Democracy On The Curb Today

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Where it apparently lives now.

We’re taking Trail Mix Live out into the wild — straight to the ICE facility behind the Burlington (MA) Mall — for a Black Friday NOON ET protest stream that actually means something.

Get the whole story on this travesty → What’s Going On at the ICE Facility in Burlington, Massachusetts

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This isn’t armchair Democracy. These are real people showing up, standing out, and refusing to look away.

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25 thoughts on “Democracy On The Curb Today”

  2. another burlington brouhaha brewing in NJ come sunday
    https://moulton.house.gov/news/press-releases/congressman-moulton-announces-oversight-visit-burlington-ice-facility-invites

    WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Seth Moulton (MA-06) tonight announced that he will be conducting an official oversight visit to the Burlington ICE facility on December 1, citing ongoing concerns about transparency and detainee treatment. Congressman Moulton is also extending an invitation to Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to join him on the visit, offering an opportunity for the Massachusetts Senate delegation to join Congressman Moulton in his district to demand answers from ICE together.
    “When it comes to ICE, elected officials should work together to demand transparency and accountability from the Trump Administration, and to ensure that the law is being followed and detainees are being treated humanely,” said Congressman Moulton. “I’m inviting Senators Warren and Markey to join me on December 1 so that we can stand united in getting the facts, supporting our communities, and ensuring that this facility is operating responsibly, humanely, and within the law. We have seen the excessive use of force and inhumane treatment by ICE personnel in Massachusetts and around the country, and want to ensure that it does not happen moving forward.
    The December 1 visit will include a walkthrough of the facility and a meeting with ICE personnel to discuss prioritization for removal, agent conduct, and conditions inside the holding facility.

  6. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/28/

    Trump says he will ‘permanently pause’ migration from ‘third world countries’ after national guard shooting
    In a social media post sent late on Thanksgiving, US president said he would ‘end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens’ following Washington DC shooting

    Donald Trump has said he will “permanently pause migration from all third world countries,” a day after two national guard members were shot in Washington DC in an attack that has become a political flashpoint in the president’s ongoing crackdown on immigration.
    In a social media post beginning with “a very happy Thanksgiving,” sent after 11pm on Thursday, the US president said his administration would “end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens” and remove “anyone who is not a net asset to the United States”.
    It as not clear how the president would enact such a “pause” in migration. Previous bans issued by his administration have faced challenges in the courts and in Congress.
    […]
    The president’s late-night post appeared to mark an escalation in the anti-migrant policies of his second term, which has been dominated by a campaign of mass deportations.
    The extended screed posted to the president’s Truth Social account did not identify the countries he intended to target or explain what he meant by “third-world”, but instead used blistering anti-immigrant rhetoric to blame issues like high crime and America’s rising deficit on the presence of migrants and refugees, without evidence.
    In his post, the president singled out Somali communities in Minnesota, after last week promising to end temporary protected status for people from Somalia in the state.
    Earlier in the day, Trump claimed the shooting in Washington DC “reminds us that we have no greater national security priority than ensuring that we have full control over the people that enter and remain in our country.”
    In the 24 hours after the shooting, the president and members of his administration announced sweeping immigration reforms. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced processing of immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals was indefinitely suspended pending further review.
    Later, the Department of Homeland Security said the administration was expanding that to include a review of all asylum cases approved under the Biden administration. The department did not clarify whether it is reviewing all asylum cases from only Afghanistan or from other countries, as well.
    The USCIS director, Joseph Edlow, said in a statement he was also directing a “full-scale, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern,” at Trump’s request.
    Edlow’s statement did not specify which countries were considered countries of concern. USCIS pointed at a travel ban Trump imposed in June on citizens of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Laos, Togo, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, and Turkmenistan.
    A travel ban issued in 2017 during Trump’s first term was widely criticised and faced legal and popular resistance when Trump tried to impose it immediately after taking office. The policy was retooled by the White House after protracted courtroom fights, but rescinded by Joe Biden in 2021. [continues]

  7. excerpt from WAPO editorial board at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/27/national-guard-shooting-afghanistan-siv-trump/

    […]
    Yet threatening the status of all 77,000 Afghan refugees who have made America their home is morally bankrupt. Many are people who put their lives and their family’s lives at risk to help the United States, working as interpreters and fighting alongside U.S. troops during the two-decade war.

    Helping them secure permanent status in America, which would include further vetting and checks, has been a bipartisan issue in the House and Senate. To punish law-abiding refugees who risked everything to help America is not going to inspire foreign friends in the future. Many deserving Afghans have been waiting for years to get the right paperwork to enter the U.S., and some of their strongest supporters are U.S. veterans.

    It was also disingenuous for the president to use a moment of national trauma to draw parallels between new Afghan arrivals and the fraud scheme being perpetrated by Somali immigrants in Minnesota. The nearly 80 people charged with pocketing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars intended to feed needy children took advantage of this country’s most vulnerable cohort.

    “If they can’t love our country,” Trump said of immigrants, “we don’t want ‘em.” It’s not unreasonable to expect new arrivals to be enthusiastic about their adopted country, and the reality is that most are. Using this incident to suggest otherwise does a disservice to the country.

    A week after Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush visited a D.C. mosque to explain that Islam was not America’s enemy, and the religion wasn’t represented by the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Those attacks prompted the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. That became the country’s longest war, and it continues to have a long tail. Neither of Wednesday’s victims was alive on 9/11.

