acab

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/19544

Since the murder of Renee Nicole Good and the U.S. attack on Venezuela, an emerging movement has taken the streets to oppose Trump’s reactionary and authoritarian agenda.

This weekend saw thousands of people mobilize across the country — including in Detroit — to demand justice for Good, no war on Venezuela, and for ICE to get out of our communities.

Detroit Will Breathe (DWB) brought together a coalition to organize a press conference and rally to bring the voice of the movement to the doorsteps of Detroit City Hall. The organization is hoping to turn up the heat on city officials while uniting different groups across the city.

The press conference and rally is supported by the People’s Assembly/Asamblea Popular, Detroit Justice Center, Black Lives Matter Detroit, the Metro Detroit DSA, We The People Dissent, The Coalition for Police Transparency and Accountability, Moratorium NOW!, and Anti-Fascist Organizing Committee.

The press conference also featured clergy, legal and civil right advocates, and elected officials who want an end to ICE activity in Detroit and across the state.

Throughout the speeches, political activists and elected officials described the fear that many in the immigrant community feel of ICE deporting their families. One notable example was from State Senator Chang, who tearfully described numerous instances of people being detained due not having the proper paperwork, being shuffled to different facilities to a point where families could not locate their family members and even those who have died while under ICE detention.

Labor, Churches, and Major Social Justice Organizations Must Act

A central aspect of the press conference was to call for action by labor, churches, and traditional civil rights groups in Detroit to mobilize to fight Trump. The only time Detroiters have made meaningful gains is when they have mobilized. It was workers fighting in Detroit that helped build the labor movement in the early 20th Century. And it was Black workers and community members mobilizing against police brutality that got the violently racist S.T.R.E.S.S. police squad disbanded in the 1970s.

Today, we need the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and others to mobilize their base to join the movement against Trump. As Left Voice member and SEIU member Julia Wallace from Los Angeles explains, we need the combativeness of BLM, the internationalism of the pro-Palestine movement, and the workers power of Italy’s “Block Everything” general strike.

Coalition Work Based on Class Independence

DWB believes the current moment calls for broad unity against Trump’s reactionary attacks. The group seeks to amplify anyone prepared to speak out against the president and call on people to mobilize, even progressive elected officials. However, the movement must have space where it can organize itself collectively, democratically, and on a politically independent basis — even when it shares space with politicians ready to speak out. Many have been frustrated by the Democrats’ failure to be a strong and consistent opposition to Trump.

The Democrats who run Detroit City Hall should have banned ICE from operating on city property, stopped sharing information and co-operating with ICE years ago. And it should do it now.

If ICE is kicked out of Detroit, it will be because of our organizing and mobilizing from the bottom up. That is why DWB is part of Detroit People’s Assembly/Asamblea Popular and is promoting mass meetings where organizations and individuals can get together to organize and discuss and debate strategy for the movement.

The next mass meeting is January 17, 3-5pm at Central United Methodist Church on 2026 Woodward Ave. in Detroit. For more information, follow DWB’s on Instagram.

The post Activists Hold Press Conference and Rally to Demand “ICE Out of Detroit” appeared first on Left Voice.

From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/19016

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sat for a live interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday morning about the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration agent last week and lied straight through her teeth to the American public about what happened.

Since Good was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross on Wednesday, members of the Trump administration have consistently tried to portray the shooting as justified despite indisputable video evidence contradicting their false claims and narratives.

Noem, who released her first statement on the shooting within three hours of Good's killing, has joined Vice President JD Vance as the leading liars and propagandists—with plenty of help from people like Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the US Department of Homeland Security, and Border Czar Tom Homan—within the Trump administration.

In her exchange with Tapper, who confronted Noem over the blatant chasm between her claims about what happened—she called Good a "domestic terrorist" who "attacked" federal agents—and what anyone with two good eyes who watches the variety of videos made public of the shooting can plainly see for themselves.

Tapper: Why did you not wait for an investigation before making your comments?

Noem: Well, everything that I've said has been proven to be factual, and the truth.

Tapper: With all due respect the first thing you said was not what happened.

Noem: It absolutely is pic.twitter.com/0yGeWSr9aa
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 11, 2026

Various angles of the video, including audio from Good's final moments, have shown that she was not "yelling" at officers or "attacking" them in any way. Video shows several vehicles driving around her car in the minutes prior to the shooting. Good has a visible smile on her face when she says, directly to Ross as he circles her car, "That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you." Detailed analyses of the footage shows Ross could just as easily have stepped aside—without drawing and firing his weapon—in order to dodge the moving car, which he did—even with firing the fatal shots—without injury or harm to others.

Asked by Tapper why she did not wait for the full facts before speaking out publicly to demonize Good and defend the officer, Noem falsely claimed that "everything that I've said has been proven to be factual, and the truth."

That's a lie.

"With all due respect," Tapper responded, "the first thing you said was not what happened."

"It is absolutely what happened," Noem said, lying once again about her initial comments and their relationship to what factually transpired.

"It should be terrifying to every American how Noem lies," said James Abrenio, a criminal defense attorney, in a social media post on Sunday. "She doesn't sweat or move uncomfortably. She just doesn't care. This is what Trump has created. An environment where you only get in trouble if you don't lie. Even about an officer shooting a woman in the face on video."

Noem, in the interview, goes on to claim that Good's behavior fits the textbook definition of "domestic terrorism," despite scores of law enforcement and civil liberties experts who have reviewed the video saying that Ross' behavior betrayed basic police training about how to deal with a routine traffic stop or de-escalate a situation involving a motor vehicle in a roadway.

When Tapper tries to pin Noem down, asking her to explain what she thinks Good was trying to do when she moved her car, the secretary deflects by saying the real "question" should be why are people—in this case a broadcast journalist—"arguing with the president who is trying to keep people safe?"

— (@)

Noem's overt gaslighting—telling the public something objectively contrary to available facts—has become part and parcel of the Trump administration's Orwellian approach in the president's second term.

"Kristi Noem is a stone-cold liar who has zero credibility," said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the minority leader in the House, on Friday in reaction to her earlier comments about the case. "There is nothing to suggest the shooting of an unarmed woman in Minneapolis was justified. This heinous killing must be criminally investigated to the full extent of the law."

On Friday, T**he Guardian documented a litany of false claims made Noem, Trump, McLaughlin, and others, comparing them against what is factually known based on video evidence and eye-witness accounts:

The claim

“ … rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them – an act of domestic terrorism” – post on X by the Department of Homeland Security.

The reality

There is simply no evidence that Good was “a violent rioter” or “domestic terrorist”. No riot was taking place before her encounter with the ICE agents, and the department could not yet have been certain of her identity at 12.43pm, the time the message was posted. There is no evidence that Good – a poet and mother – was a terrorist.

The claim

“ … the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” – post on Truth Social by Donald Trump.

The reality

Video of the incident shows that Good was not “disorderly”, and had reversed her car and allowed at least one ICE vehicle to pass before other agents confronted her. A separate video clearly shows that the officer who fired the fatal shots walked up to the front of Good’s car, which was turning away from him as it began to move forward, and he remained on his feet as the vehicle passed him.

The claim

“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots … The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries” – Tricia McLaughlin, homeland security assistant secretary, in a post on X.

The reality

The officer who killed Good was not in the pathway of her car when he began firing, analysis of the video shows. Two other officers were beside the car, and no members of the public were seen to be in harm’s way. There is no evidence that any ICE officer was injured.

According to The Atlantic's Adam Serwer, such "blatant lies" by the administration in the wake of Good's killing serve various purposes:

They perpetuate the false narrative that federal agents are in constant peril and therefore justified in using lethal force at the slightest hint of danger. They assure federal agents that they can harm or even kill American citizens with impunity, and warn those who might be moved to protest Trump’s immigration policies of the same thing. Perhaps most grim, they communicate to the public that if you happen to be killed by a federal agent, your government will bear false witness to the world that you were a terrorist.

Following the DHS secretary's latest comments on Sunday, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, also speaking on Tapper's show, said Noem "needs to resign or be impeached."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

The date is notable. I didn't know evidence, data, and information could be gathered and comprehensibly analyzed so fast!

January 8, 2026

"FOP Stands with ICE"

Minnesota Fraternal Order of Police Condemns Rhetoric

(Minneapolis, MN) The Minnesota Fraternal Order of Police stands with the men and women of Law Enforcement across the country. Over the past month, while Federal law enforcement has been doing their job in Minnesota, political and community leaders have condemned and vilified them.

The hateful and anti-law enforcement rhetoric by Mayor Frey and other politicians have made their jobs and those of local and state law enforcement more difficult and dangerous. The job of law enforcement is difficult and dangerous enough without the agitation by leaders in our state and communities.

When citizens are accused of a crime, they are given the presumption of innocence as afforded by due process. When there is an incident involving law enforcement, politicians and activists immediately condemn those involved and are scrambling for sound bites. They do not afford them the same due process but rather convict them in a public court of opinion while an investigation is barely beginning.

The Minnesota Fraternal Order of Police condemns these attacks on law enforcement and calls on politicians and leaders to stop the anti-law enforcement rhetoric and to ask for calm while the facts come out. 🇺🇸 #FOPSTRONG National Fraternal Order of Police

https://www.facebook.com/mnfop/posts/january-8-2026for-immediate-releasefop-stands-with-iceminnesota-fraternal-order-/1337523008421118/

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/18933

Since Wednesday, Minnesotans have been flooding the streets of South Minneapolis where their neighbor was shot and killed during an ICE raid. They have spent early mornings and late nights at the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE agents deploy each morning and return each night. They have spent their midnight hours protesting outside of the hotels that house the ICE agents terrorizing their communities. As the work week came to a close, protests grew even larger.

We landed in Minneapolis on Friday night, arriving at the downtown hotel where ICE agents stay. Hundreds of people lined the streets all around the building, carting drum kits, noise makers, trumpets, whistles, and even fireworks to make as much noise as possible. The message was, quite literally, loud and clear: ICE agents terrorize Minneapolis, so Minneapolis will give them no peace. Even as temperatures dipped below freezing and snow started falling, our numbers only grew. Folks in nearby apartment buildings, bars, and restaurants came out to join the march. The noise created was so deafening, protestors passed out earplugs to one another. The fury of the crowd was aimed not only at the ICE agents who kidnap and kill their community members, but at the Trump administration who deployed them. ICE has been in Minneapolis for months, but two thousand additional agents were sent by Trump last week with special instructions to target the large Somali community of the Twin Cities.

