CNN: Pastor shot by ICE with pepper balls speaks out in first TV interview [Video]
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Raw Story: Marine’s parents nabbed by ICE as they visited pregnant daughter on military base
The parents of a U.S. Marine in California were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month while en route to visit their pregnant daughter. The father was deported Friday, NBC News reported.
Steve Rios, a U.S. Marine and resident of Oceanside, was traveling with his parents to Camp Pendleton to visit his sister who, along with her husband who’s also a U.S. Marine, is expecting her first child. The trio was stopped at the base’s entrance, however, when ICE agents detained Rios’ parents, who have no criminal history and have pending green card applications.
“I just kept on looking at my parents,” Rios told NBC News. “I didn’t know if it would be the last time I’d see them.”
Rios immediately texted his sister, Ashley Rios, about the incident as it was taking place, the news of which saw her break down in tears.
“My brother texted me that they got stopped,” Ashley Rios said, speaking with NBC News. “And as soon as I heard that, I just started, like, bawling.”
Rios’ parents – Esteban Rios and Luisa Rodriguez, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico more than 30 years ago – were briefly released from ICE custody following their detention, though with ankle monitors and an order to check back in with ICE officials.
Wearing a shirt and hat that bore the phrase “Proud dad of a U.S. Marine,” Rios’ father, alongside Rios’ mother, made good on their pledge to check back in with ICE officials, only for the father to be deported on Friday and the mother detained indefinitely, according to the report.
“It’s just hard because you just want to hear, like, your parents’ voice, that everything will be OK,” Ashley Rios said, telling NBC News that she was worried about her parents missing the birth of her first child. “I’d always want, like, my mom in that delivery room and everything, so it’s just hard to not think about your parents there.”
An ICE spokesperson released a statement regarding Rios’ parents’ arrests and deportation, in which they made a soft acknowledgment that undocumented immigrants with no criminal history, outside of immigrating to the country illegally, were also the target of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy.
“As part of its routine operations, ICE arrests aliens who commit crimes and other individuals who have violated our nation’s immigration laws,” the statement from ICE to NBC News reads. “All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, regardless of nationality.”
Guardian: Chicago TV journalist pushed to ground and arrested during Ice raid, then later released
Witnesses call arrest of video editor Debbie Brockman, a US citizen, by masked federal agents ‘absolutely horrifying’
A video editor and producer for Chicago’s WGN television station was arrested by masked federal agents on Friday morning, and later released, during an Ice raid on the city’s North Side, as shown in videos shared widely on social media.
Videos show Debbie Brockman being violently forced to the ground by two agents before she is handcuffed and put in a van. A local resident filming the incident asks her name while she is face down on the street being handcuffed.
“Debbie Brockman,” she replies. “I work for WGN. Please let them know.”
In another video, onlookers shout at the agents and call them “fascists”, telling them to “get out of our neighborhood, get out of our city”. The agents get in the van and scrape the side of another car, whose driver is still inside, as they speed off, tearing off part of its bumper.
A homeland security official said Brockman stood accused of assaulting a federal law enforcement officer by throwing objects at a vehicle.
The incident took place in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, as immigration agents – at the behest of Trump officials – have been scouring the city for people to deport.
The ramped-up immigration enforcement in Chicago has been met with protests.
Local resident Nancy Molden told the Chicago Sun-Times that “it was absolutely horrifying” to see Brockman’s arrest in person.
“That was the most frightening thing I have seen in Chicago, living here 20-odd years,” Molden said.
Witnesses told local media the agents were targeting a small group of landscapers, though that was not immediately confirmed. A second person, a man, also appeared to have been detained.
In one video, the man can be seen handcuffed in the back of the vehicle while Brockman is being arrested. The person filming asks him in Spanish for his name.
Tricia McLaughlin of the homeland security department said: “US border patrol was conducting immigration enforcement operations and when several violent agitators used their vehicles to block in agents in an effort to impede and assault federal officers.
“In fear of public safety and of law enforcement, officers used their service vehicle to strike a suspect’s vehicle and create an opening. As agents were driving, Deborah Brockman, a US citizen, threw objects at border patrol’s car, and she was placed under arrest for assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
WGN said that border patrol had released the employee from federal custody as of 3pm on Friday, and no charges have been filed in her case. The network is still in the process of searching for and obtaining video showing the moment leading up to the employee’s detainment.
