LA Times: ‘Are you from California?’ Political advisor said he was detained at airport after confirming he’s from L.A.

Veteran Los Angeles political consultant Rick Taylor said he was pulled aside by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents while returning from a trip abroad, asked if he was from California and then separated from his family and put in a holding room with several Latino travelers for nearly an hour.

“I know how the system works and have pretty good connections and I was still freaking out,” said Taylor, 71. “I could only imagine how I would be feeling if I didn’t understand the language and I didn’t know anyone.”

Taylor said he was at a loss to explain why he was singled out for extra questioning, but he speculated that perhaps it was because of the Obama-Biden T-shirt packed in his suitcase.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-27/are-you-from-california-political-advisor-said-he-was-detained-at-airport-after-confirming-hes-from-la

Guardian: Federal agents blast way into California home of woman and small children

Security footage shows agents setting off explosive device and shattering window of family home in Huntington Park

Federal agents blasted their way into a residential home in Huntington Park, California, on Friday. Security-camera video obtained by the local NBC station showed border patrol agents setting up an explosive device near the door of the house and then detonating it – causing a window to be shattered. About a dozen armed agents in full tactical gear then charged toward the home.

Jenny Ramirez, who lives in the house with her boyfriend and one-year-old and six-year-old children, told NBC through tears that it was one of the loudest explosions she heard in her life.

“I told them, ‘You guys didn’t have to do this, you scared my son, my baby,’” Ramirez said.

Ramirez said she was not given any warning from the authorities that they wanted to enter her home and that everyone who lives there is a US citizen.

The agents told Ramirez that they were searching for her boyfriend, but did not tell her why, according to NBC. Ramirez told the news station that he was involved in a vehicle collision with a truck carrying federal agents last week. She said it was an accident and unintentional.

Of course, ICE & CBP “enhance” the tale:

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told NBC: “Jorge Sierra-Hernandez was arrested because he rammed his car into a CBP vehicle, causing significant damage and obstructed the work of our agents and officers during the course of a law enforcement operation.”

The spokesperson said agents were “assaulted” during this incident and “additional rioters threw rocks and other objects at our personnel”.

Poor babies, got the reception they deserved!

Customs and Border Protection did not immediately return the Guardian’s request for comment.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/27/california-home-raid-huntington-park

Esquire: How U.S. Customs and Border Protection Accidentally Sent a JD Vance Meme into the Viral Stratosphere

The altered photo of the vice president might’ve revealed his weird, sweaty soul better than Hillbilly Elegy ever could.

This week, a 21-year-old Norwegian tourist named Mads Mikkelsen was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Newark Airport, and the most important part of the story is NOT that there’s another guy named Mads Mikkelsen. The most important part of the story is that Mikkelsen claims he was detained and eventually returned to Norway at least in part because of an image CBP agents found on his phone, which is this doctored photo of JD Vance.

Upon his return to Norway, Mikkelsen gave an interview to local newspaper Nordlys, saying that CBP agents threatened him with a $5,000 fine if he did not unlock his phone and allow them to scroll through his photos, and when they saw this hilarious and unsettling image, that was the last straw. The story spread far and wide, and CBP felt the need to address the situation on social media.

Because the CBP chose to address the story publicly rather than let it blow over, the JD Vance meme has been on the front page of European newspapers and websites all week long, which is the dumbest and funniest and most obvious possible outcome. It is proof that people in power do not understand the Streisand Effect.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a65223992/us-customs-and-border-protection-jd-vance-meme

The Hill: Migrant deaths in ICE custody spark concerns

  • 8 migrants have died in ICE detention centers since January
  • Migrant rights groups allege insufficient medical care in ICE facilities
  • ICE says every death at a facility is ‘a significant cause for concern’

A Canadian citizen held in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Miami became the 11th person to die in an ICE facility since October after he was found unresponsive this week.

The agency said Thursday that Johnny Noviello, 49, died in the ICE facility and that his cause of death remains under investigation.

ICE officials say that any death that occurs in a detention facility is a “significant cause for concern” and that the agency prioritizes the health, safety and well-being of all migrants in ICE custody. Eight people have died in ICE detention centers this year alone — including four in Florida — according to federal data.

Noviello became a legal permanent resident in the U.S. in 1991 but was convicted in 2023 of racketeering and drug trafficking in Florida, ICE officials said this week. He was sentenced to spend a year in prison before he was arrested in May by ICE at the Florida Department of Corrections Probation office. He was given a notice to appear and was charged with being deported for violating state law.