Fed up, protestors brought signs reading “Trump is the real terrorist” and “Trump: end the war on immigrants!” One protestor, a school therapist, shared her reason for joining the march: “The children I work with are traumatized. They are traumatized by this administration and they are traumatized by the whole political system. We as school workers have an obligation not to be neutral in this situation. I will do everything in my power to bring about change for the students I work with.”

At 9:30, police ordered protestors to stop and disperse, declaring the protest an unlawful assembly. By 10pm, police had begun making arrests, ultimately detaining thirty protestors.

The next morning, in frigid five-degree weather, protestors rallied once again, trudging through heavy snow and across slick, icy sidewalks to convene at Powderhorn Park, just blocks from where Renee Nicole Good was killed. This same park was the site of countless protests, rallies, and community meetings during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests—George Floyd was murdered in the very same neighborhood five and a half years earlier. By the time we arrived at 1pm, thousands of people had gathered in the park and filled the surrounding streets. A contingent of teachers from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers marched together, carrying a banner which read, “Education not deportation.” One elementary school teacher spoke with Left Voice, saying, “I’m tired. I’m mad. I want them gone—I want ICE out of my city. I want my kids to feel safe again. Enough is enough, I have to be out here, I can’t stay silent.”

Another teacher working in a Title 1 school in South Minneapolis expressed that she was furious with the Trump administration, but also with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey for his complicity: “I need people to understand that Mayor Frey is not on our side, he’s the reason that our neighbors live on the streets, he destroys encampments and defunds community resources. He has been doing only the bare minimum, there’s so much more he could be doing to protect our communities and protect our schools and he won’t do it.”

Also represented in the crowd were contingents from left groups across the city, including Socialist Alternative, with signs like “Abolish ICE, fund our schools” and “Democrats won’t save us.” The Twin Cities chapter of the Revolutionary Communists of America organized a contingent whose signs read “Minnesota AFL-CIO: Call a general strike!” Also showing out in huge numbers were the Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement—a group that fights for climate justice and against authoritarianism, and the People’s Action Coalition Against Trump. Beyond the organizations present, thousands of individuals joined the march, bringing signs like “My parents fought for my rights, now I will fight for theirs,” and “Indigenous people for immigrant rights.” The march, from beginning to end, stretched nearly three miles, covering streets throughout South Minneapolis. City bus drivers, folks in cars driving by, and workers in local business waved and clapped, shouting their support and calling out, “Fuck ICE.”

As we write, protestors continue to fill the Minneapolis streets, both at Powderhorn Park and at the Whipple Federal Building.

The last two days in Minneapolis have seen huge showings of fury against ICE and the Trump administration and solidarity with immigrants in the U.S. As ICE continues to reign terror on cities across the nation, this movement must massify, connecting the struggle against ICE at home with the struggle against imperialist intervention in Venezuela abroad.

Minneapolis has been the eye of the storm before, inspiring one of the largest social movements in history in 2020–we must continue to organize together to create a fighting movement once again, both in the Twin Cities and beyond.

The post No Peace for ICE: Minneapolis Protests Trump’s War on Immigrants and Repression appeared first on Left Voice.

From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/18879

Last week, the Trump administration launched a blatant neocolonial offensive in Venezuela, kidnapping its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and declaring that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela in order to plunder its oil resources.

This imperialist aggression abroad has been matched by brutal repression at home. This week, ICE agents shot and killed Renée Nicole Good while she was observing an ICE raid and later driving away from the scene. She is the ninth person ICE has shot since September 2025.

These events are not isolated; they are two faces of the same imperialist beast. The racism and chauvinism that have Trump treating Latin America as a playground for U.S. profits are the same forces militarizing our streets. Trump’s agenda relies on terrorizing immigrant neighbors and criminalizing dissent—whether it targets another country or an activist standing up for their community here at home.

Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to paint immigrants as violent criminals and criminalize those who defend them, the real reign of terror is being carried out by ICE and federal forces that have militarized our cities. Immigrants have not made our cities unsafe; Trump’s racist and xenophobic assault on their rights and existence has.

This weekend, from Minneapolis to New York City to Los Angeles and beyond, over 1,000 actions and demonstrations have been called in major cities against Trump’s attacks—both his aggression toward Venezuela and ICE’s presence in our streets.

Thousands are beginning to recognize that the same imperialist regime attacking working people abroad is attacking us here at home. It is urgent that we unite workers and oppressed people across borders to defeat this offensive.

Since Trump’s attacks last weekend, some unions and locals have already rejected U.S. imperialist interventions and issued calls to mobilize. United Auto Workers Local 4811 (UAW 4811), which represents nearly 50,000 workers at the University of California, released a statement critical of Trump’s attacks on Venezuela. In New York City, unions such as PSC-CUNY, UAW Region 9A, UAW Local 2110 (LAAS), and Laborers’ International Union Local 79, among others, are joining Sunday’s mobilizations. The rest of the labor movement has to follow suit.

Workers and the labor movement have a special role to play in denouncing Trump’s increasing authoritarianism that threatens the working class and oppressed across borders. Trump said only “own morality” and his “own mind” can stop his agenda, but we know that isn’t the case; as we saw with the general strikes in Italy against the genocide in Gaza, even the threat of workers shutting it down against imperialism is powerful enough to check the capitalist powers’ impunity.

Building such a force in the heart of imperialism — with workers, students, and the masses in the United States denouncing the role of their own government at home and abroad, and organizing to fight back — is essential to advancing the struggle against imperialism and the Far Right across the globe and within the United States.

The mobilizations this weekend are a powerful show of solidarity with immigrant communities and strengthen the struggle of people in countries threatened by U.S. imperialism. We must mobilize with all our forces to demand ICE out of our cities and U.S. imperialism out of Venezuela and all of Latin America. As Left Voice, we join these mobilizations independently of both Republicans and Democrats, and hold no illusions in Congress or the institutions of the imperialist state.

At the same time, we act independently of Maduro’s government, which — through authoritarianism and austerity — has undermined the capacity of the Venezuelan working class to resist the current imperialist offensive.

Our perspective is one of class independence and internationalism, grounded in the power of the working class in the United States, Latin America, and beyond — the only force capable of defeating imperialism.

**U.S. out of Venezuela and all of Latin America!****Abolish ICE!****Free Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores!**Down with the Donroe Doctrine!

Across the Americas, Mobilize and Strike for Venezuela and Latin America!

If you’re in New York City, join the Left Voice contingent at the No Wars, No Kings, No ICE protest on Sunday, January 11. We will meet at 12:30 p.m. at the intersection of E 60th street & 5th Ave.

The post All Out Against ICE, Trump, and U.S. Imperialism appeared first on Left Voice.

From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/18266

Federal immigration enforcement agents on Wednesday swarmed a high school in Minneapolis, where footage and photographs showed them handcuffing school staff members and firing chemical irritants at students.

According to a report from KSTP 5 Eyewitness News, the agents descended upon Roosevelt High School on Wednesday afternoon, mere hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good.

A witness who watched the raid described seeing administrators and staff trying to get the agents away from the building to stop them from apprehending students.

The witness also said that the agents began deploying pepper spray after some students started protesting against their presence on school property.

A Roosevelt High School official confirmed to MPR News that agents wearing US Border Patrol uniforms pepper sprayed students, while also firing pepper balls at them.

Video footage taken from the scene shows agents deploying chemical irritants at demonstrators.

An official from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis told MPR News that armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came onto school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people; they handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders. pic.twitter.com/171JUUfew8
— CAIN (@XTechPulse) January 8, 2026

The school official also told MPR News that the agents handcuffed two staff members at the school, and they described getting into a physical confrontation with an agent as they were trying to tell them to leave school property.

"The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” the official said. "They don’t care. They’re just animals. I’ve never seen people behave like this.”

Meanwhile near where they killed Renee Good ICE was terrorizing a high school — and now Minneapolis has canceled school for the week.

None of this is about safety. A lawless regime with no guardrails. pic.twitter.com/H8l2nXn2FQ
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) January 8, 2026

In the wake of the raid on the high school, Minneapolis Public Schools announced that it would be canceling all classes for the rest of the week "out of an abundance of caution," citing "safety concerns" for faculty and students.

Celia Mejia, a Minneapolis woman whose daughter attends the Green Central Elementary School in the southern part of the city, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she had to pick up her daughter on Wednesday after the school went on lockdown after federal immigration agents were spotted in the area.

"That was way too close to school to feel comfortable," Mejia said.

Julia Haas, another local resident who picked up her child at the elementary school after it went into lockdown, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she was "very" frightened by the ordeal.

"Nobody should have to deal with this ever," Haas emphasized.

The reasons for the raid on the high school were unclear, and the US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to KSTP Eyewitness 5 News' or MPR News' requests for comment.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/18015

The Intercept obtained video of a federal law enforcement agent shooting multiple rounds into the vehicle of a civilian, as locals protested an ICE raid in a residential neighborhood of Minneapolis on Wednesday morning.

The driver, whom local officials identified as a 37-year-old woman, can then be seen losing control of the car and slamming into another vehicle, with smoke billowing from their dark red Honda Pilot.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot the woman, calling her a “rioter” and claiming in a release that the agents felt their lives were threatened. DHS told The Intercept that the person in the car had died.

In the video, the red vehicle appears to be blocking federal agents in a roadway when federal agents approach the car, one reaching into the open driver’s side window. In the video and another posted online from a different vantage point, the agents can be heard saying “Get out of the fucking car.”

As the car appears to be leaving the scene, moving around another federal agent in the roadway, the agent fires at short range directly into the driver’s side.

The video does not clearly show that the person was attempting to run over agents, as DHS claimed. Federal agents had been conducting “targeted operations” in the area when protesters began to arrive, said the department, which referred to the protesters as “violent rioters.”

