webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

ICE 3 HSI dhs

7 25 RENAMED ICE 3

MERRI OK

SEE RENEE GOOD 1/26 PRETTI EXTRAJUD KILLING

SEE WATCHLIST DATABASE ~ PRIVACY = ACTIV SUPPRESS = FASCISM

THIS IS NOW MAIN CURRENT GENERIC 10 25

GRABBED JUDGE AND NJ MAYOR moc mcgyver

SEE ACTIV SUPPRESS privacy ggl demand ID

SEE VOTER SUPPRESS 2026 MIDTERM NOEM

CLETA HEATHER HONEY DAVID H TEAM AMERICA INSiDE THE WIRE

GOP STEAL ELECTION mullin illegal voter bs

SEE PRISON IND COMPLX GEO

SEE FASCISM MILITarization INSURRECTION MARTIAL LAW GOON SQUAD ~ ILHAN OMAR

recruit neo-nazi gun nuts

TARGET PPL OF COLOR THUS RACIST?

SEE SECRET POLICE SEE BORTAC BOVINO

SEE ~ RULE OF LAW HABEAS

SEE FOX

SEE METHODIST

---

an 1 26 Federal agents shoot 2 people in Portland

---

1 8 26

renee good shooting bovino at school proud aclu

---

DN 7/28/26

HSI GRABBED COLOMBIA ACTIV AFTER FLA RALLY DEPORT ~ PREZ

-=-=

record 50k? scotus allows 3rd ctry?!

-=-=

mma 10 26

Fox News has spent almost two years claiming Trump’s deportations are targeting “the worst of the worst.” The administration just contradicted that narrative.

-=-=

RWW -->

Under ERO ONE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hire 142 intelligence contractors with top secret clearances and deploy them in cities across the country.

-=-=

ILHAN OMAR RAID ACTUALLY HSI

Ex-prosecutor shreds Trump's new 'raid' as blatantly timed 'political stunt'

-=-=

-=-=

AN 9 26

NOEM ASST

Trump officials caught 'intentionally destroying' evidence during court battle

//

AN 9 26

A Trump administration official and former senior aide to Kristi Noem was recently "disgraced" after a bruising story came to light, but according to a new report from The Daily Beast, she has moved on to an "extraordinary" new position, all the more alarming given her recent conduct.

Earlier this month, The Daily Beast turned up court documents revealing that Karen Evans, the one-time acting director of FEMA under fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, had been caught "intentionally destroying" workplace correspondence, which she had previously been ordered to retain as evidence in a lawsuit dealing with President Donald Trump's efforts to gut the disaster response agency. This included deleting messages sent on the communications app, Signal, which members of the administration have been caught using for under-the-radar talks repeatedly. Some of the group chats in which messages were deleted included Noem and her top lieutenant, Corey Lewandowski.

On Tuesday, the outlet's investigative Substack, PunchUp, published a follow-up report on Evans, revealing that instead of being let go, she was moved to an eyebrow-raising new role within the administration.

"After Donald Trump, 80, fired Noem in March, Evans was dumped as FEMA’s acting administrator after less than six months in the role," The Daily Beast detailed. "But rather than following her boss out of the door, she was made the department’s director of the Waste, Fraud and Abuse Task Force — three weeks before the court found her to have deleted evidence, PunchUp reports."

One anonymous source within the department, described as "beleaguered" in the report, gave the outlet a blunt response to this news.

"That sounds pretty appropriate for this admin," the insider said.

"Evans’s actions have brought grave consequences for the Trump administration," the report added. "The ruling by [Judge Susan] Illston, a Clinton appointee, means the court will now assume the missing messages would have helped prove that DHS directed and carried out the plan to slash FEMA staffing."

Evans reportedly returned to DHS 15 days prior to the judge's ruling, beginning her new role leading the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. DHS undersecretary for management Brian Cavanaugh issued a statement about Evans taking on the role, praising her for her "extensive background in federal IT and cybersecurity leadership, along with her deep experience in public service."

"But as PunchUp notes, Judge Illston’s ruling raises questions about why Evans still runs a task force dedicated to rooting out fraud after the finding, and what Cavanaugh and the department knew when she was rehired," the report noted. "DHS was asked whether Evans has faced any disciplinary measures over the destruction of government records, and if it still considers Evans an appropriate official to lead its efforts to combat fraud. Declining to comment on whether Evans had faced sanctions, the department said it was grateful for her service and work at DHS."

-=-=

-=-=

an 9 26

Trump attack dog has a bold Election Day plan —and critics say it's illegal

-=--=

8 26 RWW

The public face of DHS’s self-deportation competition made a name for himself by role-playing as a jihadist.

-=-=

an 8 26

With the midterms right around the corner and President Donald Trump relentlessly pressing his conspiracies about voter fraud, an insider and whistleblower from his first term has revealed that his “tin-foil hat” plan to “interfere in the democratic process” is underway. This is according to Miles Taylor, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first administration and exposed a number of its secrets. On Wednesday, he sounded the alarm that a plot Trump began nearly a decade ago is coming to its most dangerous phase.

Over the course of the past year, Trump and his allies have been asked repeatedly whether federal troops will be stationed at polling places during the midterms. They have tended to dodge the question, saying there are “no plans” to do so without ruling it out. But “evidently,” writes Taylor, “all of that controversy was aimed at the wrong place. While Washington officials debated Election Day polling sites, the administration was quietly reassigning battalions of officers to start homing in on the election from their cubicles, combing through voter rolls in a secret operation without precedent.”

Taylor is referencing new bombshell reporting by the Washington Post, which revealed on Tuesday, writes Taylor, “that hundreds of federal immigration officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, including the specialists who vet immigration applications for fraud and security threats, have been pulled off their day jobs and reassigned to monitor voting lists for supposed noncitizen voters. This places DHS agents directly into a role that was never envisioned when the Department was created and which has ominous implications for the midterms and future elections.” Despite the fact that they are being intentionally obscure about this, says Taylor, “the Trump administration expects Americans to trust that they are merely hunting for ‘illegal’ registrants. Yet the operation raises urgent questions about potential abuse, oversight, and whether DHS agents will play a larger role in unlawfully purging American citizens from voter rolls.”

It’s all part of a wider effort, asserts Taylor, to convert “the Justice Department’s Voting Section from a shield for voters into a weapon against them. His administration has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia to extract voter roll data, ordered federal agencies to build ‘approved’ lists of voters, and as we speak, is still moving ahead with plans to control the delivery of ballots in the mail.”

All of this began under Trump’s first term, according to Taylor, who writes, “I dealt with this in the first Trump administration, when the White House sent us on a foolish odyssey at DHS to expose this (non-existent) nationwide voter fraud conspiracy it keeps talking about. There wasn’t any evidence of such a conspiracy. It was tin-foil hat stuff. But I realize now the point was never to find the fraud. The point was to manufacture a number big enough to justify voter purges, prosecutions of election officials, and federal interference in states where the White House expects to lose. That’s what they’re doing now.”

He notes that thousands of DHS agents and federal prosecutors have been reassigned from their actual responsibilities and directed to help the president “seize control over who is allowed to cast a ballot.” For example, “the Trump administration continues to assert that all of its efforts are focused on the phantom menace of ‘noncitizen voters.’ But the pretext is collapsing under its own weight. Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin claim they’ve found roughly 278,000 noncitizens are unlawfully registered to vote in the United States. But when Nevada pressed the department on Mullin’s claim of 16,000 in their state, DHS admitted it had confirmed just 185, then refused to hand over the names so the state could investigate.”

According to Taylor, “Nothing in American history looks like this. At all. Yet there are plenty of examples of regimes around the world mounting election takeovers that look very similar. Students of history would call it authoritarianism.”

-=-=

-=-=

RWW

Lance Wallnau Praises Trump For Attacking Reporters

08/21/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

The Department of Homeland Security told Nevada election officials that it identified 185 “potential” noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls, not the nearly 16,000 it claimed last month.

-=-=

RWW

08/19/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

Three candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump lost their primaries on Tuesday night, including scandal-plagued Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), who lost to a former TV reporter in The Sunshine State.

I’m not aware of any senator ever saying anything like this about national security — especially during a war.

Mark Andrews sued Dinesh D’Souza after movie falsely portrayed him ‘harvesting’ ballots for 2020 presidential election.

The whole world is watching the relationship between the president and his favorite assistant.

DHS sent undercover agents into at least five church buildings to track activists attending events at Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Unitarian Universalist churches in Minnesota’s Twin Cities (and an event featuring Minnesota activists at a Lutheran church in Michigan). Multiple pastors have said they were unaware of the DHS actions inside their buildings until news broke last week.

Court papers reveal that the Department of Homeland Security’s covert surveillance of anti-ICE groups is much darker than it first appeared. Welcome to Donald Trump’s America.

Dearborn residents and counterprotesters confronted supporters of Jake Lang during a protest marked by anti-Muslim rhetoric.

-=-=

GUK 8 26

US conducted ‘mass spying campaign’ against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters, records reveal

Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.

Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups.

Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region.

View image in fullscreen

Protesters marching during a Nationwide Shutdown demonstration against ICE enforcement in Minneapolis on 30 January. Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

The DHS investigative reports were disclosed by the government and submitted to the court by an attorney for one of the defendants. The records show that in January, DHS launched an inquiry called “Operation Puppet Master” to identify a “network of conspirators” organizing against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The operation came as community organizing against ICE was swelling in the region in response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

A DHS report from February said the agency was looking into people who were “providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators”. The records suggest agents launched elaborate spying efforts targeting activists, protesters and mainstream progressive organizations opposing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

“I was shocked at the scope and the apparent lack of investigative discipline involved, but not totally surprised,” said Kevin Riach, an attorney for one of the indicted protesters, who filed the tranche of records in federal court.

A DHS spokesperson said that Homeland Security Investigations, its branch that carried out the investigations, “does not comment on the existence or status of specific on-going investigations, nor on investigative methods”. The agency referred questions to the justice department in Minnesota, which declined to comment.

View image in fullscreen

A memorial to Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Pretti was shot and killed by federal officers while recording them in January. Photograph: Bridget Bennett/The Guardian

The records indicate that the investigations followed the directive of Trump’s executive order last year that designated “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization” responsible for “riots” against ICE. The investigations led to the criminal case filed in June against 15 protesters, which focused on Direct Action Minnesota, a loose coalition of organizers that the government says was part of a “conspiracy” opposing ICE’s surge in the region.

The documents show that the government alleged major groups were connected to the criminal conspiracy, including the national labor unions AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union; the local unions Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees; and several large left-leaning groups, including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ).

None of those organizations have been charged with any crimes.

The records have added fuel to the concerns of civil rights groups, who have argued that the federal government was criminalizing lawful protest activity under the guise of targeting leftwing “terrorism”.

View image in fullscreen

A man dressed up as a pickle shouts at counter-protesters through a megaphone during a protest against a new ICE detention center in the small town of Appleton, Minnesota, in August. Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters

The documents show that DHS investigators obtained financial records of unions and non-profits, as part of an inquiry into “domestic terrorist financing”. One investigative record showed the DHS used administrative subpoenas to obtain “wire transfers from various financial institutions to and from” SEIU, one of the largest unions in the US. Investigators also requested that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provide financial data from the Communications Workers of America, an international union, the records showed.

The DHS further obtained financial records related to the Sunrise Movement, a national non-profit focused on the climate crisis.

View image in fullscreen

Federal agents hold a person down, two weeks after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good on 7 January during an immigration raid. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

The records also provided detailed documentation of spying operations conducted by undercover agents who posed as activists and surveilled community activities.

One DHS report documented “undercover agent activity” on 31 January at a Sunrise Movement “resistance skills training” at the Minneapolis public library. An agent described activists discussing recruitment and “de-escalation” at protests, with speakers suggesting having a “police liaison” and “safety marshal” at events. The report said: “It was clear that the Sunrise Movement organization focused on ‘peaceful’ protests.”

The undercover agent actively engaged participants, according to the report. At one point, the agent told someone in attendance that he “works in construction and could build items that might assist other groups with more ‘direct-action’ protests”. That agent told the individual that “going to jail did not bother him” and gave out his phone number.

View image in fullscreen

A protester kneels in front of state troopers outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building during a protest opposing ICE operations in Minneapolis in March. Photograph: Kerem Yücel/AFP/Getty Images

The records documented the operations of another undercover agent who joined Signal groups of activists involved in protests.

The records also showed undercover agents surveilling a virtual meeting at Hunter College in New York focused on “ICE brutality” and “responding to state violence”; a meeting at a labor center in Minneapolis during which activists discussed a wide range of political issues; a meeting in a Minneapolis public park about protest tactics; and a Direct Action Minnesota meeting at a church.

The documents indicate that agents made audio recordings of the events.

One undercover agent attended a “training” event at a gymnasium in a church and participated in “boxing/sparring practice”, according to a DHS report. The report noted that the agent was surreptitiously recording audio of the event, but that at one point the recorder “erroneously fell to the floor” and the agent had to return to the gym to retrieve the device.

View image in fullscreen

Rev Edward Ford Jr, from Shiloh Christian church in Middletown, speaks at a protest demanding justice for Renee Nicole Good. Photograph: Connecticut Post/Hearst Newspapers/CT Post/Getty Images

At one anti-ICE event at a church, agents documented the license plate information of attenders, the records showed. When two agents were approached by a man who “asked if they were ICE”, the agent responded, falsely, that they were not.

Riach, the defense attorney, filed the records as part of a motion urging the court to compel the government to release additional records. In his filing, Riach accused the government of presenting “wild conspiracy allegations … born from the fantasies of political retribution that animate the Trump Administration”.

He also alleged that DHS’s investigations were part of a “mass spying campaign” and said undercover agents “participated in organizing and directing the groups they were surveilling, at times working to entice people into discussing or committing crimes”.

The records relate to activities that extend far beyond the allegations of the 15 defendants facing prosecution. That case alleges a vast conspiracy to organize against ICE, but across a 94-page indictment, there are no allegations of injuries to specific ICE officers caused by any defendants and no charges of serious violence.

Emilia Gonzalez Avalos is the executive director of Unidos MN, a Minneapolis social justice non-profit group, whose activities were mentioned in the files.

“I believe that this is a clear attempt to intimidate us, to punish and politically repress disagreement and difference,” she said. “And that is not the America that we have built through hundreds of years. And it’s definitely not the America that we are organizing for.”

View image in fullscreen

A detained woman sits inside a vehicle surrounded by federal agents in January, two weeks after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

During trainings, organizers asked people not to record the sessions, Gonzalez Avalos said. But organizers would also say if there were any immigration agents or officers in the room, they were welcome to stay because the group had nothing to hide, because their work was “entirely grounded in the United States constitution”.

Mike German, a former FBI agent and civil liberties advocate, said it was striking that the DHS was leading the investigations when typically the FBI would spearhead operations targeting potential “terrorist” activity. He said it was also notable that the DHS was using administrative subpoenas, which don’t require judicial authorization, to obtain records.

The government, German said, also appeared to be relying on theories of “guilt by association” to justify surveillance instead of narrower investigations focused on specific alleged criminal activity. German, who previously served as an undercover agent, further scoffed at the notion of undercover agents spying on what appeared to be accessible, community events.

View image in fullscreen

An ‘ICE out’ sign in the window of a home in Minneapolis. Photograph: UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

“You’re talking about meetings that are open to the public, where they are recruiting among the public, saying: ‘Please come to this protest,’” he said. “It’s hardly a challenge to ‘infiltrate’ this kind of meeting, and that should be a clue this isn’t a criminal group. It’s very rare for criminals to [publicize] discussion of their criminal activities.”

The investigations, he added, fit patterns in US history of the government targeting leftwing activist and labor organizing. After 9/11, he said, those powers to spy on communities were greatly expanded.

“Nobody should be surprised that the government would use these authorities to target political opposition rather than target criminals, particularly so under this administration,” he said.

-=-=

8 26 YT?

LONE WOMAN agent in suv surveill, claim to be picking up immigt but alone thus spy on activists minne? re psnm 7

-=-=

AN 8 26

It was late March when Joe Teirab, the second-in-command at Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office, received an urgent email from Washington.

The federal government was scrambling to find criminal cases to back up President Donald Trump’s claims that illegal voting by noncitizens was tipping the scales in American elections. Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a massive federal law enforcement agency, had been dispatched to work leads across the country, including hundreds in Minnesota.

Teirab was already under pressure. In an earlier missive, Nick Davis, a high-ranking Justice Department appointee helping to lead the election fraud crusade, had reminded him the cases were so high priority that Teirab and his staff couldn’t decline to move forward on them without express approval from agency higher-ups. On March 24, Davis demanded a status report — within hours.

Teirab, a former Marine and a Harvard Law graduate who’d run unsuccessfully for Congress as a Republican, responded with a blunt reality check.

“Bottom line up front,” he replied in an email reviewed by ProPublica. After subpoenaing records on about 130 people, only one had been referred for prosecution, his staff had told him. Agents had deluged local election offices with calls and demands for voting histories, demonstrating “a complete lack of understanding” of illegal voting investigations.

“The HSI task force has been disjointed and disorganized,” Teirab wrote. The entire process, he said, had been “dysfunctional.”

Since Trump regained the White House, his administration has launched a series of unprecedented initiatives to find and prosecute voting by noncitizens, which he’s long claimed, without evidence, is rampant.

He’s stepped up this push in recent weeks, saying in a nationally televised speech that the American election system was “so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it.” To support that assertion, the Department of Homeland Security, HSI’s parent agency, released documents asserting it had found more than 250,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in just four states, all led by Democrats. The documents included no explanation of how that number was calculated.

It’s well known the administration has tasked HSI — a force established to combat drug cartels, terrorism and other cross-border criminal enterprises — with leading the campaign to find election fraud cases in the United States.

But an investigation by ProPublica reveals for the first time how the Trump administration came to harness HSI’s personnel, technology and sweeping legal authority in service of its election agenda — and how meager the results have been, despite the prodigious resources sunk into the effort.

According to interviews and internal emails reviewed by ProPublica, career staffers at the Justice Department warned that transferring voter rolls to HSI to enable it to search for noncitizen voters could violate federal privacy laws. Similarly, longtime HSI insiders cautioned that using the agency’s databases and tools to search these lists would yield mismatches and wildly inflated results.

The administration plowed forward anyway.

HSI’s involvement in the hunt for election fraud traces at least to summer 2025, when agency supervisors embraced a proposal from a midlevel agent who’d publicly echoed Trump’s claims about elections. He argued the agency’s powerful databases and tools could find noncitizens even on the voter lists that states make publicly available, from which the most confidential information has been redacted. Under Trump, the Justice Department had collected many public voter rolls as part of a controversial effort to compel states to turn over the unredacted versions.

Those searches went forward, ProPublica’s reporting shows, helping to generate tens of thousands of leads regarding illegal voting across the country. But when HSI agents were sent to investigate them, the results were similar to what Teirab reported from Minnesota.

Between January 2025 and May 2026, a ProPublica analysis of Justice Department data shows, fewer than 150 alleged noncitizen voters were referred for prosecution. Even fewer — 41 — were charged with voting illegally or other election-related crimes. (More than 150 million people voted in the most recent presidential election.)

In response to questions from ProPublica, administration officials insisted the effort spearheaded by HSI was producing meaningful results.

“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in response to ProPublica’s request for comment. “Noncitizens voting is a crime. Anyone breaking the law will be held accountable.”

A DHS spokesperson didn’t answer questions about why so few prosecutions have resulted from HSI’s work. The agency wouldn’t specify what tools or techniques HSI had used, but confirmed it had cross-referenced “publicly available data” from state voter rolls with information on “known illegal aliens” in its systems. “It’s not rocket science,” the spokesperson wrote of this initiative in a response to ProPublica’s questions. “It’s an easy step to secure our elections.”

Teirab and the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota declined to comment.

There’s an array of reasons why Trump’s campaign to document claims of widespread voter fraud hasn’t succeeded. Most obviously, it’s exceedingly rare, as countless studies and state audits have found. Noncitizens often get on voter rolls by accident or when government officials make errors. Last month, New Jersey disclosed that a mistake involving its Motor Vehicle Commission caused 6,600 noncitizens to be registered (fewer than 400 voted).

The administration’s critics say its hunt for noncitizen voters aligns with Trump’s attempts to seek more federal control over elections while stoking doubt and fear about the voting process. Since taking back the Oval Office, Trump has tried to impose new restrictions on voter registration, mail-in ballots and voting machines, though judges have shut down most of these efforts.

Former officials at DHS and the Justice Department called the move to involve HSI a further escalation and questioned the propriety of aiming the agency’s muscle and technology at individual cases of illegal voting.

“It’s one thing if you’re going after Pablo Escobar,” said Steve Bunnell, a former DHS general counsel and senior intelligence adviser who handled voting fraud prosecutions during more than a decade at the Justice Department. “It’s another thing if you’re going after some cleaning lady who’s been working in the United States for 20 years and taking care of her 80-year-old mother and taking her little kids to church.”

“The Swiss Army Knife of Federal Law Enforcement”

Trump’s enlistment of HSI in his election fight is no accident. Cobbled together in the aftermath of 9/11, the agency has 7,100 armed, highly trained agents and another 800 criminal analysts, as well as access to troves of confidential data about hundreds of millions of Americans.

Though part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency has historically stayed out of immigration cases. During the first Trump administration, leaders of 19 HSI regional offices — virtually its entire top field hierarchy — signed a letter calling for HSI to become a standalone agency, arguing that ICE’s deportation work dissuaded people from cooperating with its investigations. But when Trump returned to the White House, it swiftly became clear that the agency would play a central role in investigations related to the president’s twin obsessions, illegal immigration and noncitizen voting.

Trump picked his field general for repurposing HSI even before taking the oath of office. In December 2024, he named Anthony Salisbury, a 50-year-old career agent who’d run the agency’s Miami office, as a deputy homeland security adviser, reporting to White House policy chief Stephen Miller. He was also given a dual appointment as head of HSI.

Salisbury was colorful: A mixed martial arts enthusiast, he once appeared at the agency’s headquarters with his face bruised and eye blackened from a recent bout. He’d sometimes entertain colleagues by pulling out a bridge that covers his missing front teeth.

To agency veterans, however, he was forever linked to a 2011 operation he’d overseen in Mexico in which one agent was killed and another wounded in a highway ambush by a drug cartel. An agency review submitted to Trump in April 2020 concluded that errors by HSI supervisors, including Salisbury, contributed to the outcome; it urged the administration to consider disciplinary action. None was taken against Salisbury, however.

Salisbury did not respond to requests for comment from ProPublica. A White House official called him “a critical member of the Trump administration” who was “cleared” in every review of the Mexico incident and was subsequently “promoted six times under multiple administrations.”

“It’s one thing if you’re going after Pablo Escobar. It’s another thing if you’re going after some cleaning lady who’s been working in the United States for 20 years and taking care of her 80-year-old mother and taking her little kids to church.”

Steve Bunnell, a former DHS general counsel and senior intelligence adviser

Once elevated to his new posts, Salisbury took charge of carrying out the second Trump administration’s agenda for HSI, personally issuing staffing directives, reassignments and promotions, current and former agency officials told ProPublica. (A number of them spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.)

Starting in early 2025, Salisbury oversaw the unprecedented reassignment of more than 6,000 agents to immigration enforcement, diverting most of the agency from its normal duties. He then also pointed HSI at noncitizen voting, presiding over multiple meetings with officials at DOJ and Homeland Security focused on election fraud, according to emails reviewed by ProPublica and agency supervisors who worked with him.

“Stephen Miller has an HSI deputy for a reason,” said Eric Balliet, a high-level HSI manager who retired in 2024 after 23 years with the agency. (Like many HSI veterans, Balliet has remained in close contact with former colleagues.) “Salisbury is going to salute and execute, and he is going to make sure that from the HSI side, they fall in line, and there’s going to be no resistance or pushback. HSI has been turned into the Swiss Army knife of federal law enforcement.”

In early July 2025, Frank Quiñones, an HSI special agent who’d worked under Salisbury in Florida, approached leaders at the HSI Innovation Lab with an idea for using the agency’s technology to find noncitizen voters on state voter rolls, sources at the agency told ProPublica. Quiñones had been transferred to Washington to oversee a unit that had previously handled cases involving the theft of government benefits but that had been enlisted into voting investigations.

The lab, housed in an unmarked office in a D.C. suburb, had access to the government’s most sensitive databases, from suspicious activity reports to arrest records. Staffed by a combination of HSI experts and outside consultants, it developed software tools to comb the data for information that could help agents pursue criminal suspects.

Quiñones was a true believer in Trump’s claims about election fraud: In multiple Facebook posts and reposts, ProPublica found, he promoted claims that the 2020 presidential vote had been stolen. At a meeting with the Innovation Lab’s overseers, according to sources who worked in the lab, he pitched using the lab’s technology to identify illegal voters — even though the agency lacked voter rolls that included identifiers such as partial Social Security numbers. (Quiñones did not respond to ProPublica requests for comment.)

For proof of concept, Quiñones proposed using a February 2021 public voter list he’d obtained for New Jersey and running it through HSI’s databases. The lab staff viewed his idea as “a little insane,” one recalled — both unreliable and improper. Since the public rolls don’t include voters’ unique identifiers, people at the lab also knew linking them to HSI’s data would produce mismatches — what the staffer called an “ungodly” number of false positives. The lab team also worried about violating longstanding safeguards limiting use of private citizen data. They “didn’t want to touch this,” the staffer added. Quiñones defended his idea, repeatedly declaring: “The president wants this!”

Tom Hodge, an HSI data analyst at the meeting, proposed running the voter information through the Athena Toolbox, an analytical platform developed by the Sandia National Laboratories that had access to all of HSI’s databases. (Hodge did not respond to ProPublica requests for comment. Sandia referred ProPublica’s questions to the facilities’ parent agencies, including the Department of Energy, which did not respond to our requests.)

Hodge and the Sandia team spent the next six weeks on the project, reporting they’d found large numbers of noncitizens on Quiñones’ 2021 New Jersey list. According to one former HSI official, they said they’d found “5,000 high-confidence illegal voters” in just a single New Jersey county. (Officials at the New Jersey secretary of state’s office, which oversees the state’s voter rolls, declined to comment on the claim. Beth Thompson, head of a group for local New Jersey election officials, called the number impossibly high, even accounting for the mistake disclosed by the state.)

The apparent breakthrough couldn’t have come at a better time.

The Trump administration’s other efforts to identify noncitizens on state voter rolls were running into a variety of roadblocks.

The administration had hoped to persuade states to check their voters’ citizenship status using a system called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, but many didn’t. Most states also refused the Justice Department’s demands to turn over their unredacted voter rolls, including partial Social Security numbers, which thwarted the agency’s plan to run them through SAVE. Courts have stymied the DOJ’s attempts to sue for the records, citing the Constitution, which gives primary control over elections to the states.

In an Aug. 21 email to a half dozen administration officials, Quiñones touted the solution he’d brought to the HSI Innovation Lab: using HSI’s platform to search voter rolls. The results, Quiñones noted, could fuel both criminal and immigration investigations.

By the end of the month, those in top election-related roles at DHS and the Justice Department were actively promoting what they dubbed the “HSI Tool” as a preferred alternative to SAVE, according to people familiar with the matter. Among them was Heather Honey, the prominent election denier appointed as a senior counselor at DHS, who is helping lead the government’s efforts to identify noncitizens on voter rolls. (Honey did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. In an email responding to questions to her, DHS said Honey’s “expertise in election administration” was “invaluable to the Department’s efforts to protect critical infrastructure.”)

The White House, too, got behind the idea. In a November email, J. Brian Sikma, special assistant to the president, excitedly noted that the New Jersey trial cross-checking voter rolls with DHS data appeared to have identified a “very significant number” of “potential non-citizens.” (Sikma didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

The DOJ, Sikma reported, had already obtained public voter rolls for many other states. He included a list of them, adding: “It is of paramount importance that these also be reviewed expeditiously.”

Running “Roughshod” Over Privacy

As the push to use HSI’s tech to search voter information gained momentum, a new problem emerged.

Career attorneys at the Justice Department, including specialists on privacy law, raised concerns that transferring voter rolls wholesale from the agency to DHS might not be legal, according to internal emails reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with several former officials.

The voter rolls the DOJ had collected contained sensitive information on millions of Americans. Even the public versions, which political parties and candidates routinely obtain to target ads and messages, included voters’ addresses, birth dates and party affiliations. For the 16 states that have agreed to share their unredacted voter lists, the DOJ had citizens’ partial Social Security numbers or driver’s license information, too.

Federal laws, particularly the Privacy Act, dictate what data government agencies can collect, what it can be used for, how it can be shared, and how it must be protected. Agencies have to disclose their plans in advance, gathering public comment. A person’s information can’t be released or shared without their consent, subject to limited exceptions.

From the outset, the Trump administration’s effort to combine data across federal agencies has repeatedly drawn criticism from courts and whistleblowers for failing to adhere to restrictions meant to keep data private and secure. In June, for example, a judge prohibited the government from using SAVE for mass searches, ruling the administration had violated federal privacy laws by giving DHS access to Social Security data to enhance the tool. The administration has appealed that ruling.

In July 2025, as word got around that the DOJ might hand over voter data to DHS, a half dozen career attorneys who had been reassigned into the voting section voiced their unease to supervisors, according to two former DOJ lawyers. Their concerns were disregarded, prompting most to resign.

Instead, the DOJ’s office of legal counsel pushed forward with plans to share the public voter rolls, claiming a Privacy Act exception allowed HSI to receive such data without public notice as long as it was for law enforcement purposes. DHS just needed to submit a letter officially requesting the data for those purposes, an attorney in the legal counsel’s office explained, according to internal emails.

But this exception was meant to be used to get information on individual criminal suspects, not to gain mass access to data on people suspected of no wrongdoing, according to Nikhel Sus, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has sued the Trump administration on behalf of voter and pro-privacy groups, filing the case that eventually limited SAVE’s use.

“[Anthony] Salisbury is going to salute and execute, and he is going to make sure that from the HSI side, they fall in line, and there’s going to be no resistance or pushback. HSI has been turned into the Swiss Army knife of federal law enforcement.”

Eric Balliet, a former high-level HSI manager

Peter Winn, a 29-year Justice Department veteran who had served as the agency’s acting privacy chief for nearly a decade, drafted a letter to set out the data-sharing agreement between the DOJ and DHS, according to internal documents reviewed by ProPublica.

In a Feb. 12 email to two top DOJ officials, he said he’d rewritten an initial draft memo to “make the information sharing arrangement far easier to defend, if and when it is challenged in court.”

Rather than simply handing over the voter rolls, Winn proposed having DHS request “pertinent and relevant” information about specific people from the DOJ, then having technical staff at Justice and Homeland Security “coordinate” to fulfill the requests.

“Having slept on it,” Winn wrote, “I ended up deciding that our initial idea of sending a huge amount of raw unprocessed voter registration data to DHS, involved taking far too much unnecessary legal risk, given that 99% of the data would implicate the privacy and civil liberties of United States Citizens, and would risk adding to the false narrative in the establishment press of DOJ and DHS being unconcerned with the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.”

Winn attached his proposed letter, to be signed by Todd Lyons, then the acting director of ICE.

Winn’s suggested restrictions were quickly abandoned, however. A second draft of the letter, dated March 4, contained altered language providing that the voter information would be “transferred” to HSI, with one exception: Voters’ party affiliation would be redacted, if possible, it said.

The final letter, signed by Lyons and sent to the DOJ just two days later, abandoned even that limitation. Just three paragraphs long, it permitted HSI to use the voter rolls to pursue any “appropriate investigation of potential violations of federal election law.”

In response to questions from ProPublica, Winn said “I can’t really comment on internal drafts of correspondence.”

A Justice Department spokesperson defended the government’s actions, saying “no one should oppose intergovernmental data sharing and coordination that enable swift investigations and prosecution of illegal alien voting.” DHS echoed the DOJ’s view, calling such information sharing “essential to protecting America’s election process by keeping noncitizens off voter rolls” and “an easy step to secure our elections.”

Sus said that by pooling voters’ sensitive personal identifiers, along with their party and voting histories, the administration has “run roughshod” over privacy laws and is creating a “1984-style database” that could be used to surveil political participation.

CREW filed a lawsuit in April on behalf of the nonprofit advocacy group Common Cause that argues it’s illegal for the administration to use the law enforcement exception to justify mass sharing of voter information.

Balliet, the former HSI agent, expressed similar concerns, saying that handing over voter rolls to run through DHS’ systems amounted to “a mass data-collection effort by the government against its own citizens in a non-criminal setting.” On a practical level, he added, the data sharing increased the risk of breaches that can open law-abiding citizens up to identity theft.

“As a citizen, I want the government to take seriously the protection of my private data,” he said. “If it falls into the wrong hands, it’s not the government that suffers. It’s me.”

Collapsing Claims

By January 2026, scores of HSI agents were fanning out across the country to investigate thousands of leads about illegal voting.

About 25,000 of them involved people SAVE had identified as potential noncitizens on state voter rolls. Another 15,000 were given to HSI’s cross-border financial crimes unit, which was told to prioritize them over money laundering and fraud cases, a former high-level HSI official said. Quiñones’ unit led a separate effort to find additional cases by reviewing whether people who’d recently become citizens had voted before they were naturalized, then lied about it in naturalization interviews.

Still more leads came from running public voter rolls through the HSI lab’s databases, though it’s not clear how many. Agency sources told ProPublica that the rolls of New Jersey and Pennsylvania were searched using the Athena Toolbox. When DHS announced it had found more than 250,000 noncitizens on the registered voter lists of four Democrat-led states, it said that included “as many as” 35,152 in New Jersey and 14,576 in Pennsylvania. Both states have asked DHS to provide the source of the numbers.

Once federal investigators started digging into these cases, however, they often fell apart.

Through May, prosecutors had charged fewer than four dozen people with crimes related to noncitizen voting, ProPublica’s analysis of DOJ data and federal court filings shows, getting convictions or guilty pleas in 14 cases.

The largest cluster of cases was brought in the Southern District of Florida, headed by Jason Reding Quiñones (no relation to the HSI agent), a staunch Trump ally who has led investigations of the president’s political opponents. Voters have been sentenced in eight of the office’s cases; seven others are pending.

Prosecutors have initiated a total of seven noncitizen voting cases as of May in the four states where DHS claimed to have found more than a quarter million noncitizens on the rolls. Collectively, these states have more than 40 million registered voters.

Overall, the paltry numbers reflect the realities HSI investigators confronted on the ground as they tried to convert leads into cases, a ProPublica review of records obtained by voting-advocacy groups Campaign Legal Center and Democracy Forward shows.

Emails between agents and local election officials in Texas and Ohio indicate much of the federal information on purported noncitizens was inaccurate, the consequence of flawed data matching. When agents demanded voting histories and registration forms, they often discovered people weren’t registered in the counties where HSI thought they were. When voters register, they must attest that they are U.S. citizens; agents found some, however, who’d been put on voter rolls in error after disclosing they weren’t citizens. Many had never voted.

“Our initial idea of sending a huge amount of raw unprocessed voter registration data to DHS, involved taking far too much unnecessary legal risk, given that 99% of the data would implicate the privacy and civil liberties of United States Citizens.”

Peter Winn, a Justice Department veteran, in an email urging limits on data sharing that were not adopted

Most HSI agents, steeped in pursuing complex international crimes, had no experience in pursuing voting fraud. In his email to Nick Davis at the Justice Department, Teirab, the top deputy in Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office, described the chaos that ensued when the state and at least six counties got subpoenas for voters’ records. The demands “presented a host of issues,” Teirab wrote to Davis. (Davis did not respond to a request for comment.)

“An unknown number of agents are constantly arriving in Minnesota without any knowledge of the investigation, the issues already discussed and decided, and the processes they need to follow,” Teirab complained. “Instead of getting up to speed and learning, they have demanded many calls and subpoenas, most of which demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the investigation.”

In Stearns County in central Minnesota, HSI agents subpoenaed voting histories on 13 people, county officials told ProPublica. Only six turned out to live there.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said the effort revealed federal investigators’ ignorance about “the nuance of elections administration.” The rate of purposeful election crime is “microscopic,” he said. “The very human errors that can happen are not some sort of plot or scheme to dirty up the voting rolls, but are just everyday human beings making mistakes, not intending at all to violate any law.”

As of May, only one illegal voting case has been referred for prosecution in Minnesota. The state has more than 3.8 million registered voters.

Even Republican-led states like Ohio, which has shared its unredacted voter rolls with the DOJ and run them through the SAVE system, have struggled to meet Trump administration demands to deliver cases.

In October, the Ohio secretary of state referred more than 1,000 voters identified as possible noncitizens to the federal government, claiming 167 had voted at least once since 2018. At least nine HSI agents in Cincinnati and Cleveland began to investigate, emails obtained by Campaign Legal Center and shared with ProPublica show.

The agents bombarded local election officials with requests for voting histories and other records, some dating back decades. “Sorry again for piecemealing these to you,” one agent wrote to an official in Butler County, outside Cincinnati, after making five separate requests over two weeks. Mohamed Al-Hamdani, a Democratic member of Montgomery County’s Board of Elections, which received similar inquiries, said they amounted to “witch hunts” that ate up staff time.

In February, Davis sent an email pressing Ohio’s two U.S. attorneys’ offices for an “election integrity” update, asking: “How close are we to complaints/indictments, how many subjects, what issues you’ve run into, how many referrals have been closed and why, how helpful HSI has been.”

As of May, just two voting cases had been referred for prosecution in Ohio and no one had been charged, federal data shows. The state has nearly 8 million voters.

