Kerim's Triptych ❧ Crimmigration, Genetic Algorithms, Paper Flowers

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1️⃣ Crimmigration

Marie Gottschalk, writing in the Boston Review, has an important account on the links between regular law enforcement and immigration. Two points, in particular, caught my attention. First, that "county jails have always been 'foundational to the project of federal immigration law enforcement.'" A "crimmigration" system that has developed and expanded under both parties. And, second, that sheriffs in rural areas are a law unto themselves, just like they are often depicted in Hollywood—only worse.

Even if crimmigration is not new, the scale of the system is out of control:

Since ICE’s creation, the agency’s budget has increased nearly fivefold in inflation-adjusted dollars. Between fiscal years 2024 and 2025 alone it tripled to $28.7 billion—about five times the budget of the NYPD and three times that of the FBI—thanks to supplemental funding from the Big Beautiful Bill that Trump signed last July. Much of this additional spending is earmarked for recruiting thousands of new agents and expanding detention beds to at least 100,000 in order to facilitate the administration’s goal of one million deportations annually. Nofil poignantly reminds us that each so-called detention bed represents “a life and a story, a set of circumstances that led a person to leave their homeland for an unknown life in the United States.”

A lot of these new detention centers have moved to rural areas, where they are less likely to draw attention, and can work with more supportive police departments (run by those sheriffs I mentioned earlier).

But one thing that pockets of rural America do have is enormous carceral capacity and potential. The impact of federal detention contracts on local revenues can be substantial. Between 1980 and 1988, Nofil notes, the annual budget of the sheriff’s office in Louisiana’s Avoyelles Parish more than septupled to $5.5 million as the politically ambitious sheriff of the poor rural town constructed a sprawling migrant detention apparatus. By the end of the decade, his department employed more than 400 deputies—enough “to start an army,” as one resident put it. After state lawmakers approved modest measures to reduce sentences in 2017, officials in another small town, Jackson Parish, faced a bind: With declining revenues, how could they cover jail construction bonds and avoid laying off guards? There and beyond, lucrative ICE contracts have proven the answer.

2️⃣ Genetic Algorithms

What are "genetic algorithms"? Virginia Heffernan, writing in The Nerve, explains that they are "systems theory crossed with race science." It was one of the half-assed theories that Jeffrey Epstein and his pals were supporting.

With their Ivy League posts, their billions, and their blue-ribbon DNA, the would-be intellectuals in Epstein’s circle converged on nothing less than the ideology of Mein Kampf.

It seems that at least some of his teenage victims were also part of his eugenics breeding project . . .

3️⃣ Paper Flowers

Above is one of several cut and folded paper flowers that were discovered in the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang. It is amazing that they survived so well for over a thousand years! See the article on Colossal for images of some more flowers.

Endnote

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