The video, however, shows protesters filming agents and telling them to leave the neighborhood. Whistles can be heard blowing, a common tactic to warn residents of the presence of federal agents.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that DHS was trying to “spin” the shooting. “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self defense,” he said. “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit.”

Elected officials, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Minneapolis Council Member Soren Stevenson, referred to the individual who was shot as “a legal observer.”

The ICE agent shot the civilian as at least 2,000 federal agents flooded the Twin Cities over the past week following the release of a video by a far-right influencer and Republican operative alleging fraud and targeting the Somali American community. Minneapolis and St. Paul had already been hit with ramped up immigration operations, but the fraud video escalated tensions, prompting DHS to send more agents into the area.

[

Related

Right-Wing YouTuber Behind Viral Minnesota Fraud Video Has Long Anti-Immigrant History](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/31/nick-shirley-videos-minnesota-somali-day-cares-fraud-claims/)

As the fraud video went viral, fueling anti-immigrant outrage among conservatives, DHS agents began to conduct investigations in Minneapolis into the alleged fraud, drawing concern from immigrant rights activists that the city’s undocumented residents would be swept up in the operations.

Federal efforts ramped up this week as hundreds of agents arrived in the area with the DHS sharing on social media on Tuesday the threatening message: “GOOD MORNING MINNESOTA.”

A CBS Evening News segment highlighted the raids, showing two dozen agents surrounding DHS Secretary Kristi Noem as they arrested a man.

“The American taxpayer is grateful that the resource allocation has been put here,” Noem said. “We’ve never seen this kind of fraudulent and abuse of programs before in recent history.”

Omar, who has been the focus of many racist attacks on immigrants in Minnesota, called for ICE to leave the city. “ICE must stop terrorizing our communities and leave our city,” she wrote on X.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The post Video Shows ICE Agent’s Fatal Shooting of Civilian in Minneapolis appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17508

Jake Goldstein-Street*Washington State Standard*

Washington state troopers stop and search drivers of color more often than white Washingtonians, new data shows.

Washington State Patrol’s total traffic stops statewide dropped slightly in 2024, but remained well ahead of 2022 figures. Infractions issued climbed significantly in that period. The findings come as police accountability advocates have pressed state lawmakers unsuccessfully for new restrictions on when police in Washington can pull drivers over.

“Traffic stops really remain one of the most common forms of police-civilian contact, and it’s also one of the riskiest,” said Jazmyn Clark, the Smart Justice policy program director at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington chapter. “For many people of color, a traffic stop is often the most dangerous moment of police interaction.”

Black and Hispanic drivers were much more likely to be stopped last year than white drivers, according to state patrol data presented to lawmakers this month, with the rate of stops for Black drivers nearly double the rate for white motorists.

Black drivers were pulled over 154.6 times per 1,000; Hispanic drivers 102.8 per 1,000; and white drivers 82.5 per 1,000, according to the data. Two years ago, those numbers were 146.7, 89.3 and 73.2, respectively.

Vancouver police killed Nickeia Hunter’s brother, Carlos, during a traffic stop in 2019. Hunter, an advocate from the Coalition for Police Accountability, called the state patrol data “beyond troublesome.”

Speaking to the Joint Transportation Committee this month, state patrol Capt. Deion Glover told lawmakers that the agency “remains committed to fair, unbiased and professional policing statewide. That’s our goal.”

Analyzing traffic stop data from 2015 to 2019, a Washington State University study in 2021 found “no evidence of systemic bias in the decision to stop” drivers.

Disparities with searches, too

Disparities carry over to searches, as well. While Native Americans are less likely to be stopped, they are much more likely to be searched by troopers.

Native Americans were four times more likely than whites to be subjected to a high-discretion search in 2024. These searches refer to when troopers use their judgment to search a person or their car while remaining within constitutional bounds. They’re rare. Last year, there were only 320 statewide, but that’s up from 246 two years prior. About half of them over the past three years turned up contraband, Glover said.

“We really have to have some reasonable suspicion or high level of thought that this person is involved in some type of criminal activity,” Glover said.

Black and Hispanic drivers were also more likely to be searched than their white counterparts, but not to the same degree as Native Americans.

The use of low-discretion searches, used in the case of arrest warrants, vehicle impounds and arrests, also indicated disparities. Black drivers were nearly four times as likely as white drivers last year to face these types of searches, which are also on the rise, with more than 9,000 in 2024.

Push for new restrictions falters

This racial data isn’t perfect, as troopers track the demographics of people they pull over based on their own perception, Glover noted. He said the agency recognizes it has work to do.

“Those are definitely some numbers that we need to work on and dig into and learn why are these disparities happening,” Glover said.

For years, police accountability advocates have pushed legislation to limit when police can stop motorists. Under the proposed Traffic Safety for All Act, law enforcement in Washington would have been barred from stopping drivers solely for nonmoving violations, like expired tabs or a broken headlight, that advocates say disproportionately affect people of color.

Clark, with the ACLU, said “there is likely no other reform that would be more effective” at reducing racial disparities in traffic stops.

“The biggest driver of disparities is what officers are legally allowed to stop for, and when the law allows for broad discretion, bias is going to show up,” Clark said.

But the measure hasn’t made progress in the Legislature. Police officials have opposed the idea amid a dramatic increase in traffic deaths on Washington’s roads. And supporters say they are setting the idea aside for 2026.

Training and other efforts

In the wake of mass racial justice protests in 2020, state lawmakers passed a suite of police accountability measures.

More recently, they’ve shied away from the issue, especially after their move to restrict when police can pursue drivers drew such staunch pushback they had to roll the law back.

Glover noted cadets and troopers are required to take ethics and bias training. The state patrol has also recently done a four-hour “tribal liaison training” on working with tribal governments.

“This training supports better decision making by our troopers and helps reduce disparities amongst traffic stops and other issues as they’re out there working,” Glover told lawmakers.

The agency also has outreach programs to strengthen relationships with the state’s Latino and Indigenous communities.

In 2021, consultants found the state patrol had failed to diversify its ranks, with one key reason being that the department’s psychologist was failing more job candidates of color than white applicants. Glover said “95 percent” of the recommendations from that report have been implemented.

A proviso in the state’s transportation budget passed earlier this year required the state patrol to report the data to the Legislature in hopes of finding ways to address the longstanding demographic disparities.

The post Racial disparities persist with Washington state patrol traffic stops appeared first on ICT.

From ICT via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16959

A military contractor with a lineage going back to the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater will help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement track down a list of 1.5 million targeted immigrants across the country, according to records reviewed by The Intercept.

Federal procurement document show that on December 15, ICE inked a deal with Constellis Holdings to provide “skip tracing” services, tasking the company with hunting immigrants down and relaying their locations to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wing for apprehension.

[

Related

10 Companies Have Already Made $1 Million as ICE Bounty Hunters. We Found Them.](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/23/ice-bounty-hunters-track-immigrant-surveillance/)

Under the terms of the Trump administration’s skip tracing initiative, first reported by The Intercept, contractors will receive monetary bounties in exchange for turning over the whereabouts of specified immigrants as quickly as possible, using whatever physical and digital surveillance tools they see fit.

Constellis was formed in 2014 through the merger of Academi, previously known as Blackwater, and Triple Canopy, a rival mercenary contractor. The combined companies and their subsidiaries have reaped billions from contracts for guarding foreign military installations, embassies, and domestic properties, along with work for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. spy agencies.

Blackwater, founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, renamed itself multiple times over the years after it sparked international scandal for its violent work in Iraq. In 2007, Blackwater mercenaries massacred 14 civilians in Baghdad; several of its contractors serving prison sentences for the killings were pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020.

Prince resigned as CEO of Blackwater in 2009, and Constellis says it has no relationship with him.

Though there are no ties between them, Constellis’s move to serve as a bounty hunter for ICE aligns with Prince’s reported interest in privatizing immigration enforcement.

The government has so far paid Constellis $1.5 million, with the potential for the total to grow to more than $113 million.

In February, Politicoreported that Prince — a longtime and steadfast Trump ally — was among a group of military contractors who urged the federal government to employ a “Skip Tracing Team” and “bounty program which provides a cash reward” to incentivize the rapid tracking of immigrants. The proposal suggested that, due to a lack of federal manpower, ICE should deputize private citizens to help track down immigrants.

The Trump administration wound up hewing closely to the spirit of the proposal, earmarking over $1 billion for skip tracing work, much of it going to companies with military and intelligence contracting experience like Constellis. Federal records show the government has so far paid Constellis $1.5 million, with the potential for the total to grow to more than $113 million by the contract’s end in 2027.

Records do not provide any information about how Omniplex World Services, the Constellis subsidiary named in the contract, will track immigrants on ICE’s target list, stating only that the work “provides ICE with Skip Tracing services nationwide.”

Contract materials indicate that companies can use whatever techniques and technologies they believe will get the job done fastest.

Omniplex has provided investigative services like personnel background checks to DHS and the U.S. intelligence community for decades.

Constellis did not respond to a request for comment or questions about how it will locate migrants for ICE, but the company’s past experience in verifying details of an individual’s private life, including their internet activity, would be of clear utility for a skip tracing campaign.

[

Related

Deportation, Inc.](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/19/deportation-abrego-garcia-ice-immigration/)

According to program materials reviewed by The Intercept, bounty hunters hired by ICE will not be given any credentials identifying them as agents of the Department of Homeland Security as they surveil assigned targets’ homes and workplaces.

Domestic work could also be a crucial revenue bump for Constellis, which has reportedly seen revenues fall in recent years as the U.S. spent less guarding embassies and other facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Constellis, though, remains active in the Middle East, including through a contract to guard an American radar installation inside Israel.

The company has sought out business with dubious humanitarian implications. In 2024, Drop Site News reported Constellis was in talks to deploy mercenaries inside the Gaza Strip, and the company secured a $250 million construction contract at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, earlier this year.

The post Blackwater Successor Hunts Immigrants for ICE appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16758

Activists in the Pacific Northwest are building a database of license plates used by immigration authorities with the hope of keeping tabs on agents’ movements.

The database, put together by an autonomous group of volunteers, currently lists more than 600 plates matched to the make and model of the vehicle they were spotted on. Most of the sightings coming from vehicles involved in enforcement actions in and around Portland, Oregon.

