acab

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

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

Content warning: intimate partner abuse, police violence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The City chose to put her life in danger”

Chicago police detective Marco Torres, March 14 2024.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A pattern of inaction and retaliation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Often, these investigations take years to complete.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Unraveled via This RSS Feed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to the 911 call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illness and Injuries

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

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

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

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

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

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

He doesn’t know what happened to the man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A Lack of Accountability”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[

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

“Do No Harm”?

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

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

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

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

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

Nwadiuko echoed the concern.

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

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

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12833

Nineteen-year-old Any Lucía López Belloza was detained and deported, despite a lack of removal order, when attempting to head home from Babson College in Boston to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving. “This is the first arrest of its kind I’ve seen,” says her attorney, Todd C. Pomerleau, who says the student has been the victim of “character assassination.” After López Belloza “was taken down near the border on a bus, had shackles around her ankles, chain around her waist, shackles around her wrist,” her family attempted to speak out to the press about the rights violations she suffered. They are now being harassed by law enforcement, as well.

Source

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12015

ICE’s operation against Minnesota’s Somali community is seen not as an immigration raid but as a racist intimidation campaign.

The post U.S. Citizens With Somali Roots Are Carrying Their Passports Amid Minnesota ICE Crackdown appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

Since beginning operation “Midway Blitz” – an aggressive push to arrest immigrants with criminal records in Chicago – Trump’s modern brownshirts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), have unleashed a wave of reactionary violence most recently culminating in an attack on a teacher at a pre-kindergarten school, Rayito del Sol. But the people of Chicago are organizing together to fight back, and you can too.

The entirety of I.C.E’s operation in Chicago has been marked with extrajudicial murders, lies to community officials, illegal detainments, unprovoked street brawls against citizens exercising their right to observe, and the tear-gassing of children in residential areas (a war crime).

I.C.E has been particularly brutal in its attacks around schools, as they have targeted both school officials and parents attempting to drop off or pick up their children in recent weeks, a tactic which resulted in the murder of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez in October. Until recently this tactic of targeting individuals on their way to and from schools was limited to off campus grounds, however, on November 6th I.C.E escalated their assaults on education yet again by detaining a Pre-k teacher who was already inside the Rayito del Sol daycare building and was attempting to go to work. I.C.E did this without a judicial warrant to enter the building, and according to parents interviewed at the school, made the arrest at a time of peak traffic of children and parents, traumatizing many already afraid to go to school due to fears of detention. The educator was then reportedly taken to the Broadview detention facility, which, based on the statements of judge ​​Robert Gettleman in a recent trial, currently is forcing detainees to sleep on the floor or in plastic chairs next to overflowing toilets, and is where I.C.E agents have reportedly been Illegally attempting to force individuals to sign “voluntary” deportation orders without legal counsel present.

Full article

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11912

New Orleans, LA – On Thursday December 4, a crowd of 30 people packed the city council chamber to demand that the city stand up against ICE and Border Patrol operations in the city.

Operation “Swamp Sweep” began in New Orleans and surrounding areas this past Monday, December 1. A host of federal agents have descended on the city, including Gregory Bovino, chief of Border Patrol operations, who also made stops in Chicago and Charlotte earlier this year.

During a rally before the meeting, speakers united on the need to challenge city leadership, including Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, not to collaborate with ICE.

“Children are skipping school because they are afraid of ICE, parents are unable to go to the grocery store, workers are losing their jobs and losing their businesses. And our city councilors have not even put immigration on the agenda!” stated Rory Macdonald of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

After the rally, attendees filed into the meeting. They held paper signs reading “No collaboration with ICE/DHS” and sat together in a large clump in the center of the chambers. The much talked about immigration sweeps were not on the agenda, but residents organized public comment on other items to force council members to face the issue.

From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11743

New Orleans, LA – On Monday, December 1, 100 people rallied in Lafayette Square and marched to City Hall in the pouring rain to oppose Trump’s latest assault on immigrants in Louisiana, dubbed Operation “Swamp Sweep.”

