A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García, who was already wrongfully deported once, cannot be deported again until at least early October, according to multiple reports.
CNN reported that the US district judge Paula Xinis, who is presiding over the case, scheduled an evidentiary hearing for 6 October, and said that she intends to have Trump administration officials testify about the government’s efforts to re-deport Ábrego.
At the same hearing, Ábrego’s lawyers informed the court that he plans to seek asylum in the United States, according to the Associated Press.
Ábrego’s case has drawn national attention since he was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March.
Following widespread pressure, including from the supreme court, the Trump administration returned him to the US in June. Upon his return, however, he immediately faced criminal charges related to human smuggling, allegations that his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”.
Ábrego, who is 30 years old and a Salvadorian native, was released from criminal custody in Tennessee on Friday while awaiting trial.
But over the weekend, the Trump administration announced new plans to deport him to Uganda.
Then on Monday, Ábrego was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during a scheduled immigration check-in in Baltimore, which was one of the conditions of his release.
He is currently being held in a detention center in Virginia.
Ábrego’s legal team swiftly filed a lawsuit on Monday, challenging both his current detention and his potential deportation to Uganda. In court filings, they argued that the government is retaliating against Ábrego for challenging his deportation to El Salvador.
“The only reason he was taken into detention was to punish him,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney representing Ábrego, on Monday. “To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”
Later on Monday, Xinis issued a ruling temporarily barring the government from deporting Ábrego until at least Friday. On Wednesday, she extended her order until Ábrego’s current deportation challenge in court is resolved, according to ABC News.
It added that Xinis said she would issue a ruling within 30 days of the 6 October hearing, and also ordered that Ábrego must remain in custody within a 200-mile (320km) radius of the court in Maryland.
She also reportedly said she would not order Ábrego released from immigration custody, leaving that decision for an immigration judge.
Ábrego entered the US without authorization around 2011 as a teenager. According to court documents, he was fleeing gang violence.
In 2019, a federal court granted him protection from deportation to El Salvador. Despite that ruling, in March, he was mistakenly deported there by the Trump administration.
In court documents in April, the Trump administration admitted that Ábrego’s deportation had been due to an “administrative error”.
Since then, Trump administration officials have repeatedly accused him of being affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family have denied.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/27/kilmar-abrego-garcia-deportation-trump-asylum
The Trump administration deported seven migrants from third countries to Rwanda in August as part of an agreement, the African nation confirmed on Thursday.
Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo said in a statement that the group arrived to the country in mid-August, ABC News reported.
They were “accommodated by an international organization,” Makolo added, and are being visited both by members of the International Organization for Migration and the Rwandan social services.
“Three of the individuals have expressed a desire to return to their home countries, while four wish to stay and build lives in Rwanda,” the spokeswoman added. They are also set to receive workforce training and healthcare. She provided no information of the migrants sent to the country.
Rwanda will take up to 250 migrants following an agreement signed in June.
Four African countries accepted receiving migrants from third countries from the U.S., the other ones being Eswatini, South Sudan and Uganda.
Uganda is the latest one to do so, with CBS News reporting earlier this month that it agreed to the deal as long as deportees don’t have criminal records. It is not clear how many migrants the country is willing to accept.
Overall, at least a dozen countries have already accepted or agreed to accept deportees from third nations so far in the second Trump administration.
Earlier this month the Miami Herald reported that more than three in ten migrants deported to third countries are Venezuelan. The outlet scanned through data obtained by the University of California’s Deportation Data Project. It showed that Venezuelans make up the largest share of deportees sent to countries where they were neither born nor were citizens.
Overall, close to 3,000 Venezuelans were deported to third countries during the first six months of the year, although the outlet clarified that the dataset is likely incomplete. Over two hundreds were infamously sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador, where many claimed to be subjected to numerous abuses before being released as part of a three-part agreement involving the U.S., Venezuela and the Central American country.
Most have been sent to Spanish-speaking countries including Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Spain. However, two were sent to Austria, one to Italy, one to Syria and one to Vanuatu, in the Pacific.
Overall, 7,900 such deportations were recorded by then, with Venezuelans representing 36.71% of the total. They are followed by Guatemalans (20%) and Hondurans (7.8%).