In helping community members to identify unmarked vehicles used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, organizers hope to give people information about the government’s activities in their area, according to one activist involved in the effort.

“It helps reduce the unknown and reduce fear,” the activist said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation from authorities. “ICE is doing whatever they can to be undetected, and so anything we can do to chip away at that obfuscation.”

Rather than hosting the database on a centralized website, which they fear would be vulnerable to subpoenas and takedown orders, the group put their findings out through the InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS, a decentralized, peer-to-peer method of file distribution.

The database is built around community submissions of photos of ICE vehicles in action. Once the images come in, volunteers vet each picture to confirm that the plate and vehicle in question are being used by agents. The activist who spoke with The Intercept declined to go into detail about how the volunteers vet the information but said that every plate listed publicly in the database has appeared in at least two sightings.

“The reason we’re confident in what we released is that we have probably twice as many plates as what was published, but we made a decision to only publish those plates that had at least two observations,” the activist said. “And while we’re confident in the rest of the database, this was an extra measure to reduce confusion and inaccuracies. We want people to feel like they can trust what we’re publishing, and we don’t want to accidentally cause harm by releasing inaccurate information.”

[

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Kat Abughazaleh on the Right to Protest](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/01/briefing-podcast-kat-abughazaleh-indictment-protest/)

The effort comes amid a dramatic uptick in ICE activity in Oregon. For most of the year, ICE officers had largely contented themselves making targeted arrests, such as picking people up at immigration check-ins or detaining people with existing deportation orders. In October, however, federal agents began taking more sweeping actions, according to Natalie Lerner, a board member with the Portland Immigration Rights Council.

“We’re seeing a number of collateral arrests, where they’re arresting anyone who can’t prove that they have status,” she said, referring to detentions that arise from contact with immigrants who are not the targets of raids. “And I think that’s particularly scary and just super lawless.”

“It’s unimaginable how scary it is for folks,” Lerner told The Intercept. “So many people are calling our hotline saying they’re afraid to leave their homes, or they’re afraid to go to work. They’re not able to do the things they need to do to live their lives.”

Lerner’s organization — which has no connection to the volunteer database project — tallied nearly 800 detentions in the area since the start of October, which she said is likely an undercount. According to the activist involved in the database, ICE’s ramping up of enforcement makes the project even more important.

“It’s getting more and more blatant, and that’s why it’s so important that community safety efforts become more focused,” the database volunteer told The Intercept. “We’re working against this entity that has the most up-to-date technology and money and tools, and so we have to create our own tools.”

The database in Portland is perhaps the most well-organized collection of license plates from vehicles used by immigration authorities, but similar efforts have popped up across the country.

Activist networks have sprung up in various cities organizing know-your-rights workshops, building rapid-response teams and neighborhood watch groups to track the movement of agents, and distributing whistles to people in immigrant neighborhoods to swiftly notify the community of the presence of ICE agents.

[

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The Feds Want to Unmask Instagram Accounts That Identified Immigration Agents](https://theintercept.com/2025/09/18/dhs-subpoena-ice-instagram-dox/)

Recent efforts to monitor and unmask ICE agents have caught the attention of top federal officials. In July, Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem issued a warning to “criminals and Antifa groups” seeking to unmask ICE agents and other members of federal law enforcement.

“We will prosecute those who dox ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law. These criminals are taking the side of vicious cartels and human traffickers,” Noem said in a July 11 statement.“We won’t allow it in America.”

The post ICE Drives Unmarked Cars. This Public Database to Tracks Their License Plates. appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16661

Richard Glossip woke up on Christmas morning at the Oklahoma County Detention Center, a 13-story, red brick tower in downtown Oklahoma City. He did a video visit with his wife Lea, then talked to her on the phone as he was served his dinner tray — a bit of turkey and some instant mashed potatoes.

It was not how he’d pictured his first Christmas after leaving death row.

Glossip won the victory of a lifetime last February, when the U.S. Supreme Court vacated his conviction, finding that it was rooted in false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. After almost three decades facing execution for a crime he swore he didn’t commit, Glossip hoped the ruling would mark the end of his ordeal.

But nearly a year later, he was stuck in the county jail with no end in sight. Rather than resolve the case as Glossip’s advocates expected him to do, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is running for governor, announced that he planned to retry Glossip for first degree murder — and asked a judge to reject his request for bond in the meantime. Although defense lawyers pointed out that their 62-year-old client was not a flight risk and posed no danger to society, prosecutors convinced Oklahoma County District Court Judge Heather Coyle to keep Glossip at the jail – a notoriously overcrowded and filthy facility known as one of the deadliest in the country.

In the months since, the state has been unable to get its prosecution off the ground. Glossip’s legal team has successfully sought the recusal of every criminal court judge assigned to the case – all of them former prosecutors who once worked for the Oklahoma County District Attorney, the same office that sent Glossip to death row. While the attorney general’s office has accused Glossip’s lawyers of “judge shopping,” an October evidentiary hearing showed the defense attorneys’ concerns over the judges’ impartiality to be well-founded. One judge assigned to the trial, who had originally refused to step down, was revealed to have taken multiple vacations with the original prosecutor in Glossip’s case.

Nevertheless, each recusal has pushed a potential trial date further into the future. While Glossip has had no choice but to be patient, the wait is taking its toll. The sensory chaos of the county jail is overwhelming for a man who spent decades in isolation on death row. According to Lea, he wears foam earplugs to try to drown out the constant noise, sometimes wrapping a towel around his head.

The conditions are “absolutely exhausting,” Lea said. And while Glossip is grateful to no longer be under a death sentence, he is now in a kind of “purgatory” – waiting for a trial that seems less likely to happen with each passing day.

“This is not where we ever expected to be,” she said.

Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of hotel owner Barry Van Treese at a rundown Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to attacking and fatally beating Van Treese with a baseball bat but claimed that Glossip coerced him into committing the crime in exchange for money. Sneed agreed to testify against Glossip in exchange for a life sentence. He remains incarcerated.

But Sneed’s story was shaky from the start – and the state’s case against Glossip began falling apart from the moment he was sentenced to die. Over the decades that followed, numerous witnesses came forward to counter the state’s portrayal of Sneed as a follower who was powerless to stand up to Glossip, describing him instead as calculating and violent. Glossip’s attorneys also uncovered records revealing that Sneed sought to recant his testimony against Glossip on multiple occasions.

“Besides Sneed, no other witness and no physical evidence established that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese’s murder.”

Nevertheless, Glossip came close to execution numerous times before Drummond took office in January 2023 and immediately announced that he was launching an independent investigation into the case. Unlike his predecessors, who had aggressively fought back against Glossip’s innocence claims, Drummond expressed concern over the possibility that the case was a miscarriage of justice. The resulting review found myriad red flags – including that prosecutors had hidden key evidence from Glossip’s defense and that Sneed had lied on the stand – convincing Drummond that Glossip’s death sentence should not be carried out. In April 2023 he asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate Glossip’s conviction.

At the same time, behind the scenes, Drummond was secretly discussing an agreement with Glossip’s longtime attorney, Don Knight, to resolve the case. “Once the conviction is vacated,” Knight wrote to Drummond in an email on April 1, the state would bring a new charge against his client: “a single count of being an Accessory After the Fact.” Glossip “will plead guilty to this charge” and be given credit for time served. Under the terms, Glossip would be entitled to immediate release.

“We are in agreement,” Drummond replied.

But in a stunning move, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Drummond’s request to overturn the conviction. It was not until after the Supreme Court took up Glossip’s case and ruled in his favor almost two years later that the secret deal between Drummond and Knight could finally move forward. According to Knight, all signs pointed to the plan remaining in place after the high court’s decision – Drummond’s office told him to expect Glossip’s release to take place by Easter.

[

Related

In Shocking Move, Oklahoma AG Decides to Retry Richard Glossip for Murder](https://theintercept.com/2025/06/09/richard-glossip-new-trial-oklahoma-gentner-drummond/)

But that never happened. Instead, on April 22, 2025, Glossip was picked up from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and driven to Oklahoma City, where he was booked into the county jail just before 3 a.m. In early June, Drummond announced that he would try Glossip for first-degree murder.

Today, with the race for governor in full swing, Drummond denies that he ever made a deal with Knight. After Knight exposed their emailed agreement in a motion filed this summer – filing a lengthy affidavit detailing how Drummond made the deal “based on his own political calculus” – the attorney general’s office rejected his version of events. “Contrary to defense counsel’s abrupt, new theory, the parties have never reached a plea agreement in this matter,” prosecutors wrote.

On the Monday after Christmas, Glossip found himself back in court before a new judge. With six criminal court judges disqualified from presiding over the retrial, the Oklahoma County Chief District Judge had been forced to step in to move the case forward. He turned to the court’s roster of civil judges and, at a hearing in early December, chose two with experience handling criminal cases. He placed their names into a box and drew District Judge Natalie Mai.

Appearing in Mai’s courtroom on December 29, Glossip’s legal team requested two new court dates in early 2026: one on the pending motion asking the court to enforce Knight’s agreement with Drummond – which they maintain is a binding contract – and another once again arguing for Glossip’s release on bond. Mai granted the hearings, scheduling them back-to-back in mid-February.

The bond hearing will go first, on February 12. In their new bond motion, the lawyers argue that Judge Coyle should never have kept Glossip in jail awaiting trial. She had presided over his bond hearing “despite having an undisclosed, disqualifying source of bias” – a friendship with Connie Smotherman, the very prosecutor who had been found by the Supreme Court to have committed misconduct. Although Coyle had recused herself from Glossip’s case after conceding the relationship, Glossip was still paying for her decision.

The new bond motion also argues that Glossip’s health has deteriorated in the months he has spent in the county jail, where, despite repeated requests, he has only seen a doctor once. He has high blood pressure and has developed leg swelling and painful cramps, raising concerns about a possible blood clot. He also has “several soft tissue lumps” in different areas of his body, which have not been properly examined. “His remaining in the jail with a lack of medical attention and treatment puts his life and health at risk,” the lawyers write.

