Rolling Stone: ICE Raids Aren’t Just a Latino Issue – Black Communities Are Also at Risk

“It’s not just Mexican people they are looking for,” one TikToker told her audience, “it’s all immigrants that are obviously not white” 

When ICE detained Rodriguez in February, weeks after filing her green card application, there was no consideration that she’d just given birth two weeks prior. I was just taken away from the child. I was leaking breast milk all over. I was still bleeding because I just had a baby and was on medication but I didn’t get those back.‘”

On Feb. 18, two weeks after having her son via C-section, Monique Rodriguez was battling postpartum depression. The Black mother of two, who was born and raised in St. Catherine Parish in Jamaica, had come to the U.S. in 2022 on a six-month visa and settled in Florida with her husband. But after finding herself alone and overwhelmed from the lack of support, she spiraled. “My husband is American and a first-time dad and was scared of hurting the baby. He kept pushing the baby off on me, which I didn’t like. I was in pain and I was tired and overwhelmed. I got frustrated and I hit my husband,” she says. A family member called the police, resulting in Rodriguez’s arrest. Suddenly, a private domestic dispute led to more serious consequences: When Rodriguez’s husband arrived to bail her out the following day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was waiting to detain her. Despite being married and having a pending Green Card application, she became one of thousands of immigrants deported this year because of contact with police.

Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, ICE has been raiding immigrant communities across the nation. Prior to the raids, Black immigrants, like Rodriguez, have historically been targeted at higher rates due to systemic racism. With a host of complications, including anti-blackness and colorism in the Latino community — which often leaves Black immigrants out of conversations around protests and solidarity — the future is bleak. And Black immigrants and immigration attorneys are predicting a trickle-down effect to Black communities in America, making them vulnerable even more. 

On June 6, protests broke out in Los Angeles — whose population is roughly half Hispanic, and one in five residents live with an undocumented person. On TikTok, Latino creators and activists called on Black creators and community members to protest and stand in solidarity. But to their disappointment, many Black Americans remained silent, some even voicing that the current deportations were not their fight. “Latinos have been completely silent when Black people are getting deported by ICE,” says Alexander Duncan, a Los Angeles resident who made a viral TikTok on the subject. “All of a sudden it impacts them and they want Black people to the front lines.” Prejudice has long disconnected Black and Latino communities — but the blatant dismissal of ICE raids as a Latino issue is off base. 

For some Black Americans, the reluctancy to put their bodies on the line isn’t out of apathy but self-preservation. Duncan, who moved from New York City to a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in L.A., was surprised to find the City of Angels segregated. “One of my neighbors, who has done microaggressions, was like ‘I haven’t seen you go to the protests,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘Bro, you haven’t spoken to me in six months. Why would you think I’m going to the front lines for you and you’re not even a good neighbor?’” 

Following the 2024 elections, many Black Democratic voters disengaged. Nationally, the Latino community’s support for Trump doubled from 2016, when he first won the presidency. Despite notable increases of support for Trump across all marginalized demographics, Latino’s Republican votes set a new record. “Anti-Blackness is a huge sentiment in the Latino community,” says Cesar Flores, an activist and law student in Miami, who also spoke on the matter via TikTok. “I’ve seen a lot of Latinos complain that they aren’t receiving support from the Black community but 70 percent of people in Miami are Latino or foreign born, and 55 percent voted for Trump.” Although 51 percent of the Latino community voted for Kamala Harris overall, Black folks had the highest voting percentage for the Democratic ballot, at 83 percent. For people like Duncan, the 48 percent of Latinos who voted for Trump did so against both the Latino and Black community’s interest. “The Black community feels betrayed,” says Flores. “It’s a common misconception that deportations and raids only affect Latinos, but Black folks are impacted even more negatively by the immigration system.” 

The devastation that deportation causes cannot be overstated. When ICE detained Rodriguez in February, weeks after filing her green card application, there was no consideration that she’d just given birth two weeks prior. “I was just taken away from the child. I was leaking breast milk all over. I was still bleeding because I just had a baby and was on medication but I didn’t get those back.” Rodriguez thought her situation was unique until she was transported to a Louisiana detention center and met other detained mothers. “I was probably the only one that had a newborn, but there were women there that were ripped away from babies three months [to] 14 years old,” says Rodriguez. 

On May 29, her 30th birthday, Rodriguez was one of 107 people sent to Jamaica. Around the same time, Jermaine Thomas, born on an U.S. Army base in Germany, where his father served for two years, was also flown there. Though his father was born in Jamaica, Thomas has never been there, and, with the exception of his birth, has lived within the U.S. all of his life. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” says Rodriguez, who is now back in Jamaica with her baby and husband, who maintain their American citizenships. “My husband and his mom took care of the baby when I was away. But there’s no process. They’re just taking you away from your kids and some of the kids end up in foster care or are missing.” 