Maryland politicians and advocates publicly confronted the interim director of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Baltimore field office last week at the state’s premier gathering for policymakers, questioning her agents’ tactics for targeting and detaining immigrants and imploring her to resist what they called the harsher edicts of the Trump administration’s enforcement crackdown.
“Your officers have to do your job, but do you have to do it in a manner where the windows are broken?” Del. Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s) asked ICE director Nikita Baker during a heated question-and-answer session at the Maryland Association of Counties Conference in Ocean City.
Peña-Melnyk, one of several in the audience to question Baker on Thursday afternoon, questioned why ICE agents would use force to detain otherwise cooperative people, especially in front of children, and pleaded with the acting director to honor “due process.”
“We need to be respectful because we are lacking empathy right now in this country, and we are abusing people and we have laws for a reason,” Peña-Melnyk said. “Can you please go back to your office and tell them to be kinder?”
Baker said she would go back to her agents and convey that message. She defended them as professionals who have a job to do: “I can understand your feelings about it, but, however, I can’t stop doing my job. And my job is to enforce the law.”
The emotional back-and-forth mirrored the alarm many throughout the Washington region have been saying about President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown since he took office earlier this year. The president declared a crime emergency last week in the District — mobilizing federal police agents and deploying the National Guard — and daily arrest sweeps have focused on immigration enforcement.
In Maryland, where many immigrant families reside, lawmakers are mobilizing to raise the issue during the 2026 state legislative session.
“What do we have to lose?” Peña-Melnyk said in an interview after the panel. “What in the world do we need to lose when we’re losing it all?”
While the General Assembly was in session from January to April this year, advocates warned lawmakers about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, including detaining people with no history of criminal violations. In one incident, ICE agents in Maryland broke car windows in front of children during arrests, according to the Baltimore Banner.
But the comprehensive policy agenda that was introduced at the start of the session was narrowed in the end, with lawmakers barely beating the clock to pass the Maryland Values Act. That law requires law enforcement to notify officials when they are conducting activity at “sensitive locations,” including schools, libraries and courthouses.
But the law doesn’t include language championed by the Democratic majority in the House of Delegates that would have banned 287(g) partnerships, which are signed agreements between local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement that enable collaboration among agencies to deport people.
The Senate killed the effort to curtail the 287(g) program, with Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore County) saying he feared the move could provoke the White House amid Trump’s immigration crackdown and threaten critical federal funding amid a budget crisis in Maryland.
Those who championed the proposed law to limit 287(g), many of whom were in Ocean City for Thursday’s panel, said those fears have come true despite the state’s attempts to assuage the president.
“From the start, I believed that they were going to be who they are,” said Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s), chair of the Latino Caucus. “It’s our responsibility to be who we are as a state.”
Passing a ban on 287(g) agreements, Martinez said, would “highlight how we as Maryland are a welcoming state.”
Del Nicole Williams (D-Prince George’s), who championed the effort to ban 287(g) agreements, spoke on the Ocean City panel and announced that she will likely refile legislation that would curtail ICE’s power to deputize local police to enforce federal immigration laws.
“The Trump administration will probably continue to ramp up the enforcement activities that we have been seeing here in Maryland and across the country,” she said, noting that she has received a lot of requests urging her to reintroduce the 287(g) ban.
The panel focused on the relationship between Maryland and ICE, which varies substantially from county to county. Panelist Daniel Galbraith, the warden at the Harford County Detention Center, told the crowd about his county’s participation in the 287G program, a federal partnership between the Harford County Sheriff and ICE.
Baker outlined her agency’s responsibilities and championed its work to prioritize the deportation of violent criminals. She said the Baltimore field office had removed more sex offenders than any other in the nation, and had removed the second-largest number of alleged gang members. She also defended the choice of some of her officers to wear masks while arresting people because of incidents of immigration agents being doxed, threatened or followed home.
During her presentation, Williams called attention to the detention of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man who entered the United States illegally when he was a teenager and applied for asylum in 2019. He was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by ICE and accused, without evidence, of being a gang member. The Supreme Court said in an unsigned ruling in April that his removal to El Salvador was illegal.