December 1 marked the first day of Swamp Sweep, an anti-immigrant operation that has sent 250 federal agents to Louisiana – specifically to New Orleans and surrounding areas – attempting to make 5000 arrests. This operation mirrors similar federal deployments in cities such as Washington D.C., Memphis and Charlotte. Like other cities, New Orleans showed up to resist the crackdown.

The protest began with a rally featuring speakers from several organizations that are a part of an ad-hoc No Trump, No Troops coalition leading the way in the fight against federal occupation in the city.

“As a New Orleans resident it is my duty to stand up for my undocumented brothers and sisters to fight this terror that is coming down on them right before the holidays. I’ll be damned to have these families broken up in my own city!” said Anthony Franklin, a member of Students for a Democratic Society. Franklin drew direct comparisons between the federal occupation of ICE, Border Patrol, and the National Guard in New Orleans today and repression by the National Guard in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, stating, “We didn’t need the National Guard then, and we don’t need them now!”

From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11416

“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them,” Trump said.

The Trump administration is expanding its immigration raids targeting Somalis in Minneapolis this week, with reports of detentions already made as President Donald Trump spews vitriolic, racist hate against the population of several hundred thousand people in the U.S.

Major outlets, including The New York Times and Associated Press, reported Tuesday that U.S. officials are preparing the raid as a “high-priority sweep.” Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the U.S. The Census Bureau estimates that there is a population of 260,000 Somalis in the U.S., the vast majority of whom were born in the U.S. or are naturalized citizens.

The administration claims it’s targeting “hundreds of undocumented Somali immigrants” in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Officials are deploying roughly 100 officers and agents for the operation.

Sahan Journal reports that local immigrant rights groups have said that they have already witnessed four Somali individuals being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents this week. ICE has also targeted Southeast Asian and Latine people in Minneapolis for arrests.

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11422

The Trump administration on Wednesday launched a major operation against what it said are "criminal illegal aliens" in New Orleans but that critics contend is political theater targeting what the Louisiana city's mayor-elect called people “just trying to survive and do the right thing."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that it launched Operation Catahoula Crunch—which some Trump administration officials are also calling "Swamp Sweep"—because New Orleans is a sanctuary city that refuses to cooperate with the anti-immigrant crackdown ordered by President Donald Trump.

The blitz—which began on the same day as a similar operation in Minneapolis and follows federal invasions of cities including Charlotte; Chicago; Los Angeles; Memphis; Portland, Oregon; and Washington, DC—is expected to involve at least hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops and reportedly aims for 5,000 arrests in Louisiana and Mississippi.

"Sanctuary policies endanger American communities by releasing illegal criminal aliens and forcing DHS law enforcement to risk their lives to remove criminal illegal aliens that should have never been put back on the streets," Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Wednesday.

While McClaughlin claimed the targets of the operation will be "monsters" that "include violent criminals who were released after arrest for home invasion, armed robbery, grand theft auto, andremoved," examination of detention statistics of similar operations in other communities has shown that a large percentage of those swept up have no criminal record.

Academic studies and analyses by both left- and right-wing groups and have repeatedly affirmed that undocumented immigrants commit crime at a dramatically lower rate than native-born US citizens. The libertarian Cato Institute last week published data showing that nearly three-quarters of the 44,882 people booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since October had no criminal conviction and just 5% had been convicted of violent crimes.

Detention data published last month by the Department of Justice revealed that just 16 out of 614 people arrested in the Chicago area during DHS's Operation Midway Blitz had criminal histories that present a “high public safety risk.”

Elected officials representing New Orleans called the DHS operation an unnecessary and unwelcome stunt.

“It’s one thing if you would have a real strategic approach on going after people... who have criminal felonies or are being accused of some very serious and violent crimes. But that’s not what the public is seeing,” Democratic New Orleans Mayor-elect Helena Morena told the Washington Post on Wednesday.

“They’re seeing people who are just trying to survive and do the right thing—and many of them now have American children who are not causing problems in our community—treated like they are violent, violent criminals," she added.

