The meeting is at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, outside the El Paso Service Processing Center. Family, friends and aid groups have called the press, activists, community leaders, and anyone else who wants to join in. The idea is for the place to be filled with banners depicting a young Indigenous woman, sometimes wearing a Texan hat, sometimes surrounded by flowers, sometimes harvesting the land, sometimes carrying a basket in the middle of a furrow in some field in South Florida. The hope is also for the final release of Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a Mexican Zapotec woman, the daughter of farmers, the beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Dreamer who should never have been detained in early August as she was about to board a domestic flight to Houston.
Outside, the detention center is a beehive of activity. Inside, the hearing is underway in which a judge is deciding Xóchitl’s future. A future that has been on hold for 25 days, since August 3, when two Border Patrol agents detained the 28-year-old at El Paso International Airport while she was heading to a conference as part of her work with the nonprofit organization La mujer obrera (The working woman). It was almost 5:00 a.m. when the agents asked her to accompany them.
“What for?” asked Xóchitl.
“We’re going to ask you questions about your documents,” an officer replied.
“What’s the interrogation for?” she insisted.
“We’ll talk about it downstairs,” they told her.
The officers wanted to know how she obtained her work permit, the identification she has as a DACA recipient. Xóchitl demanded the presence of her lawyer, but the second officer ironically preempted her: “Well, you can’t see your lawyer unless he buys a plane ticket.”
The conversation was recorded on Xóchitl’s cell phone, and she managed to send it to her partner, Desiree Miller. Afterward, Xóchitl stopped texting. “I didn’t know where she was; I thought she was on the flight, and that’s why she wasn’t responding. I didn’t know exactly what was going on,” her partner says. Apparently, there was no problem with her documents, which were valid until April 29, 2026.
No one heard from her again until a few hours later, when she was allowed to make a call. Xóchitl confirmed that she was indeed in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “This is not an isolated incident,” the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) denounced in a statement. “Catalina is part of a disturbing and growing trend in which legally resident immigrants are detained without cause.”
Contrary to the protections afforded them until now by a program like DACA, Xóchitl is on the growing list of young people arrested in recent months by the Donald Trump administration. In a country with a government focused on meeting its self-imposed deportation quotas, the more than 500,000 DACA beneficiaries are not exempt from persecution, detention, or expulsion.
DACA, the unfulfilled promise of protection
Until now that it happened to his sister Xóchitl, JL—who asked to be identified only by his initials—didn’t feel like anything could happen to him, or that life would go back to the way it was before 2012, when they were still living almost in hiding, inhabiting the ghostly world of the undocumented. “We thought there was no risk, since DACA is protection against deportation, but today, making any mistake is a risk,” he says.
JL, 29, recalls the time when he and his sister, aged eight and nine respectively, set out from Oaxaca to travel the dangerous route to the border. “We were so afraid of getting lost or dying in the desert, but we made it.” The Zapotec family later settled in Homestead, a major agricultural area in Miami.
It was difficult, especially for them, as they not only didn’t understand English, but also didn’t speak Spanish. “At home, we didn’t speak Spanish, but Zapotec,” says JL. “That was a shock. Neither the school system nor the government knew what to do with us; there weren’t as many migrants then as there are now.”
The parents dedicated themselves to agricultural work. As teenagers, the kids combined their high school studies with farm work. Xóchitl and JL worked the Homestead fields, harvesting beans, pumpkins, cherries, and okra.
Working the land has been a skill the siblings retain to this day. JL remains involved in agriculture, and Xóchitl, from the age of 17, became involved in working with migrant support organizations. It was at that age, in 2012, that President Barack Obama announced a program that would benefit some 700,000 people across the country who had arrived in the United States as children and could now live under protection that is renewed every two years.
Like many, the siblings were suspicious of a program that required them to hand over their personal information to the authorities, not knowing what the latter might do with it. “We didn’t know how it would work, or if it would last long, because administrations change,” says JL. “Even so, we applied; there wasn’t much to lose and more to gain.”
