acab

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/74596

Two months after Iris Dayana Monterroso Lemus lost her son to a stillbirth last year while detained by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration issued a public response to her allegations that she did not receive prenatal care.

“This reporting is absolutely FALSE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, then a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement. “Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus had FULL medical, prenatal care.”

The statement, labeled as a “Fact Check,” said the Guatemalan-born Monterroso Lemus had “received prenatal care, including an ultrasound and OB-GYN visit.”

Neither side of the disputed account provided evidence to back up their claims.

Now, federal government documents obtained by The Intercept appear to undermine the Trump administration’s version of events. The documents show a lack of basic care needed for a healthy pregnancy, according to expert analysis. One document from an outside healthcare center made after the stillbirth describes a “pregnancy complicated by lack of PNC” — meaning prenatal care.

“The administration was engaged in CYA — cover your ass,” said Dr. Andrea Schecter, an OB-GYN physician with a decade’s experience working with high-risk pregnancies, including those of immigrants. “They know that what they provided is probably not sufficient care.”

“Flouting the Directive”

The new records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, include documents from Monterroso Lemus’s visit to Ochsner LSU Center, a healthcare facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, after she complained for days about not feeling fetal movement. It was the only recorded instance of her leaving Richwood Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility run by the family-owned private prison giant LaSalle Corrections.

The Ochsner LSU documents, produced after the stillbirth, say that Monterroso Lemus had told medical staff at Richwood that “this pregnancy didn’t feel right a couple days ago but nothing was done.”

Other new records include timelines produced by ICE that show a referral for an OB-GYN appointment but don’t indicate that any visit was scheduled or took place, or that Monterroso Lemus ever received an ultrasound.

Asked about the new documents, a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security simply repeated the previous claims that Monterroso Lemus received regular, timely prenatal care without responding to queries.

On May 9, ten days after losing her son, Monterroso Lemus was shackled, put on a plane, and deported to Guatemala, causing her postpartum visit to be canceled.

Ten days after losing her son, Monterroso Lemus was shackled, put on a plane, and deported to Guatemala.

“Everyone knows that ICE and DHS lie on a daily basis — and Americans have witnessed the deadly consequences of this administration’s reckless actions for nearly two years,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., when asked about the case. “The Trump administration’s barbaric treatment of pregnant women in immigration custody is unconscionable.”

In fact, the Trump administration is detaining many more pregnant women than before. During the Biden administration, for example, ICE would detain about a dozen pregnant women nationally during a year, said Eunice Cho, an immigration attorney with expertise in detention conditions. During a congressional visit to Louisiana’s Basile detention center last April, however, there were 14 in that one facility.

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The Trump Administration Is Hiding How Many Pregnant People Are in ICE Detention](https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants/)

According to a 2021 ICE directive, “Generally, ICE should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.”

Cho said, “The Trump administration is flouting the directive.”

Murray introduced legislation last year to codify in federal law the notion that pregnant women should not be detained, as well as other standards. The bill remains in committee.

“This case stands out as an example of the enormity of the tragedy pregnant women and families are facing because of the Trump administration,” Cho said, of Monterroso Lemus’s experience. “The bottom line is: No one deserves to be treated like this.”

The Timeline

Monterroso Lemus, now 38 years old, met her neighbor Gary Bivens in Lenoir City, Tennessee, about six years ago. The pair began to grow close about four years ago, after Bivens lost his wife to a heart condition.

Monterroso Lemus became pregnant, and the couple had an OB-GYN visit in February. They had plans to get married when ICE detained her in mid-March.

After ICE transferred Monterroso Lemus multiple times, on April 2, she arrived at Richwood Correctional Center, in Monroe, Louisiana.

Most of the documents obtained by The Intercept are emails between officials with ICE and at its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, where officials sought to rebut Monterroso Lemus’s statements to the media by compiling information on her medical care while detained.

The timeline included in the documents, annotated and labeled as a “[f]ull overview of her care,” begins on April 2. Versions of the timeline are included in several other places in the documents.

The timeline has nine entries under what is called a “List of medical visits.” Four of them are visits to a nurse. Two others are labeled “Mental Health Visit.”

On April 17, according to the timeline, she visited the on-site medical provider for what is labeled “prenatal care non–compliance.”

Monterroso Lemus told The Intercept that visit was due to her unwillingness to continue taking 12 pills daily, including what she said may have been vitamins and others for constipation and headaches. She had been taking them for three days.

“I felt that they made me sick,” she said. Also, “other people told me to watch out for the medicine they give you.”

On April 29, after several days of not feeling any fetal movement, Monterroso Lemus was transferred to Ochsner LSU. In the presence of several federal guards, she delivered a stillborn fetus at about 23 weeks of pregnancy.

Monterroso Lemus said she had tried to get medical attention during the days before the tragedy.

“The worst part is, I told them I felt bad — and they didn’t pay attention to me,” she said.

What’s missing from the timeline — any indication of having an OB-GYN visit before she stopped feeling fetal movement or of receiving any ultrasound — makes it difficult to understand what caused the stillbirth.

“There are some reasons this could’ve happened that would have been identified by comprehensive prenatal care,” Schecter, the OB-GYN expert, said. “At some level, they know this.”

No Ultrasound?

A separate timeline in the documents refers to medical care Monterroso Lemus received during the several days in late March that she was detained at Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama. There, it says, she got a “fetal doppler,” which measures fetal heartbeat, but is not the same as an ultrasound.

Nonetheless, the “Fact Check” DHS published months later read, “she received prenatal care including a fetal doppler ultrasound.”

Schecter told the Intercept, “A fetal doppler is just audio, but it is not the same as an ultrasound, which is visual.”

“That is not an adequate assessment of the health and well-being of the pregnancy. It absolutely is not full prenatal care,” she said.

“Full prenatal care would include an ultrasound and an anatomy scan. We already know that doesn’t generally happen in immigration detention.”

Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who researches health care in immigration detention, said, “Full prenatal care would include an ultrasound and an anatomy scan.”

“We already know that doesn’t generally happen in immigration detention,” said Zeidan.

Of the DHS “Fact Check,” Zeidan said, “They’re not being truthful about what happened.”

The experience Monterroso Lemus faced in ICE detention is not unique, according to several experts consulted by the Intercept.

“Unfortunately, this story is consistent with reports made by pregnant women in ICE detention,” said Cho, the immigration attorney. “There’s a lack of prenatal care, indifference to very serious symptoms, and a lack of treatment.”

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Read Our Complete Coverage

The War on Immigrants ---------------------](/collections/the-war-on-immigrants/)

“Waiting for My Baby”

By the end of May, the Nashville Banner had published an article in which Monterroso Lemus said, “They didn’t give me medical attention.”

The remark touched off a flurry of activity within ICE and DHS.

On June 25, at 4:41 p.m., McLaughlin, then a DHS spokesperson, wrote to another official whose name is redacted: “Wow so this is all garbage claims. This is FALSE. She had FULL medical, prenatal care. We have documentation to show it.”

The following day, DHS published its “Fact Check” — the same document the agency sent The Intercept when confronted with discrepancies.

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Trump’s National Killer Police Force](https://theintercept.com/2026/07/24/trump-ice-deaths-mass-deportation/)

Meanwhile, Monterroso Lemus and Bevins haven’t seen each other for 15 months. They communicate by WhatsApp regularly, using a translation app. On separate calls with The Intercept, both described suffering depression.

Bivens drives 100 miles every day to and from his $26-an-hour job as an iron worker. He regularly sends part of his paycheck to Monterroso Lemus. He says he’s bought a plane ticket to Guatemala for December and has created a GoFundMe to help pay for the cost of moving his tools and other things needed for the couple to start a new life in the Central American country.

The GoFundMe includes a photo of her holding her baby, taken in Ochsner.

“I don’t consider the way they treated her the American way.”

He has also engaged attorneys and sued the federal government.

“I don’t consider the way they treated her the American way,” he said. “My family goes back a long way in Tennessee. I have a great-grandfather who fought for the Confederates.”

He added, “I just want someone to be held accountable.”

Monterroso Lemus said she doesn’t think much about the officials who set in motion the events leading to the loss of her son and deportation.

“God will take care of all of them,” she said.

Bivens said he keeps the ashes of his son on a table by his bed in Lenoir City. It took him a while to figure out, but he’s obtained the paperwork needed to take the ashes with him to Guatemala in December.

“I’m waiting for my baby,” said Monterroso Lemus. “That would give me some peace.”

The post Trump Admin Said She Was Lying About Stillbirth in ICE Custody. New Evidence Points to Lack of Prenatal Care. appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/73451

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight on Thursday deported 161 Haitians following the Trump administration's cancellation of temporary protected status for 350,000 people from the Caribbean nation ravaged by deadly gang violence and a wider humanitarian crisis.

The first of what the administration says will be a wave of mass deportations to Haiti followed a June decision by the right-wing US Supreme Court affirming the Department of Homeland Security's revocation of temporary protected status for Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, many of whom have lived in the United States for years under TPS due to unsafe conditions in their countries.

However, Haiti's National Office of Migration said that none of those aboard Thursday's flight were former TPS beneficiaries; rather, they were "people facing removal proceedings after entering the US without authorization, people who had served prison sentences, and some individuals born outside Haiti to at least one Haitian parent," according to The Haitian Times.

