Tag Archives: Trump Administration

Guardian Petition by man against Ice custody may provide new path to release for others

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Rodney Taylor, who is a double amputee, filed a habeas corpus after being held in a Georgia center for eight months

Rodney Taylor, a Liberia-born man who is a double amputee and is missing three fingers on one hand has filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court seeking release from Georgia’s Stewart detention center, after being held there by Ice for eight months.

“What is at stake in this case … is one of the most profound individual interests recognized by our legal system: whether Ice may unilaterally take away – without a lawful basis – his physical freedom, ie, his ‘constitutionally protected interest in avoiding physical restraint,’” the petition says.

The action is “a canary in the coal mine for what’s about to happen” nationwide, said Sarah Owings, Taylor’s immigration attorney. “[T]housands of habeas claims are going to be filed across the country,” she said, after a Board of Immigration Appeals decision on 5 September dramatically curtailed the immigration system’s ability to release detainees while awaiting decisions on their status.

This is making immigration attorneys turn to federal district courts, observers told the Guardian.

Taylor’s continued detention despite his extensive medical needs is “yet another stark example of the cruelty of this administration”, said Helen L Parsonage, the attorney who filed the petition.

Brought to the US by his mother on a medical visa when he was a child, Taylor had 16 operations for his medical conditions. Now 46, he has lived in the US nearly his entire life and works as a barber. He got engaged only 10 days before Ice detained him in January – due to a burglary conviction from when he was a teenager and for which the state of Georgia pardoned him in 2010, according to Owings, who shared some of Taylor’s paperwork with the Guardian.

Taylor has a pending application for US residence – commonly known as a “green card” – but has not been released on bond while the federal government determines his immigration status. He says he has been subjected to multiple mishaps in detention, including the screws coming out of his prosthetic legs, causing him to fall and injure his hand; and, during different periods, not being able to charge the batteries in his prosthetic legs or get them calibrated, leading to other injuries.

Concurrently, the Trump administration has dismantled the office for civil rights and civil liberties (CRCL) and the immigration detention ombudsman (Oido) – two federal offices that provided oversight for healthcare and other issues.

Habeas corpus, a legal tool meant to challenge the legal basis for detention, “predates the United States and goes back to the English legal system”, said César García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University. It fundamentally means that a detained person has the right for a judge to rule on whether their detention is unlawful.

Taylor’s petition is important because it comes after the September decision, which “virtually eliminate[d] bond for people no matter how long they’ve lived here and whether they have jobs and contribute to our nation”, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

“The meaning of this case at this point in time is because it is a direct challenge to this administration’s … recent attempt to expand detention authority,” García Hernández said.

Immigration attorneys nationwide are pursuing the same strategy – but it requires a few steps.

“Most immigration lawyers have never seen the inside of a federal court,” said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta immigration attorney of more than three decades. That’s because immigration courts are a separate system from federal district courts.

This is leading to training sessions for immigration attorneys on filing habeas claims being staged nationwide, so they can try to get tens of thousands of detainees released from detention while their cases are resolved.

Since district courts are separate from immigration courts, immigration attorneys are also having to follow a process of admission into district courts, which then authorizes them to file habeas petitions. In Georgia and some other states, this can include traveling to the district court with jurisdiction over the area where the detention center is located and attending a ceremony.

“We’re having to adapt,” Owings said. “We’re figuring out how to respond.”

Several observers familiar with Taylor’s case said he would never have been detained without bond for eight months during previous administrations, given his medical condition. “This case is an example of what happens when Ice is judge, jury and executioner,” Owings said. “Now, if you’re coming in the door, there’s no going out,” she said.

In the months to come, she added, “There will be more Rodneys. There will be more claims from people treated the same – without medical care, without guardrails to review their situations, without the ability to be released.”

Petition by man against Ice custody may provide new path to release for others
Rodney Taylor, who is a double amputee, filed a habeas corpus after being held in a Georgia center for eight months

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/ice-immigration-rodney-taylor-georgia

Daily Beast: Trump’s Goons Topple 12-Foot Statue of Him and Epstein

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The 12-foot bronze had got a permit from the federal government—but then vanished.

