November 2024 - Trump 2.0 - Post-Election Immigration Update

Enigma - "Amen"

About the Music: Enigma's final song, "Amen," is included on the album, "The Fall of A Rebel Angel," and "...could not have had a better ending, " according to composer Michael Cretu.  “The song represents the moral of our story: Don’t give up your dreams and start living the life you want - against injustices, social constraints, and even your own fears!” 

(Click here for the poetic lyrics that echo a decade of our experiences)

Reflections of a U.S. Citizen Same-Sex Spouse of an Undocumented (green card pending) Immigrant in the Era of Trump 2.0

By: Harlon J. Wilson - US Citizen, Same-Sex Spouse, Author & Advocate for Human-Centered Immigration Reform and LGBTQ+ & Marriage Equality, Insatiable Spiritual Explorer

The shock of the November 2024 election has passed. The American people have voted for a second unhinged four years of the bully Trump.  Let the collective grief commence. Let us batten down the hatches, for we're in for a long, tumultuous, and painful quadrennium as everything we hold dear is unraveled.

I wish I could say Enrique and I are surprised, but we are not. A common phrase in our household, typically meant in a self-reflective quip when one of us makes a silly mistake, has always been, "You did it to yourself."

Hardly this couple's silly game with words, I ponder if there is truth to the notion of Karma and the wisdom in the golden rules, "Do unto others..." and "What goes around, comes around," for I am confident millions will soon experience the reality of what they did to themselves and countless other men, women, children, and nations soon to be impacted by Trump 2.0. 

After 56 years of staring into the face of the bully, plenty of evidence informs my notion that the bully always wins! Alas, there is always hope in the order of natural things. The Universe, or hopefully a new form of "alien" life from some far-off galaxy, will come to save us from ourselves (pun intended). Or is there really any hope at all for LGBTQ+ and immigrant families caught in the crosshairs of "God, Guns, Trump" of the United States AGAIN!

Processing the reality of a second term of the fascist dictator and his minions of corruption as they begin a wholesale Christian Nationalist takeover of the most powerful nation in the world is not for the feebleminded. 

Must Read: Review of Immigration Policy - Trump 1.0

It is still sinking into my consciousness: what four years of preparation could mean for Trump 2.0. Conservatives have meticulously organized, planned, and prepared to implement strategic steps to overcome policy challenges, administrative obstacles, and innate checks and balances within the Federal system. With plans to reclassify or remove career Federal employees while sidestepping the skills, knowledge, passion, and expertise of accused less loyal staff, the rogue implementation is all but assured. 

They've planned their retribution and "Day One" execution strategy.  Little can protect the nation from the shock and awe of continuous media and news sensations as the destruction of America and the rise of a fascist regime promises plenty of drama-filled reality TV. There's never been a better time to implement a digital detox, mindfulness, and mental health strategy.

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Read About Digital Detox, Mindfulness, and Mental Health in Future Posts. Subscribe to DeportingLove.com or Follow us on Facebook @DeportingLove & @PositiveIndignation to receive emails with future updates. 

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Following a decidedly clear conservative mandate from the voters that included a shocking percent of Latino and other marginalized populations voting for more of the same Donald Trump.  I fear the worst in human nature IS now uncaged. America has been sold to the highest bidder. The keys to the castle were bought with their lies. Is this where I talk about campaign finance reform? 

Pieter Bruegel the Elders "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" (1562)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" (1562)" provides a dramatic and enduring representation of this battle between good and evil. Fitting for this era, I fear humanity's worst is yet to come. The tension arises. On one side, we have compassion, kindness, civility, and care for fellow humans. On the other, we have abuse, disrespect, incivility, and outright hate. With a legitimate need to reform American immigration still ahead, the latter takes the reigns. 

But conservatives aren't the only ones prepared. With ten years of relentless delays and plenty of injustices along the way won and lost, Enrique and I have long maintained a primary, secondary, and tertiary strategy for our family's safety and pseudo-freedom. As a gay male soon to turn 56, having survived the "coming out" of the proverbial "closet" in the 80s, the outcasting of the HIV-AIDS era described by Christian Conservatives as "God's cure for homosexuality," political shaming in the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" era, and a lifetime of discrimination at the hands of the bully, history really does have a way of repeating itself.  This is merely Deja Vu. 

Must Read: Donald Trump’s 10 Worst Attacks on the LGBTQ+ Community

Like a zombie virus running rampant through the collective consciousness of the MAGA movement, the charlatan Trump is now firmly seated within the hearts and minds of more than half my countrymen and women who are blindly following what they've been sold by the greatest showman that has ever lived in human history. A mastermind marketeer, now President-elect for a grueling second term, has hoodwinked a large swath of American citizenry to devour lie after lie. 

