This is appalling:
Guillen’s father, Jesus Guillen, said he’d asked his son not to try and rescue people in the storm, but he insisted, saying he wanted to help people. He cried and prayed on Sunday afternoon as they pulled his son’s body from the water.
“Thank you, God,” he said, “for the time I had with him.”
The recovery of his body brings the number of people who have died or are feared dead from Harvey to nearly 60, and officials warn that more could be found.
Guillen, who was born in Piedras Negras, Mexico, and moved to Lufkin as a teenager, headed south with his friends toward Houston after Hurricane Harvey, towing a borrowed boat. They were near Interstate 45 and Beltway 8 and trying to reach an apartment complex when they hit the bridge, relatives said.
Alonso Guillen was a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which temporarily lifted the threat of deportation for immigrants brought to the U.S. before they were 16, family members said.
His father is a lawful permanent, but his mother is still in the application process for legal status.
Reached at her home in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Rita Ruiz de Guillen, 62, said she is heartbroken.“I’ve lost a great son, you have no idea,” she said, weeping softly. “I’m asking God to give me strength.”
She said she hoped U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials would take pity and grant her a humanitarian visa so that she could come to Houston and bury her son, but she was turned back at the border.
ICE and our Border Patrol are now effectively the brown shirts for this regime. Treat them as such.
Cermet
That they enjoy such evil behavior is what truly makes them brown shirts; they appear to be the cast-off’s of slightly less evil police systems … .
cmorenc
1) Yes, Republicans are monsters because too many of them wouldn’t want to allow Rita Ruiz De Gullen into the country even temporarily, irrespective of circumstances – don’t want her here in the first place, and besides she might be planning to overstay her permission window permanently. More Mexicans = bad.
2) Nevertheless, query whether absent documentary proof she was indeed the deceased’s mother, and not just someone coincidentally having the last name trying to defraud immigration authorities – would she have been let in by US Customs during the Obama Administration? At least without someone prominent intervening on her behalf?
Spanky
I don’t think this is the first time this has been said, but it hasn’t been said enough. It needs to penetrate the nation’s consciousness. And conscience.
Betty
There truly are no words to express the disgust these people make me feel.
OzarkHillbilly
And expected.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Sort of OT, but have y’all noticed that when Haberman tires of twitter abuse, she just starts retweeting things?
Smiling Mortician
@cmorenc: Seriously? That’s your take on this?
ChicagoPat
The way Cole formatted this gives the appearance that last line was in the quoted article. It wasn’t (not that I disagree with the sentiment).
Emma
@cmorenc: A couple of phone calls and they could get an answer. Unless, of course, you think a grieving father would spend his time helping some strange woman use his dead son’s name to get back into the US.
satby
The saddest part of that heartbreaking story to me was that his own family had to recover his body.
Kay
There’s a lot of bigotry towards Latinos in my neck of the woods in Ohio. They’re not recent immigrants- they’re 2nd or 3rd generation, mostly originally from Mexico. It persists although they are completely integrated into the local community- they are a substantial portion of public school students, they have good jobs, they all speak unaccented English, they buy property, etc. They are as “American” as anyone else here. It doesn’t matter. I still hear it.
That’s why I’m wary of the claim that this is based on immigration status. Here it isn’t that “illegals” are taking “our jobs”- it’s that Mexican-Americans are moving into the middle class. We have a city school system one county over that is about 20% Latino and they are Americans. They’re 2nd generation, at least. Still, I hear slurs and I hear white parents who won’t send their kids there.
Republicans haven’t been tested yet on whether their objections to Latino immigrants have to do with immigration status or the fact that they’re Latino but from what I observe here it really doesn’t matter if they were legal when they entered. It persists and it persists for a long time- decades.
Amir Khalid
@ChicagoPat:
The blog lord needs to correct his post, then.
Kay
The one place I can look for objective evidence on conservatives objections to Latinos that is NOT based on immigration status is voting and there have now been three federal courts ruling that the Texas GOP deliberately discriminated against Latinos on voting rights.
