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Judge Fred Biery lambasts Trump’s ‘ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented’ mass deportation campaign

A federal judge has ordered the release of a five-year-old boy and his father who were detained by federal immigration agents from their driveway in suburban Minneapolis and sent to a detention center in Texas.

In his ruling on Saturday, District Judge Fred Biery delivered a brutal assessment of Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign and an “ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas” that appears to require “traumatizing children.”

Liam Conejo Ramos was taken into federal custody from the driveway of his family’s home last week after officers arrested his father Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, who is seeking asylum in the United States. They were sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas, where the preschooler is reportedly sick, lethargic and asking for his mother, according to his family and lawmakers who visited him this week.

The judge condemned the administration’s apparent “ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence” and Thomas Jefferson’s warnings against “a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation.”

Hundreds of protesters gathered in a central square in Milan on Saturday, demanding that U.S. ICE agents assisting with security at the Winter Olympics leave Italy.

Many of the Italians who chanted and blew whistles near the grand stone arch in the Piazza XXV Aprile said they had been horrified and angered by images and videos on social media showing ICE agents operating violently in Minneapolis.

"All the videos are public and everyone can see what's happening," said Bruna Scanziani, age 18, who held up a sign with photographs of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, two American citizens killed by ICE agents. "The perception of America has changed."

Liam Ramos, 5, isn’t the only child in detention. Teachers and parents describe kids being hunted by federal agents.

School leaders are caught in the middle of this, trying to keep providing kids with a safe space to learn as their friends disappear and children cry about not knowing whether their parents will be home when they get off the bus.

Even Zena Stendvik, the superintendent of the Columbia Heights public school district, often patrols outside with parents and staff.

“I stopped wearing my high heels to work,” Stendvik told HuffPost. “I wear my boots to work, because I have had to run out onto a corner or into the back of the high school.”

In recent weeks, the Trump administration swiftly attempted to justify the shootings of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Prettiby claiming they were carrying out acts of domestic terrorism in the moments before they were killed. They made these claims without waiting for investigations to unfold, and in spite of conflicting video evidence and witness accounts.

As Martinez's case and others demonstrate, these statements are part of a much broader, months-long communication pattern by the administration on immigration related issues.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly made unproven or incorrect claims when describing immigrants targeted for deportation, U.S. citizens arrested while protesting the administration's immigration crackdown and people who simply drove through areas where an immigration enforcement operation was going on.

On social media, the administration has accused people of violently attacking federal immigration agents or impeding operations. In many instances, criminal charges were quietly dropped or never filed.

France is to enshrine in law the end of so-called "conjugal rights" – the notion that marriage means a duty to have sex.

A bill approved on Wednesday in the National Assembly adds a clause to the country's civil code to make clear that "community of living" does not create an "obligation for sexual relations".

The proposed law also makes it impossible to use lack of sexual relations as an argument in fault-based divorce.

Though unlikely to have a major impact in the courts, supporters hope the law will help deter marital rape.

‘ICE Out of Everywhere’ demonstrations, including vigils and marches, follow Friday’s national strike

More than 300 demonstrations are expected to take place across all 50 states and Washington DC, today, in what organizers are calling “ICE Out of Everywhere”.

Organizers, led by the national grassroots organization 50501, say today’s protests are a response to a series of recent deaths involving federal immigration agents, including the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month, the homicide of Geraldo Campos in an immigration detention facility in Texas and the shooting of Keith Porter Jr by an off-duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Los Angeles.

Activists said the killings reflect what they see as a broader pattern of excessive force, detention abuses and the militarization of immigration enforcement.

Washington and Buenos Aires are working on an agreement to allow the U.S. to deport immigrants from other nations to the South American country.

The United States and Argentina are in advanced talks to sign an agreement that would allow the U.S. to deport immigrants from other countries to the South American nation, according to two people familiar with the negotiations and U.S. government records obtained by The New York Times.

The negotiations come as the Trump administration has mobilized a sweeping and aggressive deportation effort, including deploying immigration officers to U.S. cities, sometimes with fatal consequences.

The talks also come as the Argentine government has escalated anti-immigrant rhetoric under President Javier Milei, including claiming to have made record numbers of expulsions and sending the police on immigration enforcement operations in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the capital.

A Russian cargo vessel that spent 14 hours anchored less than a mile from five transatlantic undersea data cables had to be chased out of British waters by a Royal Navy attack helicopter this week, The Telegraph reports.

The incident, reported on Tuesday, is a sign of the growing importance of undersea infrastructure, which links nations and carries vast amounts of communication data, and the increased vigilance over its protection.

Donald Trump’s latest attempt to sidestep the United Nations through his new Board of Peace appears to have inadvertently backfired after major world powers rejected U.S. aspirations for it to have a larger international mandate beyond the Gaza ceasefire and recommitted their support for the over 80-year-old global institution.

The board to be chaired by Trump was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing his plan for Gaza’s future. But the Republican president’s ambitions have expanded to envisioning the board as a mediator of worldwide conflicts, a not very subtle attempt to eclipse the Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security.

The board’s charter also caused some dismay by stating Trump will lead it until he resigns, with veto power over its actions and membership.

Intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of federal immigration officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents initially claimed Alberto Castañeda Mondragón had tried to flee while handcuffed and “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall,” according to court documents filed by a lawyer seeking his release.

But staff members at Hennepin County Medical Center determined that could not possibly account for the fractures and bleeding throughout the 31-year-old’s brain, said three nurses familiar with the case.

France’s finance minister is urging French tech company Capgemini to be fully transparent over a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as calls grow for scrutiny of the agency’s role in enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

The company, which employs more than 340,000 people in more than 50 countries, signed a contract with ICE in December via its subsidiary Capgemini Government Solutions (CGS).

“I urge Capgemini to shed light, in an extremely transparent manner, on its activities, on this policy, and undoubtedly to question the nature of these activities,” Finance Minister Roland Lescure told French lawmakers late Tuesday.

Effort to manipulate killing of Alex Pretti collapsed after footage torpedoed ‘domestic terrorist’ claim – could this be a turning point?

Facing a widespread backlash from the public, Democrats and even his own Republican party, Trump was forced into a partial retreat, distancing himself from efforts by aides such as Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, to demonise Pretti, and shuffling leadership of immigration operations in Minneapolis.

For once, the president’s reality distortion field – which promised Mexico would pay for his border wall, claimed Covid would disappear “like a miracle”, insisted the 2020 election was stolen, and rewrote the history of the January 6 insurrection – had met its match.

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post warned: “Mr President, the American people didn’t vote for these scenes, and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes.”