In an effort to fulfill the Trump administration’s daily immigration arrest “quotas,” federal agents and deputized local law enforcement are racially profiling and snatching people off the streets without due process. These arrests, carried out by armed and masked agents, are sowing terror and confusion in communities across the United States. Stephano Medina, a lawyer with the California Center for Movement Legal Services, shares how ICE regularly denies that it has taken people into custody, leading to family members scrambling for information about their loved ones. “It’s arrest now, ask questions later,” adds Dominique Boubion, an attorney representing Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen who was taken by ICE last month in what Velez has since described as a “kidnapping.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.

We go now to Los Angeles, where armed, masked federal agents have spent the last month carrying out arrests across the city. Families, immigrant advocates say they’re struggling to find their loved ones when they are disappeared. In one case, the family of a community activist and mother, Yuriana Juliana — they call her “Juli” — Pelaez Calderon, said she was taken at gunpoint on June 25th by two men in unmarked cars who pulled over as she went to work at night, which is uncommon. She used a borrowed phone to call her family to say she was taken to a warehouse where women are held alongside men. She compared the men who took her to bounty hunters and has not had proper food or access to her medication.

This is Stephano Medina, managing attorney with the L.A. office of California Center for Movement Legal Services.

STEPHANO MEDINA: So, DHS is out now saying that this is a hoax and that this is all made up, because they don’t have any record of Juli in their system, which I don’t doubt she’s not in their system. But Juli, in that phone call that she made to her family from a borrowed phone, told us that she was taken directly from where she was picked up in South Central Los Angeles to San Isidro, where she was presented to an ICE official and pressured to sign a voluntary self-deportation agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: Medina says Juli’s family filed a missing persons report with the L.A. Police Department as they continued their search for her.

Meanwhile, the family of Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen, described her arrest by ICE last month as a “kidnapping.” Andrea had just been dropped off at work by her mom and her sister, when the pair witnessed masked federal agents grabbing her and taking Andrea in an unmarked car during an immigration raid. One video shows a masked agent lifting Andrea off the ground and carrying her away. Andrea’s sister, Estrella Rosas, spoke with CBS News Los Angeles.

ESTRELLA ROSAS: They didn’t have vests that said ICE or anything. Their cars didn’t have license plates. … Just because of the color of our skin, they think that we’re criminals. My sister was there, so they were like, “Oh, she looks Hispanic, so let’s take her, too.”

AMY GOODMAN: Ultimately, Andrea Velez was released, but was charged with assaulting a federal officer during her arrest. She spoke at a news conference last week.

ANDREA VELEZ: They didn’t identify themselves. I can’t go through it, but yeah, it was — I was just going to work. It was just a day of work, and, like, everything happened so fast. So, yeah, and they didn’t identify themselves, so I was kind of scared.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in Los Angeles by Dominique Boubion. She is an attorney helping to represent Andrea Velez.

This is just such an astounding story. Dominique, can you explain what happened, as we watch her being carried with their arms under her chest, as she — walking forward? Where was she taken? Where was she held? How did you find out when she was disappeared and her family panicked?

DOMINIQUE BOUBION: Yes, of course. So, we were contacted by the family later that day, in the afternoon, because they had seen — the mother had seen her daughter being taken by ICE agents and hadn’t — but didn’t know they were ICE, had no idea who they were, and so they were terrified and looking for help just to locate her. And the video that you mentioned where she’s being lifted and carried up, that’s actually when she went to the police officers at LAPD asking for help, telling them, “These men are taking me.” So, I’ll back up and explain what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, wait, wait. If you can explain that point? We’re watching her being carried. Who is carrying her? And I do see police. I see the police cars, the LAPD. Who is carrying her?

DOMINIQUE BOUBION: So, that is an ICE agent. We now know it’s an ICE agent. And she was being carried away from the LAPD officers that she went over to for help, because she didn’t know who the men were or where she was being taken. She had no idea.

