By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (261)

June 2, 2025

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 6, Day 35: How many times did I have to remind myself that it was Monday? So many. On the one hand, holiday. On the other hand, much needed day to deal with this truckload of absolute WTFery that landed at my doorstep Sunday. Someone we met several years ago was snatched by ICE and the family’s been at their wit’s end not knowing what to do. They’ve tried retaining lawyers and the first one just gave up and the second one was scammy and useless. I’ve known of the family but they’ve not had any occasion to be familiar with us before yesterday when I heard the news and immediately asked more knowledgeable people for a bit of advice. It’s been a whirlwind of work since: talking to various family members trying to reach a bilingual adult who could answer questions and give me enough information to reach out for help.

Yesterday’s focus was on getting in touch with elected officials’ staffers and getting sufficient information from the family to work with. I was up til midnight on calls and collating information from those calls.

Today’s focus was running down every possible lead for a new lawyer, looking for community org support in dumping the scammy lawyer, and scanning in their paperwork so they have electronic copies. I’ve worked out an agreement with the family that I’d write all the emails, they will do the follow-up phone calls.

We’ve sent out dozens of requests for legal assistance in hopes that one of these sources might have capacity to help.

I feel like a jerk for struggling to feel hope. There are just too many bad things happening in this area right now for me to feel like any of these efforts will pay off. We have to try but knowing that a raft of CA immigration judges were fired as recently as last month and knowing from our House rep’s staffer that ICE frequently deports instead of responding to information requests from Members of Congress, it’s hard to feel like any of these will pan out.

Year 6, Day 36: I spent half the day corresponding with MoC staffers and fielding the email replies from the people we contacted. One person was actually helpful.

We’re combing the area for lawyers, the ones that the local Rapid Response team recommended aren’t answering their phones or if they do answer, they’re too busy to help. The local immigration activist org helped a little. They looked at documents and gave us some basic assessment advice but they’re too overloaded to help. One of the three local attorneys recommended by the Rapid Response team had someone answering phones, everyone else’s numbers just went to voicemail, and I did an intake with them for the family. Then we got a response from a highly recommended firm, that one seemed very promising and we set up an appointment for tomorrow. The local attorney finally got back to us – they’re too busy to take the case. Figures. It’s a hellscape. We’re all on tenterhooks.

Year 6, Day 37: Our neighbor is currently obsessed with the Cascadia Subduction Zone. She’s not concerned for herself, she’s worried for her next two generations. I’ve known and worried about this myself but to the point of buying earthquake insurance, not to the point where she is now: she’s pushing her adult children to sell their homes and move somewhere out of the subduction zone. Hawaii will sink! Alaska will too! We need to MOVE before it happens!

I get it. The worst case scenario is really bad. But we have no idea when this might hit and the impossibility of getting a timeline makes that uprooting feel almost unreasonable. They have jobs, multiple kids thriving in different schools, all involved in their various activities. They’d have to start all over if they were to pick up and leave. I’m not arguing with her, I just see that it’s really hard to justify that level of change in the face of a possible terrible natural disaster someday. I don’t doubt that it’s likely coming, we just have no idea when it’s happening.

I got curious and I found a recent study – it must be the press from this that has her in a lather, she hit all the highlights of this study when describing the potential of the disaster.

Year 6, Day 38: We got to the point of having a real lawyer to retain and the ICE pulled a fast one. He was moved in the middle of the night without warning, and without telling notification to his kin where he’s being sent. None of the ICE detention center or field office phone numbers are in service. The locator site is vague and has no information. I’ve been at a loss for what else to do. I keep wishing I’d known about this last week thinking, look at what we’ve been able to muster in 4 days, two of which were weekend/holidays. If we had known when he’d been detained, we could have done more, faster. We were so close.

Eventually it occurred to me that this timing was suspicious. He had an appointment at the detention center with a scammy lawyer that was just there to bilk the family on Friday. We scrambled to get a legit lawyer in place before Friday so they could see him instead. What if they always would have done this? What if it only took this long for them to deport because they knew he didn’t have competent legal counsel in place, they only shipped him out now because his legal representation was supposed to show up. My reddit savvy friend said that’s very likely, they’re seeing this trend reported. And we know their flagrant disregard for due process. People who are legitimately following all the rules and showing up to immigration court are being grabbed from the courts even if they’ve had successful hearings. There is a complete disregard for anyone’s rights.

Now we’re pressing the Congressional staffers to help us find out what happened to him. Where is he??

Year 6, Day 39: I had such a good week and a half without scheduled meetings so of course they all hit all at once. Everyone needed me for a call for big and small reasons and I was scrambling from one call to the next. I didn’t manage to escape the vortex for several hours. Woof.

On the bright side, I have been going through old pictures, tagging a specific set, and remembering some good dog memories. It hurts but it’s also joy. I miss these dogs so much. They were such an integral part of the family. It feels like we have multiple dog shaped holes in our lives everywhere we go.

Frustratingly corporate is still holding up my raise. It’s taking so long I’m starting to think I should just go job-hunting to show that my salary is indeed deeply below market and I have other options. Exceeepptt it’s possible the current economy is such that I don’t have other good options. There were some earlier in the year but now? After all the federal cuts? After all the federal grants pulled across a whole lot of Bay Area specific industries? Our friends here last weekend told us they’ve got friends who have now been out of work for a year and counting, and corporate cuts are continuing to impact their circles. The Microsoft layoff was a huge one – 6000 people. Hawaii Planner has been going through the wringer, interviewing. Maybe being patient and exasperated continues to be the better bet.

I find it offensive that articles refer to these layoffs as “trims fat” btw. What the hell is wrong with y’all? Cutting people because you let crappy AI take over their jobs isn’t trimming fat. Also I’m so sick of the AI race. It’s brought nothing but garbage, fraud, more fraud, and more work for my company with zero gain. The corporation has handed down an edict that we use their crap AI tool because that’s supposed to benefit the company by 15% but it’s certified crap – it never gives the right information and it never identifies the sources of the bad information. So if you’re credulous enough to ask it for factual information and don’t fact check, you get the wrong answer every single time. The only thing worse than my sense of direction!

Sigh. Lots of ups and downs this week but mostly downs. I would really appreciate a shift in the winds.

EDIT TO ADD: I tried to answer N&M’s comment but the WordPress app is acting up. I would have to set up the GFM for fundraising and I don’t have time or bandwidth to manage that right now so if anyone would like to help out, we can use my Lakota links with the note “For Jose” for now:

Venmo: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman@gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt

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