The Dimmer (Continued)

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Audio reading by Polly on Amazon Web Services

Immigration · Political Power · Law and Courts · White House · politics

In an essay titled Even God Cannot Hear Us Here, she described nightly asthma attacks, overcrowding, and women humming in the dark to stay sane. She now works with the ACLU to fight the policies that once silenced her.

Yeonsoo Go, a 20-year-old STEM student, was pulled from a visa appointment without warning. Detained. Released days later. Her voice, caught on a brief recording, cracked as she said: “I’m so grateful. I just want to breathe again.”

And Stanley Hu, a 64-year-old green card holder in Iowa, was arrested during a workplace raid despite three decades of legal residency. His wife told reporters: “He taught Sunday school. He paid taxes. They didn’t even let him call us.”

Each breath—a human drumbeat—resists erasure.

Bibliography

1. Human Rights Watch. “China’s Algorithms of Repression: Reverse Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App.” May 1, 2019. Documents how Chinese authorities in Xinjiang used AI-driven platforms like IJOP to flag “suspicious” behavior, enabling mass surveillance and detentions.

2. The Nuremberg Trials Project. “Document 2107-PS: Law on the Secret State Police.” Harvard Law School Library. Gestapo decree issued in 1936 exempting Gestapo orders from judicial review, establishing legal impunity for secret police operations.

3. Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. “Decree on the Establishment of the Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution.” December 1917. Founding order for the Cheka, the Soviet Union’s first secret police, tasking it with internal war on counter-revolution.

4. Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Provides detailed analysis of NKVD Order 00447 and Stalin’s use of execution quotas in the 1930s as a tool of systemic repression.

5. Rettig Commission. Report of the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. Chile, 1991. Documents human rights violations under Pinochet’s regime, including torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings.

6. Amnesty International. “Iran: Violations of Human Rights 1977–1979.” 1979. Summarizes abuses by SAVAK, Iran’s pre-revolutionary intelligence agency, known for torture, arbitrary detention, and suppression of dissent.

7. Jahn, Roland. Interview in Stasi: The Shield and the Sword. Directed by Matthias Schmidt. MDR/ARD, 2008. Describes how East German citizens occupied Stasi offices in 1989 and helped create the Stasi Records Act to preserve public access to secret files.

8. Federal Republic of Germany. Stasi Records Act (StUG), 1991. Law establishing public access to former East German secret police records and creating the Gauck Authority to administer transparency and accountability.

9. South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Final Report, Volumes 1–7. Cape Town: Juta, 1998. Contains sworn testimony from victims and perpetrators documenting torture, beatings, and systematic abuse under apartheid policing.

10. Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland. A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland (The Patten Report). Belfast: HMSO, 1999. Blueprint for transforming militarized police forces into accountable, community-based services following The Troubles.

11. House of Lords. R v. Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No. 3), [2000] 1 AC 147. Landmark decision affirming that torture is a universal crime subject to international jurisdiction.

12. U.S. District Court, District of Oregon. Index Newspapers LLC et al. v. U.S. Marshals Service et al., No. 3:20-cv-1035-SI. July 23, 2020. Court ruling that barred federal agents from arresting or using force against journalists covering Portland protests without probable cause.

13. Washington Post. “White House Plans for Federal Control of D.C. Policing, ICE Role in Protests.” August 14, 2025. Reports on the administration’s intention to bypass local authority over protest surveillance and immigration enforcement.

14. Wired. “ICE Resumes Courthouse Arrests Amid Policy Shifts.” April 2, 2025. Details how Immigration and Customs Enforcement reinstated courthouse enforcement operations in multiple states as part of a new federal strategy.

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