Tom Barrett, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from mid-Michigan, has four children, including three daughters.
Imagine if armed thugs blocked one of his daughter’s cars, apprehended her at gunpoint, handcuffed her, and then without any explanation, spirited her away to a sketchy, overcrowded but profitable private prison system notorious for abusing its captives.
I suspect Barrett would be concerned about that. But maybe not. Perhaps he would first have to clear his reaction with Donald Trump.
The above scenario is not as imaginary as it seems. It’s the story of Karliana Yosdeylin Perdomo Gotopo, a 20-year-old native of Venezuela, who a couple of weeks ago was grabbed off a suburban Detroit street by ICE. (Click here for more.)
Gotopo attends Cleary University in Howell, which is in Barrett’s district, so I called his office to get an update on her status. In an email response, Barrett managed to avoid the question while still defaming her, blithely lumping her among the terrorists, drug traffickers, and hardened criminals he claims have been pouring over the border thanks to Joe Biden.
Gotopo is none of those things. She legally entered the country four years ago when she was 16, presenting herself at the border as an unaccompanied minor. She has a pending asylum application, which she apparently believes still protected her.
She adapted to her new home quickly, finished high school with honors, earned an associate degree in business, played college soccer, transferred to Cleary University in Howell, and kept chasing the future her family believed she deserved.
Her mother describes her as disciplined, responsible, passionate, and determined. Her teammates call her funny, hard-working, talented, and inspiring.
But now, she is separated from her baby and stuck in a grubby, over-crowded detention center that is the target of complaints of tainted food, inadequate medical supplies, and limited or no access to legal services. This is commonplace at ICE facilities where there have already been 29 deaths in the first six months of the fiscal year, topping the total for all of the previous year.
Although ICE supposedly targets “the worst of the worst,” 75 percent of those detained – like Gotopo — have no criminal record.
ICE has not explained or justified Gotopo’s detention. Neither has Barrett, who failed to address the issue a few days ago during a carefully-scripted video town hall, a device he uses to avoid public meetings.
There was a lot not mentioned in his 60-minute charade. He never mentioned Trump, the weaponization of the Justice Department, the $1.8 billion slush fund, the glorification of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, escalating prices, or the Epstein sex scandal. He did find time to talk about his vexation with Daylight Saving Time. It’s all about priorities.
Barrett also tried to justify the war in Iran – which he hopes will be over before his 13-year-old son has to fight in it. No guarantees, though. He noted the bad actors in Iran had shut down the Strait of Hormuz, omitting that the strait had been wide open before Trump — with Barrett’s blessing — started his unconstitutional bombing.
Barrett, a first-term congressman who is feeling the heat of three strong Democratic challengers in this November’s election, has tried to weasel out of his stand by finally voting against Trump’s war powers. Barrett says this is his “consistent” position, but that’s a lie since he frequently voted against restraining Trump, including once when his vote made the difference.
Barrett also defends the “brave” members of the military who have so far killed more than 200 brown-skinned men on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific. The justification is that the U.S. is at war with Latin American drug dealers who bring deadly drugs into the country. But there is no declared war, none of the drug allegations have been proven, the killings have had no impact on drug trafficking, and the consensus is that these killings are either war crimes or murders, or both.
The proper way to police sea-going drug activity is for the Coast Guard to stop and board suspicious boats, a practice that more often than not fails to produce illegal contraband, which indicates that a high portion of those killed by Trump’s warfare were innocent people. We will never know because dead people usually give rotten testimony.
As for bravery, consider the fighter jet that looped back after its initial attack to strafe three survivors who were clinging to their ship’s wreckage.
Of course, bravery is an odd concept for Barrett who once figuratively – and perhaps literally – peed in his pants because protesters wrote chalk messages on the sidewalk in front of his Lansing congressional office.
The messages criticized Barrett’s vote to deeply cut food aid for low-income Americans. Vandalism is what Barrett called it, before the menacing messages were washed away.
Chalk and Daylight Saving Time. That’s what One-Term Tom is focused on.
