acab

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24986

The cars sat abandoned at the side of the road. Their engines idling, with hazard lights flashing, according to a witness who captured video of the incident on his phone. The occupants of the vehicles had been taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers late last month in what a local immigrant rights group calls “fake traffic stops.” During these encounters, ICE vehicles reportedly employ red and blue flashing lights to mimic those of local law enforcement agencies, duping people into pulling over.

When family members arrived on the scene in Eagle County, Colorado, their loved ones had already been disappeared by federal agents. But what they found inside the vehicles was disturbing: a customized ace of spades playing card — popularly known as a “death card” — that read “ICE Denver Field Office.”

“We are disgusted by ICE’s actions in Eagle County,” Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of that immigrant rights group, Voces Unidas, told The Intercept. “Leaving a racist death card behind after targeting Latino workers is an act of intimidation. This is not about public safety. It is about fear and control. It’s rooted in a very long history of racial violence.”

During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops regularly adorned Vietnamese corpses with “death cards” — either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for their kills. A 1966 entry in the Congressional Record noted that due to supposed Vietnamese superstitions regarding the ace of spades, “the U.S. Playing Card Co. had been furnishing thousands of these cards free to U.S. servicemen in Vietnam who requested them.”

Official U.S. military film footage, for example, shows ace of spades “death cards” being placed in the mouths of dead Vietnamese people in South Vietnam’s Quảng Ngãi province by members of the 25th Infantry Division. Similarly, Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade left their victims with a customized ace of spades sporting the unit’s nickname “Gunfighters,” a skull and crossbones, and the phrase “dealers of death.” Helicopter pilots also occasionally dropped custom calling cards from their gunships. One particular card read: “Congratulations. You have been killed through courtesy of the 361st. Yours truly, Pink Panther.” The other side proclaimed, “The Lord giveth and the 20mm [cannon] taketh away. Killing is our business and business is good.”

A customized playing card left behind after an immigration raid in January in Eagle County, Colo., includes the address of an ICE field office. Photo: Voces Unidas

The cards found in Eagle County harken back to this brutal heritage. The black and white 4×6-inch cards look like an ace of spades with an “A” over a spade in the top left and bottom right corners. A larger ornate black and white spade dominates the center of the card. Above it reads “ICE Denver Field Office.” Below it is the address and phone number of the ICE detention facility in nearby Aurora.

Sánchez said his organization took possession of identical cards found in two separate vehicles by two different families. “These were not from a doctored deck of cards. These were designed with this legacy in mind. They were printed on some sort of stock paper and cut in the dimensions of a card,” he explained. Basic templates for ace of spaces playing cards are readily available as clip art for purchase online.

A DHS spokesperson told local NBC affiliate 9News that ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility will “conduct a thorough investigation and will take appropriate and swift action.” ICE’s Denver Field Office did not respond to questions posed by The Intercept about the office’s use of the cards, the meaning behind them, and its agents’ tactics.

“You realize — of course — that in Spades, the ace of spades is the trump card,” said a federal official of the Bridge-like card game, alluding to the possibility that the death card is also an homage to President Donald Trump. That official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak to the press continued: “These guys are not too subtle, to be honest.”

Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., recently took to the Senate floor to denounce the use of the malicious ICE calling cards. “They found ‘death cards’ [left in] the cars of their family members who were taken away by ICE agents,” he said. “These cards … have a history of being used by white supremacist groups to intimidate people of color. ‘Death cards’ is what they call them.”

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He Witnessed an Earlier Shooting. Feds Arrested Him at the Scene of Alex Pretti’s Killing.](https://theintercept.com/2026/01/31/minneapolis-protester-witness-killing-alex-pretti/)

Sánchez expressed worry that similar acts of intimidation are happening elsewhere but may not be reported, noting that while Voces Unidas became aware of the death cards in the course of their work, investigating such incidents is not a core focus of his organization, which provides legal assistance to immigrants.

“When people call us, they call us to get an attorney out to them at a detention center,” Sánchez explained. “In the process, we sometimes hear about these details. But it isn’t a priority. Our job is not to investigate cards. Our job is to provide legal aid.” He noted that the community served by Voces Unidas in the western slope of rural Colorado does not trust local law enforcement officers, elected officials, or mainstream human rights groups. “They’re calling organizations that they trust. And unless those trusted organizations are doing civil rights reporting or are going in-depth in providing emergency assistance, it’s very difficult to find out the details of such incidents,” he explained. “So I would be surprised if we’re the only community where this has happened. We just might not know it.”

Neither ICE nor its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, returned a request for comment about the use of the death cards in Colorado or elsewhere in the U.S.

This isn’t the first time that immigration agents have used similar imagery during the Trump administration’s ongoing deportation campaign. This summer, for example, a Border Patrol agent taking part in immigration raids in Chicago wore the image of a skull with a spade on its forehead affixed to his helmet below another unidentified but apparently unofficial patch. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment.

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Recently, The Interceptpublished a guide to official and unofficial patches worn by immigration agents. These included a shoulder patch worn by personnel from the St. Paul, Minnesota Field Office, where Jonathan Ross — the ICE agent who shot Renee Good — works. The St. Paul office’s Special Response Teampatch was spotted on the camouflage uniform of a masked ICE officer during a raid of a Minneapolis Mexican restaurant last year. The circular patch depicts a bearded Viking skull over an eight-prong wayfinder or magical stave — a Nordic image called a “Vegvisir.” The symbol has sometimes been co-opted by far-right extremists.

Another ICE officer in Minnesota was spotted wearing a patch reading “DEPLORABLE,” a term some devotees of then-candidate Donald Trump adopted in 2016 after Hillary Clinton said half of his supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables,” since they were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, [and] Islamophobic.”

ICE and DHS failed to respond to repeated requests for comment about these patches.

The ace card has a long and macabre history. A British tax on playing cards, which specifically required purchasing aces of spades from the stamp office, resulted in the hanging of a serial forger of the “death card” in 1805. Legend has it that “Wild Bill” Hickok held the Dead Man’s Hand — aces and eights, including the ace of spades — when he was gunned down in Deadwood in Dakota Territory in 1876. In 1931, murdered Mafia boss Giuseppe Masseria was photographed with the ace of spades clutched in his hand. By that time, it was firmly entrenched in culture as the “death card.”

The U.S. use of death cards in Vietnam was immortalized in the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now” in a scene in which Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, places unit-branded playing cards, reading “DEATH FROM ABOVE,” on the bodies of dead Vietnamese people. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency developed a set of playing cardsto help troops identify the most-wanted members of the Iraqi government. President Saddam Hussein, who was eventually captured and executed, was the ace of spades.

Last year, the official Instagram account of Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector used the 1980 Motörhead song “The Ace of Spades” as the soundtrack of a video of its canines practicing attacks on people. “Our Patrol-K9s are trained to take down violent threats,” reads the accompanying caption.

The post Federal Agents Left Behind “Death Cards” After Capturing Immigrants appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25015

Portland, OR – On February 1, over 1000 Portlanders protested outside of Portland City Hall to stand against the killing of Alex Pretti, Renee Good and all those murdered by ICE, and to demand city government revoke the permit for the Portland ICE facility. The protest, organized by Portland Contra Las Deportaciones marched two miles from city hall to the Portland ICE facility.

Speaker Holly Brown called out Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and city councilors, saying months of cries to shut down the facility have been met with “not only inaction, but deliberate stalling, condescension, and lies.”

Protesters chanted “Do your jobs!” targeting Wilson and other city officials. Another rally speaker, Beatriz Ibarra, noted Custom Border Patrol agents shot two Portland residents just one day after Renee Good was murdered in Minneapolis. “Our mayor and city council send us nothing more than thoughts and prayers, while ICE agents rampage our streets,” Ibarra said.

Once at the ICE facility, furious protesters stormed the driveway, occupying the street and gated entrance. They began banging on the walls, shaking the gate, yelling “We aren’t scared of you!” as agents began shooting projectiles from the roof into the crowd.

ICE’s initial violent attempts at crowd control did not deter protesters. When federal officers opened the gates, they launched tear gas canisters and flash bangs into the crowd. One protester described the scene, saying “it was like a war zone.”

Just the day before, federal agents gassed a crowd of thousands, including families and union leaders, sparking public outrage. The increasing use of chemical weapons in the heart of Southwest Portland increases the pressure on city officials to take action to shut down the facility.

Tear gas used against protesters on Sunday spread throughout SW Portland, even crossing the Willamette River impacting neighborhoods on the East side. Despite the volume of gas being deployed, a large crowd stood their ground outside the ICE facility until after midnight.

In response to the chemical warfare used against protesters, Mayor Keith Wilson put out a statement telling ICE agents to resign and stating he will begin implementing fees on the facility. Protesters cried out that this is not enough and will not solve the problem. They remain undeterred in their demand to close down the facility.

#PortlandOR #OR #ImmigrantRights #ICE #KillerICE #AlexPretti #PDXCD #Feature

From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24683

Public health experts and immigrant advocates sounded the alarm Sunday over a measles outbreak at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement internment center in Texas where roughly 1,200 people, including over 400 children, are being held.

Texas officials confirmed Saturday that two detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, located about 75 miles (120 km) southwest of San Antonio, are infected with measles.

"Medical staff is continuing to monitor the detainees' conditions and will take appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection," the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. "All detainees are being provided with proper medical care."

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Sunday that ICE "immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected."

Responding to the development, Dr. Lee Rogers of UT Health San Antonio wrote in a letter to Texas state health officials that the Dilley outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately" by establishing "a single public health incident command center."

"Viruses are not political," Rogers stressed. "They do not care about one's immigration status. Measles will spread if we allow uncertainty and delay to substitute for reasoned public health action."

Dr. Benjamin Mateus took aim at the Trump administration's wider policy of "criminalizing immigrant families and confining children in camps," which he called a form of "colonial policy" from which disease is the "predictable outcome."

Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that can kill or cause serious complications, particularly among unvaccinated people. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, but declining vaccination fueled by misinformation has driven a resurgence in the disease, and public health experts warn that the US is close to following Canada, which lost its elimination status late last year.

Many experts blame this deadly and preventable setback on the vaccine-averse policies and practices of the Trump administration, particularly at the Department of Health and Human Services, led by vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

US measles cases this year already exceed the total for the whole of 2023 and 2024 combined, and it is only January. Yikes.

[image or embed]
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) January 29, 2026 at 12:29 PM

Critics also slammed ICE's recent halt on payments to third-party providers of detainee healthcare services.

Immigrant advocates had previously warned of a potential measles outbreak at the Dilley lockup. Neha Desai, an attorney at the Oakland, California-based National Center of Youth Law, told CBS News that authorities could use the outbreak as a pretext for preventing lawyers and lawmakers from inspecting the facility.

"We are deeply concerned for the physical and the mental health of every family detained at Dilley," Desai said. "It is important to remember that no family needs to be detained—this is a choice that the administration is making."

Run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, the Dilley Immigration Processing Center has been plagued by reports of poor health and hygiene conditions. The facility is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children.

Detainees—who include people legally seeking asylum in the US—report prison-like conditions and say they've been served moldy food infested with worms and forced to drink putrid water. Some have described the facility as "truly a living hell."

