| With Immigration and Customs Enforcement rounding up more undocumented immigrants with each new dawn, it’s no surprise to hear they’re on a hiring spree. But they’re not just searching for new agents at their career expos. They’re in need of flacks, too. Here’s a job posting for an ICE “Public Affairs Specialist” that dropped this week. The successful candidate will prepare news releases, talking points, speeches, scripts, newsletters, photographs and videos that, and I quote, “effectively communicate agency activities, programs, and policies to a variety of internal and external audiences.” The gig pays anywhere from $88,621 to $171,628 per year, and dental insurance is included — pretty solid, considering the state of the job market. But according to LinkedIn, only six people have clicked to apply. Why? Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that the Trump administration is still reeling from what Mary Ellen Klas calls its latest “bumbling, high-profile error.” No amount of PR spin is going to smooth over the chaos that went down at the Hyundai battery plant in Ellabell, Georgia last week — which now takes the cake for the largest single-site immigration raid in US history. The surprise raid was a colossal mess for many reasons. The optics — video of South Korean nationals being handcuffed and shackled with no translator in sight — are ugly. The fallout — a ticked-off South Korean president fresh on the heels of a $350 billion trade deal— is even uglier. And the target — Georgia’s biggest development project to date — makes zero sense. As Mary Ellen says, it “underscores a major flaw in Trump’s immigration policy. He would like to use his heavy-handed tariff policy to incentivize foreign investment in multibillion-dollar manufacturing plants, but building those facilities requires companies to bring engineers and contractors to the US to help complete the job. The Trump administration has done nothing to make it any easier for the South Korean companies involved with the Hyundai Metaplant America site to secure the work visas needed.” Compounding the chaos was the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on Monday, which essentially allows ICE agents to racially profile people they suspect might be illegal immigrants. Noah Feldman says the decision is likely to go down as one of worst in history, calling it a “violation of fundamental rights” that “undermines the constitutional rights of all Americans and the core principle of equality before the law.” “What makes this decision a striking example of contemporary anti-immigrant bias is how much it deviates from the ordinary constitutional rules concerning government stops of ordinary citizens,” he writes. “It would be plainly unlawful for the government to stop all young Black men in high-crime neighborhoods — or for that matter, all Patagonia-clad White guys on Wall Street in a sweep for insider trading.” It was a bloody day in Qatar after Israel launched an “unprecedented strike” targeting leaders of Hamas in the capital of Doha. Thus far, the facts are as follows: Netanyahu claims the attack was “a wholly independent Israeli operation,” meaning neither the US nor Qatar were involved. The White House says the strike — which it was notified about just before it happened — “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” Despite a number of casualties in its inner circle, Hamas claims members of its main negotiating team survived. Here’s a map of the targets from Bloomberg News’ Alex Newman: Marc Champion sees the Israeli strike as an allegory for the war in Gaza: “In principle, both sides were examining a last-ditch US proposal to strike a deal that would see all remaining hostages released and the war brought to an end. In practice, Hamas on Monday carried out a terrorist attack on a Jerusalem bus stop that killed six innocent civilians and injured more. In practice, Israel forged ahead with its campaign to finally erase Hamas in Gaza City and then tried to kill the group’s negotiators in Qatar.” Ultimately, the peace talks morphed into little more than an elaborate charade: “Even the US appeared to be going through the motions. Its proposed peace deal depended entirely on Hamas’ leaders trusting the Trump administration’s word, when it said it would prevent Israel from resuming the war. Why would they?” Read the whole thing. | 