Late last month, President Donald Trump ordered ICE to ramp up arrests of Haitians, who have been the target of racist verbal attacks by the president and other Republicans. Vice President JD Vance, infamously—and baselessly—claimed during Trump's 2024 presidential campaign that the migrants were killing and eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Beloved Springfield pastor Gilbert Joubert Adrien was arrested along with another Haitian by ICE agents on Thursday morning.

Carl Ruby, also a local pastor and founder of immigrant advocacy group G92, told the Springfield News-Sun on Friday that Adrien's arrest inflicted a "profound wound" to the "embattled" Haitian community.

“Pastor Joubert Adrien left Haiti because his life was in danger, served Christ and his congregation faithfully, and his arrest shows how far ICE will stoop to incite panic among people who came here peacefully, came here legally, and offered nothing but good to our community,” Ruby said.

Thursday's deportations came despite continuing warnings about Haiti's deteriorating security conditions. Gangs control an estimated 70% of the capital city of Port-au-Prince and major transportation routes, while roughly 1.5 million of the Caribbean nation's approximately 12 million people have been displaced by violence, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration.

The UN says more than 3,100 Haitians were killed and nearly 1,200 others wounded between January and June of this year. The violence isn't confined to Port-au-Prince; for example, at least 70 people were killed and 30 injured in a March gang massacre in the Artibonite region.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the immigration nonprofit Global Refuge, said earlier this month that it is a “stunning contradiction” that a government that advises Americans against traveling to Haiti due to the dangerous security situation there would “compel hundreds of thousands of Haitians into such dire circumstances."

The Trump administration policy, O'Mara Vignarajah added, "is an unconscionable abdication of our moral responsibility."

Democratic US lawmakers also condemned the deportations.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—who earlier this year led the Republican-controlled House of Representatives' remarkable passage of a bill extending TPS for Haiti for three years—called the Trump administration's policy "cruel and shameful."

"We should not deport ANYONE into an ongoing humanitarian crisis," Pressley added. "The Senate must come back into session NOW and pass our bill to extend TPS for Haiti before more people die."

The biggest deportation flight in months is sending Haitian families back to the violence and instability they fled in the first place.These folks have nowhere to go because they have lived most of their lives in the U.S. This is utterly shameful.

[image or embed]
— Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@frost.house.gov) August 21, 2026 at 9:08 AM

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Wednesday on social media: "Haitian families on TPS are part of the fabric of our community and our economy. They're neighbors, workers, and friends who have been in the US legally to stay safe from horrific violence in Haiti. It is cruel for Donald Trump to end TPS protections for them now."

Congressman Greg Landsman (R-Ohio) also took to social media, writing Thursday that "our Haitian neighbors deserve dignity and respect... not this dangerous deportation effort from the Trump administration."

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) asserted Friday that "our Haitian neighbors asked only for safety from the gang violence, rampant sexual exploitation, and vicious anarchy that has totally overtaken their nation."

"Donald Trump saw their suffering, and asked only how he could make it worse," she added. "His act to force thousands of men, women, and children back into the same hell they barely escaped with their lives is a humanitarian betrayal that will stain America for generations."

Thursday's ICE flight landed in the relatively peaceful northern city of Cap-Haitien, where The Associated Press interviewed deportees including Jean Diane Louis, who left Haiti when he was 5 years old.

"ICE came and took me without questioning me,” Louis said. “They just sent me here.”

Back in Ohio, Viles Dorsainvil, director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, told the News-Sun that “behind every number is a human being."

"Behind every detention is a family," Dorsainvil added. "Behind every deportation is a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a child, a friend, a church member, a coworker, or a neighbor whose life may be changed forever.”

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/73374

US Congressman Greg Casar on Thursday repeated his call for the Trump administration to close the immigration detention center in southern Texas where it's held thousands of children over the past 18 months—children, the progressive Democrat said, who "should be playing soccer, going to school, living their lives, not being arrested on the streets," as one of the center's newest detainees, 5-year-old Liam Tadeo, was earlier this week.

Casar demanded the release of at least 112 children who are being held at South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, outside San Antonio, days after Tadeo was abducted along with his father by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a traffic stop in Austin.

Tadeo and his father were on their way to the child's soccer game, days before he was set to start kindergarten, when they were arrested and taken to the detention center, said Casar. The facility, which is commonly known simply as Dilley, is a for-profit center run by CoreCivic that has come under scrutiny over reports of medical neglect and poor conditions for the dozens of families detained there.

"Liam should be starting kindergarten this week," said Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "Instead, he's sitting in a trailer prison right now in Dilley, Texas."

Lidia Terrazas of Univision posted a video on social media showing Tadeo crying during the arrest.

"Liam has been living in the United States for most of his life," said Terrazas. "I just want you to see him. I want you to look at his face. I can't even imagine what he was feeling in this moment... He's crying, he looks at his dad while surrounded by immigration officers."

ICE has abducted another five-year-old. His name is Liam. This week he missed his first week of Kindergarden because he is detained at the infamous Dilley Detention Center in Texas. Reporting by the great @LidiaTerrazas. pic.twitter.com/Smj0PMSZYT
— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) August 20, 2026

Terrazas and Casar both noted that Tadeo has the same name as another 5-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, who was abducted by ICE on January 20 in Minnesota, as he was returning home from preschool with his father. Images of the boy wearing a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack were circulated widely online as the public expressed outrage over his detention, which happened around the same time that two US citizens were fatally shot on the streets of Minneapolis by federal immigration agents.

A federal judge ordered the release of Conejo Ramos and his father in February, but they are now fighting a ruling to deport them.

Patricia Resendiz, Tadeo's aunt, posted a fundraiser on GoFundMe, asking the community "for help to secure the release of my nephew."

"The detention of Liam and my brother-in-law was cruel; they are not criminals—they were simply on their way to a soccer match," wrote Resendiz. "Liam is a beautiful, intelligent, and big-hearted little boy. My sister is devastated, and so are we. Liam was detained right in front of my son, his cousin. My son told me that the ICE agents said to Liam, 'You can't escape.' We appreciate any help you can provide."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE have not responded to questions from the press, including Newsweek and Univision, about Tadeo's detention.

But DHS recently told FOX 7 Austin that it would continue ramping up deportation operations in the Texas capital, with the agency asserting that "being in detention is a choice" and imploring undocumented immigrants to "self-deport."

"The United States is offering illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the US the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return," said DHS. "Under President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, ICE is targeting the worst of the worst."

Despite the administration's persistent claims that undocumented immigrants should "self-deport," AL.com reported on Thursday on a Venezuelan family who attempted to return to their home country, went to an ICE check-in appointment as part of the process, and were detained and taken to Dilley, where they've been held for more than a month.

The family's 7-year-old daughter has appealed to Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), the chair of a Senate subcommittee on homeland security appropriations who spoke out against Conejo Ramos' detention earlier the year, asking her to help secure the family's release.

Tadeo was detained a day before Judge Dolly M. Gee of the US District Court in Los Angeles ordered a new oversight effort at Dilley and other detention facilities in Texas and California where children are being held. The judge found that children at Dilley have likely been forced to live in unsafe temperatures with inadequate sleeping quarters and without basic hygiene products like soap.

The court also found that the government may be keeping inaccurate records regarding the length of children's detention. Under the Flores settlement, children cannot be held in immigration detention for longer than 20 days. Over the past year, said attorneys for minors who have been detained at Dilley, about 1,560 children have been held at the facility for more than 20 days.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Cross posted from https://lemmy.ml/post/51615269

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70082

To counter the purported national scourge of “organized retail crime,” a bill moving through Congress would deliver the Department of Homeland Security unprecedented policing powers, granting even more authority to what experts say is an already lawless ICE.

The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA, was introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, last year with wide bipartisan support. The bill is aimed at limiting coordinated retail theft and shoplifting, which lawmakers allege is happening at “unprecedented levels” as organized criminal gangs steal merchandise from stores and resell the goods online. According to the legislation, the perpetrators “are often polycriminal organizations, using profit from the reselling of stolen goods to support crimes involving drugs and weapons trafficking” while facilitating “human smuggling,” all of which is “funding nefarious groups and activities and threatening the integrity of the international economy.”

The bill would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement authority to coordinate federal efforts against large-scale shoplifting. ICE would establish a so-called “Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center” that would bring under one roof analysts and agents from myriad agencies, including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Secret Service. The goal is to centralize investigative data and establish “a secure system for sharing information regarding organized retail and supply chain crime threats by leveraging existing information systems at the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.”

It’s unclear if ICE agents themselves would have the authority to confront alleged suspects. DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Civil libertarian groups are disturbed by legislation they say constitutes a major expansion of domestic surveillance and policing by DHS, which was founded largely to tackle matters of counterterrorism, civil defense, and other matters of national safety, and ICE, whose purview is immigration enforcement and transnational crime.

“This would formalize a mechanism for retailers to share data about consumers with DHS.”

Jina John, senior policy counsel for AI, privacy, and technology at the ACLU, told The Intercept the bill could grant DHS increased surveillance powers. “This would formalize a mechanism for retailers to share data about consumers with DHS as well as state and local authorities relating vaguely to ‘threats,’” she said. “The risk here is that when retailers share information, it’s not a specific clip of footage related to a specific theft, in practice, they are sharing continuous footage. That means access to FLOCK license plate readers in retail parking lots and surveillance cameras at stores and malls.”