The internment center has made headlines not only for its harsh conditions, but also for its high-profile detainees, including Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old abducted by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month and held along with his father at the facility before a judge ordered their release last week. The child's health deteriorated while he was at Dilley.

On Sunday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization—held a protest outside the Dilley lockup, demanding its closure.

"Migrant detention centers in America are a moral failure,” LULAC national president Roman Palomares said in a statement. "When a nation that calls itself a beacon of freedom detains children behind razor wire, separates families from their communities, and holds them in isolated conditions, we have crossed a dangerous line."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24553

The mayor of Portland, Oregon demanded that federal immigration enforcement officials leave his city after they were seen lobbing tear gas and flash bang grenades at demonstrators.

As reported by The Oregonian on Sunday, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson reacted with outrage after seeing federal agents deploying tear gas and firing rubber bullets at thousands of protesters who on Saturday marched to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the city's South Waterfront neighborhood.

Wilson called the agents' attacks on protesters a vast overreaction to a "peaceful daytime protest, where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces" stationed at the facility.

“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson said. "Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame."

The mayor also heaped scorn on federal agents for employing such tactics when several children were present in the crowd.

"To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children," he said. "Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets. No one is forcing you to lie to yourself, even as your bosses continue to lie to the American people."

Erin Hoover Barnett, a former Oregonian reporter who attended the demonstration, told the paper that she saw "what looked like two guys with rocket launchers" who started dousing the crowd with tear gas on Saturday.

"To be among parents frantically trying to tend to little children in strollers," she said, "people using motorized carts trying to navigate as the rest of us staggered in retreat, unsure of how to get to safety, was terrifying."

A Portland protester identified only as Robin gave an account similar to Barnett's during an interview with local news station KPTV.

"About eight or 10 of them came out with guns whatever kind of guns they have and flash bombed just started throwing them at the crowd just exploding everywhere," said Robin. "It was like a war zone. It felt like we were under attack. I definitely got hit. I had to run around the corner and pour a bunch of water on my face."

One local protester identified only as Celeste told local news station KOIN 6 that she was out on the streets because she wanted to "fight tyranny."

"What’s happening in our streets with ICE is ridiculous," said Celeste. "It’s illegal. It’s got to be stopped. And no one’s going to stop it. Except we the people. We’ve got a tyrant in the White House, and no one will stop him but us.”

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24202

Less than 40 minutes after federal immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti on Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis, Clayton Kelly was thrown face-first onto the sidewalk, tasting snow and street grime as a federal agent’s knee drove into his back.

The incident, a video of which The Intercept reviewed and corroborated with an independent eyewitness, occurred not long after Kelly and his wife arrived in the area where Pretti was killed. With protesters amassing and agents from Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement flooding the area, the couple told The Intercept, they just wanted to observe the scene.

“All of a sudden,” Kelly said, a federal agent “started running toward me, pointing and yelling, ‘That’s him. Get him.’”

Ten days earlier, Kelly had watched as an immigration agent shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg during a federal enforcement action in north Minneapolis. As Kelly told the local outlet Sahan Journal, an SUV with police lights chased another vehicle, and then, “They went into a house. … I heard two shots before the area was just being swarmed by ICE immediately.” Sosa-Celis was injured — and Kelly’s account contradicted the official narrative released by the Department of Homeland Security.

At the scene of Pretti’s killing, Kelly told agents they would find themselves “on the wrong side of history,” he recalled. After the exchange, he and his wife, Alana Ericson, began walking toward another section of Nicollet Avenue where people were congregating, and as soon as Kelly turned his back, that was when agents began shouting and running toward him.

“I had my hands up. I kept saying, ‘I’m leaving. I’m leaving,’” Kelly said.

Kelly is far from the only civilian to be brutalized by federal agents in Minneapolis this month. But his detailed account of his beating and detention offers a clear example of how the agents, ostensibly deployed to carry out immigration enforcement, have instead shifted their purpose to encompass a crackdown on dissent. In Kelly’s case, it raises the question of whether he was facing retaliation for acting as a witness.

In December 2025, a group of Minnesota residents and the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed a federal class-action lawsuit, Tincher v. Noem, alleging that federal agents participating in Operation Metro Surge used excessive force, intimidation, and arrests to deter civilians from observing, recording, or protesting immigration enforcement.

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The complaint alleges retaliation against people engaging in constitutionally protected conduct, including arrests of observers who were not interfering with federal operations. In January, a federal judge issued a limited injunction barring agents from retaliating against peaceful protesters and observers.

While federal agents pinned Kelly down, given Pretti’s recent shooting, Ericson feared they could kill her husband.

“I kept telling them he’s a U.S. citizen. They said, ‘We don’t give a f—,’” she said.

Kelly had previously undergone fusion surgery in his thoracic spine, a procedure that permanently joins vertebrae to stabilize the back. “Several agents piled on top of me,” Kelly said, and one put his knee on the site of his surgical wounds. “They were sitting directly on my spine.”

“I was screaming that I couldn’t breathe, but I had almost no air left,” Kelly said. “An agent pushed the pepper spray nozzle right into my left eye and sprayed. I turned my head so I wouldn’t get it in both eyes, but my left eye was completely burned.”

Pinned beneath multiple agents, Kelly said panic quickly gave way to fear that he might not survive. He said he was unable to catch his breath and felt his limbs go limp beneath the weight on his body.

“An agent pushed the pepper spray nozzle right into my left eye and sprayed.”

Kelly was then forced to his feet and handcuffed, leaving deep indentations on both wrists that were still visible in photographs taken three days later and shared with The Intercept. At some point, his phone fell out of his pocket. He was dragged to a vehicle and placed in the back seat, where he said agents told him he was being taken to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis for detention.

After being pepper-sprayed, Ericson said she was unable to drive. A bystander offered her a ride home, where she and her mother-in-law spent the day calling attorneys and trying to determine where Kelly had been taken and whether he was alive.

An independent eyewitness who said they did not know Kelly or his wife said they were standing nearby when agents rushed Kelly, tackled him to the ground, and deployed pepper spray, corroborating Kelly’s account of the arrest. After Kelly and Ericson were gone, the witness remained near Nicollet Avenue as federal agents continued clearing the area.

Moments later, the witness said they were grabbed from behind, thrown to the pavement, and sprayed in the face. Medical records from Hennepin County Medical Center reviewed by The Intercept show the witness sustained a fractured shoulder. According to the documentation, the injury will require surgery and months of physical therapy.

The Intercept reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, CBP, and ICE with detailed questions about the use of force by federal agents in Minneapolis, the detention and processing of civilians, the seizure of phones and other personal property, and policies governing crowd control. DHS, CBP, and ICE did not provide responses by publication time.

Kelly was transported to the federal building in downtown Minneapolis, a facility commonly used by immigration authorities for detention and processing.

Several of the people detained alongside him, Kelly said, had directly witnessed or recorded the fatal shooting of Pretti earlier that morning.

Kelly said detainees were never told why they were being held and were not informed of any charges. He said federal officials discussed possible criminal violations but ultimately filed none.

Shauna Kieffer, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who is now representing Kelly, said her client was never read his Miranda rights. They’re required only when law enforcement seeks to obtain a statement, she said, so a person may be detained without being advised of those rights if officers are not questioning them and no statement is taken. At one point, Kelly said, ICE agents asked whether detainees would be willing to give interviews. All declined and invoked their right to remain silent.

According to Kelly, no medical care was provided upon arrival, even though multiple detainees had visible injuries and repeatedly asked for assistance. One older man, Kelly said, was bleeding from his elbow when brought into custody. Kelly said detainees used their drinking water to clean blood from the man’s arm while the staff ignored their requests for assistance, and that the man didn’t receive treatment until after a shift change.

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Kelly and his family have been unable to recover his phone. At the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Kelly said agents later showed him the phone, asked whether it belonged to him, and told him he would not be getting it back. According to Kelly, no one listed the device on his property inventory, and agents told him they would seek a warrant to access its contents.

A copy of the property inventory receipt reviewed by The Intercept does not list a cellphone among Kelly’s belongings. Additional photographs show his belongings placed in an ICE-labeled property bag bearing his name and a U.S. citizen designation.

In an affidavit he signed with his attorney, Kelly said the confiscated phone contained photos he took of the January 14 shooting of Sosa-Celis that he witnessed, a detail he says underscores its evidentiary value and why he wanted it returned.

Attorneys representing several detainees said federal officials told them they were considering charges of assaulting, interfering with, or resisting federal officers, according to Kieffer and another detainee’s attorney. Kieffer said the statute is often interpreted broadly, but verbal objections, mere presence at a scene, or passive conduct alone do not meet its standard.

In Kelly’s case, “any movements of his body are simply because a bunch of grown men are pummeling him,” Kieffer said, referring to the video of his arrest.

Kelly estimated he was detained for roughly eight hours before being abruptly released. After a brief stop at home, he sought medical treatment at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park. Discharge paperwork from that visit, reviewed by The Intercept, documents his injuries as assault-related.

Kelly said he continues to fear retaliation following his detention.

[

Read Our Complete Coverage

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The following morning, he said, several federal vehicles drove slowly down the residential street where he and his wife live, an occurrence he described as highly unusual for their area.

Kieffer said her client’s fears are not unfounded.

She described instances in Minneapolis in which attorneys and civilian observers reported being followed by federal vehicles after monitoring immigration enforcement activity, and in some cases later saw federal agents parked outside their homes. One attorney shared video of ICE agents following him and parking outside his house with The Intercept.

In Kieffer’s view, the sheer number of people taken into custody while observing or documenting federal activity has made Minneapolis stand out.

The emotional toll of the arrest, Kelly and his wife said, has not ended with his release.

“I’ve been having nightmares. This doesn’t feel like real life. It feels like a really bad dream that I can’t wake up from,” Ericson said. “After he spoke publicly about that shooting, I felt like he was already on their radar.”

The post He Witnessed an Earlier Shooting. Feds Arrested Him at the Scene of Alex Pretti’s Killing appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24280

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is warning that the Trump administration has crossed a "terrifying line" with its use of federal immigration enforcement agents to brutalize and abduct people in his city.

In an interview with the New York Times published Saturday, Frey described operations that have taken place in his city as "marauding gangs of guys just walking down the street indiscriminately picking people up," likening it to a military "invasion."

During the interview, Frey was asked what he made of Attorney General Pam Bondi's recent offer to withdraw immigration enforcement forces from his city if Minnesota handed over its voter registration records to the federal government.

"That is wildly unconstitutional," Frey replied. "We should all be standing up and saying that’s not OK. Literally, listen to what they’re saying. Active threats like, Turn over the voter rolls or else, or we will continue to do what we’re doing. That’s something you can do in America now."

Frey was also asked about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's comments from earlier in the week where he likened the administration's invasion of Minneapolis to the first battle that took place during the US Civil War in Fort Sumter.

"I don’t think he’s saying that the Civil War is going to happen," said Frey. "I think what he’s saying is that a significant and terrifying line is being crossed. And I would agree with that."

As Frey issued warnings about the federal government's actions in Minneapolis, more horror stories have emerged involving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minnesota.

The Associated Press reported on Saturday that staff at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis have been raising red flags over ICE agents' claims about Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, a Mexican immigrant whom they treated after he suffered a shattered skull earlier this month.

