Democrats push back against masked agents arresting immigrants, but Republicans worry about officers’ safety
Doxing has already struck a nerve among federal agents in El Paso supporting immigration operations.
“I have experienced that with one of my employees, who was photographed during an operation. It was put out on Instagram, and the individual who had posted that had indicated that ‘the community needs to remind him where he came from,’” said Jason T. Stevens, HSI special agent in charge in El Paso.
What is clearly free speech for some can translate into a threat to others.
“My employee felt such a threat that he completely changed his appearance to be able to protect his family when he’s off-duty and out in the community with them,” Stevens said at a recent Senate committee hearing in Washington, D.C.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jose Perez said doxing – the act of publishing someone’s private information online without consent – can not only hurt the target but also their loved ones.
“The doxing poses tremendous vulnerability,” said Perez, who heads the Criminal Investigative Division. “One example […] In this incident, the agent was being threatened also with pictures of his children to back down on the operations that are ongoing. It is a significant threat that we are concerned with.”
Dox them all — the masked Gestapo thugs terrorizing neighborhoods and disappearing people off the streets get no sympathy from me!
Let the First Amendment rule!
News Nation: Doxing strikes nerve among federal agents
A Honduran woman filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility.
She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras as her 6-year-old son battles acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
A Central American asylum applicant arrested outside an L.A. immigration court is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for her immediate release and that of her two children, including her 6-year-old son stricken with cancer.
The Honduran woman, not named in court documents, filed a petition for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility. She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras, as her children cry and pray nightly to be released from a Texas holding facility, according to court documents.
She and her two children, including a 9-year-old daughter, are facing two removal proceedings concurrently: a previous removal proceeding involving their asylum request and this recent expedited removal process.
The woman claims the government violated many of their rights, including the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.
Her attorneys noted that DHS determined she was not a flight risk when she was paroled and that her detention was unjustified.
The woman’s lawyers also argued that she was not given an opportunity to contest her family’s detention in front of a neutral adjudicator, and that the family’s 4th Amendment right to not be unlawfully arrested was violated.
ICE seizes 6-year-old with cancer outside L.A. court. His mom is fighting for his release
A Honduran woman is fighting to prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras as her 6-year-old son battles acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Attorneys for the boy, his mother and 9-year-old sister said they are seeking asylum and were summarily arrested despite appearing for their scheduled immigration court hearing.
A mother and her two young children — one a 6-year-old boy with leukemia — were detained by immigration officers after going to a routine immigration court proceeding in Los Angeles. Now, the family is suing the Trump administration while being detained at a facility in Texas.
According to court documents obtained by HuffPost, the family, whose names are not included in the suit, has been in the U.S. for seven months seeking asylum from Honduras. They entered the country lawfully and were granted parole as they sought asylum. However, when they arrived at the courthouse on the day and time directed, their case was dismissed, and they were detained by people, presumably federal agents, in plainclothes.
“There were men waiting for them in civilian clothing. The [immigration officers] detained the family for many hours, and it was a terrifying time for the two children and their mother,” Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told Texas Public Radio.
“They were crying in fear. One of the agents at one point lifted up his shirt, which displayed the gun that he was carrying,” Mukherjee added. “The 6-year-old boy was terrified to see the gun. He urinated on himself and wet all his clothing. No one offered him a change of clothing for many hours.”
6-Year-Old With Leukemia In Immigration Detention After Family’s Arrest At Courthouse: Lawsuit
Attorneys for the boy, his mother and 9-year-old sister said they are seeking asylum and were summarily arrested despite appearing for their scheduled immigration court hearing.
The full scope of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan – which has been evident in theory – is only just starting to come together in practice, and its scale has come as a surprise to many Americans.
This week, the Supreme Court blessed, for now, the administration’s effort to deport people from countries such as Cuba and Venezuela to places other than their homeland, including nations halfway around the world in Africa.
In Florida, construction began on a migrant detention center intended to be a sort of Alcatraz in the Everglades.
And CNN reported exclusively that the administration will soon make a large universe of people who had been working legally after seeking asylum eligible for deportation.
I went to the author of that report, CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, and asked her to explain what we know and what we’re learning about how the different stories are coming together.
