Tag Archives: Arizona

SFGate: ‘Unbelievable’: Protest against ICE arrests shuts down San Francisco court

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Multiple people were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday morning, merely 12 hours after thousands of protesters took to the streets in the Mission to rally against the widespread raids taking place across California.

The news, first reported by the NBC Bay Area, unfolded around 9:30 a.m. outside of the San Francisco Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery St. The reporter captured footage of ICE agents wearing masks escorting a person into a parked car. About an hour later, two other people were reportedly taken into unmarked cars. One told the NBC reporter that he was from Guatemala. 

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The public uprising continued into Monday night, when an estimated 9,000 protesters rallied at San Francisco’s 24th and Mission BART Plaza late into the frigid June night.

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San Francisco Immigration Court canceled the rest of its hearings on Tuesday afternoon and closed the courthouse because of the protests, NBC Bay Area reported. 

‘Unbelievable’: Protest against ICE arrests shuts down San Francisco court

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/ice-arrests-san-francisco-courthouse-20370758.php

SFGate: San Francisco police arrest more anti-ICE protesters than Los Angeles

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San Francisco police arrested 154 people Sunday night after a downtown protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly escalated with the arrival of law enforcement in riot gear.

The San Francisco protest erupted after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles — bypassing the state’s governor for the first time since 1965 — in a move that escalated tensions after an explosion of high-profile ICE activity in California last week. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles, shutting down a major highway and igniting multiple self-driving cars as officers unleashed tear gas and rubber bullets against the crowd Sunday.

Los Angeles law enforcement arrested 42 people Sunday, NBC Los Angeles reported.

On Sunday in San Francisco, hundreds began gathering in solidarity around 6 p.m. outside ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome St. before entering into a 40-minute standoff with police, Mission Local reported. Officials declared an unlawful assembly at 7:33 p.m., and about 10 minutes later, violence began with some crowd members who brought metal barricades, according to the outlet.

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San Francisco police arrest more anti-ICE protesters than Los Angeles

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sf-police-arrest-more-anti-ice-protesters-than-la-20368528.php

Guardian: US immigration agents mistakenly detain deputy marshal in Arizona

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Immigration agents briefly detained a U.S. Marshals Service deputy last month as he was entering a federal building that houses the immigration court in Tucson, Arizona.

The Marshals Service — an agency in charge of enforcing the law in federal courts, protecting judges and apprehending fugitives — confirmed with the Arizona Daily Star on Thursday that a deputy “who fit the general description of a subject being sought by ICE was briefly detained at a federal building in Tucson after entering the lobby of the building.”

What does it take to “fit the general description”? Looks like a Mexican?

It’s unclear what the Marshals Service meant when it said the deputy “fit the general description” of a person being sought by ICE. However, President Donald Trump’s policy of aggressive mass deportation has raised concerns about racial profiling. Legal residents and U.S. citizens, including Native Americans, all have been stopped by ICE.

And prior to Trump’s current presidential term, a 2022 report from the American Civil Liberties Union shed light on racial profiling that it called “endemic” to an ICE program that allows state and local law enforcement to perform certain immigration enforcement duties.

Don’t they all look alike?

Last week, Axios reported on a meeting between two top Trump administration officials, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, where they discussed a goal of arresting 3,000 people a day.

Noah Schramm of the ACLU of Arizona told the Arizona Daily Star that while there’s little information about the incident involving the deputy, arrest quotas from the Trump administration are leading to more mistakes.

“It is not surprising that there would be these cases that the wrong person is detained,” Schramm said. “I think it reflects that they are trying to get numbers and that they are OK violating basic principles and basic procedures that are meant to protect people and make sure the wrong people don’t get picked up.”

US immigration agents mistakenly detain deputy marshal in Arizona
Deputy marshal ‘fit the general description of a subject being sought’ and was briefly detained, Marshals Service says

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/08/ice-agents-mistakenly-detain-us-marshal-arizona

2 Paragraphs: U.S. Congressmen Appear at Conference Featuring Far-Right Star Who Says “Europe Was Always An Entirely White Continent”

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Right-wing Dutch social media influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who delivered the controversial speech ‘The Great Replacement Is Not a Theory—It’s Reality’ at the 2024 CPAC Hungary, is back for the 2025 conference.