In the past, it was uncommon for federal prosecutors to pursue charges against noncitizen voters who didn’t understand that it was against the law for them to vote. Without evidence of a coordinated effort or plot, it didn’t make sense to put resources into such prosecutions, a former DOJ official who oversaw election cases said.

Now, however, U.S. attorneys’ offices are taking a different approach, pursuing prosecutions that could result in prison terms or deportation.

In May 2025, federal prosecutors in Florida filed illegal voting charges against a mother and daughter, both Ukrainian citizens, who’d registered after becoming permanent U.S. residents, then voted in the 2024 presidential election. They’ve pleaded not guilty, with the mother saying in an interview with investigators that she thought having a green card meant she could vote. They and their attorneys didn’t respond to requests for comment from ProPublica. The prosecutor handling the case for the Southern District of Florida also didn’t respond to questions. The mother and daughter are scheduled to go to trial in September.

“Far-Reaching Consequences”

Experts on both elections and national security warn there may be profound longer-term costs to unleashing the federal government’s investigative and prosecutorial might to try to prove the president’s claims about noncitizen voting.

Current and former HSI agents say critical investigations — including task forces aimed at drug rings, human trafficking and money laundering — have languished as the agency has pivoted to take on noncitizen voting and immigration enforcement.

In February 2026, according to court files and emails reviewed by ProPublica, an HSI agent in Ohio who’d been leading a multistate child sex abuse investigation was abruptly assigned to pursue dozens of leads on suspected noncitizen voters, work that took months. It wasn’t until May that he made an arrest in the other case. Prosecutors have filed child exploitation and pornography charges against the man, 38, in connection with acts involving at least five 14-year-old girls.

Cases like this “don’t just stop,” said Balliet, the 23-year HSI veteran. “When you pull people off them for an extended period of time, those criminal networks will adapt, and people get killed and kidnapped.”

Federal data hints at a broader slowdown in what had been HSI’s most urgent work. According to an annual government report, the number of wiretaps obtained by DHS — often to investigate drug trafficking — plummeted to 23 in 2025, from 133 the previous year. In the report, DHS attributed the decline to several factors, including “changes in administration enforcement and prosecutorial priorities.”

“It’s never been a better time to be involved in transnational organized crime,” said John Tobon, a high-ranking HSI official who retired in early 2025.

“The very human errors that can happen are not some sort of plot or scheme to dirty up the voting rolls, but are just everyday human beings making mistakes, not intending at all to violate any law.”

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon

In its statement, DHS denied HSI has neglected its core mission, saying the agency has increased its efforts to combat criminal cartels, gangs and drug traffickers in response to multiple Trump executive orders.

Though HSI’s voting-related investigations have yielded only a small number of prosecutions, voter advocacy groups worry the Trump administration will use them to justify more extreme interventions.

Its latest tactics include threatening to withhold funds from states it says are refusing to check their voter rolls for noncitizens and saying it will prosecute state election officials who “knowingly” fail to remove noncitizens.

Trump has also continued to press Congress to enact the SAVE America Act, which would require people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, a measure advocates have criticized as a barrier to voting. Democrats are preparing for the prospect of federal troops being sent to the polls to intimidate voters.

“Those concerns are playing out in real time, with far-reaching consequences,” said Dax Goldstein, a director at the States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit group that works to build confidence in elections. “When federal agencies are misused and weaponized, people lose trust in government itself.”

-=-=

MMA

August 7, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight

ROB ASTORINO (HOST): Dr. Michael Savage joins us now. Don't you feel sorry for this guy?

MICHAEL SAVAGE (GUEST): Well, I actually do. I don't agree with any of your positions on this.

ASTORINO: OK.

SAVAGE: I know you're not going to want to hear it.

ASTORINO: No. Go, go.

SAVAGE: I happen to know that ICE is not going after the worst of the worst, they're afraid of the gangbangers. I know it because I live in San Francisco. I know the streets very well. I'm not sitting in an ivory tower. They're going after innocent people like her. Here's a guy who voted for Trump, who's saying he'll never vote for him again and the answer here, I'm afraid, is true. Why are they picking up women who present no threat to the society? OK, you could argue she broke the law because she's here illegally, that is a valid point, but is she a threat to our society? If so, how?

The true threats to our society are the heavily armed gang members who are not being touched by ICE, because they might get shot. So what the ICE members, in my opinion are doing, and I'm a hardcore conservative, borders, language, culture. Anyone can quote me on this. What ICE is doing is going after the low hanging fruit that poses no threat to them, just as cops for years have always given tickets to soccer moms, rather than those who may be dangerous. I know I've just alienated everyone in the audience who loves police and loves ICE, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong. The fact is this is why Trump's popularity is falling, and I may not agree with many of these things, but it's undeniable that Trump's popularity is falling.

-===

-===

wsj

How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics

Agency says its surveillance program searches for threats to agents, but critics see free-speech infringements

By Hannah Critchfield

and Shane Shifflett

Tired_Thumb is far from alone.

In recent months, ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet—from Facebook to Instagram to X—for speech that could endanger the agency’s mission. The government has paid millions to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE’s operations, according to federal documents, contractors and former Homeland Security Investigations agents.

In recent months, ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet—from Facebook to Instagram to X—for speech that could endanger the agency’s mission. The government has paid millions to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE’s operations, according to federal documents, contractors and former Homeland Security Investigations agents.

The program has ensnared U.S. citizens and activist groups that alert community members about ICE activity. Contractors prepare daily reports and dossiers on threat actors, identifying the poster’s name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history when possible.

To unmask anonymous online critics, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social-media companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Its agents have tracked down Americans at work and on the road, asking them to sign letters acknowledging their online speech about ICE “may” be a crime.

DHS says it is trying to protect its agents and their families from “coordinated campaigns of violence” that have fueled an 8,000% increase in death threats since Trump took office.

But civil-rights lawyers and former DHS staffers say the approach has swept up people expressing opinions that are protected by the First Amendment.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/ice-surveillance-internet-critics-e3b22f49

-=-=

AN 7 26

Trump DHS is using a Civil War-era statute to arrest protestors for conspiracy

Protesters are being arrested by President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security, a new report from National Public Radio detailed.

Treasure Thoreson, a Minneapolis special education teacher, along with 14 others, has been charged with "conspiracy to impede federal agents" because they were using "blockades" outside of the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE is headquartered.

"The charges against Thoreson are part of an escalating trend," the report said, after reviewing court records from the last five years. The analysis compared how the federal government is using one specific charge against protesters: "conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, which can carry a sentence of up to six years in federal prison," the report said.

NPR claimed that the statute was established during the Civil War and it isn't used often. Since Trump took over, however, more than three dozen people in fewer than 10 cases have been prosecuted using the law. All of them are for protesters of federal immigration enforcement. There have also been nearly 50 people indicted on conspiracy charges using different statutes.

But it was also a law used after the Jan. 6 attackers, particularly against the militia members. All of them were pardoned.

NPR noted that the sudden increase in conspiracy charges is sounding some alarms for legal experts who think it's being stretched to fit the administration's targeting of political activists.

"These cases are part of a broader trend that's worth watching," Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told NPR.

He explained that the cases all appear to be different and the administration is getting around the First Amendment by alleging destruction of property or violence, like what was seen on Jan. 6.

"The government can legitimately prosecute people for that. But some defendants aren't accused of personally engaging in that conduct," Terr says. "The concern there is that the government may be casting too wide a net. It may be lumping in innocent people or people who committed minor misdemeanors, based on their political beliefs."

Civil disobedience and non-violent protests can still break some laws, but the charges are typically minor. Conspiracy is another matter.

"For a conspiracy to occur, Terr says there has to be an agreement among people to commit a crime and, according to the statute involving impeding or injuring an officer, that crime has to prevent the officer from doing their duties through force, intimidation or threat," the report explained.

Terr said that someone showing up to a protest and deciding in the moment to block an ICE van should not be enough to constitute a criminal conspiracy.

NPR said that many of the cases have been dismissed, but there have been some successes. About 30 people outside of Spokane, Wash. were arrested after they linked arms to block the transport of two people detained by ICE. The following day, an internal email seen by Reuters from the Justice Department demanded that U.S. attorneys prioritize charges against protesters who "destroyed property or assaulted law enforcement."

The memo from former Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she wanted the protesters charged "with the highest provable offense available under the law."

Washington and Minnesota are just a few of the examples. Other protesters have been arrested in Chicago and Texas.

Katie Schwartzmann, legal counsel with the organization Protect Democracy told NPR, "It's important to see these indictments and the use of this law for what it is, which is an attempt to scare Americans. But also, Americans should not be afraid to organize peaceful resistance in this moment. Those acts of ordinary people organizing and working together have been the most important force for justice in the history of our country."

-=-=

-=-=

MMA 7 26

DA confirms no drugs were found after Fox News anchor previously claimed Houston man shot by ICE had meth in his car

MMA

Right-wing media respond to fatal ICE shooting in Maine by defending ICE vehicle stops and celebrating or downplaying the killing

Asmongold: “Good. Finally, they're shooting them.”

Written by Isabella Sherk & Torri Lonergan

Research contributions from Gideon Taaffe

Published 07/16/26

Right-wing media figures are excusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement's culpability for a recent fatal shooting in Maine -- and some are justifying, downplaying, or celebrating the death of ICE’s victim. The agency has faced widespread backlash since agents carried out two deadly shootings during vehicle stops in less than a week.

Recent fatal ICE shootings have drawn widespread scrutiny

Right-wing media figures justified, minimized, and celebrated ICE shooting and killing Guerrero

Right-wing media defended ICE vehicle stops

//

On the One Big Beautiful Bill's anniversary, Fox elided the energy story

  1. 07/16/26

Ahead of tonight’s speech, Fox praises Trump as a leader on election security — ignoring his repeated efforts to undermine it

  1. 07/16/26

Newsmax host calls the Trump administration to pull the CDC director nomination because she supports mRNA vaccines

07/16/26

RWW

07/10/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

The administration may have changed its P.R. strategy for Trump’s mass deportation campaign. The violence hasn’t changed at all.

Officials say agents believed a passenger resembled one suspect, but the encounter quickly escalated into a fatal shooting.

Three men who were in the vehicle alongside Lorenzo Salgado Araujo are contesting the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the fatal shooting.

RWW

//

07/13/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

While the number of killings by ICE officers is climbing, and DHS is sending agents to intimidate American citizens over social media posts critical of ICE officials, what’s “terrifying” to the Iowa Republican Party is criticism of Trump administration border czar Tom Homan.

An email sent from “MAGA Alerts” Monday morning carried the subject line, “What happened to Tom Homan today serves as a terrifying Reminder!”

The email began ominously:

Patriot:

Your immediate attention is required.

Please confirm you are in a safe and private place to correspond, ensuring no Democrats can read the following message over your shoulder.

When you are ready, please direct your undivided attention to the following:

Readers who click through once they’re in a secure location got this message:

At 8:58 AM, local time, a national MAGA alert was placed into effect under direct orders from Executive MAGA Leadership.

Tom Homan just said something on national television that has prompted Democrats to push for his immediate forced resignation as United States Border Czar.

What Homan said—more than a month ago on the right-wing outlet Newsmax—was that Democratic officials had “sold out” the country for political power by encouraging illegal immigration. It was inflammatory rhetoric, but certainly not the first time someone in Trump world has made that kind of accusation.

The fundraising letter then claimed falsely that Democrats were “dangerously close” to forcing Homan’s removal, adding, “All efforts and resources of the Democratic Party have been directed toward seeking his resignation.” There’s no evidence of that.

After a bit more inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric, the email asks people to sign a petition defending Homan and to make a monthly contribution “to combat the Democrats’ ongoing attacks on President Trump and his administration.”

And there’s a bit of intimidation for anyone who might be hesitating:

Contributions to the email are being shared by the Republican Party of Iowa and Trump National Committee Joint Fundraising Committee.

---

ACTIV SUPPR HUFFPO 5 26

Man Loses Global Entry After Watching Immigration Agents | HuffPost Latest News

---

AN 6 26

President Donald Trump's new appointee is raising alarm among staff inside the Department of Homeland Security and many are willing to quit over the appointment.

The Daily Beast reported on Monday that Trump has tapped an obscure state trooper from Oklahoma to run U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), citing a piece from PunchUp.

Senior officials say that they were shocked deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was not appointed to the role.

Richard “Lance” Schroyer is a former highway patrol officer and Marine, his biography says. Officials inside of DHS think that the real puppetmaster of ICE has been Miller, and they thought he was the likely nominee along with border chief Tom Homan.

The Beast noted that the Senate hasn't confirmed a head of ICE since the Obama administration. However, they did approve DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

According to insiders, Schroyer's announcement sent shockwaves through DHS.

“He’s Markwayne’s guy,” one senior official told PunchUp.

“Everyone was blindsided by the selection [of Schroyer], including Homan and Miller,” one source said.

There is a concern that it could be a signal that Miller's power over immigration and deportations is being whittled away.

“He may be getting boxed out,” the source added.

That said, the Homan wing isn't doing well either.

It “seems Homan is losing some power,” another senior ICE official told PunchUp. He evidently wasn't "a fan" of Trump's idea to rebrand ICE as "NICE."

“Everyone loves it, but I have been told by the legendary Tom Homan that the Agents do not love it as much as the other population," Trump wrote on Truth Social on June 20.

“I think Homan is going to lose all power," another official said about the matter.

Schroyer will take over a massive agency with a significant budget, despite having no experience leading an agency or office of any kind.

Three insiders told PunchUp that the rank and file are ready to self-deport from their jobs.

“Troops not happy at all. Senior leaders not happy,” said one senior ICE source. “No experience. He was a trooper. But that’s it. Never a boss. Never a leader. Never had to manage a budget. Now he has $78 billion. Now he has 32,000 employees.”

Agents, the person said, are ready to walk.

“Many say they will retire,” the source said.

“You’re gonna see a lot of senior leaders” who “retire, leave,” they told PunchUp. “Because it’ll be a power struggle. A new person in there, no one will know what is going on, and we’re gonna look like idiots.”

They think Schroyer is "nice" but that he has “no experience really with 287g ops." He's already been working quietly as a senior advisor to Mullin. Schroyer also worked previously as Mullin's residential security detail.

"The pair were so close," the report said, citing a source, and noted that he was invited to have dinner with the family while working on the detail.

One agency veteran said that it's part of an ongoing pattern of appointing friends with no experience to jobs.

“This guy will be his ‘fish cop,’” the senior ICE official said when speaking to PunchUp.

The report recalled previous Secretary Kristi Noem's deputy director of ICE, 29-year-old loyalist Madison Sheahan. She eventually left ICE and ran for Congress but lost in the primary.

“Putting his person in with no experience just to have his guy on the inside. He’s going to be the new Noem," the official said.

---

AN 5 26

The New York Times reportsa clash between a federal judge in Rhode Island and a Trump administration lawyer continued to escalate on Thursday after judges in the district appointed a special counsel to investigate potential misconduct.

In April, Judge Melissa R. DuBose released Bryan Rafael Gomez on bond, despite the fact that Gomez was wanted for murder in the Dominican Republic

Two days later, President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security did not hesitate to publicly blast DuBose in a posted a news release as an “Activist Biden Judge” who is soft on crime.

“This is yet another example of an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump’s mandate from the American people to remove criminal illegal aliens from our communities,” DHS blared in an April 30 post. “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS will continue to fight for the removal of criminal illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country.”

But the problem with that, however, is that Trump’s administrative prosecutor, Kevin Bolan, knowingly failed to alert Judge DuBose about Gomez’ murder charges before she released him. According to the Times, Bolan withheld that pivotal information on advice from the Homeland Security Department.

Infuriated, Judge DuBose called the withheld information a “serious breakdown” in legal ethics, and said further inquiry was needed into possible violations of Mr. Bolan’s duty of candor to the court. She said she would also consider imposing sanctions on the Homeland Security Department for misconduct

Bolan apologized, “but acting on behalf of the district’s three life-tenured judges, Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. chose Niki Kuckes, a law professor at Roger Williams University and a former clerk of Justice Antonin Scalia, to investigate the issue,” reports the Times.

“Kuckes will write a report that will inform the judges’ decision about whether to open ‘formal disciplinary proceedings.’ If the court finds that Mr. Bolan engaged in misconduct, it could impose punishments that range from a reprimand or fines to disbarment,” said the Times, citing the court’s local rules.

Meanwhile, DuBose has repeatedly asked Bolan to have D.H.S. take down its press release implying that she knowingly released someone accused of homicide.

“Her court’s chief deputy clerk has said that D.H.S.’s rhetoric ‘risks inciting threats against members of the judiciary’ and ‘undermines respect for the rule of law.’

Despite repeated requests and Trump’s own department withholding Gomez’ information, the page was still live as of Thursday afternoon.

---}:

an 5 26

A Canadian critic of President Donald Trump is fighting to block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from obtaining their personal and location information from Google.

A press release from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that DHS issued an "administrative demand" after "John Doe" posted criticisms of the death of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. The individuals were killed earlier this year by federal officers who shot them during the so-called "Operation Metro Surge," in which agents were sent into Minneapolis and faced protests.

Doe's posts on X received over 100,000 views. The X account is connected to a Google account, which identifies who the individual is. However, he isn't a U.S. resident and hasn't even been in the U.S. for over a decade.

Google told the man that it can't hold out forever, but it's raising questions about the Trump administration using the power of the federal government to go after critics.

The ACLU’s complaint said that the demand for information is “a transparent gambit to chill speech the government doesn’t like.”

“I have long admired the United States for its commitment to free speech,”the plaintiff said. “Never in a million years did I think that, after criticizing the US government, I would be targeted with a summons seeking to find out who I am, where I live, where I go and what I read online.”

The ACLU's senior staff attorney, Michael Perloff, attacked the DHS effort, saying that "consequences of its potential release go beyond one individual, whether they are in the United States or elsewhere.”

Trump and his allies are known for doxing individuals, but it doesn't scare them into compliance. It has happened to federal judges who rule against the Trump administration. In one case, Trump pal Rudy Giuliani targeted two Fulton County, GA vote counters who faced death threats and harassment. They won a lawsuit, forcing Giuliani to pay millions in damages.

So far, DHS has demanded information on individuals from Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, the New York Times reported in February, citing four people who are aware of the requests. In each case, the requests were sent directly to the tech companies, and there was no court order granting a warrant. In the past, DHS and ICE have been known to use what's called "Administrative subpoenas," which are simply written up by the departments and not issued by a court.

*The Washington Post* reported earlier this year that DHS is increasingly relying on the use of administrative subpoenas to get such personal information from companies. The report cited former officials and experts who estimate there have been thousands, possibly even tens of thousands of these kinds of subpoenas that are approved by mid-level staff who have no public accountability.

One such subpoena was issued for an individual who emailed an ICE attorney asking that they "[a]pply principles of common sense and decency" in immigration cases. The individual who sent the email filed a motion to quash, saying that the administrative subpoena was motivated by his speech and violated his First Amendment rights.

“Not satisfied with trying to suppress speech at home, the Trump administration is now targeting dissenters abroad,” the ACLU's Perloff said of the latest case of the Canadian.

Google said it requires that government requests not be overly broad.

“When we receive a subpoena, our review process is designed to protect user privacy while meeting our legal obligations,” a spokesperson told CBC News. “We inform users when their accounts have been subpoenaed, unless under legal order not to.”

Google didn't comment on whether it requires the subpoenas to come from a court or whether it accepts the made-up subpoenas issued by DHS.

---

---

MMA 4 26

A group of Trump allies have formed the Mass Deportation Coalition to encourage the administration not to back away from its deportation push. The coalition — which includes the Oversight Project’s Mike Howell, former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, former Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan, and conservative groups including The Heritage Foundation — released a playbook urging the White House to continue raiding work sites and deporting migrant workers despite pushback from voters. Politico, [4/1/26]

---

JACOBIN LEVER NOV?

IN February, at the start of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, news broke that a group of military contractors was circulating a blueprint for mass deportations, to be carried out by private contractors.

Led by Erik Prince, Donald Trump ally and founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater, the group proposed (among other ideas) that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) create a “skip tracing team” that would send out private contractors to hunt down immigrants targeted for deportation, per reporting at the time by Politico.

Now, there are indications ICE is carrying out those plans.

Last month, the Lever revealed that ICE had signed a $7 million contract with defense contractor SOS International for “skip tracing services.” SOS International, also known as SOSi, has long done business with the federal government, including working with the US military in Afghanistan — and has business ties to one of the military contractors whose name was listed alongside Prince’s in the proposal.

It was the first time, per online federal procurement databases, that an ICE contract description contained the phrase “skip tracing,” a term usually associated with debt collection and bounty hunting. There was little further detail about the services SOSi would provide to Trump’s immigration enforcers.

The contract — with its eerie callback to the Prince deportation blueprint — appears not to be a fluke. Several days later, ICE signed another “skip tracing” contract, this time worth up to $33.5 million, with international debt collector Global Recovery Group LLC.

Then, on Friday, October 31, as the Intercept first reported, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations bureau, the agency’s primary deportation arm, released procurement documents that mapped out new plans to create a bounty-hunting program that would deploy skip tracing methods. Though the documents are preliminary, ICE’s proposed program hews closely to the blueprint drawn up in February by Prince and his cadre of military contractors.

Under the program, private contractors will deploy “all technology systems available” to locate ICE’s targets, the documents say. Contractors would be given a list of ten thousand names at a time and be allowed to ultimately locate “up to 1,000,000” individuals, per the records.

ICE already has plenty of technology at its disposal to identify and track down immigrants, an arsenal that the agency is furtherbuilding out now that it is flush with cash. But the “skip tracing team” appears distinct in that its mandate would include sending out privately contracted bounty hunters to systematically identify immigrants’ residences and workplaces.

The bounty hunting program would include “performance-based incentives” — cash bonuses for vendors who successfully hunt down immigrants for ICE. This cash payout idea appears to be pulled directly from the Prince memo, which suggested that ICE build out a “bounty program which provides a cash reward for each illegal alien held by a state or local law enforcement officer.”

To judge from ICE’s first skip tracing contracts with SOSi and Global Recovery Group LLC, which are together worth over $40 million, the program will prove yet another gold mine for the military contractors clamoring for their cut of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar immigration spending blitz. And that makes sense: it was drafted by those same vendors.

From Blackwater to Bounty Hunting

The core message of Prince’s deportation plan was this: If President Donald Trump wanted to carry out his stated goals of mass deportations, he couldn’t do so alone. “The government,” the plan said, “should enlist outside assistance.”

Although Politico did not publish the complete text of the proposal, what has been made public from the document indicates that Prince was making the suggestion as part of the “special entity” 2USV, a group of defense contractors. (An LLC with the same name has been registered in Wyoming, but many details about the project remain unclear.)

The contractors include former Blackwater employees like Bill Mathews, the company’s former vice president, who pleaded guilty to violating firearms records law related to his work at the mercenary firm, as well as Richard Pere, former head of a Blackwater aviation subsidiary. Most of the Blackwater alumni have not been formally associated with the company in years. Blackwater has gone through a series of acquisitions and name changes since Prince sold the firm in 2010; its latest form is the private security conglomerate Constellis, which still operates the flagship Blackwater training center in North Carolina and is now trying to “drive strategic growth” in its border-operations work.

So far, there are no clear ties between Prince’s current business ventures — including Vectus Global, a murky security firm that is sending drones and mercenaries to the Haitian government — and the vendors now inking deals to carry out ICE’s new bounty-hunting program. But at least one other contractor involved in the initial proposal has business ties to the companies that have been tapped to carry out the plans.

Louis Gobern, one of the names listed in the initial Prince memo, is currently the president of Resilient Logistics Services & Solutions, a defense contractor that advertises its work with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. The company names SOS International, ICE’s new skip tracing contractor, as an “industry partner,” and both companies have previously worked as subcontractors on the same Customs and Border Protection contract.

SOS International has been vying for Department of Homeland Security contracts in recent months, poaching one of ICE’s top intelligence chiefs, Andre Watson, in August. The company boasted that Watson, who helped run the ICE program targeting students for political speech, would help the contractor “expand its business and deliver capabilities to the federal and state law enforcement agencies.”

When Politico contacted Mathews, one of the former Blackwater executives, about the proposal in February, he claimed he had heard nothing from the Trump administration about moving forward with the bounty hunter program.

“There has been zero show of interest or engagement from the government, and we have no reason to believe there will be,” he said.

If ICE’s recent multimillion-dollar spending spree is any indication, that is changing.

This article was first published by the Lever, an award-winning independent investigative newsroom.

---

---

AN PP 5 26

When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.

If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.

At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.

As the midterms approach, current and former government officials and election security experts expressed concerns that Trump appointees who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about balloting are now in positions to control the narrative around the vote’s soundness.

It’s hard to debunk false claims “coming with the seal of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager with the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program. “I certainly worry what damage that could do to voters’ confidence.”

Here are some of the key things you should know about the Trump administration’s efforts to, as the president said, “take over” the midterms. Read the full investigation here.

1. In 2020, institutional guardrails helped to prevent Trump from overturning the election.

Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump pushed for federal officials to uncover proof that he had, in fact, beaten Joe Biden at the polls. Election cybersecurity experts with the Department of Homeland Security relayed to Attorney General William Barr that the election fraud claims that they looked into were false. Barr then told the president what he didn’t want to hear: The election had not been hacked.

Barr was one of many federal officials — most of them Trump appointees — who refused to bend to the president’s demands, which only intensified in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Despite the violent uprising at the Capitol on that day, the election results held firm.

2. Less than 18 months into his second term, Trump has dismantled many of those same guardrails.

Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.

In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.

3. Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.

Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.

Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.

A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were in response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous departure from its statutory mission,” which included “electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.”

4. Trump and his appointees have gutted election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies.

FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.

(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)

The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.

  1. Trump has replaced ousted career specialists with “Team America.”

In the summer of 2025, after the Trump administration had forced out most of the career specialists, a small group of political appointees — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — began convening at DHS headquarters, looking for federal levers it could pull to realize a March 2025 executive order, in which Trump tried to exert greater federal control over aspects of voting.

Among the core members of the group was David Harvilicz, a DHS assistant secretary tasked with overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his top staffers. As ProPublica has reported, Harvilicz co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about election hacking in Michigan.

Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, is a source of the false claim that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in the 2020 presidential election — a claim Trump cited on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

At least 11 administration appointees, including Honey, have ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.

6. Team America members are using a powerful Homeland Security Investigations tool to try to identify noncitizen voters.

The DOJ has been demanding that states turn over confidential voter roll information, and it has sued around 30 states for this data.

Meanwhile, DHS has urged states to upload their voter rolls to its tool, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

The goal in both efforts has been to find noncitizens on the voter rolls. But the SAVE tool has come up short, often identifying citizens as noncitizens, as ProPublica has reported, and officials have faced other roadblocks with its use.

More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to harness a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to search for noncitizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.

In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to advantage Trump. In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote, “To meet the diverse and evolving challenges the Department faces, we hire experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”

7. Trump’s head of election security is behind the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Georgia.

Attorney Kurt Olsen once worked to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in court and was later sanctioned by judges for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections. He is now Trump’s director of election security and integrity and is the driving force behind the January raid of the election center in Fulton County, Georgia.

Toward the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. Olsen wanted the FBI to seize ballots from the Democratic stronghold, and he gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to superiors at the DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted. Afterward, Brown was given a choice: retire or be moved to a new office. Brown retired. The raid went forward under his replacement, based on an affidavit that cited information from the report Olsen provided to Brown.

Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.

An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”

8. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section could have tried to block the administration’s Georgia voting investigation.

In the months following Trump’s return to office, the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had been responsible for making sure the department’s inquiries weren’t improperly influenced by politics, was eviscerated. Resignations, firings and transfers reduced the 36-person section to two.

Multiple former lawyers for the section said they likely would have tried to block the Fulton County investigation because it lacked strong evidence, had a clear political slant and went against department directives that actions should not be taken “for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

John Keller was principal deputy chief of the section from 2020 to 2025 and was acting chief when he resigned in early 2025. He worries that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be handled on a partisan basis.

“Without that review and without apolitical, objective, honest brokers involved in the process, there is a much greater risk for intentional manipulation or inadvertent interference,” Keller said.

---

A Redditor Criticized ICE. Trump Is Trying to Unmask Them by Dragging the Company to a Secret Grand Jury.

Ryan Devereaux

An ICE summons to get the user’s identity failed. Advocates worry the move to a grand jury signals an escalation of the war on dissent.

Read More →

---

4 26 INTERCEPT

DHS Launches Massive “Less Lethal” Chemical Weapons Buying Spree Sam Biddle

Federal agents’ indiscriminate use of tear gases and “less-lethal” projectiles has become a mainstay of protest crackdowns.

https://theintercept.com/2026/04/03/less-lethal-chemical-weapons-tear-gas-protests/)

---

---

AN 4 26

WIRED sifted through the identities of federal agents sent to Chicago in Donald Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz," and they've been able to identify some of them as a "heavily armed paramilitary unit."

"A WIRED analysis of DHS records identified dozens of specialized federal agents who used force against US civilians during the largest known deployment of its kind in U.S. history," the outlet reported Thursday.

The ongoing mass deportation efforts come from Trump's pledge to deport millions of people he claimed entered the U.S. in the four years between his administrations. He's come up against the problem, however, that there aren't millions of criminals for his agents to nab and deport one *Washington Post* report explained. The campaign has led to hostility and protests that took the lives of two Americans when federal agents opened fire on them.

One PBS/NPR/Marist poll in February showed two-thirds of Americans think Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) have "gone too far."

Four of the men WIRED found are "members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC." It's a specialized federal law enforcement force based mainly at Fort Bliss. They've been sent out to at least 11 "detachments" around the U.S. The report described the agents as, at one time, being "reserved for desert rescues, executing high-risk warrants, conflicts with armed drug cartels and manhunts."

One of those unmasked was John Bockstanz, WIRED said. The Marine veteran is from Michigan, and also runs a company as a side hustle that sells "pre-workout supplements." Essentially, they're "testosterone supplements."

"Conquer each day with unparalleled potency," promises the “Alpha Testosterone Booster."

Bockstanz was in an SUV with "agent John Leslie from BORTAC’s Detroit detachment."

Another agent was identified as Javier Puente, who was in the U.S. Army. The body camera he wore showed him gripping a 40-mm grenade launcher while sitting in the back of an SUV. It wasn't used for grenades there, however, they used it to launch "less lethal" pepper-spray rounds into crowds, the report said.

While BORTAC is described as an elite unit, that isn't a sentiment embraced by others in the top forces.

One former Special Forces member was critical of BORTAC when speaking to WIRED.

“They go in real hot — in my opinion, too hot and too unruly,” the veteran said about his experience with the agents. They tend to be “ego-driven hotheads.” While they might be "highly trained," they have little or no actual war-fighting experience.

“Even then, they’re definitely not the people I’d want in any sort of civilian law enforcement context," he added.

---

REF WIRED NO LNX

:{Apr 2, 2026

Unmasking the Paramilitary Agents Behind Trump’s Violent Immigration Crackdown

A WIRED analysis of DHS records identified dozens of specialized federal agents who used force against US civilians during the largest known deployment of its kind in US history.

Documents and body camera footage released by the Department of Homeland Security reveal the paramilitary agents who used force against civilians during Operation Midway Blitz.Composite: WIRED Staff; Source materials: Department of Homeland Security

In the early morning last September 30, hundreds of federal agents swarmed the South Shore Apartments, a beige brick building on Chicago’s South Side. As feds in body armor rappelled down from a Black Hawk helicopter overhead, others crashed through the building’s doors with battering rams, rounding up residents at gunpoint.

A group of burly, masked agents wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, and toting suppressor-equipped M4 rifles, moved through the hallways in a rapid, tightly organized file. Padraic Daniel Berlin, a 34-year-old Michigan native and son of a Detroit firefighter, held Yoda, his Belgian Malinois, on a leash. David Dubar Jr., a 53-year-old onetime construction worker, followed closely behind him. Their team leader, Corey Myers, a Marine veteran from the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, checked apartment doors. Paul Delgado Jr., a standout cross-country runner in high school, was the final member of the entry team.

The four men are members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC. Based mainly out of Fort Bliss, with at least 11 detachments stationed around the United States, BORTAC and its sister unit, Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue, or BORSTAR, were once reserved for desert rescues, executing high-risk warrants, conflicts with armed drug cartels, and manhunts.

Under Donald Trump, however, they have been sent into the streets of major US cities. The result is the largest known deployment of BORTAC and BORSTAR agents in US history, a fact made difficult to pin down due to the government's secrecy around their operations. Many of the agents’ identities have remained hidden from the public. The decision to use offensive, heavily armed paramilitary units for street-level immigration sweeps in American cities is a first—a bellwether of the Trump administration’s project to militarize domestic law enforcement operations.

Myers, Berlin, Dubar, Delgado, and their teammates seemed keyed up. The intelligence briefing they received claimed the building was controlled by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang the Trump administration categorized—despite contrary evidence amassed by its own intelligence services—as a foreign terrorist organization. Gang members were supposedly occupying the building and storing grenades, handguns, and rifles on the second floor, where a suspect with an open warrant for firearms possession lived. This intelligence was never released or substantiated, and Illinois later launched an investigation into whether the property owner had sent baseless claims to the feds. But at that moment, it didn’t matter.

At every door approached by his team, Berlin yelled, “Police! Speak to me now or I’ll send the dog!” In a second-floor unit, the BORTAC team detained one man. Further down the hall, Myers noticed “signs of forced entry” and smashed open the door. Tolulope Akinsulie, an undocumented immigrant from Nigeria, happened to be hiding in the bedroom. Without issuing a warning or verbal command, Berlin let go of Yoda’s leash and the Malinois pounced, sinking its teeth into Akinsulie’s leg as he screamed in agony. Yoda bit Akinsulie repeatedly in the leg, hip, and hands before Berlin called the dog off and his team placed the man in cuffs. Akinsulie, who was not a target of the raid and has no known history of violent crime or gang affiliation, was treated for his injuries and taken to the Broadview Processing Center to face removal proceedings.

Berlin’s actions that morning were not isolated. He was involved in at least five uses of force during Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s 2025 surge of hundreds of immigration agents into Chicago and surrounding communities. Nor were the actions of his team, according to a WIRED analysis of US government records, which appeared to escalate tensions with civilian onlookers rather than quell them. Since last year, BORTAC and BORSTAR have fronted several of the US government’s invasions of its own cities, often engaging in almost theatrical uses of force that litter newscasts and social feeds, adding a new salience to US Border Patrol Special Operations Group’s self-proclaimed status as the “tip of the spear.”

The agents sent to Chicago—and Los Angeles, North Carolina, Boston, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Sacramento—come from a secretive, tightly knit world. Their names, many of which are available in a narrow set of court records and reported here for the first time, are typically excluded from official documents and shielded from public records requests. In the streets of American cities, they are usually masked, identified only by “call signs” that are sometimes visible on their uniforms and mean nothing to people demanding badge numbers.

One BORTAC agent is married to a TV news anchor who reports on the Border Patrol. Another, who also engaged in a gun battle with a school shooter in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, has posted frequently in an online gun forum with thread titles like “Whipping Haitians.” Many are military veterans, some of whom saw combat during the Forever Wars. Several have histories of domestic violence or sexual assault. Others are former cops who joined the Border Patrol after questionable uses of force. BORTAC and BORSTAR agents are not police—they are paramilitaries who operate by a different standard and with different rules of engagement, trained and suited not for law enforcement but for war.

A WIRED review of over 78 incident reports from Operation Midway Blitz found that BORTAC and BORSTAR agents were, as a group, the most violent of the hundreds of federal agents deployed to Chicago. In these documents, CBP employees recorded over 144 discrete uses of force by CBP personnel from September through early November. Sixty-two BORTAC and BORSTAR personnel were involved in these incidents over an eight-week period. Of that group, 25 were involved in two or more incidents, and 16 more used force at least once during this period. Of the 234 federal law enforcement personnel WIRED identified in these reports, BORTAC and BORSTAR agents represent almost a quarter of all personnel involved in documented confrontations with civilians during Operation Midway Blitz

Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty is actively investigating 17 separate incidents involving federal agents for potential criminal conduct. At least two of those incidents—the January 21 gassing of a crowd in South Minneapolis and a chaotic enforcement action outside Roosevelt High School—involve BORTAC personnel, per videos and photographs taken on scene.

The Department of Homeland Security has kept data and documents about the federal immigration deployments closely guarded, disclosing records only in response to litigation. US senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has been wrestling with DHS over data regarding last fall’s Operation Charlotte’s Web in his state. Tillis requested records on stops, detentions, questioning, searches, releases, uses of force, and property damage incidents, as well as the total number of detentions and a tally of all encounters with American citizens.

During Operation Midway Blitz, incidents beyond the South Shore Apartment raids included the gassing of an affluent Northside Chicago neighborhood right before a children’s Halloween parade, a chaotic car chase on the city’s South Side, and clashes with protesters outside the Broadview immigration detention facility.

BORTAC’s and BORSTAR’s uses of force in Chicago included punching and kicking protesters, throwing tear gas, macing civilians, firing pepperballs and 40-mm foam rounds into crowds, shocking people with tasers, unleashing dogs on deportation targets, and shooting unarmed civilians, killing at least one of them. This violence tracks with a loosening of the Border Patrol’s use-of-force guidelines following Gregory Bovino’s directives, as reported by the American Prospect.

“I think if we push this whole fucking block back, that ought to teach ’em a lesson,” says Bovino on an agent's body camera recording from September 27, during clashes with demonstrators at Chicago’s Broadview detention facility. “And if it doesn't, we arrest.” Bovino, the now-retired face of Trump’s immigration surges throughout 2025 and early 2026, is a longtime BORTAC member who led dozens of these agents on incursions into Southern California, Chicago, and Minneapolis, putting them front and center at some of the most high-profile clashes between immigration enforcement and the public during the past nine months.