Finally, the motion reiterates what the lawyers argued at the last bond hearing: any decision to keep Glossip in jail must be based in part on some kind of evidence that he is guilty of the crime for which he stands accused. But the state has yet to present anything new. Coyle’s order was “directly at odds” with the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning his conviction, which rendered Sneed’s testimony unreliable, the lawyers write. “Because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossip’s guilt of capital murder, the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s credibility was necessarily determinative here,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority. “Besides Sneed, no other witness and no physical evidence established that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese’s murder.”

This ruling should have been the final nail in the coffin of the state’s case, Glossip’s attorneys argue. But as long as the state of Oklahoma insists on pressing forward using the same evidence as before, the lawyers will seek to put Sneed on the stand. The court “must hold an evidentiary hearing to independently assess Mr. Sneed’s willingness to stand by his testimony and his credibility,” they argue in the new bond motion.

The Oklahoma attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment. With the state’s response to Glossip’s bond motion due in mid-January, there is reason to expect that prosecutors will argue against allowing Sneed on the stand. The state’s star witness has never been able to keep his story straight – and he has tried multiple times to recant his testimony against Glossip. Nearly 30 years after he murdered Van Treese, Sneed may be the one who unravels Oklahoma’s case once and for all.

The post It’s 2026. Why Is Richard Glossip Still in Jail? appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16556

The Trump administration is planning a massive propaganda campaign aimed at recruiting thousands of new federal immigration enforcement officers to carry out its mass deportation agenda.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that it had obtained internal documents revealing that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to spend $100 million over the next year on what the agency describes as a "wartime recruitment" drive.

The propaganda blitz will be targeted at highly specific demographics, including "people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear," according to the Post.

The ICE drive would also use an ad-targeting technique called "geofencing" to send recruitment ads to users' phone browsers if they are in the vicinity of certain locations, such as military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses, and gun shows.

The ads being designed for the recruitment drive will be based around current appeals that depict joining ICE as part of a "sacred duty" to "defend the homeland" from "foreign invaders," the Post reported.

This rhetoric is similar to the language used in a recent ICE job post flagged by University of Wisconsin–Madison sociologist Jess Calarco. The listing asked prospective recruits if they are “ready to defend the homeland” by joining “an elite team dedicated to... securing our nation’s safety.”

Calarco noted that the job post "reads like a video game ad," which she said "is almost certainly by design."

Sarah Saldaña, a director of ICE under the Obama administration, told the Post that it is worrying to see the Trump administration casting such a wide net for people who lack any experience in law enforcement and who may be eager for what the Post described as "all-out combat."

The recruitment blitz comes amid new indications that the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign is falling far short of its goals.

The New Republic's Greg Sargent on Wednesday wrote that immigration arrests this year have fallen far short of the goal of 3,000 people per day set by top Trump aide Stephen Miller, and it seems highly unlikely that Miller will realize his dream of deporting 1 million people per year.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, told Sargent that "it's clear that they have not achieved the shock-and-awe campaign of mass deportations that they wanted, and they are still running into quite a lot of obstacles."

Reichlin-Melnick also predicted that "there will still be millions of people here who are undocumented" after Trump leaves office in 2028, as the administration "will not be able to deport even the majority of undocumented immigrants in four years."

The Trump administration earlier in the year announced plans to entice new ICE recruits by offering them $50,000 sign-up bonuses and assistance with repaying student loans in a bid to double the agency's head count.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16182

Grassroots organizations around the United States, with little to no support from local authorities, have spent much of the past year defending themselves against President Donald Trump’s deployments of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the National Guard. While community defense efforts in large urban metropolises such as Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and Portland have attracted the most media coverage, anti-ICE activity is also thriving in Republican-controlled states like Texas and North Carolina.

Many grassroots groups in conservative-leaning states are documenting their own work on Instagram, using social media accounts as hubs to update local communities on ICE activity, recruit volunteers, and announce trainings. They may face a more challenging terrain than those organizing in Democratic-controlled states, given the active collaboration of law enforcement agencies with ICE.

While red state anti-ICE organizing may be less likely to feature whistles, bullhorns, and other confrontational tactics seen in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, common themes are emerging, consistent with organizing in liberal cities. The anti-ICE playbook in red states involves creating a hotline for residents to report ICE activity, “Know Your Rights” sessions that give people legal advice on what information they should withhold when confronted by ICE, and ICE-watch trainings for observers documenting arrests. Many groups are also ensuring that the families of those arrested and detained have legal and financial support.

Source

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/15824

A pro-police group is reportedly planning to ask the Department of Justice to investigate an elected prosecutor over allegations that he’s been lenient toward undocumented immigrants.

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit best known for backing police facing legal consequences for their actions, plans to ask the federal government to use a provision previously used to probe police violations of civil rights to investigate the office of Fairfax County, Virginia, Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano over his handling of cases involving undocumented immigrants, Fox News reported.

“This kind of legal warfare erodes trust in our justice system.”

The Trump administration recently put Descano in the spotlight when it attacked his office over claims that he dropped charges against a 23-year-old undocumented immigrant who was accused of killing a man the next day. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has also blamed former President Joe Biden’s administration for dismissing the man’s immigration proceedings and labeling him as “a non-enforcement priority.”

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund is invoking the same provision of federal law that the Biden administration previously used to investigate police in Louisville, Kentucky, after they killed Breonna Taylor in 2020. The law calls for policing to abide by the Constitution and establishes procedures for when police display a “pattern or practice of conduct” that violates civil rights.

Now, the pro-police group wants to argue that prosecutors like Descano are discriminating against the public by favoring undocumented immigrants in prosecutorial decisions. The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund is effectively arguing that a pattern of leniency toward immigrants by Descano constitutes discrimination against American citizens.

“The MO of MAGA groups like LELDF is to partner with the Trump Administration to weaponize the justice system and go after people they don’t like — in this case, reform prosecutors they disagree with philosophically,” said Michael Collins, an independent consultant who works on prosecutorial reform.

“Laws designed to protect people’s rights and curb official misconduct shouldn’t be repurposed to target officials over policy differences or prosecutorial discretion,” Collins said. “This kind of legal warfare erodes trust in our justice system and undermines the very protections these laws were meant to uphold.”

Neither Descano nor the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund immediately responded to a request for comment.

[

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Oakland Homicides Dropped 30 Percent. The County Still Recalled Its Prosecutor.](https://theintercept.com/2024/11/22/pamela-price-recall-criminal-justice-reform/)

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund has made attacking elected prosecutors a cornerstone of its work in recent years. This year, the group released a report focusing on the Wren Collective, an organization that works with progressive prosecutors around the country, and claimed that left-wing donors like George Soros are controlling the group and corrupting the criminal justice system.

In Virginia, the group has been trying to remove Descano and another elected prosecutor in Arlington County, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, since shortly after they first won office, though so far the police group has gotten little traction.

Descano has faced two efforts to launch recall elections against him, both organized by groups headed by Sean Kennedy, who directs policy for the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund and leads another group, Virginians for Safe Communities, which tried to launch a recall against Descano in 2021.

The LELDF spends about three-quarters of its program service budget on public and media relations, according to its most recent tax filing. About a quarter of its program service expenses goes toward legal defense for cops.

Republicans have also made Descano a target. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has repeatedly attacked Descano’s office for turning the county “into a safe haven for criminals and a nightmare for law-abiding families” and his handling of cases involving transgender defendants.

The post Cop Group Alleges “Discrimination” by Prosecutor for Being Too Nice to Immigrants appeared first on The Intercept.

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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/15601

Aurora, CO – On the morning of December 22, Jeanette Vizguerra, an immigrant rights activist detained by ICE in March of this year, was released on bond from the GEO ICE detention facility in Aurora.

In the evening of December 21, the American Friends Service Committee announced that Vizguerra had finally won release with a $5000 bond after a nine-month detention.

Vizguerra was abducted by ICE from her workplace on March 17 without warning. Throughout her imprisonment at the GEO detention facility, she faced constant threats of deportation without a valid order.

Vizguerra, known as a local community organizer, but also recognized nationally for her work as an advocate for immigrant rights and sanctuary, was notably named one of Time magazine's “100 Most Influential People” in 2017. She is a staple at protests and local events.

In the past nine months, the communities of Denver and Aurora organized weekly vigils every Monday evening outside the GEO facility. At least a dozen protests were organized in both cities against the detention of Vizguerra and other community members, at which several of her family members spoke. Organizations like Aurora Unidos CSO, Shoes Off Collective, American Friends Service Committee, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, and the ACLU consistently supported and gave updates on Vizguerra’s legal struggle and the horrid conditions inside the Aurora GEO detention facility.

In the afternoon after Vizguerra’s release, community members and organizations gathered outside the Alfred A. Arraj Courthouse in Denver to celebrate the victory.

#AuroraCO #CO #ImmigrantRights #ICE #AuroraUnidosCSO #COIRC #Featured

From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/15577

Eight months after the acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement saidd at a border security conference that the Trump administration aims to carry out its mass deportation operation with the same efficiency as Amazon's package deliveries, a draft document from ICE officials on Wednesday provided never-before-seen details of how the agency plans to do that using massive warehouses repurposed to hold tens of thousands of people.

The Washington Post reported on a draft solicitation document, a version of which ICE plans to send to private detention companies this week.

The proposal calls for contractors to help renovate industrial warehouses across the country, setting each up to hold up to 10,000 people detained by immigration agents at a time—albeit in facilities that will likely have poor ventilation, climate control, plumbing, and sanitation systems.

Warehouses, said physician and journalist Dr. Carolyn Barber, "are built for boxes, not humans."

🧊 WAREHOUSING HUMANS 😲ICE plans to herd their captives "into one of seven large-scale warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people each, where they would be staged for deportation." www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

[image or embed]
— JJ in DC (@jjindc.bsky.social) December 24, 2025 at 7:43 AM

ICE aims to modify the warehouses and create separate housing units with showers and bathrooms, dining areas, medical units, recreation areas, and law libraries, according to the document.

The agency's new facilities will “maximize efficiency, minimize costs, shorten processing times, limit lengths of stay, accelerate the removal process, and promote the safety, dignity, and respect for all in ICE custody," the solicitation said.

