Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Major Increase in Non-Criminal Detainees by ICE

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reported an 800% rise in non-criminal detainees since President Donald Trump took office, reaching a record 51,302 by early June. Only 30% of those detained were convicted criminals. The data suggests immigration enforcement is increasingly targeting non-criminal offenses, which has fueled criticism from Democratic leaders.

Former ICE Director Sarah Saldaña said, “This push on numbers — exclusive of whether or not the job is being done right — is very concerning.”

Saldaña added, “You’re going to have people who are being pushed to the limit, who in a rush may not get things right, including information on a person’s status.”

After Trump took office, the number of non-criminal detainees rose sharply to 7,781. Presently, only four in ten individuals detained by ICE are convicted criminals, marking a 20 percent decline since January.

ICE operations have remained largely under the radar as enforcement has ramped up under the Trump administration. Internal records show only 10% of detainees were convicted of serious crimes, raising concerns about misclassification.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/major-increase-in-non-criminal-detainees-by-ice/ss-AA1HEBfp

Closer to the Edge: Alligator Auschwitz

Trump built a concentration camp in the Everglades, filled it with tents, barbed wire, and migrants — then laughed about the alligators guarding it.

Donald Trump stood in the middle of a swamp and laughed about who might die there. He didn’t whisper. He didn’t slip up. He smiled for the cameras, gestured like a stand-up comic, and offered survival tips to migrants facing heatstroke and armed guards: “Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this. Your chances go up about one percent.” That’s the punchline. That’s the policy. That’s the sound of a dictator test-marketing genocide as a joke, to see if the country still flinches. And the crowd? They laughed. They always laugh.

Alligator Auschwitz isn’t hyperbole. It’s location-specific horror. It’s a mass detention facility in the Everglades, surrounded by barbed wire and alligators, built in eight days with no due process, no air-conditioning, no press access, and no shame. The people inside are dehydrated, afraid, and invisible. The man who built it treats it like a tourist attraction. He called it “professional.” He called it “beautiful.” He called the alligators “officers” who don’t need to be paid. This is not immigration enforcement. This is fascism with a swamp aesthetic — cruelty as spectacle, stripped of pretense, staged for applause.

There are no live feeds. No outside monitors. No civilian oversight. There is heat. There are guards with AR-15s. There are 5,000 beds and not a single guarantee of due process. Detainees are locked inside tents where the temperature regularly tops 100°F. If they’re sick, they wait. If they’re injured, they pray. If they try to escape, they run through terrain where the president of the United States fantasizes about gators doing the job of bullets. And we’re supposed to treat this as politics. As news. As just another item in the news cycle. But this isn’t a policy dispute. It’s a moral collapse.

Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He built a concentration camp with branding. He took the iconography of American wilderness — swamps, gators, razor wire — and turned it into a prison so brutal, so theatrical, that it becomes part of the campaign. It is the campaign. Alligator Alcatraz isn’t just a facility. It’s a commercial. A threat. A fantasy. And the only reason more people aren’t calling it Alligator Auschwitz is because they’re too afraid of the implications — of what it means to admit that America is already back in the business of building camps.

When the media says “controversial,” they mean “unthinkable but happening.” When they say “deterrent,” they mean “torture as a warning shot.” And when they say “joke,” they’re pretending there’s still a line to be crossed. But there is no line. There is a swamp. And in it, thousands of people are vanishing behind a wall of heat, isolation, and performative indifference. This is the kind of place that future generations look back on and ask, “How did no one stop it?” And the only honest answer is: we didn’t want to believe it was real.

It is real. It is here. And it is happening in our name.

This is Alligator Auschwitz. And if we don’t call it what it is now, history will — with blood in its mouth..

https://www.closertotheedge.net/p/alligator-auschwitz

Newsweek: Trump admin shares meme of ICE alligators outside Florida prison

The Trump regime’s Carnival of Cruelty continues!

The Department of Homeland Security has shared an apparently AI-generated meme depicting alligators as ICE agents outside of a Florida detention center.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is a new migrant detention center being developed on a remote airstrip in the Everglades. The facility aims to house up to 5,000 detainees and uses the area’s natural isolation and wildlife as part of its security measures.

“Coming soon!” DHS said in a post on X.