In January, Joe Biden posthumously pardoned Marcus Garvey, America’s first notable deportation of a Jamaican migrant in 1927. His faulty conviction of mail fraud set a precedent for convicted Black and brown migrants within the U.S. 

“Seventy-six percent of Black migrants are deported because of contact with police and have been in this country for a long time,” says Nana Gyamfi, an immigration attorney and the executive director of the Black Alliance For Just Immigration. A 2021 report from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants found that while only seven percent of the immigrant population is Black, Black immigrants make up 20 percent of those facing deportation for criminal convictions, including low-level, nonviolent offences. “If you’re from the Caribbean it’s even higher,” says Gyamfi. “For Jamaicans, it’s 98 percent higher. People talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act, but I’ve recently learned that the first people excluded from this country were Haitians.”

On June 27, the Trump administration announced the removal of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Haitians starting in September, putting thousands of migrants in jeopardy given Haiti’s political climate. Though a judge ruled it unconstitutional, the threat to Black migrants remains. “You have Black U.S. citizens being grabbed [by ICE] and held for days because they are racially profiling,” says Gyamfi, referring to folks like Thomas and Peter Sean Brown, who was wrongfully detained in Florida and almost deported to Jamaica, despite having proof of citizenship. “Black people are being told their real IDs are not real.” With much of the coverage concerning the ICE raids being based around Latino immigrants, some feel disconnected from the issue, often forgetting that 12 percent of Latinos are Black in the United States. “A lot of the conversation is, ‘ICE isn’t looking for Black people, they’re looking for Hispanics,’” Anayka She, a Black Panamanian TikTok creator, said to her 1.7 million followers. “[But] It’s not just Mexican people they are looking for, it’s all immigrants that are obviously not white.” 

“A lot of times, as Black Americans, we don’t realize that people may be Caribbean or West African,” she tells Rolling Stone. Her family moved to the U.S. in the 1980s, after her grandfather worked in the American zone of the Panama Canal and was awarded visas for him and his family. “If I didn’t tell you I was Panamanian, you could assume I was any other ethnicity. [In the media], they depict immigration one way but I wanted to give a different perspective as somebody who is visibly Black.” America’s racism is partly to blame. “Los Angeles has the largest number of Belizeans in the United States but people don’t know because they get mixed in with African Americans,” says Gyamfi. “Black Immigrants are in an invisibilized world because in people’s brains, immigrants are non Black Latinos.”

The path forward is complex. Rodriguez and Sainviluste, whose children are U.S. citizens, hope to come back to America to witness milestones like graduation or marriage. “I want to be able to go and be emotional support,” says Rodriguez. 

Yet she feels conflicted. “I came to America battered and bruised, for a new opportunity. I understand there are laws but those laws also stated that if you overstayed, there are ways to situate yourself. But they forced me out.” 

Activists like Gyamfi want all Americans, especially those marginalized, to pay attention. “Black folks have been feeling the brunt of the police-to-deportation pipeline and Black people right now are being arrested in immigration court.” In a country where mass incarceration overwhelmingly impacts Black people, Gyamfi sees these deportations as a warning sign. “Trump just recently brought up sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prison colonies all over the world. In this climate, anyone can get it.” 

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/ice-raids-latino-issue-black-communities-1235384699

MSNBC: A federal judge’s ruling against ICE should be required reading for every American

Los Angeles is a city under attack. Spurred on by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s outrage that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not been deporting enough people, ICE agents have been sweeping through the city, often clad in full military attire like a conquering army. Photographs and videos document ICE’s “arrest first and ask questions later” approach on a daily basis.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong ordered ICE to stop “conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.” She refused to be taken in by the Trump administration’s fog of deception and disinformation. “The federal government agrees: Roving patrols without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment and denying access to lawyers violates the Fifth Amendment,” she wrote. “What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening.”

Frimpong’s ruling should be required reading for every American. She modeled the kind of resistance that is essential in the face of the administration’s concerted attack on facts, truths and common sense. Her “believe what you see, not what they say” response sets an example for all Americans who wish to resist an authoritarian takeover in this country.

The Courthouse News Service reports that, at a hearing held Thursday, the government wanted the judge to believe “that the ICE raids were sophisticated operations, based on surveillance and information from other law enforcement agencies targeting specific individuals.” According to CNS, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that ICE could “also stop and question other individuals there who they suspected were immigrants without legal status….” That would be acceptable, a DOJ lawyer argued, based on the “totality of the circumstances.”

The government offered these claims against the weight of the evidence and out-of-court statements. In an appearance last week on Fox News, the administration’s border czar Tom Homan included “physical appearance” in the list of things that ICE takes into account during their patrols in Los Angeles. At the Thursday hearing, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that ICE was engaging in racial profiling, targeting members of the Hispanic community and ignoring people of European ancestry who might be in the country illegally. “The evidence is clear that they’re looking at race,” Mohammad Tasjar, an attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, told Frimpong. Even a lawyer for the government acknowledged that “agents can’t put blinders on.”

During the hearing, as The New York Times reported, the judge “was skeptical of the government’s assertions that it was not violating the constitutional rights of people and that agents were stopping immigrants based on ‘the totality of circumstances,’ rather than relying on race.”

That skepticism was reflected in the 52-page opinion the judge handed down one day later. Frimpong wrote that the migrants who filed suit were likely to prevail in their claim that ICE had no legitimate basis to stop and detain most of the people caught up in its military style operations in Los Angeles. She found that the ICE operation constituted a “threatening presence” that left people fearful that they were being “kidnapped.” The judge ordered that, when conducting such operations, the government must stop relying on factors such as race, ethnicity, speaking Spanish, speaking English with an accent, presence at a particular location, or type of work.

Frimpong seemed particularly disturbed by the government’s failure to “acknowledge the existence of roving patrols at all.” As she put it, “the evidence before the Court at this time portrays the reality differently.” She also noted that the government had failed to provide any evidence that what ICE is doing could pass constitutional muster, despite “having nearly a week” to do so.

This judge’s insistence that reality does in fact matter is particularly important in the face of an administration that time and again demands Americans accept whatever it says.

In the immigration context at least, that ploy seems not to be failing. A recent Gallup poll found that 79% of respondents say immigration is “a good thing” for the country versus just 20% who say it is a “bad thing.” Just a year ago, those numbers were 64% and 32% respectively. The percentage of Americans who want to see a decrease in immigration also sharply declined, from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. And 62% of Americans now disapprove of President Trump’s handling of immigration.

Judge Frimpong’s determined refusal to be deceived by the administration’s smoke and mirrors and her rebuke of ICE’s “roving patrols” shows other members of the judiciary — and the rest of the country — that the White House’s rationalizations of its immigration policy deserve not a shred of deference. It should serve as a wake-up call to all of us and a reminder of the damage the administration’s anti-immigrant crusade is doing to our constitutional order.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ice-los-angeles-judge-ruling-profiling-immigration-rcna218624

Rolling Stone: Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi Fires Top DOJ Ethics Adviser

Pam “Bimbo #3” Bondi don’t need no stinkin’ ethics!!!

Attorney General Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi – who has been purging the Justice Department of anyone tied to the Jan. 6 prosecutions as well as the prosecutions of President Donald Trump – fired the lawyer personally advising her and the department’s thousands of employees on ethics, Bloomberg reported Sunday. 

Joseph Tirrell, who began his career in the Navy and spent almost two decades in the federal government, was fired last Friday via a brief letter from [Bimbo #3] Bondi, who gave no reason for the termination. The same day, Bondi fired 20 DOJ employees who were involved in prosecuting Trump. She has also recently fired employees related to the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol. Tirrell had advised Special Counsel Jack Smith on ethics related to the prosecution of Trump, Bloomberg reported.

“My public service is not over, and my career as a Federal civil servant is not finished,” Tirrell wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. “I took the oath at 18 as a Midshipman to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ I have taken that oath at least five more times since then. That oath did not come with the caveat that I need only support the Constitution when it is easy or convenient.” 

“I believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,'” he wrote. “I also believe that Edmund Burke is right and that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.'”

Tirrell was responsible for advising Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other DOJ leaders on financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, gifts, and recusals. He also helped guide the 117,000 Justice Department employees on ethics rules. He previously served as an ethics attorney at the FBI.

He reportedly approved Jack Smith’s $140,000 in free legal fees from a major Washington, D.C., law firm. In February, [Bimbo #3] Bondi instructed a working group to investigate “Weaponization by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump.” Smith resigned in January. 

[Bimbo #3] Bondi has been under fire for possible ethics violations. Earlier this month, the Miami Herald reported that the DOJ dropped its investigation into pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s potential foreign corruption violations. Bondi was previously an outside legal counsel for Pfizer. 

Trump has also taken aim at ethics in his administration. Earlier this year, he ordered the Justice Department to pause investigations into foreign bribery cases, although the investigations eventually resumed. The Trump Organization, the president’s family business empire, fired its ethics attorney after they represented Harvard in a suit against the government for freezing its federal funding. 

“The rules don’t exist anymore,” another fired DOJ official, Patty Hartman, told CBS News last week. 

Hartman, previously a top public affairs specialist at the FBI and federal prosecutors’ offices, had worked on press releases related to prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riots. The Justice Department began purging employees who worked on these prosecutions as soon as Trump took office. Trump issued a mass pardon for all 1,500 defendants hours after he was sworn in, including some of the most violent offenders

Hartman was fired last Monday and warned that there were more firings to come. Three other employees tied to the prosecutions of Jan. 6 have been fired in the past month, CBS News reported.

“There used to be a line, used to be a very distinct separation between the White House and the Department of Justice, because one should not interfere with the work of the other,” Hartman told CBS News. “That line is very definitely gone.”

“We appear to be driving straight into an abyss that holds no memory of what democracy is, was, or should be,” the now-former DOJ official added on social media.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pam-bondi-fires-top-doj-ethics-lawyer-1235384777

Salon: Stephen Miller can’t make America white. LA is paying for his impotent rage

Mass deportations were never going to work, so Trump and Miller resort to authoritarian theater

Donald Trump loves authoritarian theater, but let’s not forget that Stephen Miller is also to blame for the violence and chaos in Los Angeles. Last week, the right-wing Washington Examiner reported that Trump’s deputy chief of staff called a meeting with the top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “eviscerate” them for falling far short of the ridiculous goal he set of 3,000 deportations a day. In their desperation to keep Miller happy, ICE has already been targeting legal immigrants for deportation, mostly because they’re easy to find, due to having registered with the government. ICE agents stake out immigration hearings for people with refugee status and round up people here with work or student visas for minor offenses like speeding tickets, all to get the numbers up. But these actions were not enough for Miller.

“Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” he reportedly screamed at ICE officials. One ICE leader protested that the agency’s lead, Tom Homan, said they’re supposed to be going after criminals, not people who are just working everyday jobs. Miller reportedly hit the ceiling, furious that arrests aren’t widespread and indiscriminate. Trump has repeatedly implied he was only targeting criminals, but as Charles Davis reported at Salon, that conflicts with his promise of “mass deportations.” Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans. The expansive efforts to find and arrest immigrants in California, which kicked off the protests, appear to be a direct reaction to Miller’s orders to grab as many people as possible, regardless of innocence. 

But Miller doesn’t seem to care about crime. Or, perhaps he thinks having darker skin should be a crime. For Miller, the goal of “mass deportations” has never been about law and order, but about the fantasy of a white America. His desire to deport his way to racial homogeneity has always been not only deeply immoral, but pretty much impossible. His impotence shouldn’t breed complacency, however. As the violence in Los Angeles shows, petty rage can lead to all manner of evils. 

The term “white nationalist” is often used interchangeably with “white supremacist,” but it has a specific meaning. White supremacists think the government should enshrine white people as a privileged class over all others. White nationalists, however, want America to be mostly, if not entirely, white — a goal that cannot be accomplished without mass violence. That Miller appears to lean more into the white nationalist camp is well known. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center reviewed a pile of leaked emails Miller had sent to media allies that illustrated his obsession with white-ifying America. He repeatedly denounced legal immigration of non-white people and endorsed the idea that racial diversity is a threat to white people. He longed for a return to pre-1965 laws that banned most non-white immigrants from moving to America.

“Trump’s mass deportation project is actually a demographic engineering project,” Adam Serwer of the Atlantic explained on a recent Bulwark podcast, pointing to the administration’s expulsion of legal refugees of color while making exceptions to the “no refugee” policy for white South Africans. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau defended the exception by claiming that “they can be assimilated easily into our country.”

But it’s clear this language is code for “white.” By any good-faith definition of the word, thousands of non-white people targeted for deportation have also assimilated. They have jobs. They get married. They have kids. They are part of their communities. 

Sure enough, a sea of MAGA influencers have responded to the Los Angeles protests like parrots trained quite suddenly to say “ban third world immigration.” 

Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA followed up by praising Steve Sailer, a white supremacist who peddles debunked “race science” falsely claiming skin color and ethnicity controls IQ. The Groypers, a Hitler-praising group that doesn’t even pretend not to be racist, was ecstatic to see MAGA leaders edge closer to openly admitting to being white nationalists. 

Miller’s whites-only dreams aren’t going to happen, though it’s unclear if he’s delusional enough to think otherwise. White non-Hispanic Americans are 58% of the population, according to the Census. That means nearly 143 million Americans — most of whom are citizens— fall outside the strict parameters of what white nationalists like Miller would see as “white people.” Even if the Trump administration met its unlikely goal of deporting 11 million people, this would still be a racially diverse country by any measure. And it’s becoming more diverse: the non-white population is younger and having more children. 

If it feels gross to treat human beings like a math problem, that’s because it is. But that’s what we’re dealing with: an administration, led by a would-be strongman and his little deputy, that can’t engineer American demographics, no matter how hard they might try. MAGA Republicans flip out when liberals correctly point out that diversity is America’s strength. But what really makes them crazy is knowing, deep down, that diversity is America’s inevitability. 

This impotent rage factor is important for understanding what’s happening in Los Angeles. Trump and Miller can’t achieve their whites-only dreams, so they’re lashing out violently at communities, like in southern California, that remind them of their powerlessness in this department. 

Make no mistake: the Trump administration is the instigator here, and not just because they sent ICE in to start nabbing people willy-nilly. As Judd Legum of Popular Information carefully detailed on Monday, the violence began because Trump called the National Guard. Before that, the protests had been relatively small and contained. The Los Angeles Police Department released a statement commending the protesters for their cooperation and peacefulness, which led to a demonstration “without incident.” 

Trump started the chaos by sending in the National Guard. He wants violent visuals for right-wing media to run on a constant loop to serve his authoritarian agenda. When the protesters in Los Angeles didn’t give Trump the imagery he wanted, he deliberately escalated and lied about the reasons. Now he is celebrating his victory because of the violence he unleashed. He’s not subtle, and it’s a failure of the media every time they report on the “violence” without noting that Trump was the instigator.  

Small, weak men can cause a lot of damage. No one should be complacent about either the violence in Los Angeles or the thousands of lives being destroyed by these deportation schemes. But it’s also important to not be cowed by Trump and Miller’s theater, which they put on in no small part to conceal the myriad ways they will never be as all-powerful as they promised their supporters they would be. Understanding this can help people find the courage needed to fight back, because the best shot that MAGA has at winning is if their opponents give up the struggle. Already the administration’s overreach is creating a backlash: 

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/11/stephen-miller-cant-make-america-white-la-is-paying-for-his-impotent-rage

Guardian: Irish tourist jailed by Ice for months after overstaying US visit by three days: ‘Nobody is safe’

Exclusive: For roughly 100 days, Thomas says he faced harsh detention conditions, despite agreeing to deportation

Thomas, a 35-year-old tech worker and father of three from Ireland, came to West Virginia to visit his girlfriend last fall. It was one of many trips he had taken to the US, and he was authorized to travel under a visa waiver program that allows tourists to stay in the country for 90 days.

He had planned to return to Ireland in December, but was briefly unable to fly due to a health issue, his medical records show. He was only three days overdue to leave the US when an encounter with police landed him in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody.

From there, what should have been a minor incident became a nightmarish ordeal: he was detained by Ice in three different facilities, ultimately spending roughly 100 days behind bars with little understanding of why he was being held – or when he’d get out.

Farm worker who died after California Ice raid was ‘hardworking and innocent’, family saysRead more

“Nobody is safe from the system if they get pulled into it,” said Thomas, in a recent interview from his home in Ireland, a few months after his release. Thomas asked to be identified by a nickname out of fear of facing further consequences with US immigration authorities.

Despite immediately agreeing to deportation when he was first arrested, Thomas remained in Ice detention after Donald Trump took office and dramatically ramped up immigration arrests. Amid increased overcrowding in detention, Thomas was forced to spend part of his time in custody in a federal prison for criminal defendants, even though he was being held on an immigration violation.

Thomas was sent back to Ireland in March and was told he was banned from entering the US for 10 years.

Thomas’s ordeal follows a rise in reports of tourists and visitors with valid visas being detained by Ice, including from AustraliaGermanyCanada and the UK. In April, an Irish woman who is a US green card holder was also detained by Ice for 17 days due to a nearly two-decade-old criminal record.

The arrests appear to be part of a broader crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pushed to deport students with alleged ties to pro-Palestinian protests; sent detainees to Guantánamo Bay and an El Salvador prison without presenting evidence of criminality; deported people to South Sudan, a war-torn country where the deportees had no ties; and escalated large-scale, militarized raids across the US.

‘I thought I was going home’

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Thomas detailed his ordeal and the brutal conditions he witnessed in detention that advocates say have long plagued undocumented people and become worse under Trump.

Thomas, an engineer at a tech firm, had never had any problems visiting the US under the visa waiver program. He had initially planned to return home in October, but badly tore his calf, suffered severe swelling and was having trouble walking, he said. A doctor ordered him not to travel for eight to 12 weeks due to the risk of blood clots, which, he said, meant he had to stay slightly past 8 December, when his authorization expired.

He obtained paperwork from his physician and contacted the Irish and US embassies and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seek an extension, but it was short notice and he did not hear back, he said.

“I did everything I could with the online tools available to notify the authorities that this was happening,” he said, explaining that by the time his deadline to leave the US had approached, he was nearly healed and planning to soon return. “I thought they would understand because I had the correct paperwork. It was just a couple of days for medical reasons.”

He might have avoided immigration consequences, if it weren’t for an ill-timed law enforcement encounter.

Thomas and his girlfriend, Malone, were visiting her family in Savannah, Georgia, when Thomas suffered a mental health episode, he and Malone recalled. The two had a conflict in their hotel room and someone overheard it and called the police, they said.

Malone, who requested to use her middle name to protect her boyfriend’s identity, said she was hoping officers would get him treatment and did not want to see him face criminal charges. But police took him to jail, accusing him of “falsely imprisoning” his girlfriend in the hotel room, a charge Malone said she did not support. He was soon released on bond, but instead of walking free, was picked up by US immigration authorities, who transported him 100 miles away to an Ice processing center in Folkston, Georgia. The facility is operated by the private prison company Geo Group on behalf of Ice, with capacity to hold more than 1,000 people.

Thomas was given a two-page removal order, which said he had remained in the US three days past his authorization and contained no further allegations. On 17 December, he signed a form agreeing to be removed.

But despite signing the form he remained at Folkston, unable to get answers about why Ice wasn’t deporting him or how long he would remain in custody. David Cheng, an attorney who represented Thomas, said he requested that Ice release him with an agreement that he’d return to Ireland as planned, but Ice refused.

At one point at Folkston, after a fight broke out, officers placed detainees on lockdown for about five days, cutting them off from contacting their families, he said. Thomas said he and others only got approximately one hour of outdoor time each week.

In mid-February, after about two months in detention, officers placed him and nearly 50 other detainees in a holding cell, preparing to move them, he said: “I thought I was finally going home.” He called his family to tell them the news.

Instead, he and the others were shackled around their wrists, waists and legs and transported four hours to a federal correctional institution in Atlanta, a prison run by the US Bureau of Prisons (BoP), he said.

BoP houses criminal defendants on federal charges, but the Trump administration, as part of its efforts to expand Ice detention, has been increasingly placing immigrants into BoP facilities – a move that advocates say has led to chaos, overcrowding and violations of detainees’ rights.

‘We were treated less than human’

Thomas said the conditions and treatment by BoP were worse than Ice detention: “They were not prepared for us whatsoever.”

He and other detainees were placed in an area with dirty mattresses, cockroaches and mice, where some bunkbeds lacked ladders, forcing people to climb to the top bed, he said.

BoP didn’t seem to have enough clothes, said Thomas, who got a jumpsuit but no shirt. The facility also gave him a pair of used, ripped underwear with brown stains. Some jumpsuits appeared to have bloodstains and holes, he added.

Each detainee was given one toilet paper roll a week. He shared a cell with another detainee, and he said they were only able to flush the toilet three times an hour. He was often freezing and was given only a thin blanket. The food was “disgusting slop”, including some kind of mysterious meat that at times appeared to have chunks of bones and other inedible items mixed in, he said. He was frequently hungry.

“The staff didn’t know why we were there and they were treating us exactly as they would treat BoP prisoners, and they told us that,” Thomas said. “We were treated less than human.”

He and others requested medical visits, but were never seen by physicians, he said: “I heard people crying for doctors, saying they couldn’t breathe, and staff would just say, ‘Well, I’m not a doctor,’ and walk away.” He did eventually receive the psychiatric medication he requested, but staff would throw his pill under his cell door, and he’d sometimes have to search the floor to find it.

Detainees, he said, were given recreation time in an enclosure that was partially open to fresh air, but resembled an indoor cage: “You couldn’t see the outside whatsoever. I didn’t see the sky for weeks.” He had sciatica from an earlier hip injury and said he began experiencing “unbearable” nerve pain as a result of the lack of movement.

Thomas said it seemed Ice’s placements in the BoP facility were arbitrary and poorly planned. Of the nearly 50 people taken from Ice to BoP facility, about 30 of them were transferred back to Folkston a week later, and the following week, two from that group were once again returned to the BoP facility, he said.

In the BoP facility, he said, Ice representatives would show up once a week to talk to detainees. Detainees would crowd around Ice officials and beg for case updates or help. Ice officers spoke Spanish and English, but Middle Eastern and North African detainees who spoke neither were stuck in a state on confusion. “It was pandemonium,” Thomas said.