Brockman’s arrest came days after prosecutors were forced to drop charges against anti-Ice protesters accused of assaulting federal agents while carrying weapons outside a Chicago immigration detention facility – with the move coming after grand jurors refused to hand down an indictment in the case.
On Thursday, a federal judge in Chicago issued a temporary restraining order blocking federal agents from using certain forceful tactics to suppress protests or to impede journalists from covering those protests.
The order restricts federal officials from arresting, threatening to arrest or deploying physical force against journalists unless authorities have established probable cause to believe the journalists have committed a crime.
Chicago TV journalist pushed to ground and arrested during Ice raid, then later released
Witnesses call arrest of video editor Debbie Brockman, a US citizen, by masked federal agents ‘absolutely horrifying’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/chicago-ice-raid-arrest
Miami Herald: He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him
On the morning of Oct. 3, 2025, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam walked out of Huntingdon State Correctional Institution, the Pennsylvania prison that had confined him for more than four decades. The 64-year-old had spent nearly his entire adult life behind bars for a murder he did not commit. His conviction had been vacated weeks earlier after a court found that prosecutors had concealed evidence that would have dismantled the state’s case. The Centre County district attorney formally withdrew all charges a day before his expected release.
But Subu never made it home.
As he stood on the threshold of freedom, officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were waiting. Acting on a decades-old deportation order, they detained him and transferred him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in central Pennsylvania.
His family, who had prepared to welcome him home, instead learned that Subu would remain in custody — not as a prisoner of the state, but as a detainee of the federal government.
“To our disappointment, Subu was transferred to ICE custody and is currently being held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center,” the family said in a statement posted on a website dedicated to building support for Vedam’s case.
“This immigration issue is a remnant of Subu’s original case. Since that wrongful conviction has now been officially vacated and all charges against Subu have been dismissed, we have asked the immigration court to reopen the case and consider the fact that Subu has been exonerated. Our family continues to wait — and long for the day we can finally be together with him again.”
Subu’s legal odyssey began in 1982, when he was arrested for the 1980 murder of his friend, 19-year-old Thomas Kinser, in Centre County. Prosecutors argued that Subu had shot Kinser with a .25-caliber pistol — a weapon that was never recovered — and based their case largely on circumstantial evidence. He was initially arrested in 1982 and convicted the following year, being finally sentenced to life without parole.
For the next 42 years, Subu maintained his innocence. His appeals were repeatedly denied, and his case languished until the Pennsylvania Innocence Project joined his defense team. In 2022, the project’s attorneys discovered previously undisclosed evidence in the files of the Centre County District Attorney’s Office — including an FBI report and handwritten notes suggesting that the bullet wound in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been caused by a .25-caliber bullet. That revelation undermined the entire prosecution theory.
In August 2025, Judge Jonathan Grine of the Centre County Court of Common Pleas ruled that the concealed evidence represented a constitutional violation of due process. “Had that evidence been available at the time,” Grine wrote, “there would have been a reasonable probability that the jury’s judgment would have been affected.” One month later, District Attorney Bernie Cantorna dismissed the murder charge, saying a retrial would be both impossible and unjust.
By then, Subu had become the longest-serving exoneree in Pennsylvania history — and one of the longest-serving in the United States.
Freedom, however, came with a new peril.
Legacy Deportation Order
ICE cited a “legacy deportation order” dating back to the 1980s, tied not only to the murder charge but also to an earlier drug conviction from Subu’s youth. Before his arrest for murder, he had pleaded guilty at age 19 to intent to distribute LSD — a charge his family describes as a youthful mistake. Although that conviction carried its own immigration consequences, Subu, who was born in India but arrived in the United States when he was 9 months old, was never deported because he was serving a life sentence.
Now, after his exoneration, ICE has revived the decades-old order.
In a statement sent to the Herald, ICE said Philadelphia officers Vedam into custody immediately after his release because his criminal past.
“Pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act, individuals who have exhausted all avenues of immigration relief and possess standing removal orders are priorities for enforcement. ERO notes that Mr. Vedam, a career criminal with a rap sheet dating back to 1980, is also a convicted controlled substance trafficker,” ICE said in an email. “Mr. Vedam will be held in ICE custody while the agency arranges for his removal in accordance with all applicable laws and due-process requirements”.
Mike Truppa, a spokesperson for the family, says the move blindsided Vedam’s family. “They’re emotionally reeling from the fact that he could be sent to a country he doesn’t know,” he said. “There’s some ancestry in India where he might have some nominal relations, but his entire family — all of his family relationships — are here and in Canada.”
Subu’s niece, Zoë Miller Vedam, said the family has little sense of what to expect from the immigration proceedings but continues to hold on to hope. “I’m not sure we have expectations. We definitely have hope,” she said. “It’s been a very long journey toward exonerating my uncle. He spent the last 44 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, and we’ve been fighting and supporting him this whole time.”
Zoë described her uncle as a deeply compassionate man who transformed his decades of imprisonment into a mission of service. “He really did so much over those years to show the person that he is,” she said. “He worked as a teacher, helping many, many people get their degrees — people who’ve spoken to us afterwards about how having him support them while they were incarcerated really changed their lives. He completed multiple degrees himself. He was always learning and caring.”
She added that Subu’s potential deportation to India would be devastating. “India, in many ways, is a completely different world to him,” she said. “He left India when he was nine months old. None of us can remember our lives at nine months old. He hasn’t been there for over 44 years, and the people he knew when he went as a child have passed away. His whole family — his sister, his nieces, his grand-nieces — we’re all U.S. citizens, and we all live here.”
Zoë said her uncle’s wrongful conviction had robbed him of the chance to build a normal life and left him unprepared for exile in a country he doesn’t know. “He’s never been able to work outside the prison system,” she said. “He’s never seen a modern film, he’s never been on the internet, he doesn’t know technology. To send him to India at 64, on his own and away from his family and community, would be just extending the harm of his wrongful incarceration.”
Still Fighting
Subu’s legal team has filed a motion to reopen the immigration case and a petition for a stay of deportation while the motion is pending. The government has until Oct. 24 to respond.
Over the decades, Subu built a life of quiet purpose inside prison walls. By all accounts, he was a model inmate. He designed and led literacy programs, raised funds for Big Brothers Big Sisters, and tutored hundreds of fellow prisoners working toward high school diplomas. He became the first person in the 150-year history of the facility to earn a master’s degree, completing his coursework by correspondence with a 4.0 GPA.
“Subu’s true character is evidenced in the way he spent his 43 years of imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit,” said his sister, Saraswathi Vedam, in a statement. “Rather than succumb to this dreadful hardship and mourn his terrible fate, he turned his wrongful imprisonment into a vehicle of service to others.”
At the heart of the current dispute lies a question of legal timing — and humanity. Because Subu was never formally naturalized, his earlier drug conviction technically makes him deportable under U.S. immigration law. The wrongful murder conviction, now vacated, had kept him in state custody for decades, effectively freezing that process. With his exoneration, ICE argues that the original deportation order can now be executed.
To Subu’s defenders, that logic defies both fairness and decency. The government is portraying him as a “career criminal and drug trafficker.” The defense intends to argue that the totality of circumstances — Subu’s wrongful imprisonment, his lifelong residence in the United States, and his record of rehabilitation — warrants reopening the case.
For his niece, the fight is about more than legal arguments. “After 43 years of having his life taken from him because of a wrongful conviction, to send him to the other side of the world — to a place he doesn’t know, away from everyone who loves him — would just compound that injustice,” Zoë said. “We’re going to keep supporting him and doing everything we can to make sure that, now that he’s finally been exonerated, he’ll be able to be home with his family.”
Washington Post: Signs popping up around D.C. note: ‘ICE kidnapping happened here’
The signs range in style and mark numerous locations where people have been taken by federal agents.
The signs — nailed to trees or wrapped around electricity poles — have appeared across some of the District’s heavily immigrant neighborhoods, marking the anger in a majority-Democratic city where federal immigration arrests have escalated.
“ICE kidnapped a community member here,” reads one. “Never forget/no nos olvidamos,” says another.
