Tag Archives: ICE

The Intercept: State Cops Quietly Tag Thousands as Gang Members — and Feed Their Names to ICE

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Gang databases are often racially biased and riddled with errors. States and cities send their flawed information to immigration authorities.

Police gang databases are known to be faulty. The secret registries allow state and local cops to feed civilians’ personal information into massive, barely regulated lists based on speculative criteria — like their personal contacts, clothing, and tattoos — even if they haven’t committed a crime. The databases aren’t subject to judicial review, and they don’t require police to notify the people they peg as gang members.

They’re an ideal tool for officials seeking to imply criminality without due process. And many are directly accessible to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

An investigation by The Intercept found that at least eight states and large municipalities funnel their gang database entries to ICE — which can then use the information to target people for arrest, deportation, or rendition to so-called “third countries.” Some of the country’s largest and most immigrant-dense states, like Texas, New York, Illinois, and Virginia, route the information to ICE through varied paths that include a decades-old police clearinghouse and a network of post-9/11 intelligence-sharing hubs.

Both federal immigration authorities and local police intelligence units operate largely in secret, and the full extent of the gang database-sharing between them is unknown. What is known, however, is that the lists are riddled with mistakes: Available research, reporting, and audits have revealed that many contain widespread errors and encourage racial profiling.

The flawed systems could help ICE expand its dragnet as it seeks to carry out President Donald Trump’s promised “mass deportation” campaign. The administration has cited common tattoos and other spurious evidence to create its own lists of supposed gang members, invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center prison, also known as CECOT. Gang databases The Intercept identified as getting shared with ICE contain hundreds of thousands of other entries, including some targeted at Central American communities that have landed in the administration’s crosshairs. That information can torpedo asylum and other immigration applications and render those seeking legal status deportable.

“They’re going after the asylum system on every front they can,” said Andrew Case, supervising counsel for criminal justice issues at the nonprofit LatinoJustice. “Using gang affiliation as a potential weapon in that fight is very scary.”

Information supplied by local gang databases has already driven at least one case that became a national flashpoint: To justify sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT in March, federal officials used a disputed report that a disgraced Maryland cop submitted to a defunct registry to label him as a member of a transnational gang. The report cited the word of an unnamed informant, Abrego’s hoodie, and a Chicago Bulls cap — items “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture,” it said.

The case echoed patterns from Trump’s first term, when ICE leaned on similar information from local cops — evidence as flimsy as doodles in a student’s notebook — to label immigrants as gang members eligible for deportation. As Trump’s second administration shifts its immigration crackdown into overdrive, ICE is signaling with cases like Abrego’s that it’s eager to continue fueling it with local police intelligence.

Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, argued that this kind of information-sharing boosts ICE’s ability to target people without due process.

“This opens the door to an incredible amount of abuse,” she said. “This is our worst fear.”

In February, ICE arrested Francisco Garcia Casique, a barber from Venezuela living in Texas. The agency alleged that he was a member of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang at the center of the latest anti-immigrant panic, and sent him to CECOT.

Law enforcement intelligence on Garcia Casique was full of errors: A gang database entry contained the wrong mugshot and appears to have confused him with a man whom Dallas police interviewed about a Mexican gang, USA Today reported. Garcia Casique’s family insists he was never in a gang.

It’s unclear exactly what role the faulty gang database entry played in Garcia Casique’s rendition, which federal officials insist wasn’t a mistake. But ICE agents had direct access to it — plus tens of thousands of other entries from the same database — The Intercept has found.

Under a Texas statute Trump ally Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in 2017, any county with a population over 100,000 or municipality over 50,000 must maintain or contribute to a local or regional gang database. More than 40 Texas counties and dozens more cities and towns meet that bar. State authorities compile the disparate gang intelligence in a central registry known as TxGANG, which contained more than 71,000 alleged gang members as of 2022.

Texas then uploads the entries to the “Gang File” in an FBI-run clearinghouse known as the National Crime Information Center, state authorities confirmed to The Intercept. Created in the 1960s, the NCIC is one of the most commonly used law enforcement datasets in the country, with local, state, and federal police querying its dozens of files millions of times a day. (The FBI did not answer The Intercept’s questions.)

ICE can access the NCIC, including the Gang File, in several ways — most directly through its Investigative Case Management system, Department of Homeland Security documents show. The Obama administration hired Palantir, the data-mining company co-founded by billionaire former Trump adviser Peter Thiel, to build the proprietary portal, which makes countless records and databases immediately available to ICE agents. Palantir is currently expanding the tool, having signed a $96 million contract during the Biden administration to upgrade it.

TxGANG isn’t the only gang database ICE can access through its Palantir-built system. The Intercept trawled the open web for law enforcement directives, police training materials, and state and local statutes that mention adding gang database entries to the NCIC. Those The Intercept identified likely represent a small subset of the jurisdictions that upload to the ICE-accessible clearinghouse.