(Note: YouTube removed the video of her 2024 speech for violating hate speech guidelines; it went viral on X.) 

The 28-year-old blonde with blue eyes said at the recent Remigration Summit 26: “Europe was always an entirely white continent. It is not unethical to want that Europe stays European.”

[Remigration is a far-right European plan to expel minorities and immigrants from Western nations, returning them to their countries of origin. Wikipedia defines the term as “a far-right European concept of ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation or promoted voluntary return of non-white immigrants and their descendants, usually including those born in Europe, to their place of racial ancestry, often with no regard for their citizenship or legal status.”]

This week WIRED and other outlets reported that the Trump administration is considering adding a dedicated “Remigration” office within the State Department.

U.S. Congressmen Appear at Conference Featuring Far-Right Star Who Says “Europe Was Always An Entirely White Continent”
Right-wing Dutch social media influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who delivered the controversial speech ‘The Great Replacement Is Not a Theory—It’s Reality’ at the 2024 CPAC Hungary, is b
U.S. Congressmen Appear at Conference Featuring Far-Right Star Who Says “Europe Was Always An Entirely White Continent”

The Conversation: Surge of ICE agreements with local police aim to increase deportations, but many police forces have found they undermine public safety

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Part of that operation includes what’s known as the federal 287(g) program. Established in 1996, it allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose work is normally carried out by federal officials, to train state and local authorities to function as federal immigration officers.

Under 287(g), for example, local police officers can interview people to determine their immigration status. They can also issue immigration detainers to jail people until agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement take custody.

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Since Trump began his second term in January, ICE has increased 287(g) agreements from 135 in 25 states in December 2024 to 628 in 40 states as of May 28, 2025.

As a criminal justice scholar, I believe the surge of 287(g) agreements sets a dangerous precedent for local policing, where forging relationships and building the trust of immigrants is a proven and effective tactic in combating crime. In my view, the expansion of 287(g) will erode that trust and makes entire communities – not just immigrants – less safe.

Surge of ICE agreements with local police aim to increase deportations, but many police forces have found they undermine public safety
History shows that building the trust of immigrants is an effective tactic in combating local crime and making entire communities safer.

https://theconversation.com/surge-of-ice-agreements-with-local-police-aim-to-increase-deportations-but-many-police-forces-have-found-they-undermine-public-safety-255937

Talking Points Memo: The ‘Invasion’ Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy

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The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.

When top Trump adviser Stephen Miller threatened on May 9 that the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus in response to an “invasion” from undocumented immigrants, he was operating on a fringe legal theory that a right-wing faction has been working to legitimize for more than a decade.

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Hard-liners have referred to immigrants as “invaders” as long as the U.S. has had immigration. By 2022, invasion rhetoric, which had previously been relegated to white nationalist circles, had become such a staple of Republican campaign ads that most of the public agreed an invasion of the U.S. via the southern border was underway.

Now, however, the claim that the U.S. is under invasion has become the legal linchpin of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-immigrant campaign.

The claim is Trump’s central justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport roughly 140 Venezuelans to CECOT, the Salvadoran megaprison, without due process. (The administration cited different legal authority for the remaining deportees.) The Trump administration contends they are members of a gang, Tren de Aragua, that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is directing to infiltrate and operate in the United States. Lawyers and families of many of the deportees have presented evidence the prisoners are not even members of Tren de Aragua.

The contention is also the throughline of Trump’s day one executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” That document calls for the expansion of immigration removal proceedings without court hearings and for legal attacks against sanctuary jurisdictions, places that refuse to commit local resources to immigration enforcement.

So far, no court has bought the idea that the U.S. is truly under invasion….

And therein lies the problem: The Trump regime is off pursuing an unconstitutional tangent to solve a problem that is improperly framed as an “invasion”.

It’s a long well-researched article. Please click on the link below and read the entire article.

