They spoke out against immigrants. So she unearthed their own immigrant ancestors

Updated 3:24 PM ET, Wed January 24, 2018

In this undated historical photo, a group of immigrants traveling aboard a ship celebrate as they catch their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York Harbor.

(CNN)If you think the ongoing immigration debates don't apply to you, Jennifer Mendelsohn has some news: They probably do.

Mendelsohn, a journalist, author and passionate genealogist, has been using people's public family history to beat back some of the uglier claims about immigrants and how they fit into US history.

She calls it #resistancegenealogy, and it only takes a few online tools and some instinctive sleuthing for her to call out public figures who oppose common forms of immigration.

Jennifer Mendelsohn

"I think the first person I worked on was Steve King," Mendelsohn says of the Iowa congressman who in March 2017 said "you cannot rebuild civilization with somebody else's babies."

"I kept thinking, 'This is ridiculous," she told CNN. "How do these people think they have a leg to stand on, looking down on immigrants when so many American people have an immigration story in their history?"

Sure enough, her research pointed her toward King's own immigrant history: His 4-year-old grandmother and her two young siblings arrived at Ellis Island in 1894.

Mendelsohn pulled out similar historical receipts for Dan Scavino, the White House Director of Social Media. Earlier this month Scavino voiced his opposition to chain migration, by which families immigrate to a country in small groups over time.

It only took a few hours for Mendelsohn to trace Scavino's roots in America back to 1904, when his great-grandfather's brother became the first of several Scavinos to immigrate from Italy in very similar fashion.

Proving prejudice is nothing new

But she says her project isn't about shaming people with their immigrant history. It's quite the opposite, says Mendelsohn.

"It shows how universal immigration is in so many American stories. Some people who've been in the country longer, it may not feel that close and it's easy for them to forget."

The obituaries, marriage announcements, ship manifests, historical archives, government documents and census data Mendelsohn uses don't forget as easily.

Mendelsohn's projects also help people realize that some of the more negative narratives of modern immigration aren't actually that modern at all.

"So many people today are sort of looking askance at the next wave of immigrants and pearl-clutching, trying to put limits on them and what they may contribute to modern society. And I just laugh at that, because the same exact things were said about their ancestors 100 years ago," Mendelsohn says.

In Scavino's case, she pointed out on Twitter that his Italian immigrant ancestors were viewed with the same type of prejudice that today's anti-immigration hard-liners sometimes cast on African, Hispanic or Middle Eastern immigrants.

And yes, there is an element of race at play that is difficult to pin down through family trees or vintage political cartoons.

"There's a fear that immigrants are getting browner," Mendelsohn says. "When the Steve Kings of the world talk about 'someone else's babies,' they're not talking about a little German baby like his grandmother was."

Uncovering a shared history

When Tomi Lahren criticized Dreamers and their families as not "law-abiding citizens," Mendelsohn was quick to point out Lahren's own ancestor was indicted for forging naturalization papers.

While Mendelsohn's followers have certainly enjoyed the apparent hypocrisy she has uncovered, there's another, perhaps more productive side to #resistancegenealogy: Appreciating the brave, painful, diverse immigrant stories that made so many people Americans.

Mendelsohn herself is descended from Jewish ancestors.

"In my own family story, some of the people who chose not to immigrate lost their lives," she said. "These things have real consequences."

Mendelsohn hopes that embracing immigrants as a fundamental part of America -- whether they are fleeing persecution, war or famine; whether they are coming for opportunity, safety or freedom; whether they hail from Mexico or Southern Europe or the Middle East -- can help people see familiarity where they initially saw division.

"This is something that Tomi Lahren and I have in common. Something that Dan Scavino and I have in common," Mendelsohn says. "To me, it is just such a fundamental and beautiful piece of being American."

CNN has reached out to King, Scavino and Lahren for comment but hasn't heard back.