New York Focus first reported the NCIC pipeline-to-immigration agents when it uncovered a 20-year-old gang database operated by the New York State Police. Any law enforcement entity in the Empire State can submit names to the statewide gang database, which state troopers then consider for submission to the NCIC. The New York state gang database contains more than 5,100 entries and has never been audited.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice, which did not respond to requests for comment, has instructed its intelligence bureau on how to add names to the NCIC Gang File as recently as 2023, The Intercept found. Virginia has enshrined its gang database-sharing in commonwealth law, which explicitly requires NCIC uploading. In April, Virginia authorities helped ICE arrest 132 people who law enforcement officials claimed were part of transnational gangs.

The Illinois State Police, too, have shared their gang database to the FBI-run dataset. They also share it directly with the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s umbrella agency, through an in-house information-sharing system, a local PBS affiliate uncovered last month.

The Illinois State Police’s gang database contained over 90,000 entries as of 2018. The data-sharing with Homeland Security flew under the radar for 17 years and likely violates Illinois’s 2017 sanctuary state law.

“Even in the jurisdictions that are not inclined to work with federal immigration authorities, the information they’re collecting could end up in these federal databases,” said Gupta.

Aside from the National Crime Information Center, there are other conduits for local police to enable the Trump administration’s gang crusade.

Some departments have proactively shared their gang information directly with ICE. As with the case of the Illinois State Police’s gang database, federal agents had access to the Chicago Police Department’s gang registry through a special data-sharing system. From 2009 to 2018, immigration authorities searched the database at least 32,000 times, a city audit later found. In one instance, the city admitted it mistakenly added a man to the database after ICE used it to arrest him.

The Chicago gang database was full of other errors, like entries whose listed dates of birth made them over 100 years old. The inaccuracies and immigration-related revelations, among other issues, prompted the city to shut down the database in 2023.

Other departments allow partner agencies to share their gang databases with immigration authorities. In 2016, The Intercept reported that the Los Angeles Police Department used the statewide CalGang database — itself shown to contain widespread errors — to help ICE deport undocumented people. The following year, California enacted laws that prohibited using CalGang for immigration enforcement. Yet the California Department of Justice told The Intercept that it still allows the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office to share the database, which contained nearly 14,000 entries as of last year, with the Department of Homeland Security.

“Each user must document their need to know/right to know prior to logging into CalGang,” and that documentation is “subject to regular audit,” a California Department of Justice spokesperson said.

Local police also share gang information with the feds through a series of regional hubs known as fusion centers. Created during the post-9/11 domestic surveillance boom, fusion centers were meant to facilitate intelligence-sharing — particularly about purported terrorism — between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Their scope quickly expanded, and they’ve played a key role in the growth of both immigration- and gang-related policing and surveillance.

The Boston Police Department told The Intercept that agencies within the Department of Homeland Security seek access to its gang database by filing a “request for information” through the fusion center known as the Boston Regional Intelligence Center. In 2016, ICE detained a teenager after receiving records from the Boston gang database, which used a report about a tussle at his high school to label him as a gang member. Boston later passed a law barring law enforcement officials from sharing personal information with immigration enforcement agents, but it contains loopholes for criminal investigations.

In the two decades since their creation, fusion center staff have proactively sought to increase the upward flow of local gang intelligence — including by leveraging federal funds, as in the case between the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, which works directly with the Department of Homeland Security. An email from 2013, uncovered as part of a trove of hacked documents, shows that an employee at the Maryland fusion center threatened to withhold some federal funding if the D.C. police didn’t regularly share its gang database.

“I wanted to prepare you that [sic] your agency’s decision … to NOT connect … may indeed effect [sic] next years [sic] funding for your contractual analysts,” a fusion center official wrote. “So keep that in mind…………..”

Four years later, ICE detained a high schooler after receiving a D.C. police gang database entry. The entry said that he “self-admitted” to being in a gang, an Intercept investigation later reported — a charge his lawyer denied.

For jurisdictions that don’t automatically comply, the Trump administration is pushing to entice them into cooperating with ICE. The budget bill Trump signed into law on the Fourth of July earmarks some $14 billion for state and local ICE collaboration, as well as billions more for local police. Official police partnerships with ICE had already skyrocketed this year; more are sure to follow.

Revelations about gang database-sharing show how decades of expanding police surveillance and speculative gang policing have teed up the Trump administration’s crackdowns, said Gupta of the American Immigration Council.

“The core problem is one that extends far beyond the Trump administration,” she said. “You let the due process bar drop that far for so long, it makes it very easy for Trump.”

State Cops Quietly Tag Thousands as Gang Members — and Feed Their Names to ICE
Gang databases are often racially biased and riddled with errors. States and cities send their flawed information to ICE.