ICE agents who brought Castañeda Mondragón to the hospital told staffers that he had injured himself after he "purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall" while trying to escape their custody.

Nurses who treated Castañeda Mondragón, however, said that there is no way that running headfirst into a wall could produce the sheer number of skull fractures he suffered, let alone the internal bleeding found throughout his brain.

“It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about," one nurse at the hospital told the Associated Press. “There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall."

According to a Saturday report in the New York Times, concern over ICE's brutality has grown to such an extent that many Minnesota residents, including both documented immigrants and US citizens, have started wearing passports around their necks to avoid being potentially targeted.

Joua Tsu Thao, a 75-year-old US citizen who came to the country after aiding the American military during the Vietnam War, said the aggressive actions of immigration officers have left him with little choice but to display his passport whenever he walks outside his house.

"We need to be ready before they point a gun to us," Thao explained to the Times.

CNN on Friday reported that ICE has been rounding up refugees living in Minnesota who were allowed to enter the US after undergoing "a rigorous, years-long vetting process," and sending them to a facility in Texas where they are being prepared for deportation.

Lawyers representing the abducted refugees told CNN that their clients have been "forced to recount painful asylum claims with limited or no contact with family members or attorneys."

Some of the refugees taken to Texas have been released from custody. But instead of being flown back home, they were released in Texas "without money, identification, or phones," CNN reported.

Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president for US legal programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project, told CNN that government agents abducting refugees who had previously been allowed into the US is part of "a campaign of terror" that "is designed to scare people."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23588

When Maher Tarabishi got a phone call from his family on January 23, he expected an update on his son’s health. Tarabishi had been held for three months at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, and his 30-year-old son Wael’s health had been on the decline. Still, Tarabishi was hoping for a full recovery.

The news, though, was not good: Wael had passed away. Maher Tarabishi was in disbelief, breaking down on the phone, according to an account of the call from his daughter-in-law Shahd Arnaout.

“He wouldn’t die without me,” Tarabishi wailed. “There is no way he died without waiting for me.”

“He wouldn’t die without me. There is no way he died without waiting for me.”

Destroyed, Tarabishi had one hope. His attorney, Ali Elhorr, had already been advocating for his release to take care of Wael, but shifted his efforts to securing a release for Wael’s funeral, which was initially scheduled for Wednesday before being moved to Thursday.

At first, ICE officials seemed like they might give in: preliminary discussion included conditions for a temporary release, including scheduling and moving Tarabishi to a detention center that was closer to the funeral home.

“Initial steps in the process had already begun when I received a call from the ICE officer with whom I had been in contact,” Elhorr said in a release. “The officer informed me that his director stepped in and told him that Maher would not be allowed to attend Wael’s burial. This was the final decision.”

ICE did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept, but told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “ICE has NOT received a formal request from anyone to attend funeral services.”

Primary Caretaker

At the time Tarabishi was arrested by ICE, he had been the primary caregiver for Wael. As he was taken, Tarabishi’s first thought was, “Who will take care of my son?” according to Arnaout’s recollection of conversations with her father-in-law.

Wael was born in Arlington, Texas, in 1995, a year after his family immigrated to the U.S. from Jordan. When the boy was 4, he had been diagnosed with Pompe disease, a rare metabolic disease that causes rapid muscular deterioration, according to his family. At the time, the doctor told the family that he might not live past 5, Arnaout said.

“Maher kept him alive,” Araout said. “Wael could not eat or drink by himself. He could not use his arms or legs. So Maher was all of that for him, his lungs, his legs, his arms, everything.”

Tarabishi, meanwhile, had applied for asylum after coming from Jordan, but he was denied. Nonetheless, he went to his regular ICE check-ins once a year for more than a decade and a half. When reports of people being arrested at these check-ins became widespread last year, his family was concerned. Tarabishi, however, was not.

“He had too much faith in the system,” Arnaout said. “He didn’t have any criminal record. He thought they put an appointment for him because they saw he is doing everything right to stay in the country, following all the rules. He never missed a single appointment.”

She said the officers at the local ICE office knew about Wael’s condition and would frequently ask Tarabishi about his son.

On January 23, the day Wael died, Elhorr had filed a motion to reopen Tarabishi’s case with the Board of Immigration Appeals. Elhorr had discovered that the purported attorney who filed Tarabishi’s original asylum application “was fraudulently practicing law without a license,” the family said in a press release.

In an earlier statement, ICE had said that Maher belonged to the “Palestine Liberation Organization” and was a “criminal alien.” While the United States has designated the PLO as a terrorist organization in the past, it is not in the country’s designated list of terrorist organizations currently. Nonetheless, the family denied that Tarabishi had any affiliation with the group.

“He has done no criminal activity,” Arnaout said. “He is an electronic engineer who loves fixing people’s laptops. He is a simple man.”

Deteriorating Conditions

In the months since Tarabishi’s arrest in October, Wael’s condition quickly deteriorated.

He was admitted to a hospital for pneumonia and sepsis in November. Connected to catheters and tubes all over his body, Wael put out a video from the hospital bed.

“The last month has been hell for me,” he says in the video. “My father was my hero, my safe place. He did everything for me 24 hours a day. And ICE took him.”

Wael ended the video with a plea: “Please release him, I am not asking for much, please release him.”

In December, Wael had to be hospitalized for a second time. Eight days before his demise, Wael went in for a surgery.

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“Don’t worry, I will be back for my father,” Wael had told his family, according to Arnaout.

Wael did not wake up for the next eight days and on the night of January 22, his condition worsened drastically. The next morning, the family signed a “do not resuscitate” letter for him. Wael passed away the next day at the Methodist Mansfield Medical Center.

Tarabishi got to speak to Wael a few times from detention. The son, according to Arnaout, made light of his medical woes.

“Don’t worry,” Wael told his father, Arnaout recalled. “I am not going die until I see you. I am not going anywhere, not until I see you.”

The post ICE Arrested Father Who Cared for His Ill Son — Then Denied His Request to Attend Son’s Funeral appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23552

The common housefly

We’ve broken lots of major stories about ICE this month, but we’re just getting started (I have more leaked documents than time to write them up!) Help make sure we have the resources to get these stories out by becoming a paid subscriber.

“We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist,” a masked federal agent taunted a protester filming him in Maine last week.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin’s response was firm: “There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.”

There’s just one problem: She’s lying.

Two senior national security officials tell me that there are more than a dozen secret and obscure watchlists that homeland security and the FBI are using to track protesters (both anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian), “Antifa,” and others who are promiscuously labeled “domestic terrorists.”

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

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

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

“We came out of 9/11 with the notion that we would have a single ‘terrorist’ watchlist to eliminate confusion, duplication and avoid bad communications, but ever since January 6, not only have we expanded exponentially into purely domestic watchlisting, but we have also created a highly secretive and compartmented superstructure that few even understand,” says a DHS attorney intimately familiar with the subject. The attorney spoke on the agreement that their identity not be disclosed.

Prior to 9/11, there were nine federal agencies that maintained 12 separate watchlists. Now, officially there are just three: a watchlist of 1.1 million international terrorists, a watchlist of more than 10,000 domestic terrorists maintained by the FBI, and a new watchlist of transnational criminals, built up to more than 85,000 over the past decade.

The new domestic-related watchlists—a set of databases and applications—exist inside and outside the FBI and are used by agencies like ICE and the Border Patrol to organize the Niagara of information in possession of the federal government. Collectively, they create ways to sort, analyze, and search information, a task that even artificial intelligence has failed to conquer (so far).

Among other functions, the new watchlists process tips, situation reports and collected photographs and video submitted by both the public and from agents in the field; they create a “common operating picture” in places like Minneapolis; they allow task forces to target individuals for surveillance and arrest; and they create the capacity for intelligence people to link individuals together through geographic proximity or what is labeled “call chaining” by processing telephone numbers, emails, and other contact information.

Administration officials have alluded to all of this, though contrary to the Hollywood idea of some all-seeing eye, actual government watchlists are more a patchwork system of lists and applications, each of which might have individual justification or even legitimate purpose to aid law enforcement but overall form the basis for massive violations of American civil rights.

“One thing I’m pushing for right now … we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault, we’re going to make them famous,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told Fox News earlier this month.

Watchlists in general fly in the face of the spirit of the Constitution and the protections it’s supposed to embody against unreasonable search and seizure, and relating to the right of privacy.

“The very essence of the ‘list’ is its secrecy and its lack of any opportunity for the listed to be heard,” Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said of a Justice Department list of subversives during the Red Scare. “It is the shrouding of the process in a veil of secrecy that is the most offensive to our democratic traditions.”

Now, the national security community has developed an interlocking set of lists and applications that are secret not just to the public but opaque to most who toil in the federal agencies themselves. Asked about the watchlists, a Border Patrol agent recounted to me how they punch their data into their own proprietary application, not really knowing what happens after that.

Again, these watchlists aren’t the all-seeing eye of Sauron that many imagine. They’re more like the compound eye of a fly, a fragmented array of lenses (over 3,000 per eye in the common housefly!) that collectively form a mosaic. That mosaic—the ability to unify all the disparate lists into one master picture—doesn’t yet exist, sources tell me. That, however, is the direction we’re going, especially with software packages like Palantir that can be customized to aggregate all that is collected.

“We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement,” says McLaughlin. “Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.”

Impeding federal law enforcement has emerged as the Trump administration’s primary justification for actions against people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

As part of its new effort to support its operations in places like Minneapolis and Los Angeles, the Homeland Security Department, working with the Justice Department, has started more methodically tracking what it calls “aggressive protesters.” According to one senior official, this is a new designation the agency uses to describe the supposed threat posed by people on the streets.

Both Good and Pretti were considered aggressive protesters; in Good’s case, for criticizing ICE officers while operating a vehicle; and in Pretti’s case, getting up close to immigration officers while filming them.

Alex Pretti filming a Border Patrol agent

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche alluded to the term in a recent CNN interview, saying: “He [Alex Pretti] was not protesting peacefully—he was screaming in the face of ICE, he had a phone up right into ICE’s face. You tell me: is that protesting peacefully?”

When the CNN host pointed out that Pretti wasn’t violent, Blanche actually agreed, but went on to argue that there’s a third category for protest that is neither violent nor peaceful.

“I did not say that he was violent,” Blanche interjected, adding: “I said that he was not protesting peacefully.”

When I asked civil liberties experts what might be the legal justification for the expanded watchlisting, Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program director said that NSPM-7 and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 5 memo implementing the presidential directive “might be their justification.”

Under the Privacy Act, Levinson-Waldman explains, the government is prohibited from collecting and retaining information about Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. There can exceptions to that, but the question is whether DHS and FBI have articulated which exceptions they believe apply here.

The DHS lawyer, who helped to reveal the many secret watchlists and applications that are now being built and used to create the new American dragnet, says that sorting out the data being collected—rather than some explicit order to collect the data—is what’s driving the process.

“We over collect and everyone agrees we should create this or that list or application to wrestle the information to submission lest we miss something important,” the lawyer said. “So the data people do their thing and pretty soon you actually have Big Brother.”

A senior intelligence official, who confirmed the existence of the watchlists described earlier, characterized the problem another way.

