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Chris Bray's avatar

Note also that local law enforcement worked on this investigation alongside federal agents, an act of cooperation discussed here:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/owners-northern-arizona-businesses-arrested-employment-practices

In sanctuary jurisdictions like California and Los Angeles, local police and sheriff's department investigators wouldn't work on something like this, because we don't allow cooperation with federal immigration authorities. So we're so moral and progressive that we wouldn't oppose human trafficking.

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Sandra Slivka's avatar

Pure evil

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PapayaSF's avatar

To paraphrase a quip I saw on X, the current progressive view is that we should triple the minimum wage but have all the work done by illegals off the books for $5/hour.

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Johnny Dollar's avatar

I've come to the conclusion the world isn't divided along right or left anymore.

It's split into Retards and Not Retards.

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An independent observer's avatar

Ha-ha. I am sure everyone puts themselves into the latter category and others in the former. Human nature.

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Hugh Wayne Black's avatar

Triple minimum wage, then print enough dollars to devalue it to 1/3 of its value!

Democrat economics™️!

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BornAlive's avatar

wow!! that HURTS😕

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Alexander Scipio's avatar

Democrats never change. Demanding slaves then. Demanding slaves now. Demanding Marxism to make us all slaves.

“The Democrat Party is a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.”

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Odysseus's avatar

Why don’t they come out and say that we need slaves so that we can have a honest debate about the benefits of slavery?

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Debbie Wagner's avatar

Great comment.

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Alexander Scipio's avatar

Because the left NEVER tells the truth. The truth is reality and the left is at war with it.

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Kyle's avatar
3dEdited

It amazes me how this script has flipped in just a few short months. The same people who talk incessantly about human rights, good working conditions, sticking it to corporations and the wealthy, are suddenly eager to defend the status quo of illegal immigration.

“But our food will get more expensive! Who will pick the crops?” It’s a valid question, but isn’t this defending the bottom line no matter the human cost? Some social justice activists are straight up adopting the language and attitudes you’d expect from a caricature of the evil capitalist.

I want to see the administration start prosecuting businesses that grossly and flagrantly violate the law. Cut their taxes and make it easy for them to do business here, sure, but send them to jail when they violate the social contract in such a grotesque way.

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Leonard's avatar

When one’s entire schtik is knee-jerk contrarianism, consistency and logic must be abhorred.

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Bud's avatar

Ah, but you see... these people would destroy all society below their station to create "equality", so virtually everyone becomes a powerless, undocumented worker. It is evil incarnate.

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TurquoiseThyme's avatar

All the labor protections provided by law are not provided for illegal immigration. Hmmmm, workers with no rights and no recourse to the law……

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Joseph L. Wiess's avatar

Are slaves.

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Sue Kelley's avatar

The Dems have never changed. Everything they do is the same as pre civil war. In the guise of caring for black Americans they have destroyed their family structure and stolen their education with the"soft racism of low expectation". They are now and have always been racist at their core. LBJ said the quiet part out loud.

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Debbie Wagner's avatar

The dems never stopped being racist. They just got better at it so nobody notices it as much.

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An independent observer's avatar

We do notice. They deny it, but we know.

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Debbie Wagner's avatar

We do know but the deception gives them a narrative with superficial plausibility. Sadly, the weak minded fall for it.

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F Wolf's avatar
2dEdited

Sue, I'll never forget hearing LBJ talking on a White House audio tape saying "If we pass this (a Great Society bill) we'll have those N******s voting Democrat for generations"

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Josh Dean's avatar

The real scandal should be that the Mexican government turns a blind eye to the human trafficking that brings people across their country into the US, because they (the government) benefit from it through the travel transactions, and those people are off their hands once those people are across the border. Most of these people are desperate for even a slightly better life, and traffickers take advantage of that.

Most Americans don't actually have a problem with most illegal immigrants on a personal level. I think we understand their motivations, which are normal and human. We have a problem with the system that allows this travesty to happen in the first place and is encouraged by media and corrupt governments.