DACA allowed them to do many things for the first time, to begin inhabiting an area of life that until now had been forbidden to them. For example, they had, for the first time, a driver’s license. They could also, for the first time, board a domestic flight, but also return to visit the countries they had left. That’s why Xóchitl didn’t think she’d have any problems when she boarded her flight a few weeks ago. However, it’s clear to her brother that there is no guarantee of anything these days, at least not until DACA becomes a program that facilitates immigration status and gives them the possibility of moving toward naturalization.
“We’ve always said there’s no permanent solution for the many people in this country in our situation,” JL says. “So there’s always that risk. For now, DACA is protection from deportation, but it doesn’t protect you from being detained or from facing that long, costly, and inhumane process.”
In a statement to the press, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asserted that Xóchitl’s arrest was due to a criminal record that included charges for trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia. However, her attorney, Norma Islas, issued a statement refuting this claim and asserting that “no such pending criminal charges exist.”
Although Donald Trump lashed out against DACA during his first administration, at the end of last year he made it seem as though, once he returned to the White House, he intended for its beneficiaries to remain in the country. It only took a few months for the fear to return, however. Not only have they been told that Dreamers would not be eligible for the federal health insurance marketplace, but Tricia McLaughlin, deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), encouraged them to self-deport and let them know that “DACA does not grant any type of legal status in this country.”
The statements and news of the arrests of other beneficiaries of the program have been a shock for a community that has built a life, created families (250,000 citizen children have parents with DACA status), and contributes some $16 billion to the U.S. economy each year. That’s why Desiree Miller insists that every vigil they’ve held outside the detention center, every protest, and every call to the community is not only for Xóchitl’s release, but “for the millions of people who are going through the same thing.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has incorporated white supremacist, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi imagery into its recruitment materials for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch project.
The review found that DHS social media accounts and web content have used graphics and slogans originating from extremist sources, while also disproportionately depicting Black and Brown people in posts highlighting arrests and detention.
Hatewatch traced one widely shared DHS recruitment post, published on June 11, to an X account associated with white nationalist content. The graphic showed Uncle Sam posting a sign reading “Help your country … and yourself … REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS.” The original creator, an account under the name “Mr. Robert,” celebrated its federal use, writing, “TODAY OUR EFFORTS ARE COMING OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE!” DHS dismissed the report’s findings.
Other recruitment images posted by DHS referenced or resembled extremist publications. One graphic echoed the neo-Nazi text “Which Way Western Man?” by William Gayley Simpson, while another depicted armed white men posing as father and son with the caption: “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level.” As the organization explains:
“The two men appear in front of an American flag backdrop, wearing military-style garb and body armor while holding assault rifles. The men have no visual identifiers affiliating them with any government agency. Instead, they look like they could be mercenaries or members of an extremist antigovernment militia.”
Posters also employed rhetoric such as “invasion” and “defend the homeland,” phrases long tied to the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims white people are being displaced and replaced in Western nations. Lindsay Schubiner of the Western States Center told Hatewatch:
“They [DHS’ social media posts] are not only intended to recruit staff but to normalize the dehumanization of immigrants. At the same time, bigotry and dehumanization wrapped in the American flag conditions Americans to accept the heightened horrors and blatant disregard of civil rights that ICE is inflicting upon our communities”
Concerns about whitewashing and white nationalist imagery in DHS communications have been on the radar of critics for a while. A July 25 report from The Guardian took a deep dive into the department’s use of “A Prayer for a New Life,” a painting by Morgan Weistling showing a white pioneer family.
The image, posted with the caption “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage” prompted scholars and critics to comment that the post advanced a selective vision of American identity that excludes Indigenous, Black, and immigrant contributions. Adam Klein, a media scholar at Pace University, said DHS’s wording around the image evokes far-right and anti-immigrant rhetoric:
“The [Weistling] painting isn’t violent at all. On the surface, it’s a beautiful image. But when you look at where it’s coming from, with [DHS using] language like ‘homeland’ and ‘heritage’, that’s really evocative of anti-immigrant sentiment”
Responding to criticism at the time, a DHS spokesperson told The Guardian: “this administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it.” .