Raw Story: Judge gives Alina [Bimbo #4] Habba lesson in law during blistering rebuke

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This is sizzling — read it all!

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Alina [Bimbo #4] Habba, was admonished in a New Jersey court when Judge André Espinosa of U.S. District Court found her arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka inappropriate.

Raw Story reported in May that the dressing down of the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey by the judge was so significant that the mayor was caught on a hot mic commenting: “Jesus, he tore these people a new a–hole. Good grief.”

Baraka was arrested on trespassing charges on May 9 after attempting to enter an ICE facility in Newark with members of Congress. The charges were dropped days later, but [Bimbo #4] Habba still went to court.

But more details about the dressing down were released Monday.

National security expert Marcy Wheeler posted the full transcript, as provided by the court reporter, in a post on X on Monday.

[Bimbo #4] Habba’s last day in her interim post is Tuesday, unless a panel of judges steps in to extend her job. So far, the appointment has been stalled in the Senate.

“I don’t want to belabor the proceeding today,” the judge began, noting that they were there after [Bimbo #4] Habba’s office claimed to be prosecuting the mayor, only to drop the charges before discussing the case in court.

The judge then eviscerated [Bimbo #4] Habba’s office.

“Please consider sharing with your colleagues this modest reminder of your unique duty as federal prosecutors. Your Office serves the 9.5 million people who live in the District of New Jersey, and your colleagues are charged with working to protect those people and the 13 interests of the Constitution under which we all live and that you and every one of your colleagues swore to uphold when you joined that Office,” the judge said.

“This is an immense responsibility with which comes an imperative for meticulous diligence and unwavering integrity.”

He cited a 1940 address by the Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, who warned against the temptation to prosecute for every possible offense. He told prosecutors, “the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes.”

Espinosa said it’s clear Jackson understood the duty of the prosecutor was for the people, not for a political party or others.

“Justice Jackson warned against using the immense power of the government to pursue weak cases or to make examples without sufficient cause,” the judge continued. “Your discretion, therefore, is not merely a legal tool but a moral compass guiding the exercise of immense power. It demands a judicious restraint, a deep respect for individual liberty, and an unwavering commitment to the principle that justice is never served by arbitrary or ill-conceived actions.”

In this case, in particular, the judge stated that the arrest was “hasty” and “followed by the swift dismissal a mere 13 days later.”

He blasted [Bimbo #4] Habba, claiming that arresting a public figure isn’t to trigger an investigation. It’s the other way around; the investigation should lead to an arrest. It has been key for the office “particularly over the last two decades,” Judge Espinosa added.

The legacy has been “one of careful deliberative action,” the judge said. It implies that in this case, it was clearly ignored. He said that the office only brings charges after an “exhaustive” search for evidence.

“So let this incident serve as an inflection point and a reminder to uphold your solemn oath to the people of this district and to your client Justice itself and ensure that every charge brought is the product of rigorous investigation and earned confidence in its merit mirroring the exemplary conduct that has long defined your Office,” he said.

Raw Story: Judge gives Alina Habba lesson in law during blistering rebuke

https://www.rawstory.com/alina-habba-2673535158

USA Today: Lawyer details ‘horrendous conditions’ faced by 11th grader detained by ICE

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“This kid has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days, no access to a shower; he’s brushed his teeth twice,” said Marcelo Gomes da Silva’s immigration attorney.

Sleeping on a cement floor in a windowless room. Only brushing your teeth twice in five days and never getting to shower. Being mocked by a guard.

These are among the “horrendous conditions” that Massachusetts high school junior Marcelo Gomes da Silva endured while being held by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, according to his lawyer Robin Nice.

Gomes Da Silva, 18, was arrested by ICE agents on May 31 when he was stopped on his way to volleyball practice with friends in his hometown of Milford. Federal officials said they targeted da Silva’s father, Joao Paulo Gomes-Pereira, who they say is an undocumented immigrant from Brazil, but they detained Gomes da Silva − who came to the United States at the age of 7 with his parents − when they realized he had overstayed his visa.

According to Nice, Gomes Da Silva was subsequently detained for five nights in cells that are intended to hold detainees for hours before being transferred. The cells lack access to basic amenities like beds and showers.

“The Burlington (Massachusetts) facility is not a detention center, it’s a holding cell,” Nice told USA TODAY after a June 5 hearing in Gomes da Silva’s case, which has drawn nationwide attention and fervent local opposition to his detention and possible deportation.

“It’s deplorable,” she added.

Nice first raised the issue in a federal immigration court hearing on whether he would be granted bail.

“He’s being held in just awful conditions no one should be subjected to: sleeping on a cement floor for just a few hours per night,” Nice began, before she was cut off by Immigration Judge Jenny Beverly, who noted the hearing was not the proper venue to raise the issue.

