The parable of the Good Samaritan in Trump’s America

Great piece by Manny Fernandez on how the Trump administration is trying to intimidate anybody who gives even life-saving aid to desperate migrants:

Teresa L. Todd pulled over one recent night on a dark West Texas highway to help three young Central American migrants who had flagged her down. Ms. Todd — an elected official, government lawyer and single mother in a desert border region near Big Bend National Park — said she went into “total mom mode” when she saw the three siblings, one of whom appeared to be very ill.

Struggling to communicate using her broken Spanish, Ms. Todd told the three young people to get out of the cold and into her car. She was phoning and texting friends for help when a sheriff’s deputy drove up, followed soon by the Border Patrol. “They asked me to step behind my car, and the supervisor came and started Mirandizing me,” said Ms. Todd, referring to being read her Miranda rights. “And then he says that I could be found guilty of transporting illegal aliens, and I’m, like, ‘What are you talking about?”

Ms. Todd spent 45 minutes in a holding cell that night. Federal agents obtained a search warrant to examine her phone, and she became the focus of an investigation that could lead to federal criminal charges.

As the Trump administration moves on multiple fronts to shut down illegal border crossings, it has also stepped up punitive measures targeting private citizens who provide compassionate help to migrants — “good Samaritan” aid that is often intended to save lives along a border that runs through hundreds of miles of remote terrain that can be brutally unforgiving. . . .

Days later, back at work at Marfa City Hall, she was visited at her office by an agent with federal Homeland Security Investigations and a Texas Ranger. The federal agent handed her a search warrant for her phone, and she surrendered it. One of the friends she had texted that night told Ms. Todd that agents had also questioned her and examined her phone. . .

The sheriff said he believes that (18-year-old) Esmeralda would have died had Ms. Todd not stopped to help her. According to court records, she was taken by Border Patrol agents to Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine, Tex., and was treated for four days for starvation, dehydration, infected wounds from cactus spines and rhabdomyolysis, a serious condition that can lead to kidney failure.

“Harboring is a big jump for them to make in my book,” Sheriff Kitts said of the threatened criminal charges against Ms. Todd. “There’s a human component to this. We’ll let Congress and the politicians fight it out, but if somebody’s hungry or thirsty or needs some help, we’re going to help them.” . . .

Ms. Todd said she plans to work with her congressional representatives on legislation exempting good Samaritans from federal prosecution.

“There is something bigger at stake than just me here, because this does send a message to try to chill people from helping others,” Ms. Todd said.

One day last week, she received one good surprise: The authorities returned her iPhone. “They took it at 11:30 in the morning and said I would have it back by 3 in the afternoon, 5 at the latest,” she said. “And 53 days later, I got my phone back.”

I’ll just leave this here:

Michele Bachmann has long been an outspoken proponent of Christian values in American life.

Now the former congresswoman from Minnesota believes those values have no greater champion than President Donald Trump. 

Bachmann, who was a Republican presidential candidate in 2012, said during an interview Saturday that “Donald Trump has had the courage and the fortitude” to stand up “where other Republicans wouldn’t dare to stand up.”

 
“He is highly biblical, and I would say to your listeners, we will in all likelihood never see a more godly, biblical president again in our lifetime,” she said on the Olive Tree Ministries’ radio show “Understanding the Times.”

Conservative politics in America today is a toxic stew of evil, stupidity, greed, ignorance, hypocrisy, and bigotry, which among other things has allowed the Republican party to become a giant affinity scam for ripping off frightened old white people.

Donald Trump is just the natural culmination of all that.