The Center itself would be staffed in part by ICE agents and helmed by a director handpicked by the head of ICE. The bill allows the Center to share information deemed confidential under federal law, which includes the “identity, confidential statistical data, amount or source of any income, profits, losses, or expenditures of any person, firm, partnership, corporation, or association.” Such disclosure would require the sign-off of the Center’s director.

“Given that this director will be named by ICE, an agency that has acted without any regard for the law, this is probably not the best person to make such important judgments,” ACLU senior counsel Nina Patel told The Intercept.

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Despite sustained opposition to DHS and ICE under Trump’s second term by congressional democrats, CORCA was co-sponsored by 13 Democratic members of the Senate, including Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner, and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin.

In a July letter opposing the bill, rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law cautioned about the establishment of “essentially a new fusion center, nominally for the purpose of addressing retail theft.” Like DHS itself, fusion centers are a post-9/11 creation intended to thwart acts of international terrorism. Over the past two decades, their mission has widened and now encompasses, for example, the surveillance of political protests.

The premise that organized retail theft is a rampant crime phenomenon, rather than a new name for the timeless petty offense of shoplifting, is disputed and controversial. In 2023, the National Retail Federation, a trade group that supports the bill and whose warnings are cited in its text, retracted a report claiming organized retail crime was responsible for 50 percent of the nearly $100 billion worth of merchandise that went missing in 2021. The true number was found to be closer to 5 percent of that sum.

The companies on whose behalf the NRF lobbies are inclined to support legislation dedicated to safeguarding merchandise and profits. Should it pass, CORCA would deepen collaboration between corporate America and DHS and expand the country’s public-private surveillance apparatus. “Companies determined by the Executive Associate Director to have significant interests” in retail theft could be granted information-sharing agreements with the government about threats, investigations and loss prevention activities, according to the bill’s text.

The ACLU and other civil liberties groups insist ICE is so lawless it can’t be trusted with new powers. “As a result, ICE would have moreaccess to information and moresway over local law enforcement — which means more opportunities for ICE to misuse data and target people in violation of their rights,” Patel said. “ICE cannot be trusted.”

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In May, the House passed CORCA and referred it to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley and Durbin are now hoping to turn it into law as an amendment to the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon’s annual funding bill that historically passes easily with bipartisan support. Despite the fact that CORCA is intended to protect store shelves from thieves, and not the United States from foreign militaries, both senators are urging the acceptance of the amendment on the grounds that it will “reduce violent crime.”

A press release from Grassley’s office last month included exhortations to include the amendment in the NDAA from executives of Amazon, Home Depot, and the International Council of Shopping Centers, among others.

The post Congress Might Give ICE the Power to Go After Shoplifters appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69792

Outside the Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi, where police shot and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, a shrine of stuffed animals sits between the garden center and the pharmacy. There are teddy bears, elephants, and kangaroos with babies in their pouches. There is a Bluey plush toy — Kohen’s favorite cartoon — along with matchbox cars, a green plastic tractor, and an array of artificial flowers.

A banner frames the display, featuring a celestial image of baby Kohen wearing gingham overalls. A handwritten sign reads, “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied.”

In the parking lot, a cop pulled a gun on a gray Ford Fusion on a Sunday afternoon and fired while Kohen’s mother held him in the passenger’s seat. A bullet struck the child on his right side, tearing through his small body and exiting his left. The driver, who was also hit, sped to a hospital, but it was too late. At 19 months old, Kohen was dead.

The killing sparked anguish and rage in Senatobia, a small city some 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. At protests and press conferences, people demanded answers, while officials stayed mostly silent. It took several days for the mayor to deliver a scripted video statement that did not even include the child’s name.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation announced a probe into the case. Speaking before an agitated crowd, state Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said this could take months, refusing to say when — or even whether — his agency would provide further updates.

Until then, the official narrative would be a version of a familiar tale told by those who kill under color of law: On June 14, Senatobia police got a shoplifting call from Walmart over baby clothes and a pack of Pampers diapers. According to an MBI press release, officers tried to stop “two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store.” The suspects “drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.” That’s when an officer fired.

Police offered nothing to back the story. A witness video captured mostly chaos as the car drove off, while a woman who asked not to be named told a local TV station she saw police chasing the car before hearing gunshots. Nevertheless, the police narrative took off. On Facebook pages like “Senatobia Happenings UNCENSORED,” commenters blamed Kohen’s mother for his death.

The accusations escalated after famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump took the family’s case, with critics accusing him of stoking racial grievances for profit. When Crump released a video of Kohen’s mother, Vel’lesiya Wiley, telling her side of the story — saying she “raised my baby up” to warn officers that Kohen was with her — a wave of racist vitriol followed. Some demanded to know why Kohen wasn’t in a car seat. Others said she’d used him as a “human shield.”

The comments were shockingly cruel. They also ignored what Black residents of Senatobia, which is about 40 percent Black, had long insisted: Police treated them with contempt and brutality.

A year earlier, at the same Walmart where Kohen was killed, a police officer forced a woman from her car in front of her children for parking in a handicapped spot — part of a string of violent incidents that made national news. In the summer of 2025, Senatobia’s board of aldermen finally voted to dismiss the police chief.

By then, the department had already hired the officer who would later be identified in the local press as involved in killing Kohen Wiley – a police sergeant who’d been previously sued for misconduct while working at two different law enforcement agencies. Just two days before Kohen was killed, a Black officer filed a complaint against him for making a racist remark.

To racial justice activist Patrick Lumumba, the decision to hire such a man was emblematic of the city’s disregard for Senatobia’s Black community. “You think they didn’t know about his past?” he asked. “But who was he gonna hurt? If he hurt anybody it wasn’t gonna be white people.”

On the last Saturday in June, as the family laid Kohen to rest, the Senatobia Walmart was relatively quiet. A police car was parked across the shopping plaza, where protesters had gathered the day before. At an empty restaurant where a TV played “Leave It to Beaver,” a young white employee said no one had come in all day, blaming the “rioters” for keeping customers away.

At the memorial site, a white woman retrieved a bouquet of dried flowers blown away by the wind. She defended the protests, adding that they had been peaceful. For all the speculation and rumor, she said, no one really knew what had happened. But nothing could justify shooting a 1-year-old boy.

“The whole thing is very, very sad,” she said. “No mother should have to bury her child.” She did not wish to share her name. “I don’t want to stir any trouble.”

A memorial for 1-year-old Kohen Wiley sits outside the Walmart in Senatobia, Miss., on July 7, 2026, facing the parking lot where he was fatally shot by police. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

“Outside Agitators”

Senatobia, the seat of Tate County, sits on the northern tip of the Mississippi Delta, a mostly rural region famous as the birthplace of the blues. Downtown, historical markers boast connections to Black musicians like pioneering country singer O.B. McClinton. “Being in the small contingent of African-American performers in country music was never a cinch,” his marker reads, “but McClinton often dealt with the subject good-naturedly in shows and songs.”

Easier to miss are the places that once saw violent attacks on the civil rights movement. Just north of town, on Highway 51, a marker commemorating the site where James Meredith was ambushed and shot during a solo march from Memphis to Jackson has been knocked from its post; it currently sits on the ground. After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. resumed the 1966 march alongside other civil rights leaders, they passed through Senatobia, in the same spot where the Walmart now stands.

The activists were widely depicted as radical outsiders — “Hard Core Civil Rights Militants,” as one headline read. But the march included locals; many offered their homes to the visitors at great personal risk. “Most people would sleep in the backyard of people’s homes because they were scared they would bomb the home,” recalled independent publisher Gloria Zuurveen, a Senatobia native whose aunt hosted activists. “But she said, ‘No, y’all ain’t sleeping in my backyard. Come on in this house.’”

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The claim that protesters were “outside agitators” was a common refrain — a persistent way to dismiss any movement. When local pastor Michael Cathey, Senatobia’s first Black alderman, led boycotts of its public schools and businesses in 1987 — part of a wave of similar actions across Mississippi — some suggested they’d been orchestrated by the NAACP. “I’d like to see local people solve local problems without outside assistance,” the mayor told reporters.

In reality, “the whole community took a stand,” Cathey recalled. “The school buses ran empty. Nobody went to the store.”

“The city government is hiding behind the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.”

Cathey has been outspoken about the killing of Kohen Wiley. His congregation, the West Gilmore Church of Christ, hosted the viewing for the toddler in June. “The city government is hiding behind the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation,” Cathey said. Their excuse is that they must wait on the state. “But that’s not true. The city can speak to the matter. … They need to be working to make sure we have transparency. But it’s not happening.”

Cathey said that the case had attracted many activists from outside Senatobia, making the protests easier for officials to ignore. But a bigger problem, Cathey and others said, is the refusal of elected leaders to represent their constituents.

Cathey served as an alderman for over 30 years, leaving office in 2017. In the decade since Donald Trump’s rise, he said, local conservatives have increasingly modeled themselves after MAGA politicians, shedding any pretense of concern for Senatobia’s Black community. Unlike the civil rights era, in which the federal government forced states like Mississippi to expand hard-fought legal rights, Trump is doing the opposite: weaponizing his office to turn back the clock on equal rights.

“What we see Trump doing on a national level, we have that same attitude locally,” he said. “And I don’t see it just being a Mississippi problem. It’s a national problem.”

Law and Order

Not that long ago, the South seemed poised toward progress.