Baltimore City council member Odette Ramos, the first and only Latina on the council, recounted reports of masked ICE agents arresting city residents and taking them away in unmarked cars, and criticized the conditions of temporary holding cells in Baltimore that have drawn the attention of the state’s congressional delegation. Ramos urged Baker to use her position to make her agents act differently.
“It’s just really abhorrent that this is happening,” Ramos said. “I’m asking you to resist. I’m asking you to stop doing this.”
Other local officials and immigration reform advocates repeatedly questioned Baker over reported incidents of ICE allegedly violating due process rights and holding detainees in inhumane conditions. Baker’s responses drew mumbled rebuttals from the crowd.
Martinez, who moderated the panel, said he was glad the conference invited a group of people with differing perspectives on immigration enforcement to come together.
“We are having a lot of these conversations but in silos, right?” Martinez said. “Folks that are in support or folks that are opposed of the current enforcement measures of this administration are talking amongst themselves. I think this panel provided us an opportunity to get all the stakeholders in the room to have an honest and truthful conversation in a way that’s respectful of one another’s point of views.”
After the panel, a woman from the audience approached Williams and showed her a picture of her young granddaughter, whose father was deported a few years ago. The woman told Williams that she doesn’t know whether they’ll see him again, and that his absence has had a negative impact on her granddaughter.
“That’s the human side of this story that we’re dealing with,” Williams said. “And this is why I do what I do and why I fight so hard. Because these are actual human beings, these are my friends, these are family members, this is my community.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/19/maryland-ice-detention-legislature-baltimore
For years, prominent voices on the right argued that Democrats were enacting a police state. They labeled everything—a report on homegrown extremism, IRS investigations into nonprofits—a sign of impending authoritarianism. Measures taken by state governments to combat the spread of COVID? Tyranny. An FBI search of Mar-a-Lago? The weaponization of law enforcement.
Now that a president is actually sending federal troops and officers out into the streets of the nation’s cities, however, the right is in lockstep behind him. This morning, Donald Trump announced that he was declaring a crime emergency, temporarily seizing control of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and deploying the D.C. National Guard to the nation’s capital.
“This is liberation day in D.C.,” Trump said. Nothing says liberation like deploying hundreds of uniformed soldiers against the wishes of the local elected government. District residents have made clear that they would prefer greater autonomy, including congressional representation, and they have three times voted overwhelmingly against Trump. His response is not just to flex power but to treat the District of Columbia as the president’s personal fiefdom.
Trump’s move is based on out-of-date statistics. It places two officials without municipal policing experience in positions of power over federalization and the MPD, and seems unlikely to significantly affect crime rates. What the White House hopes it might achieve, Politicoreports, is “a quick, visually friendly PR win.” Trump needs that after more than a month of trying and failing to change the subject from his onetime friend Jeffrey Epstein.
But what this PR stunt could also do is create precedent for Trump to send armed forces out into American streets whenever he declares a spurious state of emergency. Some of Trump’s supporters don’t seem to mind that fact: “Trump has the opportunity to do a Bukele-style crackdown on DC crime,” Christopher Rufo, the influential conservative personality, posted on X, referring to Nayib Bukele, the Trump ally who is president of El Salvador. “Question is whether he has the will, and whether the public the stomach. Big test: Can he reduce crime faster than the Left advances a counternarrative about ‘authoritarianism’? If yes, he wins. Speed matters.”
Rufo seems to view everything in terms of a political battle to be won via narratives; the term authoritarianism appears to mean nothing to him, and maybe it never meant anything to others on the right who assailed Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Democratic governors. It does have a real meaning, though, and Bukele is its poster boy. Despite the constitution having banned it, he ran for a second term in office; his party then changed the constitution to allow “indefinite” reelection. Lawmakers in his party also brazenly removed supreme-court justices, and his government has forced journalists into exile and locked up tens of thousands of people without due process. This is apparently the America that Chris Rufo wants.