Reports of incident were denied by Florida and Ice officials as detainees say they were beaten and teargas was fired
Richard Luscombe in MiamiFri 29 Aug 2025 12.37 EDTShare
Guards at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail deployed teargas and engaged in a mass beating of detainees to quell a mini-uprising, it was reported on Friday.
The allegations, made by at least three detainees in phone calls to Miami’s Spanish language news channel Noticias 23, come as authorities race to empty the camp in compliance with a judge’s order to close the remote tented camp in the Everglades wetlands.
The incident took place after several migrants held there began shouting for “freedom” after one received news a relative had died, according to the outlet. A team of guards then rushed in and began beating individuals indiscriminately with batons, and fired teargas at them, the detainees said.
“They’ve beaten everyone here, a lot of people have bled.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/29/alligator-alcatraz-uprising-florida-immigration
Gavin Newsom warned the country is on the precipice of tipping into authoritarianism, predicting that President Donald Trump does not want to leave office after his term ends and accusing federal immigration officials of acting as “the largest private police force in history.”
The California governor, speaking at POLITICO’s “The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit” on Wednesday, repeatedly urged the audience to “wake up” to dangers he said are posed by the president. He cast Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, as well as Border Patrol agents, as acting in Trump’s interests instead of the general public.
“When they’re done with this — all that funding and that ‘big beautiful betrayal’ allows more resources for this private police force that increasingly is showing a tendency not to swear an oath to the Constitution, but to the president of the United States,” Newsom said.
Newsom — stating that “the rule of law is being replaced by the rule of Don” — predicted the federal agents would be sent to voting booths and polling places across the country. But he later questioned whether there would be future democratic elections at all.
“I don’t think Donald Trump wants another election,” he said, adding he has two dozen “Trump 2028″ hats sent to him by the president’s supporters. He suggested that people dismissing talk of a third term were naive.
Newsom described a moment during his 90-minute Oval Office meeting with Trump in February when the president pointed to a painting of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt — which he interpreted as a nod to Trump’s desire to serve a third term.
Trump said this month he would “probably not” run for a third term, which would be in violation of the Constitution.
Newsom, a likely 2028 candidate, struck an angry and pugilistic tone throughout his interview as he implored Democrats to be more assertive and “stand tall” against Trump. He repeated a piece of advice that he said he once heard from former President Bill Clinton on the rise of American populism: “‘Given the choice, the American people always support strong and wrong versus weak or not,’” Newsom recalled. “And I think our party needs to wake up.”
“We’re losing this country in real time,” he said. “It’s not bloviation, not exaggeration. It’s happening.”
Newsom himself has recently embraced a more aggressive approach on social media, mocking Trump and Republicans through his personal and press office accounts on X. He said he’s pulling few punches on that front as his team deploys more satirical memes and splashy AI-generated content.
“We have a ‘Kill Switch,’” Newsom said, responding to a question about whether he approves the posts. The governor added that he’s killing “less every day,” prompting laughter from the audience.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/27/newsom-donald-trump-another-election-00532972
The Trump administration wants to use a Navy base north of Chicago as a launchpad for federal law enforcement activity against undocumented immigration, defense officials said Tuesday, as the White House contemplates also deploying thousands of U.S. troops to the nation’s third-largest city amid rising tension with the Illinois governor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/27/trump-chicago-ice-military
A manager at a McDonald’s outlet in New York was detained by immigration authorities earlier this week, despite reportedly holding a valid U.S. work visa and just before the restaurant’s annual company picnic.
Christian Rodriguez, who has worked at the branch in Oceanside, Long Island, for several years, reportedly possesses a Social Security number, according to Newsday.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told Newsweek: “Christian Emmanuel Rodriguez Torrealba, a criminal illegal alien from Venezuela, entered the U.S. on a B-2 tourist visa that required him to leave the U.S. by June 3, 2016. Nearly 10 years later, he is still illegally in the U.S. Rodriguez’s criminal history includes convictions for battery and property damage crimes. ICE arrested this illegal alien on August 21, 2025.
“President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [of Homeland Security Kristi] Noem have been clear: criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the United States.”
Newsweek has contacted McDonald’s for comment.