That morning, just minutes before, her mother had dropped her off at work on 9th and Main, downtown L.A. And as she exited the vehicle, she walked three, four steps onto the sidewalk, and suddenly there was a swarm of vehicles surrounding her. So, as she’s kind of getting her bearings what’s going on, she sees vendors over to her right, and she assumes, “OK, this must be — maybe it’s a raid. I don’t know.” She sees men approaching them. But she looks to her left, and she sees an ICE agent about 10 feet away, running full speed at her, and becomes terrified. She’s 4’11”. This is a man who, in her estimation, is over six feet. He’s masked. And he does not stop. So she becomes — she gets scared, and her reaction is to cover and block herself to protect herself, and she’s thrown to the ground.

The ICE agent continues on for about another 10, 15 seconds to get their target, and then returns and tells her she’s under arrest for what she describes as interfering. She gets put into a vehicle, a van, an unmarked van, and she’s in handcuffs. And while she’s waiting, she sees the officer, so she walks over to the officer and asks if he would help her. She doesn’t know who these men are. And that’s when you see the ICE agent pick her up and take her back to the unmarked van.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was she picked up, Dominique?

DOMINIQUE BOUBION: She — physically picked up, or why was she arrested?

AMY GOODMAN: Arrested.

DOMINIQUE BOUBION: So, what she is being charged with is assault on a peace officer. So, the version of the story that the federal agent is putting forth is that Andrea Velez purposefully walked into his path in order to protect whoever their target was, and knocked that ICE agent off balance and hit him in the head. It’s a complete fabrication, didn’t happen. And it, I believe, is more of a, number one, racial profiling. They were speaking to her in Spanish, even though she was demonstrating that she was — could speak fluent English and that she was a U.S. citizen. And I think it was a matter of “Let’s see if she is a U.S. citizen. And if she is, then we’ll slap on these charges.” It’s an issue of — it’s arrest now, ask questions later.

AMY GOODMAN: So, straight-up racial profiling?

DOMINIQUE BOUBION: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Andrea Velez has — she’s a darker-skinned Latino. And 100%, I believe that this was racial profiling.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. We’ll continue to follow this case, Dominique Boubion, one of the attorneys helping to represent Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen arrested by ICE. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

“Arrest Now, Ask Questions Later”: ICE Agents Arrest and Jail U.S. Citizen Andrea Velez

In an effort to fulfill the Trump administration’s daily immigration arrest “quotas,” federal agents and deputized local law enforcement are racially profiling and snatching people off the streets without due process. These arrests, carried out by armed and masked agents, are sowing terror and confusion in communities across the United States. Stephano Medina, a lawyer with the California Center for Movement Legal Services, shares how ICE regularly denies that it has taken people into custody, leading to family members scrambling for information about their loved ones. “It’s arrest now, ask questions later,” adds Dominique Boubion, an attorney representing Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen who was taken by ICE last month in what Velez has since described as a “kidnapping.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/2/ice_abductions_masked_men_andrea_velez

As Trump urges more deportations, veterans are seeing their parents, children and even themselves detained

The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May.

Jermaine Thomas’s deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicle, is one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.

As the Chronicle reported, Thomas was born on a US army base in Germany to an American citizen father, who was originally born in Jamaica and is now dead. Thomas does not have US, German or Jamaican citizenship – but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency deported him anyway to Jamaica, a country in which he had never set foot.

Thomas had spent two-and-a-half months incarcerated while waiting for an update on his case. He was previously at the center of a case brought before the US supreme court regarding his unique legal status.

The federal government argued that Thomas – who had previously received a deportation order – was not a citizen simply because he was born on a US army base, and it used prior criminal convictions to buttress the case against him. He petitioned for a review of the order, but the supreme court denied him, finding his father “did not meet the physical presence requirement of the [law] in force at the time of Thomas’s birth”.

…

In another recent case, the wife of another Marine Corps veteran was detained by Ice despite still breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. According to the Associated Press, the veteran’s wife had been going through a process to obtain legal residency.

…

In March, Ice officials arrested the daughter of a US veteran who had been fighting a legal battle regarding her status. Alma Bowman, 58, was taken into custody by Ice during a check-in at the Atlanta field office, despite her having lived in the US since she was 10 years old.