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In the 1930s, we illegally deported 600,000 U.S. citizens because they had Mexican heritage

Relatives and friends wave goodbye to a train carrying 1,500 persons being expelled from Los Angeles back to Mexico on August 20, 1931. (NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

In downtown Los Angeles during the 1930s, La Placita Catholic church was a social hub for Mexican Americans and immigrants. Immigration agents were well aware of this fact. On February 26th, 1931, they sealed off the area around the church before anyone could realize what was happening and began arresting suspected undocumented immigrants en masse. Families watched in horror as their spouses, friends, and colleagues — 400 people in total — were loaded into vans, and eventually shipped back to Mexico. Many of those detained had been in the country so long they didn't speak Spanish. One man, who had legal status and had his papers on him, tried to intervene. An agent took his papers and made him join the detained. The raid took an hour and fifteen minutes. The mass arrest was meant to send a message: We're coming for all of you.
Across the country, in California, Ohio, New York, Illinois, and many other places, hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants were rounded up from public places, and summarily deported. The Depression had created a hunger for easy scapegoats. "A frenzy of anti-Mexican sentiment" was roiling across the country. In an effort to get rid of Mexicans as quick as possible, immigration agents could not be bothered to differentiate between those who had entered the country legally and those who had not. As Kevin R. Johnson explains in his legal review of the event, "It is clear today that the conduct of federal, state, and local officials in the campaign violated the legal rights of the persons repatriated, as well as persons of Mexican ancestry." When people protested that the raids were unfairly targeting people of Mexican descent, the man in charge of the raids, W.F. Watkins objected, saying that three "Orientals" and two Europeans had also been arrested. In total, roughly one million people of Mexican ancestry were deported during that decade — about a third of the country's Mexican population.
Though immigration law is famously byzantine, it is crystal clear on one issue: U.S. born citizens cannot be deported for any reason. But during this mass Mexican deportation, sixty percent of the deportees were U.S. citizens, mostly children who were in fact born in the United States. Because of the speed and recklessness, this mass deportation was actually more of an "ethnic cleansing," Johnson says, not because the deportees were murdered, but because they were disproportionately targeted, rounded up, and purged because of their race.
Before the Depression, the U.S. had been in uneasy collaboration with Mexican workers, sometimes wanting their labor and other times wanting them out of the country. In the 1920s agri-businessmen lobbied to keep them in, arguing that the industry would fall apart without them.
As Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez explain in their book Decade of Betrayal, the change in policy was largely attributable to William N. Doak, who transformed the tiny, unknown Immigration and Naturalization Services into the bureaucratic behemoth we know it as today. Doak "instigated a personal vendetta to get rid of the Mexicans," they write. For the Mexican community, it was a betrayal of trust — especially the U.S. citizens and those with legal status. Without warning, a switch had been flipped. They had been told that they were safe, that this was their country, only to have that safety unceremoniously and haphazardly revoked because there was a new white man in office. Mexican news outlets condemned the deportations, and the Mexican government announced plans to deport roughly 7,000 Americans who had overstayed their visas in Mexico in response.
Many of the people who were deported to Mexico, either had never been there, or hadn't been there in so long that they had no connections and were forced to rebuild a life from scratch in an unfamiliar place. "Where is Mexico?" one five-year-old American-citizen said when his father told them of their impending deportation. In 2003, Jose Lopez, a U.S. citizen who had been removed to Michoacan when he was five, testified before the California legislature, "Living conditions in Mexico were horrible, we lived in utter poverty. My family ate only tortillas and beans for a long time. Sometimes only one meal a day." Not long after, both of his parents were dead.
For those who were not deported, the uncertainty of their position was haunting. When would the immigration agents come again? Could they go shopping, to church, or school? One woman described how during this period, her grandfather, terrified of removal despite being a U.S. citizen, never went anywhere, even the corner grocery store, without his passport. When his granddaughter asked him why, he said, "Mija, I am just an Indian from Chiapas and they will deport me if they stop me and I don't have my papers." When he died, she buried him with his passport in his pocket.

