Will Trump Try to Halt an Exodus from Puerto Rico?

[MineralMan]

He definitely dissed the territory this morning in his tweets. Puerto Ricans can freely travel and relocate to the continental US, since they are U.S. Citizens by birth. However, he might be looking at another way to restrict travel - some health issue or another bogus means of limiting a mass migration from that destruction to the US.

I'm sure he, and a number of other Republicans would love to find a way to do this. Watch for news of an epidemic disease developing on the island. A quarantine might get past the freedom to travel rights of people there.

[SummerSnow]

1. I asked that very same question the other day.

He might say that they need a job here first.

[avebury]

3. I doubt that would hold up in court.

Any American can pack up and move from state to state for any reason with no requirements. It would be discriminatory to deny the Puerto Ricans same access that everyone else has.

I wish that the Democrats could find a way to relocate them to swing states in sufficient numbers to prevent the Rethugs from winning those states in 2018.

[SummerSnow]

12. Discrimination is Trumps middle name

[Kittycow]

2. One travel ban coming right up in the express lane!

[LuckyCharms]

4. Yes I think he will. n/t

[Hekate]

5. Jesus. He is just that monstrous, isn't he? nt

[Bleacher Creature]

6. How is that different from preventing people from going between Illinois and Wisconsin?

I realize PR is a territory, but its people are still citizens. I’m guessing that would be too slippery a slope for even Republicans.

[MineralMan]

7. The only excuse he might be able to use is a health scare.

Trump doesn't care about the rights of the US Citizens in Puerto Rico. Heck, he doesn't care about people's rights at all. A federally-ordered quarantine might just slip past judicial review. I don't know.

[Bleacher Creature]

9. Like a quarantine? Or internment?

The fact that we’re even having this conversation is terrifying. And my issue isn’t that you brought it up, but the fact he’s clearly capable of trying something like that . . .

[MineralMan]

11. See below for a link to the CDC page on federal quarantines.

The laws governing this have enough leeway to allow such a thing.

The question is: Would the Trump administration create or fake an epidemic to make it possible? I wouldn't put it past them.

[Nevernose]

13. Illinoisans arent Mexicans and Puerto Rucans are

At least in the minds of Trump and his more fervent supporters. Or at least that’s what they’ll start believing if they’re told to.

I don’t know what the right word is. “Thankful” definitely isn’t it. But Teutonic Trump has definitely revealed a very ugly side of America that many of us have been comfortable minimizing or ignoring for fifty years. Even with shenanigans, Trump got fifty or sixty million votes legitimately, fifty or sixty million people essentially begging for fascism.

This country has just gotten too soft and scared.

[MineralMan]

8. Here's a CDC page on quarantines by the Federal Government.

Looks like there might be a loophole in there Trump could use. And Cholera is one of the diseases specifically mentioned. A cholera breakout in Puerto Rico, whether real or manufactured, would be perfect cover.

https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/specificlawsregulations.html

Here's the specific section:

§265. Suspension of entries and imports from designated places to prevent spread of communicable diseases
Whenever the Surgeon General determines that by reason of the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country there is serious danger of the introduction of such disease into the United States, and that this danger is so increased by the introduction of persons or property from such country that a suspension of the right to introduce such persons and property is required in the interest of the public health, the Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved by the President, shall have the power to prohibit, in whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such countries or places as he shall designate in order to avert such danger, and for such period of time as he may deem necessary for such purpose.
(July 1, 1944, ch. 373, title III, §362, 58 Stat. 704.)

[hlthe2b]

10. Well, while smallpox spore-laden blankets might be a bit obvious...

their risk of cholera and typhoid (not to mention endemic leptospirosis) is so high... Let's see, IF there were a Hitleresque person who wanted to do so, where are there the equivalent of "smallpox blankets" that could be imported into PR? And, yeah, I DO hate thinking this way.

This week Yemen reaches a grim milestone: half a million people are sick with suspected cholera this year, almost 2,000 of whom have died. It's the world's worst cholera outbreak in the midst of the world's largest humanitarian crisis.Aug 15, 2017
The biggest global cholera outbreak is happening in Yemen and ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yemen-humanitarian-crisis-cholera-bombing-worst-outbreak-sanaa-aden-a7894806.html

[Wellstone ruled]

14. Trump's Florida Pals

are already bitching about these PEOPLE coming into south Florida. Yup,count on some discriminatory action coming from Sessions.

[Doreen]

15. I have been wondering this since Maria hit PR if this was going to be an eventual issue.

I have also been wondering how long it is going to be until we are not allowed out of the U.S if we are citizens. I mean if we leave and do not come back that is less they get. Just thoughts I have had.

[hvn_nbr_2]

16. Actually I think the opposite.

If everybody leaves the island, then Donnie and his billionaire buddies can buy up an entire tropical island for pennies on the dollar of what it was worth, and they can cheaply create their billionaire's tropical enclave on the cheap. After billionaires buy all the island, then Republicans will provide billions to repair it.

All those Hispanic voters coming to the mainland and voting for Democrats? No problem. New law: anyone who ever lived in Puerto Rico must provide four forms of government issued ID, pass a literacy test, swear allegiance to the Orange Monster, and show that their DNA test is at least 50% European, in order to vote.