Tag Archives: Stephen Miller

Newsweek: Kristi Noem responds to ICEBlock app: ‘Obstruction of justice’

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Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has criticized an app that enables users to track the locations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, branding it an “obstruction of justice.”

Noem issued a statement on X, formerly Twitter, after the creator of the ICEBlock app, which uses an anonymous reporting system to maintain a real-time map of ICE activity, described its purpose as helping people avoid contact with ICE officers.

“This sure looks like obstruction of justice,” she wrote. “Our brave ICE law enforcement face a 500% increase in assaults against them. If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The app’s creator, Joshua Aaron, told CNN that he did not want anyone to use the app to target ICE officers, and that it was designed to help people “avoid them altogether if they want.”

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ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said in a statement given to Newsweek, “CNN’s promotion of an ‘ICE spotting’ app is reckless and irresponsible.”

“Advertising an app that basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs is sickening. My officers and agents are already facing a 500% increase in assaults, and going on live television to announce an app that lets anyone zero in on their locations is like inviting violence against them with a national megaphone.

“CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal aliens to evade U.S. law. Is this simply reckless ‘journalism’ or overt activism?”

That’s complete bullshit! What’s “endangering” your pigs is the way they dress up like Gestapo thugs and disappear people off the streets. Until they clean up their act, they’ll continue to be on the losing end of the popularity contest.

Kristi Noem responds to ICEBlock app: ‘Obstruction of justice’
The secretary of Homeland Security said that the app, which warns people of where ICE officers are operating, could encourage attacks against government agents.

https://www.newsweek.com/kirsti-noem-iceblock-deportation-immigration-app-2092878

CNN: Trump is creating new universes of people to deport

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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.

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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.”

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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

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/26/politics/immigration-deportations-trump-asylum-seekers

Guardian: Trump drives surge in ICE detentions of those with no criminal record despite stated priorities

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ICE facilities across the US are holding significantly more people than normal capacity

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is continuing to arrest an increasing number of immigrants without any criminal history, according to recent federal government data reviewed by the Guardian, demonstrating a further dramatic surge in this trend.

The latest available data, released by ICE last Friday, appears to contradict Trump administration officials’ frequent assertions that the agency is prioritizing the pursuit of criminals in its immigration enforcement operations.

“Our number one concern is violent criminals,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which houses Ice, said on TV in an interview with PBS last week.

In mid-June, ICE data shows there were more than 11,700 people in immigration detention who had been arrested by ICE despite having no track record of being charged with or convicted of a crime. That represents a staggering 1,271% increase from data released on those in immigration detention immediately before the start of Trump’s second term.

Trump drives surge in Ice detentions of those with no criminal record despite stated priorities
Ice facilities across the US are holding significantly more people than normal capacity

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/24/trump-immigrants-ice-arrests

MSNBC: The architect of Trump’s immigration policy could be profiting off ICE’s cruelty

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Last week, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the administration’s “No. 1 concern” while carrying out its aggressive immigration raids was going after “violent criminals.” Compare that statement to this new headline from The Guardian: “Trump drives surge in ICE detentions of those with no criminal record despite stated priorities.”

“In mid-June, ICE data shows there were more than 11,700 people in immigration detention who had been arrested by ICE despite having no track record of being charged with or convicted of a crime,” the Guardian reported. “That represents a staggering 1,271% increase from data released on those in immigration detention immediately before the start of Trump’s second term.”

The driving force behind that staggering increase is likely none other than White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, one of the architects behind Donald Trump’s family separation policy in his first term and who, in Trump 2.0, seems to be eerily obsessed with undocumented immigrants.

Last month, Miller reportedly gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers marching orders to start conducting mass arrests, according to The Wall Street Journal, which spoke to people familiar with the meeting. During that meeting, Miller allegedly told agents to target places like Home Depot, where migrant day laborers typically gather. Soon, ICE agents appeared to follow Miller’s advice and conducted a sweep at a Home Depot in Los Angeles.

He was also one of the people who, according to Axios, which spoke to two sources familiar with another meeting the deputy chief of staff had with ICE, demanded that the agency round up 3,000 people a day.

Miller is reportedly the architect of that and so much more of Trump’s hard-line immigration policy, and while his anti-immigration fervor may be scratching some racist ideological itch, we learned Tuesday that it may also be making him money.

A new report from the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, a nonpartisan nonprofit government watchdog group, found that, according to Miller’s recently released financial disclosures, he just so happens to own a significant stake — up to $250,000 — in the data analytics company Palantir, a company which stands to make millions of dollars off of Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Back in April, the Trump administration granted Palantir a no-bid $30 million contract to develop a new program called Immigration Lifecycle Operating System, or ImmigrationOS, which would effectively allow ICE to target and surveil migrants in real time.

According to public records reported by The New York Times, since Trump took office, Palantir has received more than $113 million in federal spending, and it stands to receive at least $795 million more. Right now, as POGO pointed out, Palantir is already the highest performing company in the S&P 500 this year, with its stock price rising by more than 80% in 2025 so far.