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FEMA Abruptly Cuts Housing Funds For Dozens Of Puerto Rican Families

"This cold-hearted and irrational decision will have disastrous consequences for these families from Puerto Rico."

Originally posted on January 23, 2018, at 11:44 p.m.

Updated on January 24, 2018, at 12:32 p.m.

Brianna Sacks

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Screenshot via Fox61 / Via fox61.com

Puerto Rican families gather at a Red Roof Inn in Hartford, Connecticut, to learn about the fate of their temporary housing.

Dozens of Puerto Rican families displaced by Hurricane Maria and currently living in Connecticut hotels have been told they will no longer get federal assistance to pay for their lodgings, just days after being promised an extension to their temporary housing assistance.
Though the housing assistance had originally been set to expire on Jan. 13 for many Puerto Ricans, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had agreed last week to put 36 families living in Connecticut up for another month, granting a request from the state's governor, Dannel Malloy.
But just three days after granting the relief, FEMA abruptly reversed its decision and halted payments for the hotel rooms, saying it made a mistake, and sending state officials scrambling and leaving families unsure of whether or where they would have a place to sleep the next night.
"These people are experiencing a second level of trauma because they are being told one day they are safe and eligible and 24 hours later they're out of luck," the governor's deputy communications director, Jason Novak, told BuzzFeed News. "It's exacerbating an already painful, emotional situation."
By the time the state stepped in with funds, "a number of families had already been removed from hotels," Novak said. "We got the call hours later and had to then notify these families about what was happening and tell hotel owners not to kick them out."
Neither the families nor state officials were informed that FEMA had decided to revoke the assistance Thursday. Instead, the federal agency switched the status of the families in its system, signaling to the hotels that they needed to check out by 2 p.m. that day, the governor's office said.
"This about-face is outrageous and unacceptable, and because of your agency's abysmal management of this situation, 36 families — all of who are American citizens — are now, with no warning, being told by FEMA that they have no place to live," Malloy wrote in a letter to FEMA Administrator Brock Long, demanding that the "egregious error" be fixed immediately.
"All things considered, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that the federal government sees the United States citizens who inhabit Puerto Rico as second class," Malloy added.
On Wednesday, FEMA told BuzzFeed News they are "working the families to see if they can provide us with new information to keep them in the program," said public affairs director William Booher. "We understand these are extenuating circumstances."

Jessica Hill / AP

Elionet Saez Martin, of Puerto Rico, works with his kindergarten teacher at Chamberlain Elementary School in New Britain, Connecticut.

Explaining FEMA's abrupt reversal, Booher told BuzzFeed News that after initially granting the extension, the agency reviewed the families' files and realized that 24 were no longer eligible based on new criteria from Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló.
FEMA representatives in Puerto Rico, he explained, had determined that their homes were now "livable," meaning that the families could no longer qualify for housing help. Booher did not elaborate as to why the families' files had not been reviewed before FEMA made its initial decision to extend the assistance.
"Upon review of their case files, we found that 24 were ineligible for the [transitional shelter assistance] because after inspection of their dwellings, it was determined they had little or no damage and their utilities were on," he said.
Though FEMA, at the request of Gov. Rosselló, has extended the TSA program for victims of Hurricane Maria through March 20, the agency periodically reviews individual files to see if they still need to stay at their hotels. These audits are based on FEMA inspections and a survivor's ability to send in a host of documentation.
When an inspector arrives on a disaster victim's property, they are looking to determine three things: whether it's safe, sanitary, and functional, the agency explained. If officials conclude there is insufficient damage and the utilities are on, they can verify the person lives there, there aren't two people registered to the same address, and it's their primary residence, they can stay on TSA.
If those things cannot be proved, they're off the list.
Residents can also be deemed ineligible if FEMA investigators are unable to access their homes. And for Puerto Ricans, living thousands of miles from their homes, coordinating to have a landlord, friend, or family member meet inspectors — on an island where 30% of people still lack power — is a serious feat.
Connecticut officials have pushed back on that assessment, however, pointing out that FEMA has not provided evidence to back up its determination and noting the "disconnect" between the agency's assessment and what the families' themselves have said about the condition of their homes.
"This cold-hearted and irrational decision will have disastrous consequences for these families from Puerto Rico," Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said in a statement. "I saw the devastation in Puerto Rico with my own eyes when I visited the island last month — these families' homes have been ruined, and they don't have access to clean drinking water."