Moreno's website published a "know your rights" resource page with tips from the National Immigrant Justice Center—a move that could possibly run afoul of a state law cited by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill to threaten felony prosecution of people who nonviolently resist Trump's crackdown. On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the law is a violation of the right to free speech.

Congressman Troy Carter (D-La.) said in a statement Tuesday that “if the administration truly wants to support public safety in New Orleans, they can help us recruit and retain well-trained local officers, invest in modern policing tools, and build transparent partnerships with city and parish leaders."

New Orleans welcomes partnership. We do not welcome occupation.What we are seeing unfold in our community is not public safety; it is a political stunt wrapped in badges, armored vehicles, and military uniforms.

[image or embed]
— Congressman Troy A. Carter, Sr. (@reptroycarter.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 6:35 AM

"Dropping armed federal agents and National Guard troops into our communities without coordination is not cooperation—it is chaos," Carter continued. “As Congressman for New Orleans, I want to be clear: We will always stand for the rule of law. We will always stand for safe communities. And we will always stand against tactics that terrorize families and undermine public trust."

“Our city is not a stage for political theater," he added. "Our people are not props. If the administration wants to be a partner, then act like one; share the plan, respect local law, and work with us, not around us.”

Hundreds of New Orleans residents took to the streets Monday night despite cold, heavy rain to protest the impending DHS operation. Demonstrators shared umbrellas and held signs showing support for immigrants. They chanted messages, including "No ICE! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here!" and "Chinga la Migra"—roughly translated as "Fuck the Border Patrol."

“We have to fight for the rights of everyone. I’m out here to support the immigrant community because it’s an integral part of New Orleans. New Orleans was built by immigrants," protester Jamie Segura told Gambit.

Addressing the crowd at Monday's rally, resident Mitch Gonzalez said: “This is my home. My trans sister was kidnapped and taken from me. Now she has to fight from Mexico, not even her home country, because they’re snatching people.”

Last night, hundreds marched through the streets of New Orleans, in the pouring rain, chanting “No ICE.”

If people are willing to storm the streets after dark in a downpour, it tells you everything about how fed up this country is with state-sanctioned cruelty. pic.twitter.com/kF5KjpU2SX
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) December 2, 2025

As New Orleans residents anticipated the impending operation, mutual aid groups kicked into action in defense of immigrant communities, citing effective rapid response efforts in Chicago.

“What we’ve learned is that even a street witness who is not recording makes these interactions less traumatic and less violent,” Beth Davis, press liaison officer at Indivisible NOLA, told the Washington Post on Wednesday. “So we need to get eyes on these people.”

The New Orleans branch of Democratic Socialists of America—which is hosting training sessions—said ahead of the federal blitz: "We call upon all of New Orleans to get organized and resist this fascist occupation. Protect your neighbors and make these troops and federal agents feel unwelcome in every part of our city."

Other Orleanians prepared by closing or displaying signs telling the federal invaders that they are not welcome.

“We’re going to make sure that any hotel that they stay at, any neighborhood that they try to terrorize, we’re going to bring as many people there to stop them in their tracks, whether it’s in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Chicago—anywhere in this country,” Antonia Mar of Freedom Road Socialist Organization told Verite News during Monday's protest.

Suggesting that the crackdown could backfire, Mar added that "if there’s one thing Trump does well, he gets people organized against him."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6921725

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11197

Newport, Oregon is using public pressure and legal avenues to make the state's sanctuary law a reality in practice.

NEWPORT— The chilly breeze and sandy shores in this Oregon fishing city have shielded this town from scorching heat for decades. But despite the mist in the air, rumors here spread like wildfire.

The latest of those hunches came straight from city officials and has since commanded national attention. Newport City Manager Nina Vetter and Mayor Jan Kaplan signed onto a Nov. 10 statement suggesting the Trump administration could be planning Oregon’s first Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility. The site they suspected? The municipal airport of the city, home to more than 10,000 people.

All they had were a few clues. A life-saving rescue helicopter had just been relocated from the Coast Guard’s Newport Municipal Air facility to a station in North Bend nearly 70 miles away. A defense contractor wanted to lease land in December next to that facility in support of “federal operations.” Job listings showed private companies were recruiting detention officers with ICE experience in Newport.

