Tag Archives: Latin America

Latin Times: Salvadoran Prison Chief Overseeing Trump Deportees Has Been Sanctioned By The U.S. For Negotiating With Gangs: Report

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A top Salvadoran official in charge of overseeing the country’s prisons, including the infamous CECOT where hundreds of Venezuelans have been sent by the Trump administration, is also sanctioned by the U.S. for secretly negotiating with gangs, a new report claims.

The official in question is Osiris Luna, described by the Wall Street Journal as instrumental to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on crime and gang violence.

Luna, however, has been sanctioned for engaging in negotiations with powerful gang leaders in the country. The pact would see reduced homicides and political backing for Bukele in exchange for better treatment for incarcerated leaders. The outlet said they ended up receiving cellphones, access to sex workers and other privileges, according to an indictment from U.S. prosecutors.

Bukele and Luna have denied the allegations, but a gang member recently revealed that Bukele himself has been involved in such negotiations.

Salvadoran Prison Chief Overseeing Trump Deportees Has Been Sanctioned By The U.S. For Negotiating With Gangs: Report
Osiris Luna, El Salvador’s prison director, has been reportedly sanctioned by the U.S. for secretly negotiating with gangs

https://www.latintimes.com/salvadoran-prison-chief-overseeing-trump-deportees-has-been-sanctioned-us-negotiating-gangs-583691

Independent: Immigrants are being rounded up in Hawaii’s coffee fields and being treated worse than ‘cats and dogs,’ locals say

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Armando Rodriguez and his wife Karina have employed immigrant workers on Aloha Star Coffee Farms on the Big Island in Hawaii for decades, but ICE officials are now arresting their workers

Donald Trump’s war on immigration has impacted all corners of the U.S., but now, immigration officials have targeted an isolated patch on Hawaii’s Big Island.

“Even cats and dogs have rights here and in the United States, and they’re being treated better than some of our community members here,” Armando Rodriguez, owner of Aloha Star Coffee Farms, told local station KITV.

…

He explained that his initiative, Aloha Latinos, has focused on protecting civil rights for Hispanic residents who live with their families on the island.

Yet, many lives were now being torn apart because of the recent raids, he added.

“Our fear has turned into anger. A lot of communities are mad, they’re creating angry people here,” he said.

…

“It’s terrifying. People today are seeing their parents arrested right in front of them. Children are seeing their parents treated as criminals,” Kona Coffee farmer, Victoria Magana, told KITV.

ICE officials have been targeting Hawaii’s coffee farmers, locals say
Armando Rodriguez and his wife, Karina, employ green-card workers on Aloha Star Coffee Farms on the Big Island in Hawaii. They say ICE officials have now started arresting other local farmers on the island

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/immigrants-hawaii-coffee-farms-ice-b2753911.html

New York Times: Hawaii’s Prized Kona Coffee Fields Have Become a Target for ICE

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The Trump crackdown has reached the volcanic Island of Hawaii, where immigrants, some of them undocumented, are crucial to cultivating the rare coffee.

On the mist-wreathed slopes of Mauna Loa, where the earth is rich with volcanic memory and the Pacific glimmers in the distance, a coveted coffee — Kona — is coaxed from the soil.

Nurtured by the Island of Hawaii’s unique mingling of abundant sunshine, afternoon rain and lava-infused soil, Kona coffee retails for more than $30 for an eight-ounce bag. With a devoted following around the world, the distinct coffee has been a point of pride for the Big Island, and for the thousands of immigrants from Latin America who for decades have handpicked the beans in the Kona fields.

Now the fate of many of those immigrant workers is uncertain, as is the future of the island’s coffee industry.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has reached this remote, rugged island a 45-minute flight from Honolulu.

Federal agents have flown in several times since February, most recently last week, often remaining for days as they search for undocumented immigrants among the 200,000 or so people who live on the island.

Hawaii’s Prized Kona Coffee Fields Have Become a Target for ICE
The Trump crackdown has reached the volcanic Island of Hawaii, where immigrants, some of them undocumented, are crucial to cultivating the rare coffee.

Explicame: Trump proposes $50 tax on every $1,000 sent in remittances

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Also billed as the Republican’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” and bullshit like this subtitle:

… the bill actually continues tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of the working poor, those living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. Buried starting at page 327 of 389 is a new 5% tax on remittances sent to family & friends overseas. This 5% tax is on top of the income taxes and the 15.3% (yes, the actual amount is twice the deduction that appears on your check stubs!) social security and medicare taxes that the sender has already paid, plus 2-4% in currency exchange fees.

Amidst the buzz surrounding the ambitious fiscal plan revealed by Republicans this week, a particular proposal has flown under the radar yet holds the potential to severely impact millions of workers and their families both within and outside the United States: a new tax on remittances sent abroad, costing up to $50 each month.

