Boca Raton’s GEO Group — the single largest contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — absolutely does not want anyone to accuse it of caging people or separating families. GEO is so upset by such allegations that it threatened to sue Dream Defenders, a Florida civil rights group, all…
Even in the “Gunshine State,” the National Rifle Association is rapidly becoming politically toxic. After the Parkland school massacre February 14, every politician closely aligned with the NRA took a rightful beating: Sen. Marco Rubio was ridiculed on live TV during a CNN town hall, and GOP gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam has still not lived down calling himself a “proud NRA sellout.”
Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Florida by slightly more than 100,000 votes. At least according to the official recount numbers, George W. Bush beat Al Gore in Florida in 2000 by fewer than 600 votes. Had the constantly ineffectual Florida Democratic Party gotten its act together decades ago and…
The Trump era has been horrible for many of us, but few have suffered more than immigrants and those seeking asylum from oppressive regimes. But Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown has been fantastic for South Florida’s massive private-prison corporation, Boca Raton’s GEO Group. According to a breakdown of current ICE contracts…
While our big, sweaty grandpa president is busy tweeting that immigrants don’t deserve due-process in immigration courts, the business bearing his name (which he pretty much still runs) is trying to hire more foreign workers. According to federal Department of Labor documents BuzzFeed first dug up yesterday, the Trump Organization has…
The Broward Transitional Center is basically a jail for people who haven’t committed crimes. It’s designed to hold “low-level” immigrant detainees slated for deportation after they’ve been arrested on minor charges — such as driving without a license — or picked up on no criminal charges at all.
Mary Caceres fled Colombia’s brutal civil war in 2005 with her then-9-year-old daughter Daniela Gaona after Caceres’ brother was killed by guerrillas. Daniela was eventually awarded status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and spared from possible deportation. But Caceres’ repeated attempts to obtain asylum in the United States have so far…
Dressed in head-to-toe camouflage, Ron Bergeron emerges from a yellow thicket and gazes at the open pasture. A heavy rainstorm has left behind a field of black mud and wet grass in Big Cypress National Preserve. The sky is gray and the land bare, save for a herd of deer…
Marco Rubio was still in his first year as a senator when a madman with an assault rifle murdered 20 schoolchildren and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary. After the Miami Herald pressed him for a response, he said he hoped to “take a break from the politics of shooting for a few days to mourn.”
Omar Rivero is standing cross-armed in his light-filled Los Angeles pool house, urging one of his employees to finish a meme about the “Republican Hypocrites of the Year,” when the news breaks: The president has just signed a memo banning transgender people from the military. “Oh, I hate Donald Trump!”…
In June, a group of avowed white nationalists harassed a gathering of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters who’d gathered in Hollywood to demand that the city change three streets named after Confederate generals and the original grand-wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. After a massive, multi-day PR boondoggle, the city…
Good news! We’ve finally found a bipartisan issue that has united Democrats and Republicans across the state of Florida! Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have signed on to support a bill alongside Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ted Deutch, Alcee Hastings, Frederica…
Jack Seiler once served as the mayor of Wilton Manors, a Broward city with the second-highest proportion of same-sex couples in the whole country. Seiler, a Democrat, now serves as the mayor of nearby Fort Lauderdale, which has its own long history of LGBTQ support. In fact, South Florida as a…
Into the quiet, a voice rang out amid the trees. “Everyone remain in prayer!” a man in a brown jacket instructed. “Keep your prayers focused! Keep your intentions pure!” Beneath the blue Suwannee County sky, someone tapped out a beat on a tribal drum. Two young women sat cross-legged behind…
Like most of America, John DeVore was astounded to see the Facebook photos posted by a random Palm Beach rich dude last weekend. Thanks to his membership at Mar-a-Lago, some guy named Richard DeAgazio managed to sidle up to the nuclear football for a selfie and watch a North Korean…
“Donald Trump” and “protecting patients’ access to health care” are two phrases that aren’t generally associated with each other. But that fact didn’t seem to bother the American Cancer Society (ACS), which hosted its fundraiser Rock Palm Beach at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago this past Friday night.
Donald Trump’s travel ban last week was directed at seven majority-Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Sudan. Trinidad, which sits seven miles off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean, is nowhere near any of those nations. That fact, however, apparently did not stop border patrol agents…
Richard Corcoran, the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, is ardently pro-life. He’s spoken before the Florida Family Policy Council, a pro “human life” (read: anti-abortion) advocacy group, and earlier this month expressed public support for the anti-abortion “March for Life” in Washington, D.C. But Corcoran’s concern for human life…
Jack Black was standing in the dark-green, jungle-like backyard of South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard. The actor gazed at the blue-black pond with its prowling bass and sunfish, then up at the roof. Gleaming white solar panels, the slender, geeky Stoddard explained, power his whole house, including air conditioning and…
For several hours this past Saturday, protestors closed down Wilton Drive and Oakland Park Boulevard with an anti-Trump demonstration. It drew many members of the local LGBTQ community. Unsurprisingly, given that the protest took place in the heart of Wilton Manors’ gay community, there was little pushback — although some…
Emboldened by the President-elect’s crusade to make America great again (for white people), Donald Trump’s followers seem to be celebrating the election by harassing minorities. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the number of hateful incidents toward immigrants, Muslims, women, blacks, and LGBTQ folks (including swastika vandalism) has spiked since…
The town of Palm Beach has long been the kind of place where you go to get away from traffic jams and sign-waving socialists. Tall hedges, guarded gates, and a rigid social code make it easy for the town’s residents (average per capita income: $109,219 per year) to avoid engaging with concepts like…