But considering acting ICE Director Todd Lyons' comment last April that the administration should treat deportations "like a business... Like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings," rights advocates said the plan to house people in massive storage facilities was "beyond dehumanizing."

"It is as if they don't see immigrants as people but just things to be warehoused like Amazon packages," said Philip Mai, co-director at the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.

ICE and other federal agencies have been transporting detainees around the country this year to whichever detention facilities have space, but under the new plan, seven large warehouses in Louisiana, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri would be used as deportation "staging" facilities for 5,000-10,000 people each.

Sixteen smaller warehouses would each hold up to 1,500 people, allowing the government to detain 80,000 people in immigration facilities at a time—up from about 68,000 who were in detention in early December.

ICE data shows that about 48% of the people currently being detained have no criminal convictions or current charges, the Post reported.

Jonathan Cohn, political director for the advocacy group Progressive Mass, suggested that ICE's claims that it will build facilities that prioritize detainees' "dignity" ring hollow, considering the plan's details.

"They want to build a network of concentration camps," he said simply.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/15470

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already hired 10 contractors to carry out its immigrant bounty hunting program, according to records reviewed by The Intercept. The firms included companies that had previous deals with spy agencies and the military, private investigators that boast of their physical surveillance skills, and a private prison giant.

In November, ICE launched a process to get private sector “skip tracing” services, where corporate investigators use digital snooping tools and on-the-ground surveillance to track immigrants in exchange for monetary bonuses. ICE procurement records indicate the agency will be targeting as many as 1.5 million immigrants in the U.S.

[

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Lawmaker Challenges ICE Plan to Hire Bounty Hunters](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/10/ice-bounty-hunters-immigrants/)

Taken together, records show the 10 companies have been made over $1 million to date — and stand to make over $1 billion by the contract’s end in 2027. Some of the companies’ roles in the bounty hunting program have been previously reported, including by The Intercept, but others — such as Bluehawk, EnProVera, and Gravitas — are being revealed here for the first time. (None of the 10 companies commented for this story.)

The bonanza for federal contractors comes as the Trump administration’s focus on deportations has led to a massive increase in ICE’s budget. The companies range from those with extensive experience doing intelligence work to those with more mundane government contracting experience, like finding janitors for federal agencies.

Among the companies poised to cash in on the bounty hunting program, the largest potential haul — over $365 million — could go to Capgemini Government Solutions, a McLean, Virginia-based federal consultancy that has a long track record working for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, including providing intelligence services for ICE.

Florida-based Bluehawk LLC stands to reap the second largest payout from bounty hunting, at over $200 million. Bluehawk is a longtime contractor for the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community, providing intelligence collection and analysis, as well as counterintelligence services.

In September, Bluehawk announced it was beginning counterintelligence work for the Department of Homeland Security. Like some of the other contractors tapped by ICE, the company is focusing on immigration after honing its capabilities doing war on terror-era military and intelligence operations. The company’s advisers include former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Ronald Burgess and Dell Dailey, a retired Army lieutenant general who ran U.S. Joint Special Operations Command following the September 11 attacks.

Government Support Services helps staff roles for janitors, groundskeepers, and security guards at government agencies.

Government Support Services, a contractor that helps staff roles for janitors, groundskeepers, and security guards at agencies across the federal government, could make upward of $55 million on the bounty hunting program.

EnProVera, another company signed up for a contract on the bounty hunting program, also boasts a broad range of federal contracts. The company advertises a variety of intelligence-gathering and investigative services on its website, promoting its work with Customs and Border Protection.

EnProVera CEO Larry Grant’s past work experience includes “conducting clandestine overseas operations, authoring a highly classified study of a foreign nation’s technical capabilities,” and “architecting intelligence systems support to combat operations,” according to his biography page.

EnProVera could make nearly $3 million by the contract’s end.

Constellation Inc., which has previously landed administrative contracts across the Department of Homeland Security, is looking at a potential $58 million payday from bounty hunting.

SOS International, or SOSi, another experienced military contractor, landed a bounty hunting contract around when the program was revealed in November. SOSI’s skip-tracing work for the program, which was first reported by The Lever, could earn the firm up to $123 million. The company is a longtime military contractor whose past work spans operating a major military base in Iraq to operating overseas propaganda campaigns. SOSi’s website notes the company uses large language models in its government work.

Other firms have more traditional private investigative backgrounds.

Gravitas Investigations, which could make over $32 million through the bounty hunting contract, says it offers “comprehensive surveillance operations.” The company touts its skill at locating anyone using a combination of digital sleuthing and real-world tracking.

[

Related

Deportation, Inc.](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/19/deportation-abrego-garcia-ice-immigration/)

“We go where your Subject goes,” its website says. “We follow on foot, in a vehicle, onto public property, and anywhere legal. Our surveillance operatives covertly document your Subject’s activities with a handheld, high-definition camcorders, and covert cameras.”

Gravitas says it makes extensive use of social media and other online data to pinpoint individuals on its customers’ behalf.

The company Fraud Inc. “strives to validate our clients’ suspicions,” according to its website, using a variety of public and private databases, social media digging, and video surveillance. “We also can obtain legally high-altitude video,” it boasts.

Among the more novel firms on the bounty hunting contract is AI Solutions 87, whose role was recently reported by 404 Media. The company is providing “AI agents” to ICE that it says can autonomously track “people of interest and map out their family and other associates more quickly.”

Perhaps the most provocative bounty hunting firm is BI Incorporated, an immigrant-tracking subsidiary of GEO Group, the for-profit prison giant whose fortunes have rapidly climbed following Trump’s reelection and the funding boom for deportation operations. With lucrative contracts for both hunting and imprisoning immigrants — its bounty hunting work could net $121 million by 2027 — GEO Group now stands to generate revenue through multiple stages of the administration’s ongoing deportation campaign.

The post 10 Companies Have Already Made $1 Million as ICE Bounty Hunters. We Found Them. appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/14862

In late September, Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) stopped Jose Bonilla Lopez, a gardener who lived in the city’s northwest. According to a police report, it was a case of mistaken identity. Instead of releasing him, they turned him over to masked federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, who seized him as neighbors chanted for his freedom.

Source

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

The details in the indictment are disturbing. On a night in July 2024, the two officers, Justin McMillan and Justin Colon, both with just a few months on the job, and working out of the 115th Precinct on Northern Boulevard, allegedly turned off their body-worn cameras and stole a key from a purported sex worker to an 89th Street apartment where they suspected sex work was taking place.

In a statement after McMillan and Colon were arrested, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, "Let me be perfectly clear: Any officer who violates their oath will be investigated, exposed, and held fully accountable. That standard will never change."

But the case against McMillan and Colon won't be going any further.

ah the cops excellence

Seems this guy really wanted to "change things from the inside" and resigned when he got disillusioned.

He outlines this in an email to the uploaded at 38:29, apparently made a policy for his department that they can't post "thin blue line" crap on social media and i can only imagine how butthurt the officers got about it. Even in the video he was like "brotherhood? Miss me with that crap pls".

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/13961

New Orleans, LA – On Saturday, December 12, a crowd of 100 people took to the streets of downtown New Orleans to protest the ongoing “Catahoula Crunch” ICE and Border Patrol operation in Louisiana. The action was part of a regular Saturday protest schedule by the No Troops coalition, an ad-hoc group of about a dozen organizations united against Trump’s federal takeover.

Operation Catahoula Crunch, also known as Operation Swamp Sweep, has been ongoing since December 1, sending in 250 federal agents who are working side by side with local law enforcement agencies with a goal of 5000 arrests.

The protest began with a rally at Jackson Square, featuring speakers from community organizations including Students for a Democratic Society, the Jace Lee Scott Foundation, and the New Orleans Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NOAARPR).

Rosalina Framboise, a student at Loyola, spoke about the power of being in the streets alongside other fighters to push back against the racist agendas of Trump and Governor Landry. “That feeling of powerlessness is nothing when we are in support of, and in community with, each other.” Framboise quoted the Black Panther Huey P. Newton saying, “We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible!”

The protesters then took to the streets for a march to the Hale Boggs Federal Building where they heard more speeches about fighting back against Trump’s attacks.

“What did the Border Patrol do for New Orleans after Katrina? Nothing! What did our immigrant siblings do for New Orleans after Katrina? Everything! They rebuilt and continue to maintain our city!” said Vonne Crandell, a member of NOAARPR.

“When we see these kids chasing ICE SUV’s out of their neighborhoods, it reminds me of the Palestinian youth throwing stones at Israeli tanks. Our resistance is righteous. Trump may have the agencies and institutions, but the numbers are on our side. We have the streets, we have the people power!” said Toni Mar of the FRSO.

Throughout the route down Decatur and Chartres Streets, New Orleans service industry workers came out of restaurants and coffee shops to video with their phones and clap in support. Tourists cheered as long lunch lines spilled into the street.

At the conclusion of the protest, Mar called on people to attend an upcoming panel on the fight against deportations being held on December 20, at 5 p.m. at the New Orleans Healing Center Room 258. Organizers also directed attendees to travel and support a secondary protest happening in Kenner, a site of direct ICE attacks with a large Latino immigrant community.

#NewOrleansLA #LA #ImmigrantRights #NOAARPR

From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/13395

As a "chilling" report in the New York Times revealed that the Transportation Security Administration is providing the names of all airline passengers to immigration officials, President Donald Trump's administration on Friday also openly continued its war on immigrants by announcing an end to allowing relatives of citizens or lawful permanent residents to enter the United States while awaiting green cards.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that it is terminating all categorical family reunification parole programs for immigrants from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, and "returning parole to a case-by-case basis." An official notice has been prepared for publication in the Federal Register on Monday, and the policy is set to take effect on January 14.

Responding in a statement late Friday, Anwen Hughes, senior director of legal strategy for the refugee programs at Human Rights First, said that "this outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."

"Yet again, this administration is taking extraordinary measures to delegalize as many people as possible, even when they have done everything the US government has asked of them," she continued. "The government did this in March when they announced their intent to take away lawful status from hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole beneficiaries; they are doing it now with more than 10,000 people who came lawfully to reunite with their families; they are taking their attacks on birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court; and they are escalating their threats to delegalize untold numbers of others without notice."