As protests spread across the country after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, many declared it time to break from the past. Confederate monuments were toppled and, in some states, lawmakers passed criminal justice reforms to roll back the legacy of racial violence.

In Mississippi, lawmakers did what once seemed impossible: Vote to replace the state flag, eliminating its Confederate iconography. Senatobia Republican Trey Lamar pushed the effort, calling it “something I knew in my heart for a long time was the right thing to do.”

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Such symbolic gestures, however, did not translate to systemic change. Before long, Mississippi politicians were disenfranchising Black residents in sweeping new ways. Lamar became the chief sponsor of legislation to create a new, state-controlled court system in the majority-Black capital city of Jackson, usurping the power of the city’s elected judges and handing it to white state lawmakers. The measure was about crime control, Lamar insisted. It had nothing to do with race.

But “law and order” has long been a code for racial politics. In Senatobia, which hosted a “Back the Blue and Trump” parade in the fall of 2020, the mayor and board of aldermen started making changes of their own. The city’s Black police chief, a 26-year department veteran, was replaced with a white man who had only recently joined the force.

The new chief, Richard Chandler, was given free rein to transform the department. Some moves seemed sensible enough. Senatobia police officers were paid as little as $13.75 per hour when Chandler arrived, and he successfully argued for better wages. But other decisions raised red flags. Despite the department’s small size — some 30 officers in a town of roughly 8,500 — Chandler formed a SWAT team and assigned a dozen officers to the unit. One was a 22-year-old recent recruit who described herself as “an adrenaline junkie,” as she told reporters. “I want to kick down doors and go in there and arrest the bad guy.”

“There was no consideration to how it affected the citizenry. It was just about making money.”

The stated goal was modernization; the city built a new police station, bought a fleet of new vehicles, and hired a grant writer to seek federal funds. Chandler also pushed aldermen to pass new ordinances aimed at increasing city revenue. Between 2021 to 2025, according to city meeting records, the board voted to add financial penalties to punish misdemeanor drug charges, loitering, and “nuisance level gatherings.”

The fines, ranging from $25 to $1,000, would inevitably target those who could least afford it. “There was no consideration to how it affected the citizenry,” said Cathey, who attended many of the meetings. “It was just about making money.”

It wasn’t long before a string of shocking incidents were caught on video. In February 2022, police violently arrested a man named Rodney Rucker, who was warming up his car outside a local motel before an early shift at McDonald’s. Body camera footage showed police accusing him of having white powder under his nose and, when he refused to leave his vehicle, smashing his window and breaking his phone. No drugs were found in the car.

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In 2023, Senatobia police followed a teenager into the home of a local barber named Mark Lesure, ostensibly because the young man matched the description of a criminal suspect. Video showed Chandler choking Lesure before being accidentally tased by his own officer.

Senatobia police made national news that same year for jailing a 10-year-old boy for public urination, a move Chandler conceded was “an error in judgement.” But he defended the violent arrest of two sisters, 13 and 14, outside a public housing complex in 2024. According to the girls and their mother, Chandler personally ordered one of the girls to “get your Black ass out of the road” before forcing her to the ground.

Finally, on Mother’s Day 2025 — in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen Wiley would be shot dead — a female officer dragged a Black mother out of her car in front of her frightened young children for sitting in a handicapped parking space.

By then many people in Senatobia were fed up — including some members of law enforcement. One retired police officer echoed what many said for years: Chandler drove out officers who lived in the community and brought in cops who would prey on the community. A number were hired after being dismissed from other departments. “They want people like that,” he said. “They can get them to do any kind of dirty work they want.”

In the summer of 2025, over angry objections by the mayor, Senatobia’s board of aldermen voted to remove Chandler. It was supposed to restore trust, one alderman said. But as Lumumba, who recently founded the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency, said, “We removed Chandler. But the culture remained.”

Kohen Wiley’s parents, Vel’lesiya Wiley and Daveon Williams, gather with activists led by Marquell Bridges of the Building Bridges Coalition at a park in Sardis, Miss., after burying their son on June 27, 2026. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

A History of Violence

City officials have not identified the man who shot Kohen Wiley. But it’s considered an open secret in Senatobia. A Memphis news station obtained records from the MBI that identified the officer who responded to the shoplifting call at Walmart: Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster, who has been on paid leave since mid-June.

Foster, now 33, was hired by the Senatobia Police Department in March 2025 and quickly promoted to sergeant. Two days before Kohen’s death, a fellow officer filed an internal complaint against him. According to Mississippi Today, Foster entered the booking room at the station, saw School Resource OfficerDexter Smith, and said, “‘Who is this Black motherfucker back there?’”

“The room went silent,” Smith wrote in his complaint. “I have never had any one-on-one conversation with Sergeant Foster, nor do we have any outside relationship to be on a level for him to speak to me in that manner.”

Smith quit a month after filing the complaint. In his resignation email, he cited a lack of “meaningful response or resolution,” according to Mississippi Today.

Before coming to Senatobia, Sgt. Hunter Foster had been named in two federal lawsuits.

Several red flags might have prevented Foster from being hired to begin with. Before coming to Senatobia, he’d been named in two federal lawsuits, both of which were dismissed under the doctrine of qualified immunity.

In 2022, he was accused of providing a false narrative following the arrest of two men outside a Waffle House in neighboring Southaven. In a police report, Foster accused a driver of “almost running over” another responding officer, a description unsupported by video evidence.

After moving to the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department, Foster was sued for participating in the brutal assault of a 29-year-old Black woman during a traffic stop. According to the 2024 complaint, the deputies tased her, “pulled her hair, kicked her multiple times in her stomach and ribs, called her a prostitute, stomped on her face breaking her jaw in three places and knocked out multiple teeth.”

A use of force report cited injuries on the woman — including “abrasion, puncture, lacerations, (and) swelling” — and confirmed that she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. In an affidavit, Foster said his “only involvement” was to pin her down in order to handcuff her, while providing no video footage to confirm his account. According to Foster, he tried to activate his body-worn camera only to later “realize it had never activated.”

Foster did not respond to messages from The Intercept.

Racial justice activist Patrick Lumumba speaks to reporters outside Senatobia City Hall following the board of aldermen meeting on July 7, 2026. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

“Y’all Gonna Kill Somebody”

On July 1, Ben Crump returned to Senatobia to release a report from D.C. Medical Examiner Roger Mitchell, who was brought onto the case to conduct an external examination of Kohen Wiley’s body and assess photos from the scene. A photo of the sedan showed the passenger’s side window shattered and a bullet hole in the windshield.

The findings undercut the claim that police had fired in self-defense. On Kohen’s right side, where the bullet entered, were small cuts known as “pseudo stippling,” an injury pattern commonly found on victims shot through glass. According to Mitchell, the markings suggested the bullet had been fired through tempered glass — like that found on a car’s passenger window — rather than through a windshield’s laminated glass.

But the only way to learn what really happened, Crump said, was to see the body camera footage and surveillance video that the MBI still had not released.

“If it was your 1-year-old baby, what would your response be?”

The following week a crowd filled a room inside Senatobia City Hall. Lumumba, the local activist, had been given time to speak at the bimonthly board of alderman meeting, along with two women from the Building Bridges Coalition. He gave the aldermen copies of Kohen’s obituary. “Kohen brought joy to everyone he met,” it read. “He loved playtime with his mom, playing with his toys, and cutting the grass with his toy lawnmower.”

Lumumba reminded the aldermen of the history of police violence in Senatobia. He and his neighbors had urged the city to act. “We told y’all, ‘Y’all gonna kill somebody,’” he said. Now, police had gone too far. “This ain’t going away.”

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Shatoya House reminded the officials that protesters are not “the enemy.” Yet that’s how they’d been treated. Police had deployed tear gas on one demonstration outside Walmart. And on the day the commissioner of public safety came to town, snipers had watched from the rooftops.

House also felt compelled to respond to an accusation about the activists. Many critics seemed convinced they were bigoted against white people. “I am not racist,” House said. “If it was your 1-year-old baby, what would your response be?”

When the speakers were done, no one said anything. With a placid air, Mayor Greg Graves simply moved on to the next agenda item.

“We must not be good enough for them to talk back to us,” one woman said loudly. Only one alderman had addressed them directly — to confirm that Foster was still collecting a paycheck. “Do the rest of y’all care?”

“No, they don’t care,” another replied.

A white lieutenant interrupted with a warning. “All right, that’s it,” he snapped.

“Let the mayor run the city,” the woman snapped back. “You a police officer, bro.”

He gave her a hard stare and nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I am,” he said. “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

Neither Graves nor individual aldermen responded to emails from The Intercept. Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford said any questions should go to the MBI. “I can’t say anything or do anything until they do what they’re gonna do,” he said. In an email, the MBI wrote, “This remains an open and ongoing investigation, no further comment will be made.”

Activists have continued to show up at city hall. At one recent meeting, Lumumba introduced Kohen’s mother and grandmother to the aldermen, who again had nothing to say. Outside the meeting on August 4, Lumumba passed out postcards urging people to join the cause. He was joined outside by community members wearing shirts that read, “Your baby is our baby.”

Elsewhere in town, others seem anxious for it all to go away. Last month, an anonymous woman posted in the Senatobia UNCENSORED group. Her family was moving to Senatobia but, based on what she’d seen on the page, she worried it was a mistake. “I’ve never seen so much drama and hatred,” she said. “Please tell me it’s a good place.”

