Their Bosses: Chief of the Border Patrol, Carla Provost, her boss: DHS Secty. Kirstjen Nielsen who recently replaced John F. Kelly; the reports from 2010 on are from the Obama era, of course, under Chief Jeh Johnson.

(Thedisappearereport.org, pdf, 23 pages)

The Guardian, (and I’m glad they picked up the story.  It just may help, who can say?)

“Caitlin Deighan, a spokeswoman for No More Deaths, said the policy of militarising the border and funnelling migrants into remote, perilous desert, where thousands died, dated from President Bill Clinton’s era. “It’s been ongoing throughout every administration since.”

“The report also cited anecdotal evidence from volunteers and an unnamed former border patrol agent interviewed last year who was quoted saying: “I remember people smashing and stepping on water bottles, I remember that being imparted on to us in one way or another.”

The report also quoted a 37-year-old Mexican border crosser named Miguel: “They break the bottles so you can’t even use them to fill up in the tanks. I needed water, some of the other people in the group needed water, but we found them destroyed. [I felt] helplessness, rage. They [the US border patrol] must hate us.”

The report came amid renewed rancour in Washington over Donald Trump’s desire to build a border wall and his alleged racism towards non-white immigrants. Congress is scrambling to reach a deal on immigration and border security before federal funding expires on Friday, raising the spectre of a government shutdown.

In addition to building a wall Trump wishes to hire another 5,000 border patrol agents.”

Via Popular Resistance: ‘The Consequences Of Chase & Scatter In The Wilderness’ By Staff, , January 19, 2018, some snippets:

“Since the mid-1990s, the US Border Patrol’s policy of Prevention Through Deterrence has intentionally pushed migration into increasingly remote corridors in the Southwest borderlands. This policy has turned the natural landscape into a lethal weapon that injures, kills, and disappears border crossers. Our report shines a light on the deadly practices that characterize enforcement in these hostile wilderness areas. The result: thousands of known deaths of undocumented border crossers, and an even greater number of disappearances—a crisis that has received far less attention. These individuals do not simply go missing, they are disappeared as part of a violent and deadly border-enforcement strategy carried out by the US government.

The missing-persons cases collected by the Missing Migrant Crisis Line in 2015 include 84 in which an incident of chase and scatter in the wilderness was explicitly named as the event that caused the person to go missing. Of these cases, 36% ended in death or disappearance.

The use of helicopters is particularly dangerous, causing increased injury during chase and increased incidence of scatter. In our survey, 36% of the chases involved pursuit by helicopter. When a helicopter was present in a chase, it was significantly more likely that someone would end up lost afterward.

Based on our research and continuous on-the-ground observation of border-enforcement activities, we assert that there is no policing method for interdicting border crossers in wilderness terrain that does not carry a high risk of injury, death, and disappearance. Consequently, we consider the first of this report’s five recommendations to be the most urgent: we call for the immediate end of Prevention Through Deterrence as an enforcement doctrine, as well as the removal of all walls, fencing, barriers, and other border infrastructure that serves to push migration into the deadly backcountry. We will only see the end of the crisis of disappearance with the complete demilitarization of the US–Mexico border. Federal immigration policy must be rewritten to protect human life and human rights, and to address the US-sponsored violence and economic disruption causing so many to seek refuge within these borders.”

Well the government did shut down Friday night, bleeping Senators are griping about having to work today, a Saturday no less, although no votes are planned, so the shutdown will last until next week sometime.  This is part of Eric Londen’s report on the charade:

“Politico reported that Democrats made a counterproposal Friday that included an additional $50 million in military funding in exchange for protection for DACA recipients as well as already agreed-upon increases for border militarization. Republicans called this right-wing proposal a “nonstarter.”

 The Democrats have already made clear that they are willing to support construction of a border wall and massive expenditures for militarizing the border as part of a deal that includes extensions for DACA recipients. Last week, Bernie Sanders declared, “I don’t think there’s anybody who disagrees that we need strong border security. If the president wants to work with us to make sure we have strong border security, let’s do that.”

The assurances by Sanders and the Democrats of support for added security comes as videos published this week by the pro-immigrant No More Deaths organization showed border guards pouring out over 3,500 gallons of water left by rights groups in the harsh borderlands desert. In the last 20 years, up to 27,000 immigrants have died of dehydration, starvation, heat stroke and hypothermia while attempting to escape the violence and poverty in Mexico and Central America.”

As he says, the planes with US bombing sorties will still fly over ME nations, weapons will still be sold to ‘our enemies’, the NSA will still be unconstitutionally spying on all of us, but 850,000 federal employees will be furloughed without pay, including 60% of the employees of the CDC.

O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void

~ Tennyson