Jason Ortiz/Facebook / Via Facebook: bermudezforcitycouncil

Community organizers and local politicians sit with Puerto Rican families in Hartford, Connecticut.

On Friday, the families packed into a conference room at the Red Roof Inn in downtown Hartford for a press conference to share their stories of trying to assimilate, find jobs, and secure permanent housing in the wake of the hurricane.
"I came here because I lost my entire home," said Yara Vasquez Rivera through a translator. "We're living in a constant state of fear, a constant state of terror. A constant state of terror. I don't know what will happen to myself. My children. Can we stay at the Red Roof Inn? Can we not? These questions come up every day."
Rivera said that though she has found a job, she has been unable to find permanent housing because she keeps getting turned down for apartments.
"We're here because we don't have anywhere to go back to," she said. "Our homes are gone. We are here to start a new life. But that new life is almost impossible to reach."

Carlos Giusti / AP

Some roofs damaged by Hurricane Maria are still exposed to rainy weather conditions.

This uncertainty can be found across the country, with victims of Hurricane Maria left similarly stranded after losing FEMA's temporary housing assistance, which puts disaster victims up in budget hotels until they can find longer-term housing or return to their homes. Since Oct. 30, more than 10,000 Puerto Ricans have checked into hotels across 40 states using these funds.
As FEMA removes Maria victims from its aid rolls, families struggling to find new, affordable housing in states like Ohio, Florida, Georgia, and New York are now grappling with whether to once again uproot their lives, and move back to old neighborhoods that still lack reliable access to power and water.
"It's horrifying," said Marcie Roth, a former FEMA employee who now leads the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, a national organization that provides assistance to disaster survivors with disabilities. "We are hearing way too many of these stories."
"A lot of the time," she added, "there doesn't seem to be a logical explanation" for why people are found ineligible.

Pedro Garcia

Pedro Garcia

With federal housing aid, Pedro Garcia, 58, was able to relocate on Nov. 9 to New Jersey after suffering a leg injury during the hurricane. But on Jan. 13, FEMA informed him that he no longer qualified for the funding.
"They said I didn't suffer any major damages to my home," he told BuzzFeed News. But he said his landlord told him that his apartment, in Guaynabo, still lacked electricity. "The medical situation there is terrible. Why should I leave my good doctors here while I am still under treatment for something worse there?"
Panicked, Garcia has repeatedly applied for temporary housing and medical assistance, submitting a slew of documents, including a letter from his doctor requesting FEMA extend his temporary housing assistance. On Monday, FEMA ruled that he was ineligible for medical aid because the agency "was unable to verify losses."
The agency also said he had failed to upload the necessary documents to qualify for additional housing assistance, though Garcia said he has faxed and uploaded the information multiple times.
On a call with FEMA Tuesday morning, a representative told Garcia that she could not see his file "because the system was down," but that the agency had already made its decision. He could appeal, she added, although he already had.
"The system is designed for you to fail," Garcia said after hanging up.
Even in cases where FEMA has extended temporary housing assistance, the agency has not informed the victims, leaving them uncertain as to their status.