Several people sought to reassure her. “I have rarely experienced any racism or hate,” one white woman wrote. The original poster thanked her. “This eases my heart.”

“You are so welcome,” the white woman replied. “I promise it’s peaceful here.”

“There will be some turmoil when the MBI releases their findings,” she added. “But it will be outside agitators. And it will be temporary.”

The post Black Residents Warned of Abusive Cops for Years. Then Police Shot and Killed a Toddler. appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69166

The Trump administration subjected hunger-striking immigrants held in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers to involuntary medical procedures, including forced feeding, a blatant and painful violation of medical ethics widely considered to be torture.

In the second article of a two-piece series, The Guardian revealed on Monday that court records showed ICE personnel attempted to subject at least 10 hunger-striking detainees to the procedures. At least three, and possibly five, detainees were force-fed, while five others ended their hunger strikes at the last minute rather than undergo the invasive, non-consensual insertion of a plastic tube through the nose, down the throat and esophagus, and into the stomach to deliver liquid nutrition against their will.

Hundreds of people have gone on hunger strike at ICE detention centers across the country to protest overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, spoiled and worm-infested food and water, inadequate medical care, delays in immigration procedures, alleged physical and psychological torture, and other mistreatment.

The Guardian's investigation found that one Kurdish asylum seeker detained at ICE's Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos, Texas was subjected to force-feeding for eight months, while another hunger-striker at the same facility endured six months of the painful procedure. In six cases reviewed by The Guardian, immigrants who were force-fed had no legal representation.

The Department of Homeland Security maintains that detainees receive adequate meals and care and disputes reports of abuse.

In May, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed the hunger strikers as a "handful" of detainees and falsely claimed they were striking because they "want their ethnic right food."

"Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want... This isn't Holiday Inn," he added while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick looked on and smiled approvingly.

DHS Secretary Mullin dismisses the detainee hunger strike in an ICE facility:

They're refusing to eat because they want their ethnic food. Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want. This isn't Holiday Inn. pic.twitter.com/tdUYMkUy1K
— FactPost (@factpostnews) May 27, 2026

A judge must authorize the forced feeding of ICE detainees. According to The Guardian, judges often quickly issue the requested emergency orders before immigrants can legally object.

“There’s very little due process in these proceedings,” immigrant rights attorney Eunice Cho told the newspaper, comparing the judges' orders to a "rubber stamp."

Global medical authorities, United Nations bodies, human rights defenders, and others—including people subjected to it—call forced feeding a form of torture.

"The tube went inside a little bit and then got stuck," Ajay Kumar, a former ICE detainee force-fed during Trump's first term in 2019, told The Intercept, which in 2022 obtained video of the Indian asylum seeker being strapped and pinned down by five guards in riot gear before having the nasogastric tube forced into him.

"I felt as if [the tube] was going down my throat, tearing up the insides, and blood started coming from my mouth and nose," he said. "It was very hard."

"After that they took me for an X-ray. After doing the X-ray, they informed me that the tube has not been inserted properly, so we will have to insert it again," Kumar recalled. He was asked if he wanted to end his hunger strike and, when he said no, the second insertion began. "It was more painful. These people are torturing me. The one ICE officer, I never forget him. He's smiling."

Kumar was taken for a second X-ray and was again informed that the tube was incorrectly inserted. He was again asked if he would continue his strike.

"You can torment me as much as you want, you won't be able to break my spirits," he told them. The tube was correctly inserted the third time and Kumar was pumped full of a nutritional shake. He said he could not breathe, sleep, or speak properly for weeks after.

Kumar said he was force-fed in front of three other detainees "so that they would all start eating after seeing what's happening to me."

"Whenever the doctors said, 'Yes, we are helping you, we cannot let you die like this,' I used to tell them, you are treating me worse than dying," he added.

Under the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Malta, doctors are advised to not force-feed prisoners who choose to hunger strike and understand the consequences of their actions.

“Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable,” the declaration states.

In 1981, UK authorities allowed 10 imprisoned Irish Republican Army members, including former Member of Parliament Bobby Sands, to starve themselves to death in Northern Ireland. Their deaths occurred after between 46 and 73 days of refusing food.

In contrast, force-feeding is institutional policy in US prisons, including the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp in Cuba, where detainees—most of whom were charged with no crime—were force-fed during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

Immigrants detained by the US have been force-fed since at least the Obama administration.

Sarah Houston, a managing attorney at ImmDef, told The Guardian that an ICE Health Service Corps document acknowledging the force-feeding of detainees and viewed by the newspaper is a "blatant admission" that the practice is being used by the Trump administration.

“But if they admit openly that there are hunger strikes, they admit that the conditions in detention are so bad that people are willing to forgo food in order to raise awareness about the situation,” Houston said. “Because no one goes on hunger strike unless they are really desperate.”

Matthew Wynia, a medical ethicist and director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado, said that “it is unethical to force treatment on someone who is saying, 'Don’t do this to me.'"

“People who are on hunger strike do not want to die, they are not suicidal," he continued. "They are using the only tool available to them to protest the circumstances of their confinement.”

“The idea of health professionals serving as agents of the state, rather than protectors of our patients, has a notorious history," Wynia added. "And for the medical profession, we really don’t want to go down that path again."

The Guardian series comes amid a broader pattern of abuse and neglect, sometimes deadly, of ICE detainees, many of whom are locked up in facilities run by private prison profiteers.

According to ICE’s public database, more than 50 people have died while detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency during President Donald Trump’s second term, including two people who were killed in a sniper attack on an ICE administrative and processing center in Dallas. At least 10 of the deaths were men who killed themselves, according to an Associated Press investigation published late last month.

Many of the deaths were preventable, say experts who point to systemic understaffing and DHS policy choices that weaken detainee care and employee oversight.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Cross posted from https://thelemmy.club/post/53730071

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Upon arriving at the crime scene, officers say they found five 9mm shell casings and Bravo’s injured driver, but no sign of the police detail that had been assigned to protect her.

Ex-Charleston officer arrested in China 21 years after wife's murder, Marshals say

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/67064

Tampa, FL – Some 50 people gathered in front of Tampa City Hall, Sunday, July 19, to honor the three lives recently stolen from their families and communities by ICE murderers. The protest was organized by the Tampa Immigrants’ Rights Committee (TampaIRC) as a part of the Legalization for All national week of action.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo from Houston, Texas, and Joan Sebastian Guerrero, from Maine, were gunned down when they were stopped by ICE in their vehicles. ICE claimed both men weaponized their vehicles – the same justification utilized when immigration enforcement killed Renee Good in Minneapolis in January. Videos that surfaced in all three cases contradicted the agency’s account. The other person killed was Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, a tourist from Mexico, who was hit by a semi-truck as he ran away from ICE in St. Augustine, Florida.

No ICE agent has been arrested for their deaths.

Protesters chanted, “No Trump, no KKK, no racist USA,” “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here” and, “When immigrants are under attack what do we do? Stand up fight back!”

Attention was also drawn to the grand jury investigation of Los Angeles-based immigrant rights activist Nadia Topete, a 21-year-old Chicana immigrant rights activist with Centro Community Service Organization in Los Angeles, who was targeted and subpoenaed by the FBI for her organizing work. She was called to appear before a grand jury where she exercised her right to stay silent.

Alvaro Montealegre, member of TIRC said, “it is clear she is facing repression for demanding justice for our immigrant and undocumented community members. We all stand in solidarity with Nadia and everyone facing repression for protecting the rights of immigrants. Today it’s Nadia; tomorrow it could be any one of us.”

The chair of the Tampa Immigrants’ Rights Committee, said, “it's not enough to simply get rid of ICE. What we need is legalization for all. Because, before ICE, there was the Immigration and Naturalization Services, the INS, which was restructured into ICE. The violent tactics that we see from ICE existed long before ICE. We need legalization for all. Legalization for all would mean that immigrants would not be criminalized regardless of documentation status, without the need to give up the citizenship of their country of origin. We need to remove the basis that criminalizes us immigrants to begin with. If no one can ever be illegal on U.S. soil, there would be no need for ICE, Border Patrol, 287(g) agreements or whatever else the federal and state governments cook up.”

Before an enthusiastic crowd, they ended with the chant, “What do we want? Legalization! When do we want it? Now!”

The rally ended just in time, as heavy rain began to fall.

#TampaFL #FL #ImmigrantRights #ICE #NadiaTopete #LorenzoSalgadoAraujo #JoanSebastianGuerrero

From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66464

As US Immigration and Customs Enforcement deals with the fallout of two fatal shootings, President Donald Trump's border czar Tom Homan has said the deaths were the fault of victims who did not "comply" with agents.

"It comes down to one simple fact. These people failed to comply with law enforcement," Homan said on Monday outside the White House. "All they had to do was simply comply. If they did, they'd be alive today."

Questions remain about the extent to which the two men killed earlier this month—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine—defied ICE agents leading up to their arrests, and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) initial narrative that the two men attempted to attack agents with their vehicles has been undercut by video and eyewitness evidence.

Meanwhile, legal experts have noted that failure to comply with law enforcement on its own is not a justification for deadly force under DHS guidelines or the guidelines of any other law enforcement agency, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that lethal force must be reserved for situations where suspects pose an immediate danger.