The ‘Invasion’ Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy
This article first appeared at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-invasion-invention-the-far-rights-long-legal-battle-to-make-immigrants-the-enemy

Associated Press: Trump administration releases people to shelters it threatened to prosecute for aiding migrants

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The Trump administration has continued releasing people charged with being in the country illegally to nongovernmental shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border after telling those organizations that providing migrants with temporary housing and other aid may violate a law used to prosecute smugglers.Here's The Average Price of a 6-Hour Gutter Upgrade in Minneapolis

Border shelters, which have long provided lodging, meals and transportation to the nearest bus station or airport, were rattled by a letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that raised “significant concerns” about potentially illegal activity and demanded detailed information in a wide-ranging investigation. FEMA suggested shelters may have committed felony offenses against bringing people across the border illegally or transporting them within the United States.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continued to ask shelters in Texas and Arizona to house people even after the March 11 letter, putting them in the awkward position of doing something that FEMA appeared to say might be illegal. Both agencies are part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump administration releases people to shelters it threatened to prosecute for aiding migrants
The Trump administration has been releasing people charged with being in the country illegally to nongovernmental shelters along the U.S. border with Mexico after telling those organizations that providing migrants with temporary housing and other aid may violate a law used to prosecute smugglers.

https://apnews.com/article/border-shelters-laredo-phoenix-trump-releases-afc2f4d2ca786161e7bb4b03f54033fa

Associated Press: Trump’s $600 million war chest: How he plans to wield his power in the midterms and beyond

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Between a barrage of executive orders, foreign trips and norm-shattering proclamations, Donald Trump has also been busy raking in cash.

The president has amassed a war chest of at least $600 million in political donations heading into the midterm elections, according to three people familiar with the matter. It’s an unprecedented sum in modern politics, particularly for a lame-duck president who is barred by the U.S. Constitution from running again.

The only way for MAGA & King Donald to survive is to buy their way through the mid-term elections in 2026.

Trump’s $600 million war chest: How he plans to wield his power in the midterms and beyond
Between a barrage of executive orders, foreign trips and norm-shattering proclamations, President Donald Trump has also been busy raking in cash.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-fundraising-midterms-leverage-ccee4d19d5b41f08504370839fb36364

Latin Times: At Least a Dozen Migrants Arrested After Attending Immigration Hearings in Arizona

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A dozen people who attended a morning session of immigration hearings in Phoenix were arrested and taken away in vans after prosecutors asked to dismiss their cases.

Multiple people who attended civil immigration hearings were arrested in Phoenix outside the courtroom this week.

At least a dozen people who attended a morning session of hearings in Phoenix were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and taken away in vans after prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss their cases, AZ Mirror reported.

Isaac Ortega, a Phoenix-based immigration attorney, said one of his clients was among those arrested Tuesday morning. He recalled that the officials who took the people refused to identify themselves and wore masks. It remained unclear whether his client was taken to an immigration detention facility in Eloy or Florence, or sent to another state.

“My client has no criminal history; he entered the U.S. through the CBP program,” Ortega said. He added his client was preparing for a credible fear interview, the first hurdle as part of the asylum process when federal agents grabbed him from the court.

This is very deceitful, dishonest behavior on the part of DHS & ICE:

“There were two ICE officers inside the courtrooms who would notify the officers sitting in the hallway when a case was dismissed,” she wrote on social media. “It appears the (government attorneys) were moving to dismiss cases where people have been in the U.S. less than 2 years. By arresting them post-dismissal they will now try to put them in expedited removal proceedings and move towards deportations at lightning speed.”

And the locals weren’t particularly impressed:

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs denounced the arrests on a social media statement, saying, “we need to prioritize efforts to deport criminals and secure the border. Indiscriminately rounding up people following the rules won’t make us safer.”

In time, Karma will come around.

At Least a Dozen Migrants Arrested After Attending Immigration Hearings in Arizona
A dozen people who attended a morning session of immigration hearings in Phoenix were arrested and taken away in vans after prosecutors asked to dismiss their cases.

https://www.latintimes.com/least-dozen-migrants-arrested-after-attending-immigration-hearings-arizona-583619

Alternet: More than revenge: Here’s why Trump is really targeting his own former officials | Opinion

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During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.

In April 2025, Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate two men who served in his first administration, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, because they spoke out against his policies and corrected his false claims about the 2020 election that he lost.

Further, Trump revoked the security clearances for advisers and retired generals who publicly criticized him during the 2024 election campaign.

On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.

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But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.

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Recall that Trump only left office in January 2021 because key Republican officials defied his attempts to overturn an election he lost.

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In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.

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Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.

Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.

www.alternet.org
More than revenge: Here’s why Trump is really targeting his own former officials | Opinion

https://www.alternet.org/trump-revenge-2672110754