The remote facility is expected to cost Florida approximately $450 million annually to operate. The proposal comes as President Donald Trump‘s administration looks to conduct what it describes as the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Critics say that the center’s remote location and rapid deployment raise ethical and legal questions about the treatment of migrants, transparency, and due process. Supporters say the project is a cost-efficient step to handle increased immigration enforcement.

The image shared by DHS shows alligators wearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) baseball caps outside the fences of the detention center.

The meme and plans have sparked outrage from critics over inhumane conditions and concerns from environmental groups.

“A horrendous lack of humanity,” Georgetown lecturer Brett Bruen, who served as director of global engagement during the Obama administration, said in a post on X.

Former CIA officer Christopher Burgess described the post as “Disgusting.”

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-meme-ice-alligator-alcatraz-florida-2092148

Daily Beast: Trump Celebrates Civil War Win With Brutal Message to GOP

Donald Trump is once again reminding Republicans where disloyalty gets you.

The president celebrated on Sunday night shortly after GOP Senator Thom Tillis announced he would not seek re-election next year. A day earlier, the North Carolina Republican had voted against advancing Trump’s signature spending package—the so-called “big, beautiful bill”—incurring the president’s wrath. Trump quickly slammed Tillis in Truth Social posts and threatened to back a primary challenger.

“Great News! “Senator” Thom Tillis will not be seeking reelection,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Tillis bowed out.

In a follow-up post, Trump suggested that Republicans who oppose his legislative priorities could pay a political price.

Given Trump’s nosediving approval ratings, coupled with the millions losing benefits, e.g. healthcare coverage, thanks to the Big Fat Ugly Bill, the 2026 midterms are expect to be a major rout of Republicans.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-celebrates-civil-war-win-with-brutal-message-to-gop

Mediaite: WATCH: Trump Suggests He’ll Pressure CNN/NYT Reporters to Give Up Their Sources On Iran Strike Stories — And Then Prosecute the Leakers

President Donald Trump is suggesting his administration will pressure reporters into giving up sources on their recent stories on the impact of the military strike on Iran — and then potentially prosecuting those sources.

In an interview on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, anchor Maria Bartiromo asked Trump about a social media post on Thursday in which he wrote: “The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!”

“They should be prosecuted,” Trump said again — in the Fox News interview which was taped on Friday and aired on Sunday.

“Who specifically?” Bartiromo asked.

“You can find out,” Trump said. “If they wanted, they could find out easily.”

The president has repeatedly come down on CNN and The New York Times in recent days for breaking stories on the impact of last Saturday’s attack on Iran — even threatening to sue them over reporting he has called “unpatriotic.” Both outlets reported on preliminary intelligence assessments which found that the damage of the strikes were far less than the president claimed.

Trump has repeatedly insisted three Iranian nuclear sites were “obliterated.” The preliminary intelligence assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency said the bombings only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months.

Trump went on to explain how he would go about finding out the leakers.

“You go up and tell the reporter, ‘national security, who gave it?’” Trump said. “You have to do that. And I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”

And I suspect the media response will be, “Go fuck yourself.” Trump was publicly applauding himself as the great victor and strategist, when in fact the bombings that he ordered were an abysmal flop.

Law & Crime: ‘Rightfully done and justly suffered’: Judge swats down Jan. 6 defendant’s restitution and fine return request

A pardoned Jan. 6 defendant and former U.S. Marine who sought to recover fines and restitution he paid after his Capitol riot conviction got swatted down Friday by a federal judge, who reminded him that a pardon does not make one’s conviction or the exaction of monetary penalties “erroneous”  — meaning no refunds.

“As the Supreme Court explained in Knote … once a conviction has been ‘established by judicial proceedings,’ any penalties imposed are ‘presumed to have been rightfully done and justly suffered,’ regardless of whether the defendant later receives a pardon,” wrote U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in a nine-page order for defendant Hector Vargas Santos, 29, of Jersey City, New Jersey.

Suck it up, Bubba!

Rolling Stone: Leaked Iran Call Further Shreds Trump’s Narrative: Report

Iranian government officials in a phone call said that the U.S. military strikes against its nuclear facilities were not as damaging or extensive as they had expected, further undermining the Trump administration’s narrative that they were “completely and totally obliterated.” The Washington Post first reported the call, citing four people familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.