Other body camera footage from nearly a month later captured one BORTAC agent, Edgar Vazquez, telling his colleagues that he planned to refuse Bovino’s directives. “The chief wanted us to throw gas, and I was like, we can’t!” said Vazquez. “Nah, I’m not gonna fucking do it—I’m gonna stay within policy.”

“It’s clear the administration likes the optics of BORTAC—the long guns, the camouflage, the body armor. They certainly did for Trump’s first go-round,” says John Sandweg, who was director of ICE from 2013 to 2014. However, he says, the unit is not generally familiar with urban policing, and its record in Chicago demonstrates the poor fit of borderland tactics for densely packed cities. “It’s malpractice to have paramilitary teams try to impose order by force,” he says.

In a response to WIRED’s requests for comment, CBP cited the threat of “doxing” and refused to confirm employment of the Border Patrol agents identified in the government’s own records. CBP personnel are “trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and themselves,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement.

CBP also declined to comment on whether any of the use-of-force incidents from Operation Midway Blitz are the subject of internal investigations, stating that the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility handles all such probes before submitting them to CBP’s Use of Force Review Boards.

The documents, body camera footage, and other material WIRED used to identify more than 60 BORTAC and BORSTAR operators were pried loose during litigation against DHS over alleged First Amendment violations, unconstitutional arrests, and grievous uses of force during Operation Midway Blitz, including the killing of Silverio Villegas González and nonfatal shooting of Marimar Martinez by ICE and Border Patrol agents, respectively.

No BORTAC or BORSTAR agent named in this story responded to WIRED’s request for comment.

In Illinois, civil rights attorneys and civic organizations are pressuring the Cook County state’s attorney to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and potentially prosecute ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol agents for uses of force and wrongful arrests during Operation Midway Blitz.

To date, no Border Patrol, CBP, or ICE agent has faced criminal charges for their conduct during the operation in Chicago.

The full force of the paramilitary surge into American cities was on open display the morning of October 25, 2025, when a convoy of BORTAC and other Border Patrol agents swept through the tranquil North Side Chicago neighborhood of Irving Park, trailed by whistle-blowing “ICE watchers” in cars and on bicycles.

Shortly before 10 am, a gray Suburban with BORTAC agents Andy Chavez and Tee Rico riding in the back seat cruised through Irving Park’s tree-lined streets. A black Wagoneer filled with Border Patrol agents followed closely behind, carrying BORTAC agent Javier Puente, an Army veteran, in the rear seat. All the agents wore masks and camouflage tactical gear, with pistols at their hips and M4-pattern rifles near at hand. Puente’s body camera video shows him gripping a 40-mm grenade launcher intended to fire pepper-spray-loaded “less lethal” rounds.

On the sidewalks around them, Irving Park residents gathered for the community’s Halloween parade. Before the hour was up, chaos would erupt in the residential neighborhood.

Chavez and Rico spotted a Latino man running from their convoy, leaped out of their vehicle, and tackled the man on the front lawn of a white townhouse. The home’s owner, Brian Kolp, an attorney and onetime Cook County state’s attorney who used to represent Chicago police officers in civil litigation, stormed out of his house, barefoot, screaming at the feds to get off his property and take their masks off.

“This has nothing to do with enforcing the law, and everything to do with intimidating citizens with military tactics,” Kolp tells WIRED of the incident.

Other residents and members of ICE-watch groups joined in, blowing whistles, cursing out the agents, and recording the incident on their phones. As the Border Patrol convoy attempted to leave the scene, enraged onlookers—at least one still wearing a bathrobe—moved to block their path.

As the crowd grew more hostile, agents ramped up their uses of force. Michael Brosilow—a photographer, Irving Park resident, and decorated long-distance runner—pulled into his neighborhood after returning from a training session. Rico and Chavez confronted the 68-year-old man, who yelled, “Fuck you!” as he stepped out of his silver Toyota. Rico then tackled Brosilow, planted his knee in his back, and handcuffed him. “This is my block!” Brosilow screamed. Six of Brosilow’s ribs were broken in the encounter, and he suffered internal bleeding.

Chavez pulled the pin on a can of tear gas and tossed it into the street as bystanders screamed. Puerte, meanwhile, spotted 25-year-old ICE watcher Maria Bryan allegedly hit Rico in the head and slammed her and her bicycle to the ground, fracturing seven of her ribs.

The agents eventually loaded into the vehicle, drove off, and radioed in that they had arrested two US citizens for “impeding” and “assault.” (Neither Brosilow nor Bryan were charged.)

As the agents moved out of Irving Park, the horns of trailing cars and whistles from ICE watchers were clearly audible. When the SUV stopped at a red light, two men on the sidewalk stepped up to remonstrate with the feds.

Puente photographed one with his iPhone, then rolled down his window and pointed his grenade launcher at a second man.

“Get the fuck out of the way!” he yelled, aiming his muzzle at the civilian as the vehicle pulled away. “Fuck you!”

Created in 1984 to deal with riots in immigration detention camps, BORTAC has been sent to South America for narcotics interdiction missions alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration; conducted missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Jordan; and, in the recent past, raided desert aid stations. While BORTAC is designed for close combat, BORSTAR, which was created in 1998 in response to a rise in migrant deaths on the southern border, specializes in open-country operations. Members of both teams undergo Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training, are taught complex military surveillance and countersurveillance tactics, and tend to be recruited from specialized military units like the Army Rangers.

“They go in real hot—in my opinion, too hot and too unruly,” says a former Special Forces member, speaking on condition of anonymity. This veteran says that in his experience, BORTAC members tend to be “ego-driven hotheads” who are highly trained but have little or no operational war-fighting experience. “Even then, they’re definitely not the people I’d want in any sort of civilian law enforcement context.”

Beginning in February 2020, the first Trump administration sent BORTAC into Democrat-run “sanctuary cities” for civil immigration enforcement, a surge that was short-circuited by the Covid-19 pandemic. Later that summer, BORTAC agents were documented snatching protesters off the streets of Portland, Oregon, during the George Floyd protests.

Since the start of the second Trump administration, BORTAC and BORSTAR agents have participated in immigration blitzes in California, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Vermont. Since October, the Border Patrol’s paramilitary units, led by Timothy P. Sullivan, the head of the Fort Bliss–based Border Patrol’s Special Operations Group, have also commanded the federal presence at an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, that has been a constant target of protests, often resulting in violent clashes. More recently, in mid-March, agents from one of the Border Patrol’s local Special Operations detachments used crowd control munitions on protesters in South Burlington, Vermont, during a chaotic immigration arrest.

Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies who has studied police militarization and paramilitary units for decades, says that BORTAC’s presence in Chicago was a textbook case of authoritarian overreach. “Why are they enforcing civil immigration violations with paramilitary teams?” Kraska says. “Armored personnel carriers, hostage rescue tactics, Special Forces–grade weapons, SEAL-style tactics—why do you need all that for civil violations?”

A week and a half before the Irving Park incident, another event between Border Patrol agents and a Latino couple shows how quickly Border Patrol agents escalated to tear-gassing dozens of civilians and Chicago police officers.

On October 14, Border Patrol agents were involved in a car chase and a collision with a Latino couple. One of the agents involved in the crash, Carlos Chavira Jr., radioed for help, and several BORTAC agents drove to the scene.

One of the SUVs that arrived was driven by John Bockstanz, a Michigan resident and former Marine who runs a company that sells pre-workout supplements on the side—“Conquer each day with unparalleled potency,” promises the “Alpha Testosterone Booster.” With him was agent John Leslie from BORTAC’s Detroit detachment.

The other agents who answered Chavira’s call for help were Derek Volmering, a 39-year-old Michigan native, BORTAC supervisor, and onetime Buffalo Bills linebacker prospect; Paul Beaulieu, a New England native assigned to the Border Patrol’s rough-country search and rescue team; Edgar Vazquez, a 39-year-old firearms instructor from BORTAC who joined the Border Patrol in 2007; Padraic Daniel Berlin, who sicced his dog on a Nigerian immigrant during the South Side apartment raid two weeks earlier; David Dubar Jr., the BORTAC Michigan agent who’d also been on the South Side Apartments entry team, and supervisory agent Warren Becker from the Del Rio BORTAC detachment, who exchanged gunfire with the Uvalde school shooter in 2022 after the gunman executed 19 children.

The crew met a furious and growing civilian crowd. Television news crews arrived on the sidewalks. A CBP helicopter circled overhead. “It’s gonna be a nightmare getting out of here,” Volmering grumbled.

“Yeah, we’re probably going to get stuff thrown at us,” Bockstanz replied.

They immediately began positioning themselves around the scene. Two combat veterans, who reviewed incident body-camera footage for WIRED, said the agents moved in the same way that active-duty troops would to protect and extract a disabled vehicle from a hostile crowd in a war zone.

Tensions between the agents and the crowd escalated as someone threw an egg into the mass of feds, and agents tackled one of the onlookers to the ground in response. By then, Border Patrol agents had already donned gas masks and retrieved gas canisters from their vehicles in preparation for their exit.

Bockstanz heard an object strike one of the CBP vehicles and walked over to Volmering, who was speaking to a group of Chicago police commanders. “Hey, they’re starting to throw rocks,” Bockstanz said, his voice muffled by his gas mask. “I’m gonna have to deploy gas,” he told CPD deputy chief Dan O’Connor, who appeared to object. “We gotta worry about ourselves.”

“Well, give us a minute to talk to ’em and let’s go get you guys out of here,” O’Connor replied.

Bockstanz and Volmering ignored him. As projectiles sailed overhead and struck their cars, Bockstanz took a step forward, pulled the pin on a can of tear gas, and skipped it along the pavement towards the crowd without a warning, right through a line of unmasked Chicago cops.

Bockstanz waved to a Border Patrol SUV to leave and tossed another can of gas as the first one was thrown back, yelling, “Get the fuck out of here” at his colleagues. At the skirmish line, Dubar tossed his canisters into the crowd. Demonstrators began throwing and kicking gas canisters back toward the feds, prompting Vazquez, who had previously been involved in clashes with the public in Southern California and would later use less-lethal weapons on civilians in Minneapolis, to fire a round of tear gas at the fleeing crowd before the agents sped away.

More than a dozen cops and an unknown number of residents were sickened by the tear gas, with three American citizens arrested for “assaulting” federal agents, in addition to the two “deportable” people detained. No criminal charges were filed.

The operation tapered down by mid-November amid a national backlash and a series of adverse legal rulings that restricted the feds’ ability to use less-lethal and crowd-control munitions on civilians. While a key court decision was later overturned, the judge said in her opinion that Border Patrol, ICE, and CBP used force without clear warnings, failed to wear marking insignia, and failed to justify uses of force.

At least 3,800 people were arrested during Operation Midway Blitz as of late last year. More than 2,500 have been deported, and more than a hundred may have been illegally removed from the United States. None of the dozens of people whom BORTAC and BORSTAR agents arrested for alleged assaults or other crimes against them appear to have been convicted.

Six of the BORTAC agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz—Michael Sveum, Dubar, Vazquez, Delgado Jr., Belen Lleras, and Chavez—were involved in immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Boston, and other cities. Vazquez and Sveum used force on angry Minnesotans in the immediate aftermath of Renee Good’s killing, per reporting by Chicago outlet Unraveled. It does not appear that they have faced any internal discipline or criminal charges.

For Brian Kolp, the Chicago lawyer whose Irving Park street was shaken by the October 25 BORTAC raid, the incident had a “radicalizing effect” on him. He still seethes with rage about the masked Border Patrol agents, and has been working overtime to research legal strategies that would hold the feds accountable for brutalizing his neighbors and terrifying their children.

“I’m never gonna be satisfied,” Kolp says, “until there’s some kind of accountability and justice for what happened on my street.”

Additional reporting by Tim Marchman, Matt Giles, Samantha Spengler, and Andrew Couts.

Ali Winston is an independent reporter covering criminal justice, privacy, and extremism. He has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York magazine and has reported documentaries for BBC Panorama and PBS Frontline. His work has earned several honors, including a George Polk Award for Local Reporting, an ... Read More

Contributor

Maddy Varner is a senior reporter for WIRED. In the past, she was an investigative data journalist at The Markup, where she brought numbers to stories about labor, education and politics. Before The Markup, she was a researcher at ProPublica, where she was on a team that won a Loeb ... Read More

Senior Writer, Investigations

---

---

AN 3 26

On Friday, March 20, a woman identified as "Linda from Arizona" called into aright-wing radio program, "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," with a suggestion: sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to airports. President Donald Trump later did exactly that, and his supporters praised the move as a way to help U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers who are feeling overwhelmed as a partial shutdown of the federal government drags on.

Linda's main concern, however, wasn't helping TSA employees, but upsetting liberals and progressives. Linda told the hosts, "I think it would set their hair on fire" — to which one of them responded, "Democrats would go absolutely insane."

In an article published on March 25, Salon's Amanda Marcotte notes that Trump's idea to send ICE agents to airports appeared to come from Linda — a move that, the journalist stresses, did nothing to ease the long lines at U.S. airports.

Marcotte explains, "Both Linda and the hosts were blunt that the goal was not actually helping the Transportation Security Administration run more efficient checkpoints, but to trigger the liberals…. Liberals hate ICE, the logic went, so why not inflict ICE on liberals and make them squeal? But the MAGA coalition has not been known for its logic, and it's clear from the conversation that no one involved was really thinking this through. Instead, the scheme was rooted in a childish — and sadistic — impulse to bully."

The headaches at U.S. airports are illustrated by passenger Will Frampton. During a March 24 appearance on MS NOW, Frampton told host Chris Jansing that he showed up at Atlanta's airport five hours early for a flight — but missed it because he spent nine hours waiting in a TSA security line.

According to Marcotte, the ICE-in-airports idea is hurting, not helping, Trump.

"After the idea percolated up from Linda to Clay-and-Buck and then to Fox News, Trump thought it was a stroke of genius," Marcotte writes. "Since he couldn't admit that he got the idea from a random woman in Green Valley, Arizona, he took credit for it on Monday, (March 23), comparing himself to the man who invented the paperclip in the process. What is remarkable is that everyone involved — all of them, from Linda to Trump himself — are so consumed with the desire to trigger the liberals that no one stopped to wonder if the plan to put ICE in airports would backfire, as it appears to be doing."

Marcotte continues, "Early reports show ICE is doing nothing to speed up security lines, many of which have hours-long waits due to Republicans' refusal to pass a Democratic proposal to fund the TSA directly while still withholding DHS funding. The presence of ICE is instead ratcheting up tensions at the already stress-laden airports. Federal immigration officers can't do the real work of screening passengers, but they can harass and manhandle people suspected of being immigrants. Despite credulous media reports perpetuating the belief that ICE has been deployed to help TSA agents, every indication is that Trump's goal is to make already-miserable traveling experiences even worse."

---

---

ALSO NOEM PLANE?

AN 3 26

The Wall Street Journal— hardly an outpost of left-wing propaganda — reported yesterday on the results of an investigation conducted by the Journal’sHannah Critchfield and her team.

I’m summarizing it below because it deserves your attention.

Critchfield and her team found that 279 people have been accused online by the Trump administration of assaulting federal ICE and Border Patrol agents, and more than half of these people — 64 percent — are American citizens.

Of the 181 American citizens that the Trump administration has accused of attacking federal ICE and Border Patrol officers, close to half have never been charged, and none have been convicted at trial. But the public charges alone have caused them significant harm.

The investigation

The Journal’s team analyzed more than 200 videos associated with allegations of assault against ICE and Border Patrol agents, using both police body camera footage and bystander recordings from social media. Many of the videos cast doubt on the federal government’s claims that agents were assaulted.

The Journal also reviewed more than 100,000 posts on X, posts made in the last year by accounts linked to government agencies and senior government officials.

Each time the government identified a person on a post, theJournal tracked that case through the legal system to see what charges were brought, under what statute, whether the charges were later modified, and what happened to the person in the case.

One of the cases they investigated was that of Sydney Lori Reid, a 44-year-old veterinary assistant in D.C. and a U.S. citizen.

In July, Reid went to a jail to witness an immigration enforcement action. Federal officers had gone there to arrest two migrant men, and Reid said she felt a duty to document it.

As Reid began videotaping, an agent grabbed her and pinned her to a wall. Reid was then surrounded by several federal law enforcement officials. One of them was an FBI agent wearing a face covering and an FBI vest. Two others were ICE officers, dressed in plain clothes, plaid shirts, and khaki pants.

Reid was handcuffed and told she was being arrested for interfering with their operation. Videos reviewed by Critchfield and her team cast doubt on the agents’ claims.

Reid was then placed in a government vehicle and transferred to federal custody. Like many American citizens who wind up in the crosshairs of DHS, she was accused of assault.

The government alleges she assaulted an FBI agent on the basis of scrapes on the agent’s hands, but the scrapes occurred in the process of putting handcuffs on Reid.

The government later charged Reid with felony assault of a federal official, a charge punishable with up to 20 years in prison — a serious federal charge that’s being applied far more broadly now than at any time in recent history.

When Reid was being arrested, she dropped her phone, but the phone was still recording. An agent picked up the phone and put it into the same vehicle that she was riding in on her way to detention.

One officer says: “We’re at the D.C. jail. We’re at the D.C. jail. We have an agitator in custody for ...”

Reid was handcuffed in the backseat. You can hear agents going back and forth about exactly how Reid had assaulted them. First, it was a raised knee, then an elbow.

Another officer: “Yeah, it appeared that there was an elbow that was ... When she was resisting, but she definitely interfered. So we have interfering and I’m going to get ...”

One of the ICE agents called her a stupid female as he was talking to a colleague: “Hey brother, are you good? I have to return to 1D and process this stupid female now that I f------ don’t want to process her.”

Reid was held by federal authorities for roughly two days. She wasn’t allowed to make a phone call during that time.

In the aftermath of her arrest, prosecutors tried to indict her, but that needed to be done through a grand jury, and the grand jury declined to indict her. They tried again before another grand jury, which also declined to indict her. Then they went back to a third grand jury, which declined to indict her.

This is almost unheard of. It showed both the resistance from the public to charge her based on the evidence and the government’s determination to bring charges in this case.

Prosecutors ultimately charged Reid with misdemeanor assault of an officer, a lesser offense that doesn’t require going through a grand jury. Reid was acquitted of that misdemeanor charge at trial.

The Trump Administration’s Strategy

Critchfield and her Journal team found that the push to charge more people for assaulting federal officers — as happened to Reid — is an administration-wide strategy.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and her Department of Justice have pledged to prosecute these cases aggressively. From the very beginning of Bondi’s tenure, starting on her first day in office, she issued a flurry of memos, including one that encouraged prosecutors to aggressively investigate any instances of violence against law enforcement or obstruction of law enforcement.

Gregory Bovino, then the head of Border Patrol, directed his agents to arrest anyone who touched them. “Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to. Those are the general orders all the way to the top, everybody f------ gets it if they touch you. You hear what I’m saying?”

In addition to an increasing number of prosecutions, the Department of Homeland Security has been using social media to exaggerate these alleged attacks, often with a warning to the public: “Don’t be like this person. If you behave in this way, we will come for you.” And they have posted people’s pictures and their full names, seeking to make an example out of these people even before they’re convicted of a crime.

This happened to Reid. A week after she was arrested, her mug shot and name went up on the official ICE account on X, along with the fact that she’s based in Washington, D.C., and a post that said, “Assault an officer or agent get arrested. It’s not rocket science.”

ICE also publicly alleged that Reid assaulted federal agents on behalf of two alleged international gang members.

The Purpose of This Strategy

The Journal’s investigation makes clear that the purpose of this strategy has been to intimidate and silence Americans who might otherwise protest what ICE and Border Patrol are doing.

ICE publicly describes many of these protesters as rioters, agitators, thugs, and terrorists.

Here’s Vice President JD Vance speaking of Renee Good’s death:

“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.”

And here’s then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on the death of Alex Pretti:

“This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism, that’s the facts.”

Renee Good was in her car when she was killed. Critchfield and her team found that federal government officials have accused 32 U.S. citizens of intentionally using their vehicles as weapons. DHS considers a vehicle to be a deadly weapon, justifying the use of force. Of those 32 drivers, only one pleaded guilty to an assault charge. Three had their cases dismissed; the rest were never charged.

TheJournal investigation found that in most cases where citizens were accused by the government, the outcome was similar to Reid’s.

181 citizens were accused by the government on X of attacking federal officers, but close to half of them were never even charged at all. When people werecharged, more often than not, the cases fell apart. Either they were acquitted or found not guilty at trial.

Fifteen people mentioned in government posts pleaded guilty before going to trial. Ten of whom pleaded guilty for lesser offenses than what the government initially charged them with.

Videos have often played major roles in contradicting the government’s case. Critchfield and her team viewed videos that repeatedly cast doubt on the government’s allegations. Protesters were often called violent rioters or professional agitators and accused of making physical contact in some way with agents, but video footage often showed immigration agents being the first to lay their hands on demonstrators.

...MORE

AN 3 26

According to a new report from the Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, the Trump administration has presided over what researcher Austin Kocher called “the largest fee fraud in the history of the American immigration system,” collecting over $1 billion in application fees before refusing to process the applications. The situation is a direct result of the various travel bans and other anti-immigrant policies enacted by President Donald Trump over both his terms.

Immigrant visa applications cost thousands of dollars, and by law, the government is required to take action on an application if said fees are paid, processing it to issue either an acceptance or denial. If the government takes too long, an applicant can sue to compel it to take action, essentially arguing that the government has failed to provide services for fees exchanged.

But due to Trump’s travel ban against 92 nationalities, applicants from targeted countries have had their applications barred from processing with “no end date and no refunds for fees already paid.” Many applicants who have already been waiting through years of uncertainty and slow progress now have their visa processes halted altogether.

“The State Department is actively instructing consular officers NOT to tell applicants they're banned, even as those applicants pay fees and attend interviews,” explained Kocher. “The government is cashing those checks and then doing nothing. That's fraud not delay.”

And this fraud also extends to immigrants already living in the country, who must continue to apply for legal permanent residence, work permits, and other documentation. For those from banned countries — even though they’ve already been accepted into the countries — applications for domestic documents are “all frozen with no statutory authority cited.”

According to the report, this is not only the largest fraud in the history of the U.S. immigration system, but “is likely the first $1 billion fraud," impacting some 2 million applicants.

“Folks…have applied to DHS and they’ve paid money, and DHS is doing nothing?” said Republican Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) at a recent Congressional hearing, reacting with shock.

The report concludes on no uncertain terms, advising that “Congress should immediately require the administration to start processing applications and fairly adjudicate those applications without regard to a person’s birthplace. If someone cannot establish their eligibility, they can be denied under the law, but there is no reason to steal people’s fees and fail to provide the service the law entitles them to.”

---

Steve Bannon: ICE at airports can be "a test case to get, to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm elections" | Media Matters for America

AN 3 26

---

AN 3 26

President Donald Trump recently fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on the grounds that doing so will improve her department — but a Republican national security expert argued Sunday that the problems are much deeper than that.

“The switch is cosmetic: The problem with DHS isn’t Noem or [Trump’s nominee GOP Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne] Mullin or whoever else will run it,” explained Paul Rosenzweig, who served as deputy assistant secretary for policy of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush (2005-2009) and currently cybersecurity at the George Washington University Law School. “The problem is with the agency itself.”

While some of the problems are longstanding, such as issues with FEMA or the TSA, Trump has made them worse, Rosenzweig opined.

“Under Donald Trump, ICE and Border Patrol have become rogue agencies, accused of unnecessary violence and disregard for the rule of law,” Rosenzweig argued. “In January alone, ICE violated more court orders than most federal agencies violate in their entire existence, according to a federal judge in Minnesota. ICE has also adopted what appears to be a blatantly unconstitutional search policy.”

He added, “Meanwhile, more than 40 people have died in ICE custody since the start of Trump’s second term. The answer to such abuses is not reform; it is wholesale disassembly and restructuring.”

From there Rosenzweig suggested several new policies to overhaul the Homeland Security Department. These include returning “its focus to the original objective—foreign counterterrorism—which remains a serious concern. Retain those portions of DHS that serve a counterterrorism function—CBP officers at ports of entry, TSA screeners at airports, Border Patrol agents at the nation’s land borders—and return the other components to more appropriate federal departments.”

From there, “most of the rest of DHS should be disaggregated. Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are so infrequent that FEMA can, and should, go back to being an independent agency. Likewise, immigration adjudication (currently housed in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) can be returned to the Department of Justice. The home of the few agencies whose functions are decidedly mixed—such as the Coast Guard—should be decided on a case-by-case basis, but whatever the outcome, joint task forces that coordinate response activities should be developed.”

Rosenzweig argued that the “most important” change would be to “eliminate the possibility of the creation of a federalized interior police force. Border Patrol can be limited to the border, and Homeland Security Investigations can be retargeted toward their traditional function of sophisticated transnational commercial crimes. Meanwhile, the single gravest militarized threat—ICE—should be reined in and restructured under new leadership, so that it focuses on its core mission of genuine civil-process interior enforcement.”

As Rosenzweig noted, the Senate did not seriously propose any reforms along these lines, instead treating the problems with Homeland Security as an issue primarily of Noem’s bad leadership. For example, Trump’s decision to fire Noem was based on the ex-Cabinet officer inaccurately claiming the president authorized her $220 million ad campaign.

“I was stunned when Noem answered categorically that the president approved every single bit of it,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Fox News at the time. “Later that day, I got a call from President Trump. He was mad as a mamma wasp. He said, ‘Kennedy, I hope you understand that I had nothing to do with this.’ I said, ‘I do believe you, Mr. President.'”

He added, “He was not happy. It was clear to me after that conversation that the secretary’s time at the department was limited. To be blunt, she was dead as fried chicken.”

Noem was also grilled by House members for her alleged affair with a special government employee she hired to work for her, former lobbyist Corey Lewandowski.

"Secretary Noem, at any time during your tenure…have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski?" U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) asked Noem during a hearing earlier this month.

Noem told Sydney Kamlager-Dove, "That is garbage and it is offensive that you have brought that up.”

Kamlager-Dove replied, "It is about your judgment and decision-making.”

---

OMFG

RTX Corp | AFSC Investigate

QUAKERS

BDS SHORTLIST

The world's second-largest military company, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies. It makes missiles, bombs, components for fighter jets, and other weapon systems used by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians. Its surveillance technology is also used to monitor the U.S.–Mexico border.

Gaza Genocide

Weapons and Military Equipment

Raytheon Technologies Corp, headquartered in Arlington County, Virginia, designs, manufactures, and sells military weapons and equipment, including combat aircraft, avionics, missiles, bombs, battlefield fighting vehicles, and cybersecurity systems. It was formed in 2020 as a merger of Raytheon Company and United Technologies Corporation. The merger made it the world's second-largest military company, with $64.4 billion in revenue as of 2022, 96% of which derives from its defense sector. Among its notable subsidiaries are Collins Aerospace Systems and aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney.

The company has long supplied U.S. and international militaries with weapon systems and equipment. Between 2008 and 2021, it signed contracts worth $52 billion with the Department of Defense (DOD). Additionally, the company was one of the top contractors of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the agency's efforts to erect a "smart/virtual" wall on the U.S.–Mexico border between 2005 and 2019 (see below for more details).

War Crimes Against Palestinian Civilians

Surveillance of the US–Mexico Border

Raytheon has been one of the main contractors of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It was highlighted as one of 14 "giants in the border security business" in a 2019 report by the Transnational Institute and No más Muertes. Between 2005 and 2021, the company held contracts worth $67.9 million with CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for tracking and monitoring devices, satellites, ground sensors, surveillance and radar systems for maritime drones, and other technologies.

Two Raytheon systems are installed in CBP's Guardian Predator B, a maritime variation of General Atomics' MQ-9 Reaper drone. One of the systems, the MTS-B Multi-Spectral Targeting System, is the same technology that is used to guide munitions in killer drones. Although CBP has yet to arm its drones, it has previously considered adding "non-lethal" weapons to its Predator drones in order to "immobilize" people trying to cross the border. In 2013, CBP stated that it did not have plans to arm drones and was using Raytheon's technology only to perform "surveillance and reconnaissance."

The second Raytheon system installed in CBP's Guardian drones is the SeaVue marine search radar, which allows CBP agents to "spot small targets" at sea. The SeaVue system is also installed in CBP's fleet of Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion and Bombardier DHC-8 (Dash-8) planes. CBP acquired at least $33 million of SeaVue radars from Raytheon between 2010 and 2015. In 2023, CBP's budget will include a $10 million increase for its drone program and its continuity of "SeaVue usage."

In addition to patrolling U.S. borders, CBP's aircraft fleet has also been used to assist local law enforcement agencies, including in monitoring civilian protests. In 2020, the Department of Homeland Security deployed its helicopters, airplanes, and drones over at least 15 U.S. cities during protests following the murder of George Floyd. A CBP Predator drone was flown, for example, over Minneapolis. These aircraft logged at least 270 hours of surveillance. Out of 92,800 hours of flight logged by CBP's Air and Marine Operations in 2020, 8,000 hours were spent responding to requests for assistance from law enforcement agencies around the country.

Raytheon also had one major contract with ICE from 2011 to 2013. ICE awarded Raytheon a $45 million contract to develop its Investigative Case Management (ICM) system and allow the agency to collect data and share information across more than 100 databases with local law enforcement agencies in order to surveil, track, report, and detain undocumented people. ICE terminated the contract with Raytheon in 2013 due to delays and hired the software company Palantir to complete the ICM system, which has become the "engine" of the U.S. deportation and detention machine and is critical to ICE's functioning.

Pain/Heat Ray Less-Lethal Weapon

Raytheon's Active Denial System (ADS), nicknamed the "pain ray," was developed for the U.S. Department of Defense for use in Afghanistan and Iraq. A less-lethal directed energy weapon, the pain ray emits targeted radiation that penetrates under the skin and causes an intense burning sensation. According to Physicians for Human Rights, use of the weapon is "disproportionate by design" and introduces "very serious concerns about prolonged exposure, the risk of cellular damage and high degree burns, and the potential for abuse." Since 2010, Raytheon has marketed the ADS, as well as a smaller mobile version called the Silent Guardian, to non-military prison, police, and security authorities.

Raytheon first sold a Silent Guardian weapon, to the Los Angeles County Jail, in 2010. According to the ACLU, introducing this weapon created "a wholly unjustified risk that detainees [would] be needlessly subjected to excessive force -- indeed, a use of force tantamount to torture." In 2013, the company was sued by a man incarcerated at the Los Angeles County Jail who suffered from serious burns and long-term health complications after sheriff's deputies shot him with a Raytheon heat ray weapon.

While there is no evidence of current use of this weapon against civilians, law enforcement has still considered it to be a viable option for use in border policing and crowd-control. In 2018, CBP officials suggested deploying it to prevent asylum seekers from crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. In 2020, a lead military police officer attempted to secure the weapon to disperse protests in Washington, DC, following the police murder of George Floyd. In both cases, the weapon was not ultimately deployed.

Other Controversies

---

AN PP 3 26

In his top post at the Department of Homeland Security, David Harvilicz sets policy on protecting the nation’s elections infrastructure, including voting machines.

He’s also the co-founder of a company with James Penrose, who helped hatch debunked conspiracy theories blaming hacked voting machines for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. Penrose assisted in a push to seize voting machines to overturn Trump’s defeat.

On social media, Harvilicz has called for doing away with voting machines, saying they are “eminently vulnerable to exploitation.” In a March post, he wrote that “DHS needs to ban voting machines for all federal elections. The time is now.” He also has repeatedly questioned the validity of Democratic electoral victories and pushed for Republicans to overhaul electoral systems to their advantage.

Election experts as well as current and former DHS officials say Harvilicz’s central role in overseeing the security of electoral systems and voting machines is especially concerning at a time when the administration is taking unprecedented steps to relitigate Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. That includes the FBI’s seizure of 2020 voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, and having a team working for Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, take custody of voting machines used in Puerto Rico in 2020.

“The security of our election infrastructure depends on leadership that is trusted, impartial and grounded in evidence — not individuals who have promoted conspiracy theories about the very systems they are now responsible for protecting,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights and the rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “Placing someone with that background in charge of policies affecting election security can undermine public confidence in our elections at a time when trust is already fragile.”

DHS didn’t answer detailed questions about Harvilicz or his team, providing a more general statement about the work done by the agency. “DHS and its employees are focused on keeping our elections safe, secure, and free,” it said. “Every single day appointees at the Department of Homeland Security work to implement the President’s policies and keep our Homeland safe.”

Harvilicz didn’t respond to questions about his DHS role. Harvilicz’s X account notes his post as DHS’ assistant secretary for cyber, infrastructure, risk and resilience policy but says he’s been detailed to the Defense Department. (Such temporary assignments are typically done in 120-day increments.)

Harvilicz was appointed to the DHS job around July, taking on a role that in the past has largely focused on shaping policy to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, including its election systems.

But current and former DHS officials say Harvilicz and his team have transformed their functions to become more hands-on. They’ve been deeply engaged with facilitating multiple administration data-gathering efforts aimed at scouring voter rolls for noncitizens, the officials said. ProPublica has reported on one such effort, which has led to hundreds of citizens being incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens.

Harvilicz’s team includes Heather Honey, the deputy assistant secretary of election integrity. ProPublica has reported that Honey was previously a leader in the Election Integrity Network, a conservative group that has challenged the legitimacy of American election systems. Honey worked closely with Cleta Mitchell, the network’s leader, who played a prominent role in helping Trump try to overturn his 2020 loss.

[VID]

Also reporting directly to Harvilicz is Samantha Anderson,a data specialist whopreviously worked to elect Trump through the advocacy arm of the America First Policy Institute, a think tank closely associated with the president.

Multiple officials and elections experts said they were worried that Harvilicz and Honey would have prominent parts in assessing and describing the cybersecurity of the coming election, both to the public and to administration leaders. They also expressed concern that if Trump again wanted to get control of voting machines after the election, perhaps if Republicans lose seats in the midterms, that Harvilicz is ideally positioned to help them do so.

“It would be super easy for them to get the voting machines,” a current DHS official said, adding they can “describe it as they want, if they don’t like the results.”

Harvilicz co-founded Tranquility AI, which has developed an artificial intelligence tool for law enforcement, with Penrose, and they are listed on its 2025 patents as developing its systems together.

Penrose, a former intelligence officer, played a leading role in the campaign to help Trump in his failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, ProPublica has reported. Penrose also participated in multiple attempts to clandestinely seize voting machines, including in Michigan, where prosecutors accused him of breaking into some of the machines. (Penrose wasn’t charged in the case.) He appeared to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the failed Georgia prosecution in which Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the election results, according to The Washington Post.

---

an 3 26

By late 2025, former Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino had become well known for his unapologetic embrace of aggressive and at times even deadly approaches to mass deportation. Now new reporting based on leaked documents indicates that his “smash-and-grab tactics” have been implemented as the norm throughout the Department of Homeland Security.

After the fallout from Trump’s disastrous surge of DHS agents in Minnesota, which left two dead and resulted in scores of civil suits, many celebrated the replacement of Greg Bovino with border czar Tom Homan, but it is now becoming clear that the former’s violent mark has been left on the agency, with the changes implemented by Bovino and his allies now ingrained into the departmental culture.

As an example of this, a leaked internal memo issued two months before Border Patrol’s Minnesota blitz detailed how to get away with smashing a car window then dragging the occupant out with minimal legal liability. This has since become a common practice in cities across the country.

Another leaked memo rescinds borderland migrant entry safety guidelines implemented in 2022 that limited certain interdiction tactics in dangerous environments. As a result, Border Patrol agents are now allowed to arrest migrants in waterways and on the border fence, force them back into waterways or onto the wall, and forcibly remove them to the Mexican side of the border.

Bovino’s role in creating this aggressive enforcement culture is hard to deny. For example, a recent investigation determined that the border region overseen specifically by Bovino — who once praised an agent who had shot a US citizen five times as “excellent” — had the highest ratio of use-of-force incidents to assaults on agents of any sector in the nation, rating well above the average.

To counter Bovino’s impact on the agency, Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois has introduced the DHS Use of Force Oversight Act, which would implement a DHS policy addressing use of force and de-escalation.

“A Use of Force Policy should NOT be a suggestion — it should be mandated by law,” said Ramirez. “Let me be very clear: reforms are NOT enough. Americans are past reform of a department that has used taxpayer dollars to execute people in broad daylight. ICE must be abolished, and DHS dismantled.”

---

TRAINING CUT AN 2 26

Federal agents are trained to ignore constitutional rights: ex-ICE instructor - Alternet.org

---

AN 2 26

OMFG VOTER SUPPRESS ICE

Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is sounding the alarm.

Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Richer said that if SB 1570 becomes law, it "would prove a significant disruption."

The law would require federal immigration officials to be on hand at every polling location in the state during the 2026 election. It would also require local officials to arrange for ICE agents to be present, reported AZFamily.com. It does promise that federal officials "shall not interfere with the casting or depositing of ballots except as otherwise authorized by law" and cannot "question, detain or arrest a voter solely for the purpose of determining voter eligibility, except as otherwise allowed under state or federal law."

"And it doesn't even really make sense because ICE, as I understand it, is about naturalization, about whether or not you're a United States citizen, but you don't have to bring proof of citizenship when you show up to vote," said Richer.

Republicans at the federal level have attempted to change that, too, however. The SAVE America Act, which stands for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) America Act. It's a law that the Brennan Center for Justice has called “the most restrictive voting bill ever.”

The new successor claimed that they reviewed 60,000 registered voters in Arizona and found 137 were not U.S. citizens and 60 had voted in previous elections.