“Lists of this and that—this social media post, that video taken of someone videoing ICE, the mere attendance at a protest—gets pulsed by federal cops on the beat to check for criminality but eventually just becomes a list itself of criminality, with the cops thinking that indeed they are dealing with criminals and terrorists.”

“Watchlists, and the whole watchlisting process, should be as transparent as possible, not the other way around. If we don’t explore more why all of these secret lists exist, even more of an environment of paranoia on the ground and more tragic killings.”

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— Edited by William M. Arkin

From Ken Klippenstein via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23725

Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy abducted by immigration agents in Minneapolis last week, is now in poor health after being sent to languish in a Texas facility with “absolutely abysmal" conditions, according to his family.

HuffPost reports that "Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, are being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. This is despite Arias entering the country legally and having no criminal record, according to [the family's lawyer]. Late Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked federal immigration officials from deporting Ramos and Arias, for now."

Reporters got in contact with Zena Stenvik, the superintendent at the Columbia Heights public school district, where Ramos attends preschool, who said she spoke with Ramos' mother.

Just visited with Liam and his father at Dilley detention center. I demanded his release and told him how much his family, his school, and our country loves him and is praying for him.

[image or embed]
— Joaquin Castro (@joaquincastrotx.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 3:45 PM

“Unfortunately, Liam’s health is not doing great right now,” said Stenvik. “He’s been ill. I’ve been told he has a fever. So I’m very, very concerned about his well-being in that facility.”

Earlier this week, Ramos’ mother told Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) that “Liam is getting sick because the food they receive is not of good quality. He has stomach pain, he’s vomiting, he has a fever, and he no longer wants to eat.”

A lawyer for the family, Eric Lee, told MPR that the conditions at the Texas facility are “absolutely abysmal."

“They mix baby formula with water that is putrid. The food has bugs in it. The guards are often verbally abusive,” he said.

Marc Prokosch, another of the family's lawyers, emphasized that although US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials describe them as a "family unit" that crossed the border illegally, they entered the US lawfully and had no order of deportation against them or criminal record.

He said the tactics ICE has used in Minneapolis seem designed to evade the law and separate detainees from legal representation.

“Since [Operation] Metro Surge came, they’ve been moving them all out to Texas… within 24 hours," he said. "That’s one of the core elements of being able to help somebody in the legal sphere, is to be able to communicate with them… It’s really hard to talk to them.”

Democratic US Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett of Texas went to visit Ramos and his father in the detention facility in Dilley on Wednesday. In a video posted to his social media, Castro said the facility is holding 1,100 other people.

"We spoke to many parents throughout our visit," Castro said. "There were a lot of parents there who talked about their kids experiencing deep depression, anxiety, people losing weight, both because of the bad food but also because of their mental state."

Castro said he "very bluntly told" the ICE officials there and officials for Core Civic, the private prison company that runs Dilley, "the country is against what's going on, that Liam needs to be released, that the country demands his release, and that no child that's five years old should be in detention like that."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23279

This is a developing story… Please check back for updates…

Authorities in Arizona confirmed that an unidentified person is in critical condition after a Tuesday morning shooting that involved US Border Patrol—which is facing mounting scrutiny for its involvement in President Donald Trump's mass deportation operations.

At around 7:30 am local time, the Santa Rita Fire District responded to the shooting near milepost 15 of West Arivaca Road in Pima County, just miles from the Border Patrol checkpoint in Amado and the US-Mexico border.

"Patient care was transferred to a local medical helicopter for rapid transport to a regional trauma center," the fire department said in a statement. "The incident remains under active investigation by law enforcement agencies."

The Associated Press reported that "the area is a common path for drug smugglers and migrants who illegally cross the border, so agents regularly patrol there."

A Pima County Sheriff's Department (PCSD) spokesperson told the Arizona Daily Star that the shooting involved a Border Patrol agent and a "suspect."

PCSD said on social media that it is "working in coordination" with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees Border Patrol.

At the FBI's request, PCSD is leading an investigation into the agent's use of force. The department said in a statement that "such requests are standard practice when a federal agency is involved in a shooting incident within Pima County and consistent with long-standing relationships built through time to promote transparency."

"We ask the community to remain patient and understanding as this investigation moves forward," the department also said. "PCSD will thoroughly examine all aspects of the incident, however, these investigations are complex and require time."

News 4 Tucson reported that Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos plans to hold a news conference at 4:00 pm.

A spokesperson for the FBI's Phoenix office confirmed to the Daily Star that it is investigating "an alleged assault on a federal officer."

"The subject was taken into custody," the FBI told Fox News. "This remains an ongoing investigation. No further information will be provided."

No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid group in the region, said that the incident "reflects a long history of violence from federal immigration enforcement. Since 2010, there have been 364 documented deadly encounters with Border Patrol. The number of deaths and disappearance due to Border Patrol enforcement is estimated to reach over 10,000."

"In the present moment, excessive use of force from federal agents has become especially visible. This past week, Border Patrol agents shot and killed a second legal observer in Minneapolis," the group noted. The killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good have ramped up protests against Trump's "Operation Metro Surge" in Minnesota and demands for accountability across the country.

"As a humanitarian organization founded on the belief that all people deserve dignity, we condemn all acts of violence from Border Patrol; call for a thorough investigation; and demand that the victim receive continued access to medical attention," said No More Deaths, which also called for the abolition of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

CBP and ICE are both part of the US Department of Homeland Security. The various shootings and other violence by DHS agents in recent months have fueled calls for the resignation or impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump.

Although the Trump administration has responded to the outrage in Minnesota by relocating a key official—the Atlantic reported Monday that "Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol 'commander at large' and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon"—the president said Tuesday that Noem won't resign.

DHS violence has also complicated a congressional effort to prevent a federal government shutdown before the end of the month, given the growing number of lawmakers and people across the country demanding "no funds for ICE and Border Patrol."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

this has been posted before but it is very relevant today

tl,dw: cheap hardware store over-ear protection works pretty well; a plexiglass riot shield plus ear protection works great; a curved riot shield can be used inverted to direct the sound pressure back at the operator.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23001

It has been more than 55 hours since an immigration officer's fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday, and still the US government has refused to provide the public with answers about the identity of the agent, or agents, who shot him.

Just as in the case of Renee Good, who was shot by an agent earlier this month, the Trump administration has circled the wagons around the narrative that Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, was a "terrorist" planning to “massacre law enforcement” a claim they have provided no evidence for aside from the fact that he was carrying a handgun, which local police have said he owned legally.

Video of Pretti's killing, recorded from multiple angles, directly contradicts the claims of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who alleged that Pretti was "brandishing a weapon" and that agents fired "defensive shots" after Pretti "violently resisted" arrest.

The Department of Homeland Security has not released any identifying information about the people who shot Pretti. Video evidence appears to show two agents firing at least ten shots at Pretti as he lay on the ground. One of the agents appeared to fire shots using an identical handgun to the one federal law enforcement later said Pretti was carrying.

Pretti had been shoved to the ground after attempting to film officers with a cellphone. Video shows him being shoved and later pepper-sprayed by officers, even after holding up his hands in an apparent attempt to signal that he was not a threat.

In what was described as a stunning break from the usual protocol for a law enforcement-involved shooting, Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino said during a press conference on Sunday that all of the agents involved are "still working," though they had been moved out of Minneapolis. Bovino himself is reportedly expected to leave Minneapolis soon, along with other top agents.

David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, described the fact that the agents were still on duty one day after a shooting as "unreal."

"Bovino spirited the murderer out of Minnesota's jurisdiction, yet they are still 'working,'" he said. "I've never heard of that in any real police department. Never heard of that in the federal government either."

He added that "cops shot at people in seven different jurisdictions this year," and that, "in every case, the jurisdiction put the officers on admin leave as part of standard protocol."

During the same press conference, told reporters that the agents had been moved out of Minneapolis "for their safety." He then explained: "There's this thing called doxxing."

Legally speaking, the term "doxxing" refers to the public disclosure of private information like addresses, phone numbers, and other sensitive information with the intent to harm the subject.

However in an effort to justify keeping the identities of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal officers a secret, including through the wearing of masks to hide their identities, the Trump administration and Republican members of Congress have adopted a much broader definition of the term that considers any attempt to identify an agent, even one involved in a shooting, as doxxing.

Last week, Noem harangued a CBS News anchor for even speaking the name of Jonathan Ross, the man who reporters identified as the shooter of Renee Good, live on the air, saying "we shouldn't have people continue to dox law enforcement."

She has previously pledged to prosecute those who reveal the identities of federal agents to the "fullest extent of the law," though so far no charges have been filed.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), publishing the name of a law enforcement officer is generally considered First Amendment-protected speech under Supreme Court rulings that protect the publishing of truthful information.

S.V. Date, a White House correspondent at HuffPost, said that the federal government's refusal to identify the agent who shot Pretti essentially "means we have an unaccountable secret police force that answers only to Trump."

"This person has still not been identified," he said, referring to the agent who shot Pretti while wearing a mask to obscure his identity. "In a real police force, that piece of information is released in the very first incident report."

Members of Congress have called for a transparent investigation into the shooting, including some Republicans who are otherwise supportive of ICE.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is not running for reelection in this year's cycle, called for a "thorough and impartial investigation" and said "any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins is doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump's legacy."

Of course, the Trump administration itself has already shut down an investigation into the shooting of Good, stating repeatedly that it would not pursue a probe into wrongdoing by Ross, while freezing out state-level investigators from information.

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said that the Trump administration has ignored a court order that would allow state investigators to access evidence in Pretti's killing.

"Our state investigators had to get a warrant to have access to the evidence of the shooting of Alex Pretti," Smith said. "And even then, the federal agents refused to give them access to the evidence. So this looks very much like another cover-up."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22855

In yet another display of the Trump administration's disregard for the US Constitution, there have been at least 2,300 cases in which federal judges have ruled that immigration officials illegally detained people without bond or due process since just July, according to one journalist.

Politico reporter Kyle Cheney shared some of the cases he's tracked in a thread on the social media platform X late Saturday. "This is one that stands out," he said of Sonik Manaserian, an Iranian woman of Armenian ethnicity who is a member of the Baha'i faith.

According to an order out of the Central District of California in Manaserian's case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "arrested a chronically ill, 70-year-old woman, who came to this country to avoid religious persecution and applied for asylum, who has lived here peacefully for 26 years and complied with all check-in requirements and other conditions of release, who has no known criminal record and poses no threat to anyone, without notice or the process required by their own regulations and without any plan for removing her from this country, then kept her in detention for months without sufficient medical care—and they do not have any argument to offer to even try to justify these actions."

Cheney's thread came just hours after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fatally shot legal observer and nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, less than three weeks after ICE officer Jonathan Ross similarly killed Renee Good in Minnesota's largest city.

"Minnesota courts have been inundated with these cases since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge last month," said the journalist, noting a Friday order in which a judge freed Audberto J., a Mexican man residing in the state, "where he and his wife have lived and raised three children together over the last 20 years."

While the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that its immigration enforcement operations are targeting "the worst of the worst," like the vast majority of immigrants actually seized by agents with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in recent months, Audberto J. has no criminal history, according to the order.

