Tag Archives: Eric Lee

Knewz: ICE nabs woman in U.S. for nearly 3 decades in routine traffic stop

Posted on by
Reply

A Guatemala-born woman who has lived in the U.S. since age 9 was nearly deported by ICE after a routine traffic stop in Phoenix, despite three decades of residence and three U.S.-citizen children. Knewz.com has learned that a federal judge later blocked her fast-track removal and ordered her case to be shifted into standard deportation proceedings.

Routine traffic stop escalates to ICE detention

According to court documents, Mirta Amarilis Co Tupul, 38, was pulled over by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer while driving to work at a laundromat in a Latino neighborhood in Phoenix. Her lawyers argued that the stop violated her constitutional rights because officers lacked reasonable suspicion. Following the stop, Co Tupul was transferred first to the Florence Processing Center and then to the Eloy Detention Center, which is about 65 miles from Phoenix. Within days, her attorneys were informed that she had been placed in expedited removal proceedings and could be deported in as little as one to three weeks.

District court judge blocks expedited deportation

The detainee’s legal team submitted vaccination records, affidavits and other evidence to prove her nearly 30 years of continuous presence in the U.S. They also argued that expedited removal did not legally apply to her and that bypassing a court hearing violated her due process rights. Earlier this month, a U.S. district court judge granted an emergency request blocking her deportation. The government agreed in writing not to pursue expedited removal again and moved her into standard removal proceedings, where she will have the opportunity to make her case before an immigration judge.

Attorneys celebrate ruling

Eric Lee, one of Co Tupul’s attorneys, wrote on X, “Good news: Our demand that the court halt Trump from deporting Ms. Co Tupul without due process was just GRANTED by U.S. Dist. Ct. for District of Arizona!” However, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons defended enforcement actions more broadly on Fox News, saying, “I don’t think the American public as a whole realizes just exactly who ICE is going after every day.”

Co Tupul’s case raises concerns

The Donald Trump administration expanded expedited removal in January, allowing immigration officials to apply the process nationwide to undocumented people unable to prove two years of continuous residence. Originally, the procedure was designed for recent arrivals encountered near the border. In Co Tupul’s case, her lawyers said that a deportation officer told her that ICE had a “new policy” to apply expedited removal at an immigrant’s first contact with the agency, even if that person had lived in the U.S. for decades. Attorneys said that this interpretation goes far beyond what federal law permits. Co Tupul’s case underscores concerns from civil rights groups that long-term residents risk being deported without hearings when expedited removal is used aggressively. Advocates warn that immigrants without lawyers may be particularly vulnerable. Co Tupul currently remains in custody at the Eloy Detention Center while her case proceeds.

ICE nabs woman in U.S. for nearly 3 decades in routine traffic stop
A Guatemala-born woman who has lived in the U.S. since age 9 was nearly deported by ICE after a routine traffic stop in Phoenix.

https://knewz.com/ice-nabs-woman-in-us-for-nearly-three-decades-in-routine-traffic-stop

Washington Post: Trump claims credit for fixing Social Security as it barrels to insolvency

Posted on by
Reply

Many of the president’s claims were misleading and ignored months of turmoil at the embattled agency.

President Donald Trump marked the 90th anniversary of Social Security on Thursday with an Oval Office signing of a proclamation that the safety net was “more resilient than ever before,” thanks to him. He claimed improvements to the program’s customer service. He also misleadingly declared that he had checked off his campaign promise to eliminate taxes on benefits for seniors.

But Social Security is barreling toward insolvency faster than before because of Trump’s tax bill and immigration policies, according to experts. The agency has faced tumult since the U.S. DOGE Service came in with a grand scheme to root out fraud and overhaul the program, causing disruptions and frustrations within the agency.

And despite the repetition of “no tax on Social Security” from Trump and his allies, the law ultimately signed by the president did not eliminate taxes on seniors’ benefits.

The Oval Office event — largely ceremonial — offered the president a chance to repeat his commitments to older Americans on the anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law. Trump was joined by Commissioner Frank Bisignano, who has led the agency since May.

“I made a sacred pledge to our seniors that I would always protect Social Security, and under this administration we’re keeping that promise and strengthening Social Security for generations to come,” Trump said.

However, Republicans have not yet provided a solution to put off Social Security’s impending shortfalls.

Natalie Ihrman, a Social Security spokeswoman, said the agency is “committed to working with Congress and other stakeholders to strengthen these vital SSA programs and continue to provide secure retirement and support in times of disability for millions of Americans.”

The trust fund will be insolvent by 2033, the program’s trustees said in June, if Congress doesn’t act. And after the passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the chief actuary said the law could hasten Social Security’s insolvency date.

