got the following note from Cynthia this week. She is one of the 3,000 Hopium subscribers in Minnesota:
I am a Minnesotan and cannot adequately express the depth of my gratitude to Simon for this conversation with Richard and organizing this fundraiser and to each person that donated. My heart is full and tears are running down my face. Thank you to everyone who has supported and spoke up for Minnesota in any way and pushed back against ICE and DHS anywhere.
This is the absolutely the most unsafe I’ve ever felt where I live. It far exceeds anything I’ve experienced, and I am white. It affects my decisions every time I go outside. I continue to call my reps and work with my friends and my partner to offer mutual aid, get training, and help others. My neighborhood has been quiet and we’re looking for more ways to help others in more affected areas. We are attending the Solidarity Mobilizations this coming Tues and next: https://www.mobilize.us/surj/event/885616/
I attended an excellent online event with Indivisible this week about the caucuses, plan to attend myself, and have gotten 2 more people to go already, with more on my call list.
I went to the annual art sled rally this weekend. It is one of my favorite events of the year! So much laughter, fun, and delight. Thankfully, there wasn’t ICE presence during the event that I’m aware of. Look for the Minnesota 2026 art sled rally on YouTube if you haven’t seen it yet!
Why We Must Invest Early, Now, And Not Wait - In three new essays (here, here, here) I discuss how one of the ways we win the 2026 midterms is by providing early support to our candidates and parties to allow them to staff up, be loud, define the terms of the debate now, before the inevitable onslaught on AI slop, Russian disinfo, and Trumpian lies funded through bribes and corruption wash across the land.
The midterms could be won or lost in these next few months - not in the fall of 2026 - and we need be fighting now with everything we got.
Keep working hard all. The momentum is with us, and we need to keep fighting as hard as we can - Simon
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