Barbara McCann, a city resident for 25 years, created one in August after she came upon a crowd of shouting people and broken glass on the street in her Columbia Heights neighborhood, where federal law enforcement agents had pulled two men from their car.
“People were kidnapped here this morning by ICE or ?” she wrote on the sign. “BANG pots HERE tonight 8pm.”
McCann said later that she thought of “stumbling stones” in Europe, the brass-topped cobblestones that have been placed in front of the former homes and businesses of those who were killed in the Holocaust.
“They are targeting those who are least able to defend themselves, people without homes and people without documentation,” she said. “In the past, when there’s been great injustice, moral clarity takes a long time.”
D.C. has a long tradition of protesting, including the massive marches during President Donald Trump’s first administration. The recent neighborhood signs, more personal and isolated, follow an older tradition of simply bearing witness — in this case, to the arrests of immigrants who make up the fabric of some neighborhoods.
Since late August, when Trump’s 30-day crime emergency in D.C. was in full effect, more than 11 signs and posters memorializing those arrested have appeared in neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights or Brightwood in Northwest Washington.
It’s unclear how much coordination there is between the different sign makers. Some messages are printed on 18-by-24-inch yard signs or smaller placards; others are drawn ornately by hand on paper or written in chalk. The few who will talk about the signs they created say the urgency of the moment compelled them to act.
White House officials said in a statement last month that of more than 2,600 criminal arrests between Aug. 7 and Sept. 14, more than 1,000 involved “illegal aliens.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said D.C.’s lenient policies toward immigrants, which prohibited police from cooperating in ICE arrests, made the city more dangerous.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Post in an email that ICE officers are facing an increase in assaults because of “untrue smears like false claims that they are ‘kidnapping’ people.’ ”
ICE has acted “heroically” and “with the utmost professionalism,” she said, and that those accusing agents of violating civil rights are sympathizing with undocumented immigrants and criminals.
Neighbors on Holmead Place in Columbia Heights say three masked agents in tactical vests tackled a man on the sidewalk in late August. As they struggled, onlookers gathered nearby, some with children dressed for the first day of school. According to five people who said they witnessed the event, the agents loaded the man into one of three unmarked cars with tinted windows and drove away.
In the days that followed, residents say they spotted a poster on Holmead Place NW, fastened by screws into a sycamore tree. It described the Aug. 25 arrest of “Angel H.” and the words “Never forget.”
Jacob Stokes, who witnessed the arrest with his wife that morning, came upon the sign while on a walk. Like McCann, he also thought of the stumbling stones and “remembering and associating an event with a particular place.”
“I’m not on the list of people who they’re coming for now,” he said. “It reminded me that those people are our neighbors.”
He and his family have lived in Columbia Heights since May. And he says it’s been quieter than other D.C. neighborhoods where he’s lived in previous years — until the past few months.
Jessica Loya remembers running down from her Brightwood apartment at the sound of a distressed voice outside her window on the morning of Aug. 22. She found her building’s handyman surrounded by three federal agents.
She said he told her in Spanish that he’d gone to his car to get a tool when he was stopped. She and others questioned the officers to understand why he had been approached.
“You can’t tell us what we’re going to do and what we’re not going to do,” a masked officer told Loya, according to video obtained by The Post. The video shows that officers shoved the handyman toward an unmarked vehicle and handcuffed him, then put him in a car and drove away.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the handyman had entered the country illegally from Guatemala at an unknown date.
“ICE is not ‘kidnapping’ illegal aliens,” she said in an email. “These smears are leading to our officers facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them including terrorist attacks, cars being used as weapons, and bounties on their heads.”
The next day, Loya said she stared at the spot where the handyman had stood and added that the flashbacks of his disappearance were “unbearable.” She worked late into the night with Julio Obscura, an artist and friend, to design a sign.
At one point, she considered the monarch butterfly symbol often associated with migrant advocacy groups, but felt the positive feeling wasn’t fitting for the moment.
“What I was trying to capture here in the sign was this terror,” she said.
They settled on the black sign with bold white lettering: “ICE kidnapped a community member here.”
Loya ordered three at a cost of $297.86 and picked them up from a printer three days later. With her landlord’s blessing, she planted one of them next to her building and kept the others in case the first one was damaged or stolen.