Bowman was born in the Philippines during the Vietnam war, to a US navy service member from Illinois stationed there. She had lived in Georgia for almost 50 years. Her permanent residency was revoked following a minor criminal conviction from 20 years ago, leading her to continue a legal battle to obtain citizenship in the US.

…

In another recent case, a US army veteran and green-card holder left on his own to South Korea. His deportation order was due to charges related to drug possession and an issue with drug addiction after being wounded in combat in the 1980s, for which he earned the prestigious Purple Heart citation.

“I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Sae Joon Park, who had held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio. “That blows me away – like, [it is] a country that I fought for.”

Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for’

As Trump urges more deportations, veterans are seeing their parents, children and even themselves detained

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/us-military-veterans-detained-trump

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was in full crybully mode during a Thursday news conference that, according to a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump, was intended “to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots” and provide “interesting and irrefutable” evidence of the “LEGENDARY” success of last week’s unilateral U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But Hegseth didn’t provide definitive evidence of the actual extent of the damage inflicted on those facilities by 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — or clarity on whether Iran pre-emptively moved its stash of weapons-grade uranium. Instead, the secretary complained that certain media outlets failed to act as unquestioning cheerleaders of a stunning act of aggression against a longtime U.S. adversary — an attack that the president had immediately declared an unequivocal success.

The 42-minute press conference was a useful distillation of the Trump administration’s posture vis-à-vis news coverage: playing the pure-as-driven-snow victim while lashing out in thuggish fashion.

Hegseth insisted the attack was successful in “decimating — choose your word — obliterating, destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities.” He blasted the press for reporting on a leaked preliminary intelligence assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which asserted that the U.S. attack may have only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months.

Pete Hegseth’s unhinged press conference shows how the Trump administration views the media’s job

Hegseth threw a tantrum and Trump threatened lawsuits — because news outlets reported on a government intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear sites.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pete-hegseth-s-unhinged-press-conference-shows-how-the-trump-administration-views-the-media-s-job/ar-AA1HCXQe

The White House is so hellbent on keeping Kilmar Abrego Garcia behind bars, it has released a convicted human smuggler.

The Trump administration has freed a convicted human smuggler in its desperate bid to convict Kilmar Abrego Garcia of the same charge.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported Abrego Garcia in March—a move the Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted was an error—before a federal judge forced the administration to return him. Abrego Garcia was placed in federal custody on a human smuggling charge as soon as he set foot on U.S. soil again.

Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to focus mass deportation efforts on criminals—the “worst of the worst”—the DOJ has now released three-time felon Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes from federal prison and transferred him to a halfway house in exchange for his testimony against Abrego Garcia, an undocumented father from Maryland.

Which likely will make him an unreliable witness because he has been paid / rewarded for his testimony. When it’s all over, Kilmar Abrego Garcia will walk free.

“It’s wild to me,” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director at the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, told the Washington Post. “It’s just further evidence of how the government is using Kilmar’s case to further their propaganda and prove their political point.”

Trump Frees Felon to Keep Deported Maryland Dad Locked Up

The White House is so hellbent on keeping Kilmar Abrego Garcia behind bars, it has released a convicted human smuggler.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-frees-felon-to-keep-deported-maryland-dad-locked-up

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly facing staffing issues, resulting in Border Patrol agents operating more in urban areas. Arrests at the border have dropped significantly to an average of around 280 per day from over 8,000 daily in late 2023. Border arrests are at a 60-year low, and ICE has allegedly struggled with staffing and operations, relying heavily on around 20,000 Border Patrol agents.

While in Los Angeles, Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino said, “We’re here and not going away.” Trump-backed legislation to expand ICE staffing has stalled, pushing ICE to depend on Border Patrol to reach its goal of 3,000 daily arrests.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/border-patrol-deployed-amid-ice-staffing-crisis/ss-AA1HDxfF

Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian lived in the United States for 47 years, married a U.S. citizen and raised their daughter. She was gardening in the yard of her New Orleans home when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers handcuffed and took her away, her family said.