In addition, experts have warned that Trump’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants — who pay into the system but are barred from receiving benefits — will further deplete the program.

Penn Wharton’s budget model has projected that if the government deports 10 percent of undocumented immigrants annually over the next 10 years, Social Security will lose $133 billion in funds over that period of time.

In his comments Thursday, Trump repeated a baseless claim that immigrants were getting benefits and asserted that nearly 275,000 immigrants were removed from the agency’s rolls. The agency did not provide information about the president’s claims that immigrants were getting benefits, but it said, “SSA updated the Social Security records of about 275,000 individuals no longer holding legal status, ensuring people ineligible to receive benefits are not improperly paid.”

Most federal public benefits — such as Social Security — are available only to U.S. citizens and certain categories of legal immigrants.

Trump also praised himself for keeping a campaign promise to eliminate taxes on Social Security.

“I signed One Big Beautiful Bill and allowed no tax on Social Security for our great seniors,” Trump said.

But the law didn’t create an exemption on taxes on Social Security benefits. It added a temporary $6,000 deduction for seniors who earn as much as $75,000 a year, or $12,000 for joint filers earning as much as $150,000.

Ihrman of SSA said the law “provides historic tax relief to America’s seniors.”

The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates that 88 percent of older adults will not pay taxes on their benefits because of the bill, up from 64 percent under previous law.

Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said the council’s estimate relies on the assumption seniors would use their standard deduction to reduce their tax liability on Social Security benefits rather than their total income. The policy center has estimated that about half of recipients will pay at least some income taxes on their benefits.

“What he’s saying is just wrong,” Gleckman said of Trump’s claim.

Trump and Bisignano also touted achievements in customer service, specifically claiming recent reductions in wait times for the 1-800 phone line and at field offices as well as the elimination of scheduled maintenance times for the website.

Bisignano came into the agency in May after the cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service implemented changes that led to customers complaining of dropped calls, the website repeatedly crashing and thousands of workers leaving the agency.

One of Bisignano’s early efforts to address the overwhelmed phone line was to move field office workers to answer calls.

Advocates have said it is harder to tell what customer service is like since the agency has taken down many of its public-facing performance metrics.

To trumpet the phone performance, the agency has said it reduced the “average speed to answer,” which does not count the time callers wait for a call back, even though the agency rolled out the callback feature last year.

The agency also said it cut wait times at field offices, a statistic repeated by Trump on Thursday.

That is misleading, according Jessica LaPointe, president of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees. After the agency rolled out a new system of assigning appointments to people walking into field offices in December, the time people wait in the lobby of field offices went down because they were no longer getting their issues handled when they showed up.

“Now you wait 20 minutes in the lobby to get to the window and then you’re given an appointment and you are waiting then months to get your business finished, from start to finish,” LaPointe said.

Trump claims credit for fixing Social Security as it barrels to insolvency
Many of the president’s claims were misleading and ignore months of turmoil at the embattled agency.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/14/trump-social-security-90th-annniversary

Also here:

Trump claims credit for fixing Social Security as it barrels to insolvency
Many of the president’s claims were misleading and ignore months of turmoil at the embattled agency.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ar-AA1Ky5eX

Related article:

Social Security predicted to run out of money sooner due to Trump bill

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/social-security-predicted-to-run-out-of-money-sooner-due-to-trump-bill/ar-AA1K6mMw

Guardian: ‘Petri dish for disease’: attorney raises alarm of possible Covid outbreak at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Posted on by
Reply

A respiratory disease is running rampant through Florida immigration jail, according to attorney of a detained person

An outbreak of a respiratory disease, possibly Covid-19, is running rampant through the remote Florida immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, according to the attorney of an infected detainee removed from the camp last week.

Eric Lee said he was told by his client Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez that conditions at the facility had deteriorated significantly since Thursday as more migrants held there by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency experienced symptoms.

Lee said authorities removed Rivas Velásquez, a 38-year-old Venezuelan man, from the camp after he was diagnosed in a hospital visit last week, then secretly taken to a similar facility in Texas.

Protesters at the gates of the jail in the heart of the Florida Everglades have recorded a number of instances of ambulances arriving and leaving.

Lee said the hastily erected tented camp, which Democratic lawmakers have decried for holding thousands of undocumented detainees in cages as they await deportation, is a “petri dish for disease”.

He added: “Based on what multiple detainees have told me, in the last 72 to 100 hours, there is some respiratory disease which has made the majority, or I would even say vast majority of detainees, sick in some form.

“There are people who are losing breath. There are people who are walking around coughing on one another. Their requests for masks from the guards are denied, and they only are allowed to shower once or maybe twice a week.