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John Anthony's avatar

You’re right but it goes a lot deeper into the money side of things. It’s

almost 10:30 pm and I’m old so I need my sleep. I’m not going to cite the exact numbers, but this will be close enough to get you in the zone. Non-traditional border crossers (how’s that for police correctness?) send $50 Billion home to Mexico every year in remittances (this number is low because I don’t want anyone to say “gotcha!”). Mexico takes a transaction tax of 10%. That’s $5 bn a year in government revenue, money that buys votes, right? Mexican banks take 10 to 15% as a transaction fees, this boosts the gdp by $5 to $10 billion. The recipients spend the rest, boosting the gdp by (conservatively) another $25 billion. I’ll call the total contribution about 3% of Mexican gdp. When it comes to meaningful gdp volatility, that’s a make or break number for the ruling elite. Mexico (and every other country’s elite political class south of our border, to put this into perspective) depends on these cash remittance flows to stay in power. Our country wants these countries to stay in our orbit for “national security” reasons. So, let’s think again as to who has the win or loss when it comes to illegal immigration and why it’s so hard, when it could be so easy, to stop it? If you follow my logic,this probably feels like a conspiracy theory. I don’t think this is a conspiracy, I think this is a way the political elite stays in power.

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BookWench's avatar

Agreed.

I’m so old I can remember hearing politicians on both sides rail against illegal immigration — without ever doing anything to stop it.

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An Appeal to Heaven's avatar

The Mexican government is TERRIFIED of the cartels. If a government official cuts too hard into their criminal enterprises, they are killed.

That is why there is no push to stop the human trafficking.

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Dena's avatar

The Mexican government also likes all the money that flows back to Mexico from the illegal earnings.

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fiendish_librarian's avatar

People don't believe me when I say Sheinbaum is the Wendy Byrde of Latin American presidents.

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Danny Huckabee's avatar

You're so mean, Chris.

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Chris Bray's avatar

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE OBJECTED TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING

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Danny Huckabee's avatar

I think CA needs a big sign on its border w Mexico that says "Arbeit Nach Frei" . These nice immigrants are just coming to be free and their work for little wages and long hours actually frees them.

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streamfortyseven's avatar

It does not - they owe the cartels huge debts which cannot be paid with slave wages. They flee from oppression to slavery.

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David Poe's avatar

Danny may have been being sarcastic. Maybe.

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Silent scorn's avatar

/sarc

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mileytheduchess's avatar

He's a sardonically cruel truth-teller.

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streamfortyseven's avatar

It's enslavement, pure and simple, and it's not "human traffickers", it's slave catchers and slave sellers, and there's a market for slaves. And there are slave buyers and slave owners - and slave quarters. Call things for what they are, don't use euphemisms.

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Troy Klingler's avatar

Technically, it’s indentured servitude, not chattel slavery, but compulsory labor is outlawed under the 13th Amendment regardless of type.

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streamfortyseven's avatar

"Those people in their millions who have come across the southern border with Mexico - and now with Donald Trump’s new exceptions for “agricultural labor” - do so by incurring huge debts to the cartels which tightly regulate their movement. Figure between $10,000 to $20,000 each, for people who may not see that sum in a lifetime. And when they get to the US, all too often they end up enslaved, literally." https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/the-new-american-slavery

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Ruth Elkin's avatar

Thank you. I got my first glimpse of this in the 1980s in Portland, Maine, when I attended a lecture with slides by Jacob Holdt, a Danish traveler in the United States. He'd traveled through many poor communities in the south and elsewhere in the U.S., interacting with actual American rural workers and the trafficked ones. My mouth is still open.

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Leara's avatar
3dEdited

...and I was a liberal 30 years ago. (Now I'm a "racist Nazi," according to the NYC Upper West Side Queers for Palestine.) WTF is wrong with these people.