To justify the crackdown, Trump has cited an alleged carjacking attempt that police records say injured the former DOGE employee Edward “Big Balls” Coristine. But MPD has already arrested two Maryland 15-year-olds for unarmed carjacking. That’s good news. Carjacking is a serious crime and should be punished. But Trump has used the incident to claim that violent crime is skyrocketing in Washington. This is, put simply, nonsense. During a press conference today, Trump cited murder statistics from 2023, and said that carjackings had “more than tripled” over the past five years. He didn’t use more recent numbers because they show that these crimes are down significantly in Washington. Murder dropped 32 percent from 2023 to 2024, robberies 39 percent, and armed carjackings 53 percent. This is in line with a broad national reduction in crime. MPD’s preliminary data indicate that violent crime is down another 26 percent so far this year compared with the same timeframe in 2024, though as the crime-statistics analyst Jeff Asher writes, this drop is probably overstated.
Trump’s descriptions of Washington as a lawless hellscape bear little resemblance to what most residents experience. Not only is D.C. not “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World,” as Trump claims, but his prescription seems unlikely to help. He said he is appointing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to help lead the federalization effort and MPD, but neither has any experience with municipal policing. They have not said what they will do differently. If the administration deploys its forces to high-profile areas such as the National Mall, they won’t have much impact on violent crime, because that’s not where it happens; if they go to less central areas with higher crime rates, they won’t get the PR boost they seek, because tourists and news cameras aren’t there.
Throughout his two presidencies, Trump has treated the military as a prop for making statements about which issues he cares about—and which he doesn’t. He deployed the D.C. National Guard during protests after the murder of George Floyd in summer 2020. Earlier this summer, he federalized the California National Guard and sent Marines to Los Angeles to assist with immigration enforcement, but they were sent home when it became clear that they had nothing to do there. Yet according to testimony before the January 6 panel, Trump did not deploy the D.C. National Guard when an armed mob was sacking the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to try to help Trump hold on to power.
Good policing is important because citizens deserve the right to live in safety. Recent drops in crime in Washington are good news because the district’s residents should be able to feel safe. But Trump’s militarization of the city, his seizure of local police, and his lies about crime in Washington do the opposite: They are a way to make people feel unsafe, and either quiet residents’ dissent or make them support new presidential power grabs. Many of Trump’s defenders are angry when he’s called an authoritarian, but not when he acts as one.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/08/trump-national-guard-dc/683839
Charles Hicks was at the gym when his husband called from the car to say he was being followed, Hicks recalled. His husband pulled over by their home, and Hicks watched on FaceTime as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent smashed his husband’s window.
He rushed to his Meridian apartment, but by then his husband was gone. Hicks, a U.S. citizen, already had started the process to get his husband legal status, he said. He and his husband had talked about the possibility of immigration enforcement, but Hicks said it still didn’t make him ready.
The Statesman is not naming the husband because Hicks said his husband fears repercussions for his case.
“I was not really prepared to watch that or to hear that,” Hicks said by phone. ICE agents screamed and yelled at his husband in the car, he said. “The No. 1 feeling that I had was just a pit in my stomach.”
Being in the United States without authorization is enough grounds to start the deportation process, and some immigrants who are here legally can also be removed. But under President Donald Trump, ICE agents in Idaho have been changing their tactics and using some strategies more often, according to local immigration lawyers. That includes smashing car windows, like with Hicks’ husband.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment sent via its official media email.
ICE agents also have conducted more arrests at ICE check-ins, which are routine meetings for agents to keep tabs on people going through the immigration process. Agents have also focused more on workplace enforcement, lawyers said. ICE isn’t necessarily going out to farms, but agents have been going to businesses to look for people employing undocumented immigrants, according to Neal Dougherty, a Nampa lawyer and partner at Ramirez-Smith Law.
The Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office and the Idaho State Police also have signed cooperation agreements with ICE, known as 287(g) agreements.
Overall, immigration arrests have increased over 900% in Idaho since Trump took office, according to The New York Times.
There aren’t increases in ICE’s resources or agents, said J.J. Despain, managing attorney for Wilner & O’Reilly’s Boise office, but ICE has lowered the bar on who it wants to deport and changed their strategies.
“Some of those are happening by surprise,” Despain told the Statesman.