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump has directed his administration to remove millions of migrants without legal status to fulfill his campaign pledge of mass deportation. The White House has maintained that anyone living in the country unlawfully is considered to be a criminal by the incumbent administration.
What To Know
A co-worker who requested anonymity told Newsday that Rodriguez taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after attending a hearing regarding his immigration application, in Bethpage, New York, on August 21, according to the outlet.
He had previously appeared at another hearing on August 7, which colleagues believed went favorably, the outlet reported.
On the day of the second hearing, at around 2 p.m.—the time he was expected at a company picnic—Rodriguez sent a text to a co-worker saying his application had been denied and that ICE had arrested him, per the outlet.
Rodriguez was transported to Central Islip, where ICE appears to be taking detainees to the federal courthouse, according to Newsday.
A resident of the neighboring town of Baldwin, Rodriguez came to the United States in December 2015 on a tourist visa, per the outlet, which reported that Rodriguez’s immigration “notice to appear” stated that he faced possible removal from the United States for staying past the period permitted on his tourist visa.
Concerns have been raised over the economic impacts of the president’s mass removal policy. Immigrants, documented or undocumented, made up 20 percent of U.S. workers at the beginning of the year, but by June that share had fallen to 19 percent, a decrease of more than 750,000 workers, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
What Happens Next
Rodriguez will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
https://www.newsweek.com/manager-arrested-ice-immigration-agents-company-picnic-2120819
Immigrants have been racking up as much as $1,000 a day in fines if they disregard orders to deport, totaling more than $6 billion that the Trump administration now intends to collect.
Since Donald Trump returned to office, the Department of Homeland Security has issued roughly 21,500 fines, part of a pressure campaign to encourage millions of people to leave the country with a promise that the government would waive the fees against them.
In recent weeks, the government has threatened immigrants with lawsuits, debt collectors and massive tax bills if they don’t pay those penalties, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The new system, put in place by the Trump administration in June, means immigrants are not only at risk of arrest and forced removal from the U.S. but also crushing financial debt that is virtually impossible to escape. One immigration attorney told the WSJ that it amounts to “psychological warfare.”
DHS has issued past-due notices for unpaid fines with growing interest and threatened to garnish tax refunds, deploy private collection agencies and alert credit bureaus to delinquent payments owed by targeted immigrants, many of whom are low-wage workers, according to WSJ.
The agency has also suggested it could report unpaid fines to the IRS, which could then treat the balance as taxable income.
The message from Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “is clear: if you’re in the country illegally, leave now or face the consequences,” a senior DHS official said in a statement to The Independent.
Under rules introduced in June, DHS officers can send letters threatening fees on noncitizens over failure to deport, and all rights of appeal could be eliminated if they fail to reply within 15 days.
The process is permitted under a law passed by Congress in 1996 as part of a wider immigration package. But over the last three decades, threats of fees — which can now reach up to $998 a day — have rarely been enforced. Officers instead focused on removal, rather than adding another layer of punishment.
But that changed under Trump, largely because the process for sending out threatening fines with potentially financially disastrous results is much easier, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigration policy research group.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has vowed to recoup “funds owed to Americans.”
“As part of the effort to fulfill President Trump’s agenda, Treasury’s Debt Collection Service is actively working with ICE to secure payment for all civil fines and penalties owed by illegal aliens to the U.S. government,” Bessent said on social media.
According to TV ads and social media announcements from DHS, immigrants who choose to “self-deport” will “not have to pay these fines.”
Instead, immigrants are offered “financial assistance up to $1,000” and “a free flight home,” as well as “the potential opportunity to return to the United States the legal, right way,” according to the agency.
Immigrants can do so using the CBP Home app, formerly the CBP One app, a Joe Biden-era product that allowed more than 1 million immigrants to begin their immigration process before reaching the country. The Trump administration has revoked legal status for all immigrants who entered the country with that app.
A senior DHS official told The Independent that “iIlegal aliens should use the CBP Home app to fly home for free and receive $1,000 stipend, while preserving the option to return the legal, right way.”
“It’s an easy choice: leave voluntarily and receive [a] $1,000 check or stay and wait till you are fined $1,000 [a] day, arrested, and deported without a possibility to return legally,” the official said.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association has called that promise “a deeply misleading and unethical trick.”