A towering 12-foot statue of President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands mysteriously appeared on the Capitol Mall early Tuesday.

By sunrise Wednesday, it had vanished.

The United States Park Police quietly removed the provocative bronze sculpture around 5:30 a.m., according to footage obtained by the Daily Beast.

The removal violates a permit issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to “The Secret Handshake,” the group that claimed responsibility for the installation. The statue was authorized to remain on display across from the Capitol on 3rd Street, between Madison and Jefferson Avenues, until Sunday at 8 p.m., documents reviewed by the Daily Beast reveal.

The DOI is also required to notify the artists at least 24 hours before the statue is removed for any reason.

Trump’s Goons Topple 12-Foot Statue of Him and Epstein
The 12-foot bronze had got a permit from the federal government—but then vanished.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-and-epstein-statue-in-dc-vanishes-despite-legal-permit

Knewz: Trump admin MAGA loyalists turn on each other

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FBI Director Kash Patel has come under fire with top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration amid claims U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi “can’t stand him.” Alongside that allegation, former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was just installed at Patel’s embattled agency as co-deputy FBI director alongside Dan Bongino in the wake of growing Patel backlash, Knewz.com can reveal.

Tensions abound

Trump tapped Bailey to help run the FBI, sharing the role of second-in-command with Co-Deputy Director Bongino — a Trump loyalist who recently clashed with other administration officials over the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of a review of the Jeffrey Epstein case. The change comes at a time Patel is under fire over recent mistakes. “The White House, Bondi [and Deputy Attorney General Todd] Blanche have no confidence in Kash. Pam in particular cannot stand him. Blanche either,” a source told Fox News. Bondi and Blanche denied the allegations, and the White House denied plans to strip Patel of his role.

Questioning Patel’s leadership

Within the last few months, particularly following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, questions have been swirling about Patel’s position and leadership. Patel recently faced off with lawmakers during back-to-back appearances before Congress as elected officials questioned him about his decisions and performance following Kirk’s murder, which saw multiple people erroneously arrested early in the investigation. Trump, however, had a different take on the way the manhunt for Kirk’s shooter ended. “I am very proud of the FBI. Kash — and everyone else — they have done a great job,” Trump said.

Patel backlash

Despite Trump’s praise, on social media, many commenters have been urging Patel to step down from his position. “What do you guys think about Kash Patel as head of FBI? I think he needs to step down. The former Attorney General of Missouri Andrew Bailey is being sworn in as a co-deputy director. Maybe he can do better,” wrote one commenter. Another said, “Kash Patel is an incompetent fool who needs to step down from his leadership position.” Yet another said, “I’m very confused [and] disappointed over Kash Patel’s contribution so far. If he can’t [handle] his assignment, he has to step down because this is not good enough. As for Pam Bondi, shouldn’t she be sitting more behind her desk instead of being around President Trump all the time?”

FBI criticism

Many social media users also slammed Patel and the FBI for their performance after the Kirk shooting suspect’s father turned him in to authorities. Once the manhunt for Kirk’s alleged killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, came to an end, one online commenter lamented, “Took 3 days to find the shooter. Didn’t find shooter. Shooter’s father turned him in. Faith won’t let [Patel] say Heaven so he said, ‘See you in Valhalla, Charlie.’ Should Kash Patel be forced to step down?” Another echoed a similar sentiment, writing, “Patel and Bongino need to step down. At least Kash for sure, this has been a s*** show. I’m no fan of Kirk’s but still want justice.”

Trump admin MAGA loyalists turn on each other – NewsBreak
FBI Director Kash Patel has come under fire with top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration amid claims U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi “can’

https://www.newsbreak.com/knewz-1594593/4254512519901-trump-admin-maga-loyalists-turn-on-each-other

Raw Story: Kristi Noem demoted to ‘PR person’ as Stephen Miller runs DHS: ex-insider

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Stephen Miller is the one who really controls the Department of Homeland Security, former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor — famous for his anonymous “resistance” op-ed during Trump’s first term — told former presidential adviser Sidney Blumenthal and historian Sean Wilentz on their “Court of History” podcast released this week.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has been demoted to nothing more than a mouthpiece for his agenda, he said.

