Believe It

How many times have I thought since Trump came into office, "I can't believe the federal government of my country is doing this to its people?"

For the Department of Homeland Security alone, there must be thousands of examples, from individual abuses to large-scale policies. Here's one of the latter: The agency is hiding the locations of detainees who have final deportation orders even from their attorneys. If you had told me 10 years ago that the U.S. government would do that, I would not have believed you.

Of course, they are also redetaining people who have just been released by judges, immediately after they leave court rooms. 

And I heard yesterday from a friend that people who are put into ICE detention are able to receive mail for only 15 days... even though they can be held there for months, or years. What is that about except abuse? 

And then there's the increasing number of people who have died while in custody. The ones we know about, it appears, are because of lack of medical care for known existing conditions, such as diabetes. And there are likely suicides as well.

None of that mentions the killings and injuries of people in the streets, of course. 

Here in Minnesota, we had to listen yesterday to Scott Bessent, Kash Patel, Mehmet Oz and others — standing in St. Cloud — crow about how they are fighting "fraud" at the same time they are working for the biggest fraudster in U.S. history. On the day after a local news story came out that DHS had paid $420 million more for a private prison in Appleton, Minnesota.

When a reporter from that news station, KARE-11, asked Bessent about the overpayment as an example of fraud, Bessent replied it was a "waste of time" to talk about it. 

Meanwhile, even the Star Tribune's business columnist, Evan Ramstad, can't stand the way the Trump regime is wrecking the state's economy. He wrote a piece a few days ago called the "Great Wrecking hits Minnesota's wallets" (gift link), outlining how Trump and Miller's Metro Surge — which was not just in the metropolitan area — has resulted in a decrease in our immigrant population. 

Ramstad has shown himself to be a bit obsessed with population growth as key to economic growth, which requires in-migration, because the birth rate is not going to do it. A few quotes:

...while economic effects pale against [the] other dimensions of what happened here, the Great Wrecking hit Minnesotans in their wallets in multiple ways. Most significantly, it drove people out of a state that was barely growing.

The people who left, who largely were Hispanic immigrants, also contributed most to the little population growth Minnesota has experienced in recent years. Their exit has shrunk the labor force, the consumer base and number of people who pay taxes and generate economic growth.

In September, Minnesota had 64,000 fewer people working than it did in November last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a 2.1% drop in a workforce of 3 million.

And we know those people didn’t just become unemployed because the same data shows the size of Minnesota’s workforce declined by almost 58,000 in that period, a 1.8% drop.

Minnesota has fewer people working and trying to find work today than it did in January 2020.

That loss of population is also shown in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul schools, where the number of English Language Learner students enrolled suddenly dropped in fall 2026, leaving both districts with more teachers than they needed and even larger holes in their budgets than usual. There are 1,500 kids missing in those schools because of Metro Surge, most likely because their families left the state. 

Three more days until Election Day. Vote early.