The criminal justice system
In early April, a man failed to show up for his pretrial conference in Canyon County, perplexing his lawyer.
The lawyer, with the Idaho Public Defender’s Office, had been working with his client, who was charged in December 2024 with driving with a suspended or revoked driver’s license.
“I don’t know why he isn’t here today,” the lawyer told the judge in court audio obtained via a records request.
The next day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a picture of the man being detained in Nampa by federal officers.
When ICE picks up people mid-case, they can face default judgments and parole or probation violations for failing to appear in court. When or if individuals ever return to the United States, there can already be a warrant out for an immigrant’s arrest, said Dougherty.
ICE picked up people while their Idaho criminal cases were ongoing before the new administration took office. But it’s happening more often now, Dougherty and Despain said, with potential consequences for the immigrants and any victims.
These aren’t all minor cases like driving with a suspended license. In one instance, a 27-year-old man from Mexico was arrested in Pocatello for child sexual abuse, child enticement and kidnapping. ICE posted a picture of him the day before his preliminary hearing, at which he failed to appear. He has since been deported, ICE spokesperson Alethea Smock said in an email. The case is listed as inactive and pending after the state asked to keep the case open.
Wood River Valley lawyer Justin McCarthy said immigrants in Idaho’s criminal justice system should finish their sentences in the Gem State.
“They should be held accountable here. … You don’t get to skate on the sentence,” McCarthy said. “What about victims? What about the victims’ families? … That person could come back, and they often do.”
An immigrant from El Salvador
Hicks had been with his husband for about five years by the time he was detained by ICE in late June. The couple married in 2023, according to a petition filed by his husband’s lawyers.
Hicks’s husband is originally from San Salvador, the capital of the Central American country of El Salvador. He came to the United States in 2018 to support his family and has worked in construction, Hicks said. His husband sends money to his mother, sisters and nephews back home, Hicks said. He hasn’t been able to see his family in years.
In 2021, his husband pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and received a withheld judgment. He was required to undergo alcohol education and was placed on unsupervised probation, according to court records. On June 5 of this year, he was found guilty of driving while using a cellphone, according to online court records.
After his arrest, the husband was sent to Elmore County first. Now he is detained in the Nevada Southern Detention Center west of Las Vegas, according to an online ICE detainee locator tool.
Hicks can’t go visit his husband in detention. The couple can conduct phone and video calls through the jail, Hicks said.
Lawyers for Hicks’ husband filed a petition in federal court to get him out of detention, arguing among other things that ICE agents didn’t show a warrant when they broke into his car and that an immigration judge was unfairly keeping him detained.
Hicks filed a petition earlier in 2025 for his husband to get residency, he said. But it will take four to six years, Hicks said.
“You should enter (the U.S.) with permission,” Hicks said. “But also, the whole process is just broken. It shouldn’t take someone five or six years to possibly get residency when they’re married to a U.S. citizen.”
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article311591857.html
In a decision concerning immigration procedures, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Colorado has vacated a ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). The court’s ruling, filed on Tuesday, in the case of Cortez v. United States Attorney General Pam [“Bimbo #3”] Bondi, determined that the BIA was incorrect to reject an appeal from a Salvadoran mother and son based on a technicality regarding a signature.
Ana Sofia Cortez and her minor son, M.Y.A.C., who are natives of El Salvador, had their initial application for relief from removal denied by an immigration judge.
Their attorney subsequently filed an appeal with the BIA using the Electronic Courts and Appeals System (ECAS). The BIA, however, rejected the filing, stating that the proof-of-service section on the form was not signed.
The court’s opinion, authored by Judge Hartz, found that the BIA’s requirement for a signature on this section constituted a legal error.
The court highlighted the instructions on the BIA’s own form, which stated that a signature for the proof of service was required “if applicable.” Since the attorney filed electronically through ECAS, the system automatically served the opposing party, making a separate service and, therefore, a signature on that section, unnecessary.
The government, represented by the Office of Immigration Litigation, had argued that the petitioners’ challenge to the rejection was untimely. However, the Tenth Circuit chose not to consider this argument, noting that the BIA had not relied on that specific ground in its decision.
