El Magonista Newsletter | Vol. 10, No. 25 | JUNE 29, 2022

The death toll is at least 50 after the bodies were found in the abandoned tractor-trailer on a sweltering day in Texas.

SAN ANTONIO — Dozens of migrants were found dead in an abandoned big rig in San Antonio on Monday in what appears to be the deadliest human smuggling case in modern U.S. history.

The bodies of at least 46 people were initially found in the tractor-trailer in the sweltering Texas heat, officials said. Sixteen others, including four children, were hospitalized, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

On Tuesday morning, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the death toll had risen to 50. He said 22 of the dead were Mexican nationals, while seven were from Guatemala and two from Honduras. The nationalities of the remaining 19 people had yet to be confirmed.

López Obrador said the Mexican government would be providing assistance to the family members of the dead. 

Three people were taken into custody following the discovery, San Antonio Police Chief William P. McManus said, though he added authorities did not know if they were definitely connected to the incident... READ MORE

WASHINGTON — When Speaker Nancy Pelosi refers to the Supreme Court as the “Trump-McConnell” court, she does not mean it as a compliment. Senator Mitch McConnell will take it as one anyway.

“I want to thank her for confirming the obvious,” Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, said in an interview.

Mr. McConnell is indisputably a chief architect — if not the chief architect — of the conservative court that has shaken the nation over the past week with a string of rulings on abortion, guns and religion — a trifecta of searing cultural issues.

While much of the public recoiled at the decisions and the prospect of more to come in the years ahead, Mr. McConnell, a deep admirer of Justice Antonin Scalia, saw the culmination of a personal push to reshape the court in the image of the conservative judicial icon. Mr. McConnell said his goal had been “to move us back to where Scalia would have taken us to a textualist, originalist majority. And we have that for the first time in history.”

That history-making feat came at a price: the embrace of Donald J. Trump. Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans might have had their misgivings about Mr. Trump, but they were more than willing to set aside any reservations — and Senate comity — in zealous pursuit of a reliably conservative court. Mr. Trump, however problematic, was a means to their end... READ MORE

By David G. Savage | Los Angeles Times | JUN. 24, 2022 | Video by AP

WASHINGTON — In a historic reversal, the Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision and ruled that states may again outlaw abortion. 

The court’s conservative majority said the Constitution does not protect the right to abortion, instead leaving the decision in the hands of state lawmakers. 

The 5-4 ruling marks the most significant curtailing of an established constitutional right in the court’s history.

The opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. closely tracks a draft that was leaked by Politico in May. 

“We hold that Roe and [1992’s Planned Parenthood vs.] Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The opinion was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett... READ MORE

Using a garbled reading of history as a crutch, the U.S. Supreme Court’s supposed textualist conservatives have just managed to codify a cartoon cutout version of the Second Amendment, obliterating New York State’s concealed carry firearm permitting system. We will mince no words: This will cost the lives of civilians and police officers, as almost anyone in New York City will now be free to carry a gun. At a time when the proliferation of weapons is already killing record numbers of Americans, the nearly absolutist right of self-defense the majority canonizes will become a right to societal suicide.

It’s just 27 simple words written in 1789: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the six-member majority, brazenly ignores that first clause and renders the second in the most expansive terms imaginable.

With all the incisiveness of a junior high school student, he states: “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.” By this principle, there’s just about no weapon that can be restricted in hardly any place, so long as a man with his finger on the trigger can credibly assert the need to protect himself. Indeed, with ever more Americans carrying ever more guns, the psychological need to carry ever more powerful weapons only escalates.

Most appallingly, though the challenge was to a New York law, the majority doesn’t give two shakes about the implications of its absolutism for the nation’s most populous city, which happens to be battling an upsurge in shootings due in large part to the easy availability of weapons. The word “subway” doesn’t appear once in Thomas’ 63 pages... READ MORE

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that immigrants being held for deportation have no right to seek their release on bond, regardless of how long they may be held. 

The justices ruled unanimously that federal immigration law calls for holding noncitizens who returned illegally to the United States and generally “removing” them within 90 days. They may be detained longer if they have pending claims, the court said, but they do not have a right under the law to go free on bond.