That has nothing to do with immigration status. It’s about thwarting Latino-American political power. They want to keep them off school boards and water districts and county commissions and those Latinos are American citizens.
So. Immigration is one thing. Stopping certain citizens from voting is another. I need an explanation for the latter.
Adam K
@cmorenc: Why the fuck does it matter, and who the fuck cares? Hurricane Harvey didn’t happen during the Obama administration, and the young man didn’t give his life trying to rescue others during the Obama administration. ICE is what it is and does what it does here and now, and Republicans are monsters.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: The border and immigration control people have been wannabe brownshirts for decades. They were that way under Obama. But Trump has set them loose and let them know he has their backs as they ethnically cleanse the United States to the best of their ability.
satby
@Kay: you know the explanation Kay. We all do.
debbie
@Kay:
Perhaps I’ve missed it: Have any Latino Republican legislators from other states spoken out against this?
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Trump should certainly get shit but we know Trump is a mean-spirited asshole who doesn’t care about rights.
Jeff Sessions was a US Senator and is Attorney General of the United States. What’s his excuse? He believes his job includes only protecting the rights of the group he favors? He should do his job. He’s a joke.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@debbie:
Ros-Lehtinan has been really outspoken on DACA.
Wasn’t Wasserman-Schultz’s (sp?) great crime in trying to not be a dick to her?
Kay
@debbie:
I don’t know but by focusing exclusively on immigration Republicans managed to evade any questions on why they are deliberately discriminating against Latinos as far as voting rights. In Texas! What’s the percentage of Texans who are Latino? Riddle me that. What does denying citizens the franchise have to do with immigration? Their screeching on immigration is so loud no one looks at what they’re up to as far as plain old discrimination. Will Texas Republicans stop discriminating against Texas Latinos if they write an immigration law? No. Why would they?
Caphilldcne
@cmorenc: I’m curious why you think that it’s so tough for them to figure this out and why they shouldn’t just error on the side of compassion.
Kay
The pictures of Trump spite wall (prototypes) don’t look like a wall at all- it’s a fence. I guess he couldn’t get the spit-flecked crowd fired up enough with “fence”, huh? Will they be disappointed that the liar lied to them again?
He’s poisonous. Everything he does and says appeals to the absolute worst in people. The mean-spirited nastiness at the top will continue to poison everything that comes out of that administration. It can’t work any other way. He sets the tone and he’s a nasty piece of work.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The usual answer, I think, is to spin conspiracy theories about how some huge fraction of them are secretly undocumented immigrants who are voting fraudulently.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: How often do they question the immigration status of white people speaking with a strong accent or a foreign language?
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Melania is first lady, so not often.
debbie
@Matt McIrvin:
The administration is now walking back Trump’s original statement about all Mexicans being rapists, saying he was referring to MS-13 members only. I have my doubts.
Raven Onthill
More the seed of a Gestapo, I think, the seed of a national secret police, than brownshirts (SA), Nazi paramilitaries, I think. It’s a little more than a pedantic point: the Gestapo had official power; the SA were party thugs and were ultimately suppressed by the Nazi leadership. The Gestapo was created by unifying the police forces of the Reich under the SS. The US analog of this would perhaps be bringing state and local police forces with ICE.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
Rings very true. Which is why I don’t think trade policy has much to do with Midwestern white discontent _except from the left_. On the right and from apolitical angry people, “trade” and “trade deals” translate as “more Mexicans around, and they’re winning.”
FlipYrWhig
@debbie: Trump is a very stupid and impressionable man and it has sounded to me all along like someone told him, “Remember the Mariel boat lift where Castro played Carter for a chump and got rid of a bunch of undesirables? Mexico is doing the same thing.”
rikyrah
But…it was gonna be the CRIMINALS, remember????
