Missouri MAGA Mommies Didn’t Vote For Trump To Deport This One Immigrant They Like!

Yes, they in fact did.

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You drive through Kennett, Missouri, on the way from Memphis to St. Louis, or maybe just on your way to Sikeston to go to Lambert’s. (IYKYK.) It’s in the bootheel, the furthest south in a very southern part of the state. Sheryl Crow is from there. It’s extremely flat. And as you can imagine, just like all rural America at this point, it’s severe Trump country. Or at least it has been until recently. Perhaps very recently.

The New York Times is out with what may become a new kind of Cletus Safari, where instead of visiting diners to find out what makes Trump voters so dang special, mainstream journalists venture into the sticks to meet Trump voters who just can’t believe the leopards are eating their faces or the faces of people they love. They voted for the leopards to eat other people’s faces, you guys.

You know, the wrong kind of people’s faces. Not the faces of the good ones.

This despite how Donald Trump and his surrogates have told them repeatedly for YEARSFUCKINGYEARS what they want to do to anybody they deem not white or straight or cisgender or Christian nationalist enough.

Bless their damned hearts, and Lord Jesus, give your southern writer the strength to deal with these assholes with the appropriate grace and Christian love.

And if I can’t, well, you know, fuck it.

Donald Trump won 80.5 percent of the vote in Dunklin County, where Kennett is. Kamala Harris won 18.8 percent. It’s that kind of red county.

But much of the town and county are rallying around Carol Hui, an immigrant from Hong Kong who’s been in the U.S. for two decades, who works at the John’s Waffle and Pancake House in Kennett. She was recently called into a strange, seemingly random, but mandatory immigration check-in in St. Louis. Her partner, a Guatemalan immigrant, thought it was weird. When she got there, Trump’s immigration thugs lied to her and said they were going to help her get a passport. They kidnapped, I mean, abducted, I mean “detained” her, and now they’re going to deport her, leaving her partner, children and community behind.

And many of the people in Kennett are like Oh shitfuck, I didn’t mean for the leopards to eat CAROL’S face!

“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” said Vanessa Cowart, a friend of Ms. Hui from church. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”

Yes, Ms. Cowart, you in fact did vote for that. Better you grapple with that one sooner than later.

More:

Many people in Kennett expressed outrage that a hardworking mother had spent the past month jailed by immigration authorities.

Supporters described her as an ideal addition to a rural town where the population is declining and the only hospital has closed.

“She’s exactly the sort of person you’d want to come to the country,” said Chuck Earnest, a farmer. “I don’t know how this fits into the deportation problem with Trump.”

Well my God, Chuck. What if most immigrants are more like Carol, and less like whatever bloody fever dream Hannibal Lecter fantasy Donald Trump is always babbling about, regardless of their documentation status? Please, Chuck, take the time to have a light bulb moment if you need it.

Celena Horton, a waitress at a local steak house, said she and Ms. Hui would give each other huge tips when they ate at one another’s restaurants. Ms. Horton said she loved almost everything that Mr. Trump was doing in his second term. Ms. Hui is the reason for the almost.

“I can’t believe they’re doing this to her,” Ms. Horton said.

Because you didn’t listen to the words out of Donald Trump’s mouth, like ever? Or you didn’t believe him? Like, starting from the beginning in 2015, when he came down that escalator and declared Mexicans to be dangerous rapists? Or before that, when he led his shameful birther campaign against the nation’s first Black president? All his lies about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats?

Again, what if they’re all much more like Carol then any of you are willing to admit or consider?

As the Times notes, there are those in Kennett who are truly committed to the hatred and xenophobia, who are apparently disappointed their fellow Trump voters might not be as committed to the Nazi shit as they are. They’re not upset about what’s happening to Carol.

Adam Squires, a onetime candidate for mayor of Kennett, saw it differently. He did not bear any ill will for Ms. Hui, he said, but he voted for Mr. Trump, as did 80 percent of voters in Dunklin County, and he was glad to see the deportation campaign reach home.