ICE critics have further pointed out that the agency’s unprecedented tactics under the second Trump administration—the use of unmarked cars, the refusal to self-identify, and the use of excessive force without clear justifications—make compliance impossible in many cases.

A prominent social media user known as Jesus Freakin' Congress, who catalogs ICE abuses on her account for more than 50,000 followers, drew attention to a case out of Schaumburg, Illinois, as "an example of what [Homan] wants you to comply with."

The video, filmed by Instagram user Mari Elena months earlier and posted this week, shows what she believed to be agents in unmarked vehicles following her as she attempted to leave a parking lot before a gray SUV suddenly cut her off as she approached an intersection.

"I saw what appeared to be ICE agents in a parking lot and began recording them from a distance," she explained in the post. "After they noticed I was recording, several of their vehicles drove past me. Because I was alone, I decided to leave the parking lot. As I was leaving, four ICE vehicles surrounded my vehicle in the middle of the road."

Video shows the gray SUV sitting motionless in front of Mari as she honked repeatedly. She had nowhere to go without hitting either the curb or the vehicle in front of her. After blocking her for over a minute, the vehicle drove through the intersection, allowing Mari to leave.

At no point did any of the vehicles activate their emergency lights to indicate that they were law enforcement or that she was being detained.

Jesus Freakin' Congress noted the difficulty this posed for Mari, who "wasn’t even 100% sure" that the men boxing in her car were ICE agents.

Imagine being a woman, alone in your car. A group of cars you cannot clearly identify as law enforcement, start following you. They don’t turn on emergency lights. They don’t clearly identify themselves. And one of them cuts you off and [is] blocking your vehicle from being able to drive away.

What are you supposed to think is happening? Because from your perspective, it looks like you are being kidnapped by random people.

And that is the terrifying part of what ICE is doing. They are creating situations where people have no idea whether the people surrounding them are legitimate law enforcement officers, or strangers attempting to abduct, or rob them. And Tom Homan’s answer to being kidnapped, or robbed, is… “Just comply.”

Don’t try to drive away. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t try to escape. Just calmly allow unidentified people, in unmarked vehicles, to follow you, box you in, and potentially kidnap or rob you… Because if they happen to be ICE agents, and you react like a normal person who believes they are being kidnapped, you could be assaulted, detained, or even shot. Do you understand how dangerous and insane that is?!?

“Just comply” means women are being told to surrender to potential kidnappers, and hope they turn out to be government agents. And if they don’t? Tom Homan says it’s their fault for not complying.

Although Mari was not able to confirm that the vehicles boxing her in were driven by ICE agents, her case represents the type of scenario in which Homan demands people to simply "comply."

Since it became commonplace for faceless agents to prowl the streets, there have been numerous documented cases of people impersonating immigration agents in order to kidnap, rob, and sexually assault victims.

The FBI itself put out a bulletin last year urging agents to identify themselves to prevent confusion. However, there is no evidence that DHS has implemented those guidelines.

According to a report from Wired on Wednesday, the Trump administration has sued at least five states, as well as the city of Philadelphia, in order to block laws that would stop agents from wearing masks during operations.

Witnesses say that in the incident that led to Salgado's shooting, agents did not identify themselves as law enforcement before the encounter escalated. ICE has not produced evidence that agents identified themselves before shooting Guerrero in Maine. In both cases, the men killed were not the targets of ICE's operations.

In the wake of Homan's demands that those approached by immigration agents "comply", legal experts have warned that ICE's tactics are creating fear that compels people to do the exact opposite.

"ICE and other federal immigration agents have made quick compliance difficult or impossible," Hiroshi Motomura, professor of immigration and citizenship law at the UCLA School of Law, told HuffPost. "Many agents aren't identifying themselves in any trustworthy way."

"It's only natural for people to not comply as quickly as officers might like," he continued. "In these moments of apprehension and fear, some officers seem to be escalating into violence."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/65135

Federal officers at the scene of a killing by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Maine were wearing body cameras, according to four ICE officials who reviewed images from the scene — but the cameras are on multi-function devices that ICE officers use as radio mics.

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After an ICE officer shot and killed a 25-year-old Colombian national this week in Biddeford, Maine, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin reportedly told Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, that officers involved in the shooting were not wearing body cameras.

Yet the ICE officials who spoke with The Intercept, all of whom requested anonymity to protect their livelihoods, identified cameras among the equipment worn by two ICE officers nearby in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

The body-worn devices were not designed solely to capture evidential video, and are used primarily as remote microphones for ICE officers’ radio communications. (ICE did not respond to a request for comment.)

“We are currently only using them as mics because of the AXON contract.”

ICE officials who spoke to The Intercept identified the accessories worn by ICE officers on the scene of the Maine shooting as Motorola SVX Video Remote Speaker Microphones, a wireless radio mic with one other important feature: a camera. (Motorola did not respond to a request to comment.)

Although the Motorola SVX worn by ICE officers are designed to work as body cameras, the ICE official said the function isn’t used.

“They have multiple functionalities,” one ICE official who identified the Motorola SVX at the scene in Maine told The Intercept. “However, we are currently only using them as mics because of the AXON contract.”

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, purchases body-worn cameras through a contract with Axon, a law enforcement tech firm. (Axon did not respond to a request for comment.)

Another ICE official showed The Intercept where, on their own Motorola SVX, a cover can be attached to the top of the device where the camera lens is, comparing it to the tech worn by officers at the Maine shooting scene.

“This is where the cover clips over the camera lens,” the second ICE officer said. “Since the cameras don’t work they just leave the cover on.”

The SVX mics worn by ICE are designed to record internally, capable of storing over 100 hours of standard-definition video, according to Motorola promotional materials and a technical support line. The video-recording function on the SVX mic, however, requires a subscription.

No Bodycam Footage

Motorola is a giant in the world of government law enforcement and security work.

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According to a document published on the Department of Homeland Security’s website, ICE alone expects to spend more than $100 million on a six-year contract for Motorola’s line of APX Next All-Band Smart Radios and accessories, which would include the SVX mic.

The deadly ICE shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine stoked national outrage, coming on the heels of another fatal ICE shooting of Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.

Neither man, according to news reports, had been the intended targets of the ICE arrest teams. And neither man’s death was captured by federal officers’ body-worn cameras, according to official reports.

Shortly after the Maine shooting, ICE ordered its officers in the field to halt nearly all traffic stops. After reports of the order emerged and Trump complained, border czar Tom Homan pivoted to say the ICE vehicle stops would continue.

Widely known today for its body cams, Axon used to be called Taser, named for the stun gun that built its reputation and which it still carries. The company does brisk business with ICE.

Last month, presidential financial disclosures raised eyebrows over an ICE public request for a $220 million stun gun contract that appeared tailor-made for Axon’s Tasers. Only two weeks before the request for information went out, according to the disclosures, President Donald Trump purchased as much as $5 million in shares from Axon.

During Trump’s winter immigration crackdown in Minnesota, ICE announced that it would be purchasing and distributing body cameras to every arrest team in the agency.

After the deaths of Durán Guerrero and Salgado Araujo over past week, however, the Trump administration said the distribution was incomplete.

“The body cameras have been ordered,” Homan, Trump’s border czar, said in a press conference. “There’s a deployment schedule on the books.”

The Homeland Security Department said that half of ICE field offices already had body-worn cameras and the rest were expected to get them in the next two months.

The new body cameras were funded through a $20 million congressional appropriation to expand ICE’s camera program, which includes contracts with Axon for the devices.

The post ICE Officers at Maine Shooting Scene Were Wearing Body Cameras. They Were Not Turned On. appeared first on The Intercept.

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Cross posted from https://discuss.online/post/42579879

Cross posted from https://mander.xyz/post/55162913

Cross posted from https://mander.xyz/post/55162763

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64281

After being shut out of the investigations by the Trump administration, Minnesota prosecutors announced on Monday that federal investigators finally turned over reams of unseen evidence related to shootings by immigration agents that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti and injured Julio Sosa-Celis in January.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced that after "six months of relentless collective effort," state and local prosecutors had "obtained hard drives of previously withheld evidence" about the killings, which took place during the administration's aggressive surge of immigration agents in and around Minneapolis and sparked a wave of protests.

Moriarty added that prosecutors had also obtained some physical evidence that was "previously withheld" by federal investigators. This includes the SUV that Good, a 37-year-old US citizen and mother of three, had been driving when she was shot through her driver's side window by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross as she appeared to be leaving the scene of an enforcement operation.

Attorney Antonio Romanucci and the legal team representing the family of Good said in a statement that turning over the vehicle and other evidence was "an important and meaningful step towards justice and accountability," and that they were "grateful for the resumption of regular investigatory protocols, which is not only important for the families impacted in these cases, but it is essential for the community and the country."

Shortly after Good was shot, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin portrayed her as a “violent rioter" who had attempted to run over Ross with her car, which then-Secretary Kristi Noem claimed was an "act of domestic terrorism." But video evidence showed that her wheels were pointed away from the agent, indicating that she was attempting to leave.

Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller similarly described Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, another US citizen, as a "would-be assassin” while DHS said he showed up at a protest against ICE attempting to "massacre law enforcement" based on the fact that he was carrying a legal firearm when he was shot by two Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents.

Videos showed that Pretti had intervened to stop agents from harming another protester and only held his phone during the confrontation, never reaching for his gun.