Fast-forward more than three weeks, and hundreds of Oregonians from Newport and nearby have turned out to two public meetings to voice unanimous opposition to the facility. The state of Oregon has filed a federal lawsuit seeking the return of the helicopter, and a local group supporting fishermen has done the same, winning a 14-day order just before Thanksgiving to return it to Newport. In the meantime, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Gov. Tina Kotek, and U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle have all sought answers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to no avail. From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

Through this narrative, he reflects on what this carceral dispositif reveals about the role of detention centers in migration policy and the broader border regime.

“Closed centers are not an exception; they are the culmination of an ordinary policy of sorting, exclusion, and deterrence.”

If it is already barely bearable to spend an hour visiting such places, one can hardly imagine the scale of the impact that detention has on all those forced to spend weeks or months there under the threat of expulsion.

DOWN WITH CLOSED CENTERS DOWN WITH THE STATE AND BORDERS FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE

A few days ago, I was asked to visit a young Palestinian exile detained for a month at the closed center of Steenokkerzeel (127 bis), after being arrested as he was leaving a pro-Palestine gathering on Place de la Bourse, in the very center of Brussels. This request was explicitly addressed to me as a social sciences researcher working on (anti-)migration dispositifs. The purpose of the visit was to document not only his trajectory and the reasons for his arrest, but also the concrete conditions of detention in one of the central spaces of Belgium’s system for controlling foreigners.

The 127 bis center in Steenokkerzeel is not simply a carceral architecture; it is literally a dispositif—an assemblage of practices, discourses, and techniques intended to make a certain population visible, controllable, and governable: foreigners, undocumented people, the undesirable. Set in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of Zaventem airport, the complex is wedged between the tarmac, the main road, and empty fields. The constant coming and going of planes taking off and landing shapes the soundscape—an ironic reminder of the freedom to circulate reserved for others, and a constant echo of the threat of imminent expulsion.

I have, of course, known these spaces for years—at least in theory: I have studied them, analyzed them in my research. I have also demonstrated in front of them dozens of times, shouted my rage at their gates, waited with others for silhouettes to appear at the windows. Fifteen years ago, during a demonstration in front of the Vottem center, the heavy green metal door was, for once, left low enough to climb over, and the internal gate gave way under collective pressure, revealing for a few minutes the inside of the courtyard and the faces behind the bars. That moment of breach, torn from the logic of control, carried a subversive intensity: a contact, an exchange of glances across the border. We entered the yard, exchanged a few words, a few gestures with the detainees, before all being arrested. It was a moment of rupture, almost of celebration for the young activist I was—a collective irruption into a space the state ordinarily strives to keep out of sight, a crack opened in a confinement dispositif designed never to be crossed.

Today I experienced the reverse version: the inside under control, access administered, hospitality regulated. I thus entered a closed center “legally” for the first time. I hesitate even to say “entered,” as the term sounds cynical in a place specifically designed to prevent any exit. One does not enter a closed center: one dissolves into it, step by step, even as a visitor. Three layers of barriers, identity cards to present, a metal detector, a ban on phones or pens. A kind of inverted ritual of humiliation, in which the visitor submits to an access discipline, a reduction of their capacity to observe, to write, to remember. It is a space that neutralizes, even before contact, any possibility of a free gaze.

That day, three people being visited, five visitors. The visiting room—a container of about sixty square meters—condenses the panoptic logic of the institution. Four cameras, two guards. Visitors sit on one side of the table, with their backs to the guards; detainees sit facing them, always with the guards in their field of vision—a silent reminder of the hierarchy of bodies and gazes. A table-length as an administrative border. A suffocated atmosphere, as if the air itself were under surveillance. Everything is arranged to prevent intimacy, complicity, or any affective circulation: low ceilings, muffled voices, a faint but constant background hum. As if speaking too loudly might open a crack in the fiction of control. The guards, by contrast, laugh loudly, as if mocking the discretion imposed on our voices—laughing loudly, as if to remind us that lightness is not forbidden to them. This spatial dispositif does not merely organize surveillance; it produces a moral asymmetry. The visited person becomes the object of a voice that must stay low, off to the side, under the gaze of power. The visitor, forced into discretion, becomes despite himself part of this theater of control.