“They vote for Trump, and then they get mad because the stuff starts happening,” he said of his neighbors. “We’ve got to get rid of all the illegals. This is just a start.”

He doesn’t think he bears any ill will toward Ms. Hui, but he’s fine with Trump’s Gestapo abducting her, breaking up her family and sending her thousands of miles away to a country where she hasn’t lived for two decades, or maybe to a Salvadoran prison or something if that doesn’t work out.

A white conservative Christian American man’s brain sure is a mighty sick place to be.

Similarly, there are those in the local news comments section who sound more like the Trump voters we all know and loathe:

“If you’re here illegally, expect to be removed,” said one. “This is the consequence of being in a nation with laws,” said another. One commenter simply wrote “Bye.”

I’m sure those came from high-quality individuals who really have something going for them in life.

The Times is careful to note that Carol Hui is not “blameless” in her immigration journey. She hasn’t done it perfectly. Because in the Fascist States of America, that’s supposed to be some sort of line where we lose all semblance of humanity and morality and decide it’s cool to treat people like diseased cattle.

But all these people in Kennett just can’t believe they’re doing this to Carol. Their Carol! Carol they know and love, who has been serving them forever! Carol!

Fucking assholes.

Yes, these stories are going to become more and more common. We know about all the innocent men Trump kidnapped and sent to the Salvadoran torture camp. The child with cancer they abducted and trafficked out of the United States. The students they’re arresting and trying to disappear for writing op-eds that feature opinions that offend Dear Leader and his team of Nazis.

Maurilio Ambrocio is a pastor originally from Guatemala who’s lived south of Tampa, Florida, for 20 years. He also has a landscaping business. Trump’s Gestapo recently kidnapped I mean detained him.

Now meet his neighbor Greg Johns:

Johns says he was beside himself. His eyes water as he recalls when Hurricane Milton hit last year. Ambrocio checked in on him immediately. "Do you need propane?" he asked. "Do you need water? What do you need? That's the type of neighbor [he is]. This man is a part of the neighborhood." Like many in this small rural community, Johns voted for President Trump last November. In fact, he did so at Ambrocio's church, which doubles as a polling station. "I did." He hesitates. "Because I was not happy with the direction the country was going." He says he was hoping migrants in the country without papers and with criminal records would be targeted. But he says he never expected a pillar of the community like Maurilio Ambrocio would be taken away. "You're gonna take you know a community leader, a Pastor, a hard working man… What, did you need a number that day?"

Um, well, Greg, Trump is currently firing ICE staff members in a rage because they’re not hitting deportation quotas, so yes, possibly.

But here we are again. He voted for Trump’s leopards to eat other migrants’ faces. You know, the bad ones. Not the exceptions to the rule like Maurilio! Our Maurilio! Good old Maurilio, who helps people, and is not a gang member and rapist like all the others! He didn’t want Trump to hurt Maurilio!

And yet.

They nabbed Ambrocio in a mandatory immigration meeting, the ones he goes to religiously, like he’s supposed to. They ripped him away from his wife and five children. His 19-year-old daughter is basically having to take over everything, desperately trying to keep the family afloat.

All because Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance and Ron DeSantis are irredeemable, indefensible racists. Stories like this are happening all over Florida, because DeSantis has such an eager little erection to join in Trump’s Nazi crusade, and they’re happening all over the United States. They’re really loving kidnapping migrants who dutifully show up for immigration hearings, because they’re trying to follow instructions. The Gestapo stand in the hallways, hiding their shameful faces behind masks, and they disappear immigrants as they come out of courtrooms.

A little four-year-old Mexican girl from Bakersfield, California, is being ordered out of the U.S. by Donald Trump’s Gestapo, despite how she’s here for medical treatment that she will literally die without. She has something called short bowel syndrome. Her body doesn’t absorb nutrients. Her parents brought her to the U.S. in desperation, hoping she could get the care she needs. They came in the right way, using the app the Biden administration designed for migrants who needed help or asylum or rescue. The little girl got the medical care. She’s on a near-constant IV feeding system, which she carries with her in a little backpack.

“This is a textbook example of medical need,” said the family’s attorney, Rebecca Brown, of the pro bono legal firm Public Counsel. “This child will die and there’s no sense for that to happen. It would just be a cruel sacrifice.”

She. Will. Die.

And Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, three of history’s greatest monsters, simply do not give a shit. They don’t believe people who used that app are here legally, because they don’t think the app should have existed.

Have you heard about Dylan in New York City? Read about Dylan in New York City, the Venezuelan student who came in the right way, who was doing everything he was supposed to do, who was kidnapped after one of his scheduled immigration hearings. There are so many more. This is who Trump is kidnapping and human trafficking out of the country. It’s not “criminals.”

"This is gestapo-like behavior where plain-clothes officers wearing masks are terrorizing immigrants who are doing the right thing by going to court, following up on their immigration proceedings, and trying to come into this country lawfully," said Rep. Dan Goldman.

Exactly. And Trump’s Nazis have only just begun, they are thrilled to say.

Trump ICE meatsack Tom Homan, the stupid ass who looks like he became a middle school P.E. teacher for all the wrong reasons, was thrilled to share on Fox News how much more Gestapo-ing he’s about to do, for his lord and savior Donald Fucking Trump.

"We've got 600,000 criminals walking the streets of this country that we need to get, so yeah, we increased the number of teams," Homan said. "We're going to have over 1,000 teams on the street. We are putting more targeting in this. We've got to increase these arrests and removals. These are public safety threats."

Actually it turns out they’re not public safety threats. They’re Carol. And Maurilio. And Dylan. And the little four-year-old girl the Trump regime is poised to claim as its next victim. And Andry the gay hairdresser. And Kilmar.

And and and.

Yes, we’re going to be hearing more and more and more of these stories. We need to be yelling them from the rooftops. We need to call out the real criminals, AKA the Trump administration and its Gestapo.

And — and here is the part where I was asking the Lord for grace above — we do genuinely need to figure out how to hold space for erstwhile Trump voters who seem to sincerely want to grapple with the truth, or at least for whom the cognitive dissonance is becoming deafening. We need to be discerning in identifying who’s legitimately worth holding that space for, though, and who isn’t.

Because here’s what I don’t want us to do. I don’t want us mollycoddling these fucking asshole MAGA Americans who have themselves convinced they’re not bigots precisely because they are friends with somebody they consider “one of the good ones.”

Because they love Carol down at the waffle shop!

Because Maurilio has always been such a good neighbor!

Because of course kids with devastating medical conditions should get to stay!

Pretty much since time fucking immemorial, white racist Americans have been excusing their bigotry by telling themselves that they don’t hate anybody. Why, they’ve always loved the Black family that lives on their street, they keep their yard real nice, and that Hispanic guy who cuts their grass is just real honest and hard-working.

Not like all those others, they say to themselves, unspoken, inside their heads.

They always think they know the person who’s the exception, who’s not like all those others. This is a mentality among white conservative Christian people in this country that goes all the way back to fucking slavery.

Let us clearly say that MAGA people like that can go fuck themselves. Those are the ones to whom we need to say, yes, you bigoted motherfucker, this is EXACTLY what you voted for, and if you ever wish to atone for that on Earth before God dropkicks you into the fiery depths of hell, then it’s time to rip off the Band-Aid and confess what you do every time you enter a voting booth.

So yes, let us show grace when we can, if we can, and let us find teachable moments where they genuinely exist. But do not let these assholes get away with thinking what happened to that one immigrant they like is the exception to the rule.

It’s not a teachable moment if the bastards don’t learn a fucking thing.

And that is what I have to say about that on the one-year anniversary of this here little pissed off newsletter.

May we continue to refuse to hide the lights of our moral high ground underneath a motherfuckin’ bushel, but instead let them shine before all men. (And women and all the other genders too.)

AND THE PEOPLE SAID AMEN.

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