Sosa-Celis, a 24-year-old Venezuelan national, was called a "violent criminal alien" by DHS, which accused him and his two roommates of having attacked agent Christian Castro with snow shovels, leading Sosa-Celis to be shot in the leg through the door of the home.

Assault charges against him and his roommate were dropped by federal prosecutors after video and medical evidence showed that Castro had not been attacked. ICE Director Todd Lyons acknowledged that the agents had lied about the incident, and Castro has since been arrested after being charged by Moriarty's office as part of an independent investigation.

Neither Ross nor the two CBP agents who shot Pretti—Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez—have been charged.

Federal authorities have repeatedly rejected demands from Minnesota officials to cooperate with investigations into the three shootings and grant access to evidence and the ability to interview witnesses.

In the case of Pretti, agents blocked investigators with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from entering the shooting scene after the BCA had obtained a search warrant and removed physical evidence before Minnesota investigators could document it. This included Pretti's gun, cellphone, and body camera footage, and other physical and digital evidence.

In March, Minnesota sued the Trump administration over its refusal to cooperate with the investigations, a lawsuit that was still ongoing as of Monday.

The federal government did not explain its sudden change of direction. The Associated Press described it as part of an agreement in which Minnesota agreed to share evidence it had collected in Castro's case if the federal government shared evidence it was withholding about the shootings of Good and Pretti.

Moriarty thanked the federal officials for "their willingness to consider changing course to share evidence and promote public trust."

But Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison emphasized that it "should never have taken this long."

"I remain deeply troubled that the federal government spent more than half a year attempting to conceal this evidence from state investigators," he said in a statement. "And I hope this is the beginning of a major course correction on the part of the federal government."

US Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) agreed that "this took way too long" and said, "It's not enough."

"Minnesotans' trust has been fundamentally broken," she said. "There's a long way to go before we get true justice for ICE killing two of our neighbors."

The federal government's decision to turn over evidence to Minnesota officials came less than a week after an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican father in Houston, whom DHS claimed had attempted to attack officers with his car, only to once again be undermined by video and witness accounts.

DHS has acknowledged that it was not attempting to target Salgado for removal and had mistaken his van for someone else's.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare has said that, just like in Minnesota, the federal government was refusing to share evidence with local officials.

“The federal government has not invited us in,” Teare said. “The federal government is not collaborating with us with this investigation.”

On Monday, ICE agents killed another man in Maine, 26-year-old Colombian father Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who was reportedly shot several times after stopping his vehicle, according to video footage.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said Guerrero “weaponized” his vehicle and attempted to ram officers. One eyewitness told Reuters they saw a federal SUV ram Guerrero's car.

According to Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), Mullin said that Guerrero, who was authorized to work in the US and had a Social Security number, was not the target of the warrant agents were executing.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64490

Anti-ICE protesters attend a vigil for Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old from Colombia who was shot and killed by an ICE agent, on July 13, 2026, in Biddeford, Maine. Photo: Ryan Murphy/Getty Images

For the second time in a week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have shot a man dead. Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old father from Colombia, was driving slowly in Biddeford, Maine, when an agent shot into his vehicle.

As is now par for the course, ICE representatives are already lying about the incident. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reportedly at first told Maine Sen. Angus King that the driver had attempted to use his car as a weapon — the same lie used to justify shooting 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo dead just one week ago in Houston and Renee Good months before that. ICE has made the same bogus claim in a number of recorded incidents involving agents shooting into moving cars.

In a contradictory but equally baseless statement, the Department of Homeland Security claimed on X that the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.” An eyewitness told reporters that before the victim died, his face covered in blood, he could be heard saying, “I tried to stop.”

Both shootings highlight the agency’s pattern of violent racial profiling and reckless indifference to human life.

Like Araujo in Texas last week, Guerrero had not been the target of ICE operations. This is not to say that either death would be any more justified had ICE been seeking the men for arrest; no immigration violation should carry a death sentence. But both shootings highlight the agency’s pattern of violent racial profiling and reckless indifference to human life.

Thousands protested in Houston following Araujo’s killing. Immediately after news spread of the Maine shooting, protesters took to the streets and rushed to Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s Biddeford office. Collins cast a deciding vote in the Senate last month to deliver a staggering $70 billion in funding over three years to ICE and Border Patrol. “Vote her out,” the demonstrators chanted.

Every elected official who is complicit in this border regime should be ousted. It should be a minimum requirement for Democrats running for Congress that they commit to abolishing ICE. Wherever there is legislative, municipal, city, or local power to do so, political leaders must combat ICE with more than words or face organized pressure campaigns and removal.

Following the high-profile ICE killings of Good and Alex Pretti, two Minnesotans, in January, people took to the streets nationwide. Minneapolis residents responded with work stoppages, blockades, and powerful community resistance. The need to escalate organized resistance to ICE nationwide is again all too clear. Community mutual aid networks, neighborhood defenses, mass strikes, and major disruptive protests are as necessary as ever. But all such actions face the challenge of sustainability when opposing President Donald Trump’s endlessly resourced deportation machine.

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Guerrero’s killing in Maine is the eighth fatal ICE shooting in Trump’s second term, according to The Trace. At least fifty-two people have died in ICE custody over that same period, which Human Rights Watch called a “soaring mortality rate.” Meanwhile, ICE is further scaling up its quotidian activities to serve Trump’s project of ethnic cleansing: In just five days at the end of June, ICE agents quietly made a reported 10,000 arrests.

The vile spectacle of city-based ICE surges, which were the agency’s calling card under former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, have given way to dispersed but constant round-ups. The terror for immigrant communities is no less acute; the difficulty when it comes to fighting back has only sharpened. It is high time that anti-ICE action receives more robust political and institutional support.

It is not sufficient, for example, for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to assert that the New York Police Department does not coordinate with ICE for deportation operations if the NYPD is dispatched to clear streets for ICE vehicles to travel through disruption-free. It is not enough to have a court order in place barring ICE from making arrests at New York City immigration courts if that order isn’t enforced. “Sanctuary city” has to be a label with meaning beyond Trump using it as a slur against blue cities. It’s a promise, one that must also entail taking action against the racist municipal policing under which immigrants suffer and antifascist organizing is targeted.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire vowed last week to “pursue an independent and transparent” local investigation into the ICE shooting in his city. He also said that the federal government has taken control of the evidence, making such an investigation extremely difficult. The idea that the federal government will hold its jackbooted thugs accountable is, of course, utterly laughable.

But so, too, is the idea that an investigation by Houston or Texas law enforcement will deliver justice to Araujo’s loved ones, let alone the millions of people whose lives are being destroyed by the American deportation machine. An independent investigation into ICE killings is not even the floor, it’s the basement.

As the federal government expands extremist efforts to criminalize and imprison antifascist activists and ICE watchers as terrorists, political leaders — especially those who claim to represent so-called sanctuary cities — must step up to support and protect targeted organizers. It is a disgrace, albeit not a surprise, that Democratic leaders have not spoken out against the unprecedented, draconian sentences — ranging from 30 to 100 years in federal prison — handed down to eight people in Texas over an ICE detention center protest.

The struggle against Trump’s border regime will continue to be led by immigrant communities and their neighbors. The front-line work on the neighborhood level remains the most crucial — from street to street, workplace to workplace, building to building — and in collective efforts against detention centers and in the direct surveillance of and confrontation with ICE agents on the ground. No work of legislation or policy can supplant that. But as the stakes for taking part in anti-ICE work heighten, as immigrant round-ups grow and the death counts climb, it’s high time that Democrats join the work of abolishing ICE with everything at their disposal — or be replaced.

The post How ICE Arrests Went Quiet — and Got Even More Deadly appeared first on The Intercept.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64294

Mainers descended on the city of Biddeford Monday after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian man, with protesters demanding an end to a federal agency that has killed citizens and immigrants alike.

"Is this the America we want?" asked a sign carried by a woman through the streets of the city, which is about 18 miles southwest of Portland. Other messages included "Abolish ICE," "ICE Out Now," "ICE Kills," and "Murderers."

The agency's deadly invasions of US cities—including in Maine earlier this year—as part of President Donald Trump's mass detention and deportation campaign have fueled growing calls for abolishing ICE.

"It is horrific. ICE needs to be disbanded. People who work for ICE are untrained. And we want them out of Biddeford," Maine resident Marcia Hanes told WGME. "Killing people in cold blood. They need to be out of Maine. They need to be out of the United States."

While authorities have not named the man killed on Monday, the Portland Press Herald identified him as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, citing one of his neighbors and an immigrant advocacy organization that said it had been in touch with the family.

The Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition (MIRC) and Presente! Maine said in a statement that "the young man was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number," and that they "are devastated and outraged" by his death.

"Our communities are hurting," said MIRC executive director Mufalo Chitam. "Today, a 26-year-old member of our community is dead following an incident involving ICE. We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable. How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?"

As with previous shootings involving ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agents, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed that the deceased man had "weaponized" a vehicle he was driving, according to US Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).

Videos from earlier shootings have cast doubt on or debunked some of the Trump administration's claims, including in Texas last week. While some clips of Monday's encounter have circulated online, King noted that there is apparently no body camera footage.

"Body cameras were not on the agents. So we have no video evidence of what occurred in this case," the senator said. "We don't know the circumstances at this point, but my statement to Secretary Mullin, I said, 'I'm going to say that you have committed to me that this investigation will be full, fair, and transparent. Can I say that? He said, 'Yes, absolutely.'"