“There is no plausible construction of the text of [immigration law] that requires the government to provide bond hearings before immigration judges after six months of detention,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking for the court in Johnson vs. Arteaga-Martinez.

She said Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, a citizen of Mexico, had entered this country illegally four times and been sent back across the border. 

He said he was beaten violently by a street gang in Mexico and fled north for safety. He was held in Pennsylvania for deportation but filed a claim for asylum.

After six months of detention, a federal judge and the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled he could be released on bond.

In a second, related 6-3 decision, the high court Monday also overturned the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco, which upheld broad, “class-wide injunctive relief” that required bond hearings for those who had been held for deportation for more than six months in Seattle and San Francisco. 

The Biden administration appealed that ruling... READ MORE

Lawyers for a private prison company traded arguments with the state of California before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena on Tuesday over a lawsuit challenging state legislation banning private, for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers. 

Although no ruling has been made, the outcome of the case could affect the future of the private prison industry in several states beyond California.

When California legislators passed Assembly Bill 32 in 2019, they saw their state as a leader in the battle to rid the country of private detention, and hoped that others would follow suit.

California’s ban affects private facilities contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants. About 25,000 people are currently being held in detention in the U.S. And though private prisons are responsible for less than 10% of the total U.S. prison and jail population, they hold nearly 80% of people in immigration detention... READ MORE

“The schoolhouse door cannot be closed to one of modern society’s most marginalized, most vilified groups.”

On August 31, 1977, Rosario Robles walked her five children to Bonner Elementary School in Tyler, Texas. Rosario and her husband, Jose, had immigrated to the United States from Mexico five years earlier and settled in the “rose city” southeast of Dallas, where Jose found work at a local pipe factory and the family bought a house. But never before on the first day of school had Rosario been asked to present proof of legal residency for their children—American passports, for instance, or birth certificates issued by US hospitals. When she couldn’t, the school’s principal denied the children admission, even driving them home in his own car. 

Also in Tyler, Humberto Alvarez, a Mexican-born father of four children enrolled in Douglas Elementary School, was told that the Tyler Independent School District would charge undocumented students an annual tuition fee of $1,000 per student, or the equivalent of roughly $5,000 today. Alvarez, who had left his home country in 1974 and started working at a meatpacking plant in Tyler, couldn’t afford the fee, so the requirement effectively excluded his children from the school system. Basically, the statute allowed for different school districts and schools to implement different policies... READ MORE

Chancellor of the California Community Colleges Steps into New Role.

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am pleased to announce Eloy Ortiz Oakley as the new President & CEO of College Futures Foundation. Oakley, who will step into the role August 1, is a devoted champion for equitable student opportunity and an unparalleled leader in higher education—serving most recently as Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, a senior higher education adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Education, and member of the University of California Board of Regents.

At College Futures, we believe that securing the college success of students facing the most formidable barriers will help all of us thrive—our communities, economy, and state. Our staff and board are dedicated to ensuring that more students who reflect California’s diversity can complete their postsecondary journeys and access the opportunity for a better life.

Eloy Oakley lives this mission every day. He has a well-deserved reputation as an equity champion whose innovative programs and policies have helped hundreds of thousands of students succeed. He is known for forging productive relationships between K-12, community colleges, CSU, UC, civic and workforce leaders, and policymakers. Guided by his dedication to student success and economic opportunity, he inspires those who work with him never to accept the status quo so long as equity gaps and outsized obstacles... READ FULL LETTER

What Southern California institution has won five championships over the last two decades and has never failed to make the postseason? 

Hint: It’s not the Lakers, Clippers or Dodgers. 

I’m speaking of the speech and debate program at Gabrielino High School in San Gabriel. For more than two decades it has utterly dominated the Southern California speech and debate scene, qualifying for nationals for 26 straight years. Coach Derek Yuill said he can count the number of schools the program has lost to on one hand. 

Five Gabrielino students have won national championships, and the team has been named one of the top 20 schools in the nation for the last 15 years. 

The team counts Johns Hopkins professors, NASA researchers and public defenders among its alumni. 

And it’s achieved these results with teams comprised largely of Asian and Latino students, many of whom are English-language learners and immigrants themselves... READ MORE