One thing that stuck out to me is how the totality of the administration’s actions is turning people who had been working legally in the US into undocumented immigrants now facing deportation.
…
The plans that the administration has been working on are targeting people who came into the US unlawfully and then applied for asylum while in the country.
The plan here is to dismiss those asylum claims, which could affect potentially hundreds of thousands of people and then make them immediately deportable.
It also puts the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency responsible for managing federal immigration benefits, at the center of the president’s deportation campaign, because not only are they the ones that manage these benefits, but they have also been delegated the authority by the Department of Homeland Security to place these individuals in fast-track deportation proceedings and to take actions to enforce immigration laws.
This is a shift that is prompting a lot of concern. As one advocate with the ACLU put it – and I’ll just quote her – “They’re turning the agency that we think of as providing immigration benefits as an enforcement arm for ICE.”
…
You’re right to say that coming into this administration, Trump officials repeatedly said their plans were to target people with criminal records.
That is a hard thing to do. It requires a lot of legwork, and their numbers in terms of arrests were relatively low compared to where they wanted to be.
The White House wants to meet at least 3,000 arrests a day, and you just cannot do that if you are only going after people with criminal records.
Analysis: Trump is creating a new universe of people to deport | CNN Politics
The puzzle pieces are starting to come together for Trump’s master deportation plan
The 287(g) program allows local police to work with ICE as a “force multiplier” during immigration enforcement operations.
Immigrant rights groups sued a Long Island county Tuesday over an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allows local police to carry out immigration enforcement.
Nassau County in February became the first county in New York to make a deal with ICE since President Donald Trump was inaugurated. The program — known as a 287(g) agreement after the federal law that authorizes such partnerships — allows law enforcement agencies to partner with ICE as a “force multiplier” to make immigration arrests.
Advocates and community groups, including the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, the Central American Refugee Center and the Haitian-American Family of Long Island, said in their lawsuit that the partnership exceeds Nassau police’s authority under state law and allows a police agency already dogged by accusations of racial profiling to discriminate against the immigrant community. The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, names the county and its police department as defendants.
Long Island police sued after partnering with ICE to enforce immigration
Advocates sued Nassau County after it became the first New York county to partner with ICE after President Donald Trump took office.
Multiple administrations have reportedly been deporting U.S. citizens since at least 2015
… a newly released government watchdog report revealed that at least 70 documented U.S. citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that toward the end of former President Barack Obama’s second term and throughout President Donald Trump’s first, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 674 possible U.S. citizens, detained 121 and deported at least 70, though the actual numbers may be higher.
“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens,” the report revealed.
The problem is systemic, according to Migrant Insider, since “ICE has not implemented a reliable system to track and correct its mistakes.”
Dozens of US Citizens Were Deported by ICE Before Trump Started His Second Term: Report
The Government Accountability Office, a watchdog group, found that U.S. citizens have been deported since at least 2015, and were detained as early as 2002.
ICE agents detain mother in Pasadena in front of children without showing a warrant (and the mother wasn’t who they were looking for — 3 masked men just jumped out of a car and grabbed her)
A mother walking with her children in Pasadena was taken into custody by immigration agents over the weekend in an incident that was partially captured on video and has drawn sharp criticism from witnesses.
Rosalina Luna Vargas, a mother of two and the primary breadwinner for her family, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Saturday morning around 8 a.m., according to bystanders. Her children were present at the time of the incident, which took place in broad daylight in the corner of Catalina and Del Mar.
The encounter was recorded by Jillian Reed, a Caltech alum and local resident, who was driving by when she noticed a commotion on the sidewalk.
In the footage she captured, three individuals in plain clothes—two of whom were masked and wore badges on lanyards—can be seen attempting to force Vargas into an unmarked Honda Accord. A third man, appearing younger and without any visible identification, also participated.
“I saw the commotion while driving, and when I slowed down, the kids shouted for help,” Reed said. “They kept asking for a warrant. They told the officers they would stop resisting if they just showed them a warrant. One of the men said he had one but didn’t show it.”
The video cuts off just as Vargas’s daughter pleads with Reed to call the police. According to Reed, she did call 911, reporting what she believed at the time to be a possible kidnapping.
