ICE1 dhs

see baby jail

SEE ICE 3

SEE DHS BAK = 2

SEE MASS DEPORTATION MILLER 3

SEE HOMAN

SEE NOEM

SEE HSI GOONS

see dhs main

includes CPB

5 25 FUCKERY BY INTEL?

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7 25

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'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understood that the Trump regime could make an example of her – search for some pretext for why her citizenship is no longer valid, perhaps by sifting through her history of public commentary and finding any sort of opinion that the regime considers “a threat to national securty.”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

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BUSTED: Trump official who misled the public is now in charge of LA Border Patrol - Alternet.org

bovino

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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]

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.

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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.

"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

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."

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."

*Philip Bump's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required)

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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.

THOM 3 3 25

ISIS STYLE VIDEO, CONC CAMP // PVT PRISON

And they’re proud of it.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ridiculing the judge’s order to stop the illegal, no-due-process deportation flights to El Salvador, retweeted “Oopsie … Too late,” with a smirking emoji.

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Wake up: In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or your freedom

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attends the National Governors Association (NGA) dinner and reception hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. First Lady Melania Trump in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 22, 2025.

Thom Hartmann March 20, 2025

Imagine stepping off a plane in the United States, fully expecting to enter the country without issue, only to be surrounded by armed agents, handcuffed, and thrown into a freezing detention center. No trial. No lawyer. No contact with the outside world.

In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or freedom—because now, it takes nothing more than an ICE agent’s “suspicion” to make you disappear.

This isn’t a mistake. It’s part of an expanding system of cruelty, where ICE—once an agency tasked with immigration enforcement—is now operating like an unchecked police force, targeting legal residents, visitors, and even US citizens with impunity.

They have become—since the days when Trump sent them here into Portland without ID to kidnap citizens off the streets and torment them in 2020—the Führer’s private police force. His very own “protection squads” or Schutzstaffel.

People who follow every rule, complete all the required paperwork, and obey every regulation are still finding themselves locked away, held in horrific conditions, and stripped of their rights—all based on the whims of an agent who doesn’t even need evidence to justify an arrest.

A U.S. citizen from Chicago was among 22 people recently subjected to unlawful arrests and detention by ICE. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that during Trump’s first term, immigration authorities asked to hold approximately 600 likely citizens and actually deported about 70 likely citizens.

But now, in part because of the Laken Riley Act, it’s getting worse. Forty-two Democrats in the House and fourteen in the Senate voted to pass this execrable GOP bill last month; it was named after a young woman murdered by an undocumented alien whose story was relentlessly promoted by Fox “News” and other rightwing hate media.

That law, recently signed by Trump, says that ICE now has the authority to detain anybody — anybody — for an indefinite period of time — no time limit whatsoever — if an ICE agent simply says that he or she “suspects” the person is in the country illegally or without documentation.

Did you think, “It can’t happen here”?

Wake up: Trump has already begun putting it into effect, although our media seem curiously silent about its application.

Fabian Schmidt, a German-born engineer, has lived in the United States for nearly two decades, legally working, paying taxes, and contributing to his community. None of that mattered when he returned home from a trip abroad. As soon as he landed at Logan Airport in Boston, ICE agents pulled him aside. His green card renewal was “flagged” for some unknown reason—no explanation, no opportunity to clarify, just a red mark in a government system.

That was all it took. ICE stripped him of his clothes, subjected him to hours of aggressive questioning, and locked him in a detention center. They threw him into an ice-cold shower and left him shivering on the concrete floor, humiliated and terrified.

For days, his mother, Astrid, desperately tried to find him. She called ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and any agency that might give her an answer. They either ignored her or outright lied, claiming they had no record of her son. When she finally learned where he was, Fabian was barely holding himself together. “They treat us like animals,” he told her.

And why was he there? Because of a supposed “bureaucratic error.” ICE used a minor paperwork issue as an excuse to detain a legal resident of the United States without due process, a tactic that’s becoming frighteningly common.

For Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist, her visit to the United States was supposed to be brief—just a trip to see friends and enjoy the country. She had a valid passport, a return ticket, and legal permission to enter under the Visa Waiver Program. Yet, ICE decided that she might try to work while visiting, a baseless assumption that required no proof and no justification.

Just “suspicion.” That was enough to detain her indefinitely.

Once inside, the nightmare deepened. They threw her into a cell with no bed and no access to legal assistance. For eight straight days, they kept her in solitary confinement. The lights never dimmed, and the sounds of other detainees screaming in despair echoed through the walls. She started hallucinating, her grip on reality slipping. Desperate to feel something, anything real, she punched the walls until her knuckles bled.

Meanwhile, her best friend, Amelia, searched frantically for her. ICE refused to confirm her location or even acknowledge that they had detained her. No charges, no trial, no legal recourse—just silence.

Jessica’s case isn’t unique. People who follow all immigration rules are being detained under vague suspicions, often disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole. And once they’re inside the system, their rights mean nothing.

Consider Jasmine Mooney, the actor who starred in the American Pie franchise and a Canadian businesswoman who played by the rules. She secured a job offer, completed all visa paperwork, and followed every U.S. immigration law to the letter. But that didn’t stop ICE from shackling her, chaining her wrists, ankles, and waist as if she were a violent offender.

For days, she was trapped in a brutal private, for-profit detention facility, laying on the bare floor with nothing but a crinkled foil sheet for warmth. Then, in the dead of night, ICE dragged her from her cell, bound her in chains again, and forced her onto a bus with dozens of other women. They drove for hours, denying them food, water, or bathroom breaks. By the time she arrived at another facility, she had been awake for 24 hours and was too weak to stand.

To this day, ICE refuses to explain why she was detained. And why would they? They don’t have to. The agency operates with absolute power, detaining people for as long as they want, answering to no one.

Moody tells her horrifying story to The Guardian, writing:

“I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet. …

“There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.”

These aren’t isolated cases. ICE has transformed itself into an authoritarian force that detains people indefinitely on suspicion alone. No evidence? No trial? No problem.

And the for-profit prison industry that’s holding many if not most of them has no incentive to help these people; the more they detail and the longer they stay, the more money the prison companies make (which they then share as campaign donations with Republican politicians).

ICE agents don’t need proof. They only need the power to act—and Trump has given it to them.

And, while these three cases from the last few weeks have leaked into the press, it’s possible there are dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of others. And if there aren’t now, there probably will be soon.

Canadians — and people all over the world — have to be reconsidering ever visiting or even passing through the United States.

We have become one of those dangerous, lawless nations you see movies about where the biggest threat isn’t the criminal element but are the guys in uniform who can do anything they want to you, any time they want, with no fear of consequences.

Meanwhile, these agents of the Trump administration are turning their focus on American citizens who have offended them.

ProPublica documented yesterday how a 21-year-old US citizen born in Philadelphia was dragged off to detention; a 10-year-old American citizen girl was deported, interrupting her chemo for brain cancer; and an estimated 600 US citizens were detained during Trump’s first term.

They noted in their report:

“In Utah, agents pulled over and detained a 20-year-old American after he honked at them. In New Mexico, a member of the Mescalero Apache nation more than two hours from the border was questioned by agents who demanded to see their passport. Earlier this month, a Trump voter in Virginia was pulled over and handcuffed by gun-wielding immigration agents. …

“The government does not release figures on citizens who have been held by immigration authorities. Neither Border Patrol nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles interior immigration enforcement, would provide numbers to ProPublica on how many Americans have been mistakenly detained.”

“Mistakenly”? Like the people “detained” Portland in 2020?

Worse, ICE and Trump’s lawyers are actively defying court orders that might restrain them.

High-ranking ICE officials have made it clear they don’t care what judges say, what laws dictate, or even what the Constitution requires. As Tom Homan, Trump’s “Border Czar,” told Fox “News”:

“We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.’

When a federal court ordered them to halt a mass deportation flight last week, ICE ignored the ruling and sent over 250 immigrants—mostly asylum seekers—back into danger. According to Reuters, many are not even remotely affiliated with a Venezuelan gang:

“Anyelo had told his sister on Friday night that he would be deported to Venezuela, she said in a phone interview with Reuters from Texas.

“Solanyer said her brother had been detained on January 31 after an appointment at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. He had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally with Solanyer and another sister in November 2023 and had been released to pursue a claim for asylum.

“Solanyer said an ICE officer told her that her brother was detained because of a tattoo that linked him to Tren de Aragua, a violent gang with Venezuelan prison origins that has spread through the Americas. She said the tattoo depicted a rose and that he had gotten it in a tattoo parlor in Dallas.

“‘He thought it looked cool, looked nice, it didn't have any other significance,’ she said, stressing that he is not a gang member.”

As FPWellman notes on the excellent On Democracy Substack newsletter, also quoting Reuters:

“Johanny Sanchez, 22, suspects her husband Franco Caraballo, 26, who was detained in Texas, could now be in El Salvador, but does not know for sure.

“Caraballo had multiple tattoos including ones of roses, a clock with this daughter’s birth time, a lion and a shaving razor, said his wife.

“‘I’ve never seen him without hair, so I haven't recognized him in the photos,’ she said. ‘I just suspect he’s there because of the tattoos that he has and right now any Venezuelan man with tattoos is assumed to be a gang member,’ she added, citing also the fact that he has effectively gone missing.

“Sanchez said her husband has never been a member of Tren de Aragua.”

But all of these young men were forbidden the right to hear their charges, face their accusers, hire an attorney, plead before a judge or jury, or enjoy the speedy trial that our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee to “every person” within the United States, citizen or not. They were simply arrested and sent to a foreign hellhole to be tortured at your and my expense.

The Trump administration apparently doesn’t have any intention of following the Constitution and 240+ years of the rule of law. Instead, they’re going full dictator.

And they’re proud of it.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ridiculing the judge’s order to stop the illegal, no-due-process deportation flights to El Salvador, retweeted “Oopsie … Too late,” with a smirking emoji.

A president who can deport anyone, even in defiance of a judge’s order, is a president who can arrest anyone. ICE is no longer just violating human rights—it is dismantling the American legal system itself with the explicit approval of nearly every Republican and forty-six weak-kneed Democrats in Congress.

This is no longer about immigration. It’s about control. About unrestrained police power. How long will it be before Trump reprises his sending ICE into cities to kidnap and terrorize US citizen protestors like he did five years ago?

A judge stopped him then; today, it appears, he’ll just laugh at any order a judge issues.

If this continues, the question isn’t who the ICE “protection squads” and other federal police agencies will target next—it’s who will be left to stop them.

===

hysterectomies?

ICE whistleblower’s horrifying account of forced sterilization raises fears of eugenics and genocide

Lisa Newcomb / Common Dreams

Human rights advocates sounded alarms Monday following a whistleblower complaint that alleges an alarming number of hysterectomies were performed on detainees at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/a-critic-of-the-russian-government-sought-asylum-in-the-us-and-was-treated-shamefully-under-trump/

Gregory Duralev has been seeking asylum in the United States since 2016 after exposing corruption in Russia’s economy. It’s no exaggeration to say that this could be a matter of life or death, when critics of the Russian government continue to die “mysteriously.” But Politico’s Natasha Bertrand reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has sought to deport Duralev to exactly that—and even as he’s been allowed to legally remain in the U.S. while his asylum claim plays out.

“Duralev has no criminal record in the U.S. or Russia,” Bertrand reported. “Nor do Russia and the United States have a formal extradition treaty. But he was arrested, deemed a flight risk and denied bond, he says, because of a Red Notice issued by Russia and shared with POLITICO. Experts who have reviewed the document say it was so incomplete and riddled with inaccuracies that it was nearly incomprehensible.”

The *Atlantic* in 2018 described Interpol-issued Red Notices as “the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant in use today,” though it “cannot compel any member country to arrest an individual who is the subject of a Red Notice, according to its guidelines.” Per the Justice Department, the Atlantic said, “the United States does not consider a Red Notice alone to be a sufficient basis for the arrest of a subject because it does not meet the requirements for arrest under the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.”

But during the Trump administration, Kremlin-demanded Red Notices “are being met with increasing deference by the Department of Homeland Security,” the Atlantic continued.

Duralev could now be its next victim. He was detained by ICE when he was arriving for a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) appointment that he assumed was part of his asylum process. It wasn’t. ICE under the Trump administration has in fact detained many other immigrants in this same “bait and switch” deceit, with a Maryland judge earlier this year issuing an injunction blocking mass deportation agents from sweeping up immigrants who were detained when they arrived for what they also assumed were immigration interviews.

Duralev was detained for 18 months, at one point “placed in protective custody and told to know his ‘place’” after complaining about his treatment, Politico continued. He tried asking both the immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals to let him fight his case in freedom, but that was denied due to the faulty Red Notice. “The fact that immigration judges are relying on Russian Red Notices to penalize Russians who have fallen out with the state makes no legal sense,” Bill Browder, another activist previously targeted by the Kremlin, told Politico. “It shouldn’t happen. It’s illegal and it’s unjust.”

But that’s ICE, and the Trump administration. Federal immigration officials have also resumed wide-scale sweepsin the middle of a pandemic, detaining more than 2,000 people in July and August to keep filling up inhumane and dangerous detention facilities that advocates have said should instead be emptied due to the novel coronavirus. ICE has in fact actively made the crisis in these facilities worse, by shifting detained people from facility to facility instead of just releasing them.

Politico reports that while Duralev was finally released in February, he could still face deportation. “In the meantime, from his home in California, Duralev is now pursuing a civil lawsuit against DHS for ‘fabricating charges’ against him—accusing him of illegal visa overstay, despite USCIS allowing him to remain in the U.S. pending an asylum decision. He has also sent a complaint to the DHS inspector general, which has yet to be answered.” Duralev told Politico that “DHS has acted no better than the Russian authorities.”

cascade / compound/ interacting factors

Hurricane Laura worsens already inhumane ICE conditions

Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos

Detained people already suffer dangerous conditions while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, including inhumane living arrangements, medical mistreatment or no treatment at all, and systemic patterns of abuse. The novel coronavirus pandemic has only piled…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/ice-rejected-19-testing-for-all-detainees-at-facility-because-it-would-be-too-much-trouble/

820 an

ICE rejected COVID-19 testing for all detainees at facility because it would be too much trouble

Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos

There’s really no bottom when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private prison profiteers join forces—just consider the latest example. Internal emails obtained through an ongoing lawsuit show the mass detention agency…

ere’s really no bottom when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private prison profiteers join forces—just consider the latest example. Internal emails obtained through an ongoing lawsuit show the mass detention agency and private prison operator GEO Group rejected a plan to test all detained people at one California facility for COVID-19 “because they would be unable to adequately isolate those who tested positive,” a coalition of groups said in a statement.

So rather than ensure the well-being of people in their custody, they threw up their hands because it would be challenging, or, gasp, they might actually have to acknowledge that people are safer not in detention. “These emails show a staggering disregard for human life on the part of ICE and GEO,” Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area senior staff attorney Bree Bernwanger said. “ICE chose to risk the outbreak that is now gripping Mesa Verde.” Along with the emails’ public release, a federal judge also rebuked the agency.

On Thursday, “a federal judge granted extraordinary relief—weekly rapid testing, no new intakes, and a dorm for COVID-positive detainees—for all immigrants detained at Mesa Verde Detention Facility in the wake of a COVID-19 outbreak that hospitalized two detainees and infected at least 7 others,” San Francisco Public Defenders, American Civil Liberties Unionof Northern California, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Lakin & Wille LLP, and Cooley LLP also said.

The judge’s fury was evident:Judge Vince Chhabria wrote in his order that “[t]he documentary evidence shows that the defendants have avoided widespread testing of staff and detainees at the facility, not for lack of tests, but for fear that positive test results would require them to implement safety measures that they apparently felt were not worth the trouble,” groups said in the statement.

"Another e-mail revealed that ICE refused to test contract staff due to fear that positive tests could force them to change the manner in which they detain immigrants,” the groups continued.“GEO’s Mesa Verde Warden Nathan Allen wrote that ICE’s Assistant Field Office Director ‘mentioned he would rather not have staff testing as they may also impact ERO functions, i.e., an asymptomatic person testing positive would require possible dorm cohorts and detainee testing protocols.’”

In other words, ICE said not even this danged pandemic is going to disrupt our detention and deportation agenda, even if it gets the detainees, or us sick, which it has.

“What these last few weeks have revealed without a shadow of a doubt is that a government agency, and those with whom they contract, are deliberately indifferent with respect to the health and safety of the human beings they incarcerate,” Lakin & Wille LLP attorney Judah Lakin said. “It’s infuriating, heart wrenching and, quite frankly, frightening.”

The deaths this week of two peoplewhile in ICE custody—including a man who reportedly had tested positive for COVID-19 after being detained at a hard-hit Virginia facility—marked the agency’s deadliest period in nearly 15 years. BuzzFeed News reported that the deaths of the two immigrants on the same day were the sixteenth and seventeenth in-custody deaths this fiscal year, “making it the highest total since 2006, when 19 immigrants died, according to ICE records"

an 720

whistleblowers say ICE intentionally withheld personal protective equipment during COVID-19 pandemic Aysha Qamar / Daily Kos

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/here-are-6-signs-trump-may-use-dhs-stormtroopers-to-stop-democrats-from-voting/

wa mo

Last night I wrote about Trump’s use of ICE and Border Patrol stormtroopers under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security to detain and intimidate peaceful protesters.In that piece I speculated that Trump was not only testing the waters of creating his own personal paramilitary domestic security force and attempting to please the most sadistic elements of his base, but also that he was taking the natural actions an executive might take if he actually believed the dystopian propaganda about America’s cities being promulgated every day on Fox News.

But there is another deeply alarming possibility to consider. This November will be the first since the expiration of a 1982 consent decree in which the Republican National Committee will be freed to conduct voter suppression and intimidation en masse. As Andy Kroll recently explained at Rolling Stone:

The result of the suit was a 1982 consent decree between the Democratic and Republican parties. Even though the RNC refused to admit wrong-doing in New Jersey, the group agreed to stop harassing and intimidating voters of color, including by deputizing off-duty law-enforcement officers and equipping those officers with guns or badges. Over the next three decades, Democrats marshaled enough evidence of ongoing Republican voter suppression to maintain the consent decree until 2018, when a federal judge lifted the order.

The 2020 presidential election will be the first in nearly 40 years when the RNC isn’t bound by the terms of the 1982 decree. Clark, the Trump campaign lawyer, told the group of Republicans at the private meeting last November that the end of the consent decree was “a huge, huge, huge, huge deal,” freeing the RNC to directly coordinate with campaigns and political committees on so-called Election Day operations. The RNC is sending millions of dollars to state Republican parties to vastly expand these measures, which include recruiting 50,000 poll observers to deploy in key precincts.

So consider the following facts:

1) The Republican National Committee under Trump is set to deploy tens of thousands of likely armed, unbadged goons to try to intimidate voters of color from exercising their right of suffrage;

2) Both Border Patrol and ICE are functioning as largely unaccountable enforcers of the president’s personal whims and interpretations of law, detaining citizens for hours without explanation or formal charges, and operating in direct conflict with local mayors and governors;

3) Border Patrol and ICE both have stridently bigoted, conservative organizational cultures hostile to most people of color and more liberal, urban areas generally–and they are well aware that their powers will likely be curtailed under a possible future Democratic administration;

4) Trump continues to ramp up rhetoric against nonexistent “voter fraud” in liberal areas. His focus has primarily been on vote-by-mail as a result of the COVID pandemic, but imaginary in-person voter impersonation fraud among communities of color in Democratic-leaning cities has long been a Republican obsession. A senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign recently declared that Trump would win even California if voting were “fair,” showing just how deeply the conspiratorial thinking around this issue runs in top GOP circles.

5) Acting Department of Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf appears to have no constraints on his behavior or his overheated rhetoric, and that the Trump Administration is planning to scale up the use of border patrol agents as a conservative paramilitary nationwide.

6) Donald Trump and his campaign team know by now that absent some explosive scandal around Biden or other unpredictable event to change the fundamentals of the race, the president’s only path to victory lies not in persuading a majority of voters but in choosing his own electorate by suppressing the votes of the majority of Americans who despise him.

Put all of this together, and it opens the possibility of a terrifying abuse of power. We could end up seeing armed private contractors hired by the RNC and affiliated conservative organizations to intimidate Democratic-leaning voters, bolstered by camouflage-wearing taxpayer-funded rifle-toting border patrol agents aggressively checking papers of every voter in line in the guise of “securing against voter fraud” on the president’s orders. This would be happening during the most tense presidential election in our lifetimes during a raging pandemic, often in lines in which voters must wait 8 to 10 hours to vote due to restricted polling places in minority communities–also a blatant suppression attempt enabled by the Supreme Court’s voiding of many of the protections of the Voting Rights Act. The likelihood that these actions would be met with immediate enraged protest would be very high. Election Day violence unheard of since the Civil Rights era could ensue, which would give Trump an excuse to instigate further crackdowns across the country as election day continues. Federal agents could forseeably be sent in to attempt to stop the counting of mail-in ballots in the days following the election on presidential orders. No need for aBrooks Brothers Riot if you can just send in an armed federal paramilitary, instead.

Absent some form of preventive action by states, municipalities, the Democratic Party and left-affiliated organizations, there is very little to stop Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr and Acting DHS Secretary Wolf from attempting any or all of this.

And unlike in normal political circumstances where a party that loses an election can hope and expect to retool and win elections in the future, Republicans know that if they get wiped out in 2020, demographic realities mean it could be the last hurrah for this version of the GOP at a federal level. If Democrats were to follow up a landslide victory with efforts to secure a voting bill of rights, an elimination of gerrymandering and the filibuster, and a rebalancing of the Senate, the courts and the electoral college, the Republican Party would not be able to regain serious federal power in its current form without a realignment. Donald Trump himself would literally be in danger of going to jail. The Republican incentive in November would be to pull out allthe stops to prevent this from happening, especially in a census year.

Perhaps these fears are paranoid. But when left organizers warned that ICE and Border Patrol were being converted into an authoritarian paramilitary security force and demanded that they be disbanded and abolished, self-proclaimed serious people in politics tended to dismiss their concerns as so much overheated partisanship. One of the most important lessons of the Trump administration has been that whatever you fear they might do, expect them to do worse if they can get away with it.

Far better to be prepared for such eventualities and be ready to fight back with all available legal means on Election Day, than to be caught surprised by the next unthinkable transgression. If Trump and his cronies can create authoritarian chaos on Election Day to intimidate Democratic voters, they likely will. Portland was just the first step.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_McAleenan

pal of chad wolf; ICE

Kevin Kealoha McAleenan (born September 5, 1971)^[1] is an American attorney and government official who served as the acting United States Secretary of Homeland Security from April to November 2019.^[2] He also served as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner.^[3][4] President Donald Trump designated McAleenan as Acting United States Secretary of Homeland Security in April 2019. He resigned on October 11, 2019, with Trump saying McAleenan wanted to "spend more time with his family and go to the private sector."^[5]

Early life

Kevin McAleenan was born on September 5, 1971, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a mother of Finnish descent and a father of Irish descent.^[6] He received an undergraduate degree from Amherst College. He then received a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School and practiced law in the state of California.^[7]

Early career

McAleenan practiced law in the private sector from 1998 until 2001, when terrorist attacks that September motivated him to apply to work for the FBI. He was recruited to help start up the new CBP Office of Antiterrorism, eventually becoming its executive director.^[1]

In 2006, he became CBP's area director of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).^[8] During his time as the port director of LAX, he was responsible for the security operations for that airport as well as 17 other airport facilities.^[7] After two years in private consulting, McAleenan returned to CBP in 2010, leading field operations. In 2011 McAleenan became the assistant commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection, Office of Field Operations.^[7][9] In this position he was in charge of airport operations and responsible for securing the US border while ensuring lawful trade and travel at 329 ports of entry in the United States, as well as 70 locations in more than 40 countries.^[7]

McAleenan served as deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection from 2014 to 2017.^[citation ^needed]

Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Nomination

McAleenan served as acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from January 2017 to March 20, 2018.^[10]

President Donald Trump nominated McAleenan to assume the position of commissioner in a permanent capacity in May 2017.^[11][12] McAleenan's previous nomination was supported by officials from both the George W. Bush and the Barack Obama administrations, a number of whom signed a letter to Congress expressing "enthusiastic support" for the "supremely qualified" McAleenan.^[13] Trump officially submitted the nomination to the Senate on May 22.^[14] The Senate confirmed McAleenan's nomination on March 19, 2018, by a vote of 77–19.^[15] He was sworn in on March 20, 2018.^[10][16]

Tenure

In August 2018, McAleenan was interviewed by The New York Times and said he was aware that it is illegal to detain families longer than 90 days. He also said he felt Trump's executive order was an "important recalibration" and that "well-intended efforts are not going to succeed if they lose public interest." McAleenan supports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying it does "critical work." He has said that there is no intent for indefinite or permanent family separation, and acknowledged that the CBP's job is to enforce the law.^[6]

In September 2018, McAleenan told the USA Today editorial board he planned to spend more time "analyzing ways to modernize border patrol facilities" and intended to travel to the southwest United States, where most of the migrant children were being held.^[17]

On June 28, 2019, McAleenan criticized media reports of conditions for detained migrants at the United States-Mexico border. He claimed that, contrary to reports, detained children had "appropriate meals" and "showers as soon as they can be provided." But a July 2, 2019 Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report found that some detention facilities in Rio Grande Valley had violated CBP standards by not granting children access to showers or hot meals.^[18][19]

Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

President Trump designated McAleenan as Acting United States Secretary of Homeland Security on April 8, 2019, following Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation.^[20][21][22] McAleenan resigned from the post on October 11, 2019. Trump announced McAleenan's departure on Twitter, saying that McAleenan wanted to "spend more time with his family and go to the private sector." CNN reported that White House officials tried to talk him out of resigning, but McAleenan felt he had accomplished all he could as acting secretary. Trump also announced that he would name McAleenan's successor the following week;^[5] his successor, Chad Wolf, was sworn in on November 13, 2019.^[23]

Awards

In 2005, McAleenan received the Service to America Medal, Call to Service Award for his leadership and help in developing and implementing a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy for border security after September 11, 2001. In 2015, McAleenan was awarded the Presidential Rank Award, the highest civil service award in the United States.^[17]

Reference

neglected, most undoc detainees in pvt jail?!

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/03/halfway-house-pandemic-coronavirus-geo-group/

Coronavirus CrisisHow the Coronavirus Became a Death Sentence at a GEO Group Halfway House

Liliana Segura

https://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-county-jails-detained-immigrants-for-ice-128601

omfg

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-secret-police-things-are-heading-in-that-direction/

no lnx

Trump’s secret police? Things are heading in that direction

[President Donald J. Trump speaks with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers coming in for their shift change, after President Trump attended a Roundtable on Immigration and Border Security Thursday, January 10, 2019, at the U.S. Border Patrol McAllen Station in McAllen, Texas. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)]

Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board February 18, 2020

I wrote this morning about the president’s new intimidation of sanctuary cities. He’s deploying 100 CBP agents, including BORTAC, which is a SWAT team for border security. The official goal is increasing deportations by 35 percent, but it’s pretty clear the aim is bullying local law enforcement into cooperating with federal authorities. I set the Times report in historical context, trying to explain, as I see it, how 9/11 sparked a chain reaction leading to what appears to be Donald Trump’s secret police force.

I end the piece by quoting Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent turned civil rights activist, who reported a conversation she had with a former CBP official. She wrote:

Border Patrol does not believe they are a civilian law enforcement agency. They believe they are kin to the Marine Corps. They do not believe they are accountable to Congress, which is why they have no issues lying to them even while under oath.

They believe they are only accountable to … presidents like Trump. Border Patrol believes it is not required to answer to local police, FBI, CIA or any other law enforcement agency. They claim to be the “premiere” law enforcement agency, superior to all others. They say they will become a “national police force” to be used by a president to enforce laws even among citizens. (Italics are mine.)

Check out the whole thing here.

And while you’re there, please support my work by becoming a member!

Thanks. —John Stoehr

dn 1219

:{DHS:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Memo Reveals How ICE’s Inadequate Medical Care Contributed to 4 Death

DHS created a fake university near Detroit as part of a sting operation targeting foreign students — and around 250 have been arrested so far

Alex Henderson

Complaints from immigrant groups about the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) didn’t start with President Donald Trump: there were plenty of deportations under former President Barack Obama,…

Placing children in harm’s way’: Report details how Trump policy put 13,000 kids in camps

Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams

A new report from Reuters on Friday revealed that President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies have sent 13,000 children—including over 400 infants—to tent cities on the Mexican side of the southern U.S. border…

ICE accused of ‘knowingly endangering migrants with the goal of deterring immigration’

Julia Conley / Common Dreams

Immigrant rights advocates on Friday called for Karnes Residential Center, an immigration detention facility outside San Antonio, Texas, to be shut down amid reports of severe neglect that could prove…

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/01/perceptics-hack-license-plate-readers

lee fang contractor

As Immigrants Become More Aware of Their Rights, ICE Steps Up Ruses and Surveillance

Nausicaa Renner

“ICE’s mission is to apprehend people that it believes shouldn’t be in our communities and it will go to great lengths to do that, particularly in the face of increased knowledge of rights.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/border-patrol-decried-for-trying-to-kidnap-us-citizen-kids-and-use-them-as-hostages-catch-and-deport-their-parents/

biz insider

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-letter-protest-palantir-ice-camps-2019-7

Monday, Amazon Web Services employees circulated an internal letter demanding that Amazon stop working with big data company Palantir and that it take a stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On Thursday, immigration rights protesters blocked traffic and interrupted an AWS conference in New York City because ofAWS's ties with ICE.
Palantir runs its software on Amazon's cloud, and has about $50 million in contracts with ICE.
A year ago, Amazon faced similar pressure from employees over its sales of facial recognition services to law enforcement, as well as its dealings with Palantir.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Monday, a group of Amazon employees sent out an internal email calling on Amazon to stop working with the big data company Palantir, which works with federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This email, sent to employee mailing lists within Amazon Web Services, demanded that Palantir be removed from Amazon's cloud for violating its terms of service. It also called on Amazon to take a stand against ICE by making a statement establishing its position against immigration raids, deportations, and camps for migrants at the border.

ICE is preparing to begin nationwide raids of undocumented families on Sunday, the New York Times reported. This operation had previously been postponed.

"The world is watching the abuses in ICE's concentration camps unfold. We know that our company should, and can, do better," the letter said.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Palantir, a prominent data analysis startup that counts several government agencies as customers, has about $50 million in contracts with ICE, which reports indicate entails providing software to gather data on undocumented immigrants' employment information, phone records, immigration history, and similar information. Its software is hosted in the AWS cloud.

The letter alleges that this is a violation of the AWS terms of service, which states that "[a]ny activities that are illegal, that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation" may be grounds to "suspend or terminate" use of our services.

The letter said that Palantir enables ICE to "violate the rights of others," and working with the company is "harmful to our reputation."

The employees say in the letter that their protest is in the spirit of similar action at companies including Wayfair, Microsoft, and Salesforce, where workers have protested their employers' ties to ICE and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

"Workers across industries continue to resist having their labor used to power these abuses and Amazonians are proud to stand with them. Employees at Wayfair have walked out in protest of their company's contract with ICE, while Microsoft and Salesforce employees are organizing to stop their companies' respective border contracts. The time to act is now," the letter said.

"When members of Congress visited a facility recently, they learned that detained women were 'told by agents to drink from the toilets' if they wanted water. This is a horrifying violation of human rights — and it's powered by AWS," the letter said, alluding to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's reports from her tour of a CBP facility in Texas.

A person familiar with the matter tells Business Insider that the letter has sparked fierce debates on the employee mailing lists.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, protesters blocked traffic at an AWS Summit event in New York City and interrupted Amazon CTO Werner Vogels' talk, demanding that the cloud platform cut ties with ICE, ABC7NY reported.

The last letter

The origins of this week's letter date back to June 2018, when a group of Amazon employees sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and AWS CEO Andy Jassy demanding that the company stop providing its Rekognition facial recognition software to police, and that it stop its dealings with Palantir.

That original letter was signed by 500 employees, according to the new letter circulated this week.

This new letter claims that Jassy responded to these concerns at an all-hands meeting, saying that Amazon had no intention of making changes to its Rekognition business. According to the letter, Jassy later said: "Just because tech could be be misused doesn't mean we should ban it and condemn it."

Just May, protesters demonstrated at Amazon's shareholder meeting over the treatment of its employees and environmental issues.

Read the full letter below:

In June 2018, a group of concerned Amazonians sent a letter to Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy, demanding that AWS:

Cease sales of surveillance technology to law enforcement and government agencies

Stop providing infrastructure to Palantir and any other Amazon partners who enable ICE, and

Implement strong transparency accountability measures for the sale and user of our services.

Since then, the company has shied away at every opportunity from acknowledging this letter signed by more than 500 employees. When confronted on these questions at a company all hands, Andy Jassy said "we feel really great and really strongly about the value that Amazon Rekognition is providing our custom res of all sizes and types of industries in law enforcement, and out of law enforcement." More recently, he added that "just because tech could be be misused doesn't mean we should ban it and condemn it," comparing Rekognition to a knife: "you could use a knife in a surreptitious way." As Amazonians, we are told to take Ownership for our work, meaning we "never say 'that's not my job.'" Passing the buck on responsibility for the effects of our work is not Ownership.

Our demands have become even more urgent given recent news. The US government has been detaining people, including young children, in concentration camps under horrific conditions. Reports have described extreme overcrowding (one facility was holding 900 people, in a space designed for only 125), freezing temperatures (facilities are regularly referred to as "hieleras" or "iceboxes"), and cruelty from guards at these detention centers. When members of Congress visited a facility recently, they learned that detained women were "told by agents to drink from the toilets" if they wanted water. This is a horrifying violation of human rights -- and it's powered by AWS.

Palantir, which runs on AWS services, provides the technical infrastructure used by ICE to collect and process information about people targeted for deportation. A 2016 court disclosure revealed that Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the primary deportation arm of ICE, uses Palantir's systems to gather information for its cases.

The AWS Acceptable Use Policy states that "[a]ny activities that are illegal, that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation" may be grounds to "suspend or terminate" use of our services.

Palantir directly enables ICE to "violate the rights of others" by powering the deportation processes that are rounding up immigrants and putting them in concentration camps. Additionally, hosting Palantir is "harmful to our reputation" because it hurts customer trust and leads to negative publicity. By continuing to host Palantir despite clear documentation of ongoing rights abuses that result from their products, AWS is choosing not to enforce its Terms of Service.

AWS has already kicked other customers off the platform for similar violations. WikiLeaks was kicked off for potentially "putting innocent pe eople in jeopardy." If WikiLeaks crossed a line by posting leaked documents (because AWS felt they might contribute to harm), Palantir has certainly crossed that line by directly collaborating with an agency that is demonstrably putting vulnerable people in jeopardy.

Workers across industries continue to resist having their labor used to power these abuses and Amazonians are proud to stand with them. Employees at Wayfair have walked out in protest of their company's contract with ICE, while Microsoft and Salesforce employees are organizing to stop their companies' respective border contracts. The time to act is now.

We demand that Palantir be removed from AWS for its violation of our terms of service. We call on Amazon to take a public stand against these human rights violations and make a statement establishing their position against the ICE camps, mass raids, and deportations.

The world is watching the abuses in ICE's concentration camps unfold. We know that our company should, and can, do better.

Join us in calling for a stop to our collaboration with ICE by signing onto the We Won't Build It Letter.

https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/amazon-role-immigration-crackdown-190716194004183.html

What is Amazon's role in the US immigration crackdown?

Activists blast tech giant's business offering cloud services to ICE, the US government agency conducting raids.

by Ben Piven • Short Answer

16 Jul 2019

Immigration activists rallied this week in eight cities - including at the New York City residence of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, delivering 270,000 petitions to demand that the company cut ties with United States immigration authorities.

As Amazon began its two-day annual shopping holiday on Monday, the country was emerging from a tense night of expected raids in urban areas to round up undocumented immigrants across the nation.

How does Amazon support US immigration enforcement?

Activist group Mijente - which is calling for Amazon to "stop powering ICE" - says the cloud-computing behemoth has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). US authorities manage their immigration caseload with Palantir software that facilitates tracking down would-be deportees. Amazon Web Services hosts these databases, while Palantir provides the computer programmes to organise the data. So, Amazon effectively enables Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain and deport.

"Amazon and Palantir have secured a role as the backbone for the federal government's immigration and law enforcement dragnet, allowing them to pursue multibillion-dollar government contracts in various agencies at every single level of law enforcement," says the petition on Mijente's website.

What is ICE?

ICE is a federal law enforcement agency within DHS that is responsible for managing the federal immigration system. It combats the illegal movement of people and goods and has a division focused solely on deportation: Enforcement and Removal Operations.

What did Trump order ICE to do?

On July 12, US President Donald Trump said that a nationwide wave of raids would happen over the weekend. The arrests were slated to take place in 10 metropolitan areas and net 2,000 migrant parents and children. The goal was to enforce deportation orders against people ineligible to remain in the US, mainly Central Americans who - during the last year - have arrived in significant numbers.

Did the raids succeed?

Publicity around the plans largely stymied ICE raids on Sunday, although Trump on Monday described them as "very successful". Lawyers and advocates assisting immigrants said scattered raids resulted in few actual arrests. However, the government's crackdown is not over. ICE said more arrests will occur later in the week. This is an apparent change of DHS tactics to carry out smaller apprehensions over several days.

The Guardian first reported that Amazon is hoping to broaden its DHS partnership to host biometric data for a federal database. This collaboration was the main focus of a rally on Monday in downtown Seattle at the company headquarters, among the handful taking place nationally to coincide with Prime Day. At that gathering, Jennifer Lee of the American Civil Liberties Union said Amazon was pitching its Rekognition facial identification technology that could result in "deportations without due process" and cause immigrant communities to live in fear. But publicly available procurement data indicate that ICE does not yet have a contract in place with Amazon for facial recognition services, an ICE spokesperson told Al Jazeera.[odd wording?]

What is the role of AI technology?

What does the company say?

A spokesperson for Amazon Web Services told Al Jazeera: "Companies and government organizations need to use existing and new technology responsibly and lawfully. There is clearly a need for more clarity from governments on what is acceptable use of AI and ramifications for its misuse, and we've provided a proposed legislative framework for this."

"We remain eager for the government to provide this additional clarity and legislation," continued the statement, "and will continue to offer our ideas and specific suggestions".

What do activists think?

In the protest outside Bezos's luxury apartment building in Manhattan on Monday, Anshu Khadka, an activist with Desis Rising Up and Moving, shouted that "there's no doorman there" when ICE comes to immigrant homes and workplaces to detain people and deport family members.

Last week, activists disrupted the Amazon Web Services Summit in New York, playing recordings of immigrant families being split up as Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels was giving a keynote speech. New York Communities for Change and Make the Road NY were among the groups demonstrating. Some activists are boycotting everything Amazon, which includes Prime Video, Whole Foods, Kindle, and many other popular services.

Data analytics firm Palantir, based in Palo Alto, California, is best described as a mix between Google and the CIA. It receives taxpayer dollars to provide the algorithms for many government agencies, whether related to counterterrorism or immigration enforcement. But activists recently have drawn attention to how the tech firm sells "mission-critical" tools that ICE uses to populate profiles and plan raids. Palantir's ICE contract is worth over $51m, according to the federal government. Palantir did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment.What is Palantir's role?

How does ICE operate?

An ICE spokesperson said that the agency's "Fugitive Operations teams target and arrest criminal aliens and other individuals who are in violation of our nation's immigration laws for the safety and security of our communities". The spokesperson added that 90 percent of those arrested by ICE last year "had either a criminal conviction(s), pending criminal charge(s), were an ICE fugitive, or illegally reentered the country after previously being removed". The ICE statement also said such individuals are "subject to immigration arrest, detention and - if found removable by final order - removal from the United States".

Why are activists calling to abolish ICE?

Some members of the US Congress, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, have proposed that ICE be disbanded. They say a more humane immigration system would be better than Trump's zero-tolerance policy of criminally prosecuting people who entered the US irregularly or without documents.

The US Border Patrol, which secures American borders, is a unit of Customs and Border Protection - a separate, sister agency of ICE that operates many of the detention centres along the southern border.

https://www.propublica.org/article/border-patrol-agents-are-passing-around-a-commemorative-coin-mocking-care-for-migrant-kids

B:{order Patrol Official Circulates Article That Deems :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Our Reporting on Secret Facebook Group a Threat:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

An official who directs a Border Patrol intelligence gathering center sent the article to all top intelligence officials and field offices. The article directly attacks a ProPublica reporter who revealed that agents were posting anti-migrant and misogynistic memes in group for current and former agents.

by Ginger Thompson

July 12, 6:06 p.m. EDT

pro publ

no lnx

Border Patrol Official Circulates Article That Deems Our Reporting on Secret Facebook Group a Threat

An official who directs a Border Patrol intelligence gathering center sent the article to all top intelligence officials and field offices. The article directly attacks a ProPublica reporter who revealed that agents were posting anti-migrant and misogynistic memes in group for current and former agents.

by Ginger Thompson July 12, 6:06 p.m. EDT

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

A senior Border Patrol official, who directs a key intelligence-gathering center, on Thursday circulated an inflammatory opinion article that blasted ProPublica’s reporting on a secret Facebook group for current and former agents and described the news organization as a threat to the agency and its members.

A link to the article, which specifically castigates ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson for his articles about the degrading posts in the group, was sent in an email to top intelligence officials at the agency’s headquarters in Washington and to field offices across the country. Sources said other supervisors then shared it widely with agents under their command.

The article was widely distributed by Michael E. Powell, director of the Customs and Border Protection’s Northern Border Coordination Center, and comes as the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, the CPB, which it oversees, and the Border Patrol have publicly condemned the Facebook posts and launched investigations into the group.

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And the article raises questions about whether internally, agency officials may be having different reactions to the public exposure of anti-migrant and misogynistic posts by some of its agents. On Friday, The Intercept reported that Border Patrol head Carla Provost appeared to have once been a member of the group. She has not commented.

A Border Patrol spokesman responded angrily Friday to questions about the significance of a senior intelligence official circulating such an article.

“I’m not going to comment on a third party opinion piece simply because you disagree with it,” said Matthew Leas, a Border Patrol spokesman. “The author isn’t even a CBP employee. Last time I checked, agency responses typically come from the agency…”

Powell did not respond to questions about the email.

The article was published on a website called Law Enforcement Today, and was written by a woman named Dawn Perlmutter, who describes herself as an expert on “symbols, symbolic methodologies, atypical homicide and ritualistic crimes.”

It alleges that ProPublica’s reporting about the secret Facebook group, which was known as “I’m 10-15,” was part of an “anti-police information operation” that was “calculated to incite hatred against CBP, ICE and DHS officers, provide party-line propaganda for the media and ignite protests to further political agendas.” And it claimed that Thompson, who broke the story about the Facebook group, “essentially doxed CBP officers,” when he published the posts.

“Thompson’s byline says he covers hate crimes and racial extremism, when in fact, he perpetuates it,” the piece reads. “His irresponsible reporting incites police hatred and endangers officers’ lives under the guise of social justice.”

Border Patrol Condemns Secret Facebook Group, but Reveals Few Specifics

The agency won’t say how many employees have been disciplined or warned in the ongoing scandal over offensive social media posts.

One agent who received the piece was troubled that an official in charge of an intelligence unit would send it out under his Border Patrol email, and worried that it could undermine trust in the unit’s work.

“We need effective intel units that have garnered the trust of agents, the community, and elected officials,” said the agent, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “Distributing partisan opinion pieces under the guise of intelligence, undermines the credibility of our intelligence department and raises doubt about the intelligence we distribute.”

“Revealing hateful posts circulated to 9,500 people on Facebook hardly constitutes doxing,” said Richard Tofel, the president of ProPublica. “ProPublica seeks to hold public officials to account, including making sure the Border Patrol lives up to the standards of decency that every American law enforcement agency pledges to live by.”

The article’s distribution came as the House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a hearing Friday on recent reports about appalling conditions inside Border Patrol detention facilities and the disturbing Facebook posts revealed in ProPublica and The Intercept’s reporting. Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, had requested that Kevin McAleenan, the acting chief of the Department of Homeland Security testify at the hearing. But McAleenan did not attend.

Instead, the hearing devolved into a fierce partisan debate with Democratic legislators accusing the Republicans of “manufacturing” the crisis at the border for political gain and Republicans admonishing Democrats for “vilifying” border patrol agents.

:{DHS:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Watchdog: “Dangerous Overcrowding” and Dire Conditions at Texas Migrant Jails
at sime time/day head and djt say good; djt says refugees come from no water, so happy.

Trump’s acting citizenship and immigration director says he’s ready to deport ‘approximately one million people’

Image via Screengrab.

written by Matthew Rozsa / Salon July 8, 2019

President Donald Trump’s acting citizenship and immigration services director, Ken Cuccinelli, announced on Sunday that the president is planning roughly 1 million deportations of undocumented immigrants in the near future

“Well, essentially at this point it’s beenput in Matt Albence’s hand, the acting director at ICE,” Cuccinelli told Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation” about Trump’s plan for undocumented immigrants after Congress failed to overhaul asylum laws after a two week deadline. “He’s a career ICE officer, came up through the ranks and they’re ready to just perform their mission which is to go and find and detain and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders. They’ve been all the way through the due process and have final removal orders. Who among those will be targeted for this particular effort, or not, is really just information kept within ICE at this point.”

After Brennan suggested that this meant the removals would be much larger than previously indicated, when the number suggested was merely “in the thousands,” Cuccinelli insisted that he was simply drawing from a larger pool of people.

“No, no I’m just pointing out that the pool of those with final removal orders is enormous,” Cuccinelli explained. “And, you know, it’s important to note, here we are talking about ICE doing its job as if it’s special.And really this should be going on on a rolling basis for ICE and they’ve been interfered with effectively and held up by the politics of Washington to a certain extent they’re looking forward to just getting back to doing their job.”

Cuccinelli also answered a question by Brennan about whether census data is being used for political purposes.

“The census is intended to gather an awful lot of information the way it’s used now,” Cuccinelli told Brennan. “However, if your question is, ‘Will my agency or other agencies see a person who says, ‘no I’m not a citizen and their name and address and so forth,” that’s taken on an aggregated basis. That’s not individualized data that comes to us.”

During an interview with Dana Perino on “Fox News Sunday,”Cuccinelli also blamed Congress for not doing enough to “fix the problem” of undocumented immigration in the United States.

“People in the House come down and complain about them while not helping fix the problem. It’s the height of hypocrisy,” Cuccinelli told Perino.

He later added, “It was being run well, it was run safely, and so forth, but once you’re over those capacity points, you encounter problems.” After insisting that Congress change asylum laws in order to limit how people can enter the United States, Cuccinelli struck a pessimistic note, telling Perino that Democrats in Congress “just want to politicize it. They don’t actually want to solve the problem.”

He also explained that the reason ICE will have to conduct operations to remove roughly 1 million undocumented immigrants who were ordered to leave the United States by the courts proves that “we’ve fallen to the point where we’re talking about it like it’s news.” He added that this demonstrates “how far that we have fallen in the enforcement side. It is the most violated federal court order in America.”

Border Patrol Agents Tried to Delete Racist and Obscene Facebook ...

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/05/border-patrol-facebook-group/

:{2 days ago - :{Border Patrol:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: agents quickly began deleting racist and violent posts ... Ortiz's personal :{Facebook page:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: indicates that he previously served in ..:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-post-sexist-memes

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/inside-the-secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-where-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-and-post-sexist-memes/

kpfa 6/12/19 recycled wwii jap camp?!

geo? gp

mma

Over the past several years experts across the spectrum have raised red flags about the conditions immigrants face while in DHS custody. Fox News figures repeatedly dismissed and mocked those concerns -- and now a new watchdog report proves that the experts were correct all along.

A report from the DHS inspector general found that immigrants face “unsafe and unhealthy conditions” in violation of ICE standards. Some issues include expired food, raw food contamination, moldy or dilapidated bathrooms, and segregation practices that violate standards and “infringe on detainee rights.”

Other credible reports have show similar horrors. News outlets have also reported that solitary confinement is misused at various facilities, that ICE has deported former service members inappropriately, and that doctors have concerns about DHS practices and the conditions under which it keeps undocumented patients, including “shackling patients to beds and not permitting them to use restrooms.” Additionally, 24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the acting DHS secretary is asking for the law to be changed to allow ICE to detain immigrants even longer.

None of this makes it to Fox News. Instead, Fox figures have rigorously defended the conditions at these facilities:

Fox host Laura Ingraham claimed detention centers holding migrant children separated from their parents are “essentially summer camps” or “basically boarding schools.”
Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy chided those criticizing the Trump administration for putting children in cages, telling viewers to “keep in mind, this is a great big warehouse facility where they built walls out of chain link fences.”
Former Border Patrol chief and acting ICE director Mark Morgan told Tucker Carlson that the agency “should be applauded” for its policy of housing children in cages.
A Fox & Friends regular asserted that detention centers “are not dog kennels” because “they’ve got cable from Central America.”

During Fox News’ town hall with 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Julian Castro, co-moderator Martha MacCallum falsely claimed that 90% of immigrants who are detained and then released “do not ever show up for their court date.” This is false. The number is only related to a Trump administration pilot program launched in late 2018 to expedite asylum cases; in contrast, the traditional program for these families is effective, with just 27.4% of families failing to appear for their court dates.

MacCallum appears to have lifted the lie from erstwhile Fox contributor Tom Homan, whom Trump recently announced could be rejoining the administration as a "border czar."

This highlights the Faustian bargain that Fox News town halls offer to Democrats. The candidates want exposure, but the cost is exposing the audience to a massive slew of Fox News propaganda (this is not the first timea Fox moderator pushed misinformation during a town hall). And this puts the candidates in a lose-lose position. They either need to be able to debunk all the lies off the top of their head (and lose the chance to talk about their policies), or they let the propaganda go by without debunking it. And all the while, Fox News is using the image of the candidate's appearnance to sell ads, subsidizing the hate from the rest of the network.

Trump announces that he wants to make a Fox contributor the "border czar"

During a Friday morning interview on *Fox & Friends*, President Trump announced that he was hiring Tom Homan back into his administration as a “border czar.” Homan has since demurred.

Homan once served as Trump’s acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Homan began appearing exclusively on Fox News in the latter months of his leadership of ICE and joined Fox as a contributor after he retired in June 2018. But even before his retreat to Fox, Homan spread and inspired misinformation in the conservative media sphere:

In 2017, Homan falsely suggested that an undocumented immigrant may have been responsible for the devastating wildfiresin California. Local law enforcement officials were forced to debunk Homan’s statement.
Under Homan’s tenure at ICE, the agency often wrongly accused immigrants of beinggangmembers as a pretext to arrest them.
During his time in government service, Homan reportedly used a slur in his work that glorified violence against immigrants.
In September, following the start of his employment at Fox News,Homan was a special honoree a conference organized by the anti-Muslim extremist group ACT for America.
Homan called for criminal charges against local government leaders of so-called sanctuary cities.
In June 2018, Homan defended Trump’s inhumane family separation policy and said “you’d have to put the blame on the parents” for immigration officials taking their children away.
ICE arrested for deportation several immigration activists, journalists, and ICE critics under Homan’s leadership, spurring accusations of improper politicization of immigration law enforcement.
Homan advocated for detention of migrants past current legal time limit, including for pregnant women.

Homan's rhetoric has continued on Fox as well: He's called for 100,000 immigrant families to be rounded up and deported, supported the idea of detaining immigrants in tent cities, and blamed deaths of migrant children in DHS custody on the lack of a border wall. You can sum up Homan's approach with what he told Fox in November: "There should be fear in the immigrant community."

619 an

United States has never offered much more than lip service to military veterans, especially those of color. The “support the troops“ spiel is mostly employed to get politicians elected or the Pentagon’s budget increased. Now a new government report reveals just how little consideration some U.S. soldiers receive when they return home.

According to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) completely lacks records concerning the deportations of former military service members.

Historically, non-citizens have been vital to the nation’s military success. More than 100,000 lawful permanent residents have served in the U.S. armed forces since 2001.

Typically, if a foreign-born service member received an honorable discharge, he or she is eligible for citizenship. But it is not automatic — and some veterans don’t realize they must then apply for citizenship.

“Anyone with an honorable discharge … will not be subject to any kind of deportation,” former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters last year, announcing an agreement he said was made with former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Although every veteran’s case is supposed to be reviewed by a senior ICE official, the GAO’s investigation found that the agency didn’t bother to do this in 70% of the cases.

...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/things-are-going-to-get-worse-historian-details-how-trumps-immigrant-detention-could-follow-the-terrifying-path-of-past-concentration-camps/

Historian details how Trump’s immigrant detention could follow the terrifying path of past concentration camps

Cody Fenwick

**Homeland Security Whistleblower Goes Public About ICE Abuse of Solitary Confinement**

Maryam Saleh, Spencer Woodman

Ellen Gallagher’s yearslong effort to draw attention to ICE’s use of solitary confinement was met with a maze of bureaucratic indirection and indifference.

mma

After a far-right militia received national coverage for detaining a large group of asylum seekers at gunpoint on the U.S.-Mexico border, multiple Fox News segments argued that the group's actions may have been legitimate.

The militia, United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), posted a video to its Facebook page showing armed group members detaining almost 300 migrants on the U.S. side of the border. The American Civil Liberties Union says their actions constitute illegal kidnapping. Additionally, it is not illegalto enter the U.S. to seek asylum. At least one militia member also falsely identified himself as a member of U.S. Border Patrol, which is a common tactic militia members use to give migrants the impression that they are law enforcement officers.

On April 20, the FBI arrested UCP leader Larry Mitchell Hopkins. Hopkins' lengthy criminal record includes a conviction for impersonating a police officer. The FBI also received a tip in 2017 that the group was plotting to assassinate former President Barack Obama, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and philanthropist George Soros.

Fox News has treated UCP's legitimacy as an open question. During an April 22 segment of Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox host Charles Payne said, "Citizens that are taking up arms, trying to assist... It's apparent to the world that we've got a crisis down there and they're trying to help out."

Other segments on Fox News promoted the group's claims of legitimacy. A Fox News correspondent noted that UCP members "see themselves, as their name suggests: as patriots, not vigilantes."

Other segments on Fox have mentioned a new way the group is trying to raise money after the viral migrant detention video led to PayPal and GoFundMe banning the group from their platforms.

Official Who Compared Family Detention Centers to Summer Camps Set to Become Head of :{ICE:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

basically fired when she told trump he was asking he to do crimes

Kirstjen Nielsen Steps Down as :{DHS:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Secretary

miller calling deputies to scream for not being tough enough

new

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/trump-government-tracked-targeted-database-american-citizen-journalists-activists-migrant-caravan.html

Days before the Nov. 2018 midterm elections, President Trump cooked up pre-election hysteria over the so-called “caravan” of migrantsa thousand miles away in southern Mexico, who were slowly making their way on foot towards the U.S. border. The president’s anti-immigrant chauvinism couldn’t stop his party from losing the House in a blue wave of Democratic victories, and afterward Trump largely dropped the issue until it became politically useful again months later during the government shutdown. The American government, however, sharpened its focus after the furor died down, according to a chilling report from NBC 7, NBC News’ local affiliate in San Diego. Documents leaked to NBC 7 show that the Trump administration went about gathering names of journalists, activists, and attorneys who had covered or worked with the fleeing migrants, and created a database that included dossiers on 57 people, including 10 journalists.

Those swept up in the government database where then targets for surveillance and harassment with at least 21 individuals subsequently questioned or arrested by Customs and Border Protection. The U.S. government, in some cases, placed alerts on the targeted individuals’ passports who were listed in thedatabase titled: “San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch: Migrant Caravan FY-2019, Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators and Media.” The documents dated Jan. 9, 2019 included files onsome 39 American citizens, including seven who were tracked by the U.S. government. The documents are part of an interagency “SharePoint” application accessible to a myriad of agencies, including agents from Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S.

Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations, and the San Diego office of the FBI.

Some of the individuals who were there for the ultimate caravan standoff with border patrol suspected they were being targeted in the aftermath and the leaked documents showed the extent to which they were being singled out, including journalists being harassed at the U.S.-Mexican border, taken into secondary screening on the grounds it was a national security matter, and in one case denied entry to Mexico altogether. Here’s more on what was compiled from NBC 7:

For each person, the documents show their photo, often from their passport but in some cases from their social media accounts, along with their personal information. That information includes the person’s date of birth, their “country of commencement,” and their alleged role tied to the migrant caravan. The information also includes whether officials placed an alert on the person’s passport.

One dossier, shared with NBC 7, was on Nicole Ramos, the Refugee Director and attorney for Al Otro Lado, a law center for migrants and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico. The dossier included personal details on Ramos, including specific details about the car she drives, her mother’s name, and her work and travel history.

Trump’s America.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/15/vermont_immigrant_rights_group_sues_ice

major new federal lawsuit claims that immigration agents are targeting undocumented organizers for their activism in Vermont. The suit accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles of carrying out a multiyear campaign of political retaliation against members of the group Migrant Justice. According to the lawsuit, Migrant Justice was infiltrated by an informant, and its members were repeatedly subjected to electronic surveillance. At least 20 active members of Migrant Justice have been arrested and detained by ICE. We speak with Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based group founded and led by immigrant farmworkers.

omg bizarre confluence of MIC and PIC!

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/06/zero-tolerance-immigration-is-big-money-for-contractors-nonprofits/

no lnx

‘Zero-tolerance’ immigration policy is big money for contractors, nonprofits

June 21, 2018 | President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy under the direction of Attorney General Jeff Sessions is big business for U.S. companies — from private prison and tech firms to defense and security contractors — as well as nonprofits.

...Under bipartisan pressure, Trump signed an executive order Wednesday ending the administration’s controversial child-separation policy. But Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy, in which individuals who enter the U.S. illegally are prosecuted, will continue.

All this comes as the country grapples with harrowing images of babies stripped from their mothers’ arms and children playing soccer on the grounds of abandoned Walmart stores along the Southwest border.

Trump defended his policy in a campaign speech Wednesday in Minnesota. That came a day after the raid of an Ohio meat plant in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 146 employees accused of being in the country illegally. It was the largest workforce raid in recent history, according to the agency.

ICE, which enforces the administration’s immigration policy, has allocated billions in federal contracts to private companies for software, consulting and manpower. Overall, the federal government has spent $4 billion since October 2016 — the start of 2017 fiscal year — on contracts and grants to counter illegal immigration.

OpenSecrets analyzed the money going to these often high-profile, publicly traded companies as well as their political spending and lobbying, along with the nonprofits commissioned to care for minors.

Private Prisons and Security

Trump’s hardline approach to illegal immigration is a boon for private prisons and security companies.

In 2016, the Department of Justice under the Obama administration began phasing out for-profit prisons for federal inmates following a DOJ report that found poor management practices at one private facility contributed to an inmate riot that killed a prison guard in 2012.

The Trump administration, however, has embraced them — particularly as a solution for the high cost of detaining people who crossed the border illegally.

The 2012 inmate riot occurred inside a prison owned and operated by CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America.Since 2017, CoreCivic has received $225 million in ICE funding to manage immigrant detention facilities, according to USASpending.gov data.

A subsidiary of the Tennessee-based company donated $250,000 toward Trump’s inaugural festivities last year.

Another $250,000 Trump inaugural donor —GEO Group — is the country’s largest for-profit prison operator and amultimillion-dollar beneficiary of the administration’s aggressive immigration policy.

The Florida-based company and its subsidiaries, which also gave $225,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC during the 2016 presidential election, have been paid $560 million over the last two fiscal years for contracts they hold with ICE.

GEO Group and its subsidiaries oversee a number of ICE detention facilities and have aggressively lobbied to secure contracts and influence the nation’s immigration policy. In 2017, the company spent $1.7 million on lobbying, the highest amount on record for a private prison contractor.

Aside from lobbying, the company has a prolificpolitical action committee and a number of big-donor employees. So far in 2018, the company’s PAC and employees have contributed$727,000 to candidates — a total that is on track to continue the upward contribution trend.

The top three recipients are Texas House members — Republicans John Culberson and John Carter and Democrat Henry Cuellar, each having received at least $31,000 dollars.

While GEO certainly profits off keeping immigrants detained, they also make money once they’re released. A large share of ICE’s payments to GEO last year went to BI Inc., a subsidiary that provides ankle bracelets and monitoring services to track those awaiting trial for immigration violations.

BI first received an ICE contract in 2008 and was paid $10 million that year. Payments have grown steadily since then, topping out at $115 million in the 2017 fiscal year. 2018 totals are on track to surpass that.

MVM Inc., a Virginia-based private security contractor, has earned $115 million since 2017 through immigration-related ICE contracts. The company provided “security guards and patrol services” for $53.7 million, according to the contract description.

In 2017, the company was sued for workplace discrimination and had a lucrative CIA contract canceled for failing to provide enough security guards.

The company does not appear in lobbying disclosures. Company founder Dario Marquez Jr. is an active political donor, however. Since 1990, Marquez has given $212,321, including donations to Virginia Democrats Tim Kaine ($51,340) and Gerry Connolly ($29,100).

Tech Firms

ICE also contracts with technology and software companies, including Silicon Valley firms and defense contractors, for tools to help track, arrest and monitor those suspected of violating immigration laws.

Palantir Technologies, a data analytics firm, has never reported a profit since its founding in 2003. The company has come to rely on lucrative, long-lasting contracts with government agencies, including ICE, seeking to make use of its tools.

Since 2014, Palantir has received just under $100 million in ICE funding for both case management software and a customized data analytics tool called FALCON-SA, which helps ICE track and arrest individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.

Palantir’s largest contract — $53 million to provide software services — was awarded in 2014 during the height of the Central American refugee crisis and is ongoing through 2019. The company’s most recent ICE contract was $250,000 for the purchase of another software program called Gotham.

The bulk of Palantir’s political spending can be attributed to Peter Thiel, the group’s founder, who contributed about $1.3 million in 2016 to groups supporting Trump’s election and $100,000 to the president’s inauguration.

Thiel’s support for the president during the campaign ultimately landed him a spot on Trump’s transition team.

Palantir is also heavily invested in the D.C. influence culture through its lobbying activities, which peaked last year at $1.4 million. The majority of the money was directed toward securing government contracts.Thiel and Palantir’s lobbying appears to have paid dividends beyond the contracts awarded by ICE.

The company also won an $876 million defense contract this year.

Microsoft,another tech giant fulfilling contracts for ICE, has recently encountered backlash from employees over its relationship with the controversial agency. In an open letter first published by The New York Times, more than 100 employees argued that the contracting work was a “clear abdication of ethical responsibilities.”

Other major ICE contractors include big names in defense contracting.

Booz Allen Hamilton has been a perennial ICE contractor, having received contracts to support the Law Enforcement Systems and Analysis division, which is the main data analysis office ensuring the agency’s detainee processing and enforcement systems are working efficiently.

Recent immigration measures have sparked waves of protests. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In June 2017, Booz Allen announced it was under federal investigation related to how it billed the government for its services. The contractor and its subsidiaries received $63 million in federal funding from ICE over the last two fiscal years.

Other major defense contractors receiving ICE contracts include CSRA LLC and Northrop Grumman who were paid $34 million and $397,000 respectively in the last two years.

ORR also paid General Dynamics, which acquired CSRA in April, $4 million for casework related services last year.

Child Services

Federal data suggest migrant children have been sent to nonprofit residential centers stretching from Seattle to New York and Chicago to Miami.

Since 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has paid out $1.2 billion to nonprofit organizations that care for minors. None have benefited more from Trump’s now-rescinded child-separation policy than Southwest Key Programs, Inc.

The Austin, Texas-based nonprofit was paid $596 million in the last two fiscal years to house immigrant children, including those seized from parents at the border.

The facilities operated by Southwest include Casa Padre, a federal detention center in Brownsville, Texas, housing over 1,400 children — some of whom were among those separated from parents, according to media reports. The facility is a converted Walmart.

The contracts were awarded through HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for custody of the children.

The more than half a billion in grant funding comes one year after Southwest Key laid off nearly 1,000 workers due to a drop in illegal border crossings.

The nonprofit employed over 4,500 workers and reported revenue of about $243 million in its 2016 Fiscal Year, according to its most recent tax returns.

Of the $243 million, roughly 66 percent — or $159 million — went toward salaries, including $3.1 million to nine executives in base salaries and bonuses. The nonprofit was almost entirely tax-funded, with $240 million coming from government grants, according to the filing.

BCFS Health and Human Services, a multinational network of nonprofits based in San Antonio, has received $121 million this year in HHS grants to shelter unaccompanied children. The grants and services include:

$36.8 million for 461 beds in the Texas border-area towns of Harlingen, La Feria and Raymondville.

$19.3 million for 359 beds in San Antonio, Chavaneaux and Baytown, Texas

$3.9 million for 18 “male beds” in California

The nonprofit conglomerate also received a $10 million grant for 1,152 “home study cases” and 4,000 “post release cases,” according to the HHS descriptions.

Cayuga Centers, a New York-based nonprofit, was awarded $39 million for “transitional foster care submission.”

Facilities for the detained children included Cayuga Centers in Harlem, which New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday was housing 239 unaccompanied minors, including children as young as 9 months old, The New York Times reported.

Other nonprofits with 2018 grant funding to care for unaccompanied minors include:

Heartland Human Care Services, of Chicago:$40.2 million for “shelter” and “post release and home study services”

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, of Baltimore: $19.8 million for “shelter and fingerprinting services” as well as “long term foster care”

Florence Crittenton Services, of Fullerton: $4.2 million for “residential shelter” in California

Pioneer Human Services, of Seattle: $2.8 million for 23 beds in the Seattle/Tacoma area

It’s unclear if and when the thousands of displaced children will be reunited with parents.

In a nationally televised incident that "should disturb every single person living in the United States," agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General's Office on Wednesday interrupted an interview with former ICE spokesperson James Schwab, who resigned from his position in March after he was asked to perpetuate lies on behalf of the Trump administration.

"This is intimidation," Schwab told CBS reporter Jamie Yuccas after the agents left his doorstep. "And this is why people won't come out and speak against the government."

Watch:

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-got-hurt-at-work-then-they-got-deported

...The previous year, Arias had been mowing the median of Highway 59 just over the Alabama line when his riding lawnmower hit a hole, throwing him into the air. He slammed back in his seat, landing hard on his lower back.

Arias received pain medication, physical therapy and steroid injections through his employer’s workers’ compensation insurance. But the pain in his back made even walking or sitting a struggle. So his doctor recommended an expensive surgery to implant a device that sends electrical pulses to the spinal cord to relieve chronic pain. Six days after that appointment, the insurance company suddenly discovered that Arias had been using a deceased man’s Social Security number and rejected not only the surgery, but all of his past and future care.

Desperate, Arias hired an attorney to help him pursue the injury benefits that Florida law says all employees, including unauthorized immigrants, are entitled to receive. Then one morning after he dropped two of his boys off at school, Arias was pulled over and arrested, while his toddler watched from his car seat.

Arias was charged with using a false Social Security number to get a job and to file for workers’ comp. The state insurance fraud unit had been tipped off by a private investigator hired by his employer’s insurance company.

With his back still in pain from three herniated or damaged discs, Arias spent a year and a half in jail and immigration detention before he was deported

...

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-10-25/ice-seeks-to-reopen-private-prisons-shuttered-by-justice-department

ICE1 dhs

whistleblowers say ICE intentionally withheld personal protective equipment during COVID-19 pandemicAysha Qamar / Daily Kos

Early life

Early career

Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Nomination

Tenure

Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

Awards

See also

Reference

Coronavirus CrisisHow the Coronavirus Became a Death Sentence at a GEO Group Halfway House

The last letter

Read the full letter below:

B:{order Patrol Official Circulates Article That Deems :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Our Reporting on Secret Facebook Group a Threat:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

whistleblowers say ICE intentionally withheld personal protective equipment during COVID-19 pandemic Aysha Qamar / Daily Kos