Richer said it's important to understand the context. Maricopa County has about 2.6 million registered voters in it. So, he wanted to know more to understand what the new recorder was referencing.

"Every year, we would review our voter rolls, and we would make sure that there were no irregularities and we would forward any cases that deserve more investigation to the county attorney's office and to the attorney general," Richer said.

That has changed, however, he noted.

"Since I left office ... the federal government has unrolled its saved database that purports to allow states to upload their voter registration rolls to see if there are any non-citizens," he explained. "The problem with that, as reported by ProPublica in recent weeks, is that it returns quite a few false positives."

He said that while it can lead to further investigation, "registrants should not be taken off of the rolls simply because they are pinged by the database, and I trust that the county recorder's office under my successor will do further investigation on those voters."

CNN host Boris Sanchez noted that the federal government is also seeking driver's license information, partial Social Security numbers, and other data to connect to voter databases. Sanchez asked Richer what the federal government wanted with that data.

By and large, I think the federal government has sued, now, about 28 states. States are resisting because they feel that it violates both state law and federal law to give up their entire voter registration databases, which include personal identifying information like your Social Security number or your driver's license.

He noted that in all of those cases, so far, the federal government has lost.

"I don't think it's an appropriate request from the federal government. I am, however, sympathetic to wanting to do list maintenance. I'm sympathetic to wanting to make sure that non-citizens aren't participating in our elections," Richer added.

Richer commented that, given the governor of Arizona is the former secretary of state, she is well-informed on voting rights. If SB 1570 passes the legislature, he doesn't believe she will sign it. It's unclear whether there are the votes to override such a veto.

---

---

an 2 26

Leading officials in the Trump administration have been aware of the skyrocketing use of violent force by federal agents, according to newly unearthed emails, with the trend being known well before two U.S. citizens were gunned down in Minnesota.

According to a Tuesday report from Politico, the emails were obtained by American Oversight — a "liberal leaning watchdog nonprofit" — using Freedom of Information Act requests. They reveal that instances of "lethal force or non-lethal efforts to physically restrain or subdue people or neutralize threats" began to increase "rapidly" among federal immigration officers after Trump's return to the White House, and that officials in charge of these agents were aware of it.

The Department of Homeland Security has maintained over the last year, in the face of mounting reports of ICE agents' harassment and brutal physical tactics, that its agents were acting in accordance with the standards set during training and using "incredible restraint" to avoid force in the field.

"Our ICE agents are following the law and are running their operations according to training," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said last month, following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE and CBP agents.

The emails, however, show that instances of violent force quadrupled in the early months of Trump's second term.

"Caleb Vitello, at the time the official tasked with overseeing field and enforcement operations at ICE, was informed on March 20 that ICE officers had reported 67 incidents where they had used force in the first two months of Trump’s term, according to the emails," Politico's report detailed. "In the same time frame in 2024, that number was 17 incidents, representing a nearly four-fold increase. Days before, Vitello was informed that the use of force in the first two weeks of March alone had quadrupled compared with the same timeframe the year before, per another email."

The emails also reveal the priorities of those in charge when faced with this trend. According to Politico, ICE officials had no "particular urgency" as far as addressing the use of force by agents. Instead, they were more interested in shifting the narrative to assaults on ICE agents, which were also up more than fourfold in the early months of 2025. Officials also deflected blame onto Democratic leaders in the cities where their agents operated, accusing them of "stoking tensions."

"The email indicated that ICE leadership was keen to prosecute those cases," Politico explained. "With a unit chief writing to Vitello that a team in a regional office could 'package up a summary of the needed elements of the crime, definitions of what constitutes assault, etc with the intent of broadcasting to the workforce in an effort to drive more presentations for prosecution.'”

---

AN 2 26

It's become accepted religion on MS-NOW political talk broadcasts – and in Democratic circles in and out of Congress — that one way or another, Donald Trump is actively aiming to disrupt the November elections.

The tools for disruption vary from Trump attempts to tilt the balloting rules orpush for gerrymandered districts to full-blown deployment of armed Homeland Security armies around voting precincts in at least 15 jurisdictions, picking up from Trump's own projections about where he intuits widespread voter fraud without a shred of evidence to persuade, say, a judge.

To a certain extent, then, Trump already has proved successful in at once annoying and frightening Americans with his ever-present, evidence-free, authoritarian push.

It is Trump, of course, who is pushing this argument by word and deed. Rather than accept that the slice of voters who decide between wins and losses is a relatively small, fickle group that drifts back and forth between parties, Trump cannot stomach a loss or even the suggestion that his every act is not adored by friend and foe alike. And so, we have White House trumpeting about "nationalizing" elections that are Constitutionally assigned to states, a public seizure of 2020 ballots in Atlanta, involvement of officials who have nothing to do with elections in precincts where Trump has suffered losses, redrawing of districts, and a so-far failing campaign to grab every state's voting rolls for Trump's own review.

It is Trump who is making clear that he wants to interfere and control elections before voting, in the actual submission of ballots, and, naturally, with the counting of votes. The goal in November is to retain majorities in both houses of Congress and the incessant questioning, oversight activities and possibilities of impeachment that could follow a return of a Democratic majority in even one house.

What Evidence?

Much as Fox, Newsmax and other outlets on the right regularly promote deportation efforts and the need to preserve voting from undue, "fraudulent" voting by immigrants, the MS-NOW crowd of regulars sees a different reality in Trump's dedicated march to undercut voting by making the process more difficult and results always questionable.

Both sides repeat their vents over election tactics endlessly, to the exclusion of other public issues also in contention.

The difference, of course, is that the MS-NOW pundits base their thinking on plethora of actions as well as statements that offer warning signs, on scores of court decisions that have found the "fraud" and "rigging" of elections arguments to be without merit, and on current laws in states that already bar voting by non-citizens and voter registration processes in most states that require showing various documents to be eligible to vote even in local elections.

The "pro-democracy" pundits are reacting to welcomed pressure on the White House coming from Steve Bannon, among others within MAGA, to do anything, including deploying military troops or paramilitary border police to surround polls, discourage voting even in person, and, naturally to eliminate such efforts as mail ballots that encourage more voting, not less.

This weekend, Trump promised on social media that he would issue an executive order to require voters to show identification in the midterm elections even if Congress does not do so. Trump posted, "There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!"

Trump has already attempted to use an executive order to alter voting laws last March, but in January, a federal judge threw it out, finding that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally alter election procedures.

Trump is stumping for something called The SAVE Act in Congress, which would require voters to show passport or other documents each time they vote – and would require all states to turnover state voter rolls loaded with personal information to Trump's government, presumably for unspecified checks against citizenship records. For anyone who has worked with data, name checks are the worst possible way to match records because of name or initial changes, spellings, relocations among jurisdictions. Voter rolls do not list who actually voted, just who once registered.

Like most legislation, there is some kernel that makes sense, but partisan disagreement about its effects, about how it would be used, and the broader un-Constitutionality of putting the feds in charge of activity directly assigned to states.

A Campaign Against Voting

Taken together, Trump's activities towards elections past and present show a consistent line: He wants to sow distrust for the results. On some level, it makes no sense. He supported the outcome of the same voting techniques and procedures when he won in 2016 and 2024, but not 2020 – or apparently in the looming November results.

For those who followed the investigations of activities ending in the Jan. 6, 2021, efforts to remain in office despite election results, it feels all too familiar. These are the same drumbeats that Special Counsel Jack Smith was prepared to prosecute as illegal conspiracy to overturn election law.

Trump does not help himself in these matters when, as over the weekend, he takes his tales of election woe to a military base in North Carolina, in a partisan address to Fort Bragg soldiers in blatant violation of military tradition, if not law. Trump does not help his credibility by sending Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence to participate in a search warrant seizure of ballots in Atlanta, or dispatching Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem to Arizona over securing voter rolls. Rather, those come across to the public as sending willing co-conspirators in what seem warning signals that this federal government will intervene in state elections.

Here was Noem in an Arizona interview: "When it gets to Election Day, we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country." Regardless of party, how are we not supposed to take this as between inappropriate and dangerous?

What most ails our voting in this country is that its residents don't vote. A 60 percent turnout is considered high. Only Trump sees widespread fraud – especially when the same exact ballot elects those Republicans in Congress or state legislatures who must carry out Trump's assault on voting focused on minority precincts in states whose outcomes he did not like.

What most ails our Trump administration about voting is that it seeks to depress the vote, and uses the hammer of immigration as a supposed explanation for what seems genuinely widespread unhappiness with most of Trump's policies about tariffs and prices, access to health care and childcare, a vastly growing gap between rich and poor, the abuse of the Justice Department and FBI towards partisan political ends, its opposition to climate concerns and the promotion of self-aggrandizing schemes for Trump's own family, friends and backers, and the attack on democracy itself.

Watch for the actions as well as bluster of Truth Social posts.

---

---

rww

02/11/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

The attorney general ignored questions about the administration’s handling of the case, which has enraged lawmakers, survivors, and the public.

The challenge, filed by a coalition of interfaith groups, says the commission is violating laws regarding transparency and ideological bias.

Religious Liberty Commission removes member Carries Prejean Boller after her defense of Candace Owens.

A young aide behind social posts that echoed white supremacist messaging will help run social media for the much larger Homeland Security Department.

“It’s time to get aggressive,” a Border Patrol agent said shortly before Marimar Martinez was shot five times.

Fabled Republican political operative Roger Stone is locked in a knock-down, drag-out fight with fellow MAGA heavyweight Steve Bannon and his allies that has already produced a surplus of wild insults.

===

---

// recruit gun nuts, proud boy?

an 2 26

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), led by Secretary Kristi Noem, hired 21-year-old Peyton Rollins — a former U.S. Labor Department employee — to help manage its social media accounts. But the hire is now being scrutinized by the New York Times, which reports that Rollins made posts on Labor Department accounts that "raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging."

Times reporter Evan Gorelick, in an article published early Wednesday morning, February 11, explains, "Mr. Rollins has spent most of the past year giving the Labor Department's social media pages a makeover in Mr. Trump's image. Current and former employees said career staff members had been pushed aside after Mr. Rollins' arrival and rarely, if ever, crafted social media posts once he took control. Instead, Mr. Rollins personally posted social media content, which he has included on his personal website."

Recent federal government posts, according to Gorelick, "have used evocative imagery, some reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, with phrases like 'Restore American Greatness' and 'he globalist status quo is OVER.'"

"During the period when those posts were made," Gorelick reports, "the department's social media following exploded, even as colleagues warned superiors that the department's accounts could be seen as promoting white-supremacist rhetoric, Nazi imagery and QAnon conspiracy theories. Some employees who have since left the Labor Department said that the agency's posts had grown increasingly questionable."

Gorelick notes that according to "dozen internal e-mails and Microsoft Teams conversations obtained by The New York Times," Rollins' co-workers "expressed personal discomfort with the posts, cited data showing engagement with right-wing extremists, and urged a more moderate messaging style."

Former Labor Department employee Egan Reich, who spent 15 years with the agency before leaving in April 2025, told the Times, "It's incredibly chilling and disappointing, and I do feel it diminishes the work my colleagues and I did over the years to educate people about the government."

---

---

SHOT FIRED THRU DOOR?

MMA

Right-wing media hyped a supposed “shovel” attack against ICE. Prosecutors just dropped the charges.

After a federal agent shot and killed Renee Good, MAGA pundits seized on the supposed shovel attack to change the narrative

Written by John Knefel

Published 02/13/26

In mid-January, right-wing media figures seized on a story that could serve as a narrative reset after a Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. Amid rising backlash to the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation across Minnesota, MAGA pundits hyped claims from the Department of Homeland Security that Venezuelan immigrants had attacked federal agents with a shovel and broomstick. Federal agents shot in response, the story went, wounding one of the men accused in the attack.

Since then, those claims have totally fallen apart, and on February 12 prosecutors asked the presiding judge to dismiss the case with prejudice. The prosecutor wrote that “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations” put forward by the government in official filings and testimony.

Right-wing media coverage of the story was unhinged, and it followed a clear, established pattern of hyping dubious initial government claims that would later turn out to be false.

As news of the incident broke on January 14, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin called in to Sean Hannity’s show to read a DHS statement he’d been given “literally 45 seconds ago” and to lay the foundation for the coverage to come, a role he often plays in the conservative media ecosystem. ESCALATOR?

“While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle,” Melugin read. “As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broomstick.”

“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired defensive shots to defend his life,” Melugin continued.

The narrative was set, and the next morning Fox News’ Fox & Friends weighed in on the story.

“You come at these guys and these women with a shovel and if you are being apprehended and try to run away or drive over them, you will be featured in retaliation videos,” said host Brian Kilmeade. “That's what this is about."

Video

Citation

From the January 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Kilmeade’s co-host, Steve Doocy, also bought the government’s line. “You cannot hit a cop with a shovel or a broom. You just can't do that. It is against the law,” Doocy said. “It is terrible when anybody gets shot. But, unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize, if you break the law -- when you're breaking the law, there's going to be repercussions.”

Co-host Ainsley Earhart suggested capital punishment should be on the table. “When we were growing up, if you harmed a police officer, if you killed a police officer, in South Carolina you got the electric chair,” Earhart said. “When we were growing up, you didn't go after police with your car. You listened to what they said.”

Guest Trey Gowdy, who hosts another Fox show, said the supposed attack and the broader resistance to ICE’s presence gave President Donald Trump “all the justification” he needed to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, thereby deploying active military units against civilians.

The tenor of the coverage was similar elsewhere, and sometimes even more irresponsible.

On the podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Kevin Posobiec — brother of MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec — said an immigrant was “shot in the leg because he was trying to kill an ICE agent with a shovel.”

At The Daily Wire, host Matt Walsh claimed that after a foot chase, “the illegal alien began attacking the officers and then two individuals, apparently family members of this person, came out of a nearby apartment and began ambushing the officers with a shovel and a broom handle.”

Walsh called it “another clear-cut, totally justified shooting by law enforcement.”

Walsh’s colleague, Michael Knowles, said, “The poor ICE agents now getting ambushed — they take out shovels, they start beating this guy with a shovel, and, so, luckily, happily, the ICE agent was able to get his gun out and shoot the Venezuelan.”

Although the exact details of what happened in the incident remain unclear, the prosecutor’s own words make it plain that the government's account was false. Less than two weeks after the shooting, two Border Patrol agents would shoot and kill Alex Pretti. Right-wing media tried to justify that shooting as well.

---

---

AN 2 26

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin is out after some very public clashes with the facts over the past few months, Politico reported Tuesday.

McLaughlin has been called out by name by attorneys of those who encountered Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents in Minnesota and Illinois.

Frequently, McLaughlin falsely claims that the people harmed by ICE or CBP agents were attacking the agents or threatening them in some way. Videos have then come out showing the opposite is true, leaving many to question whether the agents lied to DHS or DHS was lying to the public.

Public opinion has soured on DHS since the shooting deaths of two people in Minneapolis. DHS was already suffering public outrage over the administration nabbing anyone and everyone it could, rather than what President Donald Trump promised in 2024: "the worst of the worst."

The White House set a 3,000-immigrant daily quota for DHS, resulting in the arrest ofgardeners, raids at construction sites, moms being snatched out of their front yard, and a number of those with valid visas, green cards, and more being mistakenly detained for months.

“Media is so much of the battle, so to speak, on the immigration issue,” said McLaughlin when speaking to her hometown paper last month. “So much of the debate is a [public relations] debate. It’s a PR war.”

As Politico stated, "That PR war has left scars."

"Her exit comes amid unprecedented turbulence at DHS," Politico added.

---

CONTEXT ACTIV SUPPRESS TERROR BS

The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent

SARAH MCL

Imagine finding out that the government is issuing secretive orders to unearth your personal information and then sending federal agents to question you — all because you sent an email criticizing the life-or-death decisions the government makes.

That sounds like something out of China, Russia or the increasingly dystopian United Kingdom, right? Well this time, it’s happening here.

The Trump administration is reportedly abusing oversight-free administrative subpoenas to chill protected speech. Recent targets include a man who sent an email criticizing efforts to deport an Afghan man on humanitarian parole seeking asylum.

Our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad.

While subpoenas have been used to chill speech across numerous presidencies, the way this administration is using them, and the broader repressive pattern they are part of, should disturb all Americans. As The Washington Post reported this week, a Philadelphia-area retiree wrote an email to a federal prosecutor last year asking him to “[a]pply principles of common sense and decency” to the deportation case of an Afghan man, who feared death at the hands of the Taliban. Only the retiree’s first name, Jon, is given, as he fears for his safety.

Only hours later, to Jon’s shock, he received a notice from Google that the company had received a subpoena compelling the release of identifying information, including older account activity and his physical address. The Department of Homeland Security issued an administrative subpoena, which doesn’t require the oversight of a judge or grand jury, to get Jon’s information. DHS attempted a similar stunt to target internet commenters who posted about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That was not Jon’s only brush with DHS. Agents would also soon show up at his door with a copy of the email he’d sent and ask him to explain himself.

There is no better guarantee of the right to speak and criticize our government than the First Amendment, which stands as guard between us and the power of the state. But our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad. Americans must understand that with enough time and pressure, even the strongest of foundations can weather down to dust.

These administrative subpoenas intended to unmask critics of government action are just the tip of the speech-chilling iceberg.

Between these disturbing allegations, recent alarming on-camera encounters between civilians and law enforcement and the ceaseless incursions from the Trump administration against our First Amendment rights, Americans must recognize that the United States is failing as a bulwark for liberty in a world increasingly bereft of it.

Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis last month was deeply alarming. Rather than immediately commit to an intensive investigation of what took place, officials such as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem spread the unfounded claim that Pretti tried to “kill” law enforcement. Senior adviser Stephen Miller called Pretti an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” The administration has since started to shy away from these fantastical claims after Americans could watch the video for themselves.

Their narrative might still stand, however, had protesters nearby not caught the shooting on camera from multiple angles. But that First Amendment right to film law enforcement is increasingly under attack. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said filming and posting videos of ICE is “doxing our agents” and the government “will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.” Pretti himself had been recording agents with his cell phone moments before he was killed.

U.S. federal agents also appear to be creating a database to track protesters and observers who are legally and peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. In an encounter a woman filmed in Maine, an ICE agent told her he’s recording her information for a “nice little database” for “domestic terrorists” like her. A CNN report confirms a DHS memo informing agents to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” News of this database follows in the footsteps of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s plan to crack down on “domestic terror organizations,” using a framework that targets broad ideologies such as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” as markers of political violence rather than constitutionally protected beliefs.

You may be familiar with lists of alleged anti-government activists from their other iterations in Belarus, Russia and China. The lists are frightening. What governments do with them is usually even worse.

The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.

And many Americans were rightfully shocked by a “60 Minutes” exposé of German censorship last year, which included raids on the homes of social media users who had insulted politicians, and by regular reports from other nations such as the U.K., where a late-night knock at the door from police has become disturbingly commonplace. In Germany, the government treats insults to politicians more, not less, harshly than other forms of insult, essentially exempting the powerful from upsetting speech.

That’s the opposite of how we view political speech in the U.S. — with great power must come a thick skin.

But the Trump administration doesn’t see it that way. In fact, ICE and DHS leadership have undertaken a concerted effort in recent months to pervert the concept of “doxing,” the sharing of identifying information about an individual, into one so broad it includes simply saying the name of the men and women who serve as armed agents of the state. Administration officials have repeatedly — and wrongly — suggested this “doxing” is illegal.

Imagine a United States in which federal agents have the authority to fire their weapons as representatives of the government, and yet everyday Americans aren’t even free to state clearly who or where those agents are. Even worse, those same Americans may find themselves on a clandestine government database for engaging in protected speech. Or, like Jon, they could even face a secretive administrative subpoena followed by a knock at the door from DHS agents.

“Secret police” cannot be a necessary term in the American vernacular, but if we do not stem the tide of these First Amendment violations and transgressions, it may become one. The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.

The post The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent appeared first on MS NOW.

This article was originally published on ms.now

---

---

AN 2 26

NO LNX

History shows what Trump is doing — and what comes next

Thom Hartmann February 06, 2026

As people testified before Congress on Tuesday about the brutality and violence they’d suffered at the hands of ICE, that massive paramilitary organization was shopping for giant warehouse-style facilities they can retrofit into what they euphemistically call “detention centers.”

Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:

“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”

Jails are where people accused of crimes but still waiting for their day in court are held, as Merriam-Webster notes:

“[S]uch a place under the jurisdiction of a local government for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes.”

But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:

“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”

The British originated the term “concentration camp” to describe facilities where “rebel” or “undesirable” civilians were held in South Africa during the Second Anglo‑Boer War (1899–1902) to control and punish a rebellious population.

They were facilities where the “bad elements of society” were “concentrated” into one location so they could be easily controlled and would lose access to society and thus could not spread their messages of resistance against the British Empire.

The Germans adopted the term in 1933 when Hitler took power and created his first camp for communists, socialists, union leaders, and, by the end of the year, Hitler’s political opponents. They Germanized the phrase into “Konzentrationslager” and referred to the process of their incarceration as “protective custody.”

The first camp was built at Dachau just weeks after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and by the end of the year there were around 70 of them operating across the country.

When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986-87, we visited Dachau with our three children. The crematoriums shocked our kids, but even more so because this was simply a “detention facility” and not one of Hitler’s death camps (which were all located outside Germany to ensure deniability).

The ovens at Dachau were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera or other disease, much like the 35+ people who’ve recently died in ICE’s concentration camps.

When American friends would visit us and we’d take them to Dachau (we lived just an hour up the road) they’d invariably be surprised when I told them that by the time of the war there were over 500 substantial camps and an additional few hundred very small ones all over the country.

“How could the people not know what was going on?” they’d ask.

The answer was simple: the people did know. These were where the “undesirables,” the “criminal troublemakers,” and the “aliens” were held, and were broadly supported by the German people. (It wasn’t until 1938, following Kristallnacht, that the Nazis began systematically arresting and imprisoning non-political Jews, first at Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.)

By the end of his first year, Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons, castles, and other buildings.

By comparison, today ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across America, and Trump, Homan, Miller, and Noem hope to more than double both numbers in the coming months.

In Tennessee, the Guardian reports that Miller has been coordinating with Republican leaders to create legislation that would turn every local cop, teacher, social worker, and helper in the state into an official agent of ICE and criminalize efforts by cities to refuse cooperation. It also makes it a felony crime to identify any of ICE’s masked agents or disclose conditions within the concentration camps to the public.

Germans didn’t have the benefit of warnings from a fascist history they could look back on; much of what Hitler did took them by surprise, as I’ve noted in previous articles.

In 2026 America, however, operating with the benefit of historical hindsight, entire communities are rebelling at Trump’s effort to beat Germany’s 1933-1934 prisoner numbers.

In city after city, Americans are organizing to deprive ICE of their coveted spaces, putting pressure on companies not to sell and on cities and counties not to permit any more concentration camps.

Because immigration violations are labeled “civil,” people in ICE concentration camps are stripped of many of the normal constitutional protections that apply to people in criminal incarceration. This has created a legal black hole that ICE and the Trump regime exploit, where indefinite imprisonment, abuse, and medical neglect flourish with little to no oversight or accountability.

Human rights organizations like the ACLU describe pervasive patterns of abuse in ICE detention: hazardous living conditions, chronic medical neglect, sexual assault, retaliation for grievances, and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Detainees who have committed no crime other than being in the United States without documentation report being shackled for long periods, packed into freezing, overcrowded cells under constant fluorescent light, and denied hygiene and timely care. Meanwhile, GOP-aligned private prison companies are making billions off the program.

Inspections and oversight are inconsistent: one recent investigation found that as detentions and deaths surged in 2025, formal inspections of facilities actually dropped by over a third. ICE regularly refuses to allow attorneys, family members, and even members of Congress to access their concentration camps; the issue is now being litigated through federal courts.

History shows us that once a nation builds a mass detention apparatus, it never remains limited to its original targets. Future generations of Americans — our children and grandchildren — won’t ask us whether ICE followed civil detention statutes: they’ll want to know why we allowed concentration camps to exist in America at all.

Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem. And that’s exactly what ICE is building now.

History isn’t whispering its warning: it’s shouting.

---

---

AN 2 26

Donald Trump may appear to be retreating from his operations in Minnesota, but according to an analysis from The i Paper, it is only a small move, and he remains committed to a "bigger and more sinister" plan for the coming elections.

On Wednesday, Tom Homan, Trump's leading adviser on border security and immigration matters, announced that 700 federal agents from ICE and CBP would be withdrawing from Minnesota. This followed weeks of a massive deportation operation in the state's Twin Cities that terrorized and harassed residents, and resulted in two U.S. citizens getting killed by federal agents on camera. The ongoing operation has been widely credited with further tanking public approval of federal immigration officers, and Trump's overall handling of the issue.

Despite this move, political reporter James Ball, writing for The i Paper on Thursday, said this was a relatively small reduction in force, as there were 3,000 agents deployed to the state to begin with. Reports from residents on the ground in the Twin Cities have also indicated that ICE and CBP tactics have not changed much, even as the Trump administration built the narrative of softening its approach.

Ball further argued that no matter what Trump is doing about his immigration operation in Minnesota, he remains committed to a much more worrisome plot involving these federal immigration officers: using them to interfere with future elections and cling to power.

"There are signs, too, of a bigger and more sinister plan in motion than simply using the machinery of the federal government to ramp up deportations," Ball wrote. "More than one figure close to Trump has connected these ICE raids to bids by the President and the Republican machinery around him to cling on to power at the midterms and other future elections."

He continued: "Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, appeared to give this game away in a letter to Minnesota’s Governor, Tim Walz, in which she seemingly demanded access to the state’s voter records, asking for the power to purge voters she saw as ineligible. Under the U.S. Constitution, elections are managed by the states, not the federal government."

This letter from Bondi was followed this week by comments the president made during an appearance on a right-wing podcast, in which he asserted that elections ought to be "nationalized" in certain states, raising alarms among many lawmakers and experts that he intends to go further with his desire to control the outcomes of future elections.

Steve Bannon, the former Trump aide who maintains a prominent voice in MAGA politics, also said this week that the administration plans to deploy ICE agents to polling locations in upcoming elections. He characterized this idea as an effort to prevent election rigging — an echo of Trump's false claims about the 2020 race — while others argued that this tactic would instead be used to suppress voter turnout via intimidation. Not directly affiliated with the administration, Bannon has in recent months made several outlandish claims about Trump's future plans, including that he intends to run for an illegal third term.

"The White House has, for now, disavowed Bannon’s proposal, but that means little," Ball wrote. "Trump himself spent much of the 2024 election campaign disavowing 'Project 2025' – the radical nationalist blueprint for his second administration – only to hire one of its chief architects into his White House, and enact the plan almost in full. The President’s opponents are right to view Bannon’s plan as a very real possibility."

---

AN 2 26

President Donald Trump's second term will enter its second year on January 20, and there is already a running tally on the number of people who have been either killed or wounded by U.S. immigration agents.

Nonprofit gun violence news outlet The Trace reported Wednesday that after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Trump administration immigration officials have so far killed four people and shot five others since Trump officially took office last year. There have also been 28 incidents in which federal agents held people at gunpoint during immigration operations, and 14 shootings.

"They include the shootings of three people observing or documenting ICE raids; the shootings of five people driving away from traffic stops or evading an enforcement action; and the September 30 raid on a Chicago apartment building, during which half-asleep tenants and their children were held at gunpoint," wrote The Trace's Jennifer Mascia.

Mascia noted one particularly controversial shooting in which U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez was shot by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Chicago, Illinois last October. Martinez was shot five times but survived.

"I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes," read a text message from the officer who shot Martinez. "Put that in your book boys."

According to The Trace, there have also been 13 incidents in which federal immigration agents fired less-than-lethal munitions (like pepper balls and rubber bullets) at both suspects and the public. Mascia wrote that those munitions "can cause welts and burning in the lungs and eyes."

"[The Trump administration is] describing what’s happening to cities across the United States as an invasion and using language and imagery that’s evocative of war," Ohio State University law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández told The Trace. "The fact that immigration agents are responding in a way that is more aggressive than what is customary cannot be divorced from the fact that the rhetoric that leading figures in the Trump administration, including the president himself, are using is far more aggressive than what is customary."

Click here to read The Trace's report in full.

---

February 3, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Democrats are saying this is the greatest voter suppression movement in history. Here's the reason, Minnesota shows you this, New York City shows you this, if they don't have illegal aliens voting, if they don't have these phony migrants that are here on these phony programs that are at the polls — and you're damn right we're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.

We're not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen. And that's why I'm so proud of what President Trump is doing and people are doing. Caroline Wren, your thoughts on that before I go to Brad?

CAROLINE WREN (GUEST): I think what you said about ICE is very much related to this, because in fact, Senator Mark [Warner] said in an interview, he said, we don't want ICE agents showing up at the polling stations. That's what this is all about. That's why they're trying to defund ICE, that's why they're trying to, you know, go after and target ICE and shut it down.

Why would you care if ICE shows up to polling stations because illegal aliens are not allowed to vote in this country. Except for the problem is they do, and they do in these, they're not blue states, I was gonna say blue states. Minnesota is a deeply red state that is held hostage by illegals voting and it is — the minorities have taken over there, and by minorities I mean the minority party, the Democratic Party there, and that is due to allowing illegals to vote. And so that is what this outrage by the left is against ICE.

They're desperately trying to shut down the DHS funding bill. They don't want ICE funded because they don't want ICE at the polling stations to stop illegals from voting.

BANNON: The ask here on the Save Act, and Make Elections Great Again Act are pretty basic. A legitimate ID to show who you are to vote. It is to clean up the voter rolls. We've had Tom Fitton on here, there are millions, there are tens of millions, particularly in places like Georgia, but all over the nation there are tens of millions of people on voter rolls that should not be, they have to be cleaned up, and the blue states are the ones that are fighting the Justice Department.

And then the last is, you've got to go back to the basic law. If you're gonna have mail-in ballots, you have to have signature verification, you have to have the double envelopes, you have to have everything so we can't have a 2020 and the Democrats don't want to play with that because they know how to steal elections.

Let's just, let's put you on notice again. ICE is going to be around the polls in the 2026 midterm elections because we are never again going to allow your business model because — I think Jesse Kelly is right, 20% of the country probably votes for Democrats, you know, the credentialed class and of course the abject poor that they keep on these social welfare programs and never let them off it. That's the Democratic Party base with a handful of oligarchs, the super wealthy, that's who controls the Democratic Party.

The way that they continue to win elections is they cheat. If they don't cheat, they can't win. And now they're sitting there saying President Trump is a fascist. These are very basic things, and they're not — we're going to find out today, Chip Roy is going to come on. As hard as Anna Paulina Luna and people have been working I'm not so sure the Save Act even comes to a vote.

---

---

an 2 26

A newly surfaced Trump administration memo has been deemed "outrageous," per an analysis from Bloomberg, for paving the way to turn federal agents into "an all-powerful police force" for the president.

The memo, first reported on by the New York Times, pertains to officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and authorizes them to make arrests of anyonethey suspect of being undocumented, without the need for a warrant and without providing any proof that the individual is a flight risk. Breaking down the details for Bloomberg, legal scholar Noah Feldman decried the memo as an attempt not merely to exploit "loopholes" in the system, but to fundamentally rewrite the law itself.

"The directive, contained in a memo obtained by the New York Times, reverses long-standing ICE policy and effectively renders the warrant requirement itself empty," Feldman wrote. "Coming on the heels of another legally indefensible memo, which purported to allow ICE agents to enter the homes of suspected undocumented people without a judicial warrant, the new policy shows that ICE isn’t just exploiting legal loopholes to create massive sweeps. Instead, it reveals an agency actively attempting to change the legal landscape to turn itself into an all-powerful police force."

According to Feldman, ICE was previously authorized to make warrantless arrests under two circumstances. The first was when an officer directly witnessed someone making an unlawful crossing at the U.S. border. Given the nature of ICE's nationwide mass deportation agenda, he noted that this circumstance is essentially irrelevant. The second instance would be, as he noted earlier in his piece, when an office “has reason to believe” that someone is in the U.S. with undocumented status and “is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”

Feldman argued that this new memo stems from a 2025 Supreme Court ruling that "disasterously eroded" the protections afforded by the law to individual rights. In the decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that officers were permitted to make arrests based on "reasonable suspicions," which could include factors such as their ethnicity or the language they spoke, two factors that did not previously meet the standard for probable cause.

The memo broadens the definition of a flight risk for ICE officers, allowing them to arrest anyone who is "likely to escape," meaning anyone who might not be expected to remain at the scene of a stop by the time an arrest warrant is obtained.

"Since just about anyone would walk away from an ICE arrest if they could (at least under current circumstances), it follows from this interpretation that anyone stopped by ICE is 'likely to escape' — and therefore may be subjected to warrantless arrest," Feldman explained.

He later added: "I realize all these legal technical details are a lot. So let me put it simply. Under the new memo, ICE agents can detain anyone they think might be undocumented, based on factors like ethnic appearance, language, and where you happen to be hanging out when they stop you. Once they’ve stopped you, they can claim to have probable cause that you’re undocumented (for example, because you don’t have proof of citizenship on you). Then the officers can simply arrest you, without a warrant. The total package amounts to a sweeping authorization for ICE agents to roam the streets, grab just about anyone they want, arrest and detain them."

---

AN 1 26

The core basis of the MAGA movement's ideology has effectively been debunked, according to one journalist who has been covering President Donald Trump's crackdown in Minneapolis.

The Atlantic's Adam Serwer claimed earlier this week that "Minnesota proved MAGA wrong" in the wake of the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge" this month. In a Wednesday interview, Serwer told the Bulwark's Tim Miller: ""The right has a social theory that multiracial, multi-faith communities cannot be 'cohesive,' that our chaos is the result of the presence of people who are different from us," and then argued that the anti-immigration argument didn't pass muster, pointing to the diverse nature of Minneapolis and the hyper-local network that people of all backgrounds organized in order to protect their neighbors.

Miller prodded Serwer by playing a clip of Vice President JD Vance's interview with the New York Times' Ross Douthat last year, in which Vance asserted that "those who care about what may be called the common good" discount "how destructive to the common good immigration at the levels and at the pace that we've seen over the last few years."

"I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly," said Vance, who is married to the daughter of Indian immigrants. "And so that's not because I hate the migrants or I'm motivated by grievance. That's because I'm trying to preserve something in my own country. Social solidarity is destroyed by migration."

Serwer said while Vance's argument technically "makes sense on paper" and has a "logical progression to it," it was still "wrong."

"We know it's wrong because we can see in Minneapolis, we can see a group of people who, we can see these communities of people who say, 'you are my neighbor whether you were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. You are my neighbor and I'm going to protect you. I'm going to walk your kids to the bus stop because I know you can't go outside. I'm going to bring you food if you need to stay at home. I'm going to help you pay your rent. If I see ICE, I'm going to blow my whistle or I'm going to take out my camera and start filming.'"

"It's a little weird to say that when you consider that a substantial amount of the white population in the United States was segregated into ethnic enclaves where people only spoke their original language for much of the late 19th and early 20th century," he contimued. "And it turned out OK. And what we have here is immigrants are actually assimilating much faster than in that period, like much faster, like second, third generation, they only speak English. So it's just not true."

"What is so moving about the sort of neighborism there is that everybody says it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what gender you are, it doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are. You are my neighbor. I will defend you," Serwer added. "And that is a level of commitment to social cohesion that I have yet to see from anybody in the MAGA coalition who all seem to be about stating these things, not so much as a matter of principles they want to see lived in the world, but as a question of brand-building and political identity, which is, I think what JD Vance is doing."

---

an 1 26

Former Trump Department of Homeland SecurityChief of Staff Miles Taylor said he is furious that ‘wannabe school shooters’ in high positions in the administration of President Donald Trump are hijacking government social media and demeaning “decent” employees who work for the federal government.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that high-ranking Trump officials have posted on social media references to “neo-Nazi literature, ethnic cleansing and QAnon conspiracies.” They’ve also “mused about deporting nearly a third of the U.S. population, and promoted lyrics from an anthem bellowed by the far-right militants of the Proud Boys,” according to the Times.

“I'm sitting here kind of on the edge of my seat because just hearing you go through that really pisses me off, because there's a lot of good people that work in [government] and want to do the right thing, and they have been by these people who sound a lot more like wannabe school shooters than they do public servants.”

“You look at the rhetoric out of people who [President] Donald Trump has appointed in his second term,” Taylor told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace. “You see folks who'veoffered praise for Adolf Hitler. You've seen folks who've said they're ‘a little bit of a nazi’ and who've been kept inside this administration, people who have been kept in jobs carrying out the work of the American people. I don't think as taxpayers, we want to fund wannabe nazis to run these agencies.”

Davis said this was no longer a matter of one or two embarrassing individuals fouling the water for the rest of employees.

“This isn't some coincidence,” said Davis. “You cannot possibly be a Republican and say, ‘this is just a couple of bad apples.’ This is a whole tree. The whole tree is rotten from the core, all the way out to every single one of those branches. And that tone is being set by the top. It starts with Donald Trump saying Somalis are garbage and then sending 3,000 troops into that state.”

---

---

AN 1 26

Despite denials from a senior Trump administration official, secret watchlists of Americans are being used by federal agencies to track and categorize US citizens—especially protesters, activists, and critics of law enforcement—as “domestic terrorists,” investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reported Wednesday.

Klippenstein said that two senior national security officials speaking on condition of anonymity told him that there are over a dozen “secret and obscure” watchlists that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI are using to track anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and pro-Palestine protesters, antifa-affiliated individuals, and “others who are promiscuously labeled ‘domestic terrorists.’”

“I can reveal for the first time,” he wrote, “that some of the secret lists and applications go by codenames like Bluekey, Grapevine, Hummingbird, Reaper, Sandcastle, Sienna, Slipstream, and Sparta (including the ominous sounding HEL-A and HEL-C reports generated by Sparta).”

“Some of these, like Hummingbird, were created to vet and track immigrants, in this case Afghans seeking to settle in the United States,” Klippenstein explained. “Slipstream is a classified social media repository. Others are tools used to link people on the streets together, including collecting on friends and families who have nothing to do with any purported lawbreaking.”

“There’s practically nothing available that further describes what these watchlists do, how large they are, or what they entail,” he added.

Klippenstein’s revelation seemingly flies in the face of DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin’s recent denial that the administration has a database containing the names of people accused of domestic terrorism.

“There’s just one problem: She’s lying,” wrote Klippenstein.

Many observers already thought as much, especially after a masked federal enforcer taunted an anti-ICE protester in Maine by telling her that “we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

White House “border czar” Tom Homan—who was recently sent to Minnesota to oversee the anti-immigrant blitz following the departure of Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino amid outrage over the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—also said this month that “we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous.”

Reporting Tuesday that Pretti—the nurse who was disarmed and then shot dead by federal enforcers in Minneapolis last week—was known to Trump officials after a previous encounter in which agentsbroke his rib raised further questions about government watchlists.

“We came out of 9/11 with the notion that we would have a single ‘terrorist’ watch list to eliminate confusion, duplication, and avoid bad communications, but ever since January 6, not only have we expanded exponentially into purely domestic watchlisting, but we have also created a highly secretive and compartmented superstructure that few even understand,” a DHS attorney “intimately familiar” with the matter told Klippenstein on condition of anonymity, referring to the deadly January 2021 Capitol insurrection.

According to Klippenstein:

Prior to 9/11, there were nine federal agencies that maintained 12 separate watchlists. Now, officially there are just three: a watch list of 1.1 million international terrorists, a watch list of more than 10,000 domestic terrorists maintained by the FBI, and a new watch list of transnational criminals, built up to more than 85,000 over the past decade...Among other functions, the new watchlists process tips, situation reports, and collected photographs and video submitted by both the public and from agents in the field; they create a “common operating picture” in places like Minneapolis; they allow task forces to target individuals for surveillance and arrest; and they create the capacity for intelligence people to link individuals together through geographic proximity or what is labeled “call chaining” by processing telephone numbers, emails, and other contact information.

Asked about how the Trump administration might try to legally justify these watchlists, Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program director, cited President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7 (NSPM-7), which mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

Levinson-Waldman also noted Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 5 memo directing federal agencies to expand the investigation and prosecution of “domestic terrorism,” including groups “aligned” with antifa, an anti-fascist ideology that does not exist as an organization.

One senior intelligence official who confirmed the existence of the watchlists warned Klippenstein: “Lists of this and that—this social media post, that video taken of someone videoing ICE, the mere attendance at a protest—gets pulsed by federal cops on the beat to check for criminality but eventually just becomes a list itself of criminality, with the cops thinking that indeed they are dealing with criminals and terrorists. Watchlists, and the whole watchlisting process, should be as transparent as possible, not the other way around.”

“If we don’t explore more why all of these secret lists exist,” the official added, there could be “even more of an environment of paranoia on the ground and more tragic killings.”

---

---

an 1 26

President Donald Trump was recently dealt another unfavorable ruling by a federal judge, who struck down his attempt to obtain sensitive information about voters.

On Monday, Politico legal correspondent Josh Gerstein reported that U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai – an appointee of former President Joe Biden — dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain Oregon's database of registered voters. Kasubhai also reportedly asked the Trump administration about Attorney General Pam Bondi's letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) asking for Minnesota's voter database.

Gerstein reported that neither the Trump DOJ nor Oregon said that Bondi's letter to Walz impacted the Oregon case "at this stage," though Kasubhai's line of questioning suggests that the letter may potentially come up as an issue should the administration decide to appeal.

In order to overturn Judge Kasubhai's ruling, the Trump administration will have to petition the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (whose jurisdictions includes the District of Oregon). However, the Ninth Circuit is widely regarded as one of the most liberal judicial circuits since the late 1990s. Should the Ninth Circuit decline to overturn Judge Kasubhai's decision, the Trump DOJ will have to hope for relief from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

The administration's loss in the District of Oregon comes on the heels of another separate loss in the Central District of California in a similar suit. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter granted a motion filed by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to dismiss the administration's lawsuit for California's voter rolls.

"The foundation upon which American democracy has been built is the right to vote. Brave Americans have given their lives for more than two hundred years to protect this right," Carter wrote. "Now it seems the Executive Branch of the United States government wants to abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots."

---

an 1 26

A key Trump official is facing the possibility of being held in contempt, according to Politico's Kyle Cheney, after a leading judge in Minnesota lashed the administration for failure to comply with court orders in a new filing from Monday.

According to filing documents shared to social media by Cheney, Judge Patrick J. Schlitz, the chief federal judge for the District of Minnesota, ordered Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE under Donald Trump, to appear in court on Friday to answer for his agency's evident court order violations.

"Judge Schlitz, the chief federal judge in Minnesota, has ordered the head of ICE, Todd Lyons, to [appear] in court Friday and threatened him with contempt for the agency’s repeated violation of court orders," Cheney wrote in a post shared to X and BlueSky Tuesday morning.

In the documents, Schlitz explained that the court had previously ordered ICE to hold a bond hearing for a petitioner named "Juan T.R.," an individual detained by the agency, within one week of the order's issuance. If that hearing had not been provided in the time given by the court, T.R. was to be released from custody. As the filing explained, after the allotted time elapsed, T.R. had not been given a hearing and remained in detention.

This, Schlitz wrote, was part of a growing trend of ICE flouting court orders in Minnesota, resulting in detained individuals, many of whom have no criminal history, being taken to holding facilities in Texas.

"This is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed toc omply in recent weeks," Schlitz's filing reads. "The practical consequence of respondents' failure to comply has almost always been significant hardship to aliens (many of whom have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong). The detention of an alien is extended, or an alien who should remain in Minnesota is flown to Texas, or an alien who has been flown to Texas is released there and told to figure out a way to get home."

The filing continued: "This Court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result. Respondents have continually assured the Court that they recognize their obligation to comply with Court orders, and that they have taken steps to ensure that those orders will be honored going forward. Unfortunately, though, the violations continue. The Court's patience is at an end."

Schlitz therefore ordered Lyons to personally appear in court to explain why he should not face contempt charges for his agency's actions. The judge acknowledged that this was an "extraordinary step" to take, but argued that it was warranted in the face of ICE's "likewise extraordinary" defiance of court orders.

:{:{:{---}:

---

an 1 26

After the latest shooting of a Minneapolis protester, President Donald Trump's campaign to deport immigrants is quickly losing support from Republican lawmakers, loyalists and conservative publications.

On Sunday, the conservative Wall Street Journal posted an analysis calling the Trump administration out on its lies that VA ICU nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti walked up to ICE officers with a gun, intending to “massacre law enforcement.”

"See how immigration officers escalated a fatal confrontation Saturday," the subheading of the Journal reads.

It notes at the close of the story that reporters continue to ask the administration at what point, exactly, Pretti's gun came out.

“This situation is evolving,” Customs and Border Protection official Gregory Bovino said at a press conference on Saturday. “This is under investigation. Those facts will come to light.”

He refused to answer the same questions on CNN when host Dana Bash asked them.

They've also lost far-right disgraced former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. In his Sunday column, O'Reilly, who now occasionally appears on NewsNation, tells Trump it's time he make "adjustments."

While O'Reilly spends most of the column trashing Democrats in Minnesota, he also says, "some restraint is necessary." While he pointed the criticism to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), he adds, "That point of view would help him and everybody else."

While many Democrats posted condemnations of ICE and Homeland Security as a whole, Republican lawmakers are also starting to call for accountability.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) posted on X Sunday morning, "There must be a thorough and impartial investigation into yesterday’s Minneapolis shooting, which is the basic standard that law enforcement and the American people expect following any officer-involved shooting. For this specific incident, that requires cooperation and transparency between federal, state, and local law enforcement. Any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins are doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy."

Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.)commented late Saturday, "I’m disturbed by what I’ve seen from today’s video from Minnesota. It’s critically important that the American people and Congress be given a better understanding of how immigration enforcement is being handled, including the methods federal law enforcement officers are using to prioritize, identify and arrest suspected targets, the training they are receiving, the implementation of body cameras, the threats they face in conducting operations and the challenges posed by sanctuary cities and states."

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R‑N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has already called for a full hearing in which ICE and DHS answer questions.

Even former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) is angry over ICE's attack on a man who was lawfully carrying a gun.

"Legally carrying a firearm is not the same as brandishing a firearm," she wrote on X Sunday morning.

She closed her lengthy post by adding, "You are all being incited into civil war, yet none of it solves any of the real problems that we all face, and tragically people are dying."

---

---

Unraveling claim Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino wore 'Nazi uniform'

...

The claim about Bovino's coat spread widely because critics have accused Border Patrol and ICE agents of using Nazi-like tactics by going door to door and searching for immigrants to deport. Singer Bruce Springsteen compared Trump's immigration crackdown to "Gestapo tactics," referring to the Nazi secret police.

Advertisement

Snopes has previously covered an rumor that the Department of Homeland Security used a lectern displaying a Nazi slogan during a news conference. We also analyzed Department of Labor posters during the Trump administration that used imagery experts said dehumanizes immigrants.

---}:

an 1 26

---

AN 1 26

U.S. District Court Judge Katherine M. Menendez probed the Justice Department on Monday over whether a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) should be issued against the federal government after the recent slaying of a second Minneapolis citizen.

Speaking to federal lawyer Brantley Mayers, Judge Menendez questioned the purpose of the surge of federal agents and whether it was to get the state and cities to change their policies, wrote legal reporter Chris Geidner of the "Law Dork" newsletter.

Geidner recounted that Mayers attempted to say that the federal goal was to enforce federal law, but Judge Menendez pointed to statements from top Trump officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In a recent letter to Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Bondi said she would ensure that all federal agents were withdrawn if he turned over all voting records in the state.

"How am I supposed to interpret [Bondi's letter]" other than that if the state/cities change these policies, 'then this will end?'" the judge asked, according to Geidner.

Meyers said that even if the policies change and the surge is relaxed, it still isn't a Tenth Amendment issue, because the "stated" reason for the surge is valid enforcement of federal law.

Menendez asked if Meyers said, "We are here until and unless you change your policies," would that be a 10th Amendment anti-commandeering problem?

Meyers answered: "No."

She then asked about Trump's comments, "Minnesota, your day of retribution is here."

"That doesn't negate the fact that legitimate law enforcement is going on," said Meyers.

Menendez asked if there was "no limit" to the number of agents Trump's administration could send. Meyers didn't answer the question, responding only that it isn't a Tenth Amendment issue.

"Is the executive trying to achieve a goal through force that it can't achieve through the courts?" the judge asked, referencing the Bondi letter again.

“It concerns me that Attorney General Bondi’s letter cites three things that are the subject of pending litigation before this court,” the judge said, according to Adam Klasfeld, who writes the "All Rise" Substack.

She then referred to a statement from Tom Homan, Trump's executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

Homan said, "If you want less officers on the street, then let us in the jails."

So, Menendez questioned if Meyers was using the idea of "law enforcement" as a catch-all.

"Your position is that it doesn’t matter how clear that the quid pro quo" is, Klasfeld quoted the judge saying.

"I have all of these quotes in the record. You're telling me that I'm reading them wrong," the judge said. "What do I have in the record to show that the surge is to make up for the harms caused by the policies?"

Meyers maintained that the surge has nothing to do with a coercion campaign to change the state's policies.

Geidner added, "Mayers is trying mightily to argue that any challenges to actions in Minnesota can be brought in separate litigation and are not proper under a Tenth Amendment claim."

Legal analyst Klasfeld agreed with the assessment.

"This was an uphill battle for the state of Minnesota — but Pam Bondi's letter may have turned it into a viable one, if not today, down the line," he wrote on BlueSky.

*See the full thread here.

---

2ND MURDER PRETTI 1ST AND 2ND AMEND

AN 26

A leading Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota has withdrawn from the race, citing the Republican Party’s “stated retribution on the citizens of our state,” and saying he cannot count himself a member of a party that would do so.

Chris Madel’s announcement Monday morning, just two days after federal agents shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis in under three weeks, was deemed “stunning” by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Madel recorded a nearly eleven-minute video explaining his decision to withdraw.

“United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear,” he told supporters. “United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong.”

“ICE has authorized its agents to raid homes using a civil warrant that need only be signed by a border patrol agent. That’s unconstitutional, it’s wrong. Weaponizing criminal investigations against political opponents is unconstitutional, regardless of who is in power,” he continued.

Madel also pointed to the “countless United States citizens who have been detained in Minnesota due to the color of their skin. I personally have spoken to several law enforcement officers, some Hispanic, and some Asian who have been pulled over by ice on pretextual stops,” he said.

“Driving while Hispanic is not a crime,” Madel added. “Neither is driving while Asian.”

The Star Tribune reported that Madel “launched his campaign for governor as a staunch defender of law enforcement and had **:{recently provided legal counsel to Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.”}:

“I do this because I believe the constitutional right to counsel is sacrosanct,” he said.

He also called the federal operation in Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge, “an unmitigated disaster.”

---

AN 1 26

Donald Trump's ego appears to be driving a conflict with the various "hardcore nationalists" in his administration, according to a new analysis from The i Paper, with his desire to be "loved and thanked" conflicting with their desire to go further in cracking down on immigration and protestors.

The administration is facing mounting unrest in Minnesota, where over the weekend, federal officers killed another American citizen, intensive care nurse Alex Pretti. This death, only weeks after the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer, has soured more and more Americans on Trump's immigration crackdown plans, which were already tanking the president's approval on immigration, one of his key issues overall.

Writing for The i Paper on Monday, James Ball wrote that the administration is largely uninterested in discontent and protests from Democratic voters, and in fact seems to "relish" causing them pain and distress. The killing of Pretti, however, is driving away increasing numbers of independents and even some Republicans. This has created a conflict, Ball argued, between Trump's desire to be popular with non-Democratic voters and the desires of key figures in his administration to go as far as possible with the immigration crackdowns, as part of their plot to fundamentally remake the U.S.

"The problem for Trump in responding to this self-inflicted crisis is that while most of the American public hates what they are seeing in Minneapolis, some in his White House love it. This is what they came into office to do," Ball wrote. "Trump is surrounded by hardcore nationalists who see him as their vehicle to rebuild America – and mass deportations are the first step in doing that. A faction led by Stephen Miller, and represented by the ambitious US Vice President J.D. Vance, is leading this hardline movement. They are urging the President to go further, all but openly seeking an excuse to activate the Insurrection Act, enabling them to send in American troops into American cities."

Trump, meanwhile, wants on some level to be seen as a unifying figure and as a great president, typified by his recent focus on legacy projects. This instinct, Ball argued, will cause him to pull back on issues like Minnesota when they become toxically unpopular, despite the ambitions of his top officials.

"The main obstacle standing in their way is Trump himself, who, on some level, still wants to be loved and thanked by the nation he so divisively leads. Even now, he complains about the difficulties of building the new White House ballroom, wondering plaintively why anyone would mount legal challenges against a building project he sees as his legacy," Ball wrote.

He continued: "Trump is a petty and vindictive man who wants revenge on his enemies, but he still wants to be seen as a unifying figure – he has more than once spoken of his wish to one day be represented alongside other great presidents on Mount Rushmore. Trump doesn’t look at the footage out of Minnesota and feel horror in the same way most of us do, but he understands that it’s bad for him – trapping him between the hardliners he’s surrounded himself with, and his own political instincts."

---

AN 1 26

A federal appeals court has now lifted restrictions on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in how they're meant to deal with local protesters in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney reported Wednesday that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals — whose jurisdiction encompasses Minnesota along with six other states — has now granted a motion by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to impose a stay on a temporary restraining order (TRO) put in place by U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez (an appointee of former President Joe Biden). This means that the restrictions will no longer be in place while the DHS appeals them to the circuit court.

After Judge Menendez's TRO was stayed, this means that ICE agents will now once again be allowed to use less-than-lethal munitions on protesters, like flash-bang grenades and tear gas, and make arrests. Politico reported that the TRO was initially put in place following a lawsuit filed over DHS' heavy-handed response to protests that unfolded in the wake of the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good.

DHS and ICE had previously been prohibited from "using pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity." Judge Menendez's order also forbade federal agents from pulling over citizens for following them, as long as they were keeping an "appropriate" distance.

The overturning of Menendez's TRO comes on the heels of the Trump administration telling military personnel to prepare for a "possible mobilization to Minneapolis." The Department of Justice (DOJ) has also announced federal investigations into Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz – who have encouraged citizens to film and document ICE actions — for allegedly impeding law enforcement operations.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance recently compared the Trump administration's handling of Minneapolis protesters to former Birmingham, Alabama Sheriff Bull Connor's treatment of protesters during the Civil Rights Movement. She also condemned the DOJ for objecting to Judge Menendez's order, writing on her Substack: "DOJ has stopped being the independent gem in the crown of the American rule of law."

"Now, it’s just Trump’s law firm," she wrote. "He’s finally found his Roy Cohn, a number of them."

---

---

context divert blame

mma

airbaGs went off, doors locked auto; bystanders had to pull out; baby lAST, NOT BREATHING MOM MOUTH TO MOUTH; ICE BLOCKED EMT?

NOTE PAWN // PAID PROTESTOR: VICTIM NOT OF STATE THUGS BUT DERSERVE HARM BECAUSE DUMB ENOUGH TO BE MANIPULATED BY EXTREME LEFT LUNATICS?

January 15, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline

CARL HIGBIE (HOST): And to counter that, though, the liberal media is trying to go out and tell, like the most insane thing — like, here, about this six-month-old who unfortunately got tear gassed by ICE. Well, like, that sucks. But why was the six-month-old, even exposed or near tear gas in the first place? Huh?

I mean, this has become such a problem that people are using their children as political pawns that DHS had to tweet this out. We told you about this other day. Do not bring your baby to a violent riot. The fact that you have to tell someone that — you should be — your kids should be taken away from you. But that baby was exposed to tear gas because the mob — baby was in the mob in a car — the mob was attacking the ICE agents. They didn't aim the tear gas. They weren't like, hey, check out that six month-old. Let me shoot him in the face. Not at all. That's not at all what happened. They were aiming at the crowd where, for some reason, the car with this six month-old was. Now, if the crowd — I don't know. And I'm just spitballing ideas here — If they listened to law enforcement, no one would have gotten shot with tear gas.

Also showing stuff like this. Kids skipping school to protest ICE turns into violent mosh pits and all this stuff. Here the kids are just piling out of classes like, hey, no, no, they should probably not be in class at all. It's just unbelievable. The only reason that kids would protest ICE because they were taught to protest ICE by liberal teachers in Tim Walz's school districts.

---

---

mma 1 26

[## LOCAL REPORTING SHOWS U.S. CITIZENS AND LEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE BEING DETAINED IN MINNESOTA 01/16/26

---

AN 1 26

President Donald Trump's administration is now allegedly preventing a U.S. citizen and veteran from meeting with their attorney, according to a new report.

ABC News reported Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not allowing attorneys representing clients who are being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Whipple Building outside of Minneapolis. This apparently includes at least one U.S. citizen who also served in the Iraq War.

According to ABC, an unnamed "prominent local criminal defense attorney" verified that his client was a bystander witnessing an immigration enforcement operation near his home.

"They told me that because my client had not requested me by name, that I could not see him," the lawyer said. "I’ve been practicing law in Minnesota for almost 20 years, and I have never been denied access to a client."

Another attorney who withheld their name told ABC that the Whipple Building is unable to accommodate meetings between attorneys and their clients. They accused the Trump administration of denying their client a core Constitutional right that is afforded both citizens and non-citizens alike.

"One ICE agent said if we let you see your clients, we would have to let all the attorneys see their clients, and imagine the chaos," the attorney told ABC. "And I said to that person, yeah, you do have to let all the attorneys see their clients. You do have to accommodate that. That’s the Constitution. You chose to put them here. I didn't bring this guy here, you did."

Under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, anyone who is "accused" of a crime not only has the right to a speedy trial by a jury of their peers in the jurisdiction where they were charged, to be able to confront witnesses, have the process for obtaining witnesses in their favor "and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." Attorney Robert Sicoli told ABC that there is "nothing in the Constitution that talks about accommodating the government."

"It is a violation of constitutional rights," said Sicoli, who said he was also prevented from meeting with a client detained by the federal government.

---

an 1 26

Renee Good was still alive when feds blocked medic from checking pulse: records

---

AN 1 26

One unnamed U.S. Border Patrol agent who is reportedly "outraged" at the conduct of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents is now leaking sensitive details of secret operations that, according to one journalist, show how President Donald Trump's administration is targeting both immigrants and U.S. citizens.

In an article published to his Substack on Wednesday, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein published a 15-page document revealing details of 21 different "major" ICE operations across the country. The document is marked "LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE" and includes codenames of the various operations that have not previously been reported.

The document claims nearly 7,000 people have been apprehended by ICE since June, and that 2,000 "intelligence assets" in various U.S. cities are reportedly conducting surveillance "on immigrants and Americans alike," per Klippenstein's report. He further wrote that the document shows ICE has morphed "into a parallel FBI, a DEA and an independent police force whose mission has crept well past the deportations that media tend to focus on."

One initiative codenamed "Operation Benchwarmer" documents how ICE agents are on "plainclothes" detail to "gather important tactical intelligence" and amass "information not normally gained during formal interviews." Another dubbed "Operation Abracadabra" has a goal of linking "every individual who crosses the border illegally to a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a Transnational Criminal Organization and/or utilizing the intelligence to develop targets."

Klippenstein's source is reportedly motivated by a desire to shed light on ICE and other agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with Klippenstein pointing out that ICE's use of force policy is "almost completely blacked out" in public documents. An anonymous FBI source also confided to Klippenstein that there is concern in the bureau that ICE is permanently tainting Americans' perception of the law enforcement community.

The new leaks come just days after a separate leak to Klippenstein in which federal agents upset over the Trump administration's handling of the killing of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good leaked internal documents showing a last-minute push by administration officials to bolster ICE's numbers in Minnesota.

Click here to read Klippenstein's full report.

---

AN 1 26

SLATE

Many critics of the Trump Administration's mass deportations policy are arguing that President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are creating a dangerous situation by putting poorly trained U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) agents on the streets of U.S. cities. In an effort to ramp up deportations, they contend, Noem and border czar Tom Homan have significantly lowered ICE hiring standards. And journalist Laura Jedeed, in an article published by Slate on January 13, pointed to her own experience with ICE as an example.

Jedeed's article inspired an angry backlash from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which accused her of lying. But she proved that the allegations in her article were absolutely true.

Jedeed went undercover, applying for employment with ICE at a recruitment drive in Dallas. And the vetting process, she reported in Slate, was incredibly lax.

Jedeed, who said she was interviewed for only six minutes, wrote, "Many of ICE's critics worry that the agency is hoovering up pro-Trump thugs — January 6 insurrectionists, white nationalists, etc. — for a domestic security force loyal to the president. The truth, my experience suggests, is perhaps even scarier: ICE's recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who's joining the agency's ranks. We’re all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into America’s streets. And we are all, collectively, discovering just how deadly of an arrangement that really is."

Jedeed's article was followed by an attack tweet from DHS, which tweeted, "This is such a lazy lie. This individual was NEVER offered a job at ICE. Applicants may receive a Tentative Selection Letter following their initial application and interview that is not a job offer. It just means they are invited to submit information for review, similar to any other applicant."

But Jedeed debunked DHS' claim that she was lying, posting the acceptance letter ICE sent her.

During a January 14 appearance on MS NOW, Jedeed told host Chris Jansing that ICE's hiring process is abysmal — and when they sent her an acceptance letter, they didn't realize she was a journalist who has been a scathing critic of Trump's deportation policy.

"The more you think about it," Jedeed told Jansing, "the worse it gets."

*Laura Jedeed's full article for Slate is available at this link (subscription required).

---

Joe Rogan condemns Trump's 'Gestapo' for 'snatching up people'

Carl Gibson

---

// jdv yale law grad absolute immunity?

an 1 26

Top aide to President Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, spoke to Fox News on Tuesday, and one legal expert says he may have just made things worse for the administration.

According to Evan Bernick, associate professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law, both Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are creating a paper trail that will not work out well for them.

DHS posted the interview with Miller in which he tells Fox: “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. Anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist — can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties. The Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.”

Bernick commented, "I encourage the administration to continue to leave a paper trail for future lawsuits — which are inevitable, because following this advice will lead to civil rights violations."

Qualified immunity, as explained by the Legal Defense Fund, personally protects government officials, including cops, when they're sued.

"The doctrine holds that officials who violate other people’s constitutional rights can only be held responsible if there exists a previous court decision, with very similar facts, that resulted in other officials being held accountable. Qualified immunity has been used in many cases to protect officials who have engaged in a variety of misconduct, including fatal shootings, police brutality, stealing, sexual misconduct, and more."

---

---

RWW

01/14/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

The search came as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.

The president can be seen in video giving the middle finger.

Alveda King wants employees of the U.S. Department of Labor to see themselves as doing God’s work. The rightwing anti-abortion activist and niece of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. added during the second monthly DoL prayer service that workers shouldn’t complain, and she criticized people who aren’t religious.

QAnon influencer: “The U.S. Department of Labor’s official account is Q posting. … This is not debatable now. If you like it, cool. If you don’t like it, too bad. It’s happening.”

The government is recruiting ICE agents with (literal) neo-Nazi propaganda.

In a world where ICE agents are shooting US citizens on the street, the need for militias and extremist groups like the Proud Boys to support far-right interests has evaporated.

---

RWW

01/13/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

The Justice Department’s civil rights division has historically investigated law enforcement killings.

A bombshell report reveals how the Trump administration conducted that double-strike boat bombing.

What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We’re all finding out.

President Donald Trump erupted at the people of Minnesota in a truly unhinged Truth Social post on Tuesday morning, pledging that ‘THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING’ as protests intensify over the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent.

He didn't even bring in a thousand dollars.

---

Philly Sheriff Vows To Arrest ICE Agents - YouTube

DA KRASNER SAY HER NAME GOOD, NO MASKS

Philly Sheriff Vows To Arrest ICE Agents

---

neo nazi ads 1 26

Trump administration's posts echo rhetoric linked to extremist groups - YouTube

we will have home agIN BY GOD PROUD BOY

---

---

AN PP 1 26

We found over 40 cases of federal agents using banned chokeholds, cutting off breathing

Nicole Foy McKenzie Funk ProPublica

---

an 1 26

In Minneapolis, federal Judge Kate Menendez is ruling on an emergency motion by protesters who oppose the tactics being used in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in that city. The motion comes at a time when Minneapolis is reeling from the fatal shooting of unarmed 37-year-old motorist Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent.

Politico's Kyle Cheney reported on the motion and a Tuesday, January 13 hearing in a thread on X, formerly Twitter — describing the frustrations Menendez expressed to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers.

Cheney tweeted, "Menendez again frustrated that she doesn't have firsthand accounts from police officers who claim protesters suing them were acting in unruly ways. 'Why don't I have that officer's declaration before me?' she asks when DOJ lawyers alleges a protester 'pushed past' an officer. Menendez: I don't have any ability to assess that because I don't have anything but an unknown level of high summary."

The Politico reporter noted that Menendez, during the hearing, made it "clear she intends to rule on the emergency motion by protesters — seeking to halt key police tactics by ICE in Minnesota — by Thursday afternoon," January 15.

According to Cheney, "Under questioning from Menendez, DOJ struggling again to articulate why ICE officers can draw guns on drivers who are following them, so long as those drivers are not breaking traffic laws or posing any other articulable threat."

After the hearing concluded, Cheney described the skepticism that Menendez expressed over the ICE-related claims by Trump administration officials.

"Update: Hearing in Minneapolis is over," Cheney tweeted. "Judge Menendez appeared skeptical of Trump administration on a few key points: That ICE can pull over cars that are following them, even if those cars obey all traffic laws; that officers can draw guns on stopped motorists without evidence of a crime. But she also seemed skeptical of effort by protesters to apply an injunction statewide, or that in a post-CASA world, she could (or needed to) provisionally certify a class at this stage of the case."

CASA refers to Trump V. CASA, where, as ScotusBlog reports, "the Supreme Court curtailed the use of universal injunctions."

Cheney continued, "She's eyeing a ruling that would cover specifically 'Operation Metro Surge' or the 7 counties in the Twin Cities metro area. Next step: Protesters/DOJ must decide whether the judge can demand video of specific arrests prior to ruling on the preliminary injunction. Ruling on the PI to come Thursday PM or Friday AM."

---

AN 1 26

A prominent Democrat is demanding to know how many January 6 “insurrectionists” have been hired by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as critics warn that federal agents under President Donald Trump are increasingly engaging in violent enforcement actions.

“We know that several participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have been rewarded with high-ranking positions in the Department of Justice (DOJ),” U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“However, it remains unclear how many more have been invited to join the ranks of this Administration, including among the masked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents and officers that have dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, shot, and killed citizens and non-citizens alike in communities across the country,” he added.

According to Raskin, Jared Wise, a former Supervisory Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “stormed his way into the Capitol Building” on January 6, 2021.

“As he did so, he taunted and threaten police officers defending the building and the ones inside, screaming: ‘You guys are disgusting. I’m former—I’m former law enforcement. You’re disgusting.”

Raskin included additional language attributed to Wise, then wrote that he “has never expressed remorse or contrition for his criminal actions.”

Wise was pardoned by President Donald Trump, along with nearly 1,600 others, “including hundreds of cop beaters.”

“Today, Mr. Wise serves as senior adviser in the office of the Deputy Attorney General, alongside another January 6th participant, Ed Martin, the U.S. Pardon Attorney and head of the DOJ Weaponization Working Group,” Raskin wrote.

Congressman Raskin also blasted the recruitment and vetting processes being used by the Trump administration.

“For its part, DHS seems to be courting pardoned January 6th insurrectionists. It uses white nationalist ‘dog whistles’ in its recruitment campaign for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that appear aimed at stirring members of extremist militias, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters, which participated in the insurrection,” he stated. “The recruitment campaign began with a $50,000 sign-on bonus, removal of the college degree requirement, and a relaxed vetting process.”

“Who is hiding behind these masks?” Raskin demanded to know. “How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6th and were convicted of their offenses? The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this Administration.”

---

---

mma

  1. ### Right-wing media villainize and blame Renee Good for her own death in Minneapolis ICE shooting

01/09/26 3:53 PM EST

  1. ### Watch how Fox tried to spin the disappointing December jobs report

01/09/26 3:38 PM EST

  1. ### Megyn Kelly on Minneapolis shooting and ICE protests: “All we can do is flood the field, in my view, with more officers”

01/09/26 3:01 PM EST

  1. ### Jack Posobiec says Renee Good's wife is “complicit in the killing” and “should be brought up on federal charges”

01/09/26

Right-wing media villainize and blame Renee Good for her own death in Minneapolis ICE shooting

Written by Gideon Taaffe, Isabella Sherk & Jack Winstanley

Published 01/09/26

After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good on January 7 during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, right-wing media reacted by blaming Good for her death, saying it "was her own doing” and attacking her character by labeling her “a perpetrator” and “trained agitator.”

//

  1. ### Jack Posobiec says Renee Good's wife is “complicit in the killing” and “should be brought up on federal charges”

01/09/26 12:16 PM EST

  1. ### A look at how Fox used its coverage of the Minneapolis ICE shooting to push the administration's propaganda

01/08/26 4:14 PM EST

  1. ### Megyn Kelly caller on Minneapolis shooting: “The vice president was up there lying his self off”

01/09/26

---

AN 1 26

The Intercept reported the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who shot a Minneapolis, Minnesota mother of a six year-old in the face and killed her Wednesday is Jonathan Ross, a deportation officer based out of the agency’s St. Paul field office.

“According to court documents from an unrelated case, Ross (43) has been with the agency since at least 2016,” the Intercept reported, based on a Thursday scoop from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “In June, he was injured in a traffic incident while apprehending Roberto Carlos Munoz-Guatemala, an undocumented man later convicted of dragging Ross with his car.”

A Fox affiliate in Minnesota quoted a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson confirming that the agent involved in the shooting was the same agent dragged by Munoz-Guatemala in June. And while the New York Post ran a storyreferencing Ross’s dragging incident, it did not at the time name him.

“Video footage from the Munoz-Guatemala incident shows a beige Chevy Tahoe, the same SUV make and model that was on scene, parked close to Good’s dark red SUV before the shooting,” reported the Intercept. “A photo on the Facebook page of a man identified in public records as Ross’s father shows a man carrying an assault weapon captioned ‘Jon Ross in Iraq.’ The man pictured in the photo and others closely resembles images of the agent at the scene of Wednesday’s shooting. Ross previously lived near Fort Bliss, a U.S. Army base in New Mexico and on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas.”

The Intercept further reported a man who picked up a phone at the number linked in public records to Ross’s father hung up when asked about his son on Thursday.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem described Ross’ victim as a “domestic terrorist,” but the Intercept claims video footage “contradicts the government’s narrative.”

“The video shows the officer telling Good, ‘Get out of the f—— car,’ before shooting into her car three times, then walking away apparently uninjured,” the Intercept reported. circular hand gesture walking back from good?

Read the Intercept report at this link.

---}:

an 1 26

Zeteo reports two White House officials and an anonymous military source say President Donald Trump's administration privately plans to go scorched-earth if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are arrested or prosecuted for breaking the law.

“As one senior Trump administration official describes it, the mandate was clear: Don’t give an inch, and protect the accused agents ‘no matter what,’” write Zeteo correspondents Asawin Suebsaeng and Prem Thakker. “Two of the sources add that within the past year, President [Donald] Trump himself has privately said that if one of his immigration agents were ever subject to arrest or prosecuted, he and his administration could retaliate by refusing to hand over the officer, counter by federally charging Democrats or local officials with ‘obstructing’ immigration enforcement, or threaten to further cut off federal funding to the state in question.”

Trump began rolling masked ICE forces through U.S. cities last year, triggering violent arrests and harassment of local residents, often over the opposition of local leaders. Now that 43 year-old ICE agent Jonathan Ross has killed a 37 year-old mother in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the administration is already swinging into action to bar unbiased investigations into the slaying, claiming local courts and prosecutors have no jurisdiction into the murder of one of its own residents.

Administration officials say the White House and the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, “gamed out since early last year” what to do if Democrats, or state or local prosecutors, ever moved to arrest or prosecute ICE officers or federal immigration personnel accused of crimes, even murder.

“Almost instantly after news of the fatal shooting began circulating on social media, the Trump administration and its close allies fanned out to insist to the American people that the victim had it coming, or that Democrats will only suffer more if they try to hold anyone accountable for the killing,” Zeteo reports.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quickly labeled the victim, Renee Nicole Good, a “domestic terrorist.” One anonymous military policy official told Zeteo he was surprised at “Noem so readily moving to defend the murderous ICE agent.”

“[It] never has bode well, historically, once the state stops pretending to care about some level of institutional respect and acts without regard for the public backlash,” the source told Zeteo. “Only makes me worried about what it’ll do next.”

The state of Minnesota may yet move to prosecute the ICE agent, but sources say the Trump administration is already “primed to retaliate.”

An anonymous National Guardsman told Zeteo that the ICE agent’s “weapons training, the trigger discipline is completely f—— up” but added that’s “lower down the list of issues.”

Read the Zeteo report at this link.

---

---

dn

ICE Plans $100 Million “Wartime Recruitment” Campaign Targeting Military and Firearms Enthusiasts | Democracy Now!

Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, are planning to spend $100 million over a one-year period to recruit gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geotargeted advertising campaign. That’s according to The Washington Post, which reports it’s part of what the agency called a “wartime recruitment” strategy aimed at hiring thousands of new deportation officers nationwide. The recruitment drive is targeted at people who have attended UFC fights, listened to far-right podcasts or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear. It uses the ad-industry technique known as “geofencing” to send ads to people who set foot near military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses or gun shows.

---

1 26 gmail}:

How ICE Makes Raids Go Viral

Taylor Lorenz

Jan 8

For years, ICE’s public affairs was run like any other routine government communications shop. They posted public service announcements and news releases, mostly to their own website where very few Americans would ever see.

But since Trump’s second term, ICE has rapidly transformed itself into an influencer-style media machine, churning out non-stop viral videos of tactical operations and immigration raids.

ICE’s social media strategy and ability to dominate the internet has come to serve as a blueprint for other Trump administration agencies, and their relentless focus on dominating the internet is already reshaping public opinion on immigrants.

My former colleague Drew Harwell has been covering ICE’s social media blitz and he joined me on my podcast this week to discuss the inside information he uncovered about how ICE’s internet meme team operates, what their internal chat logs reveal about their approach to the internet, and a how this previously under the radar federal law enforcement became a deadly “influencer-style media machine.”

wh comm shop be smashmouth meme way to virality; film crew shadow ice raids “viz comm team” “digital engagement teams” ridealong traffic stop kavanaugh giy raN tackled, action movie rap soundtrack cops TV style chase not woman in apron and guy pt specks; posted to outrafe left so THEY wd boost also extreme captions, copyrt music ~ sabrina carpenter berate libs belittle immigr 4chanfied enemy ayt gates repel invADERS

LOW LEVEL STAFF POST GET PICKED UP BY INFLUENCERS POKEMAN COLLECT ALL DOOR EXPLODE; MEMELORDS NO CONSTRAINTS; EXPLIC SAY TRAD MEDIA DOES NOT MATTER; FEED CONTENT TO INFL BENNY J 1ST, LIVESTREAM THEN CLIP

former colleague Drew Harwell has been covering ICE’s social media blitz and he joined me on my podcast this week to discuss the inside information he uncovered about how ICE’s internet meme team operates, what their internal chat logs reveal about their approach to the internet, and a how this previously under the radar federal law enforcement became a deadly “influencer-style media machine.”

:{:{Inside ICE’s Private Chats About Going Viral - YouTube}:

Inside ICE’s Private Chats About Going Viral

Taylor Lorenz

238K subscribers

65,033 views Jan 7, 2026 Power User Podcast w/ Taylor Lorenz

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON for ad-free and bonus episodes!!! / taylorlorenz Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co Since Trump took office, ICE has rapidly transformed itself from an under the radar agency into an influencer-style media machine, churning out non-stop viral videos of tactical operations and immigration raids. ICE's ability to dominate the internet has come to serve as a blueprint for other Trump administration agencies, and their relentless focus on virality is already reshaping public opinion on immigrants. Drew Harwell is a reporter at The Washington Post and he recently published an investigation into ICE's social media blitz. He joins me to:

Explore the podcast

[

89 episodes](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu4srHCWJrrjFyF0hHNi7lVFYssn35zog)

Power User Podcast w/ Taylor Lorenz

Taylor Lorenz

:{:{[}:

Podcasts](https://www.youtube.com/podcasts)

Transcript

Follow along using the transcript.

Show transcript

[

Taylor Lorenz

238K subscribers](https://www.youtube.com/@TaylorLorenz)

VideosAbout[

Patreon](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=Watch_SD_EP&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbEFuQmw3dllCT29PYmVSSi1iUHpqVC1uWjlfZ3xBQ3Jtc0ttWnZxSXJ6NTR5N0dUNU5fQ1ZYYlNPTDAzYkdJTEZHTWNJOHpNbV85TWYzZW1JWmZuUTczVHdDZkZUQnc1ZVptTFFSSG15WVZXWHlFbGZmNXFOTjdfZmJiVE9iRHVYSE14YmlEb3AxdExsS3NoVDFKbw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.patreon.com%2Fc%2Ftaylorlorenz)[

Instagram](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=Watch_SD_EP&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa1JCYkdjZzM4VTBDUldjVHNQNDJZT0JGUU1od3xBQ3Jtc0tuYk1tb00zcmVqLXVDVzk4VzNobGdFX3VsNkxzaDVLellZanFkVE56NTZLR2NtT1JLT1F3TGFpUG9QV0ptOV9VeUNsdThPelBHV0NJTVBIMjVrWVp4ak02c0dNVDgwY3R5ZUJiTGotNU84ZjVQa09BWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Ftaylorlorenz)[

TikTok](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=Watch_SD_EP&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbC14ZHVxRlgwRWduZS03QjdkYjh1UnN3Y0djUXxBQ3Jtc0tsTnlrVThzZkdHZlI4VHVqQlk4Znhud1JtT0xjRDVia0sxYnZIMjU1WHl2R0RyRU9QaW9BWHNKS0Z5YWtFZzBYMzdzZGx3NWlRUkdId3ZyRnhzaF9MTE5pYUNvRFJaVDM2Z3RqUFpEWURvOUE1ZXppMA&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40taylorlorenz)[

Twitch](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=Watch_SD_EP&redir_token=QUFFLUhqblRfWWlKMkVqZnZ1WTNhWWhsZWFidHRKZ1FVUXxBQ3Jtc0tuQUZvd3ZPOHdUcXYzSmFZS3B2bnpTVUhQQnN6cGJRX0dqWV9WZjRmaVhhRVJpTHMwRndyU3NsU2k1eS1oMFkwQ3FibU9SeV9NLWZ3ZlF5XzFSQ2xSS0FDOU45eXNKUlNpWW5ERzQ5UjZ0UWtYQXdISQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitch.tv%2Ftaylorlorenz)

321 Comments

This after the news today might finally break the illusion that we aren't being occupied by state terrorists.

Transcript

0:00

But they are not taking down murderers

0:01

every time they get somebody. A lot of

0:03

these people have no criminal history.

0:07

For years, ISIS public affairs

0:09

department was run like any other

0:11

routine government communication shop.

0:13

They posted public service announcements

0:15

and news releases, mostly to their own

0:18

website where very few Americans would

0:20

ever see them. But since Trump's second

0:22

term, ICE has rapidly transformed itself

0:24

into an influencer style media machine,

0:27

churning out non-stop viral videos of

0:30

tactical operations and immigration

0:32

raids. IC's social media strategy and

0:34

ability to dominate the internet has

0:37

come to serve as a blueprint for other

0:38

Trump administration agencies, and their

0:41

relentless focus on dominating the

0:42

online world is already reshaping public

0:45

opinion on immigration. Drew Harwell is

0:48

a reporter at the Washington Post and he

0:50

recently published an investigation into

0:52

ISIS's social media blitz. Today, he's

0:54

joining me to reveal the inside

0:56

information that he uncovered about how

0:58

ISIS's internet meme team operates, what

1:01

their internal chat logs reveal about

1:03

their approach, the Gen Z clip farming

1:05

operation they're employing, and how a

1:07

previously under the radar federal law

1:09

enforcement agency became an influencer

1:12

style media machine. Drew, welcome to

1:15

Power User.

clip farm?

---

---

AN 1 26

President Donald Trump's second term will enter its second year on January 20, and there is already a running tally on the number of people who have been either killed or wounded by U.S. immigration agents.

Nonprofit gun violence news outlet The Trace reported Wednesday that after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Trump administration immigration officials have so far killed four people and shot five others since Trump officially took office last year. There have also been 28 incidents in which federal agents held people at gunpoint during immigration operations, and 14 shootings.

"They include the shootings of three people observing or documenting ICE raids; the shootings of five people driving away from traffic stops or evading an enforcement action; and the September 30 raid on a Chicago apartment building, during which half-asleep tenants and their children were held at gunpoint," wrote The Trace's Jennifer Mascia.

Mascia noted one particularly controversial shooting in which U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez was shot by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Chicago, Illinois last October. Martinez was shot five times but survived.

"I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes," read a text message from the officer who shot Martinez. "Put that in your book boys."

According to The Trace, there have also been 13 incidents in which federal immigration agents fired less-than-lethal munitions (like pepper balls and rubber bullets) at both suspects and the public. Mascia wrote that those munitions "can cause welts and burning in the lungs and eyes."

"[The Trump administration is] describing what’s happening to cities across the United States as an invasion and using language and imagery that’s evocative of war," Ohio State University law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández told The Trace. "The fact that immigration agents are responding in a way that is more aggressive than what is customary cannot be divorced from the fact that the rhetoric that leading figures in the Trump administration, including the president himself, are using is far more aggressive than what is customary."

Click here to read The Trace's report in full.

---

AN 1 26

The Trump administration provoked horror this week with the suggestion that the United States could be turned into a paradise if over a quarter of the people in the country were deported.

On Wednesday, the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security posted a piece of artwork depicting a pink late-1960s Cadillac Eldorado parked on a bright, idyllic beach. Over the clear blue sky are the words “America after 100 million deportations.The post was captioned by the agency: “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”

Social media users later discovered that DHS had, ironically, stolen the image from the Japanese pop artist Hiroshi Nagai without giving credit.

It is hardly the first time the administration has used edgy and inflammatory social media posts to promote its agenda. But DHS has come under particular scrutiny for its style of communication, which often evokes white nationalist rhetoric and symbolism.

Posts by the agency have cheered “remigration,” a term that far-right parties in Europe have often used to describe the forced repatriation of nonwhite populations, including citizens. Other posts have referred to President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” campaign as part of an effort to defend American “heritage” and “culture.”

The agency frequently evokes images of the American frontier and references “Manifest Destiny,” at times explicitly posting artwork glorifying the forced displacement of Native American populations.

An image by the agency, featuring a chiseled Uncle Sam calling on Americans to “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,” was even directly sourced from an overt neo-Nazi account.

The agency has only continued to double down in the face of criticism this week. On Friday, it posted that “2026 will be the year of American Supremacy” over an image of then-Gen. George Washington crossing the Delaware River, which was emblazoned with the words “Return this Land,” a possible reference to a recently-founded “whites-only” town in rural Arkansas known as “Return to the Land.”

But Wednesday’s post calling for “100 million deportations” specifically was perhaps the most direct nod yet to those who believe the United States must be reconstituted as a white nation. As social media users were quick to point out, only about 47 million people living in America are foreign-born, according to the US Census Bureau.

Even if the administration kicked out every single immigrant—including legal residents and naturalized citizens—meeting such a goal would mean deporting 53 million people who were born in the US and are legally entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

If the use of the phrase “third world” did not make it obvious enough, the specific number—100 million—seems to betray the racial motivation behind the message.

Citing 2020 census data on the Wikipedia page for “Demographics of the United States,” one social media user pointed out that approximately 100 million people in the US identified as nonwhite.

The DHS post drew comparisons to one made earlier this year by the close Trump ally and unofficial White House operative Laura Loomer, who suggested that thanks to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the massive internment camp in Florida for those arrested by immigration agents, “the alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals,” which referenced the total number of Hispanic people in the United States.

While it’s almost certainly not possible for the administration to conduct a deportation campaign of such a staggering scale within Trump’s term of office, the administration’s latest post was frightening to many observers, even as they acknowledged that it was a “troll post” meant to rile people up.

It is still reflective of the Trump administration’s ideology with respect to immigration. Leaders of Trump’s deportation effort have acknowledged that they target people based on their appearance, and many nonwhite US citizens have been caught in the dragnet. Meanwhile, its refugee policy has welcomed only white South Africans, as Trump has enacted what he says is a “permanent pause on migration from all Third World Countries.”

During 2026, the administration has said it plans to target hundreds of US citizens each month for “denaturalization,” and Trump has called for it to be used against his most prominent critics, including the Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and New York’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

“This is absolutely insane Nazi propaganda, posted by the US government,” said Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report in response to DHS’s call for“100 million deportations.”

“It makes it clear that the Trump administration’s mass deportation drive is not actually about ‘illegal immigration.’ There are estimated to be 14 million undocumented immigrants in the US. But the fascist DHS wants to deport 100 million people,” Norton continued. “This is a call by the US regime for ethnic cleansing of racial minorities, to create a white-supremacist regime without anyone with ‘third world’ heritage.”

===

---

INTERCEPT 126

Blackwater Successor Hunts Immigrants for ICE

Sam Biddle

Constellis Holdings, which traces its roots to Erik Prince’s mercenary firm Blackwater, landed an ICE contract as a bounty hunter.

Read More →

:{:{----}:

only fox tv?

USMC 2 TOURS 45% RULE TO SHOOT, PIZZA WOMAN SHAKING

INFLU INSTIGATORS then run to fox cam

MOLOTOV TENTS BURN NOT BY PROTESTORS

120 DAYS SOLD HOMES

ice enjoy cruelty, post vid soc med; riot staged 2 feds in plain clothes w/ cams? drones? push out 4 blocks

15 agents manhandle daca w expired lic; woman w small kid walked when filmed

The Truth Behind "War Ravaged Portland" | Jerrod Zisser | TMR

[

The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

1.98M subscribers

Dec 31, 2025 The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

Check out Jerrod Zisser on ⁨@theringoffire3228⁩ Watch the Majority Report live Monday–Friday at 12pm EST on YouTube OR via daily podcast at http://www.Majority.fm Send us IM messages during the live-stream with our free Majority Report App: http://majority.fm/app Subscribe to MR's daily AM Quickie newsletter: https://am-quickie.ghost.io

The Truth Behind "War Ravaged Portland" | Jerrod Zisser | TMR - YouTube

---

---

AN 12 25

Federal law enforcement agencies are detaining US citizens who do not carry proof of their citizenship in what civil rights advocates describe as a flagrant violation of constitutional rights—and a top Trump administration official is claiming the government has the authority to do so.

A Somali-born Minnesota man was alarmed by the practice last Tuesday when immigration agents tackled him, handcuffed him, and arrested him, refusing to accept his REAL ID as proof of his legal residence in a video that was widely circulated on social media.

The man, who identified only as Mubashir, was placed into a chokehold and forced to his knees in the snow on his way to get food in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which has a large Somali population.

As the Sahan Journal describes:

Mubashir said he told officers multiple times that he is a US citizen and asked if he could show them his ID. Officers ignored him, dragged him in the snow, and pushed him into a car as witnesses yelled and blew whistles, according to the video of his arrest.The arrest occurred as federal agents walked into nearby businesses in the Somali-heavy neighborhood, questioning people and asking them to show their passports. Mubashir said he was in the car with officers for about 20 minutes, asking them repeatedly if he could show them his ID. They refused, he said.

According to the report, officers asked if they could photograph Mubashir to check whether he’s a US citizen—likely to run his information through a facial recognition application that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acknowledged it uses during immigration stops, including on US citizens without their consent.

Mubashir declined to have his photo taken, asking: “How would a picture prove I’m a US citizen?”

He was later taken to a federal building that houses an immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. Only after having his fingerprint taken was Mubashir allowed to present his ID and given permission to leave.

Officers refused to drop him back off at Cedar-Riverside, instead telling him to walk home more than seven miles in the midst of a snowstorm, which had led authorities to issue a weather advisory.

“I deserve to be here like anyone else—I’m a US citizen,” Mubashir said. “I can’t even step outside without being tackled—no question—because I’m Somali.”

“I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say ‘police.’ That’s embarrassing,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said to Mubashir during a press conference on Wednesday.

According to legal experts, there is no requirement under US law that American citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment’s notice.

In comments to KQED, a public radio station in San Francisco, earlier this month, Richard Boswell, a law professor at the University of California Law School, called it “most troubling” that US citizens have felt the need to carry their ID to avoid harassment.

“There is no reason why government officers can or should be questioning people about their citizenship without any reason to suspect that they are noncitizens who are here unlawfully,” he explained.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noncitizens must carry proof of their legal status, such as a green card or a foreign passport with stamps indicating a lawful visa.

About two dozen states require residents to identify themselves if stopped by law enforcement. But none require citizens to carry a physical ID at all times, except in specific cases, such as operating a motorized vehicle.

And, as Bree Bernwanger, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, explained, “there is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them.” Unless police have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the US unlawfully, she said, “there shouldn’t be a reason to have to carry your papers, because immigration agents aren’t supposed to stop people or detain them.”

But as backlash rolled in from the video of Mubashir’s arrest, the man leading Trump’s mass deportation crusade, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, seemed to falsely suggest via social media that citizens are required to carry proof of their citizenship.

“One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A REAL ID is not an immigration document,” he wrote in response to a post about Mubashir’s arrest, which noted his citizenship.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, responded that “in no way does the INA require citizens to carry immigration documents” and that Bovino is “just letting his jackboot thugs presumptively detain whomever they like.”

Immigration lawyer Jared McClain later noted on social media that, in response to a class-action suit arguing against indiscriminate workplace raids, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) argued that an Alabama construction worker, who was kept in handcuffs even after presenting multiple REAL IDs to agents, had still not done enough to prove his citizenship, according to the federal officers.

“This is the official policy—not a one-off,” McClain said.

Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the filing was “official confirmation that ICE HSI believes that it can, in fact, detain US citizens for immigration checks, and keep them handcuffed while they have their biometrics run.”

“That is a chilling assertion,” he said.

ProPublicafound in October that at least 170 Americans have been detained by immigration agents, sometimes for days, with some having been “dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot.”

But months after the report was published, top administration officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—continue to emphatically deny that any US citizens have been detained during the second Trump administration.

At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Noem abruptly left before Democrats could grill her on reports that citizens had been arrested, claiming she had to speak at a different committee hearing. Reports later found that the hearing had already been cancelled, leading to accusations that Noem misled Congress.

In response to Bovino’s assertion that REAL IDs are not immigration documents, Nicole Foy, a reporter at ProPublica, toldthe Border Patrol commander: “We’ve been trying to request an interview with you for months now about the enforcement operations you’re leading and the detention of US citizens.”

“Why does a US citizen need to carry immigration documents?” she asked. At press time, Bovino had not publicly responded to Foy’s question.

---

an 12 25

Although MS NOW host, Never Trump conservative and ex-GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough often says that the United States' immigration laws must be obeyed and enforced, he is vehemently critical of the way in which President Donald Trump's

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are being carried out. Scarborough considers the raids reckless and blatantly cruel.

Scarborough isn't alone in that view.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on November 29, journalist/author Adrian Carrasquillo reports that companies helping ICE with the raids are facing an angry backlash from consumers.

"Companies that have collaborated with immigration enforcement agencies in various ways to aid Trump's mass deportation initiative — whether through allowing ICE to raid their parking lots, taking on contracts with DHS, or a variety of other actions — are starting to feel the rumblings of a consumer revolt," Carrasquillo reports. "Home Depot is possibly the most visible case after the company’s parking lots became a familiar setting for shocking viral clips and local news segments depicting federal agents' aggressive attempts to apprehend unsuspecting day laborers. The home-improvement chain now faces the prospect of a national boycott."

Carrasquillo adds, "But that's not the end of their troubles: Bold and unpredictable protests are beginning to disrupt retail operations across the country…. For months now, Home Depot has been singled out for its role as a staging ground in the Trump deportation regime."

Another possible target for boycotts, according to Carrasquillo, is AT&T.

Carrasquillo reports, "There's also speculation that AT&T data could have been used by DHS to target people during the shocking raid at the 7500 South Shore Drive residential building raid in Chicago."

Chris Newman, general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), doesn't see these boycotts letting up anytime soon.

Newman told The Bulwark, "People are becoming more emboldened to cross Trump as his power wanes. The shared goal of the corporate overlords and ICE is to make people feel powerless, and these actions are a way of resisting that sense of powerlessness."

---

an 11 25

Trump's policiescracking down on undocumented immigrants by ramping up ICE authorities are facing sustained and growing push back from judges, according to a new analysis from Politico, including several that were appointed by him.

Politico's reporting on Friday concerned a policy Trump instituted back in July, calling for all individuals facing deportation proceedings to be jailed without the possibility of seeking a release. Though the Trump administration has defended its crackdown by claiming that it is being applied to dangerous and violent criminals, Politico noted that many of the immigrants targeted by this new policy "have lived in the U.S. for years, and sometimes decades, without incident and have been pursuing asylum or other forms of legal status."

The response to this rule sparked a "tidal wave of emergency lawsuits" claiming it violated immigration laws and immigrants' due-process rights. As of Friday morning, when its piece was published, Politico found that in an overwhelming percentage of these lawsuits, judges ruled against Trump's policy, with a good number of them being judges he himself appointed.

At least 225 judges have ruled in more than 700 cases that the administration’s new policy, which also deprives people of an opportunity to seek release from an immigration court, is a likely violation of law and the right to due process," the report explained. "Those judges were appointed by all modern presidents — including 23 by Trump himself — and hail from at least 35 states, according to a Politico analysis of thousands of recent cases."

The rate at which legal opposition to Trump's immigrant detention policy has grown is also considerable, with the number of judges who have ruled against the administration doubling in just the last month.

The scale of the push back feels even greater when considering the inverse: Politico found that only eight judges in the entire country, six of whom were Trump appointees, ruled in favor of the administration's position.

Judges have also grown "exasperated" by the volume of litigation flowing into their courts as a result of Trump's policy, making it difficult for them to keep up.

“The Court is unable to remain current on all new case authority supporting the Court’s conclusion, given the continued onslaught of litigation being generated by [the administration’s] widespread illegal detention practices,” U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder, a federal judge in California originally appointed by Bill Clinton, said in a comment from last week.

“Dozens of district courts across the nation — with more each day — have rejected DHS’s expansion of … mandatory detention,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, another Clinton appointee in Idaho. “This court joins the overwhelming majority.”

---

MMA

ICE keeps giving exclusive access to right-wing and right-leaning influencers

Influencers have joined ICE on ride-alongs across the country, calling protesters the “enemy within” and bragging about getting “full access” with “no guidelines”

Written by Payton Armstrong

Published 11/20/25

A handful of right-wing and right-leaning influencers have been given repeated access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and ride-alongs, celebrating “riding with ICE in Chicago exposing the enemies within” and touting their “full access.”

The ride-alongs have come as Trump sends the National Guard into U.S. cities partially in response to protests against ICE. Right-wing media, who have generally seen increased access to the second Trump administration, have cheered the incursions.

A.J. Bauer, a University of Alabama professor who studies media activism, told NPR that the Trump administration is “working hand in glove” with right-wing influencers “in order to promote the government's message” around the protests against ICE. Meanwhile, some local media outlets have reportedly not been granted the same access when they have asked for it.

Trump has sent troops to blue cities across the country. Right-wing media – who have been given extensive administration access — have cheered the move.

Benny Johnson

Johnson posted a YouTube video titled “I Went on an ICE Raid and Arrested Illegals in Chicago” that earned at least 422,000 views. “Come along with us as we show you what a day in the life of an ICE agent inside one of America’s most Democrat left-wing cities is actually like,” he said. Johnson also posted a picture of himself with agents in military attire and wrote, “It’s just me and my homies, in the streets.” After the visit, Johnson reportedly posted (and later seemingly removed) “an AI-generated video that featured him portraying Batman and beating up multiple people wearing sombreros and ponchos.” Twitter/X, [10/3/25, 10/3/25, 10/3/25; YouTube, The Benny Show,10/5/25; The Independent, 10/6/25]}:

Chaya Raichik

Citation

From an October 15, 2025, video uploaded to Nick Shirley's YouTube channel

---

AN 11? 25

Kilmar Armando Ábrego García's ongoing case was back in court on Thursday as Judge Paula Xinis questioned U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

It was revealed that top immigration official John Cantú didn't draft the sworn statements submitted to the court for the case. The statement was previously sealed, Lawfare's Roger Parloff wrote in a BlueSky thread.

Ábrego was sent to an El Salvador prison, despite a judge's order not to send him to the country. Initially, the administration sought to deport him to various African countries such as Uganda, Eswatini and now, Liberia.

Ábrego sought to go to Costa Rica, but Cantú wrote, and the government has alleged, that the country would not accept him.

Legal analyst Adam Klasfeld, of "All Rise News," reported on X, "A senior ICE official just admitted in an evidentiary hearing in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case that someone else drafted his declaration in the case and he didn’t know what certain words meant."

Parloff, who was live-posting about the court hearing, cited Judge Xinis saying that the witness had zero information about the content of his declaration.

"No shade on you Mr. Cantú," Xinis said, according to Parloff. "You've been very candid with the court."

Ábrego's attorney, Sascha Rand, asked who might have more information "about the sum and substance of your declaration that we could go talk to?"

Cantú responded, saying, "No, sir. As far as I know, I'm the only one he talked to," Parloff relayed.

---

---

AN 11 25

In a new 233-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis found that many top officials in President Donald Trump's administration "lied multiple times" under oath.

The Thursday ruling issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agents from using force in Chicago. It has already been appealed and put on hold by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Chicago Sun Times reporter Jon Seidel said.

Legal analysts Mark Joseph Stern of Slate and independent journalist Julie DiCaro sorted through the lengthy opinion, finding citations of "widespread misrepresentations that call into question everything" they "say they are doing in their characterization of what is happening."

Her ruling then claims that their testimony is objectively false, Stern said, broadly discrediting the Trump administration.

"After reviewing all the evidence submitted to the Court and listening to the testimony elicited at the preliminary injunction hearing, during depositions, and in other court proceedings, the Court finds Defendants’ evidence simply not credible," Ellis said, according to DiCaro.

At one point, in footnote six, DiCaro cited Ellis writing, "In another case considering some of the same evidence presented to this Court, another court in this district also found that the perceptions of certain of Defendants’ declarants, such as [Russell] Hott and [Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Daniel] Parra, were not reliable."

"But a review of [evidence submitted by Defendants] shows the opposite — supporting Plaintiffs’ claims and undermining all of Defendants’ claims that their actions toward protesters, the press, and religious practitioners have been, as Bovino has stated, 'more than exemplary,'"the judge also wrote.

In a section where she addressed the testimony of Gregory Bovino, commander-at-large of the U.S. Border Patrol, Judge Ellis found that he also lied under oath on several occasions.

"When shown a video of agents hitting Rev. Black with pepper balls, Bovino denied seeing a projectile hit Rev. Black in the head," Judge Ellis wrote.

"In another video ...he obviously tackles [Scott] Blackburn [one of Plaintiffs’ declarants]...But instead of admitting to using force against Blackburn, Bovino denied it and ...stated that force was used against him,"the ruling continued.

"Most tellingly, Bovino admitted in his deposition that he lied multiple times about the events that occurred in Little Village that prompted him to throw tear gas at protesters," the judge added.

"Defendants, however, cannot simply create their own narrative of what happened, misrepresenting the evidence to justify their actions," the judge wrote.

She ultimately explains, "These are not the only inconsistencies and incredible representations in the record. While Defendants may argue that the Court identifies only minor inconsistencies, every minor inconsistency adds up, and at some point, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe."

Read the full ruling here.

---

---

an 11 25

The Idaho Statesman reports the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office and Caldwell Police Department released a joint statement Wednesday contradicting ICE claims of orchestrating a Sunday raid that was not an ICE-led operation, despite what the Department of Homeland Security indicated.

“To be clear, this was not an ICE-led enforcement action,” said Sheriff Kieran Donahue and Police Chief Rex Ingram. “The statement released by DHS yesterday claiming responsibility for dismantling a criminal organization was completely false and a serious misrepresentation of the facts.”

Homeland Security claimed in a Tuesday media statement that “ICE dismantled an illegal horse-racing, animal fighting, and a gambling enterprise operation” and that “as part of the operation ICE law enforcement officers arrested 105 illegal aliens,” according to the Statesman.

But the raid at La Catedral Arena, which concluded with the arrest of four people for alleged illegal gambling, according to the Statesman, was in fact led by the FBI’s Treasure Valley Metro Violent Crime and Gang Task Force. The Statesman added that the FBI has said several times that it was the lead agency and that ICE was there “as part of the broader federal team to process individuals who were found to have potential immigration violations.”

In their joint statement, Donahue and Ingram criticized Homeland Security for putting out a claim that was “deeply misleading to the public.”

The two said they normally limit comments on “active federal investigations,” but felt it was “important to address the confusion caused by recent public statements from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

Additionally, they pointed out that follow-up questions about the raid from members of the media or friends and family members involved should go to the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office, not Homeland Security.

“Our agencies remain committed to supporting the rule of law within our jurisdictions, regardless of whether they are state, local, or federal operations,” they said.

Read the Idaho Statesman report at this link.

---

an 11 25

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that President Donald Trump's administration unlawfully arrested and detained hundreds of people across the country as part of its immigration crackdown, and ordered them to be released by November 21.

CNN host Boris Sanchez reported Wednesday that the decision by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings (an appointee of former President Joe Biden) was a "major blow" to Trump's mass deportation efforts, while reporter Whitney Wild described the ruling was an "enormous win" for plaintiffs' attorneys suing the administration. She observed that Judge Cummings pointed out that more than 600 people detained across the country "have no deportation orders" and "no criminal history."

"This more practically applies to all 3,000 people who are who have been arrested by ICE and Customs and Border [Protection] between June and October," Wild said. "But most practically speaking, it applies to 615 people who are currently in custody all across the country."

According to Wild, plaintiffs' attorneys believe roughly 1,100 immigrants "simply left voluntarily after they were placed in custody because they just they gave up on their immigration status fight and chose to leave the United States." However, attorney Mark Fleming told CNN affiliate WLS that the ruling proved their argument that a bulk of the administration's arrests of immigrants in Chicago, Illinois this summer and fall — under the direction of Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino — were illegal.

"For the last two months, the terrorizing of our neighborhoods, the brutalizing of people here has all been unlawful," Fleming said. "That's what it's going to show. It's going to show that all of this, all of the tactics of Mr. Bovino, all of the tactics of ICE have been unlawful in the vast, vast majority of arrests."

So far, the Department of Homeland Security has not yet said if it will appeal Judge Cummings' decision to the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, though Fleming told WLS that he understood that the Department of Justice was planning to consult with Solicitor General D. John Sauer (one of Trump's former personal attorneys) about whether to file an appeal. However, Wild reported that the ruling may potentially have nationwide implications.

"More broadly, the question is, what does this mean for cases all across the country?" Wild said. "... The attorney for the ACLU told me that she believes that there are other cases across the country that are similar. And so you will start to see more cases end up just like this, with judges simply saying that these people who are in custody, it's completely improper."

---

---

an 11 25

Trump encouraging 'rogue agency' to engage in 'lawlessness': former DOJ prosecutor

---

AN 11 25

Black Memphis Residents 'don't feel safe' following harassment from Trump's cops

---

---

AN 11 25

ABC News reports the Border Patrol official in charge of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago admitted to lying about a thrown rock before launching tear gas at protesters.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said Thursday that Patrol Commander Greg Bovino fabricated claims about the Oct. 23 incident, which was caught on camera with Bovino throwing a gas canister at demonstrators in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood without giving a verbal warning — a violation of the judge's earlier temporary restraining order limiting the use of force, the judge said. That same day, the judge issued a preliminary injunction limiting the use of force during immigration arrests and protests.

"Mr. Bovino and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had been hit by a rock in the head before throwing the tear gas, but video evidence disproves this. And he ultimately admitted he was not hit until after he threw the tear gas," Ellis said.

DHS initially defended Bovino's actions saying that a Border Patrol transport van transporting undocumented immigrants was attacked by demonstrators.

"The mob of rioters grew more hostile and violent, advancing toward agents and began throwing rocks and other objects at agents, including one that struck Chief Greg Bovino in the head," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an October statement.

But Bovino proved McLaughlin’s statement incorrect.

ABC News reached out to DHS in the aftermath of Bovino’s confession but DHS officials responded by criticizing the judge's decision to grant a preliminary injunction.

“This injunction is an extreme act by an activist judge that risks the lives and livelihoods of law enforcement officers,” the official said.

Commenters on X slammed Bovino’s dishonesty.

“I’d sure as s—— go to jail if had lied about my actions,” posted retired veteran Scott Warhin on X.

“In any other era in America, Greg Bovino would immediately be fired for flagrantly lying under oath in court,” complained another critic on X. “But Trump loves criminals and miscreants. America has had enough of this s—— show.”

---

---

Meet the man currently leading Border Patrol's operations in LA

cal matters

In summary

The immigration raids across Los Angeles have all the hallmarks of Gregory Bovino’s Kern County sweep, which a federal judge says likely violated the Constitution.

The day after Congress certified President Donald Trump’s victory, Gregory Bovino led his Border Patrol agents hundreds of miles north, sweeping through Kern County in an audacious immigration raid that shocked the local agricultural community.

At the time, Bovino, chief of the El Centro sector, said that his agents had a “predetermined list of targets,” many of whom had criminal records, before they set off for Kern County. “We did our homework,” he said.

In the weeks after, both the factual and legal foundation of Bovino’s bold sweep crumbled. Border Patrol documents obtained by CalMatters showed that 77 of the 78 people his agents arrested had no prior record with the agency.

Then, a federal judge ruled the wide-net sweep – based on random, warrantless stops where day laborers and farm workers congregate – likely violated the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches. Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security promised to re-train Bovino’s 900-plus agents on the Constitution. But that wasn’t enough. The judge issued an injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from conducting similar raids in California’s Central Valley.

“You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” said U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston.

It appears Bovino’s stock has only risen within the Trump administration since.

On Thursday, Bovino – in his green uniform, with his high-and-tight hairdo – stood next to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and announced that he has been in charge of Customs and Border Protection operations in Los Angeles. Indeed, the immigration raids that sparked the protests have all the hallmarks of Bovino’s Kern County operation.

Federal agents picked up day laborers outside of a Home Depot in Westlake. They went after car wash workers in Los Angeles and garment workers in Downtown LA. And farm workers have reported that Border Patrol agents have been conducting operations around the strawberry fields of Oxnard.

Bovino doesn’t distinguish between field workers or paleteros and fentanyl dealers. To him, they all fit one category: “Bad people.”

“For Customs and Border Protection, that’s why we are here right now, is to remove those bad people and bad things, whether illegal aliens, drugs or otherwise,” he said at the press conference Thursday. “We are here and we’re not going away.”

At this point, Bovino’s rapid rise from one of 20 section chiefs around the country to the face of Trump’s aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles almost seems inevitable. His team employs a group of five agents to make videos, cranking out dramatic, fictionalized videos portraying migrants crossing the border as menaces with a bloodlust to commit crimes.

Bovino seems to relish the camera himself. The El Centro sector posts staged photos of him in uniform, including a closeup with an AR-15, and one on a white horse in the desert, cradling a shotgun. Inan interview with CalMatters in February, flanked by a wall of armed agents, he taunted his other Border Patrol counterparts. “Twenty sectors in the U.S. Border Patrol, and we do call ourselves the ‘Premiere Sector,’” he said with a smile. “So please let those other chiefs know we said that.”

Bovino likes to praise President Dwight Eisenhower, who led the largest deportation in American history, rounding up 1.3 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans in 1954. The first buses deporting migrants – in what was called “Operation Wetback” – rolled out of El Centro over 70 years ago.

The Kern County raids were pitched as a “proof of concept” for how the Border Patrol could be mobilized for mass deportation operations away from the border. It’s exactly the kind of operation that, according to the Wall Street Journal, top White House aide Stephen Miller wanted to see when he convened top immigration officials in late May and demanded more aggressive action. Miller, the Journal reported, told officials they didn’t need targeted lists of immigrants – they should instead just go to Home Depots, inspiring the LA raids.

Now, Bovino, at the same press conference in which agents handcuffed Sen. Alex Padilla after the senator tried asking questions of Noem, said he’s sticking around.

“You’ll continue to see us in Los Angeles,” he said. “Not going anywhere soon.”

A new series of raids in California

Bovino labeled the Kern County sweeps “Operation Return to Sender.” Over three days, his agents detained day laborers, farm workers and others in a Home Depot parking lot, outside a convenience store and along a highway between orchards.

The ACLU sued on behalf of United Farm Workers, arguing that the indiscriminate stops violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.

The judge hasn’t yet ruled on the full case, but found the ACLU was likely to succeed, and issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Border Patrol agents from taking similar actions. That restricts them from stopping people unless they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in violation of U.S. immigration law. It also bars agents from carrying out warrantless arrests unless they have probable cause that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.

The injunction only applies to the Central Valley, but similar legal challenges could await after the latest wave of sweeps.

Advocates are still trying to get a handle on the scope and details of federal actions over the last week.

Just after dawn on Tuesday, Border Patrol agents and other federal officers swept across Ventura, Kern, and Tulare counties, according to the United Farm Workers.

UFW provided CalMatters with a video that shows a white and green Border Patrol truck pulling up to a business in Moorpark. Two masked agents emerged and arrested a man in a baseball cap and neon yellow work shirt who was opening the gate just before 9 a.m.

A video shared on social media by ABC7 shows officers in green Border Patrol uniforms chasing a farmworker through an Oxnard field. Another video shot from a different angle shows a green and white Border Patrol truck racing along the edge of the farm fields.

The agents appear to catch the worker, but it is unclear what happens after that. “There’s a lot we don’t know yet,” said Antonio de Loera-Brust, a spokesman for UFW. The labor union representing farm workers is working to contact families affected by the raids.

Other videos show white and green vehicles typically used by Border Patrol, but so far, the agency has not confirmed their participation. A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency for Border Patrol, told CalMatters to direct our questions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A spokesperson for ICE told CalMatters to contact Customs and Border Protection with our questions.

“We’ve seen videos of Border Patrol trucks tearing through farmlands. I’ve heard reports of operations in farmlands, and we’re still investigating if the court’s order has been violated,” said Bree Bernwanger, an attorney with ACLU Northern California, which brought the Kern County suit.

“The Fourth Amendment really prohibits immigration agents from doing sweeps of communities, from doing racial profiling, from targeting people just because they’re Brown or looking like a farm worker.”

Oxnard Mayor Luis McArthur said his office has also received disturbing reports of immigration officials trying to enter agricultural fields and conducting vehicle stops.

“These actions are completely unjustified and harmful. They create chaos and distress in our community without contributing to public safety,” he said. “The individuals affected by these operations; they’re not criminals. They’re hardworking families who make meaningful contributions to our local economy and to our greater community.”

Elizabeth Strater, vice president of the UFW, said that a number of employers stopped federal agents from accessing their land.

“All across California one thing that is good to hear is that we can confirm in a number of locations federal agents attempted to enter a worksite and were repelled because the employer took the practical steps, like gates, and told the agents that they couldn’t come onto the property,” she said.

In February, Bovino denied that his agents had gone after farmworkers.

“For us, targeting agricultural workers at their job, absolutely not. That has no merit,” he said. “But when Border Patrol comes into contact with illegal aliens, you’re going to get arrested.”

He promised to take his fight across the state. “Our area goes through Central California all the way to the Oregon border, so anywhere in that area, we are going to go where that threat is, and where we can do the most damage to bad people and bad things as we possibly can,” Bovino said.

For now, that’s Los Angeles. Bovino said at the Thursday press conference he had several hundred agents and officers there.

“Many millions of illegal aliens have passed across that border over the past several years. It’s our job to get them out,” he said. “And that’s what we’re going to do and what we’re doing right now.”

---

---

AN 11 25

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tells the New Republic that “we have all three key ingredients of a strongman state: a rubber-stamp Congress acceding to the president’s desires; a Supreme Court enhancing the president’s powers; and a power-hungry president … disregarding the laws and the checks and balances of our Constitution.”

In this environment, President Donald Trump is using 10 rules out of the “authoritarian playbook” to collapse U.S. democracy.

“The first rule … is to fire the government’s referees,” said Merkley, which Trump began when he fired 17 inspectors general and members of federal oversight commissions and regulatory boards without cause. The second rule is then to “pack your government with loyalists."

“The Senate is supposed to block confirmation of unqualified individuals,” but Merkley said that’s where that “rubber stamp” in the Republican majority comes in handy.

A third rule is to grab the power over the funding of programs from Congress so a single man can decide which programs to fund and at what level. Once you’ve grabbed the funding levers you can pursue the “fourth rule in the authoritarian playbook” by going after centers of power.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

“Trump is doing exactly that when he withholds research grants from universities or security clearances from law firms unless they restructure to his will,” Merkley said.

The fifth rule involves an autocrat pushing his influence over the press, which Trump is doing with “lawsuits and his power over broadcast licenses and corporate mergers to pressure newspapers and networks over the content of their reports and broadcasts, and even which late-night comedians they employ.” Merkley said Trump’s already destroyed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defunded PBS, NPR, and even Voice of America, which was created specifically to counter disinformation from authoritarian regimes around the world.

Rule No. 6 is to disregard due process. “Democracies don’t have secret police,” said Merkley. “But now, unidentified masked federal agents are arresting people off the street … terrorizing communities, zip-tying children, and disappearing people overseas without a fair trial.”

Rule No. 7 — attack and diminish dissent by weaponizing the Department of Justice — is hot on the heels of that with Trump publicly naming enemies and pushing the DOJ to pursue them: James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, John Bolton.

Soon comes Rule No 8, which involves the “use the military to suppress domestic dissent.”

“Trump is activating Title 10 of the U.S. Code, section 12406, to federalize the National Guard and send them into American cities,” said Merkley. “… A district judge ruled against Trump’s effort to federalize and deploy Oregon National Guard members in Portland … but Trump may yet succeed, because some judges … are arguing that the courts should defer to the president’s discretion.”

“A ninth rule is to use the power of the government to spread propaganda,” said Merkley, which Trump is already doing with “banners with the president’s face hanging off federal buildings; video announcements at airports featuring Homeland Security Secretary Noem blaming Democrats for the government shutdown; federal websites spreading the president’s political messages,” all in violation of the Hatch Act and other rules.

A tenth rule in the authoritarian playbook — and the most dangerous rule of all, said Merkley — is to rig future elections. Trump is already trying to consolidate states’ voter registration files into a national database to make them easier to manipulate in the next election, and he’s gerrymandering states’ congressional districts to increase Republican power in the House of Representatives, possibly with the blessing of the Supreme Court in upcoming months.

It will take “strong citizen resistance” in the autocrat’s first year to derail his effort. After that, the struggle gets considerably harder, if not impossible.

“Let’s ring the alarm bells loud and clear and pass the election test in November 2026 with flying colors,” Merkley said.

Read the full New Republic report at this link.

---

---

mma

How Fox News has justified and celebrated ICE’s violent immigration crackdown in Chicago

As ICE targeted immigrant communities, Fox whitewashed its abuses

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Ben Van Bloem, Harrison Ray, Payton Armstrong, Jack Wheatley & Sophie Lawton

Published 10/21/25

October 9 marked one month of “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s effort to target and harass immigrant communities in Chicago with military-style raids and violent enforcement to advance its mass deportation plans. Fox News has responded by celebrating and justifying the violence Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have unleashed on Chicago residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status.

Fox inaugurated the operation by embedding a reporter with ICE agents in a move reminiscent of the height of the global war on terror, signaling to its audience that Chicago was a battlefield that required a militarized crackdown. Over the subsequent four weeks, Fox dutifully fulfilled that expectation with coverage that painted civic resistance to ICE as proof that Trump’s authoritarian tactics were needed, while simultaneously whitewashing the agency’s worst abuses.

On September 30, ICE initiated a raid on a Chicago apartment building that began with agents rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter and ended with residents — citizens and noncitizens alike — reportedly imprisoned in unmarked vans, grouped by perceived race, ethnicity, or immigration status. Parents were separated from their children, some of whom were zip-tied to other kids, according to a witness. In at least one instance, an agent pointed their gun in the face of a grandmother who lives in the building, she said. Agents destroyed family belongings and lobbed flash-bang grenades as they ransacked the building.

In a different context, it would have been the stuff of right-wing paranoid nightmares. But this was a building in Chicago that houses Black and immigrant families, and Fox found it worthy of praise.

In a segment teasing coverage of the siege, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner said the security forces had zeroed in on “a Chicago apartment complex … targeting members of the brutal Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang,” adding: “Seems like a good thing."

The ICE claim that the raid would yield TdA members, which Faulkner parroted, turned out to be wrong. According to MSNBC’s reporting, only one of the people arrested was “verified” as part of Tren de Aragua, and ICE didn’t provide evidence to back up even that assertion. (ICE has repeatedly claimed people are members of TdA, only to have its accusations fall apart under scrutiny.)

The next evening, host Laura Ingraham repeated the false ICE talking point that the raid turned up gang members.

“TdA gang members in Chicago got a surprise this week, an unexpected drop-in that involved a Black Hawk helicopter and hundreds of federal agents,” Ingraham said.

Video

Citation

From the October 1, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Ingraham also falsely claimed that the building raid was proof that Trump was “fixing the criminal mess” in Chicago.

MSNBC found that of the 37 people arrested, only eight had criminal charges and it isn’t clear how many — if any — had been convicted.

Faulkner returned to the story on October 2, reiterating the false characterization of the building.

“The political left is also pushing against a massive federal raid on an apartment complex taken over by members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang,” she said.

Video

Citation

From the October 2, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Faulkner Focus

The storming of the apartment building wasn’t the only violent incident Fox chose to celebrate. On September 19, a federal agent in a Chicago suburb threw Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh to the ground during a protest outside an ICE facility.

Ingraham praised the assault.

“A similar situation in Chicago today where absolutely unhinged agitators worked to form a blockade — they don't have actual jobs, but that is their job — in front of an ICE facility, including a Democrat congressional candidate who was thrown to the ground by an ICE agent,” Ingraham said. “Good work.” (Abughazaleh formerly worked at Media Matters.)

Even when Fox personalities didn’t overtly celebrate ICE’s abuses, the network has justified the Trump administration’s brutal tactics. Such coverage frequently clustered around high-profile events with dramatic footage, such as the storming of the apartment building. Other notable incidents included federal agents using tear gas, pepper ball projectiles, and rubber bullets on protesters on September 19 and again on September 26.

Describing the same event, Fox host Jesse Watters said the protesters“went loco” and “slashed tires,” adding, “Mostly peaceful protests are no bueno in the golden age. One day they’ll learn.” Watters introduced footage of ICE’s brutal tactics by mocking the protesters, saying it “didn’t work out for them.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/19/25]

In two notable cases, Fox appeared to justify federal agents shooting two people, killing one of them, by repeating government claims that were soon undercut by local reporting.

On September 12, an ICE officer in a northern suburb of Chicago shot and killed Silverio Villegas González following a traffic stop. A Department of Homeland Security statement claimed the officer had been “seriously injured,” which was later contradicted by police body camera footage in which the officer is heard saying his injuries were “nothing major.” A witness also told the Sun Times that they “didn’t see Villegas González dragging one of the agents behind his car,” and NBC News reported, “No videos show the actual shooting or the ICE agent being dragged and injured, making it difficult to corroborate DHS’s account of what happened.”

Fox framed the fatal shooting by repeating the unsubstantiated government claims.

As the news broke, Fox anchor Martha MacCallum presented DHS’ version of events without qualifications.

“An ICE officer severely injured during a traffic stop in Illinois," MacCallum said. “ICE says that the suspect dragged the officer as he tried to get away.”

Video

Citation

From the September 12, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Story with Martha MacCallum

Weekend anchor Jon Scott said González “tried to flee the scene in a car, dragging the agent by his bumper,” adopting DHS’s initial characterization. “The agent wound up shooting and killing that alien.”

Then on September 28, Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy repeated the characterization, saying, “We saw an ICE agent dragged with his vehicle.”

Two Fox hosts had a similar approach to an October 4 incident in which a Border Patrol agent shot Chicago woman Marimar Martinez five times. According to her attorney, footage apparently contradicts initial government allegations that Martinez had rammed her car into the agent’s vehicle — which the government then moved more than 1,000 miles away, despite its likely role as key evidence in the case. Several of the government's claims appear to be undercut by the criminal complaint against Martinez.

Jesse Watters repeated the government’s unverified version of the event.

“So you’re saying she didn’t ram the ICE officer’s vehicle with her car and trap it?” Watters asked co-host Jessica Tarlov. She had referenced press coverage that undercut the government’s version of events, to which Watters replied: “We don’t have that — I’m just not going to take your word for it.”

Video

Citation

From the October 7, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

Ingraham claimed officers had been “nearly run over” and called it a “coordinated ambush of federal officers.”

Beyond the Chicago area, the Trump administration has surged — or threatened to surge — federal immigration and police forces, the National Guard, and the military into Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Portland, Memphis, Baltimore, New Orleans, San Francisco, and New York City. Many of those cities have already resisted Trump’s onslaughts. Wherever he sends his forces next, Fox is sure to follow, cheering his administration along the way.

---

---

AN PP 10 25

*These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system.

Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings.

“He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van. It doesn’t say ICE.”

One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go around without license plates?”

And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?”

During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled. There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to reliably learn their identities.

Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in Chicago and elsewhere. “It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, ‘It worked there, so now let me send them there,’” Amezcua said.

Current and former national security officials share the mayor’s concerns. They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force. The transformation, the officials say, unfolded rapidly and in plain sight. Trump’s DHS appointees swiftly dismantled civil rights guardrails, encouraged agents to wear masks, threatened groups and state governments that stood in their way, and then made so many arrests that the influx overwhelmed lawyers trying to defend immigrants taken out of state or out of the country.

And although they are reluctant to predict the future, the current and former officials worry that this force assembled from federal agents across the country could eventually be turned against any groups the administration labels a threat.

One former senior DHS official who was involved in oversight said that what is happening on American streets today “gives me goosebumps.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered investigations: “Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.”

The former official paused. “We’re at an inflection point in history right now and it’s frightening.”

Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were offices within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department.

The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public.

The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended.

The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement.

Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000.

“Supercharging this law enforcement agency and at the same time you have oversight being eliminated?” said the former DHS official. “This is very scary.”

Michelle Brané, a longtime human rights attorney who directed DHS’ ombudsman office during the Biden administration, said Trump’s adherence to “the authoritarian playbook is not even subtle.”

“ICE, their secret police, is their tool,” Brané said. “Once they have that power, which they have now, there’s nothing stopping them from using it against citizens.”

Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, refuted descriptions of ICE as a secret police force. She called such comparisons the kind of “smears and demonization” that led to the recent attack on an ICE facility in Texas, in which a gunman targeted an ICE transport van and shot three detained migrants, two of them fatally, before killing himself.

In a written response to ProPublica, McLaughlin dismissed the current and former national security officials and scholars interviewed by ProPublica as “far-left champagne socialists” who haven’t seen ICE enforcement up close.

“If they had,” she wrote, “they would know when our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs” and other criminals.

McLaughlin said the recruiting blitz is not compromising standards. She wrote that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is ready for 11,000 new hires by the beginning of next year and that training has been streamlined and boosted by technology. “Our workforce never stops learning,” McLaughlin wrote.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson also praised ICE conduct and accused Democrats of making “dangerous, untrue smears.”

“ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism,” Jackson said. “Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens and fueling false narratives that lead to violence.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump pick who fired nearly the entire civil rights oversight staff, said the move was in response to CRCL functioning “as internal adversaries that slow down operations,” according to a DHS spokesperson.

Trump also eliminated the department’s Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which was charged with flagging inhumane conditions at ICE detention facilities where many of the apprehended immigrants are held. The office was resurrected after a lawsuit and court order, though it’s sparsely staffed.

The hobbling of the office comes as the White House embarks on an aggressive expansion of detention sites with an eye toward repurposing old jails or building new ones with names that telegraph harsh conditions: “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, built by the state and operated in partnership with DHS, or the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.

“It is a shocking situation to be in that I don’t think anybody anticipated a year ago,” said Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism. “We might’ve thought that we were going to see a slide, but I don’t think anybody anticipated how quickly it would transpire, and now people at all levels are scrambling to figure out how to push back.”

“Authoritarian Playbook”

Frantz and other scholars who study anti-democratic political systems in other countries said there are numerous examples in which ICE’s activities appear cut from an authoritarian playbook. Among them was the detention of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was apprehended after co-writing an op-ed for the campus paper that criticized the school’s response to the war in Gaza. ICE held her incommunicado for 24 hours and then shuffled her through three states before jailing her in Louisiana.

“The thing that got me into the topic of ‘maybe ICE is a secret police force’?” said Lee Morgenbesser, an Australian political science professor who studies authoritarianism. “It was that daylight snatching of the Tufts student.”

Morgenbesser was also struck by the high-profile instances of ICE detaining elected officials who attempted to stand in their way. Among them, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained for demanding a judicial warrant from ICE, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a DHS press conference.

And David Sklansky, a Stanford Law School professor who researches policing and democracy, said it appears that ICE’s agents are allowed to operate with complete anonymity. “It’s not just that people can’t see faces of the officers,” Sklansky said. “The officers aren’t wearing shoulder insignia or name tags.”

U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, recently pointed out that use of masked law enforcement officers had long been considered anathema to American ideals. In a blistering ruling against the administration’s arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, he wrote, “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.” The Trump administration has said it will appeal that ruling.

Where the Fallout is Felt

The fallout is being felt in places like Hays County, Texas, not far from Austin, where ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine children, during a birthday celebration in the early morning of April 1.

The agency’s only disclosure about the raid in Dripping Springs describes the operation as part of a yearlong investigation targeting “members and associates believed to be part of the Venezuelan transnational gang, Tren de Aragua.”

Six months later, the county’s top elected official told ProPublica the federal government has ignored his attempts to get answers.

“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them,” said County Judge Ruben Becerra, a Democrat. “By definition, that’s a kidnapping.”

In the raid, a Texas trooper secured a search warrant that allowed law enforcement officers to breach the home, an Airbnb rental on a vast stretch of land in the Hill Country. Becerra told ProPublica he believes the suspicion of drugs at the party was a pretense to pull people out of the house so ICE officers who lacked a warrant could take them into custody. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has yet to produce evidence supporting claims of gang involvement, said Karen Muñoz, a civil rights attorney helping families track down their relatives who were jailed or deported. While some court documents are sealed, nothing in the public record verifies the gang affiliation DHS cited as the cause for the birthday party raid.

“There’s no evidence released at all that any person kidnapped at that party was a member of any organized criminal group,” Muñoz said.

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, did not respond to questions about Hays County and other raids where families and attorneys allege a lack of transparency and due process.

In Plain Sight

Months after ICE’s widely publicized raids, fear continues to envelop Santa Ana, a majority-Hispanic city with a large immigrant population. Amezcua, the mayor, said the raids have complicated local policing and rendered parents afraid to pick up their children from school. The city manager, a California-born citizen and Latino, carries with him three government IDs, including a passport.

Raids of car washes and apartment buildings continue, but the community has started to “push back,” Amezcua said. “Like many other communities, the neighbors come out. People stop in the middle of traffic.”

With so few institutional checks on ICE’s powers, citizens are increasingly relying on themselves. On at least one occasion in nearby Downey, a citizen’s intervention had some effect.

On June 12, Melyssa Rivas had just started her workday when a colleague burst into her office with urgent news: “ICE is here.”

The commotion was around the corner in Rivas’ hometown, a Los Angeles suburb locals call “Mexican Beverly Hills” for its stately houses and affluent Hispanic families. Rivas, 31, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, belongs to Facebook groups where residents share updates about cultural festivals, church programs and, these days, the presence of Trump’s deportation foot soldiers.

Rivas had seen posts about ICE officers sweeping through LA and figured Downey’s turn had come. She and her co-worker rushed toward the sound of screaming at a nearby intersection. Rivas hit “record” on her phone as a semicircle of trucks and vans came into view. She filmed at least half a dozen masked men in camouflage vests encircling a Hispanic man on his knees.

Her unease deepened as she registered details that “didn’t seem right,” Rivas recalled in an interview. She said the parked vans had out-of-state plates or no tags. The armed men wore only generic “police” patches, and most were in street clothes. No visible insignia identified them as state or federal — or even legal authorities at all.

“When is it that we just decided to do things a different way? There’s due process, there’s a legal way, and it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore,” Rivas said. “Where are human rights?”

Video footage shows Rivas and others berating the officers for complicity in what they called a “kidnapping.” Local news channels later reported that the vehicles had chased the man after a raid at a nearby car wash.

“I know half of you guys know this is fucked up,” Rivas was recorded telling the officers.

Moments later, the scene took a turn. As suddenly as they’d arrived, the officers returned to their vehicles and left, with no apology and no explanation to the distraught man they left on the sidewalk.

Through a mask, one of them said, “Have a good day.”

---

---

REFPP

They Don’t Care About Civil Rights”: Trump’s Shuttering of DHS Oversight Arm Freezes 600 Cases, Imperils Human Rights
The closure of the 150-person office, which protected the civil rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, strips Homeland Security of its internal guardrails as the Trump administration turns DHS into a mass-deportation machine, analysts say.

by J. David McSwane and Hannah AllamApril 8, 2025,

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

IFrame Content

On Feb. 10, more than a dozen Department of Homeland Security officials joined a video conference to discuss an obscure, sparsely funded program overseen by its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The office, charged with investigating when the national security agency is accused of violating the rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, had found itself in the crosshairs of Elon Musk’s secretive Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

It began as a typical briefing, with Homeland Security officials explaining to DOGE a program many describe as a win-win. It had provided some $20 million in recent years to local organizations that provide case workers to keep people in immigration proceedings showing up to court, staff explained, without expensive detentions and ankle monitors.

DOGE leader Kyle Schutt, a technology executive who developed a GOP online fundraising platform, interrupted. He wanted Joseph Mazzara, DHS’s acting general counsel, to weigh in. Mazzara was recently appointed to the post after working for Ken Paxton as both an assistant solicitor general and member of the Texas attorney general’s defense team that beat back public corruption charges.

Schutt had a different interpretation of the program, according to people who attended or were briefed on the meeting.

“This whole program sounds like money laundering,” he said.

Mazzara went further. His facial expressions, his use of profanity and the way he combed his fingers through his hair made clear he was annoyed.

“We should look into civil RICO charges,” Mazzara said.

DHS staff was stunned. The program had been mandated by Congress, yet Homeland Security’s top lawyer was saying it could be investigated under a law reserved for organized crime syndicates.

“I took it as a threat,” one attendee said. “It was traumatizing.”

For many in the office, known internally as CRCL, that moment was a dark forecast of the future. Several said they scrambled to try to fend off the mass firings they were seeing across the rest of President Donald Trump’s administration. They policed language that Trump’s appointees might not like. They hesitated to open complaints on hot-button cases. They reframed their work as less about protecting civil rights and more about keeping the department out of legal trouble.

None of it worked. On March 21, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem shut down the office and fired most of the 150-person staff. As a result, about 600 civil rights abuse investigations were frozen.

“All the oversight in DHS was eliminated today,” one worker texted after the announcement that they’d been fired.

Eight former CRCL officials spoke with ProPublica about the dismantling of the office on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution. Their accounts come at a time when the new administration’s move to weaken oversight of federal agencies has faced legal challenges in the federal courts. In defending its move to shut CRCL, the administration said it was streamlining operations, as it has done elsewhere. “DHS remains committed to civil rights protections but must streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement,” said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

CRCL staff “often functioned as internal adversaries to slow down operations,” McLaughlin added. She did not address questions from ProPublica about the February meeting. Mazzara and Schutt did not reply to requests for comment.

The office’s closure strips Homeland Security of a key internal check and balance, analysts and former staff say, as the Trump administration morphs the agency into a mass-deportation machine. The civil rights team served as a deterrent to border patrol and immigration agents who didn’t want the hassle and paperwork of an investigation, staff said, and its closure signals that rights violations, including those against U.S. citizens, could go unchecked.

The office processed more than 3,000 complaints in fiscal year 2023 — on everything from disabled detainees being unable to access medical care to abuses of power at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and reports of rape at its detention centers. For instance, following reports that ICE had performed facial recognition searches on millions of Maryland drivers, a CRCL investigation led the agency to agree to new oversight; case details have been removed from the DHS website but are available in the internet archive. The office also reported to Congress that it had investigated and confirmed allegations that a child, a U.S. citizen traveling without her parents between Mexico and California, had been sexually abused by Customs and Border Protection agents during a strip search.

Those cases would have gone nowhere without CRCL, its former staffers said.

“Nobody knows where to go without CRCL, and that’s the point,” a senior official said. Speaking of the administration, the official went on, “They don’t want oversight. They don’t care about civil rights and civil liberties.”

The CRCL staff, most of them lawyers, emphasized that their work is not politically motivated, nor is it limited to immigration issues. For instance, sources said the office was investigating allegations that disaster aid workers with the Federal Emergency Management Agency had skipped over houses that displayed signs supporting Trump during the 2024 election.

“The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties touches on everyone,” one fired employee said. “There’s this perception that we’re only focused on immigrants, and that’s just not true.”

Uncertainty and Panic

The final days of the civil rights office unfolded in a cloud of uncertainty and panic, as with other federal offices getting “RIF’d,” the Beltway verb for the government’s “reduction in force.”

Staff members described the weeks before the shutdown as a whittling away of their work. Dozens of investigative memos posted online in a transparency initiative? Deleted from the site. The eight-person team on racial equity issues? Immediately placed on leave. Travel funds to check conditions at detention centers? Reduced to $1.

As fear intensified that the civil rights office would be dismantled, staff tried to lie low. Leaders told staff to stop launching investigations that came from media reports, previously a common avenue for inquiries. Now, only official complaints from the public would be considered.

Staff was particularly frustrated that under this new mandate it couldn’t open an official investigation into the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and legal resident who was arrested for participating in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

CRCL staff was unable to open an investigation into Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest after they were told to stop launching investigations that came from media reports. Credit:Bing Guan/The New York Times/Redux

With dozens of employees spread across branches or working remotely, many civil rights staffers had never met their colleagues — until the Trump administration’s return-to-office order forced them to come in five days a week. By early March, when reality had sunk in that their jobs were likely to be eliminated, they began quietly organizing, setting up encrypted Signal chat groups and sharing updates on lawsuits filed by government workers in other agencies.

“It’s inspiring how federal employees are pushing back and connecting,” one worker said.

Beyond Trump’s mandate to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, leaders told staff to omit from memos words such as “however,” which might sound combative, or “stakeholders,” which came across as too warm and fuzzy.

“Daily life was one miserable assignment after the next,” a staffer said. The orders coming down from Trump appointees were intended to “basically tell us how to undo your office.”

In what would be the last days of the office, the atmosphere was “chilling” and “intimidating.” Some personnel froze, too afraid to make recommendations, while others risked filing new investigations in final acts of defiance.

When the news came on a Friday that they were all being fired, civil rights staff were told they couldn’t issue any out-of-office reply, one former senior official said.

They are still technically employees, on paid leave until May 23. Many have banded together and are exploring legal remedies to get their jobs back. In the interim, if complaints are coming in, none of the professionals trained to receive them are around.

What’s Been Lost

Days after the meeting in which allegations of money laundering and organized crime were loosely thrown at CRCL employees, the program in question was shut down. That effort had essentially earmarked money to local charities to provide nonviolent immigrants with case workers who connect them to services such as human trafficking screening and information on U.S. law. Created by Congress in 2021, the goal was to keep immigrants showing up to court.

Now, Trump’s DHS is suggesting the case worker program is somehow involved in human smuggling. Erol Kekic, a spokesperson for the charity the federal government hired to administer funds in that program, said Church World Services received a “weirdly worded letter” that baffled the organization’s attorneys.

“They said there could be potential human trafficking,” he said, referring to DHS. “But they didn’t accuse us directly of it.”

The nonprofit is working on its response, he said.

Elsewhere, the absence of Homeland Security’s civil rights oversight is already reverberating.

With their office closed, CRCL staff now fear the hypotheticals: At ports of entry, Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizure are relaxed; if CBP abuses its power to root through phones and laptops, who will investigate? And if DHS began arresting U.S. citizens for First Amendment protected speech? Their office would have been the first line of defense.

As an example of cases falling through the cracks, CRCL staff told ProPublica they had recommended an investigation into the deportation of a Lebanese professor at Brown University who was in the country on a valid work visa. Federal prosecutors said in court she was detained at an airport in Boston in connection with “sympathetic photos and videos” on her phone of leaders of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Reuters reported she told border authorities she did not support Hezbollah but admired the group’s deceased leader Hassan Nasrallah for religious reasons.

Staff also wanted to look into the case of a 10-year-old girl recovering from brain cancer who, despite being a U.S. citizen, was deported to Mexico along with her parents when they hit an immigration checkpoint as they rushed to an emergency medical visit.

In Colorado, immigration attorney Laura Lunn routinely filed complaints with CRCL, saying pleas with ICE officials at its Aurora detention center were often ignored. Those complaints to CRCL have stopped her clients from being illegally deported, she said, or gotten emergency gynecological care for a woman who had been raped just before being detained.

But now, she asks, “Who do I even go to when there are illegal things happening?”

Lunn’s group, the Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network, has also joined in large group complaints about inadequate medical care, COVID-19 isolation policies and access to medical care for a pod of transgender inmates.

She’s among those trying to find clients who were housed in the Aurora facility but have mysteriously disappeared. Her clients had pending proceedings, she said, yet were summarily removed, something she’d never seen in 15 years of immigration law.

“Ordinarily, I would file a CRCL complaint. At this moment, we don’t have anyone to file a complaint to,” Lunn said.

That sort of mass deportation is something CRCL would have inspected. In fact, staff members said they had just launched a review into Trump’s increased use of Guantanamo Bay to detain migrants, an inquiry which now appears to have vanished.

A new camp site where the Trump administration plans to house thousands of undocumented migrants at Guantánamo Bay, seen in February 2025. A recent CRCL review of the administration’s use of Guantanamo Bay has vanished. Credit:Doug Mills/The New York Times/Redux

In New Mexico, immigration lawyer Sophia Genovese said she’s filed more than 100 CRCL complaints, helping her secure medical care and other services for sick and disabled people.

She said she has several pending complaints, including one about a detainee who has stomach cancer but can’t get medication stronger than ibuprofen and another involving an HIV-positive patient who hasn’t been able to see a doctor.

“CRCL was one of the very few tools we had to check ICE, to hold ICE accountable,” Genovese said. “Now you see them speeding to complete authoritarianism.”

Filed under —

[

J. David McSwane

I write about national issues, including everything from health care to business to civil rights issues.

I want to hear from current and former federal workers, lawyers and advocates — really anyone who sees an injustice worth investigating.

Hannah Allam

-

From Washington, I cover national security issues, with a focus on militant movements and counterterrorism efforts.

I’m interested in tips about counterterrorism, court cases involving surveillance or civil liberties, national security personnel changes, threat assessments and the proximity of extremist movements to federal power.

---

---

MMA

Right-wing media said Chicago ICE raid yielded numerous gang members' arrests. New reporting shows hardly any arrests related to Tren de Aragua.

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Published 10/16/25

Right-wing media have cheered Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s September 30 raid on a Chicago apartment, saying they arrested a dozen or dozens of “suspected Tren de Aragua gang members” in an apartment complex “seized by TdA gang members.”

However, the Department of Homeland Security told CNN that just two of the 37 arrested are believed to be gang members. And later DHS told MSNBC it has “verified” one Tren de Aragua member from the raid.

The Trump administration claims that its arrests in Chicago have targeted criminals, but there is little evidence many of the 1,000 people detained by ICE in the city have any criminal convictions. Right-wing media have previously carried water for the Trump administration’s mass deportations that allegedly focus on the “worst of the worst” even though the majority of ICE detainees have no criminal convictions.

ICE's raid on a Chicago apartment building led to dozens of arrests and four children taken into custody. New reporting shows that few if any arrested in that raid or others in Chicago have criminal or gang ties.

//

  1. ### Right-wing media falsely claim benefits go to undocumented immigrants as millions of Americans face health coverage losses

10/14/25 4:20 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media say Portland is a war zone under siege. On-the-ground coverage paints a different picture.

10/10/25 9:40 AM EDT

  1. ### As Trump sends the National Guard into US cities, right-wing media celebrate and call protests “an insurrection”

10/08/25

---

---

an 10 25

A new memo from the Department of Homeland Security authorizes Federal Protective Service officers to leave federal property and, if necessary, enter private homes to “eliminate” threats, including what it describes as an “identified sniper” located blocks away from a federal facility, journalist Marisa Kabas reported Friday in her newsletter The Handbasket.

The internal memo, titled “Federal Protective Service [FPS] Policy and Off-Property Jurisdiction,” was written by DHS Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara and circulated to all FPS personnel on Wednesday by Benjamine Huffman, the DHS Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary for Management, per the report.

Addressing concerns about the legal limits of FPS jurisdiction, Mazzara wrote that such limits “are misplaced,” and that “the limits to FPS’s authority off federal property are the edges of the Constitution on one side and necessity on the other.

Mazzara stated that FPS officers are permitted to respond to incidents even far from federal buildings if a “reasonable nexus” to the protection of federal property exists.

He wrote: “FPS could even enter a private residence containing an identified sniper blocks away from a federal facility in order to eliminate that exigent threat. There is simply no legal barrier to FPS taking action off federal property where a reasonable nexus to protecting that property exists.”

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

The phrase “identified sniper” refers to an individual who has been clearly recognized by FPS as posing a lethal, long-range threat — likely armed and positioned to target a federal building or officers.

The memo frames this as a justification for the use of force and warrantless entry in urgent situations.

Mazzara also wrote that FPS may set up barriers, fences, and other physical controls in areas near, but not limited to, federal buildings.

“This is not limited to the sidewalk or streets immediately adjacent to federal buildings as we do not live in a world of sticks and stones, but Mausers and Winchesters,” he said, referencing rifle brands.

One FPS employee, who was not named, told The Handbasket: “It’s quite clear that agents are being told they can go wherever. All of it was quite alarming and an unusual email to receive both in content and tone.”

The guidance comes as National Guard troops have been deployed to cities like Chicago, where DHS agents have recently been involved in arrests of immigrants, journalists and clergy. U.S. Northern Command confirmed Wednesday that these deployments are intended to protect DHS personnel and property.

In an accompanying email, Huffman wrote that the guidance “reaffirms that FPS officers and, by extension, any DHS personnel performing protective functions at ICE or CBP facilities may operate beyond federal boundaries when a clear nexus exists to the protection of federal property. Meanwhile, although the memo presents its scenarios as responses to threats, internal reports from DHS itself suggest a different picture.

The New York Times reported that FPS assessments of recent protests in cities like Portland described them as “low energy,” offering no indication of heightened threats that would warrant expanded enforcement powers.

Another FPS employee told The Handbasket: “I guess they got jealous of ICE being able to do anything they want.”

---}:

MMA

10/10/25

NOTE CRM POD BROS MANTA INSURRECTION

10/10/25

Right-wing media say Portland is a war zone under siege. On-the-ground coverage paints a different picture.

Local coverage has highlighted the peaceful nature of protests and the violent response of federal agents

Written by Noah Dowe & Pete Tsipis

Research contributions from Casey Wexler & Media Matters Staff

Published10/10/25

Updated10/10/25

Right-wing media claim that Portland’s protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement show a city “under siege” or “conquered by antifa,” but on-the-ground coverage, by both national media outlets and local media outlets, has revealed the opposite.

Multiple local broadcast outlets report that protests are relatively small and peaceful, with many demonstrators “in pajamas, sharing pastries, throwing a frisbee, and playing board games."

The Wall Street Journal reported that “a sergeant from the Portland Police Bureau filed his daily observations of the demonstrations outside an ICE facility. 'Saw 8 people out front and couldn’t even get one of them to flip me the bird,' he wrote. 'Very low energy.'”

In direct contrast to coverage from right-wing media, Portland residents and officials have emphasized that it's actually federal agents who have been engaging in “violent tactics” against protesters, including “shoving peaceful veterans and elderly people to the ground” and employing point-blank attacks with pepper spray and mace.

IFrame Content

Protests in Portland were described as “low energy” until Trump and right-wing media started claiming otherwise

---

---

AN 9 25

Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The Des Moines Register reports that Roberts, who has served as superintendent in the Iowa district since 2023, was taken into custody by ICE agents on Friday morning.

The Des Moines Register has confirmed that Roberts is currently being held at the Pottawattamie County Jail, which the paper noted would put him in close proximity to the Omaha Immigration Court.

According to local news station KCCI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that that Roberts was been taken into custody as part of a “targeted enforcement operation.”

DHS said that after ICE officers approached Roberts’ vehicle on Friday, he sped away and tried to escape. They eventually apprehended him and found a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed-blade hunting knife inside his vehicle.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

DHS also claimed that Roberts had been ordered to be removed from the US in May 2024, and that he had an existing weapons possession charge dating from 2020.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, put out a brief statement on Friday saying she was “made aware this morning that Ian Roberts was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and is in contact with the Iowa Department of Public Safety and federal authorities.”

Reynolds last year touted a meeting she’d held with Roberts in which she said the two discussed “our shared goal of providing all Iowa students a world-class education.”

Local residents who spoke with The Des Moines Register were stunned by news of Roberts’ detention. Alison Hoeman, founder of the local nonprofit Des Moines Refugees Support, told the paper that her phone “blew up” from concerned parents as soon as they heard the news about Roberts’ arrest.

“You know it’s the Black and brown kids who are worried,” she said. “If it’s Ian Roberts who’s in trouble, what does that mean for them?”

Roberts was born to parents who immigrated to the US from Guyana, and he told local news station WHO 13 last year that he spent considerable time in both countries growing up.

Prior to pursuing a career in education, Roberts competed in the 2000 Summer Olympics as a middle-distance runner for the Guyana team.

---

AN 8 25

'Weak little man': Newsom blasts Trump for sending his 'private army' to press conference

'Weak little man': Newsom blasts Trump for sending his 'private army' to press conference

California Governor Gavin Newsom, along with local congressional representatives, state officials and supporters, speaks as he announces the redrawing of California's congressional maps, calling on voters to approve a ballot measure, in response to a similar move in Texas being supported by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake

David BadashAugust 14, 2025 |

California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has spent the week mocking President Donald Trump, adopting Trump’s signature social media style — extreme, self-promotional, hyperbolic, all-caps — to deliver taunts about his plans to counter Trump’s directive for Texas and other red states to redraw their congressional maps, a move aimed at reducing the number of Democratic-held districts and paving the way for Republicans to hold the House in November.

Governor Newsom’s focus has been on what he is calling his “Election Rigging Response Act,” legislation where he will ask voters in November to allow California to redraw its congressional district maps to respond to President Trump’s unprecedented move to conduct redistricting outside the constitutionally mandated decennial censuses.

Fox News declared on Thursday that “Gavin Newsom is in on the act now.”

READ MORE: Inflation ‘Starting to Boil’: Dire Economic News for Trump — Worst in Three Years

Newsom’s social media team called out the Trump administration Thursday afternoon, after it noticed Border Patrol agents outside his Los Angeles redistricting rally.

In a stunning turn of events, however, the masked Border Patrol agents outside Newsom’s rally started arresting people.

Fox News happened to have Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem live on-air when it ran video of at least one arrest. The Fox News hosts praised the move.

READ MORE: ‘Most Economists Don’t Agree With Us’ Admits Trump Trade Chief as Costs Climb

“This is coming from our reporters in L.A. right now, where they say that border patrol has arrived just outside of the downtown L.A. Venue where Governor Gavin Newsom was actually holding a press conference today, and it appears that those border Patrol agents are making arrests, illegal immigrants that are — I don’t know if they were at this press conference, if they were in the area, but this is the area … when we first saw this video, it is a very ‘in your face’ way to let, you know, Democrats know that you are gonna do your job, that you’re going to carry out these Trump policies.”

“One of the speakers in the runup to Newsom’s event just warned this would be happening and held it up as another reason why Californians needed to get behind Newsom’s answer to Texas and Trump,” reported NBC News Senior National Political Reporter Natasha Korecki.

Newsom responded in real time to the arrests.

“And right outside, at this exact moment, are dozens and dozens of ICE agents,” the governor told rally attendees. “Donald Trump — you think it’s coincidental? — Donald Trump and his minions, Tom Homan — tough guy —he decided, coincidentally or not, that this was a location to advance ICE arrests.”

“People are scared,” Newsom continued. “People are fearful.”

---

an 8 25

Duty to disobey': A stunning number of US troops know they can defy Trump's orders

---

$50k sign bonus, forgive student loans; no college needed, age limited lifted

has been tv superman deanK?

---

an 8 25

What could possibly go wrong?' Outrage as Trump admin recruits teens to join 'the Gestapo'

---

---

AN 8 25

NO LNX

The one big reason why most Republicans are acting irrationally — without consequences

Sarah Davis of Lincoln, Nebraska, shouts after asking U.S. Representative Mike Flood (R-NE) a question during a town hall in Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S., August 4, 2025. REUTERS/Scott Morgan

John Stoehr A ugust 07, 2025

If you consume mainstream news, you might think the Republicans are in trouble ahead of next year’s congressional elections. In a recent report by CNN, for instance, Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska is met with a barrage of boos and jeers at a town hall.

They should be in trouble. Though the president’s policy agenda is dramatically unpopular, Flood and the Republicans have gone along with him. Donald Trump’s net approval is now -15 percent, according to the latest numbers by The Economist, with 55 percent disapproving. Gallup’s are worse. His rating among independent voters is 29 percent.

You’d think a congressman like Mike Flood, who represents a district that’s evenly split, would at the very least pretend to be contrite, knowing that being on the good side of voters is the key to remaining in office. You’d think he would behave like he knows he’s in trouble.

But he’s not. In that CNN report, Flood gives the impression that the opinions of his constituents, whose outrage is abundantly clear, are immaterial to his goal of staying in power – which is to say, he’s behaving as if he has no fear of democracy holding him accountable.

In that, he’s following the president’s lead. In a recent CNBC interview, as Joe Walsh put it, Trump said that “won the 2020 election (he didn’t). He has a 71 percent approval rating (he doesn’t). The jobs numbers were rigged (they weren’t). I could say something funny here, but I won’t. It’s just so damn dangerous to have him in the White House.”

In the same interview, Trump said he would “probably not” run for office again, understanding full well that the Constitution limits presidents to two terms, whether or not those terms are consecutive.

Walsh is often right, but here he’s doubly so. It’s so damn dangerous when a president and his party act like democracy doesn’t matter.

In 2009, after they passed into law the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama and the Democrats faced the prospect of a wipeout in the following year’s midterms. The law started out unpopular and grew more unpopular by the day. But they didn’t try to change the rules of democracy to avoid the consequences of their choices, even though the consequences were catastrophic. The Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate. Obama’s presidency never recovered.

Donald Trump and the Republicans, however, are trying to change the rules of democracy to avoid the consequences of their choices. I don’t think there’s any one source of disapproval, like the ACA used to be for the Democrats. Instead, public ire seems to have multiple layers, with the deepest being the gigantic sales tax, in the form of tariffs, that the president has unilaterally imposed on everyone. And Trump knows it. That’s why, in anticipation of a wipeout, he asked legislators in Texas to redraw its congressional districts to give his party five more seats.

This should be damning. And the Republicans should be running from the idea, in the same way that some Democrats ran from Obamacare. But most are doubling down. Texas is going to try gerrymandering its districts to give Trump the advantage, as likely will any state controlled by the GOP that has at least one big blue city in it. (Perhaps this is why Mike Flood can shout down constituents with impunity. Nebraska Republicans could choose to redraw his district to ensure reelection.)

But the Republicans are doing more than changing the rules of democracy. They are creating the conditions for criminalizing it.

Democratic legislators in Texas left the state to deny a quorum for Republican efforts to redraw its congressional districts. The state’s attorney general declared the move illegal. The state’s governor ordered state law enforcement agencies to arrest and return them. Texas has no jurisdiction in Illinois, where some Texas Democrats decamped, but that didn’t stop vigilantes from issuing bomb threats.

This is in addition to the Justice Department opening an investigation into alleged tampering of the 2016 election by Barack Obama and his administration. (The allegations are completely imaginary.) There is, moreover, the fact that two Democrats have been arrested and are pending trial; two Democrats were manhandled and arrested; one Democrat was assassinated; not to mention the president ordering the (short-lived) military occupation of the city of Los Angeles. More recently, three House Democrats were “in essence, incarcerated,” after a masked ICE agent locked them in a room at a detention center.

The goal is silencing dissent, and elected Democrats are not the only targets. All of us are. Even as Trump and the GOP do things that make people angry – like taking away their food money, taking away their vaccines, taking away their jobs, all while forcing them to pay more and more for the essentials of life – people can’t vent their anger.

The heart of democracy is our ability to petition the government for a redress of grievances. But the Republicans are creating conditions nationally, after having done so locally, in which that’s not possible.

They are either gerrymandering voters out of existence, their judges are narrowing the right to vote to the point of extinction, or they are preparing to prosecute people for their opinions. At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before being a liberal is a criminal offense.

The only Republicans acting rationally are those who represent districts in blue states. “What Texas is doing is wrong and I’m opposed to it,” New York Congressman Mike Lawler told Politico, adding that “he’s sponsoring a bill with fellow blue state Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley of California that would ban gerrymandering nationwide.”

But they are only acting rationally, because their party cannot change the rules of democracy to avoid being held accountable by their constituents for their choices. Blue states like New York and California are now considering redrawing their congressional maps in reaction to potential moves by Texas, Florida and others to do the same. In other words, blue-state Republicans have an immediate incentive to behave themselves while the rest of the GOP, including its leader, does not.

That fact alone should be damning.

NOW READ: 'Really strange vibe': Visitors to bizarre Island say 'skeevy' Epstein gave them the creeps

---

:{:{---}:

AN 7 25

Delegates at the United Church of Christ’s (UCC) 35th General Synod overwhelmingly passed an emergency resolution this week, condemning the ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids as “domestic terrorism” and accusing President Donald Trump's administration of “weaponizing the Constitution.”

Religious News Service reported Tuesday that the resolution targets immigration enforcement operations “carried out by ICE agents working without uniforms, wearing masks or refusing to identify themselves,” condemning these tactics as threatening and abusive.

Titled “Responding to the federal government’s attack on immigrants, migrants, and refugees,” the resolution urges the church to divest from for-profit private detention firms, specifically naming CoreCivic, GEO Group, and Management and Training Corp.— while allowing congregations to go further if they choose, according to the report.

READ MORE:Devastating CNN poll shows just how much Trump has fallen — even among his biggest supporters

Presented as an emergency motion by the Rev. Clara Sims of First Congregational UCC in Albuquerque on behalf of the Southwest Conference, the move reflects the church’s urgent response to escalated immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Meanwhile, First Congregational UCC has opened housing and provided food and aid to immigrants arriving from the border, actions its minister says stem from the denomination’s theological commitment to protect the vulnerable.

“Our faith has always called us into spaces of risk on behalf of the vulnerable,” said Sims, “especially when people are being made vulnerable by really corrupt systems of power.”

The Southwest Conference fast-tracked the resolution after national church leaders and regional partners voiced deep concerns about human rights violations in detention facilities, per the report.

READ MORE:Trump 'very irritated' with GOP senator whose reelection bid could decide Senate control

Last month, Bishop Alberto Rojas of the Diocese of San Bernardino, California, released a letter addressing recent reports that ICE agents had entered Catholic churches.

As head of the sixth-largest Catholic diocese in the U.S., Bishop Rojas strongly criticized the escalation of ICE operations.

In his communication to Catholics, he highlighted that “authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God.”

He conveyed his solidarity with immigrants “who are bearing the trauma and injustice of these tactics,” and assured them that “we join you in carrying this very difficult cross.”

---

---

deflect rubber reverse false equiv

an 7 25

One of the nation’s most prominent civil rights attorneys is denouncing Fox News co-host Greg Gutfeld’s attempt to normalize the word “Nazi,” diminish its horrific meaning, and strip it of the weight it carries. And she’s asking why so few seem outraged by his remarks.

“This is why the criticism doesn’t matter to us when you call us Nazis. ‘Nazi this,’ and ‘Nazi that,’ Gutfeld declared on Tuesday (video below) during the cable network’s show, “The Five,” in a segment where the chyron read: “Dems Smear ICE With Nazi Comparisons.”

“You know what? I’ve said this before,” he continued. “We need to learn from the Blacks — the way they were able to remove the power from the N word by using it. So, from now on, it’s, ‘What up my Nazi?’ ‘Hey, hey, what up, my Nazi?’ ‘Hey, what’s hanging my Nazi?'”

Sherrilyn Ifill, the civil rights attorney, Professor of Law, and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wondered where Americans’ outrage had gone.

READ MORE: ‘Popping Champagne’: Russia Scoffs, Snubs Trump’s 100% Tariff Ultimatum

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

“Just loathsome,” Ifill wrote. “I know it’s old school, but is there no demand that Fox fire him? Losing his microphone should be the minimum.”

Others also responded.

Progressive media outlet The Tennessee Holler called Gutfeld’s remarks “One of the most tone deaf and problematic 30 seconds of TV in our history right here. This will be tough to beat.”

The Lincoln Project responded, “So they’re just fully comfortable calling themselves Nazis now. Got it.”

The House Homeland Security Committee Democrats weighed in, writing: “Greg Gutfeld is an unwatchable racist clown.”

Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo News, wrote: “These quotes, even if said in jest, would destroy the careers of any other journalist on any other mainstream national media platform. But Fox doesn’t employ journalists and doesn’t have any journalistic (or decency) standards.”

READ MORE: ‘Divine Providence’: Johnson Paints Trump as ‘Miraculously’ Spared by God

Dr. Travis L. Stokes, Ed.D., as part of a lengthy response, wrote: “Let me get this straight: you’re comparing the Black community’s centuries-long, survival-forged, trauma-laden, complex reclamation of the n-word—a term born from slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, police brutality, redlining, mass incarceration, and generational trauma—to you and your little Fox News clowns tossing around ‘Nazi’ like it’s a TikTok trend?”

Philosopher, historian, and activist, Dr. Émile P. Torres called it, “The normalization of Nazism. Happening in realtime.”

This is not the first time Gutfeld has faced backlash for remarks invoking Nazism or the Holocaust. Two years ago, Gutfeld was rebuked for comments he made about Jews, the Holocaust, and Nazis.

“Officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland have criticized Fox News host Greg Gutfeld for saying on air that Jewish people survived Nazi concentration camps by being ‘useful’,” NBC News reported at the time.

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

---}:

7 25

NO LNX

'Patterns are clear': Critics urged to plot 'an escape plan' from Trump's retribution

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during the opening of a temporary migrant detention center informally known as "Alligator Alcatraz" in Ochopee, Florida, U.S., July 1, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

John Stoehr July 14, 2025

Leigh McGowan, who does the Politics Girl podcast, was on CNN recently and as I watched, I found my admiration growing.

I don’t mean her politics, which I mostly share, or her skills as a communicator, which are enviable. What I admired was her courage.

She was part of a panel discussing “an aggressive new strategy” by the Justice Department to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans. McGowan is herself an immigrant. She came from Canada as a student, then spent years going through the grueling process of naturalization.

That’s admirable, but what really struck me was the context.

McGowan was criticizing the president’s anti-migrant purge on national TV just a few days after his Republicans in the Congress decided to give more money to immigration cops than any other law enforcement agency in the country. ICE and related agencies now have more funding – $170 billion on top of their regular annual budgets – than most countries in the world spend on their national defense.

She was also criticizing the president’s anti-migrant purge after ICE and other federal agencies staged what appeared to be a “massive show of force,” according to an eyewitness, in a park in Los Angeles. It looked like “a city under military occupation,” that city’s mayor said.

McGowan surely understood the context and she surely understood that the Trump regime could make an example of her – search for some pretext for why her citizenship is no longer valid, perhaps by sifting through her history of public commentary and finding any sort of opinion that the regime considers “a threat to national securty.”

This is, after all, what the regime is already doing to foreign students. They can’t go to college here if they have expressed opinions critical of Trump (or of Israel). The regime is doing this to public servants, too, forcing them to take lie detector tests in order purge anyone deemed disloyal to Trump, which is to say, anyone who thinks for himself.

Yet McGowan went on national TV anyway. My admiration grew.

So did my trepidation.

This is real, not theoretical. There are nearly 25 million Americans in this country who went through the naturalization process, which is more than half of all immigrants living in the US. All of them now face the prospect of being stripped of their earned rights and privileges based solely on whether Trump is in the mood to respect them.

It’s one thing for a naturalized citizen and public figure like McGowan to go on national TV to criticize the president before he has made an example of someone. It will be another after he has done so, and we should not be naive: eventually, he will make an example of someone.

As if on cue, Acting ICE Director Tom Homan made this statement on Fox this morning: “People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don't need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them ... based on their physical appearance."

Trump and his Republicans in the Congress have now created a secret police force in the form of ICE and Border Patrol that has, unlike the US military, no alligiance higher than the president’s whims and fancies. At the rate we’re going, snatching and disappearing a critic of the regime isn’t a likelihood. It’s an eventaulity. What do we do then?

We carry on, said Jemar Tisby.

He’s a historian and professor at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville. He’s the author of The Color of Compromise, the award-winning How to Fight Racism and recently, The Spirit of Justice.

After the GOP passed their budget bill, Professor Tisby posted a piece called “Trump’s Personal Army,” in which he recommended an escape plan for anyone who’s “committed to truth, justice, and democracy.”

I read the piece and asked for an interview. I admit I was skeptical of the reality behind Professor Tisby’s escape plan, as you will see in the interview with him below. But then I saw McGowan on CNN. I learned that she’s a naturalized citizen. And I thought: Damn, yeah. He’s right.

“People with large public platforms who continue to be outspoken will be in far more danger than the average person,” the professor told me.

Many people have been concerned about Donald Trump's use of the US military to control the population. Sending the Marines to Los Angeles seemed to confirm that suspicion. In your recent piece, you say that that's a red herring. The real problem is ICE. Why?

The US military, for all its issues, has a higher standard for deployment and very strict rules for any domestic functions.

The Posse Comitatus Act, for instance, largely prevents the president from deploying US military for domestic operations.

ICE is different.

ICE agents do take an oath to the Constitution, but they are under the US Department of Homeland Security, and they are classified as civilian law enforcement, not military.

Not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

They are under the executive branch, which means Trump has much broader discretion to direct them.

So he can functionally use them as his personal paramilitary army. You can imagine how such force and power could be wielded by an impulsive president.

The ICE and Border Patrol's demonstration of strength in a park in Los Angeles would be a case in point, correct?

Absolutely.

There was no urgent need for a show of military force like that. In a park. In broad daylight.

The president and his officials are targeting cities like LA for shows of force.

Not unlike targeting higher education institutions like Harvard University, if they can bring ostensibly liberal bastions to heel, then it’s supposed to demonstrate no one can oppose their power and others shouldn’t even attempt to resist.

Mayor Bass said it looked like “a city under military occupation,” just the kind of thing that the founders based their revolution on. Yet "constitutional conservatives" for years said the Second Amendment was the answer to tyranny. We're seeing tryanny and no reaction from the NRA and others. I guess they never meant what they said.

The operating principle for the far right or “constitutional conservatives” is “rights for me, not for thee.”

They selectively apply civil rights and constitutional principles when it serves their purposes.

They willfully disregard them if such rights impede their pursuit of unchallenged power.

Simply look at their response to the January 6 insurrection.

A violent mob storms the US Capitol and where was the military show of force?

Instead, this president pardons those convicted of crimes that day.

But he does not hesitate to send ICE and the Marines to cities and states with no other “threat” than liberal leadership.

In your piece, you recommend an escape plan for people who are "committed to truth, justice, and democracy" because “you can’t afford to be unprepared." I feel the urgency. I could be a secret police target. But I confess I don’t feel the reality. How alarmed should I be? How hard are you going to lean into that recommendation?

Look, these preparations may sound alarmist to some, but so did Project 2025.

So did deploying ICE and the Marines to public parks.

There is simply no red line this regime will not cross. Why would the $170 billon ICE and Border Patrol forces be any different?

The patterns of authoritarian regimes are clear.

Once they have control of military-like force, they use it.

While the initial targets may be others (in this case, immigrants), the very nature of these forces is they can be turned by the leader toward virtually any perceived threat, including “dissenters.”

I don’t think they come for everyone the same way. People with large public platforms who continue to be outspoken will be in far more danger than the average person.

And there are other ways to shut down dissent: firings, freezing or confiscating assets, lawsuits.

But authoritarian regimes are always built on bloodshed.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

It has been suggested that so far power has not yet been met with power. Specifically, ICE agents are not being stopped by local cops, nor have they yet been prosecuted by local district attorneys for violating state law. What's your view? Is that an answer? Or is that more escalation of a fight whose outcome we can't know?

My concern is the people will be provoked to violence.

The typical recourses to oppose injustice – courts, local law enforcement, principled leaders – are hobbled and in short supply.

They tend to work slowly. And this regime hasn’t shown any willingness abide by the law or settled norms.

We need as many officials as possible to use their positions to resist these egregious provocations.

But guns, abductions and confrontations with local residents are a volatile mix. An encounter can turn violent, even deadly, with the twitch of a finger.

That would, tragically, be a boon to this regime. They would have even more excuse to deploy military-like force.

As a people, we must remain committed to the welfare of our neighbors, the promotion of democracy, and the use of nonviolent means to protest.

Hakeem Jeffries affirmed recently his belief "in the fundamental goodness of the American people." What we're talking about here, the application of state terrorism for the purpose of controlling the citizenry, would suggest that that's naive. What do you think?

My latest book, The Spirit of Justice, speaks to the tension between the persistent presence of injustice and the necessity of hope.

In my studies as a historian, I have observed that, lamentably, evil and injustice are commonplace. Somehow, they always show up.

What is far more remarkable is the fact that there are always people willing to battle evil and injustice.

In every age and era, people have risen up, no matter the odds or opposition, to resist and reassert the dignity of all humanity.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, whose husband Medgar Evers was shot and killed in front of their home for his civil rights activism, said:

“But it’s something about the spirit of justice that raises up like a warhorse. That horse that stands with its back sunk in and hears that bell —­ I like to say the ‘bell of freedom.’ And all of a sudden, it becomes straight, and the back becomes stiff. And you become determined all over again.”

The spirit of justice is moving today. It is making a small but mighty group of people determined all over again.

Hope is not naive. It is the essential to taking the next step in the journey of justice.

NOW READ: There's far more to Trump and Epstein's relationship: Trump biographer

---

---

TRMS nerds not trained for str/crowd control

---

//

ref gothamist

In a dramatic incident captured on video, U.S. Department of Homeland Security police Wednesday handcuffed one of Rep. Jerry Nadler aides in the congressmember's Manhattan office, which is in the same federal office building as an immigration courthouse.

In the video, which was shared with Gothamist and filmed by a person who was monitoring activity in immigration court, DHS officers entered Nadler’s district office and accused staff members of “harboring rioters.” A Nadler staffer is seen crying and being handcuffed. Another officer is at a door trying to enter a private area of the office while a staffer asks for a warrant.

DHS later said in a statement that “one individual” — the woman seen being handcuffed — had blocked police from performing a security check they intended to do based on information there were protesters in the lawmaker’s office. Later that day, protesters gathered outside of the federal building, demonstrating against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [vid]

IFrame Content

The staff member was not arrested and not charged with any crime, both Nadler's office and a DHS spokesperson confirmed. In a brief telephone interview, the staffer who'd been handcuffed said that “everything resolved” and declined to comment further.

Initially, Nadler’s office would not comment on what led up to the chaotic incident. But after Gothamist broke the story Friday, the congressman posted a statement on X.

“While no arrests were made and the situation was quickly deescalated, I am alarmed by the aggressive and heavy-handed tactics DHS is employing in New York City and across the country," the statement said. "The decision to enter a congressional office and detain a staff member demonstrates a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries."

Two people who were at the courthouse to monitor ICE activity said the confrontation came after ICE officers threatened to arrest them and other advocates, and a Nadler staffer invited the advocates inside.

Nadler’s office is on the sixth floor in the same Varick Street building as federal immigration court, which is on the fifth floor. The building also houses DHS and other federal offices.

{Last week, Robert Gottheim, Nadler’s co-chief of staff, confirmed there was no arrest but otherwise declined to comment on the unusual event that resulted in federal agents entering the office of a Democratic member of Congress, accusing office staffers of criminal wrongdoing and handcuffing a staffer.}:

The incident comes at a time of heightened tension between Democratic lawmakers and the executive branch over federal immigration enforcement, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver arrests earlier this month in connection with protests outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

There have been an increasing number of arrests at immigration courthouses across the country in recent days. The Trump administration, promising the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, announced in January it would no longer treat venues such as courthouses and schools as “protected” sites off-limits to immigration enforcement.

At another immigration courthouse in the city, at 290 Broadway, ICE officers last week arrested a 20-year-old Bronx high school student after an immigration judge dismissed the student’s pending deportation case. The student, from Venezuela, is the first New York City public school student to be detained by ICE during Trump’s second term, according to the city education department.

Hours after the confrontation involving the Nadler staffers and DHS police, around 6:30 p.m., police arrested nearly two dozen demonstrators they allege blocked traffic outside the building, an NYPD spokesperson said.

In the demonstration, mutual aid volunteers assisting immigrants tried to block ICE vans transporting detained immigrants from leaving the building, according to organizers. Eighteen protesters were issued criminal summons, and five people were arrested and charged, the NYPD spokesperson said.

In the video of the confrontation at Nadler’s office, the handcuffed staff member says that there were constituents present in the office for a meeting. Those constituents later identified themselves in interviews with Gothamist as immigrant rights advocates monitoring activities in the building, including outside the federal immigration courtrooms.

The video does not capture any interactions between Nadler’s staff and DHS police before the staffer was handcuffed. But two advocates who were present as the events unfolded described officers questioning people as they left immigration court and threatening advocates as they intervened. Both people asked Gothamist not to use their names, saying they fear retaliation by the federal government.

The advocates said they were outside an immigration courtroom where plainclothes ICE officers were questioning people as they were leaving their court appearances. The advocates said they were advising the immigrants of their rights. The officers, in turn, threatened the advocates with arrest for loitering, according to the two advocates who spoke with Gothamist.

According to the two advocates, ICE officers then arrested one of the advocates in the courthouse; DHS did not respond to further inquiries about what transpired. Then, the two advocates said, a Nadler staffer invited them and a third advocate up to the lawmaker’s office, which is on the floor above the courthouse. They were there for about 20 minutes before the DHS police entered, the two advocates said.

An officer is heard in the video of the encounter claiming the handcuffed Nadler aide, seen crying, had pushed a DHS officer. Another officer is also seen entering an area of the lawmaker’s office, over the objections of a Nadler aide, who asked for a warrant before acceding to the demand.

The advocates said they did not witness any staff member pushing a DHS officer. They said the aide who was handcuffed had declined the officer entry to a more private part of the office. The courthouse as well as the government offices are generally open to the public.

The video shows the handcuffed staff member asking officers, “What’s your problem?” She adds, without further clarifying, “They’re here for a meeting. They’re constituents.”

A DHS officer urged her, “Do not resist. Stop resisting.”

The DHS statement on Thursday made no mention of Nadler’s office harboring rioters, as the DHS officer claims in the video. Thursday’s statement said that DHS officers were responding to information that protesters were inside Nadler’s office. Out of concern for Nadler’s employees, the statement said, the officers went to the lawmaker’s office “to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those present.”

The statement said the officers “were granted entry and encountered four individuals,” but did not specify who the four were. After stating their intent to conduct a “security check,” the statement said, one of the individuals became “confrontational and physically blocked” access to the office and had to be detained in the hallway in the federal building. But the statement says that no arrests were made and all “were released without further incident.”

*Ben Feuerherd contributed reporting.

---

---

AN 6 25

During his first presidency, Donald Trump spent a lot of time fighting with conservative appointees who resisted parts of his agenda — from John Bolton (national security adviser) to Jeff Sessions (U.S. attorney general) to Rex Tillerson (secretary of state) to Gen. John F. Kelly (White House chief of staff). Trump's third White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, even ended up endorsing presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

But Trump's second presidency is much different. This time, he made a point of surrounding himself with hardcore MAGA loyalists—who, the Washington Post's Philip Bump argues in his June 2 column, are making a concerted effort to bully and intimidate opponents and create a climate of fear.

Trump, Bump warns, has a "range of dishonest actors" at his disposal. And they range from White House adviser Stephen Miller to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to immigration czar Tom Homan.

READ MORE: 'Beyond the pale': Scarborough rips 'childish' Joni Ernst for 'mocking her constituents'

"What President Donald Trump wants is to put big deportation numbers on the scoreboard," Bump explains. "Recent reporting suggests that senior administration officials, including adviser Stephen Miller, are leaning on DHS to remove more people, faster. Trump’s 2024 campaign promised to focus on removing the massive population of criminal undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But, in part because his claims about the scale of the problem have consistently been hyperbolic, the (Trump) Administration is instead resorting to deporting just about anyone it can conceivably fit into the system."

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Bump notes that the intimidation tactics of Trump and his allies range from the arrests of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-New Jersey) and Judge Hannah Dugan to DHS agents accusing Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D-New York) staff of "harboring rioters" and even handcuffing a Nadler staffer.

"In San Diego," Bump observes, "heavily armed immigration officers conducted a raid at a restaurant. When observers attempted to halt the arrests, the federal agents allegedly used a stun grenade against the crowd. That incident was perhaps the most extreme of a number of tense, aggressive encounters between immigration officials and the public over the past four months…. It also seems clear that some agents understand they won’t be held accountable for their actions."

Bump adds, "Detaining a staffer in member of Congress' office in search of 'rioters' from a nonexistent riot doesn't comport with a liberal democracy."

READ MORE:'Mass delusion fueled by charisma': Expert explains why Trump's followers still believe in him

Nadler told the New York Times, "The Trump Administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices. We have to fight them. We don't want to be a fascist country."

Bump laments, "This is the reality. Immigrants are cast as dangerous when they aren't. Governmental power is abused without accountability. All of it at Trump’s whim — very much to Nadler's 'authoritarian' point."

READ MORE:'Disappointed': Musk says Trump's bill 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing'

*Philip Bump's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required)

---

---

SEE YT CICC A GESTURE TO HIT CAN BE assault; any touch not consented?!

AN 5 25

House Democratic Leadership has strongly condemned interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba's decision to charge Rep. LaMonica Mclver (D-N.J.), calling it "an attack on the American people."

The Justice Department announced on Monday that it has filed charges against McIver, accusing her of assaulting law enforcement officers earlier this month at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Newark.

In a statement released Monday, House Democrats said the party "will respond vigorously in the days to come at a time, place and manner of our choosing."

READ MORE:'Not one peep from Trump': Tornado-ravaged city’s mayor pleads for federal assistance

"The criminal charge against Congresswoman LaMonica McIver is extreme, morally bankrupt and lacks any basis in law or fact," said the statement, shared by House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on the social platform X.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

"Members of Congress have a constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight of the executive branch wherever and whenever it is needed. We are lawfully permitted to show up at any federal facility unannounced to conduct an inspection on behalf of the American people," the Democratic lawmakers said.

"By visiting the detention center in Newark, Rep. McIver and two other Members of Congress were upholding their oath of office. They didn’t assault anyone, but were themselves aggressively mistreated by illegally masked individuals," the statement added.

"There is no credible evidence that Rep. McIver engaged in any criminal activity, and she would not have been permitted to tour the facility had she done anything wrong," the Democratic leadership said.

READ MORE:This Trump-made disaster will be more deadly than any hurricane

The statement further said that the proceeding launched "by the so-called U.S. Attorney in New Jersey is a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate Congress and interfere with our ability to serve as a check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch."

House Democrats vowed not to "be intimidated by the Trump administration."

Several Democratic lawmakers posted separate statements condemning Habba's move.

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M) said in an X post: "Rep. LaMonica McIver walked into Delaney Hall to protect human rights and it is her lawful duty to conduct oversight. Now, the Trump Administration is throwing bogus charges at her for doing her job."

READ MORE:'Truly chilling': House Dem rips MAGA prosecutor after she indicts sitting congresswoman

"They want to silence everyone. If they came for a sitting member of Congress, who will they come for next? I stand with @RepLaMonica—and for the Constitution. It is our sacred obligation as Americans to protect each other from tyranny," she added.

Rep Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) wrote: "A RED LINE has been crossed. Trump is prosecuting his political enemies in Congress. This is just the beginning. We must take whatever we’ve done before to show dissent and go ONE RUNG HIGHER. And save your bulls--- documents on this, Alina. You’ll need them when you testify."

Political commentators and attorneys also spoke out against the development.

Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnicksaid in a post: "Donald Trump’s personal lawyer is acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, despite no relevant background. She just charged a Democratic congresswoman with assaulting a cop in an incident which occurred after DHS chose to arrest Newark’s mayor for trespassing."

READ MORE: White House scrambles to clean up Trump’s Walmart 'rage tweeting' amid upcoming 'standoff'

Meanwhile, supporters of Make American Great Again (MAGA) movement welcomed Habba's action.

MAGA conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer wrote on X: "Democrat Congresswoman @RepLaMonica has been charged for assaulting an ICE agent in New Jersey! Thank you, @AlinaHabba. You may want to keep an eye on homeboy Hakeem who said you will 'find out' if his Sista faced 'trumped up charges'. Sounds like a threat."

---

---

POLITICO

New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka arrested at ICE facility

The Democrat, who is also running for governor, was involved in a scrum with three members of Congress seeking a tour of Delaney Hall.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was detained while at Delaney Hall, a facility to house migrants. | Seth Wenig/AP

By Ry Rivard

05/09/2025

NEWARK, New Jersey — The mayor of New Jersey’s largest city, who is also a Democratic candidate for governor, was handcuffed and detained by federal officials on Friday at a protest ofan immigration detention centerfollowing a scrum involving federal agents and three members of Congress seeking a tour of the facility.

The arrest followed a chaotic scene in the detention facility’s parking lot involving protesters, federal law enforcement officers and the three Democratic members — Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver — at Delaney Hall. It is the Trump administration’s newest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, which is expected to play a major role in its Northeast immigration operations.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was being held at a separate ICE field office in his own city as elected Democrats in New Jersey scrambled to get him released.

House members, protesters clash with authorities at New Jersey ICE facility

IFrame Content

Play Video

The members of Congress all said they were touched to varying degrees and, in one case, assaulted by federal authorities at the facility.

“This most assuredly is the most discomforting, concerning visit we have had. And what we experienced was the weaponization, of the abuse of power, that this administration has given ICE to do,” Watson Coleman said. “ICE is out of control.”

The mayor and the three members of Congress had been visiting Delaney Hall hoping to inspect conditions inside. While the members were inside, Baraka waited in a fenced in parking lot at the facility while protesters gathered outside the fence.

The roughly 1,000-bed facility just recently started taking detainees. The Baraka administration has tried to prevent it from opening, taking the private prison operator that runs the facility to court and alleging it does not have proper city permits.

The detention unfolded after Baraka was apparently allowed inside the fenced parking lot at the facility and then later told to leave.

The three House members had been inside the facility waiting for a tour [for two hours?] but then came out after officers wearing gear that identified them variously as federal police, ICE and Homeland Security personnel began gathering near Baraka in the parking lot. At one point, the three Democratic members came out as authorities threatened to arrest Baraka. They all exited to a parking lot outside the fence where protesters had gathered in an attempt to defuse the situation and to avoid Baraka getting arrested.

The three members then reentered the fenced area while Baraka waited outside the fence, but Menendez quickly came back and warned Baraka that the authorities still wanted to arrest him. When Menendez came to warn Baraka, he looked through the fence and told the mayor, “They are talking about coming out to arrest you.”

Later, Menendez told POLITICO that he’d witnessed an agent inside the fenced area talking on the phone with someone who told the agent to arrest Baraka, who by then was outside of the fenced area. McIver gave a similar account in a press conference.

Then law enforcement officials all came out, setting off a scrum in the parking lot area outside the fence, with Baraka and 80-year-old Watson Coleman near its middle.

It was a chaotic scene.

The group then moved to reenter the fenced-in area as Baraka was handcuffed and detained.

The interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, confirmed that Baraka was in custody.

“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” shewrote on X. “He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”

But the members of Congress also said they had been touched.

McIver, who represents Newark, said she and her colleagues came to the facility for a “simple oversight visit” but they had to wait about two hours to get inside. She and Watson Coleman were “assaulted” and Menendez was “roughed up” afterward. Menendez said that “all of us were touched,” calling what happened to McIver an “assault.”

As they reached the gate after the scrum to reenter the secure area of the facility, Menendez said he witnessed a federal law enforcement official assault McIver.

“It was a complete shove,” Menendez said in an interview.

McIver gave a similar account.

But even after that, the three members of Congress continued inside the secure area and received a tour. None of the members said they witnessed deplorable conditions at the facility, but by then the mayor’s arrest had overtaken the inspection.

“What we just witnessed was disgusting,” McIver told reporters. “If they can treat three members of Congress like that, just imagine how they can treat people on the street each and every day.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, described the events differently. It said in a statement that as a bus of detainees was entering the security gate of Delaney Hall a group of protesters and two members of Congress — Menendez and Watson Coleman — “stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”

:{:{MOST READ}:

  1. ### Judges warn Trump’s mass deportations could lay groundwork to ensnare Americans
  2. ### RFK Jr., DOGE gutted legally required offices. Courts may undo it all.
  3. ### ‘It’s time for Joe Biden to go away': Democrats are triggered by Biden’s return to the spotlight
  4. ### Qatar calls reports of pending jet gift to Trump ‘inaccurate’
  5. ### Republicans’ partial tax plan estimated to cost $5 trillion

“These members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and the detainees at risk,” the agency said. “Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility. This is an evolving situation.”

protesters on the scene, which included members of the SEIU union, began moving to the field office across town when they learned Barak was being taken there.

By late afternoon, the three members of Congress reassembled at the field office and began pushing back against claims that they had stormed the facility. At least 100 protesters remained outside the facility in the rain Friday evening, chanting “free Ras Baraka.”

IFrame Content

Baraka, astaunch progressive and one of six Democrats running for governor this year, has been a vocal opponent of the Trump administration’s plans for the immigration detention facility. While other Democratic candidates have spoken out against the Trump administration’s recent immigration actions, none have done so as forcefully as Baraka. He took part in a rally against the reopening of the facility in March — footage of which hasappeared in his campaign ads — and has been “demanding entry” into Delaney Hall throughout the week since its opening.

Newark, which is home to a diverse population, previously filed a complaint with the Essex County Superior Court, alleging that ICE was planning to open Delaney Hall “without following proper building safety protocols.” (DHS told POLITICO in a statement that the facility has “valid permits and inspection from plumbing, electricity to fire codes has been cleared.”) GEO Group, the private prison contractor that owns the facility, has accused the legal action of being “politically motivated.” GEO Group referred POLITICO to ICE for comment.

At the March rally, Baraka told reporters that he would “love to see action” from his fellow Democratic candidates regarding immigration.

“They say they are against the detention facility in Newark, and that’s the talk,” Baraka said at the time. “I would love to see them out to help us in this effort. I mean, it is a competition, so maybe they feel like coming here supports me. I don’t know what it is. I can’t speak for them, but I would love to see them out here.”

The arrest puts Baraka in the national spotlight with a month to go before the June 10 primary. Just two hours after he was led away in handcuffs, Baraka’s campaign sent out a text message asking for donations. “Ras was at Delaney Hall today demanding entry into the ICE detention center where Trump and MAGA extremists are illegally detaining people,” it read. “Ras is ready to do whatever it takes to stop Trump and to protect New Jerseyans from his extreme agenda. We need you with us now more than ever.”

Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement he was “outraged by the unjust arrest” of Baraka. The governor noted that he signed a law several years ago that aims to ban private immigration detention facilities, but the law has not been enforced amid a pending lawsuit.

“Mayor Baraka is an exemplary public servant who has always stood up for our most vulnerable neighbors,” he said. “I am calling for his immediate release by federal law enforcement.”

The arrest alarmed other pro-immigrant activists who were in attendance.

“If they can do this to a mayor that has a profile as large as Mayor Baraka, what are they going to do to people protesting at Tesla stores?” said Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

Other Democratic candidates running for governor condemned the arrest. Rep. Mikie Sherrillcalled it an “absolute outrage,” while Steven Fulop, mayor of Jersey City,said it was “a dangerous precedent — and it demands condemnation in the strongest possible terms.” Former state Senate President Steve Sweeney called for his release, as did Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who said that Delaney Hall has “an environment ripe with mistreatment and abuse.”

New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller said that he will go to Delaney Hall tomorrow, and called on the other candidates to join him “in standing together for justice.”

Meanwhile, Republicans attacked Baraka. Bob Hugin, the state Republican Party chair, warned that Baraka would be a governor “who puts political theater ahead of public safety and the rule of law.” The GOP gubernatorial hopefuls also went after him, with former radio host Bill Spadea saying that he “should be embarrassed by his behavior” and former Assemblymember Jack Ciattarelli calling Baraka “shameful.”

“In Newark, the airport is in the midst of an unprecedented & dangerous meltdown, the public schools are failing students & families, and there is crime in the streets every day,” Ciattarelli wrote. “And yet its Mayor and leading Democrat candidate for Governor … is busy shilling for illegal Immigrants at an ICE detention center with a cheap publicity stunt.”

*Madison Fernandez and Daniel Han contributed to this report.

---

Charlie Kirk: “These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this.”}:

05/12/25

May 12, 2025, edition ofThe Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This is a very easy one for my friend, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. Very easy. They went after American patriots for peacefully walking into the United States Capitol building, nonviolently, while being invited, while doors were opened, and they stayed within the lanes, the little rope lines. These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this, without a doubt. No one is above the law, is what we've always been saying. No one is above the law.

...

KIRK: And that's exactly what should happen. You see, the Democrats have a big problem with Immigration Customs and Enforcement. But if you assault ICE, you get consequences. If you storm an ICE facility, there will be consequences. Rob Menendez complained that they had put their hands on a member of Congress. Oh, I must have missed the memo that he was an untouchable. He thinks they should be invulnerable, that he is royalty. And by the way, his dad is literally a traitor. Bob Menendez sold our country out to Egypt for gold bars while on the Senate foreign intelligence committee, selling out American secrets for cash. And did — he also had multiple instances of near misses with the law. This guy was a disgusting person.

...

KIRK: Throw the book at them. Kash and Pam, you got all the details you need — charge these members of Congress. The facts are there. They stormed the facility. They assaulted our ICE officers. They think they are above the law. They tried to put President Trump in jail for 700 years for something he did not do. They are begging you to indict them and do it. Don't make a big show of it. Indite them. Charge them. The only way that we end the lawfare chapter in this country is reciprocity. They came after us, they assaulted ICE officers, and we will go after them.

---