Reminders of Trump 1.0

(Source: The New York Times)

In "How liars create the ‘illusion of truth,'" repetition is a strategy. “Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth” is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. This is known as the "illusion of truth" effect among PSYCHOLOGISTS.  Painfully familiar with the blinding tactics of the bully, as Enrique might suggest, "They did it to themselves." Now, we hold our collective breath as we wait to see just how great an America built on the unwitting manipulation of more than half the population. Indeed, they very well may have "done it to themselves." A look back into history will help us to remember. A hostile takeover of the nation has already commenced.

A Cause for Urgent Change of Direction in Our Immigration Case

This summer, Trump blocked a $118 billion, bipartisanly negotiated, common-sense approach to immigration policy. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act was favored to pass both the House and Senate. Trump wielded his bully dominance, calling upon the darker natures of his GOP colleagues to stop the bill with his own narcissistic intent in mind; he wanted to take credit for future immigration reform efforts. Narcissim-over-nation, the bill was dead on arrival.  

How can a man who doesn't even hold an elected or appointed position (the privilege of billionaire bullies that buy elections) hold such mesmerizing power over the sitting Congress, the rightfully elected president, and the lives of the millions of Americans and migrants waiting for their right to due process is beyond comprehension. A classic case of "sedition," some might think Trump won in 2020. I digress.

But for our family and a half million others, an 11th-hour Administrative order penned by the President should have been all it would take to finally obtain the green card. After all, presidents can pardon criminals and themselves, apparently. However, proposing such policy shifts just before the election and possibly ending tenure as president seems carelessly inappropriately timed. Perhaps if Biden had enacted the order in the earlier years of his Presidency, we might have already had the green card ending this dark, painful, fear-filled, emotionally and physically abusive, and immeasurably costly American immigration purgatory. Biden's actions were simply "a little too little, a little too late?"

Biden's Administrative Order: "A Little too Little, A Little too late!"

Link to News Source

As the days of the election were underway, we monitored Biden's "Keeping Families Together" Executive Order with specific interest.   Finally, at the 11th hour of his tenure, the President launched a promising policy that would have paved the way for what is known as "Parol In Place" for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, side-stepping the current costly requirement to leave the country and re-enter "legally." Our application was one of the first submitted. For undocumented spouses who have been inside the country for more than 10 years, a more humane option would finally become law. Or would it?

Nearly twenty years ago (2005), at 19 years of age, Enrique fled gang recruitment and sought work opportunities to provide for his family. He traversed El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico with only the shirt on his back and a denim jacket in tow.  Seeking asylum at the southern US border, Enrique entered the United States.

Present within the country for nearly 20 years and now married for "11 años increíbles," Biden's executive order would have immediately completed our final requirement to complete the green card, making it possible to finish the process from our midwestern hometown rather than force us to endure the added risks, costs, and time needed to travel outside the nation for processing and immediate re-entry without shenanigans or delay. 

Summer 2024 - Immigration Attorneys Offices Filing 

Our Application for Biden's Keeping Families Together Executive Action

Proving the long arm of bully Trump, the common-sense humanitarian approach that would have benefited half a million families was crushed by Trump appointee U.S. District Court Judge J. Campbell Barker, who "found the program violates U.S. immigration law, agreeing with a lawsuit filed by Texas and more than a dozen other Republican-led states." The executive order, now determined illegal, leaves us with our last and final option: Enrique must leave the country and re-enter. 

Going Back & Coming Back the Right Way

Immediately following the election results announcement, our attorneys filed for the emergency closure of the cases we still have before the immigration court. We have requested an appointment at the embassy in El Salvador, where we plan to present Enrique for the final interview and the processing of his green card. We want this finished before January 20th to avoid getting caught in another four years of inhumane immigration policies. 

We have no control over when the appointment at the U.S. Embassy will be. It's not a collaborative process. Any day now, we will be told when to arrive in San Salvador for final processing. Enrique will be expected to appear at the designated time.  With the documents filed last week, we again wait for the government to respond. Accustomed to waiting years and having exhausted every other remedy to remain together in the United States, we again call upon our inner patience as we wait.

If I had a $1 for every time I have been asked, "Why can't he go back and come back the right way," I'd be a wealthy man. This is Enrique's legal path to re-entry. With our recently approved waiver requesting that he be allowed to enter the country for processing and return without a 2 to 10-year bar from re-entry approved, Enrique will now "go back, and come back the right way," or so we hope as we've learned not to trust U.S. immigration and humanity in general in this 21st century America. We hope we're invited to the embassy before the end of the year (2024).

We must never let our guard down.  The fact remains we are a same-sex married couple from the United States. We will all soon endure four more years of a conservative regime that once proudly gloated about pulling babies from their mother's arms as human deterrents for humanitarian migration.  

Will this be Trump 2.0?