In 2024, an American Civil Liberties Union report indicated that 95% of deaths that took place in ICE facilities between 2017 and 2021 could have been prevented or possibly prevented. The investigation, which was conducted by the ACLU, American Oversight and Physicians for Human Rights, analyzed the deaths of the 52 people who died in ICE custody during that time frame.

“ICE has failed to provide adequate — even basic — medical and mental health care and ensure that people in detention are treated with dignity,” Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project and report co-author, said last year. “Abuses in ICE detention should no longer go ignored. It’s time to hold ICE accountable and end this failed, dangerous mass detention machine once and for all.”

The report alleged that ICE had “persistent failings in medical and mental care” that caused preventable deaths, including suicides. It also said that the federal agency failed to provide adequate medical care, medication and staffing.

Of the 52 deaths that the study analyzed, 88% involved cases in which the organizations found that incomplete, inappropriate and delayed treatments or medications contributed directly to the deaths of migrants being held in ICE custody.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5374028-migrant-deaths-in-ice-custody-canadian-citizen-florida

Reason: How DHS Facial Recognition Tech Spread to ICE Enforcement

More government agencies are using facial recognition for enforcement than ever before.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a smartphone app to identify people based on an image of their fingerprints or face, 404 Media reported Thursday, based on a review of internal ICE emails. The expanding and repurposing of this sophisticated technology, ordinarily used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when people are entering or exiting the country, is now being used on people living in the United States to meet mass deportation and arrest quotas imposed by President Donald Trump.

The app, Mobile Fortify, enables users to verify an unknown person’s identity in the field through contactless fingerprints and facial images on ICE-issued phones, according to an email sent to all ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel and obtained by 404. According to the emails, Mobile Fortify can identify a person by comparing a photo of their face across two databases—Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Traveler Verification Service database of people’s photos taken when entering the United States, and Seizure and Apprehension Workflow, described by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an “intelligence aggregator” that brings together information related to searches and seizures. For fingerprint matches, the app uses DHS’s centralized Automated Biometric Identification System, which “holds more than 320 million unique identities and processes more than 400,000 biometric transactions per day,” according to the agency.

A report released by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in September 2024 attempted to call attention to concerns about accuracy, oversight, transparency, discrimination, and access to justice as facial recognition tools have quickly proliferated. Although facial recognition technology is now available to the public through commercially available tools, policies governing the federal government’s use of the technology have lagged behind real-world applications. Currently, there are no comprehensive laws regulating the federal government’s use of facial recognition technology and no constitutional provisions governing its use.

Face recognition technology is notoriously unreliable, frequently generating false matches and resulting in a number of known wrongful arrests across the country. Immigration agents relying on this technology to try to identify people on the street is a recipe for disaster,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media. “Congress has never authorized DHS to use face recognition technology in this way, and the agency should shut this dangerous experiment down.

https://reason.com/2025/06/27/how-dhs-facial-recognition-tech-spread-to-ice-enforcement

Newsweek: Green card-holder with 2 US citizen kids held by ICE for over two months

Claudio Cortez-Herrera, a green card holder from Mexico who has lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and has two U.S. citizen children, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials for over two months.

Cortez-Herrera, 34, has been in the U.S. for over two decades, his fiancee Leticia Ortiz Lopez wrote in an online fundraiser seeking financial assistance for legal fees and child support. He is the father of their two U.S. citizen children, a 2-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son with autism.

She told local outlet 13 On Your Side that he was on his way to work and “putting in the house payment across the street at the drop box post office, when he got surrounded by 10 ICE agents, and he was taken.”

ICE confirmed in a Facebook post that Cortez-Herrera was arrested by Detroit-based immigration officials on April 23. Newsweek confirmed in the ICE detainee database that he is still in custody, held at the Calhoun County Correctional Center in Battle Creek, Michigan.

In the Facebook post, ICE noted Cortez-Herrera’s previous criminal record, writing, “Convicted in New Castle, Del [Delaware],” noting that his conviction was for “Planning first-degree arson & first-degree reckless endangering.”

Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the conviction.

His wife said in the GoFundMe: “Over 20 years ago, as a teen, he made a mistake. He took responsibility and left that life behind.”

https://www.newsweek.com/green-card-holder-2-us-citizen-kids-held-ice-over-two-months-2091660

ABC News: Trump administration expediting fines for those in the US illegally: Exclusive

New rule will eliminate the 30-day warning period before fines begin.

The Trump administration is looking to speed up its ability to fine those in the United States illegally — up to $1,000 per day — according to a rule set to be published Friday in the Federal Register that was obtained by ABC News.

Currently, the government can alert those in the U.S. illegally 30 days before it starts issuing fines.