Her voice buckled as she talked about the handyman’s family. His wife is terrified, she said, and his three children, who all are younger than 10, don’t understand what’s happened to their father.
Loya said she has been helping the family since he was detained, hoping to show them “not every U.S. citizen believes in what this administration is doing.”
Polling shows Americans overall are split on whether immigrants deported by the Trump administration should have been removed. A majority of D.C. residents oppose D.C. police helping with deportations, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
Another man was working as an Uber driver when he was detained by federal agents and D.C. Police on 8th and Tuckerman Street the night of Aug. 26. Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) rushed to the intersection and began live-streaming the arrest.
Lewis George told The Post she couldn’t get information about the man at the time of his apprehension and was unable to locate him in nearby police precincts afterward. His car and phone were left behind, she said, so neighbors were able to make contact with a friend.
“There was a moment where, like, is this really happening to us?” Lewis George said. “I kept thinking, like, Oh, my God, are our neighbors going to have to end up in our basements and attics?”
Former Advisory Neighborhood Commission member Sophia Tekola — who said she spoke to the man in Amharic and has been in touch with his family — learned that he’d been detained in a facility outside Washington and was released the next day.
Loya, who saw Lewis George’s live stream of the arrest, rushed up the street that same night with her extra signs from the incident with her building’s handyman and approached a neighbor lingering nearby.
“I think it’s important to put these up,” Loya told the woman. The neighbor fastened the memorial to a tree in her yard, near the spot where the man had been arrested.
The next day, the council member took to social media and made a six-minute, 34-second video urging her followers to call their representatives. As Lewis George spoke, a photo of Loya’s black and white memorial was visible in the background.
Shows of disapproval and protest of Trump and his administration’s policies haven’t matched the volume seen in Trump’s previous term despite concerns about potential abuse of power. For people like Loya and McCann, who have spent years in a town known for its statues and monuments, the act of remembering those taken away isn’t just an act of empathy — it’s a signal.
McCann said she’s long had an interest in history. This moment in the city has made her reflect on what may lie ahead for it and the country, she said.
“What I always have on my mind is like, well, what’s next?” she said.
Newsweek: ICE Agents Dragged Naked Children Out of Homes in Chicago Raid: Neighbors
Several South Shore residents reported witnessing federal immigration agents forcibly removing unclothed children from apartments during the pre-dawn raid in Chicago.
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment via email.
Why It Matters
Immigration enforcement is at the forefront of the national conversation surrounding the policy in the United States as the administration pushes to remove millions of migrants without legal status. The administration is facing increased scrutiny as well as several allegations of misconduct against federal agents.
What To Know
In the pre-dawn hours of September 30, federal agencies coordinated a large-scale immigration enforcement action targeting a five-story apartment building near 75th Street and South Shore Drive, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The DHS said that 37 individuals were arrested and that the operation involved the U.S. Border Patrol, FBI, and ATF.
The agency claimed the building and surrounding area were tied to activity by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and that those arrested included people allegedly involved in drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations.
Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the building, told WBEZ Chicago that she saw federal agents dragging residents, including children, out of the building without clothes and loading them into U-Haul vans. She said the children were separated from their mothers.
Watson says she observed what appeared to be “hundreds” of agents outside her home.
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” Watson told the news station. “Even if you’re not a mother, seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.”
“Stuff was everywhere,” Watson told WBEZ. “You could see people’s birth certificates and papers thrown all over. Water was leaking into the hallway. It was wicked crazy.”
Pertissue Fisher, a woman who lives in the building, told CBS News Chicago: “No shoes, the kids didn’t have no shirts or no pants on. They just treated us like we were nothing.”
This raid comes amid Operation Midway Blitz, a federal push across Chicago and the wider Illinois area that began in early September. The initiative aims to apprehend undocumented immigrants, particularly those with criminal records, under a broader mandate by DHS.
The administration is coordinating multiple federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Border Patrol, the FBI, and the ATF, to carry out enforcement operations nationwide. Critics have characterized some of the immigration raids as aggressive and have raised concerns about potential violations of due process and the treatment of migrants in custody.
ICE and U.S. Border Patrol officers arrested more than 800 individuals without legal status during Operation Midway Blitz, according to a press release by DHS issued on October 1.