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Miller’s Palantir stock is technically in a brokerage account for one of his young children but, as POGO pointed out, “that does not legally matter, according to the Office of Government Ethics, which says “an asset that is owned by a spouse or minor child is analyzed under 18 U.S.C. § 208 [the criminal conflict of interest law] as if the employee owns it.”

Jen Psaki: The architect of Trump’s immigration policy could be profiting off ICE’s cruelty
While Stephen Miller’s anti-immigration fervor may be scratching an ideological itch, on Tuesday, we learned it may also be making him money.

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/stephen-miller-palantir-profit-ice-raids-rcna215021

NBC News: Trump administration accuses judge of ‘unprecedented defiance’ of Supreme Court in immigration dispute

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The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to clarify a decision Monday that paved the way for the government to quickly deport criminal immigrants to “third countries.”

 fight over the fate of six migrants the Trump administration wants to deport to South Sudan flared up again on Tuesday as the Justice Department accused a federal judge of “unprecedented defiance” of a Supreme Court decision the previous day.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a motion at the Supreme Court seeking clarification of the Monday evening decision that lifted nationwide restrictions on the administration’s ability to send convicted criminals to “third countries” they have no connection to.

Immediately after the Supreme Court action, Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, who is presiding over the litigation, said in a docket entry he did not believe that a May 21 order he issued that prevented the six people being sent to South Sudan had been blocked by the justices. The detainees are currently being held in a U.S. facility in Djibouti.

Murphy’s understanding was that the high court had blocked only his earlier ruling that set nationwide rules giving those affected a “meaningful opportunity” to bring claims that they would be at risk of torture, persecution or death if they were sent to countries the administration has made deals with to receive deported immigrants.

The Supreme Court itself did not explain its decision and did not specify which of Murphy’s rulings were blocked. But liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a dissenting opinion, said she did not think Murphy’s May 21 decision was affected.

Trump administration accuses judge of ‘unprecedented defiance’ of Supreme Court in immigration dispute
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to clarify a decision Monday that paved the way for the government to quickly deport criminal immigrants to “third countries.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/trump-administration-accuses-judge-unprecedented-defiance-supreme-cour-rcna214735

Rolling Stone: Stephen Miller Has Financial Stake in Company Helping ICE With Deportations: Report

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s obsession with kicking millions of undocumented immigrants out of the country is a byproduct of his hateful ethnonationalism – but he also stands to make a pretty penny off the administration’s deportation agenda.

According to ethics disclosure reports released by the White House, Miller owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data and intelligence software company that has a several lucrative contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track data and conduct surveillance on undocumented immigrants. It’s a pretty clear conflict of interest from the man behind much of Donald Trump’s immigration policy, in an administration that is already rife with corruption.

Stephen Miller Has Financial Stake in Company Helping ICE With Deportations: Report
Stephen Miller reportedly has a financial stake in Palantir, which is helping ICE deport undocumented migrants.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/stephen-miller-financial-stake-palantir-ice-contractor-1235371343

Daily Beast: Judge Embarrasses Stephen Miller in High-Profile Court Ruling

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A judge has shut down arguments pushed by the Trump administration and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in a ruling surrounding the high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Tennessee Magistrate Barbara Holmes ruled Sunday that Abrego Garcia is not the dangerous gang member Trump allies like Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have repeatedly claimed he is.

Abrego Garcia is pending trial on human smuggling charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In March, the Trump administration admitted to mistakenly deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. The Supreme Court ordered them to facilitate his return to the United States.

In her 51-page report, Holmes disputed claims made by the U.S. government that Abrego Garcia was a member of international crime gang MS-13.

Stephen Miller Embarrassed in High-Profile Court Ruling
A court did not rule in favor of arguments pushed by the likes of Miller.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-embarrasses-stephen-miller-in-high-profile-court-ruling

Raw Story: ‘Grandmother who won’t stop talking’: GOP aides say Stephen Miller won’t hang up

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Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor, just won’t get off the phone, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday night that Trump 2.0 has Miller’s fingerprints all over it, with Miller “emerg[ing] as a singular figure in the second Trump administration, wielding more power than almost any other White House staffer in recent memory—and eager to circumvent legal limitations on his agenda.”

Miller has drafted or edited each of Trump’s signed executive orders, according to the report, giving him considerable influence over Trump’s second term. This comes after the president refused to give him a leading role at the Department of Homeland Security, reportedly telling aides he didn’t see Miller as leadership material, according to the report.

Also of note — Miller appears to be getting under the skin of GOP aides on Capitol Hill who say they can’t get him off the phone.

‘Grandmother who won’t stop talking’: GOP aides say Stephen Miller won’t hang up

https://www.rawstory.com/stephen-miller-2672408339

More here:

Stephen Miller Is Driving Congressional Aides Crazy With Non-Stop Calls
Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, is so involved in every aspect of the Trump administration’s efforts to radically reconfigure American democracy that congressional aides have reportedly begun complaining about his incessant phone calls. Ignoring the fact that his “outreach wasn’t always welcome,” Miller would call congressional aides for lengthy, aimless conversations about illegal immigration that contained no specific requests,…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ar-AA1H8sPE

And here:

Stephen Miller Driving Congressional Aides Crazy With Calls
A new report details just how far Miller’s reach is in the Trump administration.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-miller-is-driving-congressional-aides-crazy-with-non-stop-calls

Daily Mail: Nursing student detained by ICE after cop noticed she had ‘a bit of an accent’ during routine traffic stop

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A college student was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after a cop noticed she had ‘a bit of an accent’ during a routine traffic stop.