In the conversation that was meant to be private, Iranian government officials wondered why the strikes did not cause more widespread destruction.

The administration in a statement from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt essentially confirmed the existence of the call but called the paper’s reporting “shameful.”

“It’s shameful that The Washington Post is helping people commit felonies by publishing out-of-context leaks,” Leavitt said. “The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense. Their nuclear weapons program is over.”

Except that the bunker busters aren’t capable of penetrating through hundred of feet of rock. There are no “hundreds of feet of rubble”.

When it comes to presidential press secretaries, they don’t come any dumber than Karoline “Bimbo #1” Leavitt. She wrote the book on stupidity.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/leaked-iran-call-nuclear-trump-1235375174

Daily Digest: Mexico Roars: Sheinbaum torches Kristi Noem over controversial comments

… the Mexican President did not hesitate to put the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in her place.

In a message on her Twitter account, Sheinbaum was very firm: “In response to a question from a media outlet, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security mistakenly mentioned that I encouraged violent protests in Los Angeles. I inform you that this is absolutely false.”

Kristi Noem [hsf] accused the president during a press conference at the White House: “Claudia Sheinbaum came out and encouraged more protests in L.A., and I condemn her for that,” as reported by Reuters.

Sheinbaum has sought to distance herself from these events and address Kristi Noem’s accusations: “We do not agree with violent actions as a form of protest; the burning of police cars seems more like an act of provocation than resistance.”

https://thedailydigest.com/singapore/archivo/kristi-noem-sparks-international-feud-with-sheinbaum-mexico-hits-back-hard

Fox News: Trump blasts Powell, says any replacement would be better for refinancing $9T debt

Former president vows to appoint someone who will slash interest rates to help refinance $9T in national debt

President Donald Trump said he would welcome anyone but Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates as the U.S. is faced with having to refinance about $9 trillion in debt.

Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo sat down with Trump for an interview that aired Sunday, when she asked the president how he was going to deal with the $9 trillion in debt that is due this year.

Trump said he was going to refinance the $9 trillion as short-term debt because “we have a stupid person” at the Federal Reserve.

The president explained his desire for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates so the U.S. does not have to pay for 10 years of debt at a higher rate.

Our root problem is that we have an extremely stupid child in the White House.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-blasts-powell-says-any-replacement-would-better-refinancing-9t-debt

Newsweek: Iranian woman who has lived in US for four decades detained by ICE

Mandana Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian woman who came to the United States at 17 years old just ahead of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, was arrested by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Sunday and is being in detention in Louisiana.

Newsweek has confirmed her detention in the ICE detainee database.

Kashanian came to the U.S. on a student visa on July 24, 1978 and “gained authorization to remain in the U.S. until May 31, 1983 by changing her status to that of a spouse of a nonimmigrant student” according to documents from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reviewed by Newsweek.

She eventually applied for asylum, but her claim was denied, according to the 2001 court documents. Her family told MSNBC that she applied for asylum and was denied multiple times. Kashanian has appealed several court decisions relating to her status as well as filing a motion to reopen appeals.

She married early on and then divorced. She then married Russ Milne, a U.S. citizen, in 1990 and the couple share a 32-year-old daughter together, who is also a U.S. citizen. Part of the complication of Kashanian’s status is due to her first marriage, which the court reported as “improper” and fraudulent, and subsequently interfered with her green card application once married to Milne.

Her father had worked as an engineer for the Shah in Tehran, according to Nola.com, and she claimed she would “experience extreme hardship if deported,” per court documents.

The local outlet said she was granted a stay of removal on the basis that she comply with immigration requirements, which her family says she has always met. Her husband told MSNBC on Friday that she has no criminal history.

She has lived in the states for almost 50 years, setting down roots in New Orleans. She shares Persian recipes on a YouTube channel, was involved in her daughter’s parent-teacher association, volunteered after Hurricane Katrina, and helps out family and neighbors, her husband told MSNBC.

On June 22, she was arrested by officers in unmarked vehicles, her neighbor Sarah Gerig, told Nola.com, noting that the arrest was less than a minute.

Kashanian is currently held in South Louisiana ICE processing center, according to the ICE database. The GEO Group runs the 1,000-person capacity facility located in Basile, Louisiana.

https://www.newsweek.com/iranian-woman-who-has-lived-us-four-decades-detained-ice-2092082