Thomas said he saw a BoP guard tear up “watching the desperation of the people trying to talk to Ice and find out what was happening”, and that this officer tried to assist people as best as she could. Thomas and Malone tried to help asylum seekers and others he met at the BoP facility by connecting them to advocates.

Thomas was also unable to speak to his children, because there was no way to make international calls. “I don’t know how I made it through,” he said.

In mid-March, Thomas was briefly transferred again to a different Ice facility. The authorities did not explain what had changed, but two armed federal officers then escorted him on a flight back to Ireland.

The DHS and Ice did not respond to inquiries, and a spokesperson for the Geo Group declined to comment.

Donald Murphy, a BoP spokesperson, confirmed that Thomas had been in the bureau’s custody, but did not comment about his case or conditions at the Atlanta facility. The BoP is now housing Ice detainees in eight of its prisons and would “continue to support our law enforcement partners to fulfill the administration’s policy objectives”, Murphy added.

‘This will be a lifelong burden’

It’s unclear why Thomas was jailed for so long for a minor immigration violation.

“It seems completely outlandish that they would detain someone for three months because he overstayed a visa for a medical reason,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, who is not involved in his case and was provided a summary by the Guardian. “It is such a waste of time and money at a time when we’re hearing constantly about how the government wants to cut expenses. It seems like a completely incomprehensible, punitive detention.”

Ice, she added, was “creating its own crisis of overcrowding”.

Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel with the National Immigration Law Center, also not involved in the case, said, in general, it was not uncommon for someone to remain in immigration custody even after they’ve accepted a removal order and that she has had European clients shocked to learn they can face serious consequences for briefly overstaying a visa.

Ice, however, had discretion to release Thomas with an agreement that he’d return home instead of keeping him indefinitely detained, she said. The Trump administration, she added, has defaulted to keeping people detained without weighing individual factors of their cases: “Now it’s just, do we have a bed?”

Republican lawmakers in Georgia last year also passed state legislation requiring police to alert immigration authorities when an undocumented person is arrested, which could have played a role in Thomas being flagged to Ice, said Samantha Hamilton, staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a non-profit group that advocates for immigrants’ rights. She met Thomas on a legal visit at the BoP Atlanta facility.

Hamilton said she was particularly concerned about immigrants of color who are racially profiled and pulled over by police, but Thomas’s ordeal was a reminder that so many people are vulnerable. “The mass detentions are terrifying and it makes me afraid for everyone,” she said.

Thomas had previously traveled to the US frequently for work, but now questions if he’ll ever be allowed to return. “This will be a lifelong burden,” he said.

Malone, his girlfriend, said she plans to move to Ireland to live with him. “It’s not an option for him to come here and I don’t want to be in America anymore,” she said.

Since his return, Thomas said he has had a hard time sleeping and processing what happened: “I’ll never forget it, and it’ll be a long time before I’ll be able to even start to unpack everything I went through. It still doesn’t feel real. When I think about it, it’s like a movie I’m watching.” He said he has also struggled with long-term health problems that he attributes to malnutrition and inappropriate medications he was given while detained.

He was shaken by reports of people sent away without due process. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if I ended up at Guantánamo Bay or El Salvador, because it was so disorganized,” he said. “I was just at the mercy of the federal government.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/15/irish-tourist-ice-detention

Raw Story: ‘Heck of a job’: Kristi Noem hammered in vicious attack from Texas newspaper

As the horror of the Texas floods continues to reverberate around the state, a major newspaper’s editorial board aimed a brutal attack on the Donald Trump government’s response.

And it saved a particularly vicious putdown for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Starting with praise for the way Texas’ community has pulled together to support itself, the Houston Chronicle quickly showed its admiration did not extend to the nation’s leaders.

“Judging by recent reporting on the Hill Country floods, however, some officials in Washington are more focused on saving cash than helping Texans recover,” the board wrote.

It listed what it saw as failures in the days after a girls’ summer camp was deluged, more than 130 people were declared dead and many more missing.

Among them was the Federal Emergency Management Agency “bizarrely” laying off workers at its disaster call center days after the flood — leaving thousands of affected community members unable to get help.

“Internal emails even show that officials knew they were failing at their task and needed the secretary to extend the call center contracts,” the Chronicle wrote. “We still do not have a decision, waiver or signature from the DHS Secretary,” one FEMA employee wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues.”

The editorial board declared, “Leaving disaster victims on hold isn’t governmental efficiency. It’s heartless.”

But it went on, hitting Noem for reportedly waiting 72 hours to send help because of “self-imposed red tape.”

“Noem has mandated that she personally review and approve expenses over $100,000 — including, say, deploying search-and-rescue teams after a flood that left more than 100 dead,” the board wrote.