From where I sit, I can see only a piece of sky through the windows, two-thirds covered. A beige sky, typically Belgian, without promise. Below, two rows of barbed wire. The green fence. More cameras. From where I sit, the world exists only in two colors: the green of metal and the gray of air.

“It’s not a prison,” people often say to soften the truth. This sentence is accurate in at least one sense: in “camps for foreigners”—the words are cold, but the violence burns—people are confined without trial, without a defined term, without a horizon. A machine for suspending time, for rendering the future hypothetical. Waiting is its main technique of domination—a temporality with no end, indefinitely extendable, without judicial framework, without clear outcome.

Sitting across from me is H., this young Palestinian man of 21 (almost twenty years younger than me). His face undoubtedly bears traces of detention—slightly thinner, drawn features—but still that of a very young man, full of softness: bright eyes, neatly trimmed beard, a timid, discreet smile, restrained but real, clearly happy to receive a visit. I listen to him tell his story, but in a space where nothing lends itself to it—surveilled, noisy, constrained—I almost feel embarrassed to occupy these few minutes of intimacy he should have had with his partner, whom I accompanied to visit him. A youth that could seem ordinary if it hadn’t already been marked by too many exiles. From Gaza, which he left more than two years ago by way of Egypt, then Turkey, then a crossing to Greece. In Greece, he obtained protection status, worked in agriculture, before being cheated by his employer—with no recourse, no salary. So he left again, for Belgium, where an uncle lives. Arriving in Brussels, he worked in a restaurant, began DJ training, made friends, met a partner, started building a life. He also took part in the daily gatherings at Place de la Bourse in support of Palestine, his country ravaged by a genocide whose scale we all know. It was there, in late September, that he was arrested for no apparent reason as he left with his girlfriend.

Since then, he has been locked up. Not in a place, but in a suspension. A space where nothing moves forward, where each day could be the same, where the horizon is administratively blank. He also tells me about Mahmoud, his 26-year-old friend, also Palestinian, arrested under the same conditions, who took his own life in the same center a few days after his incarceration. The words hang in the air, crushed by the drone of the ventilation system and the ambient murmur. Like many others, H. is what is called a “Dublined” person: threatened with expulsion to Greece, the country where his fingerprints were taken. A country where he no longer knows anyone, where he never had a home, and of which he retains memories of violence, deception, ordinary racism. But he has no intention of returning. He says it plainly: what he wants is to stay here. Here, where he works, where he loves, where he sees a future. Expulsion would not be a return but an imposed uprooting. He is not asking for an exception—only to stay where he already lives. H. is here; H. is from here!

As I left the center, I thought I would feel anger. Instead, it was shame that dominated. Not abstract or moral shame, but political shame: the shame of belonging to a society that produces and administers such spaces, fully aware of their deadly causes and effects. A society that created this: rooms without light, separating tables, guards’ laughter, overhanging cameras. Shame at the bureaucracy that turned human suffering into procedure, exile into fault, and solidarity into an offense.

In this place, state xenophobia is not only visible; it is palpable: in the weight of the doors, the gaze of the guards, the neutralization of gesture, the distancing of bodies. Here, everything contributes to producing the foreigner as a figure of radical alterity, as a non-citizen, a non-person. What these walls and green fences do is precisely that: they manufacture foreignness. They turn situated, rooted lives into files to be transferred and bodies to be expelled.