They've bullied and taunted LGBTQ+ and other minority populations, removing us from textbooks prohibiting the use of the word "gay" in schools in many states that have now implemented "Don't say 'gay' legislation." They've consistently mischaracterized immigrants, Latinos, and many other marginalized populations and have promised unprecedented deportations to rid the country of what Trump consistently refers to as criminals, thugs, rapists, thieves, and cartels from "shithole countries." 

Remember their "zero-tolerance" policies? Describing Latino immigrants as "poisoning the blood of our country," the white, racist, Christian Nationalists have all but called for ethnic cleansing on American soil. But let's be clear, deportations focus on legal status to be present within the US in the first place. By making it impossible to declare such status but still carrying out the actions of mass deportations, family separations, detentions, and displacements to rid the country of the "poison blood," the bully has created yet another end-around the terminology and crisp definition of what is a human rights violations? Words matter. 

They have told us what they are going to do, so let us not be surprised when the strategic dismantling of American democracy, morals, and human decency begins. Or has it already?

For over a decade, Enrique and I have endured more than half the US population's blind choice to avoid the truth. Looking the other way and bending the facts to the convience of their plight, our family and countless other gay or immigrant families are caught in the injustice of modern American Immigration, LGBTQ+, racial, and gender discrimination. Now, as Chrisitan Nationalism makes its way through American policy following the election, as Project 2025 is unleashed, conservatives will attempt to further erase us from textbooks, literature, curriculum, and more.  We silently prepare. 

We are not ashamed, and we certainly are no longer afraid. We can not be erased. Enrique and I exist in peace with Love and care for the human species and the planet. Could we be more polar opposites of the incumbent regime?

Will America be the "Golden Years" promised by Trump and believed by many? Only providence will tell. While I believe in a single human species, one planet, nature, natural order in the Universe, Love, and Unity, I am all too familiar with the bully's actions and the power of an untamed ego, a flaw in human DNA. But I remain eternally hopeful for the Spirit of humanity exemplified by all the outreach of family, friends, and neighbors to check on us following the announcement the criminal candidate had been re-elected President.

"When the Spirit is Calling" is a tribute to the Indigenous people and a fight song for their human rights. Jon Henrik Fjällgren has been inspired by chanting in this song, a common way of expressing ones feelings in the natives' music. The text is written for both his origins in Colombia and with the Sami people in Sweden. The music video was filmed in Härjedalen, Sweden. Source:YouTube.com

Summary

Caos, mistreatment, and delays occurred in our last dance with the Devil (2016-2020). With Biden's compassionate last "too little, too late" Executive Order now determined illegal, our only remaining remedy is already underway. 

Enrique and I are on the edge of our seats, hoping to hear from the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador so we can swiftly process our final step. Please visualize with us as we manifest smooth travel to his native country to complete the processing of the green card, a wonderful time with friends and family, and a swift return to the US (without incident) as a lawful green card holder. 

Perhaps more valuable than any prize can be, Enrique will finally reunite with his family in El Salvador after more than twenty years. I'll definitely have to learn Spanish, and I can not wait to be with our Central American family again (hopefully very soon!).

Our earlier dance with the Devil fresh in memory, we call upon history to remind us of what may soon come to pass. In Auswhich, Germany, when occult groupthink gave rise to a human incarnation of hate, a murderous dictator was similarly empowered. The following is an excerpt from a favorite author, Dr. Wayne Dyer, who wrote about his experience exploring the history of the Holocaust in his groundbreaking self-help book, "I Can See Clearly Now," which seems startlingly similar to current conditions.

As of this writing, I'm now semi-retired and spending more time researching and writing about our journey in the upcoming memoir, "Positive Indignation: A call for measurable and sustainable human-centered immigration reform." As Enrique and I continue our battle for justice and step up our advocacy work in support of LGBTQ+ equality and immigration reform, I find Dyer's retracing of one of humanity's darkest hours terrifyingly similar to the nation's current trajectory of Trump 2.0 and Project 2025 unleased within modern day USA. Remember, I've seen the face of the bully. Have you? Auschwhich is but one example. 

Please read the excerpt and consider the following: What would you have done in Auswhich, Germany? What can now be done from within the United States? Or is it a little too little, a little too late? Return to DeportingLove.com and look us up on FB to stay informed. Follow us as we travel to Central America, we hope, later this year.

Excerpts: Dr. Wayne Dyer, "I Can See Cleary Now"

Recommended Reading: I Can See Clearly Now - Dr. Wayne Dyer

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Recommended Listening: "Borders" a Song by Kalandra

Lyrics

On the borders of safety

That's where I find peace

Where the black sand

Meets the raging seas

I see the forces

For what they truly are

Yet, I am reminded

Of my beating heart

Among the lonely rocks is where I lay my head

I hear the ocean calling, "Come with me instead"

She sings me songs of ungrateful souls

Who once thought gods could bring them home

...

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