Shackles, teasing, and solitary confinement

Nice provided more details on her client’s confinement in a press conference after the hearing, in which the judge set a $2,000 bond for Gomes da Silva’s release, and in a subsequent interview with USA TODAY.

“This kid has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days, no access to a shower, he’s brushed his teeth twice. He’s sharing a room with men twice his age,” Nice said at the press conference outside the Chelmsford, Massachusetts federal immigration court.

At one point, Gomes da Silva was taken to a hospital emergency room because he was suffering severe headaches and vision loss stemming from a high school volleyball injury days earlier. When he was transferred to and from the hospital, he was handcuffed and kept in leg shackles and then moved to a different room, Nice said.

“He got back to the holding facility at 4 am and then was put in what I would refer to as solitary confinement: it was a room without anyone else, and all of these rooms that people are held in, there is no window,” Nice said. “There is no yard time, because it’s not set up for that.”

“If you are detained in the Burlington ICE facility, you do not see the light of day,” she said. “You don’t know what time it is.”

The isolation that da Silva subsequently endured made him so “desperately lonely” that he took to banging on the walls of his cell to get someone to come talk to him, Nice told USA TODAY. The guards, who he said mostly ignored him, nicknamed him “the knocker” in response.

When Gomes da Silva was held in the room with a larger group, one of the guards played a cruel practical joke on the detainees, Nice said:

“He said when ICE opens the door it means either someone’s coming in or someone’s getting released, so everyone perks up when they open the door. So he sees in a little slit in the door window, one ICE officer motion to another and says ‘watch this,’ and so one ICE officer opens the door to the cell and just stands their for a minute and then says, ‘psych!’ And closes the door. And everyone had just perked up,” Nice recounted.

The isolation in the ICE holding facility extended beyond its walls, Nice said. There was no way for her to call her client there, and he could only make one call for two minutes per day − and not even every day.

Nice wasn’t able to get in to see Gomes da Silva until the fifth day of his confinement. He was so shut off from the outside world that he didn’t know his varsity volleyball team had lost in the semi-finals of the state tournament, even though the match drew media coverage.

ICE did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment on Nice’s allegations.

In a statement on June 2, Patricia Hyde, acting field director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations’ in Boston defended Gomes da Silva’s detention and said the agency intends to pursue deportation proceedings.

“When we go into the community and find others who are unlawfully here, we’re going to arrest them,” Hyde said. “He’s 18 years old and he’s illegally in this country. We had to go to Milford looking for someone else and if we come across someone else who is here illegally, we’re going to arrest them.”

‘Nobody deserves to be down there’

Later on June 5, Gomes da Silva himself addressed reporters after posting the $2,000 bond and being released.

“Nobody deserves to be down there,” da Silva told reporters. “You sleep on concrete floors. The bathroom — I have to use the bathroom in the open with like 35-year-old men. It’s humiliating.”

Gomes da Silva also said they were given only crackers for lunch and dinner. Nice told USA TODAY he was also fed what he described as an undefined “mush” that was “like oatmeal, but not oatmeal.”

A twice-weekly churchgoer, Gomes da Silva asked the guards for a bible but was not provided with one.

Beside him were U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton and Jake Auchincloss, both Democrats from Massachusetts, who said they returned from Washington, D.C., on Thursday to speak with da Silva and to inspect the detention center.

Consequences of an immigration crackdown

The Trump administration has sought to ramp up deportations of undocumented immigrants, including those like da Silva who were brought here as children and have no criminal record. ICE reported holding 46,269 people in custody in mid-March, well above the agency’s detention capacity of 41,500 beds.

USA TODAY has previously reported on allegations of conditions in ICE detention similar to what Gomes da Silva and Nice described.

In March, four women held at the Krome North Processing Center in Miami said they were chained for hours on a prison bus without access to food, water or a toilet. They also alleged they were told by guards to urinate on the floor, slept on a concrete floor, and only got one three-minute shower over the course of three or four days in custody.

The allegations come after two men at Krome died in custody on Jan. 23 and Feb. 20.

Lawyer details ‘horrendous conditions’ faced by 11th grader detained by ICE
“This kid has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days, no access to a shower; he’s brushed his teeth twice,” said the teenager’s attorney.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/05/marcelo-gomes-da-silva-ice-conditions/84057203007

USA Today: ‘Atrocious:’ lawyers, family and friends of detainees describe ICE detention

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One man, Nexan Aroldo Asencio, was forced to sleep on the wet, foul-smelling floor of the bathroom, according to his wife.

  • The comments paint a similar portrait to the description from Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader at Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts who was held in Burlington for six days.
  • The unusually large volume of immigrants in detention meant a backlog was created at the office in Burlington, Massachusetts.
  • “Two days, he was sleeping on the bathroom floor,” one detainee’s wife said her husband told her. “It was a small room and it had a toilet and a sink, but it was always wet the floor.”