Faced with this cold machinery, what remains? Perhaps, as always, the cry—the one we shout in front of the gates of shame during demonstrations. Perhaps also the need to write, to bear witness, to document this banality of administrative violence. But beyond denunciation, we must think about the continuity between these spaces of confinement and the entire migratory system. Closed centers are not exceptions; they are the culminating points of an ordinary policy of sorting, exclusion, and deterrence. The centers materialize what Belgian and European asylum and migration policy produces in its negative space (that is, less visibly but continuously): an internal, diffuse border, no longer located only at the geographic edges of Europe, but extended into the very interior of cities, institutions, and the law. This border is not only barbed wire. It also resides in files, procedures, police controls, administrative statuses, and legal categories that decide who may circulate, who may work, who may love, who may stay, and who must disappear from view.

Finally, one can simply affirm that this necropolitical machinery is not a fatality and recall simple words: Papers for all. Abolition of closed centers. Freedom of movement.

These are not naïve slogans. They are antidotes to the shame one feels near a closed center.

Freedom for H. Freedom for all those imprisoned!

Shame on me. I didn't check the date!

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/8836

Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to drop criminal charges against Marimar Martinez, a woman who was shot multiple times by a US Border Patrol agent last month in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood.

As reported by local news station WTTW, prosecutors filed a one-page motion asking the court to dismiss the indictment against both Martinez and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, who had been accused of assaulting a federal immigration officer by intentionally ramming their vehicle into the officer's car.

The US attorneys who filed the motion to dismiss offered no further explanation for their decision to drop the case.

In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that Martinez and Ruiz were part of a larger group of people in cars that was trailing immigration officers' vehicles as they conducted operations in Brighton Park.

Prosecutors said that the Border Patrol agent who shot Martinez had been acting in self-defense, and that he had only opened fire after Martinez's car collided with his vehicle.

However, recently uncovered text messages showed the Border Patrol agent apparently bragging about shooting Martinez, as he boasted that he "fired five rounds and she had seven holes" in a message sent to fellow agents.

An attorney representing Martinez claimed last month that he had seen body camera footage that directly undermined the US Department of Homeland Security's claims about how the shooting unfolded.

Gregory Pratt, an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune, said the dismissal of the case was yet more evidence that the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement operations appear to be backfiring.

"This follows several dropped prosecutions against protesters," he wrote on Bluesky. "To say the immigration raids have been all around mess is an understatement."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tennessee-jd-vance-motorcade-crash-b2865928.html

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/7882

ICE wants to build a public-private surveillance loop that transforms everyday online activity into potential evidence.

When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to comb through “Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.,” turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICE’s databases.

The request for information reads like something out of a cyber thriller: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a tiered system of prioritizing high-risk individuals, and the latest software keeping constant watch.

I am a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies and the U.S. federal government. I believe that the ICE request for information also signals a concerning if logical next step in a longer trend, one that moves the U.S. border from the physical world into the digital.

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

A responding Chicago police officer was injured during the incident, officials said...

During the incident, DHS says an unknown male, who was driving a black Jeep, fired shots at agents and fled the scene. DHS also said "an unknown number of agitators" threw a paint can and bricks at Border Patrol vehicles....

"All you want to do is protect everyone who's in here. And you almost feel like for instance for me I feel helpless," Macias said.

Michelle Macias said Saturday was the second time federal agents have come to Carniceria y Taqueria Aguascalientes in recent weeks. Macias says agents came to buy a drink and were denied service.

"There were about 10 agents that walked in here. And our cashier that was working in the morning she told them you need to get out," Macias said. "When Bovino was outside, my dad was telling him, 'Get off my property.'"

Saturday afternoon, warning whistles and vehicle horns once again blared as neighbors say federal agents attempted, unsuccessfully, to detain a man and his 11-year-old niece near 25th and Sawyers.

Tensions flared after CPD was once again called for crowd control when federal agents left after claiming a vehicle rammed their SUV.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/4229

Oakland, CA – On October 23, Trump rushed over 100 federal agents, in a long-threatened “surge” operation, to occupy the San Fransico Bay Area. So, the Community Service Organization, the Oakland Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and over 500 Oakland residents mobilized for an emergency “Ice Out of the Bay” rally and march to take the fight directly to ICE and Border Patrol at the U.S. Coast Guard base where they were stationed.