Caroline Dias Goncalves, 19, was pulled over on the Colorado Interstate 70 on June 5, accused of driving too close to a semi-truck.

The University of Utah nursing student complied with the officer, identified as Investigator Alexander Zwinck, by handing over all of her documentation and paperwork.

In bodyworn camera footage seen by DailyMail.com, Zwinck told Goncalves he would let her off with just a warning, asking: ‘Where are you from? You have a bit of an accent.’

Goncalves answered: ‘I’m from Utah.’ 

Zwinck asked how long she’d been living in Utah and whether she was ‘born and raised there’, to which she cautiously answered: ‘No. I was born in, um, gosh I always forget the town.. down in Brazil.’

‘My parents moved here,’ she added.

Zwinck appeared unfazed by her answer, moving on to ask her questions about her boyfriend, her weekend plans and her dreams of becoming a nurse.

Mistake #1: Personal questions are none of the pig’s business. Respectfully decline to answer any such questions.

After explaining to her once again that he was giving her a warning which would not require any following up, he sent her on her way, wishing her safe travels and urging her to give semi trucks on the road a little more space.

But minutes after the friendly interaction, Goncalves was pulled over again by ICE agents as she exited the freeway, and taken into custody.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office has since revealed that Zwinck was part of a group chat with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners which was used to improve multi-agency cooperation to stem the drug trafficking trade.

‘We were unaware that the communication group was used for anything other than drug interdiction efforts, including immigration,’ the statement read.

‘We have since removed all Mesa County Sheriff’s Office members from the communication group.’

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Goncalves is now being held in Denver Detention Facility.

She is one of 2.5 million Dreamers in the United States, referring to undocumented migrants who were brought to the US as young children.

It is understood her family arrived in the US on a tourist visa, which they overstayed. Her father then applied for asylum, and that case is pending.

Goncalves earned a coveted TheDream.US national scholarship, which allows undocumented youth to help finance college.

While her asylum claim was pending, she had been granted temporary rights to work.

A GoFundMe set up by a friend to help Goncalves’ family cover legal costs associated with her detention has already raised $25,000.

‘Caroline has always followed the law, passionately pursued her education, and dreamed of a future full of opportunity,’ the fundraising page reads.

‘Yet she now finds herself unlawfully detained, frightened, and far from the safety and support she deserves.’

Nursing student detained by ICE after cop’s shocking observation
Caroline Dias Goncalves, 19, was pulled over on the Colorado Interstate 70 on June 5, accused of driving too close to a semi-truck.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14822749/college-student-caroline-dias-goncalves-detained-ice-traffic-stop.html

Wall Street Journal: Trump Is Losing Political Ground on Immigration

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The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation program is testing the political bounds of what Americans will tolerate, spurring a backlash from voters and some Republicans and testing the administration’s resolve.

Federal officials in recent weeks have stepped up raids on worksites and farms, seeking to fulfill President Trump’s pledge of mass deportations. The move has sparked alarm in immigrant communities and street protests in Los Angeles and other cities. Last weekend, Trump directed that arrests be paused at farms and hotels, only to reverse the directive days later.

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Republican members of Congress from California, Texas and Florida have publicly urged the White House to give priority to deportations of criminals rather than migrants who have resided in the U.S. for long periods and have otherwise obeyed the law. The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R., Pa.), called the farm raids “just wrong.” The co-founder of Latinas for Trump, Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia, wrote on X that the administration’s actions were “unacceptable and inhumane” and “not what we voted for.”

“I may have voted for Trump, but I can’t stay silent about what’s happening with ICE in LA,” Ryan Garcia, a former interim lightweight boxing champion who endorsed Trump last year, wrote on X. “We can have borders without losing our humanity.”

Presidents of both parties have historically hesitated to pursue large-scale immigration enforcement in the country’s interior precisely because it tends to be politically unpopular. Trump’s push for deportations far from the border has begun to trigger a backlash in public opinion, with polls showing his approval rating on immigration and deportations—formerly one of his strongest issues—has now turned negative.

A Quinnipiac poll earlier this month found that just 43% approved of Trump’s performance on immigration while 54% disapproved. On deportations, 40% approved while 56% disapproved. In the polling average maintained by the analyst Nate Silver, Trump’s immigration policies were popular on a net basis until earlier this month—but are now more unpopular than popular by a 3-point margin. 

Trump Is Losing Political Ground on Immigration

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-is-losing-political-ground-on-immigration-20de43bc

Also here:

Trump Is Losing Political Ground on Immigration
The administration’s aggressive deportation push has alarmed voters, including some of the president’s supporters.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-is-losing-political-ground-on-immigration/ar-AA1H5df5