"This outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."

Lawyers behind a class action lawsuit against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other key administration leaders over the March policy—Svitlana Doe v. Noem—plan to also challenge the new move.

"Those who entered under the family reunification program should contact their immigration attorney immediately to better understand their options, as those options may change on December 15," warned Esther Sung, legal director at Justice Action Center, which represented plaintiffs in the earlier case.

"The legal team in Svitlana Doe v. Noem will also alert the court as soon as possible to ensure that our clients and class members are not unlawfully harmed by this move," Sung said. "Today's news is devastating for families across the country, but we will continue to fight alongside all immigrants and their families who are unjustly targeted by this callous administration."

Ending family reunification parole won't make us safer, it will only tear families apart. Our immigration policies should be fair and humane. This is just cruel.www.uscis.gov/newsroom/ale...

[image or embed]
— Rep. Linda Sánchez (@replindasanchez.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 2:36 PM

Meanwhile, as the Times reported Friday, in March, TSA began sending the names of all air travelers to another DHS agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which "can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people."

"It's unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration," the newspaper detailed. "But documents obtained by the New York Times show that it led to the arrest of Any Lucía López Belloza, the college student picked up at Boston Logan Airport on November 20 and deported to Honduras two days later. A former ICE official said 75% of instances in that official's region where names were flagged by the program yielded arrests."

In López Belloza's case, she tried to board her plane, but her ticket didn't work. The 19-year-old—who said she didn't know about a previous deportation order—was sent to customer service, where she was met by agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), another DHS agency playing a key role in Trump's sweeping and violent crackdown on immigrants.

Like the new attack on family reunification, the Times reporting sparked a wave of condemnation. David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said on social media, "Make sure people you know who need this information have this information."

Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, declared that "the Trump administration wants to make flying unsafe: unsafe because of surveillance, unsafe because of understaffed air traffic controllers, and unsafe because of gutted consumer protections."

Eva Galperin, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's director of cybersecurity, pointed to the constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, saying, "I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like the Fourth Amendment has something to say about this."

Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation EffortThe Transportation Security Administration is providing passenger lists to ICE to identify and detain travelers subject to deportation orders.www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u... obvi lawlessly…Prosecute all of them…

[image or embed]
— Sarah Szalavitz💡 (@dearsarah.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 4:14 PM

Amid protests over Trump's broader deportation push and the president's plunging approval rating on immigration, unnamed DHS sources confirmed Friday that CBP teams "under Commander Gregory Bovino will change tactics," according to NewsNation. "Instead of sweeping raids like those that have taken place at locations including Home Depot, agents will now be narrowing their focus to specific targets, such as illegal immigrants convicted of heinous crimes."

NewNation's reporting came just days after DHS published a database on ICE arrestees that led Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, to conclude that the department "is implicitly admitting that less than 5% of the people it arrests are people they believe are 'the worst of the worst.'"

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/13162

“Male detainee needs to go out due to head trauma,” an employee at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention center in Georgia tells a 911 operator.

The operator tells the employee at Stewart Detention Center that there are no ambulances available.

“It’s already out — on the last patient y’all called us with,” the operator says.

“Is there any way you can get one from another county?” the caller asks.

“I can try,” the operator says. “I can’t make any promises, but I can try.”

Listen to the 911 call

The call was one of dozens from the ICE detention facility seeking help with medical emergencies during the first 10 months of the second Trump administration, a sustained period of high call volume from the jail not seen since 2018.

Emergency calls were made to 911 at least 15 times a month from Stewart Detention Center for six months in a row as of November 1.

Like the call concerning a detainee’s head trauma from April 1, emergency dispatch records show that the ambulance service in Stewart County, Georgia, where the detention center is located, has had to seek help outside the county more than any time in at least five years — including three instances in November alone.

The burden on rural Stewart County’s health care system is “unsustainable,” said Dr. Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who researches health care in immigration detention.

“People are going to die if they don’t get medical care,” said Zeidan. “All it takes is one person who needs a life-saving intervention and doesn’t have access to it.”

“People are going to die if they don’t get medical care.”

This continuous barrage of calls for help with acute medical needs reflects increased detainee populations without changes to medical staffing and capacities, experts told The Intercept. Shifting detainee populations, they said, may also be exacerbating the situation: Older immigrants and those with disabilities or severe health issues used to be more frequently let out on bond as their cases were resolved, but ICE’s mass deportation push has led to an increase in their detention.

With the number of people in immigration detention ballooning nationwide, health care behind bars has become an issue in local and state politics. In Washington state, for instance, legislators passed a law last year giving state-level authorities more oversight of detention facilities. A recent court ruling granted state health department officials access to a privately operated ICE detention center to do health inspections. (A spokesperson from Georgia’s health department did not answer questions about the high volume and types of calls at Stewart.)

911 calls from Stewart included several for “head trauma,” such as one case where an inmate was “beating his head against the wall” and another following a fight.

Impacts of the situation are hard to measure in the absence of comprehensive, detailed data, but they extend both to Stewart’s detainee population — which has increased from about 1,500 to about 1,900 during the Trump administration — and to the surrounding, rural county. (ICE did not respond to a request for comment.)

The data on 911 calls represent what Dr. Marc Stern, a consultant on health care for the incarcerated, called “a red flag.”

Illness and Injuries

Data obtained by The Intercept through open records requests shows that the top four reasons for 911 calls since the onset of the second Trump administration have been chest pains and seizures, with the same number of calls, followed by stomach pains and head injuries.

Neither written call records nor recordings of the calls themselves offer much insight into the causes of injuries. One cause of head traumas, though, could be fights between detainees, said Amilcar Valencia, the executive director of El Refugio, a Georgia-based organization that works with people held at Stewart and their families and loved ones.

“It’s not a secret that Stewart detention center is overcrowded,” he said. “This creates tension.”

Issues such as access to phones for calls to attorneys or loved ones can lead to fights, he said.

Another issue may be self-harm, suggested testimony from Rodney Scott, a Liberian-born Georgia resident of four decades who has been detained in Stewart since January. One day in September, Scott, who is a double amputee and suffers high blood pressure and other health issues, said he saw a fellow detainee climb about 20 stairs across a hall from him and jump over a railing, landing several stories below.

“He hit his head,” Scott said. “It was shocking to see someone risk his life like that.”

He doesn’t know what happened to the man.

On another day, about a month earlier, Scott saw a man try to kill himself with razors.

“He went in, cut himself with blades, after breakfast,” Scott said. “There was a pool of blood,” he said. “It looked like a murder scene.”

In addition to interpersonal tensions, large numbers of detainees in crowded conditions can strain a facility’s medical capacities.

“People are becoming sicker than what the system can handle.”

“There’s a mismatch between the number of people and health workers,” said Joseph Nwadiuko, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who researches the immigration detention system. “People are becoming sicker than what the system can handle. The complexity of patients is above and beyond what Stewart is prepared for.”

CoreCivic, the company that operates Stewart, is currently advertising to hire a psychiatrist, a dental assistant, and two licensed practical nurses at the detention center. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)

“A Lack of Accountability”

The situation at hand also potentially impacts the residents of Stewart County, a sprawling tract of about 450 square miles in southwest Georgia. About 28 percent of the county’s nearly 5,000 residents, two-thirds of whom are Black, live below the poverty line.

The county has two ambulances, and there are no hospitals. The nearest facilities equipped to handle calls coming from the ICE detention center are in neighboring counties about 45 minutes to the east or nearly an hour north. County Manager Mac Moye, though, was nonplussed when presented with the data on the sustained high volume of 911 calls from the detention center.

“We are in a very rural, poor county, with very low population density,” he said. “We’ve always had slow responses compared to, let’s say, Columbus” — the city of 200,000 nearly 45 miles north where one of the nearest hospitals is located.

“We run two ambulances; most surrounding counties have one,” he continued. “We have more money, because of Stewart” — the detention center.

The ICE facility paid nearly $600,000 in fees in fiscal year 2022, the latest year for which data is available, or about 13 percent of the county’s general fund of $4.4 million.

Moye, who worked at the detention center before taking his current job, also called into question whether 911 calls were always made for legitimate reasons. The county manager did not comment on whether his own constituents are increasingly more at risk in situations like the one on April 1, when no ambulance was available to answer a call from the detention center.

“It’s still faster than if we had one ambulance,” he said. “We wish we would never have to call another county, and deal with every call on our own.”

As for the conditions facing detainees, particularly given the types of emergencies the detention center calls 911 about, Moye said, “It’s difficult to comment on what’s happening over there, because we don’t have any control over it.”

That points to a larger problem reflected in the increased calls.

“Obviously, a prison is a prison — it’s blind to the rest of the world,” said Nwadiuko, the Penn professor. “There’s a moral hazard for conditions that don’t occur elsewhere, a lack of accountability.”

[

Read Our Complete Coverage

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

“Do No Harm”?

“Seizures, chest pains — are they preventable? Why is it happening?” said Stern, the doctor who consults on carceral health care, commenting on the high volume and types of calls. “Could mean that access or the quality of care is poor. It’s a red flag if the number is high or increasing, and it indicates that investigation is required.”

In September, Democratic Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons expressing concern over the 14 deaths in ICE custody this year, including Jesus Molina-Veya, whose June 7 death at Stewart has been reported as a suicide.

The letter sought answers to a series of detailed questions by October 31 about the care Stewart and other ICE detention centers are providing to detainees. Warnock and Ossoff’s offices said they have not received a reply. Ossoff also released an investigation in October called “Medical Neglect and Denial of Adequate Food or Water in U.S. Immigration Detention” that included information gathered at Stewart.

Zeidan, the Emory professor, noted that there’s little information about what happens to ICE detainees once they reach a hospital.

“What happens after detainees are admitted?” Zeidan said. “Are they discharged? Are they getting comprehensive, follow-up care?”

Nwadiuko echoed the concern.

“Are doctors and hospitals using good judgment regarding when going back to a detention facility doesn’t mean ‘a safe discharge’?” he said. “We have an oath: ‘Do no harm.’ That may conflict with an institution’s desire to minimize a detainee’s time outside the gates of the detention center.”