Family members and lawyers of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the agency’s office in Burlington, Massachusetts, say their clients have been held for days in overcrowded holding cells with inadequate and unclean drinking water, little food and no opportunity to bathe.

One man, Nexan Aroldo Asencio, has even been forced to sleep on the wet, foul-smelling floor of the bathroom, according to his wife.

“He said, ‘It’s horrible here in Burlington: I’m sleeping on the bathroom floor. It smells like piss. It smells like poop,'” Christina Maria Toledo, Aroldo Ascencio’s wife, told USA TODAY.

“‘Everyone’s coming in and out. It’s so packed. The only thing they gave me crackers and water that was dirty,'” she said her husband told her.

Derege Demissie, a lawyer who has represented several people who have been held in the facility, told USA TODAY the conditions are “untenable.”

“They’re atrocious, they’re just ridiculous,” he said. “They had at one point up to 18 women there in a small room, with one toilet, and there’s a camera over the toilet.

“They don’t have a bed. They don’t have a blanket. They don’t have a pillow. They have only a mylar blanket like you get in the marathon.”

The comments paint a similar portrait to the description given by Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader at Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts, who was held in the Burlington ICE facility for six days. Lawyers for da Silva and other detainees say the holding cells are overflowing because recent widespread ICE raids have brought in more immigrants than ICE’s facilities are equipped to handle.

“Nobody deserves to be down there,” da Silva, 18, told reporters upon his June 5 release. “You sleep on concrete floors. The bathroom – I have to use the bathroom in the open with like 35-year-old men. It’s humiliating.”

In a statement, ICE contradicted some of the claims by detainees and noted that their stays are temporary.

“The ICE field office in Burlington is intended to hold detainees while they are going through the administrative intake process,” the agency said in an emailed response to USA TODAY. “Afterwards, they are usually moved to a detention facility. There are occasions where detainees might need to stay at the Burlington office for a short period that might exceed the anticipated administrative processing time. While these instances are a rarity, the Burlington field office is equipped to facilitate a short-term stay when necessary. Detainees pending processing are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”

Immigration raids cause overcrowding

The ICE Boston field office in Burlington, Massachusetts, looks like any suburban office: a low-slung, concrete and dark-glass building that could just as easily be a school or customer call center. If ICE detention facilities are the equivalent of jail, where one is held during court proceedings, the office is the police station. The detainees normally spend a few hours there while they’re being processed and awaiting transfer.

But ICE has recently been conducting raids in Massachusetts that brought in nearly 1,500 undocumented immigrants by June 3. The arrests have caused widespread fear among immigrants in Massachusetts towns such as Milford.

Plymouth County Correctional Facility, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is the only ICE detention center in the state. The number of ICE detainees there more than doubled in the first three months of this year, according to an April 10 report from WCVB.

The unusually large influx of immigrants in detention meant a backlog was created at the office in Burlington, causing people arrested on an immigration violation to be held for days in a facility unequipped for the purpose, according to lawyers for the detainees.

“This is not set up for overnight detention,” Demissie said. “It’s just a holding place to process people for a few hours, but they’ve arrested so many people, they’ve created an overcrowding situation.”

Those caught in the dragnet are often surprised to be stuck in a holding cell for days on end.

“He was there the whole time, six days, and he was supposed to be there one to three hours,” said Coleen Greco, the mother of one of Gomes da Silva’s volleyball teammates.

“Two days, he was sleeping on the bathroom floor,” Aroldo Asencio’s wife Toledo said he told her. “It was a small room and it had a toilet and a sink, but it was always wet the floor, it looked like it was piss everywhere and it stunk, he said.”

After some people were transferred out of the facility, Aroldo Asencio was transferred from the bathroom to a holding cell.

Gomes da Silva said after his release on June 5 that there were approximately 40 men in a windowless holding cell without beds.

That’s the room Aroldo Asencio was moved to after his first two nights in Burlington. Among his cellmates was Gomes da Silva, a fellow Milford resident. Gomes da Silva sent Toledo a voice memo in which he stated, “Your husband was treated just like everyone there with no respect – they treated all of us inhumanely.”

Like Gomes da Silva, Aroldo Asencio said he had no access to a shower in Burlington, Massachusetts. His first shower came after he was transferred to a longer-term detention facility in Vermont, four and a half days later.

“He wasn’t able to do anything, not brush his teeth, nothing,” Toledo said.

“They have no sanitary products, like soap,” said Demissie, the immigration lawyer who had several clients in the facility.

For a pillow, Gomes da Silva told his volleyball coach, Andrew Mainini, he used his shoes. The metallic blanket was so thin that he was able to fold it up into a bracelet to bring home with him as a souvenir.