What People Are Saying
A DHS official told Newsweek: “In the early morning hours of September 30, 2025, allied federal law enforcement agencies with CBP, FBI, and ATF, executed an enforcement operation in Chicago’s South Shore area, a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates. Some of the targeted subjects are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes, and immigration violators.
What Happens Next
Immigration arrests are expected to continue as part of Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago.
ICE agents dragged naked children out of homes in Chicago: Neighbors
Two residents reported witnessing federal immigration agents forcibly removing unclothed children from apartments during the raid.
https://www.newsweek.com/ice-agents-dragged-naked-children-out-homes-chicago-raid-10823150
Money Talks News: “There’s No Way This Is Going to Happen to Us” : Army Sergeant, Before ICE Deports His Wife
Immigration enforcement actions are separating military families despite ongoing legal processes for citizenship. The War Horse investigation reveals how thousands of service members face difficult choices between military service and family unity.
“There’s No Way This Is Going to Happen to Us” : Army Sergeant, Before ICE Deports His Wife
Immigration enforcement actions are separating military families despite ongoing legal processes for citizenship. The War Horse investigation reveals how thousands of service members face difficult choices between military service and family unity.
Mirror US: Chicago fights back against Trump’s National Guard threats as NYC’s Mamdani issues warning
The Illinois governor called Donald Trump a ‘wannabe dictator,’ after earlier this month Trump claimed Americans might ‘like a dictator’
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani issued fiery statements opposing President Donald Trump’s escalating threats to deploy federal troops into the largely Democratic cities, a continuation of his weaponization of the government against his opponents.
Mamdani, asked about the idea of National Guard troops being sent to New York City, cautioned that the potential illegality of an act would not dissuade Trump from pursuing it. “The first thing is we have to prepare for the inevitability of that deployment,” he said. “We cannot try to convince ourselves that because something is illegal, Donald Trump will not do it.”
Pritzker, in response to a post from Trump threatening to sick his so-called “Department of War” on an American city, called Trump a “wannabe dictator.”
Trump on Saturday amplified his promises to send National Guard troops and immigration agents to Chicago by posting a parody image from “Apocalypse Now” featuring a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the nation’s third-largest city, according to The Associated Press.
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
A rally and march formed in downtown Chicago Saturday evening against the increase in ICE operations, which were expected to begin that day. About 300 federal agents were using North Chicago’s Naval Station Great Lakes as a logistical hub for the operations.
While Trump has attributed the surge in immigration enforcement activity in Chicago and other blue cities to “out of control” dangerous criminals, his claims defy evidence, which show decreases in violent crime. In 2024, Chicago’s violent crime rate was down 11% compared with 2023 levels, and about half what it was in the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the BBC.
Trump’s weekend post follows his repeated threats to add Chicago to the list of other Democratic-led cities he’s targeted for expanded federal enforcement. His administration is set to step up immigration enforcement in Chicago, as it did in Los Angeles, and deploy National Guard troops.
In addition to sending troops to Los Angeles in June, Trump has deployed them since last month in Washington, as part of his unprecedented law enforcement takeover of the nation’s capital.
He’s also suggested that Baltimore and New Orleans could get the same treatment, and on Friday even mentioned federal authorities possibly heading for Portland, Oregon, to “wipe ’em out,” meaning protesters. He could have been mistakenly describing video from demonstrations in that city years ago.
Details about Trump’s promised Chicago operation have been sparse, but there’s already widespread opposition. City and state leaders have said they plan to sue the Trump administration. Pritzker, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, is also fiercely opposed to it.
The president “is threatening to go to war with an American city,” Pritzker wrote on X over an image of Trump’s post. “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”
He added: “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Trump has suggested that he has nearly limitless powers when it comes to deploying the National Guard. At times he’s even touched on questions about his being a dictator.
“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ — I am not a dictator, by the way,” Trump said last month. He added, “Not that I don’t have — I would — the right to do anything I want to do.”
“I’m the president of the United States,” Trump said then. “If I think our country is in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it.”
Trump began putting the federal government to work for him within hours of taking office in January, and he’s been collecting and using power in novel ways ever since. It’s a high-velocity push to carry out his political agendas and grudges.