“What do you hear about what people think on the inside about Miller’s power?” asked Wilentz, shortly after another revealing segment in which Taylor speculated that even President Donald Trump’s inner circle no longer sees him as fit for his duties.

“It’s almost absolute,” said Taylor. “You know, he would never say that … Stephen is very, very careful to always be entirely deferential to the president.” However, he said, in one revealing incident in 2018, Miller “was growing really, really frustrated with … the slow-walking that was happening over at the Department of Homeland Security when it came to some of the president’s more outlandish ideas. He wanted to do a lot of things that just, our lawyers knew would so clearly break the law, and you know, not only did we not want that for the country, but people like me didn’t want to go to prison because of it, right?”

And so Miller persuaded Trump behind the scenes to give him effective control of DHS, Taylor continued: “It wasn’t some public announcement, but he’d gone to the president and said, ‘Look, I’m tired of this, you know, basically give me the authority to make some of these decisions over at DHS and essentially override the Department.

“And he called me to tell me this. I remember where I was. I was driving on Capitol Hill, and it was the words he used that stuck with me. He said, ‘think of this as my coronation.” That’s what he called it. He called it his coronation, that he’d gotten the president to empower him to take on these new duties.”

“There’s a lot of royalist thinking it seems to me, automatic royalist thinking,” Blumenthal interjected.

“There is, though,” said Taylor. “And that was, I think, the most revealing thing that I ever heard come out of his mouth. And Stephen rarely — you really rarely get these unguarded moments with them, he’s extremely guarded, and that was sort of an unguarded moment from him but, I think, illustrative of not just where his head is at, but also how this administration, like you said, thinks of governance is, not in terms of democracy and checks and balances but, you know, how can you consolidate total rule. And so Stephen certainly has that inside this administration. He’s got much more authority than he had before, and you are seeing what that looks like if left unchecked.”

A key example, he added, is the deployment of the military to crush anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles, which has Miller’s “fingerprints all over it.”

“So, Kristi Noem, who is the chief bureaucrat, the secretary of DHS, doesn’t act like an actual cabinet secretary, and I say that besides her cosplay and you know various numerous costume changes,” said Wilentz. “She’s under the thumb of Stephen Miller, and I wonder what people on the inside say about that and how they feel about what’s going on there?”

“I think there’s a recognition in the Department that the current secretary is not a policy heavyweight,” said Taylor. “The result is … what can you do if you, you know, don’t have a command enough of the issues to run that department, or at least to be able to stand up to the White House and make decisions? Well, all you can do is PR, and I think that’s the role she’s settled into, is essentially the president’s Homeland Security PR person. And it’s not unreasonable or outlandish to say that Stephen Miller is running the Department of Homeland Security.

“I very much believe it and I know that day-to-day, that tactically that is what’s happening.”

Raw Story: Kristi Noem demoted to ‘PR person’ as Stephen Miller runs DHS: ex-insider

https://www.rawstory.com/stephen-miller-kristi-noem

MSNBC: Supreme Court issues ruling on Trump’s power to fire FTC commissioner without cause

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Chief Justice John Roberts had previously blocked the reinstatement of the agency’s lone Democratic commissioner whom Trump sought to fire.

The Supreme Court has backed President Donald Trump’s power to fire the lone Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission without cause, agreeing at the same time to consider overturning a longstanding precedent that has protected independent agencies.

The high court’s three Democratic appointees dissented from the decision Monday to lift a lower court order that sided with the commissioner, Rebecca Slaughter, while litigation proceeds. The high court’s order said the justices will hear oral argument in the case during its December argument session.

“Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the three Democratic appointees, calling out how the Republican-appointed majority has helped Trump in this and other cases in his second term. “Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers,” she wrote.

Monday’s order follows Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision on Sept. 8 to temporarily halt Slaughter’s reinstatement while the full Supreme Court considered whether she should be reinstated while litigation over her firing continued. That word from the full court came Monday, as the majority sided with Trump ahead of the December hearing and, in doing so, signaled that it will side with him in its final decision. The court, whose next term starts in early October, typically issues the term’s decisions by early July, meaning a final decision in the Slaughter case should come by then next year.

