No to PARRIS

A few days ago, I mentioned I had heard on Facebook that a person who works with legal refugees has had 60 of her clients sent to Texas, where they were later let out, after checking their documentation — in Texas — with no way back to Minnesota. 

That's what's called Operation PARRIS*.

Today there was an op-ed in the Star Tribune (gift link) by Kathleen Motzenbecker, a refugee services director for the Minnesota Council of Churches, which spells that exact situation out in more detail.

So don't take any news you may be hearing about Greg Bovino departing our state as a big sign of a permanent win. They're trying to put some lipstick on their white nationalist pig.

They'll still be trying to denaturalize naturalized citizens (we haven't heard any backing down on that, have we?), and there's no word on PARRIS, either. And of course, some of ICE's goons are moving on to Maine, and I've heard Milwaukee, too. Hegseth, some news reports say, is still making noises about sending troops here.

Motzenbecker says PARRIS is an acronym that spells the end of refuge: a commitment the U.S. signed on to after World War II. At first, she assumed the program meant people would have to refile some paperwork, but then she realized it was

armed men in masks going to my clients’ homes in the middle of the night and taking people in their pajamas away in handcuffs. I did not imagine a paramilitary group roaming the streets at 7 a.m. and grabbing people from bus stops or out of cars as they went to their cleaning jobs...

Who are her clients? 

They were invited to our country by our government. They even paid for their own airplane tickets through travel loans they are required to pay back. Refugees are a vetted group of people who already cleared extensive benchmarks and identified as individuals who would be killed if they returned to their home country. Many were certified as victims of torture. I know because I read their files before they arrived.

All of this, of course, after the "declaration that only white South Afrikaners would be refugees." Followed by Trump calling Somalis “garbage.”

We know what the regime means because of its actions, and their misspelled "PARRIS" is a final bit of ugly leering about who is welcome. Integrity, my derrière. 

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* Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening.