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Trump has loved “travel bans” since his first term in office. It has nothing to do with making America safer or better and everything to do with making America whiter.
People were opposed to Trump’s blanket bans all the way back in 2017, when the heads of tech companies managed to collectively grow enough spine to push back against Trump and his bigoted take on immigration.
Well, it’s now Trump’s second term and for damn sure US tech companies aren’t going to be riding to rescue. The post-truth administration continues to welcome white migrants while doing everything it can to eject non-whites, even if it means repeatedly arresting and jailing actual US citizens.
The thing is that migrants actually make America greater than it would ever be if it was just a nation of white people pretending they’re actually the “native” Americans. Migrants break fewer laws, pay more taxes, and avail themselves of fewer social programs than naturally-born citizens.
This administration is fully engaged in Manifest Bigotry. It has stripped temporary protected status from thousands of people who fled from war-torn countries, abject poverty, and nations known for their perpetual human rights abuses. Those still being allowed to access this particular privilege are the kind of people this administration loves: whites fleeing imaginary “persecution” in a nation where Black people have finally been given the same rights as white people.
While it may seem plausible to extend a travel ban now that Trump has picked an unwinnable fight with a nation capable of destroying the world’s economy for the next several decades, it doesn’t explain why Trump feels the need to strip rights and privileges from so many people who’ve already made their way into the United States.
That US Citizenship and Immigration Services policy has blocked work permits and green cards for people from countries deemed “high risk” by the government including Iran, Nigeria, and Venezuela—even though they were already present in the US. That’s led many to lose jobs and put their lawful status in jeopardy as the benefits pause has continued.
As the court notes in its ruling, this targeting of so many migrants is retroactive. Rather than treat the new policy as something that only effects everyone moving forward, the administration treats every new anti-migrant policy as retroactive, clawing back protections awarded them by previous administrations.
All of this is being done by executive order. At no point has Congress passed any laws in support of these executive declarations. And while far too many judges (especially those in certain appellate courts and the Supreme Court) seem to feel they’re incapable of reining in executive power, lower courts are more than willing to lay down a few roadblocks, even when it’s almost inevitable the higher courts will have them removed as soon as fucking possible.
And the administration continues this assault on non-white people, practically daring courts to do anything about it. This court — one that is currently entertaining the thought of sanctioning DOJ prosecutors — is trying to do something about it. And the Rhode Island court — represented here by chief judge John McConnell Jr. — points out the government has sabotaged its own reputation repeatedly while engaging in what appears to be blatant bigotry.
McConnell also found evidence—including derogatory statements about immigrants by administration officials after the National Guard shooting—of pretextual reasons behind the policies.
“The Government effectively invites the Court to shut its eyes and ignore the strong evidence of anti-immigrant animus before it,” he wrote. “Doing so would require profound naiveté on the Court’s part.”
This government wants courts to pretend they’re stupid. It wants the sort of deference handed over to despots, even as it pretends it’s still the leader of the Free World. And so the courts that respect the rule of law get this sort of bullshit from administration officials, who choose to present everything as some sort of liberal conspiracy against the Great Morbidly Obese White Hope:
The administration’s critics on the left have been “running the same gambit with so called ‘animus’ claims since 2017,” James Percival, general counsel for DHS, said in a statement.
“It is sabotage dressed in legal clothing,” he said.
Cause and effect, you racist idiots. If you’re seeing more anti-immigrant animus claims since Trump’s first term in office, it’s because the Trump administration (both versions) is deeply steeped in anti-migrant animus. Correlation and causation. That fewer judges ruled against the Biden administration on animus claims isn’t evidence of judicial activism. It’s nothing more than judges responding to stimuli.
Filed Under: bigotry, cbp, dhs, ice, iran, john mcconnell, mass deportation, nicaragua, nigeria, rhode island, travel ban, trump administration, venezuela
You really can’t make this stuff up.
On Friday, the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs posted to Twitter/X condemning Nicaragua’s government for—and I quote—”detaining Nicaraguans for liking posts online,” calling it evidence of “how paranoid the illegitimate Murillo and Ortega regime is.” The Bureau demanded “the unconditional release of all political prisoners” and declared that “freedom means ending the regime’s cycle of repression.”
Stirring stuff. Very pro-free-expression. One tiny problem: the very same day, a federal judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the US government doing… essentially the same thing. Hat tip to the excellent Chris Geidner from Lawdork for calling out the contrast on Bluesky.
The lawsuit, brought by Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation along with two anonymous noncitizen students, challenges the government’s practice of revoking visas and initiating deportation proceedings against people lawfully present in the United States based on their speech—including, notably, their social media activity. As we’ve covered here at Techdirt, the State Department has made reviewing social media profiles a regular part of the visa process, and has been actively targeting people for their online expression.
The court’s ruling lays out in pretty damning detail just how aggressively the government has been going after people for their protected speech. From the order:
In March 2025, DHS and ICE began aggressively targeting lawfully present noncitizens for protected speech, particularly at universities. Plaintiffs point to the arrests of Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Mohsen Mahdawi as emblematic of the Government’s enforcement strategy.
And what exactly did these individuals do that warranted arrest, detention, and deportation proceedings? Let’s see:
Ms. Öztürk is a PhD student at Tufts University who is lawfully present in the United States on an F-1 student visa. Ms. Öztürk co-authored an opinion article in the Tufts student newspaper that criticized the university’s refusal to adopt several resolutions approved by the undergraduate student senate urging the University to, among other things, recognize a genocide in Gaza and divest from Israeli companies… On March 25, 2025, six plain-clothes federal officers surrounded Ms. Öztürk on the street outside her home, detained her, and transported her to a Louisiana immigration jail.
She wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper. A DHS spokesperson claimed her editorial “glorified and supported terrorists.” It did not. It criticized the university’s policies, and did nothing to glorify or support “terrorists.”
The court also details what government officials have been saying publicly about this enforcement strategy.
DHS posted on Twitter that anyone who thinks they can “hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism—think again.” Stephen Miller bragged that “The State Department has revoked tens of thousands of visas, and they’re just getting started on tens of thousands more.” The US government isn’t hiding the fact that they’re combing US social media to figure out who to detain.
One of the plaintiffs—Jane Doe—is on the Canary Mission website, a private list of people which MAGA folks claim are anti-Israel and which the government has apparently been using as a shopping list for who to kidnap and deport. From the ruling:
Jane Doe was listed on the Canary Mission website, which is an anonymously and privately run website that publishes personal information of individuals and organizations that the Canary Mission personally deems “anti-Israel.” In their motion and during the hearing, the Government explained that DHS had asked ICE to generate “reports” for the State Department on individuals listed on the Canary Mission website to aid in decision-making about visa revocations. Notably, before the Government brought enforcement actions against them, Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Mohsen Mahdawi all had profiles published about them on the Canary Mission website.
The US government is actively monitoring people’s social media, revoking visas over protected speech, and using an anonymous website that doxxes pro-Palestinian activists as a source for enforcement targets.
And then the State Department has the audacity to criticize Nicaragua for “detaining Nicaraguans for liking posts online.”
Remember, the State Department’s tweet said that this kind of behavior shows “how paranoid and illegitimate” the regime is. We agree.
The hypocrisy is coming so fast it’s hard to keep up, but this one deserves special mention because the State Department is literally condemning other countries for the exact policy it’s implementing, and getting called out about it in court.
Nicaragua is paranoid and illegitimate for targeting social media activity, but when the US does it, we’re… protecting national security? Fighting antisemitism? The framing changes but the underlying action is the same: using the power of the state to punish people for their online expression.
The court, for its part, found that the plaintiffs’ fears of enforcement were entirely reasonable given the government’s very public campaign of targeting people for their speech:
Jane Doe and John Doe have sufficiently alleged that their behavior falls into the crosshairs of the Government’s stated enforcement priorities. The Government has also not disavowed plans to continue invoking the Revocation and Deportation Provisions.
In other words: the government isn’t even pretending it won’t keep doing this. And yet somehow it’s Nicaragua that needs to be lectured about freedom?
Maybe someone at the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs should walk down the hall and have a chat with their colleagues about what “freedom means ending the regime’s cycle of repression” actually looks like in practice. Because right now, the State Department’s position appears to be: targeting people for their social media activity is evidence of a paranoid, illegitimate regime—unless we’re the ones doing it.
Filed Under: illegitimate regime, marco rubio, nicaragua, paranoia, social media, state department, trump administration, visas
We’ve argued for years that intellectual property laws have little, if any, connection to innovation and economic growth. We’ve seen so much research on this that, at this point, it’s hardly even an open question. And yet… politicians and the press (and beneficiaries of stricter IP law) always seem to insist that there’s a clear, undeniable and strong positive connection between stricter IP laws or enforcement and economic growth and innovation. Unfortunately there are no legitimate studies that seem to support that argument. Mike Palmedo recently put together a presentation highlighting some of the research which demonstrates the lack of a connection between such policies and economic growth or innovation. Here’s a quick summary:
UK Commission on Intellectual Property Rights. Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy. 2002. (Link)
“…strong IP rights alone provide neither the necessary nor sufficient incentives for firms to invest in particular countries… The evidence that foreign investment is positively associated with IP protection in most developing countries is lacking.”
Robert L. Ostergard., Jr. “Policy Beyond Assumptions: Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Growth.” Chapter 2 of The Development Dilemma: The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights in the International System. LFB Scholarly Publishing, New York. 2003
“…no consistent evidence emerged to show that IPR contributed significantly to economic growth cross-nationally. Furthermore, when the nations are split into developed and developing countries, results to suggest otherwise did not emerge.”
Carsten Fink and Keith Maskus. “Why We Study Intellectual Property and What We Have Learned.” Chapter one of Intellectual Property and Development: Lessons from Economic Research. 2005. (Link)
“Existing research suggests that countries that strengthen their IPR are unlikely to experience a sudden boost in inflows of FDI. At the same time, the empirical evidence does point to a positive role for IPRs in stimulating formal technology transfer.”