The rule proposed by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security allows the government to immediately start fining those in the U.S. illegally.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-eliminating-warning-period-fining-us-illegally/story?id=123249981

Guardian: Trump drives surge in ICE detentions of those with no criminal record despite stated priorities

ICE facilities across the US are holding significantly more people than normal capacity

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is continuing to arrest an increasing number of immigrants without any criminal history, according to recent federal government data reviewed by the Guardian, demonstrating a further dramatic surge in this trend.

The latest available data, released by ICE last Friday, appears to contradict Trump administration officials’ frequent assertions that the agency is prioritizing the pursuit of criminals in its immigration enforcement operations.

“Our number one concern is violent criminals,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which houses Ice, said on TV in an interview with PBS last week.

In mid-June, ICE data shows there were more than 11,700 people in immigration detention who had been arrested by ICE despite having no track record of being charged with or convicted of a crime. That represents a staggering 1,271% increase from data released on those in immigration detention immediately before the start of Trump’s second term.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/24/trump-immigrants-ice-arrests

Straight Arrow News: National Guard, DEA raid illegal marijuana farms in Southern California

More than 300 National Guard troops initially tasked with aiding law enforcement in the Los Angeles protests and subsequent unrest assisted federal agents during the week of June 15 in a large-scale raid targeting three suspected illegal marijuana farms in Thermal, a desert community in Riverside County, California. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) led the operation, which spanned approximately 787 acres in the Coachella Valley.

However, California officials argue that extending the Guard’s role to operations far from Los Angeles exceeds Trump’s authority. In a federal court filing cited by The Los Angeles Times, California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office stated that the marijuana farm raids were not related to protecting federal property or personnel in Los Angeles, and questioned whether the president’s order remains legally valid, given the changed circumstances.

The dispute centers on whether Trump’s extended use of the National Guard violates the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the use of military forces for domestic law enforcement without congressional approval. Bonta’s office asked the court to review whether federalized troops can operate in areas where no violence or protests are occurring. Defense Department documents indicate that the deployment could last 60 days or longer, at the discretion of the secretary of defense.

https://san.com/cc/national-guard-dea-raid-illegal-marijuana-farms-in-southern-california

Washington Examiner: Liberal judge frees federally charged anti-ICE rioters in Portland

A liberal Portland judge has ordered the pretrial release of several antifa-affiliated activists facing federal charges for their alleged violent involvement in the uprisings against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Stacie Fatka Beckerman, a federal magistrate judge who donated to Democrats, freed at least four known antifa affiliates federally charged over serious crimes connected to the anti-ICE riots, according to a Washington Examiner review of court records.

Joshua Ames Cartrette, a convicted felon accused of assaulting a federal officer; Ginovanni Joseph Brumbelow, who allegedly tried to stab a Customs and Border Protection agent with a wooden stake; Deni Jungic Wolf, who is suspected of punching a federal officer in the head; and alleged anti-ICE rioter Eli Victor McKenzie were all released without bail after appearing before Beckerman in separate preliminary proceedings.

Cartrette, 46, of Oregon City, allegedly attacked a federal agent and kicked deployed tear-gas cannisters toward other officers during a declared June 14 riot outside the ICE office in south Portland, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Authorities allege that Cartrette was part of a far-left mob that launched mortar fireworks, rocks, bricks, and glass bottles at the facility to burn down the building following nationwide “No Kings” protests. Cartrette, a self-described “anarchist” who uses the comrade moniker “Zero,” has frequently been featured in writings published on the antifa blog “It’s Going Down.” If convicted, Cartrette faces a maximum one-year prison sentence.

That same evening, Brumbelow, 21, of Gresham, allegedly interfered with the arrest of a fellow anti-ICE rioter and used a “pointed” stake to strike the back of a CPB agent’s head, according to probable cause statements.

Video evidence allegedly captures Brumbelow, dressed in black, bashing the officer over the head with the wooden end of a protest sign. Brumbelow faces up to eight years in federal prison for felony assault of an officer.

Wolf, 19, of Portland, is accused of assaulting a federal officer at a June 16 standoff outside the local ICE office. When agents moved in to clear a make-shift barricade erected by anti-ICE activists, Wolf allegedly punched an officer with enough force to knock his mask off and expose him to pepper spray deployed during crowd-control operations. Charging documents say Wolf was armed with a knife. Assaulting a federal officer resulting in bodily injury is punishable by up to 20 years behind bars. Last year, Wolf was reported to Portland police as an autistic, teenage runaway.

McKenzie, 21, of Portland, is charged with failing to obey a lawful order at the June 16 riot near the city’s ICE office. The offense is a Class C misdemeanor and carries a penalty of up to 30 days in custody.

So glad to see these heroes resisting ICE!