— (@)

"Yet another ruling from Friday, freeing a man detained by ICE in Minnesota who suffered severe head injuries during his arrest and has been hospitalized since. The man claims ICE has required him to be shackled in the hospital, against the wishes of doctors," Cheney noted. "Here's another Minnesota ruling that just came in tonight: A federal judge is threatening DHS with contempt for transferring a petitioner out of the state despite a court order enjoining the administration from doing so."

The journalist added to the thread on Sunday, as judges in Minnesota continued issue to rulings. In one of those cases, "Judge [Katherine] Menendez—who issued last week's injunction against ICE's retaliatory use of pepper spray—just ordered the release of a Kenyan woman arrested while picking up seizure medication at CVS."

Sharing the thread, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick stressed "this is what 'mass deportations' looks like. Neither due process nor basic humanity. Don't look away."

Immigrant Defenders Law Center co-founder and CEO Lindsay Toczylowski said that "as you read this excellent thread, let it sink in that one of the most pervasive issues for people in ICE detention is lack of access to counsel which means in most cases people have no shot at filing these challenges to their illegal detentions in federal court."

— (@)

The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution states in part that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," and protects various rights in legal proceedings. The Trump administration has also faced intense criticism recently for its disregard of rights protected by the First, Second, and Fourth amendments.

Cheney was praised by other journalists for "such good shoe-leather reporting," as "PBS NewsHour" correspondent Lisa Desjardins put it. Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff suggested that he "should get a Pulitzer for this thread."

John Yarmuth, a former newspaper editor and Democratic congressman from Kentucky, said that "this is a great example of a journalist doing his very critical job. Now it's up to government officials to act to correct these injustices. AND be shamed and replaced if they don't."

Last Thursday, seven Democrats in the US House of Representatives voted with nearly all Republicans to pass a multibillion-dollar DHS funding bill. Pretti's killing has increased pressure on all senators to reject it. While immigration agents' deadly and illegal actions have fueled calls to "abolish ICE," some lawmakers are demanding reforms at the agency and across the department.

Pointing to Cheney's findings, anti-monopoly lawyer Basel Musharbash said: "This is fucking insane. What reforms are supposed to fix an agency that commits 2,300 adjudicated constitutional violations in just six months? And those are just the ones that made it to court!"

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/21744

"Even the name" chosen for the Trump administration's ramp-up of immigration enforcement in Maine was denounced as "racist and degrading" by one state politician on Wednesday as reports mounted about federal agents arresting dozens of people in the Portland and Lewiston areas.

"Nothing about this is normal or okay," said Hannah Pingree, a Democratic former state lawmaker who is running for governor of the state. Referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she added, "ICE OUT OF MAINE."

Pingree was one of several officials in Maine who condemned "Operation Catch of the Day" as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it had officially surged federal agents to the state.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that those arrested included people who had been convicted of "aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of a child," but DHS records have shown that just 5% of people booked into ICE detention in recent months have had violent criminal convictions and nearly three-quarters have had no convictions at all.

The agency did not mention that one of the people detained on Wednesday was Micheline Ntumba, a mother of four who was followed home by ICE agents after she dropped her child off at school. Ntumba has a pending asylum application and no criminal record, according to her daughter and a background check system checked by the Maine Monitor.

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DHS also did not include in its statement the reported arrest of a pregnant woman in Westbrook or the fact that school attendance in Portland Public Schools—the state's most diverse school district, with more than 30% of students being English language learners—was down by 5% on Tuesday, with families evidently keeping their children home for fear of immigration enforcement.

Westbrook Mayor David Morse told WMTW, an ABC News affiliate, that a housing rights advocate had witnessed the arrest of the pregnant woman, an immigrant from Ecuador. The ICE agents later returned to the area and "yelled at her saying they knew her name and where she lived," reported WMTW.

The woman was "targeted for intimidation by a masked federal law enforcement officer," Morse said. "This is outrageous behavior from a federal authority, and I stand by our citizens’ rights to peacefully observe and/or protest."

Portland Mayor Mark Dion joined other city leaders Wednesday afternoon at a press conference where he said immigrants in the community were "anxious and fearful" over ICE's arrival.

“We believe in their right to be safe and we’ve tried to direct resources their way to support their capacity to stay here in Portland," said Dion, noting that schools are offering hybrid learning options.

City Council Member April Fournier noted that families across the Portland area are likely to face social as well as economic impacts in the coming weeks as ICE continues operations.

"Immigrants are what make Portland just such an incredible place to be," said Fournier. "And what we're all going to see is not only the social impact and what we all feel... we're also going to see an economic impact. These are now families that will have potentially the primary breadwinner in their household has been disappeared, so how are they going to make rent? So we're going to have a potential increase in evictions."

Schools and businesses may also see a growing number of staff members disappeared by ICE, said Fournier.

"If we saw that this immigration enforcement was consistent and was following the law with this administration, I don't think any of us would have the level of anxiety as I know we have today," she added.

The Maine People's Alliance (MPA) urged community members to testify in writing, virtually, or in person at an upcoming hearing by the Maine Legislature's Judiciary Committee regarding an emergency bill to ensure ICE can't enter private spaces in hospitals, schools, and childcare centers. The hearing is being held January 29.

"We want to be very clear: ICE is not welcome in Maine. Masked militia do not belong in our communities, let alone armed and willing to commit murder. Mainers won’t fall for divisive rhetoric from the Trump regime," said MPA co-director Amy Halsted. "We will protect ourselves, our family members, and our communities from the violence, chaos, and fear ICE agents bring with them. Because in Maine, we look out for one another."

"While ICE is sending masked agents in unmarked cars to disappear our neighbors, hanging around while our kids board the school bus, and kidnapping parents as they pick up their kids after school, Mainers will not be bullied," she added.

Community members have volunteered in recent days to deliver groceries to families who are housebound out of fear of ICE arrests, and the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition has trained people to verify reports of ICE sightings to help organize efforts to protect neighbors.

The Trump administration's surge of federal agents in Maine comes after President Donald Trump claimed members of the state's Somali community, which has grown in recent years and is largely centered in Lewiston and Portland, are involved in "scams." Similar allegations preceded the ongoing deployment of immigration agents in the Minnesota, where a tiny fraction of the state's nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent were involved in a fraud scandal involving the social services system.

The mayor of Lewiston, Carl Sheline, also made clear his outrage over the Trump administration's nationwide mass deportation and detention operation, in which ICE agents have fatally shot at least nine people since September. At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year, and reports of torture and inhumane conditions in the facilities have mounted.

“These masked men with no regard for the rule of law are causing long-term damage to our state and to our country,” said Sheline. “Lewiston stands for the dignity of all people who call Maine home."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/21781

"The United States government is looking for ways around that pesky Fourth Amendment," an investigative journalist said of Wednesday reporting by the Associated Press on an internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo claiming that ICE agents can forcibly enter a private residence without a judicial warrant, consent, or an emergency.

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

ICE's May 12 memo, part of a whistleblower disclosure obtained by the AP, says that "although the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the US Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose."

The January 7 disclosure was sent to the US Senate by the group Whistleblower Aid, which is "keeping the whistleblowers' identities anonymous even from oversight investigators," according to the document. It notes that despite being addressed to "All ICE Personnel," the seemingly unconstitutional memo "has not been formally distributed to all personnel."

Instead, it "has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the memo and return it to the supervisor," the disclosure details. "Newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on" an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.

Yeah, why could anyone think that ICE fits the description of the Gestapo?apnews.com/article/ice-...

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— Dan Sohege (@danielsohege.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 4:48 PM

Asked about the May 12 memo, signed by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP that everyone DHS serves with an administrative warrant has already had "full due process and a final order of removal," and the US Supreme Court and Congress have "recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement."

However, as Whistleblower Aid senior vice president and special counsel David Kligerman stressed in a Wednesday statement, "no court has ever found that ICE agents have such legal authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant."

"This administration's secretive policy advocates conduct that the Supreme Court has described as 'the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed'—that is the warrantless physical entry of a home," he noted. "This is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent."

"If ICE believes that this policy is consistent with the law, why not publicize it?" he asked. "Perhaps they've hidden it precisely because it cannot withstand legal scrutiny. Policies which impact fundamental constitutional rights, particularly one which the Supreme Court has called the greatest of equals among the Bill of Rights, should be discussed openly with the American people. It cannot be undone by hidden policy memos."

They just make up bullshit, bad-faith legal theories, do what they want until a court stops them, then lather, rinse, and repeat. In the meantime, they get to terrorize people. And nothing will happen to any of those responsible.Our courts are not equipped to deal with this.

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— Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 5:14 PM

Other lawyers, journalists, and critics responded similarly to the AP's reporting on social media. Alejandra Caraballo of the Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic declared that "the Fourth Amendment literally exists to prevent this."

Bradley P. Moss, an attorney specializing in litigation related to national security, federal employment, and security clearance law, said, "Remember when the Fourth Amendment was still a thing?"

American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: "It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo!"

"This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda," he continued, highlighting a footnote that suggests "they won't even rule out authorizing home invasions with no judicial warrant for people not even ordered removed!"

"In short, this secret memo explains SO MUCH of what we've been seeing over the last months, including this raid of a home in Minneapolis where ICE officers presented no judicial warrant before breaking in the door," he said. "Turns out they were secretly told they don't need one!"

While Reichlin-Melnick shared photos of a scene in which armed immigration agents used a battering ram to enter a Minneapolis home and arrest a Liberian man, federal agents also recently broke down the door of a residence in neighboring Saint Paul, Minnesota, and arrested ChongLy "Scott" Thao, a US citizen who was later freed.

— (@)

The AP reporting and responses to the leaked memo came as the Trump administration on Wednesday surged immigration agents to Maine for what it dubbed "Operation Catch of the Day," mirroring the federal deployment to not only Minnesota—where ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in her vehicle earlier this month—but also Illinois and California.

US Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened an inquiry into reports of unconstitutional detentions of US citizens by immigration agents in October and on Wednesday demanded answers about the new whistleblower disclosure.

Blumenthal sent lists of questions and requests for records to Lyons and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as well as Benjamin C. Huffman, director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. The senator also wrote to Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), urging them to call the ICE and DHS leaders to testify before their panels.

"Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home," Blumenthal said in a statement. "It is a legally and morally abhorrent policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time."

"In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light," he continued. "Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire. I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward and put the rights of their fellow Americans first."

"My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity and obligation to prove that rhetoric is real," the senator added. "They must hold hearings and join me in demanding the Trump administration answer for this lawless policy."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/21445

The city government of Miami Beach is under fire from civil rights groups after police visited the home of a woman about posts she made on social media critical of the mayor.

In a video posted online last week, two detectives with the Miami Beach Police Department were filmed questioning Raquel Pacheco, a former candidate for statewide office and longtime resident of the seaside resort city, over a post she made criticizing what she said was Mayor Steven Meiner’s hypocrisy around Israel and Palestine.

“This Facebook post was protected speech, and it’s not a close question — not remotely,” said Daniel Tilley, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “In context, the actions and statements by government officials here are likely to have a chilling effect on those who would otherwise voice their critique of the government.”

Pacheco, a frequent critic of the Miami Beach mayor, said she didn’t think much of a Facebook comment she wrote on January 7, in which she pointed out the mayor’s hypocrisy over calling the city a safe haven for all.