Under current law, anyone living in the U.S. for more than six months without legal permission cannot return as an immigrant for at least three years. Immigrants who were in the country for more than a year could be blocked from reentering for at least 10 years.
Immigrants with a record of deportation also are more likely to face lengthy waiting periods, or outright denials, when applying for future visas.
Noem has claimed that more than 1.6 million immigrants have “left” the country within the first 200 days of the administration.
In May, a Honduran woman who has lived in the U.S. for two decades was hit with nearly $2 million in fines for failing to leave the country after receiving a removal order in 2005.
“I live with anxiety… I can’t sleep… I don’t feel,” the 41-year-old mother-of-three U.S. citizens told CBS News.
Another woman — a mother-of-four in New York who has been living in the U.S. for 25 years and trying to get her removal order tossed so she can get a green card — had considered self-deporting out of fear that the Treasury Department would repossess her house, according to WSJ.
She faces more than $2 million in overdue penalties, with growing daily interest. She could also be subject to administrative costs totaling at least 32 percent of her fine, or more than half a million dollars, according to DHS.
To carry out the president’s plans for mass deportations, the Trump administration has pushed to “de-legalize” millions of immigrants who were granted humanitarian protections and other protective orders to legally live and work in the country.
More than 1 million people are at risk of being removed from the U.S. after the administration revoked Temporary Protected Status for several countries.
Another 1 million immigrants who entered legally through the CBP One app also are at risk of being arrested and removed, while thousands of people with pending immigration cases are being ordered to court each week only to have those cases dismissed, and find federal agents waiting to arrest them on the other side of the courtroom doors.
Those reversals have radically expanded a pool of “undocumented” people to add to Trump’s deportation numbers.
It has finally dawned on Joe Rogan that President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have any evidence to back up the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
The podcaster gave Trump a huge platform when he was a guest on the show in the final week of the 2024 presidential election campaign, where he reeled off his widely-debunked grievance that the 2020 election was “fraudulent.”
Now, Rogan has shared his skepticism.
“I don’t think they have any evidence,” Rogan told his guest comedian Dave Smith on Tuesday’s episode ofthe Joe Rogan Experience, referring to Trump’s 2020 claims.
“I think there’s a lot of speculation and there’s a lot of consideration about mail-in ballots. There’s a lot of shenanigans,” Rogan added. “There’s a good record of shenanigans and there’s the reality of any kind of electronics can be hacked.”
“It was one of the most interesting parts of your podcast with him was when you asked him about that, it was like he really didn’t have anything to back it up,” Smith interjected.
Rogan then criticized Trump for not having a “tight 10 minutes” prepared to present his evidence and argument.
“If that was you or if that was me, I mean, there was some reason why I knew that they did something and I could give you all the facts, I would have that ready for anybody,” Rogan said. “Because…you’re, for four f***ing years they’ve been telling him he’s crazy for questioning the election. So after four years I’d have a f***ing tight 10 minutes on the election where I could just rattle off at you and rock your world with it.”
Rogan’s interview, which pulled in 38 million viewers within three days of airing, and other podcast appearances within the so-called “Manosphere” have been credited with helping Trump clinch the presidency.
Rogan, who endorsed Trump after the episode aired, gave him the opportunity to explain his evidence for claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
“I want to talk about 2020 because you said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020,” Rogan said. “How do you think you were robbed?”
Trump then launched into a familiar tirade about judges not having “what it took to turn over an election,” mail-in ballots being insecure, and Democrats using “Covid to cheat.”
Rogan appeared to sympathize with Trump. “You get labeled an election denier,” he said, drawing similarities with being labeled an “anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the Covid-19 shots.”
More recently, Rogan has been calling out the man he endorsed for president. In July, the podcaster ripped into the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.
“They’ve got videotape and all a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said. “You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,’” referring to FBI Director Kash Patel’s interview with Rogan in June.
He also criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE raids on his show, appearing to suggest that they had taken things too far.
“The targeting of migrant workers — not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?” Rogan said. “I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that.”