In July, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s attempt to fire Slaughter was unlawful. A divided appellate panel refused to lift the judge’s order on Sept. 2, citing the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor precedent that endorsed for-cause removal protections. The Roberts Court has weakened that precedent, and the Trump administration has targeted it. The precedent arose in the context of the FTC specifically, raising the possibility that the justices could overturn it outright in Slaughter’s case.

The Supreme Court’s order Monday said the justices want the parties to brief and argue these two questions, specifically naming the 90-year-old precedent:

(1) Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled. (2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person’s removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law.

Dissenting from the appellate panel’s Sept. 2 refusal to lift U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan’s order, Trump appointee Neomi Rao acknowledged the Humphrey’s precedent but noted that the Supreme Court has been siding with Trump on his firing powers lately. In any event, the district judge was powerless to order Slaughter’s reinstatement, Rao wrote.

The administration cited Rao’s dissent in seeking to lift AliKhan’s order, casting the case as the latest in Trump’s second term to warrant relief from lower court overreach. “In this case, the lower courts have once again ordered the reinstatement of a high-level officer wielding substantial executive authority whom the President has determined should not exercise any executive power, let alone significant rulemaking and enforcement powers,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote to the justices on Sept. 4. Sauer asked the justices to lift AliKhan’s order immediately.

Opposing even a temporary pause in the judge’s order (which Roberts granted Sept. 8), Slaughter’s lawyers said the government wouldn’t be harmed by her continuing to serve while the administration’s application to the justices is pending. They sought to distinguish recent cases in which the court sided with the administration by noting that Slaughter “is the sole Democratic member on a Commission with a three-Republican majority,” so her presence on the FTC wouldn’t result in any meaningful action opposed by the majority.

On Sept. 15, her lawyers further wrote that Congress hadn’t granted Trump the broad power he claims and that if he “is to be given new powers Congress has expressly and repeatedly refused to give him, that decision should come from the people’s elected representatives.” They further argued that “[a]t a minimum, any such far-reaching decision to reverse a considered congressional policy judgment should not be made on the emergency docket,” referring to the court’s rulings made without full briefing, hearing or explanation, which have frequently helped Trump in his second term. It’s the majority’s use of the docket in this way that Kagan and the Democratic appointees called out on Monday.

Supreme Court issues ruling on Trump’s power to fire FTC commissioner without cause
Chief Justice John Roberts had previously blocked the reinstatement of the agency’s lone Democratic commissioner whom Trump sought to fire.

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-ftc-commissioner-fire-cause-trump-rcna231388

Axios: ICE arrests rock Malden, Somerville

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It’s a familiar scene: neighbors, attorneys and activists rallying with immigrant families over the loved ones lost in the federal immigration system.

  • Dozens came together in Malden on Monday, this time for Edgar Hernan Elias Escobar.

The big picture: Elias Escobar, a native of El Salvador with no criminal record, joins a growing population of newcomers disappearing from the streets of Malden, Somerville and other Boston-area communities in the past two weeks.

Catch up quick: Elias Escobar, an undocumented immigrant who was obtaining papers through a family-based petition from his wife, was stopped by immigration agents on his way to a construction job Wednesday.

  • Agents smashed his car window and pulled him out, even after his wife, Leslie Perlera Gonzalez, showed up saying he had a pending immigration petition, GBH News reported.
  • A Department of Homeland Security official later told Axios he refused to roll down his window and that the “officers took appropriate action and followed their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation.”

State of play: Elias Escobar is detained in the Plymouth County Correctional Center with other immigrant detainees.

  • Greater Boston Legal Services, where Perlera Gonzalez works, filed a lawsuit alleging his rights were violated.

Yes, but: The Trump administration has fought habeas lawsuits over immigrant detainees tooth and nail since ramping up immigration enforcement this year.

Context: Immigrants have historically been allowed to adjust their status through a handful of avenues if they have a relative or spouse who is a U.S. citizen.

  • With the exception of the first Trump administration, it is uncommon for immigration officials to detain and seek to deport an immigrant mid-petition or with legal status if the person poses no public safety threat, said Maggie Morgan, managing attorney for the GBLS immigration unit.