As the situation escalated, Vargas allegedly broke free from the agents and ran into the courtyard of the nearby Del Mar Park Assisted Living Facility, with her children following close behind. The agents pursued, but were confronted again by the children, who physically tried to shield their mother.
“They formed a human wall,” Reed said. “One of the kids clung to her, telling her, ‘Don’t let go! Don’t let go!’ while crying. Then he started shouting to the crowd, ‘I can’t lose my mom!’”
Reed said the staff at the assisted living facility intervened, telling the agents they were on private property and could not proceed without a warrant. The agents, she said, took photos of everyone present—including Reed—before leaving in two separate vehicles.
Pasadena police later arrived and took statements from those at the scene. According to Reed, ICE agents returned later and took Vargas into custody.
A family member told Reed the warrant in question was for someone else entirely, and that Vargas and her children had simply been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Community members say the incident highlights growing concerns over ICE’s arrest tactics and the lack of transparency in operations conducted in public areas without coordination with local law enforcement.
Reed, still shaken, called the incident “horrific” and questioned whether law enforcement procedures were followed.
“Only two of the three men had badges, and none were in uniform,” she said. “I didn’t know if I was witnessing a hate crime or a kidnapping. And because they might have been law enforcement, I wasn’t even sure whether to call the police.”
ICE has not publicly released details about the arrest, including the charges or the identity of the agents involved.
The incident comes as federal immigration enforcement actions have intensified in parts of Southern California, prompting backlash in immigrant communities and renewed debate about due process, civil rights, and the rights of children in enforcement situations.
ICE agents detain mother in Pasadena in front of children without showing a warrant
A mother walking with her children in Pasadena was taken into custody by immigration agents over the weekend in an incident that was partially captured on video and has drawn sharp criticism from w…
A new report suggests that President Donald Trump’s administration sent National Guard troops in Los Angeles to assist the Drug Enforcement Administration in a law enforcement operation about 130 miles outside the city, in a move that experts say seems unlawful.
According to the report, around 315 National Guard troops were sent to the eastern Coachella Valley region to help the DEA search a local marijuana growing operation. The DEA asked the National Guard for assistance due to the “magnitude and topography” of the operation.
Legal experts expressed alarm at the move.
“This is the slippery slope,” Ryan Goodman, law professor at New York University, wrote on Bluesky.
Federal law prohibits the National Guard from replacing local law enforcement agencies under the Posse Comitatus Act. There are limited instances where the National Guard can be used in law enforcement operations, such as to quell a rebellion. But the guardsmen have to be invited by a state’s governor under the law.
‘Slippery slope’: Experts sound alarm on Trump’s new National Guard tactic
Illegal immigrants who sought to stave off deportation by filing asylum claims may find themselves in line for deportation according to a new report.
According to CNN, federal officials are considering a plan in which they would dismiss asylum claims for illegal immigrants, which would make them what CNN called “immediately deportable.”
CNN cited sources it did not name for the report.
The report said that illegal immigrants whose asylum claims are terminated would be subject to expedited removal.
Closing the cases of illegal immigrants who sought asylum with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will impact thousands of illegal immigrants, which the CNN report estimating there were about 250,000 cases in 2023 alone, during the height of the Biden-era spike in illegal immigrants entering the U.S.
The report said about 1.45 million people have asylum applications pending.
That’s almost 1.5 million lives (not counting friends and family) that can be turned inside out and upside down. Homan & Noem must be getting really excited, already savoring the fear and anxiety they will inflict.
Trump Admin Preparing Move That Would Allow for Mass Deportation of Hundreds of Thousands of Illegal Aliens: Report
A new report says the Trump administraiotn may be looking at another option to deport illegal immigrants across America.
However, Delegate Mike Jones (D-Richmond), who represents parts of Chesterfield County, said ICE hasn’t provided any evidence to show that those who were arrested were actually violent criminals.
“They’re just dressed in basic clothes, but then they’re snatching people,” Jones said. “What type of message is that to send in America?”
Jones added that ICE is striking fear into the community, something that may lead to immigrants not reporting criminal activity or refusing to show up to courts for any reason.
“They will remain silent, and that just means they are opening themselves up to be targeted even more,” Jones said.
Virginia lawmakers react to ICE arrests at the Chesterfield County Courthouse
