Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Mini-Post: Your Papers Please

Sunday, October 05, 2025

Mini-Post: Your Papers Please

I remember growing up in the fifties and watching the spy movies and TV shows, and the secret police always said "Your papers, please." to travelers, there you needed permission to travel outside your district. And now here in the U.S. you need papers to travel if you look Latino, otherwise it is night or two... or three in jail.

US-born citizen sues after twice being arrested by immigration agents
Leonardo Garcia Venegas was twice arrested in construction site sweeps.
ABC News
By Laura Romero
October 1, 2025

A U.S.-born citizen who was arrested and detained by immigration authorities twice in recent months has filed a lawsuit against the federal government claiming he was improperly detained.

Leonardo Garcia Venegas, an American citizen and construction worker who lives and works in Baldwin, Alabama, claims the arrests were "unreasonable" and violated the Fourth Amendment that protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

"DHS authorizes these armed raids based on the general assumption that certain groups of people in the industry, including Latinos, are likely illegal immigrants," Venegas' attorney claimed in the lawsuit. "Once immigration officers are on a site, they preemptively seize everybody they think looks undocumented."

And if they don't happen to drive... good-bye!

"The officers ran right past the white and Black workers without detaining them and went straight for the Latino workers," his attorney claimed in the lawsuit.

Two weeks later, Venegas was allegedly arrested again on another private construction site "when another immigration patrol saw him working and assumed, without reasonable suspicion, that Leo was undocumented."

Assumed undocumented until...

The agents said that...

"He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands," the statement said. "Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest."

I would sure like to see the body camera footage of that!

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

“A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.”
― Booker T. Washington

"We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason."
– Edward R. Murrow

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Sunday, October 05, 2025

Mini-Post: Your Papers Please

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