Morgan says she has seen reports of immigration agents detaining people before confirming their identity or status.

  • “This is violating due process not just for those individuals, but for everyone in the community who could be at risk of having this happen to them,” Morgan said.

Zoom out: The LUCE hotline has received more than 100 calls in the last week flagging immigration enforcement activity.

  • Somerville residents tried to stop immigration agents from questioning a man they stopped. He complied and, within minutes, was placed in handcuffs despite having no known record, Rep. Mike Connolly told the Cambridge Day.

What they’re saying: “I believe that if Hernan doesn’t get to come home, it has little to do with the rights or whether he deserves to be an American and more to do with the U.S. deciding who it likes,” Frank Pinto, Perlera Gonzalez’s cousin, told the crowd Monday morning.

The other side: The DHS official said any claims of racial profiling are “categorically false.”

  • “What makes someone a target of ICE is that they are in our country illegally—not their skin color,” the official said. “DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence.”

What we’re watching: A federal judge will have to decide whether Elias Escobar’s lawsuit can move forward and if he can continue to pursue his immigration application.

ICE arrests rock Malden, Somerville
An immigrant resource hotline received 100-plus calls last week.

https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2025/09/22/ice-arrests-malden-somerville

Kansas City Star: Trump Withdraws National Guard Threat Amid Defiance

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President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago amid Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s objections, pointing to Washington and Memphis as examples of federal intervention. Critics argue the move would mark an effort of federal overreach into state authority, while Republicans have argued it could help curb violent crime. Trump has withdrawn his plans to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, at least for the immediate future.

…

Trump said, “So I’m going to go to Chicago early against Pritzker. Pritzker is nothing. If Pritzker was smart, he’d say, ‘Please come in.’ … If they lose less than six or seven people a week with murder, they’re doing a great job in their opinion.”

Pritzker called Trump’s remarks inconsistent and not credible, warning that a deployment without state consent would face immediate legal challenges. Pritzker said, “That you can’t take anything that he says seriously from one day to the next.”

Pritzker added, “He’s attacking verbally, sometimes he attacks, sending his agents in, sometimes he forgets. I think he might be suffering from some dementia. The next day, he’ll wake up on the other side of the bed and stop talking about Chicago.”

Pritzker argued “Operation Midwest Blitz” could justify broader federal action and said the enforcement posture is likely to provoke confrontations. Legal limits may restrict deployment, as a federal judge in San Francisco ruled a June Los Angeles deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act.

Trump said, “Chicago is a death trap and I’m going to make it just like I did with D.C., just like I’ll do with Memphis.”

Civil liberties groups criticized the Memphis operation as overreach and regressive policing. The White House has touted the move as a measure to reduce violent crime.

American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee said, “This latest step makes clear that the Trump administration is claiming a sweeping mandate to patrol, arrest and detain people in Memphis, and will bring back the same failed policing tactics that caused widespread constitutional violations for decades.”

Pritzker said, “The harder the ICE agents come in, the more people want to intervene and step in the way of them. And when that happens, and when there’s any kind of, well, touching or engagement with those ICE agents that involves actual potential battery, well, that’ll be the excuse.”

Trump Withdraws National Guard Threat Amid Defiance

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-withdraws-national-guard-threat-amid-defiance/ss-AA1N5efl

Independent: Fruit vendor arrested by border patrol outside Gavin Newsom event speaks out after six weeks in ICE prison

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Strawberry delivery driver released on bond after abrupt arrest as agents patrolled governor’s event

Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios was unloading boxes of strawberries during his final delivery in Los Angeles when a band of masked Border Patrol agents surrounded him and asked for his identification.

Minguela had unwittingly entered a political minefield on August 14 outside the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, where California Governor Gavin Newsom was addressing a crowd about his plans to fight back against a Republican-led gerrymandering campaign to maintain control of Congress.

Federal agents deployed by Donald Trump’s administration were patrolling the street directly in front of the building.

The timing of the spectacle drew immediate scrutiny and backlash, with the governor speaking out in the middle of his remarks to condemn what was happening just outside the event. “You think it’s coincidental?” he said.