Yahaira Vega / Via Faceook

"They don't tell you anything. You never know what is going to happen," said Yahaira Vega, a 32-year-old from Caguas who relocated to Ohio using temporary assistance funds, which she was told would expire on Jan. 13. "I didn't know that I could appeal or ask for another extension. I thought I was going to be out on the streets."
Unable to return to her home in Caguas — where her mother and sister are still living without electricity — Vega, who has congestive heart failure, was able to find space in public housing with the help of volunteer aid groups. After signing the lease, however, she learned that FEMA had actually extended her hotel stay for another month.
"No one called to tell me," she said. "It's like they don't want you to know what's going on. Getting help is much harder than I thought it would be."

Brianna Sacks is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.
Contact Brianna Sacks at brianna.sacks@buzzfeed.com.

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Hugh Masekela, Father Of South African Jazz, Dies At 78

5:24 AM ET

South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela performs during the Observance for Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey in central London in March 2012. Leon Neal/AP hide caption

toggle caption

Leon Neal/AP

Hugh Masekela, the legendary South African jazz musician who recorded more than 40 solo albums and collaborated with artists ranging from Harry Belafonte to Paul Simon, has died at 78 after a protracted battle with prostate cancer, his family announced Tuesday.
"[Our] hearts beat with profound loss," the Masekela family said in a statement. "Hugh's global and activist contribution to and participation in the areas of music, theatre, and the arts in general is contained in the minds and memory of millions across 6 continents ..."
The trumpeter, composer, flugelhorn player, bandleader, singer and political activist, was born in Witbank, South Africa, on April 4, 1939. He was given his first trumpet by anti-apartheid crusader Father Trevor Huddleston at age 14.
"I was always in trouble with the authorities in school," he told NPR in 2004.
He had been inspired by the Kirk Douglas film Young Man with a Horn. Huddleston, hoping to steer him away from delinquency, asked what it was that would make Masekela happy. "I said, 'Father, if you can get me a trumpet I won't bother anybody anymore.'"
Masekela soon became part of the Huddleston Jazz Band.
By the mid-1950s, he joined the Alfred Herbet's African Jazz Revue and began creating his signature "Afro-Jazz" sound.
In 1960, at the age of 21, as he was coming under pressure from authorities for his anti-apartheid activities, he decided to leave his home country for England.
Once in London, his then-girlfriend and future wife, singer Miriam Makeba, encouraged him to come to the U.S., where she had arrived the previous year.
"We'd always dreamt of coming to the States, but she came a year earlier and blew the States away," he told NPR.
"So she said, 'Hey, you got to come, forget about London, this is the place to be.' And, she was on a first name basis with everybody. Then she and Harry Belafonte gave me a scholarship to Manhattan School of Music. I also had to work part-time in Harry Belafonte's music publishing, because they ain't going to give you no money," Masekela said.
In addition to Belafonte, he also worked with legends Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis. Along with Miriam, they all encouraged him to develop his own style.
"[They] said, `Listen, if you're going to play jazz, you're just going to be a statistic like all of us. Why don't you infuse some of the stuff from your home into your music, and then maybe you'll come up with something that will interest everybody and that we can learn from.' And I guess I came up with some kind of a hybrid," Masekela told NPR.
In 1962, he released his first album, Trumpet Africaine.

Makeba and Masekela wed in 1964, but their marriage lasted a scant two years. Even so, the two remained friends.
In 1967, the year of his hit Up, Up and Away, he also performed alongside Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, The Who and Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival. A year later, he performed on Grazing in the Grass, which hit U.S. charts and went on to become a global hit.
In 1977, Masekela's Soweto Blues, about the anti-apartheid Soweto uprising, was recorded by Makeba, and it reached an international audience.
He penned the anti-apartheid anthem Bring Home Nelson Mandela in 1986 and returned to his native South Africa following Mandela's release.
In 1987, he appeared with Paul Simon on his Graceland album tour alongside South African musicians Ladysmith Black Mambazo and again in 2012 on the 25th anniversary of the Grammy-award winning album's release.

In 1997, he acknowledged that he had become addicted to alcohol and drugs, and checked himself into a recovery center in England.

Masekela performed at the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup and tournament in Soweto's Soccer City in 2010.

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