‘I don’t want cake, I want my daddy’

Aroldo Asencio is an immigrant from Guatemala who works as a framer, building houses. He and his wife, who is a native-born U.S. citizen from New Jersey, started a construction business in March. They have two four-year-old sons and Aroldo Asencio has already obtained an I-130, a document that recognizes his marriage to a citizen and is a step in the process of applying for a green card.

According to ICE, of the 1,500 immigrants arrested in Massachusetts before June 3, just under 800 of them have criminal records in the United States or abroad.

Aroldo Asencio has no criminal record, Toledo said. He was arrested by ICE agents on May 30 who were looking for his brother Victor, who got arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol last year.

Shortly after Aroldo Asencio left for work that morning, Toledo heard her 4-year-old son Damian screaming, “Daddy!” because his father was outside. She and her twin sons watched the ICE agents arrest her husband.

“It was one officer that went to him and another one, maybe 10 seconds later, grabbed him aggressively, went to put cuffs on,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Why you being so aggressive? He’s not resisting.’ His shirt was ripped. And another officer went to grab him, and they’re being rough with him. And I’m telling them, ‘He’s not fighting, you don’t need to grab him. And my kids are watching. My kids have asthma, and I don’t need them to be crying the way they are.’”

The reason the arrest occurred right in front of their home, Toledo explained, is that when ICE stopped Aroldo Asencio, he didn’t know who they were and he ran home.

“He gets pulled over, but when he looks back, it’s just a regular SUV. But all he sees is people running out of it with masks on. So he gets scared and runs off, and they’re yelling ‘Victor,’ but he’s not Victor.”

Aroldo Asencio and Toledo explained who he was and shared his immigration status, but the ICE agents arrested him anyway.

“They asked about his status, and I’m like, ‘He has an approved I-130. And they said, ‘If you show us, we’ll let him go,’ Toledo said. But even after she showed them the paperwork, they didn’t release him.

Instead, he was transported to the police station and then to Hartford, Connecticut, and later to Burlington, without notifying his wife.

“It was two days I didn’t know anything about him,” Toledo recalled. Eventually, he was able to call her from detention at the ICE office in Burlington.

Toledo says her children, whose fourth birthday her husband missed on June 11, remain disturbed by what happened to their father and his ongoing absence.

“My son Jhon is the one that’s very attached to his father,” Toledo said. “He didn’t want to blow out the candles on his birthday, because he said, ”I don’t want cake, I want my daddy.’”

Demissie represents a client, Kary Diaz Martinez, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic whom he said is also married to a U.S. citizen and has no criminal record.

At a deportation hearing in Boston on June 3, Martinez was released on her own recognizance by a judge, but ICE arrested her when she exited.

“She did what she was supposed to do: appeared at her hearing,” Demissie noted. “In the meantime, she’s married to a U.S. citizen and would be entitled to seek permanent residency here through what is called an adjustment of status. ICE is basically blocking that whole process.”

“There is no reason to arrest her,” Demissie continued, adding that the “inhumane conditions” violated her constitutional rights.

Demissie filed a motion to get Martinez released on the grounds that the conditions in Burlington were inhumane. ICE then found room for her in a Chittenden, Vermont detention facility. They allowed Demissie to meet with this client at a courthouse, after refusing to let them meet in person.

‘Like cat food’

A constant theme in the testimony of ICE detainees in Burlington is the extreme inadequacy of the food and water.

“When they asked for more food or water, they wouldn’t give it to them,” Toledo said, citing her conversations with her husband.

“They described it as like cat food,” Demissie said, referring to his clients’ description of the food they were given.

That may be because the building lacks the equipment needed for cooking.

“We have no kitchens and no dining rooms, and therefore we cannot keep people overnight or over the weekend,” Bruce Chadbourne, then-New England regional director of ICE, said at a public meeting in 2007.

ICE did not respond to a request from USA TODAY to verify if this is still the case.

In response to an inquiry for a previous story on Gomes da Silva’s conditions, ICE said he was provided meals, including sandwiches.

Whatever Gomes da Silva ate in captivity, it clearly wasn’t enough, according to Mainini, his volleyball coach.

“He seemed thin,” said Mainini, who saw Gomes da Silva the night he was released. “As someone who works out with him and sees him daily, he looked thinner than just six days earlier. And it was pretty noticeable in his face, specifically.”

“ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said in a prior statement in response to Gomes da Silva’s allegations. “ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.”

Among the traumas Gomes da Silva described to Greco was that ICE asked his cellmates to sign papers in English, which they did not understand. Gomes da Silva speaks Portuguese and Spanish, so he translated the documents, which were often deportation orders. Some of the men then broke down in tears when he told them what the papers said.

Greco said that Gomes da Silva emerged from captivity famished and immediately ordered a 20-piece chicken McNuggets from McDonald’s.

“He talked the entire ride home,” said Greco, who picked him up because Gomes da Silva’s parents are afraid to leave their house and risk ICE arresting them. (His father was the target when Gomes da Silva was pulled over, according to ICE.)