Minguela, 48, was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody last week after nearly two months inside a facility he described as a “prison” with lights on at all hours of the day, no beds and only a concrete floor to sleep on.

Detainees received little food, and the conditions were so bleak that some of the men inside volunteered to self-deport rather, he told CBS News.

“Those days were the hardest,” Minguela told The Los Angeles Times. “My first day there on the floor, I cried. It doesn’t matter that you’re men, it doesn’t matter your age. There, men cried.”

Minguela, who is undocumented, has lived in the United States for more than a decade after entering the country from Mexico on a tourist visa. He overstayed his visa after fleeing violence in the Mexican state of Coahuila, where he had been kidnapped twice and stabbed by people trying to steal money from ATMs he was servicing, according to The Times.

He does not have a criminal record.

Minguela was released on bond and is equipped with an ankle monitor as an immigration judge determines next steps in his case.

A spokesperson for Homeland Security said he “was arrested for breaking our country’s laws by overstaying his visa” but remains unclear why he was targeted for arrest.

Minguela had overstayed a tourist visa after fleeing the Mexican state of Coahuila in 2015 because of violence he faced there, his partner said. She said he had worked servicing ATMs there, was kidnapped twice and at one point was stabbed by people intent on stealing the money. After his employers cut staff, she said, he lost his job, helping drive his decision to leave.

On August 14, Minguela left his partner and three children — ages 15, 12 and six — while they were still asleep as he prepared for his daily delivery route at 2 a.m. He had worked for the same produce delivery company for eight years and never missed a day.

Minguela was unloading several boxes of strawberries and a box of apples when he noticed a group of masked Border Patrol agents roaming the area surrounding Newsom’s event.

Video from the scene shows the agents passing his van then doubling back and looking inside to find Minguela. He presented a red “know your rights” card from his wallet and handed it to an agent.

“This is of no use to me,” he said, according to The Times. Agents then asked him his name, nationality and immigration paperwork before leading him away in handcuffs.

“Immigration has already caught me,” Minguela wrote in text messages to his partner. “Don’t worry. God will help us a lot.”

U.S. Border Patrol El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino was observing the arrest. He turned to the officers and shouted out “well done” moments before speaking with reporters who were filming the scene.

“We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we don’t have politicians that will do that,” Border Patrol El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told FOX 11. “We do that ourselves, so that’s why we’re here today.”

Asked whether he had a message for Newsom, who was speaking roughly 100 feet away, Bovino said he wasn’t aware where the governor was.

“I think it’s pretty sick and pathetic,” Newsom said of the arrest.

“They chose the time, manner, and place to send their district director outside right when we’re about to have this press conference,” he said. “That’s everything you know about Donald Trump’s America … about the authoritarian tendencies of the president.”

Minguela believes he was targeted for his appearance.

Immigration raids throughout the Los Angeles area in June sparked massive protests demanding the Trump administration withdraw ICE and federal agents from patrolling immigrant communities.

In response, Trump federalized National Guard troops and sent in hundreds of Marines despite objections from Democratic city and state officials.

A federal judge determined the administration had illegally deployed the Guard as part of an apparent nationwide effort to create “a national police force with the president as its chief.”

The Supreme Court also recently overturned an injunction that blocked federal agents from carrying out sweeps in southern California after a judge determined they were indiscriminately targeting people based on race and whether they spoke Spanish, among other factors.

The court’s opinion drew a forceful rebuke from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the bench, who accused the conservative justices of ignoring the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful searches and seizures

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” she wrote in a dissenting opinion.

“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be “free from arbitrary interference by law officers,’” she added. “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”

Fruit vendor arrested outside Gavin Newsom event speaks out after ICE detention
Strawberry delivery driver released on bond after abrupt arrest as agents patrolled governor’s event

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/gavin-newsom-los-angeles-ice-arrest-border-patrol-b2831503.html

Reuters: Trump signs order targeting antifa as a ‘terrorist organization’

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  • Trump designates antifa a ‘terrorist organization’
  • Critics warn of potential free speech attack
  • Legal experts question constitutionality of designation

U.S. President Donald Trumpsigned an executive order on Monday calling the antifa movement a “terrorist organization,” the White House said, after promising actions targeting left-wing groups following Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Kirk, a prominent conservative activist with close ties to Trump, was assassinated on September 10 while speaking on a college campus in Utah. A 22-year-old technical college student has been charged with Kirk’s murder.