‘It’s true Texas has done an admirable job bolstering our own disaster response,” the board continued.

But, it concluded, “Given the compounding scandals, Texans can be forgiven for any flashbacks to FEMA’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina.

“ … Even the president’s typically sharp tongue seems to have been replaced by embarrassing Bushisms. Trump’s claim that Noem was “right on the ball” is just his version of “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

https://www.rawstory.com/texas-flood-noem

Showbiz 411: Trump Epstein Fake Out: Says He Might Revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship (Which He Knows He Can’t Do)

There’s nothing to quote, it’s all in the title. Our pathetic King Donald is making a royal ass of himself in front of 340 million Americans and assorted billions elsewhere.

El Pais: Support for immigration reaches historic high in US despite Trump crusade

Gallup poll shows 79% of Americans favor immigrants, a significant increase from a year earlier and a high point in a nearly 25-year trend

About 8-in-10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, up sharply from 64% a year ago and a high point in a nearly 25-year trend. In contrast, only two in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing, down from 32% last year.

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-07-13/support-for-immigration-reaches-historic-high-in-us-despite-trump-crusade.html

Raw Story: DOJ lawyer ‘put his foot in his mouth’ in front of ‘righteously indignant’ judge

The Justice Department’s lawyer “put his foot in his mouth the minute he started and never seemed to get it out” in a recent hearing, according to a former prosecutor.

Ex-federal prosecutor Joyce Vance highlighted a high-profile case in which, as the Washington Post put it, “a federal judge in Maryland sharply rebuked a Justice Department attorney” after “an immigration official could not answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s plans to deport Kilmar Abrego García if he is released pending trial on federal human-smuggling charges against him in Tennessee.”

In the Maryland hearing this week, “Judge Paula Xinis heard testimony from a witness she had directed the government to present, and it turned out that the testimony failed to answer some of the very basic questions she has about the case,” according to Vance. She said they were questions such as, “What do you plan to do with Mr. Abrego Garcia if he’s released, and in what country, other than El Salvador, where the government is currently prohibited from sending him, might you dump him?”

Vance went on to ridicule the DOJ’s position in the case.

“The government is taking a ridiculous posture, saying that unless and until he’s released from criminal custody in the Tennessee case, they aren’t making any plans at all—they just have some vague ideas about the possibilities,” she wrote. “Given that this is the same government we now know from the Erez Reuveni whistleblower case doesn’t feel compelled to comply with courts that rule against Donald Trump’s desired course of action, it’s easy to understand why the Judge was skeptical of the government, telling their lawyers she could no longer presume they were acting in good faith at one point. The presumption of regularity entitles the government to an assumption by the court that its actions are valid and in accordance with the law, placing a burden on any party challenging it to prove otherwise.”

Vance highlighted Xinis’ comment to the DOJ lawyer: “You have taken the presumption of regularity and you’ve destroyed it in my view.”

“The government acted like everything was business as usual and this was just an ordinary case. But this Judge understands that it is not. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers made such a modest request, functional due process, just a couple of days’ notice before their client is dropped in a hellhole like South Sudan,” she wrote. “The government’s lawyer put his foot in his mouth the minute he started and never seemed to get it out. For starters, the Judge had asked yesterday for basic paperwork, the detainer that ICE was using to hold Abrego Garcia. But it took them until midway through the hearing to provide it to her. That’s an inexcusable failure on the government’s part that fairly shouts disrespect to the court.”

The analyst continued:

“The government told Judge Xinis they can either deport Abrego Garcia to a third country of their choice or reopen withholding proceedings… But the government wouldn’t commit to either option or even hint at its thinking.”

She added, “The Judge was righteously indignant that the government wouldn’t say what it wants to do, maintaining the fiction that some randomly assigned desk officer will decide what happens on the fly if Abrego Garcia is returned to their custody, just like they would in any normal case. It’s ridiculous. The government is saying ‘f— you’ to the courts over and over again, and the courts seem to be getting the message.”

https://www.rawstory.com/doj-lawyer-foot-in-mouth

The Grio: Trump admin ends legal protections for half-million Haitians who now face deportations- critics call it a “death sentence”

Advocates say sending 500,000 Haitians back to a nation overrun by gang violence and displacement is a death sentence.

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it is terminating legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, setting them up for potential deportation.

DHS said that conditions in Haiti have improved and Haitians no longer meet the conditions for the temporary legal protections.

Safe for whom?

The Department of State, nonetheless, has not changed its travel advisory and still recommends Americans “do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

https://thegrio.com/2025/06/30/trump-admin-ends-legal-protections-for-half-million-haitians-who-now-face-deportations-critics-call-it-a-death-sentence