  8. New on our Burlington brief:
    ADDENDUM: WHEN A FEDERAL COURT SAID STOP — AND ICE KEPT GOING

    The Burlington ICE facility is back in the spotlight after Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a Babson freshman, was detained at Logan and held at Burlington’s ICE field office before anything else happened. Her lawyer raced to federal court, and Judge Allison Burroughs issued a crystal-clear order: Do not deport her. Do not transfer her out of Massachusetts.

    What followed wasn’t a loophole — it was a collision. Within a day, ICE moved her out of the state anyway, flew her to Texas, and deported her to Honduras. The agency hasn’t offered a real explanation beyond pointing to a years-old removal order from when she was a child. That does nothing to explain why the brand-new federal order was ignored.

    More at…

    What’s Going On at the ICE Facility in Burlington, Massachusetts

  11. https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/indigenous-actor-elaine-miles-reports-detention-by-alleged-ice-agents

    Indigenous actor Elaine Miles (Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation) says she was walking to a bus stop in Redmond when four men wearing masks and vests labeled “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement” stepped out of two unmarked black SUVs and demanded her identification, according to an account she shared on social media and in reporting by The Seattle Times.

    Miles — best known for her roles in Northern Exposure, Smoke Signals, Wyvern and The Last of Us — said she handed the men her tribal ID from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon. Tribal IDs are recognized by federal agencies, and Miles has used hers to travel across the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders without issue, The Seattle Times reported.

    But Miles said one of the men dismissed the card as “fake,” while another told her, “Anyone can make that.”

    She said both her son and her uncle were previously detained by ICE agents who initially refused to accept their tribal IDs before releasing them.

    Miles’ encounter occurred the same day ICE conducted multiple arrests at Redmond’s Bear Creek Village shopping center, prompting strong local reaction. The Redmond City Council subsequently voted to shut off its Flock Safety license-plate-reading cameras, citing concerns that the technology could be used in immigration enforcement, The Seattle Times reported. There is no evidence the cameras were used in the arrests.

    Miles said the men did not provide their names or badge numbers and that she feared they could have been bounty hunters. When they questioned her tribal ID, she pointed to the Umatilla enrollment office phone number printed on the back and urged them to call. When they refused, Miles attempted to call the office herself.

    She told The Seattle Times the men tried unsuccessfully to seize her phone before a fifth man whistled from an SUV, prompting the group to abruptly leave.

    *F*ck ICE! They are racial profiling.

    Craig – An actress from one of your favorite shows and mine, Northern Exposure. Hopefully, this will get the attention of Hollywood to be more vocal.

  13. Craig
    Slow getting around today.
    Hope you had fun.
    Take that picture and cross out the defend on their motto Defend The Homeland and replace it with “Terrorize” Do it sharpie style.
    Jack

  14. Meanwhile…..anyone who knows cardboard….and knows a thing or two about the machinery needed for making of cardboard boxes…..yeah, those people are busy these days. If that old fartbrain in “The Graduate”had grabbed Dustin Hoffman like that to tell him something, he shoulda said ‘Cardboard’ instead of ‘plastics’.

    But then, every plastic puppy has its day.

    I guess.

    I sit there at The Place Where You Throw Away Cardboard…..it’s a HUGE compactor, you could drive your car in it if not for the fences, you don’t have to flatten the boxes, you just throw whole boxes into the hopper and when it’s full some attendant, much like the Carnival’s Tilt-A-Whirl guy flips the switch and there she goes.
    The while I stay there it’s a steady stream of good people disposing of unwanted cardboard boxes.

  17. Gardening tip:

    brown cardboard is a valuable gardening commodity, use it like a biodegradable weed blanket, cover with mulch 👍

    It can also aid your compost pile if you rip it up or layer it correctly

  19. yeah i feel like they covered the earth with that black weed blanket in the 90s, i’m always excavating it

    …and it’s always riddled with weeds 🫤

  20. We had a roadside vegetable/flower operation going on in the 90’s , we used that black stuff cause that’s what the REAL farmers were doing.
    So I guess all that garbage is still in the ground there but don’t matter none cause the buyers after a couple of setbacks (‘08–covid) finally got it covered in like townhouses and Apartments, or whatever—ain’t much dirt there now.

    So, hell—it all works out……..

  21. Best buy of the day.
    Fresh turkeys for 50 cents a lb. God bless Walmart’s, AI ordering system. This store is close to the university, I assume they sell more organic type stuff than an average Walmart. So the AI over ordered fresh turkeys. Given that most of the customers on any given day are either old folks or college kids, 2 groups that will probably get their turkey fix elsewhere, the AI probably goofed. But who am I to complain.
    6 bucks, for a weeks supply of meat.
    With a freezer I don’t have to eat it now, I can freeze it then next spring, get out the smoker and smoked turkey. Might even invite a neighbor or two over.

    Life is good
    Jack

  22. Jack, 1/3 wholesale price. Pretty good. 😉
    4th day in NYC. Place gets nuttier each visit, but tonight, NYPhil – Pines of Rome. Can’t get that in East Bumfuck.

  23. Our first clip from today’s Burlington ICE protest is live — protesters sang for the detainees inside.

    Good job 🫡

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