This initiative is part of the ‘ways and means bills,’ as termed by lawmakers aligned with President Donald Trump. The legislative package seeks to extend and expand tax exemptions implemented during his first term while introducing a series of public spending cuts. However, among the numerous provisions, the remittance tax stands out for its immediate and silent social impact.

The proposal specifically calls for a 5% tax on remittances sent from the United States. This levy would fall on the sender, meaning the worker in the U.S. who sends money to their home country to support loved ones, with an amount of $50 for every $1,000 sent.

With this tax, a monthly transfer of $300 could cost the worker an additional $15 in taxes, a figure that may seem small in macroeconomic terms but represents a significant expense for households living paycheck to paycheck.

Trump proposes $50 tax on every $1,000 sent in remittances
In a sweeping fiscal plan unveiled by Republicans, a proposed tax on remittances could significantly impact millions of workers and their families.

https://www.explica.me/en/News/Trump-proposes-50-tax-on-every-1000-sent-in-remittances-20250516-0016.html

GOP’s “big beautiful bill” would tax payments that many immigrants send back home
The bill would impose a 5% tax on remittance payments, with exceptions for most transfers made by U.S. citizens.

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/05/14/gops-big-beautiful-bill-would-tax-payments-that-many-immigrants-send-back-home

Apparently there are a few Republicans who think the bill is not so big and beautiful.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5304927-trump-agenda-shaky-congress

The Telegraph: If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market

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The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

Donald Trump is systematically purging every US government institution, a pattern familiar to anybody who has studied the caudillo regimes of Latin America, or the playbook of today’s Putin-Orbán-Erdoğan prototypes.

It is a racing certainty that he will soon do the same to the Federal Reserve, forcing the central bank to cut interest rates into the teeth of rising inflation, with epic consequences for the world’s dollarised financial system and for €39 trillion (£33 trillion) of offshore dollar debt contracts and swaps.

Late last week he fired the head of the National Security Agency and its top officials at the behest of Laura Loomer, a fringe conspiracy theorist, who whispered into Trump’s ear that they were disloyal to the Maga movement.

He has already fired the heads of the FBI’s intelligence division, its counterterrorism division and criminal investigations division, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices.

He has fired the top brass of the US military, starting with a preemptive strike on the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify Trump’s attempted coup d’etat on Jan 6 2021.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the constitution,” said Milley in his parting shot.

But Trump also fired the three judge advocates general, who are legally independent by Congressional statute and have the authority to decide which military orders should be disobeyed – such as Trump’s order to “just shoot” American protesters, on American soil, during the Black Lives Matter saga.

That obstacle will not recur. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said the three judges had been sacked to stop them posing any “roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief”.

You can go through the list, agency by agency, extending to the universities and private law firms, and even to the muzzled editorials of some of America’s once great newspapers: the purge is Bolshevik in ambition.

Does anybody in their right mind think that Trump will spare the Fed’s Jerome Powell as the two men gear up for an almighty clash over US monetary policy? “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” bellowed Trump in capital letters on Truth Social on Friday.

If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market
The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/08/trump-sell-off-is-bad-wait-until-wreck-us-bond-market

Washington Post: How [Bimbo #2] Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flashpoint

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When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.

The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.

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“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.

“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”

…

“To be wearing that in El Salvador while visiting a” maximum-security prison, he said, “is kind of like a big F you.”

Noem visited the prison as part of her trip to three Latin American nations to discuss crime, deportation and immigration. The Trump administration has sent scores of Venezuelan migrants to CECOT without judicial hearings, despite a court order to return them to the U.S.

During Noem’s tour, she walked past a containment unit, the prison armory and two crowded cell blocks, where men in a cell packed almost to the ceiling were told to remove their face masks and shirts and stand in the shot, according to a press pool report.

Men in the prison, which can house up to 40,000 inmates, sleep on metal bunks with no mattresses and are not allowed visits from lawyers or family members.

During her visit, Noem turned her back to the bars to record a selfie video. When Noem left, the cell block erupted in indecipherable chants, according to the pool report.

How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flashpoint

How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flashpoint

Reuters: DOGE staffer ‘Big Balls’ provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

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The best-known member of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters.

Edward Coristine [aka “Big Balls”] is among the most visible members of the DOGE effort that has been given sweeping access to official networks as it attempts to radically downsize the U.S. government.

…

Beginning around 2022, while still in high school, Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN that provided network services, according to corporate and digital records reviewed by Reuters and interviews with half a dozen former associates. Among its users was a website run by a ring of cybercriminals operating under the name “EGodly,” according to digital records preserved by the internet intelligence firm DomainTools and the online cybersecurity tool Any.Run.

DOGE staffer ‘Big Balls’ provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show
WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) -The best-known member of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters. Edward Coristine is among the most visible members of the DOGE effort that has been given sweeping access to official networks as it attempts to radically downsize the U.S. government. Musk has championed the teen on his social media site X, telling his followers last month that “Big Balls is awesome.”

DOGE staffer ‘Big Balls’ provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show