“The BIA’s rejection of Petitioners’ motion for reconsideration was predicated on an error of law and must be set aside,” the court stated in its opinion.
As a result, the court has vacated and remanded the case back to the BIA for further proceedings. This decision allows the petitioners a renewed opportunity to have the merits of their appeal considered. The ruling underscores the importance of agencies adhering to the clear language of their own procedural instructions and forms.
“Thank you so much for showing up this morning,” Sharon Nicholls said into a megaphone at 8 a.m. Wednesday outside a Home Depot in Pasadena.
As of Friday afternoon, no federal agents had raided the store on East Walnut Street. But the citizen brigade that stands watch outside and patrols the parking lot in search of ICE agents has not let down its guard—especially not after raids at three other Home Depots in recent days despite federal court rulings limiting sweeps. On Friday, a Home Depot in Van Nuys was raided twice before noon.
About two dozen people gathered Wednesday near the tent that serves as headquarters of the East Pasadena Community Defense Center. Another dozen or so would be arriving over the next half hour, some carrying signs.
“Silence is Violence”
“Migrants Don’t Party With Epstein”
Cynthia Lunine, 70, carried a large sign that read “Break His Dark Spell” and included a sinister image of President Trump. She said she was new to political activism, but added: “You can’t not be an activist. If you’re an American, it’s the only option. The immigration issue is absolutely inhumane, it’s un-Christian, and it’s intolerable.”
There are local supporters, for sure, of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Activists told me there aren’t many days in which they don’t field shouted profanities or pro-Trump cheers from Home Depot shoppers.
But the administration’s blather about a focus on violent offenders led to huge demonstrations in greater Los Angeles beginning in June, and the cause continues to draw people into the streets. Not all day laborers are undocumented, one Pasadena protester told me, and the taxpayer-funded use of federal forces to arrest people looking for work is offensive.
Dayena Campbell, 35, is a volunteer at Community Defense Corner operations in other parts of Pasadena, a movement that followed high-profile raids and was covered in the Colorado Boulevard newspaper and, later, in the New York Times. A fulltime student who works in sales, Campbell was also cruising the parking lot at the Home Depot on the east side of Pasadena in search of federal agents.
She thought this Home Depot needed its own Community Defense Corner, so she started one about a month ago. She and her cohort have more than once spotted agents in the area and alerted day laborers. About half have scattered, she said, and half have held firm despite the risk.
When I asked what motivated Campbell, she said:
“Inhumane, illegal kidnappings. Lack of due process. Actions taken without anyone being held accountable. Seeing people’s lives ripped apart. Seeing families being destroyed in the blink of an eye.”
Anywhere from a handful to a dozen volunteers show up daily to to hand out literature, patrol the parking lot and check in on day laborers, sometimes bringing them food. Once a week, Nicholls helps organize a rally that includes a march through the parking lot and into the store, where the protesters present a letter asking Home Depot management to “say no to ICE in their parking lot and in their store.”
Nicholls is an LAUSD teacher-librarian, and when she asks for support each week, working and retired teachers answer the call.
“I’m yelling my lungs out,” said retired teacher Mary Rose O’Leary, who joined in the chants of “ICE out of Home Depot” and “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
“Immigrants are what make this city what it is … and the path to legal immigration is closed to everybody who doesn’t have what, $5 million or something?” O’Leary said, adding that she was motivated by “the Christian ideal of welcoming the stranger.”
Retired teacher Dan Murphy speaks Spanish and regularly checks in with day laborers.
“One guy said to me, ‘We’re just here to work.’ Some of the guys were like, ‘We’re not criminals … we’re just here … to make money and get by,’” Murphy said. He called the raids a flexing of “the violent arm of what autocracy can bring,” and he resents Trump’s focus on Southern California.
“I take it personally. I’m white, but these are my people. California is my people. And it bothers me what might happen in this country if people don’t stand firm … I just said, ‘I gotta do something.’ I’m doing this now so I don’t hate myself later.”
Nicholls told me she was an activist many years ago, and then turned her focus to work and raising a family. But the combination of wildfires, the cleanup and rebuilding, and the raids, brought her out of activism retirement.