“Developing countries should carefully assess whether the economic benefits of such rules outweigh their costs. They also need to take into account the costs of administering and enforcing a reformed IPR system”
“We still know relatively little about the way technology diffuses internationally.”
Keith Mascus. “Incorporating a Globalized Intellectual Property Rights Regime Into an Economic Development Strategy.” Ch. 15 of Intellectual Property, Growth and Trade. (ed. Mascus). Elsevier. 2008.
“Middle income countries must strike a complicated balance between promoting domestic learning and diffusion, through limited IP protection, and gaining greater access to international technologies through a strong regime… it makes little sense for these nations to adopt the strongly protectionist IP standards that exist in the U.S., the EU and other developed economies. Rather, they should take advantage of the remaining policy space provided by the TRIPS Agreement.”
“It is questionable whether the poorest countries should devote significant development resources to legal reforms and enforcement of IPR.”
Kamal Saggi. “Intellectual Property Rights and International Technology Transfer via Trade and Foreign Direct Investment. Ch. 13 of Intellectual Property, Growth and Trade. (ed. Mascus). Elsevier. 2008.
“Overall, it is fair to say that the existing empirical evidence regarding the overall technology-transfer impacts of increased IPR protection in developing countries is inconclusive at this stage. What is not yet clear is whether sufficient information flows will be induced to procure significant dynamic gains in those countries through more learning and local innovation.”
“Developing countries need not only to obtain foreign technologies but also to learn how to use them to their fullest potential. In this context, it is useful to make a distinction between the initial introduction of a technology into a country and its subsequent diffusion within the domestic economy.”
Alexander Koff, Laura Baughman, Joseph Francois and Christine McDaniel. “Study on the Economic Impact of ‘TRIPS-Plus’ Free Trade Agreements.” International Intellectual Property Institute and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. August 2011.
- TRIPS-Plus IPRs viewed as “important, but not essential” for attracting investment. Many other factors matter (taxes, human capital, clustering, etc).
- Many countries had recently changed laws to comply with TRIPS, so changes for FTAs had a smaller effect on investment.
- The way in which the obligations were implemented was important. It is not wise to simply impose one legal framework on top of another. Implementation of FTAs requires taking specific nations’ legal systems into account.
That same post includes additional data from a research paper that Palmedo himself is working on, looking specifically at the impact on foreign direct investment (FDI) in countries that sign free trade agreements (FTAs) with the US, which require stricter IP laws. Palmedo looked at three countries, Guatemala, Peru and Nicaragua, that had signed such FTAs with the US, and studied how much foreign direct investment they got before and after the new laws went in place. He also looked at how much change there was in technology licensing. The results, again, highlighted how such rules appeared to have little direct impact on these items — even if they’re often cited as the key reasons for signing these agreements. As Palmedo concludes:
In general, the results show that stronger IPRs were not correlated with changes in FDI. They were correlated with changes in licensing, but not always in the direction one would expect. The data does not show that stronger IPRs required by FTAs drove significant amounts of tech transfer in these three countries.
There are plenty more studies along these lines. At what point do we stop taking it on faith that expanding intellectual property laws is automatically good for the economy and innovation and start looking at what actually works?
Filed Under: economic growth, fta, guatemala, ipr, mike palmedo, nicaragua, peru, uk
We recently wrote about a dispute between Costa Rica and Nicragua, after a Nicraguan military official and his troops accidentally “invaded” Costa Rica allegedly relying on Google Maps, which placed the border between the two countries in the wrong place (oops). However, what’s amazing to me is that the story has continued to escalate. Even though Costa Rica has no standing army, it mobilized its police force to go to that area, and now both sides are being urged to back down. Obviously, Costa Rica feels that this was much more than a Google Maps error (since corrected, by the way). Nicaraguan officials are now claiming that they didn’t actually rely on Google Maps (though, it was wrong) and that they didn’t actually invade Costa Rica, but the Costa Ricans aren’t buying it. And no one seems to be explaining why the Nicaraguans have stuck round the area… The whole thing sounds like some important details are being left out, but it would be quite an unfortunate story if it turns out that a Google Maps error leads to war.
Filed Under: costa rica, dispute, google maps, nicaragua
You would think that military professionals would rely on something other than Google Maps in determining where countries have their borders. However, down in Central America, there’s apparently been something of an international incident, after a Nicaraguan military commander, using Google Maps as his guide, brought his troops into Costa Rica. He insists that he was just following what Google Maps said, and that he never intended to go into the neighboring country. Yet… the report also notes that there was a Costa Rican flag there, which the Nicaraguans took down and replaced with their own flag. You would think, at that point, that everyone involved might double check to make sure they were on the right side of the border. After raising their own flag, the Nicaraguans apparently set up camp, cleaned up a nearby river (nice of them) and then dumped sediment into Costa Rican territory (not so nice of them). If this truly is an honest mistake, then hopefully nothing more is made of it, but it sounds like Costa Rican citizens are quite upset about the whole thing, leading Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla to go on TV to ask citizens to “be calm… amid the outrage that these events provoke within us.”
Filed Under: costa rica, google maps, nicaragua
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