The post ICE Prison’s 911 Calls Overwhelm a Rural Georgia Emergency System appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/13280

Content warning: intimate partner abuse, police violence

A new federal lawsuit details a years’ long pattern in which leaders in the Chicago Police Department ignored complaints that an officer had “repeatedly physically, mentally, and sexually abused” a fellow detective.

Attorneys for the victim, identified only as Jane Doe for her safety, allege Chicago police detective Marco Torres viciously abused her and threatened her life. They also claim high-ranking officials, including then-chief of the Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA) Yolanda Talley, not only failed to protect Doe, but also retaliated against her for reporting the abuse. Police Superintendent Larry Snelling and Chief of Detectives Antoinette Ursitti are also named defendants.

According to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Thursday, Torres relentlessly tried to find Doe’s new home address despite an order of protection against him.

In one text exchange with a fellow officer submitted as evidence, he allegedly writes from a burner phone that he needs her address because he has a “guy from gangs” who “can get rid of her” for “a grand:”

Screengrab of a text message allegedly from Marco Torres to another CPD officer. Source: Court filing

The complaint also states that CPD officials were aware of the text message, which the recipient sent to investigators at BIA, but they never warned Doe of the threat or launched an investigation.

Attorneys say the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) also failed to properly investigate the incidents of abuse—and their client received “what amounted to a form letter” from Deputy Corporation Counsel of the Employment Litigation Division for the City’s Department of Law when they tried to escalate their complaints.

Just last month, attorneys say, Doe also found a GPS tracking device on her car which she believes Torres used to stalk her.

Torres is currently under court mandated electronic monitoring after he was convicted of assault in December 2024 over his previous threats to kill Doe.

As a result of that conviction, he was placed in court supervision, ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor for one year, and Doe was granted a one year order of protection. The GPS monitor provides real-time alerts to survivors of domestic violence when their abuser is detected within a set proximity.

Around Thanksgiving, just days before Torres’ court mandated electronic monitoring was set to expire, Doe received numerous alerts while driving on the expressway. Concerned about how Torres could know where she was, she had her vehicle inspected and found a tracking device behind the wheel well.

The lawsuit expands upon allegations originally detailed in a whistleblower complaint filed by the same Jane Doe in the Cook County Circuit Court in 2023, and follows an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) determination that there was “reasonable cause” that the department discriminated and retaliated against Doe based on gender.

“The City chose to put her life in danger”

Chicago police detective Marco Torres, March 14 2024.

The complaint describes a pattern of ambivalence, retaliation, and misogyny within the City and police department’s leadership.

Doe formally reported Torres’ abuse to BIA in November 2022. After sitting for an “hours-long” interview with BIA and members of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, providing documentation, witness information, and describing specific evidence on Torres’ phone, the officials “refused” to investigate further, closing the case in December 2022. Doe was then reassigned to another unit.

Allegedly, Torres warned Doe that if she reported him, he was involved in another “sexual relationship” with a BIA officer who “would lie for him and who could get Doe fired.”  He also detailed how he planned to kill her with her own gun to make it look like a suicide, and repeatedly threatened to kill himself as well. One of those threats, included in the filing, was sent from his Chicago Police Department email address:

Screenshot of an email from Marco Torres. Source: Court filing

In February 2023, concerned about Doe’s safety, her attorneys say they sent additional details and documentation about Torres’ alleged abuse to the Chief of Constitutional Policing and Reform, Angel Novalez. They received no response.

Doe’s attorneys tried Talley again in March 2023, asking her to re-open the closed BIA investigation. After no response, they emailed her again, asking her to confirm receipt and to confirm that she would re-open the investigation.

According to the complaint, Talley responded with one word: “Received.” The investigation was not re-opened.

At least two other CPD officers reportedly submitted written reports about Torres, one of which described violence and stalking against a different female officer years earlier. During this time, again, Talley allegedly did not investigate or recommend any disciplinary action against Torres.

While CPD was ignoring the problem, attorneys say, Torres continued to harass and stalk his fellow detective. After filing an EEOC complaint in April 2023, and subsequently filing “more than a dozen” police reports about Torres’ actions, Doe petitioned the courts for a civil Order of Protection in September 2023, which was granted.

At that time, CPD stripped Torres of his police powers—not over alleged abuse or criminal conduct, but because he was prohibited by Illinois law from possessing a firearm due to the Order of Protection against him. Torres took a leave of absence, but otherwise faced no discipline.

Doe alleges that after reporting multiple violations of the Order of Protection to CPD, they still took no action to investigate or discipline Torres. The first breakthrough finally came after two events: Doe’s attorneys requested that personnel from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office participate in any subsequent interviews with BIA, and after that, Torres showed up at Doe’s workplace at 1:00 a.m., at the end of her shift, which another detective reported to BIA.

An Assistant State’s Attorney began investigating the case. They interviewed a witness who had personally witnessed Torres’ physical abuse and death threats in September 2022. Finally, in March 2024, Torres was arrested and charged with assault and domestic battery. At that time, he was also ordered to wear an electronic monitor.

According to the complaint, however, the electronic monitoring did not dissuade Torres from continuing to terrorize his victim. As Cook County Sheriff’s deputies were at Torres’ home fitting him with his new ankle monitor, Torres “repeatedly and aggressively” asked deputies to tell him Doe’s home address, referring to Doe as a “bitch.”

Sheriff’s deputies found his behavior so concerning they notified their supervisor, who then contacted Doe to warn her. She filed a police report about the incident.

On May 20, 2024, less than two months later, Torres allegedly texted a fellow officer from a burner phone asking for Doe’s address, saying he needed it for his gang contact to “get rid of her” for “a grand.” The recipient provided BIA with a copy of the text and warned Doe that Torres had made a threat, but did not send her the text. Despite attorneys’ repeated requests for a copy of the text to assess the threat, CPD ignored their requests, never investigated, and never notified Doe of the direct threat against her life.

“When the City became aware of the text message seeking Doe’s address for the purpose of having her killed, it did nothing—not one thing—to alert her to this grave threat,” attorneys write in the filing. “By choosing not to inform Doe that a hit man may have been hired to kill her, the City made a deliberate choice to intentionally place Doe in harm’s way.”

Only after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office investigated Torres’ earlier harassing text messages and calls to potential witnesses were they able to correlate cell tower pings for Torres’ burner phone with the same location as Torres’ ankle monitor.

In March 2025, Torres was arrested and indicted on yet another charge:  felony harassment of a witness.

In that case, prosecutors allege Torres told a witness to his abusive behavior that he could get his commander, Arleseuia Watson, to fire her if he wanted. Watson was a Lieutenant in the Confidential Section of BIA in November 2022.

She previously worked with both Torres and Doe before she joined BIA, and failed to recuse herself from the Torres investigation, Doe’s attorneys say was involved in summarily shutting down the initial investigation into Torres and not long after, was promoted to Commander of Area 1 Detective Division, where Torres was assigned.

Torres’ electronic monitoring has been extended until a February 2, 2026 hearing to determine whether violated the terms of his probation.

A pattern of inaction and retaliation

Chicago police officer Krystal Rivera was shot and killed by her partner Carlos Baker in June 2025. Source: Chicago Police Department

The pattern of protecting officers—in particular, male officers—is so common, it has a name: The Code of Silence. Doe’s complaint cites several similar cases where CPD failed to take action against domestic abusers on the force and others where police brass retaliated against whistleblowers.

One of the most recent examples of the department’s alleged failure to act swiftly against an officer with a history of excessive force and domestic violence is not cited in the complaint—because the allegations were just made public the same day Doe’s federal lawsuit was filed.

The family of Krystal Rivera, who was fatally shot by her partner, Carlos Baker, filed a lawsuit this week alleging Rivera had recently broken off a romantic relationship with Baker and that she believed he posed a threat to her. Attorneys point to Baker’s previous history of misconduct and domestic violence allegations, which the department failed to address even when he was a probationary officer and could have been summarily dismissed.

Another relatively recent case includes a domestic violence investigation where the Office of the Inspector General recommended the police department fire Officer Tri Tran. Investigators concluded there was ample evidence he threatened to kill his girlfriend and her entire family.

Instead, police brass chose to give Tran a two-month suspension.

Tran has since served his suspension, and he is now working as a Community Policing Officer in the 1st District.

Since 2018, the department has moved to terminate only nine officers with sustained domestic violence allegations, according to public records. In total, 66 officers had domestic violence allegations sustained in the same time period.

Of seven other officers COPA has recommended for termination, four resigned before the department took action, and three are still awaiting action from the Superintendent.

Often, these investigations take years to complete.

In another instance, COPA recommended a six-to-twelve month suspension for Enrique Delgado Fernandez, an officer with an extensive history of violence. The agency’s investigation into an incident where he forced an ex-partner into his squad car and held her captive for hours while driving on the highway took nearly five years to complete. In the end, Superintendent Snelling issued Fernandez a suspension of six months, which he then appealed via arbitration. Fernandez is currently assigned to the 7th District in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood.

The president of the Chicago police union FOP Lodge 7, John Catanzara, received only a 30-day suspension after stalking a woman, breaking into her home, and violating an order of protection.

In another case, officer Laura Kubiak was working in CPD’s Office of News Affairs in 2012 when she was assaulted and threatened by fellow officer Veejay Zala. One officer who witnessed the incident later said they thought Zala was going to pull his gun and shoot Kubiak.

During the altercation, Zala shouted, “You are nothing, you are a stupid bitch, you don’t know how to be the police, I am the police, I am the real police.”

Their boss would prove Zala right by later reassigning Kubiak to work the midnight shift in the South Chicago district. A jury awarded Kubiak nearly $2 million in 2019. The case eventually cost taxpayers over $5 million in legal fees and interest.

Doe’s lawsuit is seeking compensation for lost wages and benefits, compensatory damages for emotional distress, punitive damages, and an injunction to prevent discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against women and against whistleblowers.

Upon learning of the suit filed Thursday, attorney Michael Leonard, who is currently representing Torres, told Unraveled: “in my opinion, it appears to be a meritless case.”

A Chicago Police Department spokesperson confirmed that Torres is not currently on duty. He has not been separated (fired) from the department, but is listed as “inactive.”

From Unraveled via This RSS Feed.