“The guy who consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians, tried to shut down a theater for showing a movie that hurt his feelings, and REFUSES to stand up for the LGBTQ community in any way (even leaves the room when they vote on related matters) wants you to know that you’re all welcome here,” she wrote, following up with three clown emojis.

Pacheco’s comment came in response to a post by Meiner in which he called out New York City for alleged antisemitism after Mayor Zohran Mamdani rescinded his predecessor’s controversial executive orders on Israel. Meiner post echoed the Israeli government’s response to Mamdani.

“Our city is consistently ranked by a broad spectrum of groups as being the most tolerant in the nation,” Meiner wrote on January 6. “By contrast, certain places like New York City are intentionally removing protections against select groups, including promoting boycotts of Israeli/Jewish businesses.”

“He claims Miami Beach is a safe haven for everyone, but the post itself is addressed to a specific group of people.”

Pacheco said she was irritated by the insinuation by Meiner that New York City was rife with antisemitism, or that Miami Beach was free of bias. So she fired back.

“I was pointing to the hypocrisy of his statement,” Pacheco told The Intercept. “He claims Miami Beach is a safe haven for everyone, but the post itself is addressed to a specific group of people and makes false allegations against NYC.”

Meiner, who is Jewish, is a staunch supporter of Israel’s war on Gaza. He has used his office to clamp down on pro-Palestine speech. In March of last year, Meiner sought to evict an independent cinema from its city-owned space over plans to air “No Other Land,” a documentary on attempts by Israeli forces to demolish a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank. Meiner called the Oscar-winning film “hateful propaganda.”

Pacheco acknowledged that Meiner may not have verbatim called for the death of all Palestinians, but said she was taking aim at his “blind support for Israel” and the connotations of that support in light of the genocide in Gaza.

“He may not have said it in those words, but that was my interpretation,” she said.

Pacheco said she thought little of the post until days later, on January 12, when a pair of plainclothes detectives with the Miami Beach Police Department knocked on her door wishing to discuss the post.

In the video of the interaction filmed by Pacheco and provided to The Intercept, Pacheco answers the door to a pair of officers, one of whom is holding a cellphone with a screenshot of Pacheco’s Facebook post on the screen. One of the officers asks several times if Pacheco was the author of the post, but she declines to confirm.

[

Related

Man Jailed for Facebook Meme Is Freed in Tennessee](https://theintercept.com/2025/10/30/larry-bushart-tennessee-free-speech-charlie-kirk-meme/)

“What we’re just trying to prevent is someone getting agitated or agreeing with the statement,” the officer says, before reading aloud from the post in which Pacheco accused Meiner of “consistently calling for the death of all Palestinians. “

“That can probably incite someone to do something radical. That’s what we’re here to talk about,” he says. “I would think to refrain from posting things like that, because that could get something incited,” he continues.

“I appreciate your concern,” Pacheco responds, while still declining to confirm that she was the author of the post and saying she would only answer questions with a lawyer. A few seconds later, the officers depart.

Shortly after the incident at her home, and after consulting with a lawyer, Pacheco decided to post the video of the police visit online, kicking off a local controversy in Miami Beach.

[

Read our complete coverage

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

In response to criticisms from the ACLU of Florida and other groups, Miami Beach Police Chief Wayne A. Jones took responsibility for sending the detectives to Pacheco’s home.

“Given the real, ongoing national and international concerns surrounding antisemitic attacks and recent rhetoric that has led to violence against political figures,” Jones said in a statement on January 16, “I directed two of my detectives to initiate a brief, voluntary conversation regarding certain inflammatory, potentially inciteful false remarks made by a resident to ensure there was no immediate threat to the elected official or the broader community that might emerge as a result of the post.”

Representatives for Meiner and Jones did not respond to requests for comment from The Intercept.

Pacheco, for her part, said she hopes the controversy might make city government think twice before pulling a similar move with other critics.

She said, “This stops at my door.”

The post She Criticized the Mayor’s Support for Israel on Facebook. Then the Cops Showed Up at Her Door. appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/21149

Officials in both Texas and Minnesota are calling for accountability and a full investigation into conditions at Camp East Montana, the sprawling detention complex at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, following the third reported death at the facility in less than two months.

Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis, where ICE has been carrying out violent immigration arrests, cracking down on dissent, and where one officer fatally shot a legal observer earlier this month.

He was one of roughly 2,903 detainees being held at Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss US Army base, one of the largest ICE detention centers in the country, on January 14 when contract security workers found him “unconscious and unresponsive” in his cell.

He was later pronounced dead and ICE released a statement saying he had died of "presumed suicide," but officials arre still investigating his cause of death.

Diaz's death comes days after it was reported that a medical examiner in Texas was planning to classify another death reported at Camp East Montana—that of Geraldo Lunas Campos—as a homicide.

A doctor said Lunas Campos' preliminary cause of death in early January was "asphyxia due to neck and chest compression." An eyewitness said he had seen several guards in a struggle with the 55-year-old Cuban immigrant and then saw guards choking Lunas Campos.

A month prior of Lunas Campos' death, 49-year-old Guatemalan immigrant Francisco Gaspar-Andres died at a nearby hospital; he was a detainee at Camp East Montana. ICE said medical staff attributed his death to "natural liver and kidney failure.”

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan called for a "complete and transparent investigation" into what happened to Diaz after his death was announced Sunday.

"We deserve answers," said Flanagan.

US Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who last year expressed concern about the US government's deal with a small private business, Acquisition Logistics LLC, to run Camp East Montana, said the detention center "must be shut down immediately," warning that "two deaths in one month means conditions are worsening."

— (@)

After the administration awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Acquisition Logistics to build and operate the camp, lawmakers and legal experts raised questions about the decision, considering the small company had no listed experience running detention centers, its headquarters was listed as a Virginia residential address, and the president and CEO of the company did not respond to media inquiries.

"It's far too easy for standards to slip," Escobar told PBS Newshour after touring the facility. "Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility."

In September, ICE's own inspectors found at least 60 violations of federal standards, with employees failing to treat and monitor detainees' medical conditions and the center lacking safety procedures and methods for detainees to contact their lawyers.

Across all of ICE's detention facilities, 2025 was the deadliest year for immigrant detainees in more than two decades, with 32 people dying in the agency's centers.

After Diaz's death was reported Sunday, former National Nurses United communications adviser Charles Idelson said that "ICE detention centers are functioning like death camps."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/21151

*When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents brought a detainee to a California hospital in 2025, they didn’t know they would leave empty-handed. Using capacity they built over months of organizing, Healthcare workers intervened quickly to protect and ultimately free their patient from the clutches of federal secret police.

Based on an interview with local healthcare worker, organizer, and Black Rose/Rosa Negra member Morgan****,*** this article breaks down how hospital staff launched campaigns and won victories that pushed ICE out of their workplace. Although steps are listed numerically, in reality they feed off and into one another at any given time.

by Juan Verala Luz

1. Build the Culture

---

A big hurdle to pushing law enforcement out of healthcare settings is the normalized culture of collaboration. “We have all different kinds of cops in the hospital all the time,” Morgan explained. Like many similar settings, management forces staff to cooperate with police mandates often “beyond what is necessary in the law.” For example, workplace policies prevent workers from helping patients in custody to contact their families. Those kinds of requirements are often taken-for-granted.

Trump’s barbarous attacks on immigrant communities created openings to challenge that. In a “sanctuary city” that serves many immigrants, management quickly put out basic know-your-rights information about warrantless entries and other gross violations of the law. Without clear procedures for responding to real-world scenarios, staff across the health center felt this inadequate response left them unprepared and confused about what to do if ICE came to the hospital.

A core of organizers seized the opportunity to reshape the culture. They passed out informational flyers about interacting with ICE and partnered with local legal clinics to host healthcare-specific “Know Your Rights” training. They also adapted for their workplace “What to Do if ICE Comes” badge buddies–a small card outlining common procedures, codes, and other need-to-know parts of the job that people could wear everyday under their hospital IDs.1

Questioning ICE’s presence with everyday parts of the job not only increased awareness about workplace rights, but it also permitted coworkers to imagine a different way of interacting with them. It showed one another that they could have the workplace they want–one that protects themselves and their patients.

2. Grow Networks and Strengthen Relationships

---

The core of organizers didn’t materialize out of thin air. The group, which drew in “a mix of people with different jobs like medical residents, nurses, dieticians, physical therapists,” and more, met in no small measure thanks to years of organizing against the genocide of the Palestinian people. A local Healthcare Workers for Palestine chapter deepened their connections with each other, other healthcare workers in the region, and allies outside their industry.

Following Trump’s reelection, they began planning how they could keep ICE out of their workplace. This small group couldn’t stop ICE on their own, but they knew that their committee’s diverse membership could activate coworkers across their institution.

To do that, they began adding all their coworkers to a WhatsApp chat. Here, they invited one another to upcoming “Know Your Rights” training and planned to alert each other if ICE is in the building. This chat is generally open for any coworker to join with a focus on spreading the word instead of tight security. There is one exception: they keep out management because, however well-meaning individuals are, “they have different pressures on them than we do, and some of those pressures come from above that are going to be reactionary forces.”

Relationships didn’t stop at the hospital doors though. Healthcare workers developed ties with a neighborhood rapid-response network. They also learned from colleagues at nearby facilities frequented by ICE about how they created a powerful policy to protect patients in ICE custody. And connections with lawyers who trained staff about their rights would later provide pro bono legal support for a patient’s release from ICE.

3. Set Goals and Make Demands

---

Growing arrests at courthouses and brutal conditions in ICE detention centers put more detainees in medical emergencies. In 2025, the deadliest year to date, 32 people died in ICE custody. Although Morgan’s coworkers hadn’t treated patients in ICE custody during this uptick, they didn’t want to panic when they inevitably arrived at the hospital’s doorsteps. With a wider reach and a growing culture of resisting ICE, coworkers began setting goals, formulating demands for management, and committing themselves to defending one another and their patients.

“Our real demand is that we should not even allow ICE in our hospital at all,” Morgan emphasized. But because that was “going to be a harder one to win,” hospital workers began formulating interim demands. In the medium term, healthcare organizers drafted a workplace policy that would restrict the agency’s reach within their hospital. Modeled after another California hospital’s policy shared with them through organizing networks, their version demanded protections to help detained patients exercise basic, constitutional rights, like access to legal counsel, and allow them to contact families about medical concerns.

Even if management wouldn’t accept the policy wholecloth, healthcare workers promised one another they would act as if it was in place. They readied a petition that would urge management to provide the protections they wanted for their patients.

Demands gave shape to the growing anti-ICE sentiments among hospital workers, showing one another that they weren’t alone and, together, they could envision the workplace they wanted.

4. Act Courageously, Ethically, and Innovatively to Win

---

The first time ICE brought in a sick patient, on-duty personnel pinged the WhatsApp chat about agents’ presence. Attending staff and coworkers “immediately started putting pressure on management,” gathering hundreds of signatures in a few short hours on the prepared petition. Despite the healthcare workers’ best efforts, administrators failed to act and the patient was eventually discharged back to ICE.

Bolstered by their powerful but ultimately unsuccessful efforts, organizers pushed even harder for a clear, strong anti-ICE policy. To turn up the pressure, they scheduled a public forum about the dangers of ICE in the hospital where they invited management to answer for the facility’s inadequate protections. This proved a turning point in their struggle.