Phuck ICE
OzarkHillbilly
@Caphilldcne:
One crossing of the US/Mexico border would explain that. It’s a zoo. If the way I am reading the article is correct she did not go to a US consulate. If she did she might, might, get a different result.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Continue with the truth, Kay.
PPCLI
@debbie: really? Because then he added “and some of them I assume are good people”.
Aren’t we to understand that he was saying some MS 13 members are good people?
OzarkHillbilly
@PPCLI: He’s said the same thing about Nazi’s, so why not?
Starfish
@Kay: It’s like that in a lot of places, and people are ignoring the fact that non-whites are never granted legitimacy. I mean we would not have had the Florida teacher telling a black student that Trump would send her back to Africa if it was about something other than racist nonsense.
Ruviana
@debbie: Right. Not to mention that MS13 began and is still dominated by Central Americans.
JPL
@Kay: The same was true during the great migration.
O. Felix Culpa
@Starfish: WTF? Trump has unleashed evil. It was always there, but now he’s given them full-throated permission to parade their evil, racist selves in full daylight. Now we know who and what they are and we must not let them win.
JPL
@O. Felix Culpa: Is Trump the Grand Wizard? just wondering
glory b
On Pittsburgh’s local news this a.m., it was announced that the Catholic Church bishops are speaking out against the reversal of DACA. They interviewed two local priests who are urging their parishoners to call their representatives.
Starfish
@O. Felix Culpa: Note that that story is from almost a year ago. We know what they are no matter how much the New York Times tries to show us the humanity of the white working class. I am so tired of these stories.
Laura
@Kay: They must be carefully taught.
cmorenc
@Matt McIrvin: yes exactly
Honus
@cmorenc: I thought of that too, but I recalled the line from Cool Hand Luke: “Callin’ it your job don’t make it right”
Honus
@Kay: decades? Try centuries. They’ve treated and still treat blacks the same way and virtually all African Americans are from families that have been in this country since the 17th and 18th centuries.
Honus
@Kay: you’re kidding, right? About Sessions protecting anybody other than white people?
Honus
@glory b: was Rich Zelik one of the priests?
JPL
I just put on the local news and there is quite a crowd in downtown Atlanta in support of DACA. I assume when the program is announced there will be more rallies across the nation.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Quoted for Truth.
And it’s not just ICE and the Border Patrol. It’s beginning to seem like a lot of state and local law enforcement officers see themselves as warriors for Trump, or warriors for the right-wing.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Raven Onthill:
So the Keebler Elf (apologies to Dobby & Kreature) is an American Heinrich Himmler wanna-be?
To carry the analogy a bit further, who’s Sessions’ Heydrich?
cmorenc
@Smiling Mortician:
Maybe you misunderstand my post – I was observing that back during the Obama administration, Ms (Mrs?) de Gullen may have found herself frustrated by the regulatory red tape of the Customs & Immigration process, albeit I agree with another poster’s observation that the mentality of the field officer level of that organization may have even then had a rigid, brown-shirt overlay. Sorry m’am, gotta dot the i’s and cross the t’s of submitting the required proof of your connection to the deceased.
What the Trump Administration has done is to not just openly stroke racist hostility, but stridently encourage the brown-shirt inner freak-flag of many in the agency to openly fly. It’s open malevolent inhibitory intent now, rather than simple regulatory rigidity at the field-officer level.
Raven Onthill
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): When Bannon was still part of the administration, I suspected it could be him. Now, I don’t know.
J R in WV
@Kay:
Seriously? I’m going with bigoted racist haters seeing to maintain their control of every centavo moving through any part of the government at any level where they can misdirect or steal come or all of that revenue.
Really, what’s wrong with bigoted racist hater? That’s what’s going on when multiple generation Americans are treated differently because of their appearance.
In states with no immigrants of color to hate (Africans, Asians, Latino), the local white immigrants hate the local Native Americans whether they are darker complected or not. Even when many of those “white” Americans would show up hot on any DNA scan for Native AMerican ancestry, or when the Native Americans have been here for 30,000 years longer than Sven…