Kashanian arrived in 1978 on a student visa and applied for asylum, fearing retaliation for her father’s support of the U.S.-backed shah. She lost her bid, but she was allowied to remain with her husband and child if she checked in regularly with immigration officials, her husband and daughter said. She complied, once checking in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina. She is now being held at an immigration detention center in Basile, Louisiana, while her family tries to get information.

Other Iranians are also getting arrested by immigration authorities after decades in the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security won’t say how many people they’ve arrested, but U.S. military strikes on Iran have fueled fears that there is more to come.

“Some level of vigilance, of course, makes sense, but what it seems like ICE has done is basically give out an order to round up as many Iranians as you can, whether or not they’re linked to any threat and then arrest them and deport them, which is very concerning,” said Ryan Costello, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group.

…

But over four decades, Kashanian, 64, built a life in Louisiana. The couple met when she was bartending as a student in the late 1980s. They married and had a daughter. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, filmed Persian cooking tutorials on YouTube and was a grandmother figure to the children next door.

The fear of deportation always hung over the family, Milne said, but he said his wife did everything that was being asked of her.

“She’s meeting her obligations,” Milne said. “She’s retirement age. She’s not a threat. Who picks up a grandmother?”

While Iranians have been crossing the border illegally for years, especially since 2021, they have faced little risk of being deported to their home countries due to severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. That seems to no longer be the case.

After decades in the US, Iranians arrested in Trump’s deportation drive

Some Iranians are getting arrested by immigration authorities after living decades in the United States.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-immigration-arrests-us-trump-deportations-9a4136657bda3a277125738807848368

Trump has called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate” and called its supporters “thugs”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who previously spread conspiracy theories about the Black Lives Matter movement, said Saturday that its leaders and supporters should celebrate President Donald Trump because he’s “done more to save Black lives than any leader in our country.” 

Trump has called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate” and called its supporters “thugs.” In 2020, Trump deployed the National Guard on people in Washington, D.C. protesting the police murder of George Floyd. He also allegedly said of the protesters, “Can’t you just shoot them?”

In 1973 Trump was sued in federal court for refusing to rent apartments to blacks. Why should blacks celebrate such a bigot?

J.D. Vance Thinks Black Lives Matter Should ‘Celebrate’ Trump

Vice President J.D. Vance wrote that Black Lives Matter supporters should celebrate Donald Trump after Trump negotiated a peace agreement in Africa.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/j-d-vance-black-lives-matter-trump-1235375033

A group of armed federal immigration agents in Huntington Park, California, blasted their way into a family’s home Friday morning while searching for a man they accused of charging into a law enforcement vehicle, according to several media outlets. 

“I just heard the loudest blast of my life,” resident Jenny Ramirez told NBC Los Angeles. “I told them, “You didn’t have to do this. You scared my son, my baby and myself.’”

Ring camera footage obtained by the outlet shows a group of armed Customs and Border Protection agents placing an explosive device near Ramirez’s home before a fiery explosion breached the front of the residence. The agents then entered one by one with weapons drawn.

“If they would’ve knocked on my door I would have opened the door, but they blew up the window and door first,” Ramirez told ABC7. “There didn’t have to be that violence to enter my house.”

Ramirez told NBC Los Angeles she heard the explosion —which blew off her door and shattered the windows — a little after 6 a.m. Friday.

She said she and her two children, ages 1 and 6, were the only people inside the house at the time, which she shares with her boyfriend, Jorge Sierra-Hernandez.

“Where they broke the window, my baby was there, and before I got him out of there was when it exploded,” Ramirez told ABC7. “My ears went blank, I imagine how they felt. They were shaking.”

Ramirez said authorities did not give her any warning that they wanted to enter the home, adding that they deployed a drone into her house after setting off the explosive device.

‘Minor Traffic Accident’ Led Federal Agents To Blast Into American Family’s Home: Reports

“If they would’ve knocked on my door I would have opened the door, but they blew up the window and door first,” said Jenny Ramirez, who was home with two young children.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/border-patrol-blast-american-family-home_n_686039dae4b0a28ae2087aab

President Trump had sued over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The company needs federal approval for a multibillion-dollar sale.