“I said to Luis, ‘pass the phone. Let me hear it from somebody else. I just want to make sure that people’s stories are straight.’ And unfortunately they very much are.”

The development follows a claim by a woman, a state licensed corrections officer, who said she contracted Covid-19 after working at the camp in unsanitary conditions for about a week last month, and was subsequently fired.

“We had to use the porta-johns. We didn’t have hot water half the time. Our bathrooms were backed up,” the woman told NBC6 News after being granted anonymity to discuss conditions there.

“[The detainees] have no sunlight. There’s no clock in there. They don’t even know what time of the day it is. The bathrooms are backed up because so many people [are] using them.”

The Florida department of emergency management, which is responsible for operations at the jail, did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.

In a statement to the Miami New Times, Stephanie Hartman, a department spokesperson, did not answer questions about a possible outbreak, but insisted: “Detainees have access to a 24/7, fully staffed medical facility with a pharmacy on site.”

Lee said Rivas Velásquez told him in a phone call that he pleaded for medical attention for 48 hours after contracting breathing difficulties, and eventually collapsed inside the metal cage in which he and dozens of other inmates were being held.

He said his client was taken to Miami’s Kendall regional medical center, where he was diagnosed with a respiratory infection, then returned only briefly to the Everglades camp before disappearing for three days. Lee said Rivas Velásquez called on Sunday from a new detention camp in El Paso, Texas.

“He said when he was returned to the Alcatraz facility he asked the guards to provide his medical records and they said they would not do that,” Lee said.

“The guards came to his bed, opened his pillow, took all the poetry and letters he’d been writing, and all the notes he’d been taking about his experiences, and told him he’s no longer allowed to write.”

Apart from the brief call from Texas, Lee said he had no further information about his client’s wellbeing.

“I haven’t heard from him for two days now. I have no idea how he’s doing or frankly whether he’s alive or not. It’s hard to wage a legal fight when you don’t even have access to your client,” he said.

If the outbreak is Covid, Lee added, it would have consequences beyond Alligator Alcatraz.

“The disease doesn’t recognize the prison walls and guards are going to get sick. They’ll give it to their kids, it’s going to get into the Miami school system, people are going to get sick and die as a result of the conditions that are in this facility,” he said.

‘Petri dish for disease’: attorney raises alarm of possible Covid outbreak at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
A respiratory disease is running rampant through Florida immigration jail, according to attorney of a detained person

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/12/attorney-covid-outbreak-alligator-alcatraz

Washington Post: Scientist on green card detained for a week without explanation, lawyer says

Posted on by
Reply

Tae Heung Kim, a Korean citizen studying in the United States, is being held in San Francisco after returning from his brother’s wedding overseas.

A Korean-born researcher and longtime U.S. legal permanent resident has spent the past week detained by immigration officials at San Francisco International Airport without explanation and has been denied access to an attorney, according to his lawyer.

Tae Heung “Will” Kim, 40, has lived in the United States since he was 5 and is a green-card holder pursuing his PhD at Texas A&M University, where he is researching a vaccine for Lyme disease, said his attorney, Eric Lee. Immigration officials detained Kim at a secondary screening point July 21 after he returned from a two-week visit to South Korea for his younger brother’s wedding.

Lee said the government has not told him or Kim’s family why it detained Kim, and immigration officials have refused to let Kim speak to an attorney or communicate with his family members directly except for a brief call to his mother Friday. In 2011, Kim faced a minor marijuana possession charge in Texas, Lee said, but he fulfilled a community service requirement and successfully petitioned for nondisclosure to seal the offense from the public record.

“If a green card holder is convicted of a drug offense, violating their status, that person is issued a Notice to Appear and CBP coordinates detention space with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said Tuesday in a statement to The Washington Post. “This alien is in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”

Aside from a brief phone call, the only other contact Kim’s family has had with him is through what they believe to be secondhand text messages — probably an immigration official texting them from Kim’s phone in his presence. When relatives asked via text if Kim is sleeping on the floor or if the lights remain on all day, Lee said, the reply from Kim’s phone read: “Don’t worry about it.”

When Lee asked a CBP supervisor in a phone call if the Fifth and Sixth amendments — which establish rights to due process and the right to counsel — applied to Kim, the supervisor replied “no,” according to Lee.

“If the Constitution doesn’t apply to somebody who’s lived in this country for 35 years and is a green-card holder — and only left the country for a two-week vacation — that means [the government] is basically arguing that the Constitution doesn’t apply to anybody who’s been in this country for less time than him,” Lee said Monday.

