Dream journal

We were about to get married all over again, to fix the mistakes of the first time, and we were making a whole bunch of new mistakes. Scheduled to get married on Monday, after spending Saturday and Sunday out of town at an SCA or LBC event, and it had just occurred to me on Friday to get some couples counseling through my employer, so (without an appointment) I showed up at the counselor's office on Friday to see what we could schedule. A gay-male couple that I knew were already there, about to have their session. It occurred to me to ask shalmestere whether we had the site reserved for the wedding three days hence. And that's all I remember.

Diagnosis: pretty obviously, anxiety over being underprepared and underplanned.

Disappearances

So DJT took office promising to deport millions of "dangerous criminal" illegal aliens, and demanded a certain number of deportations per day. ICE had trouble finding that many dangerous criminal illegal aliens, so they decided to deport a lot of illegal aliens who hadn't committed any crimes. That still wasn't enough to meet quota, so they started deporting legal temporary residents (people here on tourist, student, refugee, or asylum status) who hadn't committed any crimes. That still wasn't enough, so they started deporting legal permanent residents (people with green cards) who hadn't committed any crimes.

These people are being detained and deported for a variety of reasons: (a) they once led a protest against Israeli policy in Gaza, (b) they once wrote a column in a student newspaper criticizing Israeli policy in Gaza, (c) they have an in-law they met once or twice who, ten years ago, was a member of Hamas, (d) they went home to Lebanon to visit relatives, (e) they applied again for a visa (successfully) after it was rejected the first time, or (f) they have tattoos and therefore are obviously members of Tren de Aragua, which despite its appearance as a profit-driven protection-market gang is really a front for a Venezuelan-government invasion of the United States that's so secret the defense department doesn't know it's happened.

Most of these detentions and deportations seem to happen with no legal process whatsoever: somebody high up in the State Department decides unilaterally that you're a menace to society, so your immigration papers are cancelled without notice or appeal, you're picked up on the street by masked plainclothes ICE officers, and you're sent to some prison where US law doesn't apply, to be held without charges, indefinitely, without your friends, family, or lawyer even knowing where you are.

That's review so far: we all know that. But we've come this far in only ten weeks. What's left for the Trump administration to do in the next 3-3/4 years?

Once you realize that you can disappear legal immigrants without evidence, charges, or legal proceedings, the obvious next step is to disappear US citizens. All you have to do is tell ICE that somebody made a false statement on a naturalization application, or is using a counterfeit passport or birth certificate, and that person is gone without a trace. I'm sure DJT has a long list of US citizens he wishes would just disappear....