“I said, ‘You don’t have to talk to me,'” the family friend recalled. “He said, ‘No, I want to tell all these stories.'”

‘Atrocious:’ lawyers, family and friends of detainees describe ICE detention
Lawyers, family and friends of ICE detainees in Burlington, Massachusetts describe “horrible” conditions including insufficient food and clean drinking water, and no soap, showers, or beds.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/13/ice-detention-describe-horrible-conditions/84173121007

WCCO Radio Minneapolis: Civil rights advocates are condemning ICE courtroom arrests in Minneapolis

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Members of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, gathered in protest outside Minneapolis’s Whipple Federal Building, claiming ICE agents have detained at least four people after they showed up for their scheduled immigration court hearings.

Leaders like Ward 9 Minneapolis Councilmember Jason Chavez are demanding an end to these practices.

“We’re going to be strengthening our separation ordinance,” says Chavez, “we’ll do that by working with community members that are leading the work on the ground because the folks on the grounds are the ones that are protecting our community.”

Member of The Interfaith Coalition on Migration John Benda describes what volunteers with his organization have seen.

“Our volunteers who do court watch here, are telling us the stories of agents waiting outside the court hearing rooms, and people think they’re free to go outside and they are apprehended.”

Advocates argue these arrests are a part of an aggressive, nationwide deportation agenda under the current administration.

You do what they tell you to do, and then they arrest you and deport you anyway.

Civil rights advocates are condemning ICE courtroom arrests in Minneapolis
Immigrant rights advocates are speaking out against alleged actions by plain-clothes ICE officers who reportedly detained at least four individuals outside immigration court hearings at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/civil-rights-advocates-are-condemning-ice-courtroom-arrests-in-minneapolis/ar-AA1IAVRI

Mirror: Trump officials give ICE access to Medicaid patients’ home addresses and ethnicity data

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The Trump administration has quietly authorized ICE to access personal data from 79 million Medicaid recipients—including addresses and ethnicities.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are set to gain access to the personal details of America’s 79 million Medicaid members, including home addresses and ethnicities, in a bid to locate immigrants who may be residing unlawfully in the United States, as per an agreement seen by The Associated Press.

The data will empower ICE officials to pinpoint “the location of aliens” nationwide, according to the pact inked Monday between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security. This deal has yet to be disclosed to the public, the Associated Press reported.

This unprecedented sharing of vast amounts of personal health information with immigration enforcement is the latest move in the Trump administration’s intensified efforts to detain 3,000 individuals daily, pushing the envelope of legal limits.

Legislators and certain CMS officials have questioned the lawfulness of deportation authorities’ access to some states’ Medicaid enrollee information.

This development, revealed by the Associated Press, was described by Health and Human Services officials as an effort to identify individuals improperly enrolled in the program.

However, the recent data-sharing arrangement clarifies what ICE officials plan to do with the health information.

“ICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE,” the agreement says.

The database will expose to ICE officials the names, addresses, birth dates, ethnic and racial information, as well as Social Security numbers for all individuals enrolled in Medicaid.

The state and federally funded program delivers health care coverage for the nation’s poorest residents, including millions of children.

The arrangement does not permit ICE officials to download the information.

Rather, they will be granted access to it for a restricted timeframe from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, until Sept. 9.

“They are trying to turn us into immigration agents,” said a CMS official who did not have permission to speak to the media and insisted on anonymity.

Revelations about potential immigration enforcement in emergency medical settings could spark panic among those in need of urgent care for themselves or their kids.

The crackdown on illegal immigration has already cast a shadow of fear over schools, churches, courthouses, and other common spaces, leaving immigrants and even U.S. citizens anxious about being swept up in raids.

Big Brother has arrived! 🙁

Trump gives ICE access to Medicaid patients’ addresses and ethnic data
The Trump administration has quietly authorized ICE to access personal data from 79 million Medicaid recipients—including addresses and ethnicities.

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/breaking-trump-officials-give-ice-1274202

Kansas City Star: ‘Not on Our Watch’: ICE Announces Major Arrests

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ICE has reportedly arrested a suspected MS-13 gang member in Omaha, Nebraska, who is wanted for multiple murders in El Salvador. In addition, another suspected gang member was detained for ordering serious crimes such as murder and drug trafficking. ICE arrests are expected to further surge following a funding boost from $2 billion to $45 billion annually.

Wow! Pugsley Homan caught whole two real criminals. I’m impressed. Not!

…

[Todd] Lyons stated, “Our ICE officers and agents are protecting your neighborhoods, even when you don’t know the threat is there, so either support them, or get out of the way.”

Like hell you are. Your masked Gestapo thugs are terrorizing our neighborhoods, not protecting them.