Representatives for CBP and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment about the supervisor’s alleged comment about Kim’s constitutional rights.

President Donald Trump has made aggressive immigration enforcement a signature of his second term, promising to root out violent criminals who are in the country without authorization. But the crackdowns have in practice swept up undocumented immigrants with little or no criminal history, as well as documented immigrants, like Kim, who hold valid visas or green cards.

Lee, the attorney, said that with no details from immigration officials or direct access to Kim, he and Kim’s family could only speculate on the reason he was detained, though Lee had believed it is probably tied to the 2011 drug charge. But immigration law has a long-established waiver process that allows officials to overlook certain minor crimes that would otherwise threaten a legal permanent resident’s status. Lee said Kim easily meets the criteria for a waiver.

“Why detain him when he’s got this waiver that is available to him?” Lee said.

Other foreign-born researchers detained by the Trump administration have included scholars accused of being “national security threats” because they expressed views opposing U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. In another case, a Russian-born researcher studying at Harvard University was charged for allegedly smuggling frog embryos into the country.

At Texas A&M, Kim’s primary research has focused on finding a vaccine for Lyme disease, which is caused by bacteria spread through tick bites. He began his doctoral studies there in summer 2021 after earning a bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering from the university in 2007, Texas A&M said in a statement to The Post.

As Kim’s family waits for answers, his mother, Yehoon “Sharon” Lee, said she worries about his health and if he’s eating well — “mother’s concerns,” she said through an interpreter.

“I’m most concerned about his medical condition. He’s had asthma ever since he was younger,” Sharon Lee added. “I don’t know if he has enough medication. He carries an inhaler, but I don’t know if it’s enough, because he’s been there a week.”

Sharon Lee, 65, and her husband came to the U.S. on business visas in the 1980s, and she eventually became a naturalized citizen. But by then, Kim and his younger brother had aged out of the automatic citizenship benefit for minor children whose parents are naturalized. The brothers are legal permanent residents and have spent most of their lives in the United States.

“He’s a good son, very gentle,” Sharon Lee said of Tae Heung Kim, noting that he is a hard worker and known for checking on his neighbors. After his father died of cancer, Kim stepped up to help take care of his mother and the family’s doll-manufacturing business.

After more than three decades in the U.S., Sharon Lee said her son’s predicament has saddened and surprised her.

“I immigrated here to the States — I thought I understood it was a country of equal rights where the Constitution applies equally,” she said.

She still believes the U.S. is a country of opportunity and second chances. But she said vulnerable immigrants must learn about immigration law to protect themselves. In her son’s case, that was the hotline at the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium, an advocacy group for Koreans and Asian Americans.

Eric Lee, Kim’s attorney, said there’s a dark irony to the Trump administration’s detention of someone like him.

“This is somebody whose research is going to save countless lives if allowed to continue — farmers who are at risk of getting Lyme disease,” Lee said. “Trump always talks about how much he loves the great farmers of America. Well, Tae is somebody who can save farmers’ lives.”

Scientist on green card detained for a week without explanation, lawyer says
A Korean citizen studying in Texas on a green card was detained in San Francisco after a trip overseas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/07/29/korean-scientist-green-card-detained

Scientist on green card detained for a week without explanation, lawyer says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/scientist-on-green-card-detained-for-a-week-without-explanation-lawyer-says/ar-AA1JuESE

CNN: Wife of Colorado attack suspect says she and her 5 children are ‘suffering’ in ICE custody

Posted on by
Reply

The wife of an Egyptian man accused of carrying out an antisemitic attack in Colorado earlier this month says she was in “total shock” when she learned what her husband had allegedly done, detailing the “grieving and suffering” her family is enduring in after federal custody, in a statement released Wednesday.

Hayam El Gamal, 43, and her five children were detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement two days after federal prosecutors say her husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, drove to downtown Boulder with a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails and attacked demonstrators at a peaceful event to support Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring at least 12 people.

…

But El Gamal says she and the children were not aware of Soliman’s plan to hurt innocent people.

“Why punish any of us, who did nothing wrong?” El Gamal said in the statement. “We are treated like animals by the officers, who told us we are being punished for what my husband is accused of doing.”

On June 3, El Gamal says she and her children were arrested, put on a flight in the middle of the night and transferred from Colorado to the Dilley Family Detention Center in southern Texas.

In the two weeks that have passed, El Gamal said her eldest daughter turned 18 in federal custody and her younger children – aged 4, 4, 7 and 15 – were “forced to watch officials rough-up” another detainee.

“They cried and cried, thinking they would be roughed-up, too,” El Gamal said. “How much longer will we be here for something we didn’t do?”

