Greetings from Southern California.
Donald Trump campaigned on promising mass deportations of undocumented people. After taking over the White House, he said the initial focus would be on undocumented people who are criminals, but instead, they went after everybody.
The protests against ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in Los Angeles haven’t been about Trump going after criminals, but the regime going after anyone undocumented. They’ve been raiding homes, car washes, schools, and even an elementary graduation. They weren’t going after criminals. If the regime had only gone after criminal immigrants, there wouldn’t be any protests.
One of the problems with only going after criminals who are undocumented is that there aren’t really enough for good photo-ops. You need several hundred to send to the notorious prison in El Salvador for a sweet Kristi Noem photo opportunity. So it’s better to send masked goons to grab immigrants off the streets, and claim they’re criminals, even if they’re not (most aren’t).
An idea better than deploying the National Guard and Marines to stop the protests in Los Angeles would have been to stop the ICE raids. If you don’t want people to protests against you, then don’t do dickish things. The deployments weren’t because of riots, but because of protests. Donald Trump made that clear when he threatened protesters at his birthday parade.
ICE also raided farms, processing plants, hotels, meat packing plants, restaurants, etc, where no criminals were found, just honest people trying to make a decent living to support their families. Detaining and deporting undocumented workers from these places hurts the businesses. It would seem Trump would have planned for this or at least had been aware of it, but very little forethought was put into the regime’s ICE raids.
Trump didn’t figure this out. The business leaders who helped fund Trump’s campaign basically told him that he needed to stop detaining and deporting their employees.
If only there were a way to conduct a study to determine if deporting a huge chunk of America’s workforce, the ones doing the jobs American citizens don’t want to do, would be bad for the economy. If only there were a way to be sure that spoiled and entitled White Americans would rush to fill those jobs.
Last Thursday, Trump issued a statement saying, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.” Keep in mind that Trump is in the hotel and leisure business. He has been found to employ undocumented immigrants. But since he is in the business, shouldn’t he have already known this?
Trump blamed Joe Biden for allowing “criminals” to apply for jobs on farms, and added to his statement, “We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA.” Trump doesn’t care about the workers, just the people who employ them.
If you don’t like the undocumented applying for jobs on farms, you can’t blame Biden. Blame the farmer who hires them. But criminals aren’t applying for farm jobs. It’s not like a member of MS-13 shouts out during a gun fight, “Amigos, let’s finish this up because I gotta wake up at 5 to pick peas. Ándale! Ándale!”
The majority of immigrants in this country are law-abiding. Percentage-wise, natural-born Americans commit more crimes than people in this nation illegally.
Trump also said, “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.”
Somewhere in that word salad, he’s saying most immigrants are great people and an important part of our nation, even making a nation better from their presence, so it would take a heartless cockwomble to start rounding them up indiscriminately for deportations to god knows where.”
Why wasn’t that part of the campaign rhetoric? Oh, yeah. The Trump Campaign only sold hate.
But then Trump showed his true intentions. He didn’t care about the immigrants. He said, “We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure, too, hotels. We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.” He’s talking about himself, but he implemented a policy that isn’t based on sense, common or otherwise.
So, don’t conduct ICE raids on the Los Angeles garment district?
Last Thursday, Senior ICE official Tatum King sent an email to regional leaders of ICE to pause raids on certain businesses, stating, “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”
The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, and drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” undocumented immigrants who have committed any crimes.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesgoon for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed this, stating, “We will follow the president’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets.”
The pause on noncriminals is taking ICE agents by surprise, and maybe all the fun out of it for them. Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, who’s almost as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside,” has been pushing for 3,000 arrests per day, especially of “illegals” who steal his wife, and don’t bring her back before the hypnotism wears off and she realizes she married Stephen Miller.
And they must be really confused because on Thursday, the same day ICE got the memo, Trump posted on ShitSocial, “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do.”
It has to be a mindfuck to be an ICE agent these days.
Creative note: This idea came to me over the weekend while in DC, but it wasn’t the subject I wanted for those days, and instead of waiting until Monday, I decided to draw it on the plane to California. It was a five-hour nonstop flight from DC to San Diego, and I gotta say, crosshatching and drawing a thousand Big Macs is a great way to kill time. Time can fly for me when I draw, and I get bored during flights. It’s also hard for me to sleep on a plane.
I didn’t think I’d draw the entire cartoon on the fight because there was a lot of turbulence, but I powered through it. This also isn’t the first canvas for this cartoon. I started it on another, but the angle bored me, so I started again, which became what you’re seeing now.
I caught the girl in my aisle (there was an open seat between us) peeking at what I was drawing. We never talked. I wonder what she thought about the drawing.
Why am I in California? I have a friend, Danny, whom I met on the Fredericksburg music scene in the early 2000s (but back then, his stage name was DANNY GALAXY!!!! You have to shout when saying that name), who now lives in Southern California. Danny, his girlfriend Marina, and her two kids are traveling through Ireland for the next couple of weeks. Danny has been asking me to come out for years, but now he asked if I’d like to come out, go to the beach, use their pool, jacuzzi, and just be in beautiful SoCal…and watch their dog. They love this dog. Danny knows I’m good with dogs and other animals (there are two geckos and a snail I have to watch, too). I thought that it’s a little crazy, but so what? Let’s change my scenery for a couple of weeks.
I haven’t seen Danny in two decades, so it’s amazing how comfortable I am around him, and even Marina, whom I just met. They’re people I can joke with without worrying about offending them. It’s also crazy how much they trust me with their home. I’m really overwhelmed by it. I’m so touched that there might be a slight tug on my heart when I rob the hell out of this place and sell the dog for slot money.
I kid. I kid. I did joke with Danny about throwing a cocaine hooker party. He knows I don’t do cocaine.
Now, where did that dog go? I’m not kidding.
Music note: I was listening to the music downloaded to my phone from Apple Music during my flight, and I know I listened to some Kaiser Chiefs, the Cars, Foo Fighters, Fleetwood Man, Nirvana, and all sorts of stuff because the cartoon took about five hours to draw.
Drawn in 30 seconds:
Timelapse:
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At least for lettuce, which is grown in the Salinas valley, what happens is, workers will remove the lettuce head (with a knife) and place it in a carton or a movable conveyor, where it will be examined for its condition, then wrapped in plastic and subsequently chilled for retail sale (or more properly for a middleman's purchase for wholesalers who will sell the stuff to markets). Then, McDonalds or a similar operation would send out a mechanized harvester to collect the scraps for sale as "fresh produce," specifically for the fast food market. It's not like you cut open a head of lettuce in your restaurant (sic) to make a layer for your BigMac. The stuff that was left behind is what goes into your sandwich. Farmworkers were NOT unskilled braseros. They are trained to discard low quality vegetables for the market and leave the rest. My point is only that legal or not, farmworkers provide a link in the chain that keeps our food safe. But mostly they do the manual labor of selecting and sorting. By the way, Agent Orange has also reduced the inspection duties and personnel of the USDA.
Today I listened to The Kaiser Chiefs, Talking Heads, and Mingus' posthumously recorded Epitaph.
Wait ... Trump actually said "We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense ..."???? What hypocrisy!!! He has NO common sense -- never has, never will! Who does he think he's kidding? Great 'toon ... I hope Pizza Rat doesn't get squished by the wheels of that truck he's under!!! Enjoy your time in California, Clay!