‘Not on Our Watch’: ICE Announces Major Arrests

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/not-on-our-watch-ice-announces-major-arrests/ss-AA1ITaQn

Sun Herald: Tenth Death in ICE Custody Sparks Outrage

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has launched an investigation into the death of Canadian citizen Johnny Noviello. He was reportedly found unresponsive at a Federal Detention Center in Miami. Noviello’s death has marked the tenth in ICE custody this year and the fourth in Florida.

ICE stated, “ICE remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments. Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”r

Bullshit! Way too many people have been saying otherwise.

ICE added, “All people in ICE custody receive medical, dental and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. At no time during detention is a detained illegal alien denied emergent care.”

More bullshit — see above.

ICE policies under President Donald Trump have drawn sharp criticism nationwide. ICE notified the Canadian consulate of Noviello’s death, though the consulate has not responded publicly. Noviello entered the U.S. in 1988 and became a lawful permanent resident in 1991.

Tenth Death in ICE Custody Sparks Outrage

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/tenth-death-in-ice-custody-sparks-outrage/ss-AA1IUBPZ

Columbus Ledger Enquirer: ICE Crackdown Draws Outrage from Local Leaders

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Federal immigration enforcement efforts in Los Angeles have escalated sharply, leading to 2,792 arrests, including nearly 1,200 individuals detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The surge in enforcement has drawn strong criticism from local officials and community leaders, who argue that the actions are sowing fear in vulnerable communities. Democratic leaders have called for greater transparency and accountability, warning that the crackdown could erode trust in public institutions.

A Home Depot spokesperson stated, “We aren’t notified that ICE activities are going to happen, and in many cases, we don’t know that arrests have taken place until after they’re over. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson stated, “CBP arrested 14 illegal aliens during an operation near Figueroa Street, and 11 illegal aliens in North Hollywood, CA, and 12 illegals on Sunset Boulevard. Criminal histories of those detained include drug trafficking, firearm offenses, theft, forgery, DUIs, and battery.”

And as usual DHS is probably lying and most of those 37 people that they arrested probably have NO CRIMINAL RECORDS.

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez condemned federal immigration raids, saying they clash with city values. Reports showed children at summer camps were forced indoors during raids at places like MacArthur Park.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the actions “disgraceful.” Local officials argued that the federal crackdown does little to address crime and only fractures families.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed President Donald Trump’s authority to control the California National Guard, permitting its deployment in Los Angeles.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez said, “I’m completely outraged by what’s going on.” Soto-Martinez added, “These are day laborers. These are people that are coming here every single day to try to find work. These are street vendors. These are folks that feed our community.”

ICE Crackdown Draws Outrage from Local Leaders

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ice-crackdown-draws-outrage-from-local-leaders/ss-AA1IV5ky

Independent: ICE secretly deported Pennsylvania grandfather, 82, after he lost his Green Card

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‘I can see all my family is in pain right now,’ Luis Leon granddaughter said

The family of an 82-year-old Chilean national feared he was dead for weeks before discovering that he had been detained by ICE after he misplaced his green card, according to a report.

Relatives last saw Luis Leon, who lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on June 20, when he and his wife visited the Philadelphia immigration office to replace his lost green card, The Morning Call first reported.

There, officers handcuffed him and took him away without explanation, relatives told the outlet. His family was left scrambling, contacting immigration offices, hospitals and even a morgue for more information on Leon’s whereabouts.

Then, on July 9, Leon’s wife received a call that seemed to confirm the family’s worst fears; the caller claimed the 82-year-old had died.

Thankfully, this week, his family members learned that Leon had been moved from a detention facility in Minnesota to Guatemala. He’s now in a hospital in Guatemala City, the outlet reported. The Independent has reached out to ICE for more information.

It’s not immediately clear why he was sent to Guatemala. But last month, the Supreme Court left the door open for the Trump administration to deport immigrants to countries they have never called home.

“I can see all my family is in pain right now,” his granddaughter Nataly told The Morning Call. She’s planning to fly to Guatemala to see her grandfather, who suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions.

She told the outlet she hopes to amplify Leon’s experience to show how he was treated by the immigration system.

If the multi-location ordeal wasn’t enough, the unknown caller contacted the family another time. Days after immigration authorities arrested Leon, a woman claiming to be an immigration attorney called Leon’s wife and claimed she could help get Leon out on bail. However, she didn’t mention how she learned about the case or where he was at the time.

Leon was granted political asylum in 1987 after surviving Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime, the outlet reported. He has a clean record — and hasn’t even been given so much as a parking ticket, the family claimed.

He’s not alone, figures from the data distribution organization Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse show. As of this week, there are more than 56,800 people in ICE detention; 72 percent of them have no criminal convictions.

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

ICE secretly deported Pennsylvania grandfather, 82, after he lost his Green Card
‘I can see all my family is in pain right now,’ Luis Leon granddaughter said

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-deported-grandpa-green-card-b2792290.html