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An independent observer's avatar

One day I was getting off the train at the UWS after work, and a group of sad grey-haired septuagenarians was demonstrating in the little park near the station with a banner: “Jews against apartheid”. I wish I took a pic.

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Leara's avatar

Thanks for the laugh. Can't make this shite up!

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Ruth Elkin's avatar

Please see my comment above, as it applies to your comments as well as Leara's.

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Ruth Elkin's avatar

I get it that you used to be a liberal---me, too. And I think Queers For Palestine is a ridiculous name for a group, also that its view of you and me as racist Nazis is absurd. But just because people like that rally against Israel's brutal occupation and now genocide, and were probably recruited to do so by evildoers like Soros, doesn't mean they're wrong about that issue.

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Pat Robinson's avatar

There is no genocide. That is a bastardization of the English language straight out of 1984 and I just wish you’d all stop.

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An independent observer's avatar

Me too! (Not to confuse with Me Too).

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Lisa Ivey's avatar

We have noticed where I live they have a high turnover in the Mexican restaurants. Every Saturday a white van would unload about twenty workers to cash their checks at the gas stations here. I feel bad for these people. They are slaves and no way out. Sending them home would be the best thing for them. I have seen them in the er in Memphis with a handler that keeps all of their information in a folder. They have no recourse. Dems are evil to allow this to happen.

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Sardaukar's avatar

Frankly, you might want to call the ICE tip line about this, so this abuse of them can stop, they return home and hopefully the perps are arrested & prosecuted. The number is

1 (866)347-2423. They answer 24/7.

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Lisa Ivey's avatar

Thank you the police have been watching those gas stations every Saturday.

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Lisa Ivey's avatar

I don’t about that part just remember the pitiful look on the couples face.

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letterwriter's avatar

It would by far be best for them to return home

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Debbie Wagner's avatar

And they don’t just allow it. They facilitate it.

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letterwriter's avatar

Any idea who these handlers are? Does the ER require their ID? I feel like I recall seeing authorized representative signature spaces which require the individual to be named... seems like that would be feasible even in a "sanctuary" place, if only to be paid for the services?

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F Wolf's avatar

ER visitors cannot be turned away for any reason, no matter what they are in the ER for. One time we had to rush a daughter to an LA ER, the large waiting room was packed, and once we got in our (caucasian, gay, articulate) doctor unleashed for about 30 seconds then clammed up: "Do you know how great it is to hear you speaking english? All day all I hear is what you saw out there, many of them just here for the flu and stuff.... ok so what do we have here, I don't think she needs stitches"...

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letterwriter's avatar

oh wow. A trauma MD, repurposed as an urgent care nurse. What a shame.

But yes ok so these signature forms I've seen might not even be in play all the time in an ER.

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BookWench's avatar

When ICE raids drop houses in or around Phoenix, they discover that some jefe is holding everyone’s passports, & that shoes are all left outside where they can’t get to them (because you cannot run far on foot here in the desert for a good 6 months out of the year). Coyotes will also demand more money be wired to them once they cross the US border — despite having been paid up front.

But we’re the bad guys for objecting to all this.

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Demetra Markis's avatar

The gap between this kind of reporting and the reporting that my NorCal neighbors are reading is so vast that I truly don’t know how to bridge it.

I welcome suggestions though.

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Rick Olivier's avatar

Eugypius’ substack reveals it’s happening, but even worse, in Germany and the EU.

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streamfortyseven's avatar

As to the Newsom meme, it should be changed -from "undocumented child labor" to " the enslavement of children" - stop sugarcoating these criminal and unconstitutional acts.

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John Kirsch's avatar

Whatever else you might say about Santa Ana, he hated slavery.

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Dan Jones's avatar

Interesting how the left has gobs of money for expensive federal litigators to challenge the administration on immigration policy but not enough to pay pot pickers and busboys the minimum wage or overtime.

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Mary Shimp's avatar

I’m glad we’re finally discussing human trafficking as a cost of illegal immigration. There has been a deafening silence on this topic for way too long.

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