King added that Mullin told him the driver was not the target of the warrant the officers were executing in Biddeford.

The office of Maine Attorney General Aaron M. Frey said that it "is investigating a fatal use of deadly force that occurred this morning," and "Biddeford, Saco, and the Maine State Police are assisting with the investigation as well as federal authorities."

Initial statements indicate ICE "was conducting an enforcement operation related to a final order of removal when the subject attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer and was fatally shot," the attorney general's office said. "We encourage any member of the public to come forward if they have information they feel would be helpful to the investigation. Please contact your local law enforcement agency."

Some of the protesters headed to the local office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection in November.

According to the Press Herald:

As the crowd marched down Main Street and gathered outside Sen. Collins' Biddeford office, about a dozen people made it inside the entryway, chanting "Vote her out!" and banging their fists on the office’s locked doors.

Staffers inside could be seen on the phone as the crowd grew. Minutes later, five Biddeford police officers pushed through the entryway and placed themselves between protestors and the door.

"This is your fault Susan!" one man shouted.

"You're a fascist!" another person yelled at the officers.

Collins responded to the shooting by calling for "a full and impartial investigation," and faced fierce responses from some Democrats running to replace primary winner Graham Platner as her challenger in the November election.

"Sen. Collins voted for the Republican bill to give ICE another $70 billion to terrorize our communities with no accountability. Maybe sit this one out," said Nirav Shah, who previously led the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and then served in leadership at the federal CDC. "I'm running for Senate to end this blank check, stop ICE's lawlessness, and protect Mainers."

Jordan Wood, another Senate hopeful who was previously a congressional chief of staff, told Collins, "What it requires is for you to have the courage to stop funding this lawless agency that's been terrorizing our streets for over a year."

"ICE needs to get out of Maine," Wood said. He called for ICE to be "abolished and replaced with a new agency that protects and serves the people," and will "not murder them."

The national progressive group Our Revolution—which is backing former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson as Platner's replacement—declared: "Collins voted to hand ICE $70 billion. No reforms. No accountability. She funded this. She owns this. Vote her out!"

As with previous ICE shootings, Monday's deadly encounter drew alarmed responses from across the United States. "When is shit like this going to end?" asked US Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).

In Minnesota—where federal agents fatally shot US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and injured Venezuelan national Julio Sosa-Celis, in January—Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said: "Americans are once again watching in horror as Trump's lawless federal agents took another life—this time in Maine. We must seek accountability and justice and an end to this madness."

The elected attorney in Minnesota's Hennepin County, Mary Moriarty, announced Monday that after "six months of relentless collective effort," prosecutors had finally "obtained hard drives of previously withheld evidence" about the shootings from the federal government.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/62836

In the early morning hours of June 29, federal agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security conducted a raid on home in Midlothian, Texas, in the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area.

The raid, which saw federal agents deploying flash-bang grenades and using armored vehicles, was authorized by a federal search warrant related to an ongoing federal investigation into an alleged bomb plot at a June 14 Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House. The Justice Department characterized the case as an assassination plot against high-ranking officials using of explosive drones and sniper rifles.

The search warrant in Midlothian was issued as part of federal agents’ search for evidence of several potential charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, according to documents viewed by The Intercept.

“They are stress-testing the limits of NSPM-7.”

The subject of the raid in Texas claimed that, in the days after the raid, federal agents returned to her home and offered her up to $200,000 to act as an informant for federal law enforcement. The resident, “Doberman,” who asked only to be identified only by her social media handle because of ongoing threats to her safety, has not been indicted on any charges. Doberman also said she was visited by agents from the FBI and Secret Service weeks before the raid.

The raid was part of a sweeping effort by the federal government and far-right media figures to spin up a vast far-left conspiracy casting antifascist activists as well-organized extremists who pose a threat to public safety.

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President Donald Trump has made attacks on antifascist activists a centerpiece of his domestic crackdown on the left, designating antifa a terrorist organization and issuing directives like the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 to focus resources on going after left-wing activists.

The crackdown recently helped spur centuries’ worth of combined prison sentences for a clutch of left-wing activists who launched a protest at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Prairieland Detention Facility, just a 20-minutes drive from Midlothian.

First Amendment advocates said the Midlothian raid fit into the widespread pattern of aggressive policing tactics being used against the left, including other attempts to flip activists.

“They are stress-testing the limits of NSPM-7, both by trying to cast various groups or voluntary associations that are protected by the First Amendment as being antifa, or as falling within the ambit of this sort of very broad definition of terrorism,” said Moira Meltzer-Cohen, a New York-based attorney who represents defendants in federal cases but is not working on the Midlothian raid. “We see that with this thing in North Texas, we saw that in Prairieland, and we’re seeing that in Minneapolis” — a reference to the recent indictments of 15 anti-ICE activists in Minnesota.

Doberman is a well-known activist in north Texas left-wing circles. She has been filmed armed at protests and is a member of a group known as the Community Liberation Brigade.

In the days before the raid, a Dallas Express op-ed by a local right-wing activist identified Doberman as a leader of the Community Liberation Brigade. The article suggested that Doberman had ties to the Pairieland defendants — a case that saw the government’s first successful prosecution under Trump’s directives against antifa. It’s unclear what role, if any, the Dallas Express op-ed played in the raid.

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Doberman, who told The Intercept she doesn’t have any ties to the Prairieland defendants, said she was questioned about the case during the raid. Authorities also asked Doberman about people named in recent federal indictments surrounding the UFC plot, where the most serious charges included conspiracy to commit murder — the same charge that appeared on the search warrant for Doberman’s home.

Because of the ongoing investigation, the Secret Service directed questions about Doberman’s case to the Justice Department. The Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the FBI. Neither the Justice Department nor the FBI immediately responded to requests for comment.

“Rifles Trained Directly at Me”

Two weeks before the Midlothian raid, federal agents tried to question Doberman about the alleged plot to attack the UFC 250 event, an extravagant mixed martial arts performance hosted by the White House as part of its celebrations of 250 years of American independence.

Two men who identified themselves as federal agents from the FBI and Secret Service arrived at Doberman’s door, according to video footage of the encounter obtained by The Intercept.

In the footage, one of the agents assures Doberman that she is “not in trouble” and asks her if she knows anything about an impending attack. Doberman replies that she doesn’t know anything about any plot. When asked if she plans to travel to Washington, she says she is “broke as fuck.” Shortly after, Doberman declined to answer further questions and instructs the agents to come back with a warrant.

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Chilling Dissent ----------------](https://theintercept.com/collections/chilling-dissent/)

Two weeks later — just days after the Dallas Express piece published — federal agents arrived during the early morning hours in Bearcat armored vehicles. They broke down Doberman’s door in a “no-knock” raid, a controversial tactic that has led to the deaths of innocent people.

“I was woken up by a loud crack, a loud bang,” Doberman told The Intercept in her first media interview since the raid. “I shot up and looked directly to my door, where I was then briefly blinded by a very fucking bright flash of light. After I got my vision back, I saw three rifles trained directly at me.”

Officers placed Doberman in handcuffs, she said, and led her to a local police cruiser parked nearby. Doberman, who is transgender, was denied the opportunity to put on clothes, even after being detained and handcuffed by agents. She was then forced outside in her underwear.

“I’m a trans woman — so, trans woman in a very red state, in a very red city, in feminine underwear. Not the best look,” she said.

According to a seizure receipt viewed by the The Intercept, Doberman’s cellphone was the only item taken during the raid.

In the days after the raid, another FBI agent, whom Doberman said did not give their name, returned her cellphone.

“We know that you’re struggling financially. We know that the people you hold dear are struggling financially.”

During the exchange, Doberman said, the agent offered her hundreds of thousands of dollars to become a confidential informant.

“He said, ‘Hey, we know that you’re struggling financially. We know that the people you hold dear are struggling financially. We are willing to offer monetary gain if you can give us any information on bad actors,’” she recalled.

“The agent said $100,000 to $200,000, which is a life-changing amount,” Doberman said.

Doberman said she told the agent that she would think about the offer. In an interview with The Intercept, however, she said she had no intention of accepting.

Shortly after the offer was made, Doberman spoke to Xavier de Janon, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who confirmed the account to The Intercept. De Janon says that proposals like the one received by Doberman could be indicative of the larger network of resources being poured into federal investigations under Trump’s NSPM-7 directive.

“Getting money in exchange for information isn’t new for this government. It’s actually pretty old. I think what is a bit surprising is the amount,” he said. “These cash payouts are really large and probably reflect the very large budgets that these federal agencies have under Trump.”

De Janon said large financial offers to potential collaborators raise questions about the validity of information provided by informants.

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“Even without cash payments, federal informants and state-level informants, too, are pressured so much to give out information that they start behaving in ways that creates criminal situations and questionable moments that wouldn’t have happened to begin with,” he said.

Informant programs have been riddled with issues and allegations that the government targets and takes advantage of vulnerable people, and alleged criminal plots are frequently conceived and proposed by the informants themselves.

For her part, Doberman was rattled by the raid. Though she was not accused of any crimes, the violent raid left her in a persistent state of anxiety. “I’ve been working on my PTSD for years,” she said. “It’s gotten so much worse. And every night now, constant nightmares.”

The post FBI Raided Texas Activist’s House — Then Offered Her $200,000 to Become Antifa Informant appeared first on The Intercept.

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