Conditions in the detention center are inhumane, according to El Gamal, who says detainees are always being watched and woken up in the middle of the night.

…

“Now my seven-year-old is about to have her birthday in jail, and my fifteen-year-old, too,” El Gamal added. “All they want is to be home, to be in school, to have privacy, to sleep in their own beds, to have their mother make them a home-cooked meal, to help them grieve and get through these terrible weeks.”

And the legal basis for the family’s detainment?

The exact reason for the detention of Soliman’s wife and children is not clear, according to Eric Lee, the family’s immigration attorney based in Michigan.

The family entered the United States in August 2022, Lee told CNN Wednesday, before overstaying their visas. However, that’s not why they were detained, he said.

“The issue here is whether they can be detained when the government has explicitly stated that its reason for detaining them is not because their visa overstays, but is because of their family relationship to their husband/father,” Lee told CNN Wednesday.

Once detained, El Gamal and the children were placed under expedited removal, a process that allows immigration officials to remove noncitizens without a hearing before an immigration judge, Lee says.

At the time of their detention, DHS did not provide additional details on the expedited removal process.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has said the agency is “investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.”

El Gamal has not been charged with a crime, according to Lee, who notes there is no legal basis for deporting Soliman’s family.

“The government can’t detain individuals for unlawful purposes,” Lee added.

Wife of Colorado attack suspect says she and her 5 children are ‘suffering’ in ICE custody | CNN
The wife of a man who told investigators he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people” when he threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators raising awareness of Israeli hostages.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/18/us/colorado-attack-suspect-family-ice-detention

New York Times: As White House Steers Justice Dept., Bondi [Bimbo #3] Embraces Role of TV Messenger

Posted on by
Reply

Attorney General Pam Bondi [Bimbo #3] has adopted a conspicuously performative approach, willing to execute White House directives with little fuss.

Pam Bondi [Bimbo #3], the attorney general of the United States, circled the Roosevelt Room in late February, handing out bulky white binders labeled “Epstein Files: Phase 1” to a conclave of Trump-allied influencers summoned to the White House for their first visit.

That Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3], the nation’s top law enforcement official, would prioritize a case of importance primarily to conspiracy theorists was telling. Anxious to appease the restive MAGA base, she hyped the disclosure as “breaking news” on Fox the night before, part of an effort to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to reveal new details on the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s misdeeds and death.

It was a dud. There were “no bombshells,” she said, according to one of those invited.

Later, activists on the right lashed out at Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3]. She responded by blaming others, and then dispatched F.B.I. agents and prosecutors from the Justice Department’s national security division to scour the archives, officials familiar with the situation said. They found little. No one knows when Phase 2 is coming. But it is not likely to amount to much, those people said.

…

Since taking office as U.S. attorney general in early February, she has adopted a conspicuously performative approach to survive inside a Trump cabinet that rewards self-promotion, ritualized public flattery and, above all, a willingness to execute White House directives with little fuss.

Over the last few days, Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3] signed off on Mr. Trump’s acceptance of a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane upgraded to serve as Air Force One donated by the Qatari royal family, which raised a host of ethical and legal questions. As a lobbyist, Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3] herself received six-figure consulting fees from Qatar.

…

But her approach represents a noticeable departure from that of her predecessors at the Justice Department who saw themselves, to varying degrees, as guardians of institutional independence, attentive but not beholden to the presidency.

https://archive.is/fr5Xq#selection-4629.132-4629.368

New York Times: Under Hegseth, Chaos Prevails at the Pentagon

Posted on by
Reply

The defense secretary’s inner circle is in disarray, and distrust is growing among civil servants and senior military officials.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon in January with almost no government experience and huge ambitions to remake the way the military was being run.

In just three months in office, Mr. Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has instead produced a run of chaos that is unmatched in the recent history of the Defense Department.

Mr. Hegseth’s inner circle of close advisers — military veterans who, like him, had little experience running large, complex organizations — is in a shambles. Three members of the team he brought with him into the Pentagon were accused last week of leaking unauthorized information and escorted from the building.

A fourth recently departed member of Mr. Hegseth’s team, John Ullyot, who had been his top spokesman, accused Mr. Hegseth of disloyalty and incompetence in an opinion essay in Politico on Sunday. “The building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” Mr. Ullyot wrote.

The discord, according to current and former defense officials, includes: screaming matches in his inner office among aides; a growing distrust of the thousands of military and civilian personnel who staff the building; and bureaucratic logjams that have slowed down progress on some of President Trump’s key priorities, such as an “Iron Dome for America” missile-defense shield. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal business.

Cry me a river! Even better, resign and self-deport to somewhere, anywhere!

https://archive.is/I0kbS