Another $16M in the Grifter-in-Chief’s pockets. The corruption continues unabated.

Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit

President Trump had sued over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The company needs federal approval for a multibillion-dollar sale.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/business/media/paramount-trump-60-minutes-lawsuit.html

Any attempt to teach my children that Trump exists and is president might suggest such behavior is acceptable, and that would infringe on my right to raise my child under the moral tenets of my faith.

I have a deeply held religious conviction that, by divine precept, lying, bullying and paying $130,000 in hush money to an adult film star are all immoral acts.

So it is with great thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court and its recent ruling allowing Maryland parents to opt their children out of any lessons that involve LGBTQ+ material that I announce the following: Attempts to teach my children anything about Donald Trump, including the unfortunate fact that he is president of the United States, place an unconstitutional burden on my First Amendment right to freely exercise my religion.

In its June 27 ruling, the high court cited Wisconsin v. Yoder and noted, “The Court recognized that parents have a right ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their children’ and that this right can be infringed by laws that pose ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that parents wish to instill in their children.”

Well, I wish to instill in my children the belief that suggesting some Americans are “radical left thugs that live like vermin” and describing a female vice president of the United States as “mentally impaired” and “a weak and foolish woman” are bad things unworthy of anyone, much less a commander in chief.

So any attempt to teach my children that Trump exists and is president might suggest such behavior is acceptable, and that would infringe on my right to raise my children under the moral tenets of my faith. (My faith, in this case, has a relatively simple core belief that being a complete jerk virtually all the time is bad.)

Alito clearly doesn’t want schools teaching kids that Trump exists

As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion regarding the use of LGBTQ+ books in schools, some “Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.”

Exactly. I wish to present a moral message to my children that when a man is found liable for sexual abuse and has been heard saying things like “I moved on her like a bitch” and “she’s now got the big phony tits and everything” and “Grab ’em by the pussy,” that man is deemed loathsome by civil society and not voted into the office of the presidency.

That wish is undermined by any book or teacher exposing my student to the fact that Trump is president.

Supreme Court is protecting children from the tyranny of love

Alito cited several books that were at issue in Maryland schools, including one called “Love Violet,” which “follows a young girl named Violet who has a crush on her female classmate, Mira. Mira makes Violet’s ‘heart skip’ and ‘thunde[r] like a hundred galloping horses.’ Although Violet is initially too afraid to interact with Mira, the two end up exchanging gifts on Valentine’s Day. Afterwards, the two girls are seen holding hands and ‘galloping over snowy drifts to see what they might find. Together.’”

While my religion would define such a story as “sweet” and “loving,” Alito and his fellow conservatives on the Supreme Court find it “hostile” to parents’ religious beliefs.

As Alito wrote, “Like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. They are clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”

OK. By that same logic, any class discussion or history lesson involving Trump and his status as president has the potential to teach my children that it’s normal to have a president who lies incessantly, demeans transgender people and routinely demonizes migrants.

Any in-class acknowledgement of Trump as president would, in Alito’s words, be “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”

I will now object to any book or classroom mention of Donald Trump

I simply will not stand idly by while a taxpayer-funded school indoctrinates my children into believing a fundamentally dishonest and unkind person like Trump has the moral character to be president of the United States. My faith has led me to teach them otherwise, and any suggestion that Trump’s behavior is acceptable would undermine that faith.

Elly Brinkley, a staff attorney for U.S. Free Expression Programs at the free-speech advocacy group PEN America, said in a statement following the Supreme Court ruling in the Maryland case: “The decision will allow any parents to object to any subject, with the potential to sow chaos in schools, and impact students, parents, educators, authors, and publishers.”

Amen to that. I object to the subject of Donald Trump. Let the chaos ensue.

Thanks, Supreme Court! It’s now my right to prevent my kid from learning about Trump. | Opinion

Attempts to teach my children anything about Donald Trump place an unconstitutional burden on my First Amendment right to freely exercise my religion.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/06/29/trump-supreme-court-ruling-books-maryland-parents/84380649007