Trump had warned and later recanted the takeover of San Francisco, but no such promise was made to spare Oakland. The Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity was flashbanged, run over by Customs and Border Patrol trucks, and Reverend Jorge Bautistathe was shot in the face with pepper rounds at the bridge connecting Oakland to the Coast Guard base island.

A mile away, in the plaza of the Fruitvale district, home to Oakland’s largest Chicano/Latino community, protesters gathered in the afternoon. Danny Celaya, with the Community Service Organization of Oakland, started the program by welcoming supporters and introducing speakers.

Romaine Charite, who represented the Oakland branch of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, started with a speech calling the president’s assault on the birthplace of the Black Panther Party “An attack on democratic institutions, an attack on the Chicano/Latino movement for legalization, and an attack on the political power of African Americans who are fed up with white supremacy.” Charite also tied the use of federal agents to crush the Black Liberation Movement, such as during the George Floyd Uprisings under Trump’s last term.

From Fight Back! News via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/4095

Since returning to power, Donald Trump has used the Immigration and Custom Enforcement service (ICE) like his own personal gestapo. In one troubling video, this saw them ‘violently detaining’ a blind man in Portland, Oregon.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Veronica De La Cruz (@veronicadelacruztv) ICE: State violence As […]

As reported by the Hill, ICE agents dragged Quinn Haberl into their facility. In the course of dragging him, the agents dropped him on his head at one point. Following the fall, one agent stopped to collect Haberl’s white cane.

According to the Hill, activists report that Haberl is ‘usually joyful, dancing and having a good time while protesting outside of ICE’. These activists said directly:

It was heartbreaking to see him being dragged the way he was. The visceral reaction was to just not continue videotaping and get the angle, but I just couldn’t keep it out. I had to keep him in frame. I had to keep him in frame, and it just hurt my heart.

The Department of Homeland Security responded as follows:

This rioter was arrested after he blatantly disobeyed law enforcement orders to remain off federal property, obstructed law enforcement, and continued to block the driveway so vehicles could not enter or exit the ICE facility.

Haberl, meanwhile, is reportedly ‘too emotional to speak’.

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/3738

Residents of Chicago's Little Village are angrily lashing out at federal immigration officials who rolled into their neighborhood and detained residents for a second consecutive day.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that US Border Patrol agents, led by Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, stormed into Little Village on Thursday morning wearing military-style gear and gas masks. Witnesses tell the Sun-Times that the agents began by trying to enter a discount mall in the neighborhood, only to realize that it had been closed.

The agents' presence drew the attention of local residents who gathered around them and demanded that they leave their neighborhood.

Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, said that he arrived on the scene and tried to deescalate tensions between the agents and the community. However, he told the Sun-Times that Bovino appeared to be itching for confrontation and was the first federal official to lob a tear gas canister into the crowd.

"I told him not to throw it because all he was going to do was rile people up, but he just smirked at me and threw it anyway,” said Enriquez, who also accused Bovino of leading an "orchestrated" assault on the neighborhood.

At the end of the operation, Border Patrol agents detained five people, including at least two people whom locals said were US citizens.

Illinois state Rep. Edgar González (D-23), who grew up in Little Village, expressed fury at the agents' tactics.

“It pisses me off to see them coming into our neighborhood and terrorizing our people,” he said, while also cautioning residents against getting into violent confrontations with federal officials.

"It’s a normal reaction to want to resist and to be angry,” González said. “I’m angry, too. But we need to remember not to take the bait."

The raid in Little Village came on the same day that Human Rights Watch released a report documenting the use of excessive force by federal immigration officials on protesters, journalists, and volunteer street medics outside of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, Illinois.

According to Human Rights Watch—and reporting published since the Trump administration launched Operation Midway Blitz last month—federal agents have repeatedly lobbed tear gas canisters and fired projectiles into crowds of peaceful protesters who are posing no threat to law enforcement officials.

“This is not crowd control, but a campaign of intimidation,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “Federal agents are using chemical irritants and firing projectiles at peaceful protesters, volunteer street medics, and journalists in broad daylight. The message is clear that dissent will be punished.”

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.