Shortly before the forum began, management quietly posted to the hospital’s intranet the demanded “ICE interactions” policy. Emboldened, healthcare workers and community organizers grilled management about further strengthening the protections. They had no better proof-positive of their needs than when ICE hauled in another patient that same day.

Upon the patient’s arrival, hospital staff moved quickly. They sought support from lawyers they got to know from the healthcare worker legal trainings who, with little hesitation, agreed to take on the patient’s case. Meanwhile, attending physicians provided maximum care to the patient, ordering numerous tests that slowed their discharge. Those delays allowed lawyers to petition the court that the patient was unlawfully detained – an injunction the judge upheld. Beaming with pride, Morgan concluded “the ICE officer who had been accompanying them had to walk out of the hospital and leave and this person was able to be discharged back to their home.”

On their own, demands weren’t enough to change hospital policy and secure their patient’s freedom. Collective action grounded in cunning, courage, and a commitment to control over their workplace–and, in a small measure, society writ large–carried hospital workers to victory.

5. Keep Fighting

---

Morgan—and an increasing share of coworkers—won’t isolate ICE from other police agencies. “I think the goal should be to make our policies for anyone incarcerated to have these protections.” Federal agents and municipal police alike, they proclaim, should be kept out of their hospital. Hospital workers have issued another deadline for management to update all their policies on interactions with law enforcement, and are ready to act if they don’t respond.
To be certain, these gains build on nearly a decade of organizing. Without rank-and-file union reformers challenging stodgy leadership with a successful strike that secured a stronger contract years ago, many of today’s organizers would not have gotten to know one another. Without prior workplace organizing and struggle against genocide in Gaza, many healthcare workers would not have come to know they can reshape the culture and policies at their institutions.

Even though you and coworkers may not have been building for years, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still win nor that you shouldn’t start fighting today. ICE is not slowing its fascistic spread–and neither should our defense of each other, patients. As Morgan reminds us:

You’re not always going to win things. When you don’t, you’re making relationships and learning skills that you can use next time to win things. It feels impossible right now, but you definitely will not win anything unless you fight.

Notes

1. Although not used in this campaign, we have collected some examples of the kinds of flyers, know-your-rights information, training, and badge buddies described above. ↩︎

If you enjoyed this piece, we also recommend Organizing to Keep ICE Out of Your Workplace and How Everyday Organizing Stopped Trump’s Bay Area ICE Surge.

The post Healthcare Workers Freed a Patient From ICE – You Can Do the Same appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

From Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20442

A Texas medical examiner is reportedly planning to classify the recent death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last summer, as a homicide, marking the latest apparent abuse at the hands of an agency that has been rampaging lawlessly through US communities at the behest of President Donald Trump.

As the Washington Post reported Friday, "An employee of El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner told Lunas Campos’ daughter this week that, subject to results of a toxicology report, the office is likely to classify the death as a homicide, according to a recording of the conversation."

"The employee said a doctor there 'is listing the preliminary cause of death as asphyxia due to neck and chest compression,' which means Lunas Campos did not get enough oxygen because of pressure on his neck and chest," the newspaper added.

In an interview with the Post, one detainee at the sprawling El Paso detention center known as Camp East Montana said he witnessed "at least five guards struggling with Lunas Campos after he refused to enter the segregation unit, complaining that he didn’t have his medications."

The eyewitness, according to the Post, "said he saw guards choking Lunas Campos and heard Lunas Campos repeatedly saying, 'No puedo respirar'—Spanish for 'I can't breathe.' Medical staff tried to resuscitate him for an hour, after which they took his body away."

Jeanette Pagan Lopez, the mother of two of Lunas Campos' children, told the Post that she was contacted by agents from the FBI who said they were investigating Lunas Campos' death.

“I know it’s a homicide,” Lopez told the newspaper. “The people that physically harmed him should be held accountable.”

US Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, wrote in response to the Post's reporting that "Geraldo Lunas Campos may have been murdered."

"So disturbing," Barragán added. "Republicans’ excessive funding of ICE and DHS, along with Trump’s pardons and claims of absolute immunity, are literally killing people. Republicans remain silent or are openly OK with this."

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which has lied relentlessly about recent killings and other incidents involving ICE, claimed in a statement that Lunas Campos died after trying to take his own life.

“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness. Medical staff was immediately called and responded. After repeated attempts to resuscitate him, EMTs declared him deceased on the scene.”

Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban immigrant, was detained last summer and died on January 3. Citing court records, the Post noted that "Lunas Campos was convicted of several crimes, including for aggravated assault with a weapon and, in 2003, first-degree sexual abuse involving a child under 11 years old."

"Be ready for the Trump admin to highlight this guy's lengthy criminal record to eliminate any sympathy for him, even though none of that justifies being choked to death by guards at a detention center," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

Lunas Campos is one of four people to die in ICE custody so far in 2026.

“ICE kills—full stop," said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network. "Whether ICE is targeting people in the streets, where they work or live or behind closed doors in one of its nearly 200 abuse-ridden detention centers across the country—ICE is an inherently violent agency jeopardizing families and community safety."

Camp East Montana, where Lunas Campos was reportedly killed, is a huge makeshift tent camp at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas.

Last month, the ACLU and other human rights groups demanded the immediate closure of the facility for immigrant detention, citing "accounts of horrific conditions, including beatings and sexual abuse by officers against detained immigrants, beatings and coercive threats to compel deportation to third countries, medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of meaningful access to counsel, among other rights violations."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20472

What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We’re all finding out.

The plan was never to become an ICE agent.

The plan, when I went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Career Expo in Texas last August, was to learn what it was like to apply to be an ICE agent. Who wouldn't be curious? The event promised on-the-spot hiring for would-be deportation officers: Walk in unemployed, walk out with a sweet $50k signing bonus, a retirement account, and a license to brutalize the country's most vulnerable residents without consequence---all while wrapped in the warm glow of patriotism.

At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America's Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82^nd^ Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé---one which omitted my current occupation---I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.

The catch, however, is that there's only one "Laura Jedeed" with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country's general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump's unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you'll find articles with titles like "What I Saw in LA Wasn't an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot" and "Inside Mike Johnson's Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution." Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.

In short, I figured---at least back then---that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE's application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.

The ICE expo in the Dallas area, where my application journey began, required attendees to register for a specific time slot, presumably to prevent throngs of eager patriots from flooding the event and overwhelming the recruiters. But when I showed up at 9 a.m., the flood was notably absent: there was no line to check in and no line to go through security. I walked down nearly empty hallways, past a nearly empty drug testing station, and into the event proper, where a man directed me to a line to wait in for an interview. I took my spot at the end; there were only six people ahead of me.

While I waited, I looked around the ESports Stadium Arlington---an enormous blacked-out event space optimized for video game tournaments that has a capacity of 2,500. During my visit, there couldn't have been more than 150 people there.

Hopeful hires stood in tiny groups or found seats in the endless rows of cheap folding chairs that faced a stage ripped straight from Tron. Everything was bright-blue and lit-up and sci-fi-future angular. Above the monolithic platform hung three large monitors. The side monitors displayed static propaganda posters that urged the viewer to DEFEND THE HOMELAND and JOIN ICE TODAY, while the large central monitor played two short videos on loop: about 10 minutes of propaganda footage, again and again and again.

After about 15 minutes of waiting, an extraordinarily normal-looking middle-aged woman waved me forward. I sat across the black folding table from her on one of the uncomfortable black chairs. She asked for my name and date of birth, then whether I am over 40 (I am 38). Did I have law enforcement experience? No. Military experience? Yes. Did I retire from the military at 20+ years, or leave once my enlistment was up? The latter, I told her, then repeated my carefully rehearsed, completely true explanation for why the résumé I'd submitted had a large gap. "I had a little bit of a quarter-life crisis. Ended up going to college for part of that time, and since then I've been kind of---gig economy stuff."

She was spectacularly uninterested: "OK. And what location is your preference?"

After some dithering, I settled on my home state of New York. That was the last question; the entire process took less than six minutes. The woman took my résumé and placed the form she'd been filling out on top. "They are prioritizing current law enforcement first. They're going to adjudicate your résumé," she told me. If my application passed muster, I'd receive an email about next steps, which could arrive in the next few hours but would likely take a few days. I left, thanked her for her time, and prepared to hear back never.

The expo event was part of ICE's massive recruitment campaign for the foot soldiers it needs to execute the administration's dream of a deportation campaign large enough to shift America's demographic balance back whiteward. You've probably seen evidence of it yourself: ICE's "Defend the homeland" propaganda is ubiquitous enough to be the Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster of our day, though somewhere in there our nation lost the plot about the correct posture toward Nazis.

When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event's lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That's the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.

Many of ICE's critics worry that the agency is hoovering up pro-Trump thugs---Jan. 6 insurrectionists, white nationalists, etc.---for a domestic security force loyal to the president. The truth, my experience suggests, is perhaps even scarier: ICE's recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who's joining the agency's ranks. We're all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into America's streets.

And we are all, collectively, discovering just how deadly of an arrangement that really is.

At the end of my brief interview, the recruiter mentioned I could talk to a current deportation officer about what the job would be like. There was no line to talk to a deportation officer (did I mention how empty the place was?) and so I walked up, introduced myself to one of them, and asked about day-to-day duties.

I shouldn't expect to hit the streets right away, the agent told me. Odds were good I'd get a support position first---something like the Criminal Alien Program office. "Let's say a local police officer arrests someone out in the field for a DUI. Extremely common. Or beating their wife or whatever---all the typical crimes they commit," he said. (The "they" here being "undocumented immigrants," and while it's extremely difficult to measure, evidence suggests that "they" actually commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born citizens.)

If the cops suspect they're dealing with an immigrant who doesn't have permanent legal status, they alert ICE, whose agents conduct interviews and run record checks.
If this preliminary investigation suggests that status, the person ends up in the Criminal Alien Program office for processing---which is where I would come in. "What you see on TV, with us arresting people and doing all kinds of crazy things, that's maybe 10 percent. The other 90 percent is essentially doing a bunch of paperwork," the agent said. "It takes a lot to remove somebody from the United States. Some people are subject to due process."

The officer ran down other departments I might end up in: Prosecutions, Removal Coordination Unit, or Detention. The point being that I should not expect to be a badass street officer on Day 1. "I have so many guys that come over to me, they're like, 'I'm gonna put cuffs on somebody. I'm gonna arrest somebody.' Well, you need to master this first and then we'll see about getting you on the field."

I told him that I was fine with office work---with my analyst background, it seemed like a better fit for my skill set anyway. His attitude shift was subtle, but instant and unmistakable; this was the wrong attitude and the wrong answer. "Just to be upfront, the goal is to put as many guns and badges out in the field as possible," he said.

The agent then told me a bit about his own background. Like me, he enlisted straight out of high school, then got out and vowed to get as far away from the violence of the military as possible. Like a lot of veterans, he had trouble assimilating into the civilian world. "After about six months, I was like, 'These people aren't like me. I want to be around like-minded people.' " He found his way into law enforcement. That was well over a decade ago---he's on his way to a very comfortable retirement, and he enjoys the work. "I like that instant gratification of Hey, that guy committed this crime, these X, Y, and Z, he's not even supposed to be here," he said.