This past month, hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops fanned out across Washington after Trump drew on a never-used law that allows him to take control of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. He’s threatened similar deployments in other cities run by Democrats, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York and New Orleans. He also fired a Federal Reserve governor, pointing to unproven claims of mortgage fraud.
That’s not weaponizing government, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told The Associated Press; it’s wielding power.
“What the nation is witnessing today is the execution of the most consequential administration in American history,” Fields reportedly said, “one that is embracing common sense, putting America first, and fulfilling the mandate of the American people.”
Chicago fights against Trump’s National Guard threats as Mamdani issues warning
The Illinois governor called Donald Trump a ‘wannabe dictator,’ after earlier this month Trump claimed Americans might ‘like a dictator’
https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/breaking-chicago-fights-back-against-1375650
Money Talks News: Foreign Students Face New Reality: 6,000 Visas Revoked for Law Breaking
Foreign Students Face New Reality: 6,000 Visas Revoked for Law Breaking
Over 6,000 international students have had their visas revoked for criminal violations and overstays as Trump administration increases immigration enforcement.
“Between 200 and 300 students lost visas over [so called] terrorism support allegations.”
Supporting the Palestinians — especially the Gazans who are being abused and slaughtered by the thousands — is a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment. So much for the “Land of the Free”.
MSNBC: New report shows how Trump’s DHS is mainstreaming white supremacy
The SPLC’s Hatewatch looked at how the Department of Homeland Security has ramped up its bigoted social media strategy in recent months.
Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security’s social media channels are beginning to look like a white nationalist content mill, churning out bigoted, jingoistic schlock.
A recent report from Hatewatch, the extremism watchdog run by the Southern Poverty Law Center, shows how the agency and top Trump administration officials have ramped up their promotion of white nationalist or anti-immigrant social media posts since June, when the agency reposted anti-immigrant propaganda that originated from an avowedly racist social media account.
MSNBC has noted the agency’s propaganda in the past, including their use of cruel memes that vilify nonwhite immigrants and of American artworks to promote themes of ethnic cleansing.
The Hatewatch report takes a comprehensive look at these incidents since June, citing an apparent increase in racist propaganda as part of what the watchdog calls “an escalating trend in American immigration enforcement toward overt use of white nationalist and anti-immigrant myths to recruit personnel and justify departmental operations.”
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to MSNBC’s request for comment on Hatewatch’s claims. When asked last month by NBC’s Los Angeles affiliate about the campaign, the DHS called its digital strategy “bold and effective.”
Here’s one example Hatewatch flagged:
In one recruitment poster, published on Aug. 11, a white Uncle Sam caricature in the style of a Norman Rockwell painting stands at a crossroads of directional signs that include such phrases as “INVASION,” “CULTURAL DECLINE,” “HOMELAND” and “LAW & ORDER.” The poster includes the caption “Which way, American man?” — which appears to be a nod to the influential white nationalist text Which Way Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson. Published by an imprint associated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the book is a reflection and critique of society from Simpson’s travels. While critical of some aspects of society, it largely frames Western civilization as superior and veers into sexist and antisemitic commentary.
To some online observers, like author and conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild, this apparent nod to an unabashed bigot was hardly subtle
….
The report notes that multiple Trump administration figures in senior leadership roles have ties to racist organizations or have been known to espouse white nationalist themes. That includes border czar Tom Homan, who collaborated with anti-Muslim hate group The United West on his “Defend the Border” project, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, whose white nationalist views first came under scrutiny during Trump’s first term.
The report also refers to multiple posts from DHS that promote the idea of forging friendships or strengthening familial bonds over the targeting of immigrants. And it notes that the agency’s social media strategy has been celebrated by known white supremacists like activist Jared Taylor, who called the posts a “remarkable change” during an episode of his podcast in August.
That’s certainly one way to describe the Department of Homeland Security’s embrace of racist propaganda to further the Trump administration’s draconian anti-immigrant agenda.
New report shows how Trump’s DHS is mainstreaming white supremacy
The SPLC’s Hatewatch looked at how the Department of Homeland Security has ramped up its bigoted social media strategy in recent months.
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/homeland-security-social-media-white-supremacy-rcna228582