“The first people to come out after the firefighters—the second-responders—were day laborers cleaning the streets,” Nicholls said. “You’d see them in orange shirts all over the city, cleaning up.”
The East Pasadena Home Depot is “an important store,” because it’s a supply center for the rebuilding of Altadena, “and we’re going out there to show our love and solidarity for our neighbors,” Nicholls said. To strike the fear of deportation in the hearts of workers, she said, is “inhumane, and to me, it’s morally wrong.”
Nicholls had a quick response when I asked what she thinks of those who say illegal is illegal, so what’s left to discuss?
“That blocks the complexity of the conversation,” she said, and doesn’t take into account the hunger and violence that drive migration. Her husband, she said, left El Salvador 35 years ago during a war funded in part by the U.S.
They have family members with legal status and some who are undocumented and afraid to leave their homes, Nicholls said. I mentioned that I had written about Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, who was undocumented as a child, and has kept his passport handy since the raids began. In that column, I quoted Gordo’s friend, immigrant-rights leader Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
“Full disclosure,” Nicholls said, “[Alvarado] is my husband.”
It was news to me.
When the raids began, Nicholls said, she told her husband, “I have the summer off, sweetie, but I want to help, and I’m going to call my friends.”
On Wednesday, after Nicholls welcomed demonstrators, Alvarado showed up for a pep talk.
“I have lived in this country since 1990 … and I love it as much as I love the small village where I came from in El Salvador,” Alvarado said. “Some people may say that we are going into fascism, into authoritarianism, and I would say that we are already there.”
He offered details of a raid that morning at a Home Depot in Westlake and said the question is not whether the Pasadena store will be raided, but when. This country readily accepts the labor of immigrants but it does not respect their humanity, Alvarado said.
“When humble people are attacked,” he said, “we are here to bear witness.”
Nicholls led demonstrators through the parking lot and into the store, where she read aloud the letter asking Home Depot to take a stand against raids.
Outside, where it was hot and steamy by mid-morning, several sun-blasted day laborers said they appreciated the support. But they were still fearful, and desperate for work.
Jorge, just shy of 70, practically begged me to take his phone number.
Whatever work I might have, he said, please call.
Critics have not spared Donald Trump since his reign began for the second time in January. Now, George Conway, a conservative attorney, has also warned Americans about what might happen to the nation if his administration continues its endeavors. Conway, who has been a longtime vocal critic of Trump, commented that he is steering the United States toward a grave constitutional crisis.
He made those remarks in a report on the ongoing turmoil in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu’s government voted to fire the attorney general who is prosecuting him over a corruption case. Although the Supreme Court has blocked the move pending judicial review, one government minister is prepared to ignore the decision. Conway provided the ordeal as an example of what Donald Trump might try to do next in America.
He tweeted, “Mark my words. Trump will defy our Supreme Court, too. It’s just a matter of time.” His comments came after the Trump administration tried to dodge a bunch of Supreme Court orders since his second term began. For example, in the Kilmer Abergo Garcia case, as part of the immigration crackdown, ICE wrongfully detained and sent Garcia to the notorious El Salvador prison, a facility known for its extreme conditions. His case created a vast controversy, especially when the administration threatened to ignore strong court orders against it.
Meanwhile, Karl Rove, a longtime Republican strategist, noted that Donald Trump’s problematic moves could cost him badly. During a Fox News interview over the weekend, he noted that the President is losing his strong grounds, which could result in a bad outcome during next year’s midterm elections.
“While he has strengthened the support among right-leaning Republicans, he has also sort of lost ground among independents, who at this point are disposed to say, ‘I’m voting Democrat in the midterm election,” Rove said, as per Huff Post.
“To me, what’s ironic is, is that the Trump administration is making the same mistake that the Biden administration made,” the strategist added. He explained that there were mostly three issues that got Trump elected: the economy, the border, and inflation. While the President is definitely working on border issues, inflation and the economy seem to be the least priorities for his administration right now.
“Well, now we have ‘the golden age of American prosperity has returned,’ and Americans are not feeling that. I think that’s a big mistake for the White House and is likely to come back and bite ’em in the midterm elections,” Rove concluded.