I do not agree with his framing, but have no trouble understanding the appeal. Hell, it's why I enlisted in the first place. Thankfully, Afghanistan beat it out of me. If I believed what he believed, I would surely do the same thing he's doing.

I thanked him for the information and time, shook his hand, and took a seat on one of those uncomfortable folding chairs. I had a few hours before my flight back to New York City, and it made more sense to hang out than to flee the building and get good and airport drunk, regardless of how desperately I would have preferred the latter. Instead, I settled in to do what everyone does at the DMV: check my phone and people-watch. The aspiring officers fall broadly into three categories: thick-necked law enforcement types who look like they do steroids but don't know how to work out, bearded spec-ops wannabes who look like they take steroids and do know how to work out, and dorks. Pencil-necked misfits. I couldn't tell whether there were more white or Hispanic people waiting for their email, but it was close. A few Black applicants rounded out the overwhelmingly male group.

I'd been sitting around for about an hour when the video suddenly stopped and a bearded man in a black suit stepped onto the stage. He did not introduce himself---we were, I gathered, supposed to already know who he was---but it became clear he's a senior agent of some sort. "I figured it would be best if I break up the same video you've been watching for the last four hours," he said, and offered to answer any questions we might have.

One person asked about work/life balance, which the agent said is possible but not the route he's chosen. Someone else wanted to know about travel opportunities and he talked about the many places he's gone as part of the job.

Every other question during the 45 minutes the agent stood onstage pertained to the hiring process or what we could expect in training. Law enforcement types seemed especially concerned about the painful parts: Would they have to get pepper sprayed again? Would they have to get shot with a taser if they'd already qualified? Yes and probably not, respectively. The agent took the opportunity to gush about ICE's new state-of-the-art semi-automatic tasers and brand-new pepper-ball guns. "It's mostly very liberal cities---San Francisco, Los Angeles---where groups will come and try to stop ICE officers from arresting somebody. They're like, 'We're going to form a human wall against you,' " he said. "When they do that, you can just pop 'em up. Let them disperse and cry about it."

When, during a moment of protracted silence, the agent threatened to put the video back on if no one had questions, I asked about harassment and doxing. "We will prosecute people to the fullest extent of the law," he assured me, "and then people like myself will go on TV and publicly talk about how that person is now in prison to dissuade other people from doing it."

As empty as the place had been when I'd arrived, it was even emptier by the time the senior agent ended the Q&A. Somebody vastly overestimated the number of Americans willing to take a job brutalizing and disappearing hard-working men and women---even with a potential $50K bonus, even in this economy.

That may have something to do with what happened to me next.

I completely missed the email when it came. I'd kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but I'd grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.

"Please note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment," the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps I'd need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driver's license information, an affidavit that I've never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: "If you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below."

As I mentioned, I'd missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.

And that might have been where this all ended---an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox---if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. "Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process," it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) "Please complete your required pre-employment drug test**.**"

The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadn't smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I'd waste a small piece of ICE's gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I'd failed.

Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.

Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me---not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it---ICE had apparently offered me a job.

According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was "EOD"---Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to "Onboarding" and a helpful pop-up appeared. "Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!"

I clicked through to my application tracking page. They'd sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. "Welcome to Ice. ... Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025."

By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.

Perhaps, if I'd accepted, they would have demanded my pre-employment paperwork, done a basic screening, realized their mistake, and fired me immediately. And yet, the pending and upcoming tasks list suggested a very different outcome. My physical fitness test had been initiated on Oct. 6, it said: three days in the future. My medical check had apparently been completed on Oct. 6.

The portal also listed my background check as completed on Oct. 6. Had I preemptively passed? Was ICE seriously going to let me start training without finding out the first thing about me? I reached out to ICE for an explanation, but never heard back.

The only thing left for me to do was press the green "Accept" button on the home page. And maybe I should have. Maybe no one would have ever checked my name and I could have written the story of a lifetime. Or maybe the agency infamous for brutalizing and disappearing people with no regard for the law or basic human rights would have figured out exactly who I am while I was in one of their facilities with no way to escape. I'm not actually a domestic terrorist sent straight from Antifa headquarters, but to a paranoid fascist regime increasingly high on their own supply, I sure look like one on paper. Self-preservation won out.

I hit "Decline," closed my browser, and took a long, deep breath.

What are we to make of all this? To be clear, I barely applied to ICE. I skipped the steps of the application process that would have clued the agency in on my lack of fitness for the position. I made no effort to hide my public loathing of the agency, what it stands for, and the administration that runs it. And they offered me the job anyway.

It's possible that I'm an aberration---perhaps I experienced some kind of computer glitch that affected my application and no one else's. But given all of the above, it seems far more likely that ICE is running an extremely leaky ship when it comes to recruitment.

With no oversight and with ICE concealing its agents' identities, it'll be extremely difficult for us to know.

There's a temptation to take some comfort in ICE's sloppiness. There's a real argument here that an agency so inept in its recruitment will also be inept at training people and carrying out its mission. We're seeing some very sloppy police work from ICE, including an inability to do basic things like throw someone down and cuff them. On some level, all of this is a reminder that their takeover is neither total nor inevitable.

But if they missed the fact that I was an anti-ICE journalist who didn't fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing? How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other people's homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organizations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status? How manyremoveds and pedophiles are working in ICE detention centers with direct and unsupervised access to a population that will be neither believed nor missed? How are we to trust ICE's allegedly thorough investigations of the people they detain and deport when they can't even keep their HR paperwork straight?

And if they're not going to screen me out, what hope is there of figuring out which recruit might one day turn into a trigger-happy agent who would forget that law enforcement officers are trained not to stand in front of vehicles, get jumpy, and shoot a 37-year-old woman to death on the streets of Minneapolis?

That's exactly what happened last week, and why Renee Good will never have a 38^th^ birthday, and why her children will never again be hugged by their mother.

By all appearances, the only thing ICE is screening for is a desire to work for ICE: a very specific kind of person perfectly suited for the kind of mission creep we are currently seeing. Good's murder is not an isolated incident; the American Civil Liberties Union reports a nationwide trend of ICE pointing guns at, brutalizing, and even detaining citizens who stop to film them. A Minneapolis pastor who protested ICE by chanting "We are not afraid" was detained at gunpoint by an agent who reportedly asked him: "Are you afraid now?"

I am. We all should be.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20588

Several Democratic lawmakers on Friday convened a hearing in Minnesota to hear testimony from local officials and residents about the impact that the surge of federal immigration agents in the state has had on their lives.

The hearing, which was organized by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), featured elected leaders such as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, as well as testimony from US citizens who had been taken into custody by federal agents.

Patty O'Keefe, a 36-year-old US citizen, told lawmakers that her encounter with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began when she and a friend had received a report that legal observers in her neighborhood were being pepper sprayed.

She said they found the agents and began following them in their car while honking their horn and blowing whistles to alert others in the area to their presence.

The ICE agents subsequently stopped their vehicle, surrounded the car, discharged pepper spray into it, then smashed the car's windows and dragged out both O'Keefe and her friend.

O'Keefe said that after being detained by agents, they started taunting her, with one agent telling her, "You guys got to stop obstructing us, that's why this lesbian bitch is dead," an apparent reference to Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent last week.

O'Keefe said this comment left her feeling "rage and sadness," while also asking why anyone would say something like that about the victim of a horrific killing.

"Then I remembered that cruelty and humiliation were probably the point," she said.

O'Keefe was then taken to the BH Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul, where she was put into leg shackles and placed in a detention area that had been reserved for US citizens.

While in detention for eight hours at the building, she said she saw people being subjected to inhumane conditions.

"I saw holding cells with over a dozen people each, and a large holding cell of between 40 to 50 people," she said. "Most of the people there were Hispanic and East African, both women and men. Some cells had no room for people to sit or lay down. Most people I saw were staring straight ahead, not talking, despondent and grief stricken. I know I'll never forget their faces."

Mubashir, a 20-year-old US citizen of Somali descent, recounted his detention by federal immigration agents in December, when officers tackled him and took him into custody even though he offered to show them his identification proving his citizenship.

"I repeated, 'I'm a citizen, I have an ID,' the agent kept saying, 'That don't matter,'" Mubashir explained.

Like O'Keefe, Mubashir was taken to the St. Paul ICE detention facility, where he was shackled. Unlike O'Keefe, however, he was told that he was going to be deported despite having proof of his legal status.

Eventually, Mubashir was able to show a photo of his passport card to an official at the facility who instructed officers to release him from custody.

"It is difficult to believe this happened to me," he said. "I knew the president had made statements about Somali people and there would be additional ICE officers in the Twin Cities... But I did not think this would happen to me or someone in my family. We are all United States citizens, so we should not be at risk of being jailed or deported by ICE."

Mubashir also emphasized that "my citizenship did not protect me from being physically detained and hurt by ICE agents."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20276

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday was called out for making a blatantly false claim about whether federal immigration agents are arbitrarily demanding that Minnesota residents provide evidence of their legal status.

While speaking with reporters outside the White House, Noem was asked about videos that have emerged from Minneapolis showing federal agents asking passersby to give proof of citizenship.

"Is that targeted enforcement and are you advising Americans to carry proof of citizenship?" a reporter asked Noem.

"In every situation we are doing targeted enforcement," Noem said. "If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they're there, and having them validate their identity. That's what we've always done."

In reality, there have been multiple alleged instances of federal agents asking Minneapolis residents for proof of citizenship that were completely unrelated to any "targeted" enforcement operation.

A lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Monday documented numerous such instances, including one where federal agents surrounded and questioned a driver at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport about his citizenship, and another where US Department of Homeland Security agents approached a team of Minneapolis Public Works employees and questioned them on their citizenship.

A Monday report from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, meanwhile, quoted a St. Paul resident who said federal agents knocked on her door and asked her to help them "identify Hmong and Asian households" in her neighborhood.

Given the extensive evidence of federal agents hounding Minnesotans for proof of their citizenship, many critics were quick to call out Noem for dishonesty.

"This is just a lie," wrote Democratic strategist Matt McDermott in a social media post. "There has been extensive reporting on ICE doing random door-to-door neighborhood patrols looking for anyone who is not white."

NPR reporter Sergio Martínez-Beltrán countered Noem's claims by describing an incident he saw first-hand.

"A few days ago, I witnessed how immigration agents stopped at a parking lot and asked drivers charging their electric cars for proof of citizenship or legal status," he explained.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that Noem's claims were false not just in the context of Minneapolis, but of other US cities as well.

"In Los Angeles, for example, DHS officers outright admitted to doing 'roving patrols,' which are NOT targeted," he explained.

Another first-hand account was given by Dan Mihalopoulos, an investigative reporter at Chicago-based public radio station WBEZ.

"Last month, I saw Border Patrol roll up to random Asians in the parking lot of a Costco in Illinois asking if they are citizens," he said. "They backed off a woman who spoke English without an accent. But a Chinese shopper had to show his green card to agents."

Democrats on the US House Homeland Security Committee accused Noem of supporting racial profiling by law enforcement.

"If you’re Black or brown, Kristi Noem thinks it’s fine to stop you, cuff you, and demand proof you’re American," they wrote. "Republicans support racial profiling. They want it in your neighborhood."

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