Investigators are still looking for a motive and have not said the suspect operated in concert with any groups. But the Trump administration has used the killing as a pretext to revive years-old plans to target left-wing groups they regard as being hostile to conservative views.

Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a “decentralized, leaderless movement composed of loose collections of groups, networks and individuals,” according to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks extremists.

“While some extreme actors who claim to be affiliated with antifa do engage in violence or vandalism at rallies and events, this is not the norm,” it says on its website.

Trump’s 370-word executive order directs “all relevant executive departments and agencies” to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations” conducted by antifa or anyone who funds such actions, according to the White House.

“Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech.”

Federal law enforcement officials already investigate violent and organized crime associated with a variety of hate groups and ideological movements.

The U.S. government does not currently officially designate solely domestic groups as terrorist organizations in large part because of constitutional protections.

But a Justice Department official with knowledge of discussions on the issue said Trump’s order would unlock expansive investigative and surveillance authorities and powers.

The person, who declined to be named, said the designation would allow the U.S. government to more closely track the finances and movements of U.S. citizens and to investigate any foreign ties of the loose network of groups and nonprofits the Trump administration views as antifa.

FOCUS IS ON FOREIGN FUNDING

Critics of the administration have warned it may pursue an attack on free speech and opponents of the Republican president.

The FBI’s Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Divisions will be used to track finances – both domestic and foreign sources of funding – and attempt to identify the central leadership of antifa, the official said. FBI surveillance and investigative operations are normally restricted in how they can target U.S. citizens.

“The big picture focus is on foreign money seeding U.S. politics and drawing connections to foreign bank accounts,” a White House source familiar with the plans told Reuters.

“The designation of antifa gives us the authority to subpoena banks, look at wire transfers, foreign and domestic sources of funding, that kind of thing,” the White House source said.

It was not clear which individuals would be the target of such a probe.

Political violence experts and U.S. law enforcement officials have previously identified far-right attacks as the leading source of domestic violent extremism. Trump administration officials have sought to portray left-wing groups as the main drivers of political violence in their remarks since Kirk’s death.

Legal experts have said the domestic terrorism designation may be legally and constitutionally dubious, hard to execute and raise free-speech concerns, given that subscription to an ideology is not generally considered criminal under U.S. law.

During the first Trump administration there were at least two failed efforts to designate antifa a terrorist organization, according to internal Department of Homeland Security communications viewed by Reuters.

Trump signs order targeting antifa as a ‘terrorist organization’

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-sign-order-designating-antifa-terrorist-organization-2025-09-22

Reason: What Does It Mean for Trump To Designate Antifa a ‘Terrorist Organization’?

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America doesn’t have an official list of domestic terrorist organizations, but the declaration could mean heavier political surveillance and RICO prosecutions.

President Donald Trump announced in a social media post on Wednesday night that he is “designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” He made the same declaration in 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter protests against the police killing of George Floyd, with no real effect on the ground.

But Trump’s new declaration came with another, more specific order: “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.” And that may be the real significance of his decision.

There is no such thing as a domestic terrorist organization list in the United States. When Congress debated the first counterterrorism legislation in the 1990s, the Clinton administration and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) pushed for sweeping domestic police powers. It was Republicans who opposed those measures at the time because they worried that counterterrorism would be weaponized against the right.

As a compromise, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 only allowed the government to designate and ban foreign terrorist organizations. The first Trump administration reportedly tried to paint Antifa as a foreign organization by pointing to Antifa activists who fought for Kurdish militias in Syria. The problem is that the same Kurdish militias were also allied with the U.S. military, which introduced a foreign policy complication.

The current administration could try to use the Palestinian solidarity movement to paint the left as foreign terrorists. Both Republican politicians and the ADL have tried to imply that student protesters are materially connected to Hamas. As with the Kurdish connection, however, the Palestinian connection to Antifa is fairly stretched.

During the 2020 unrest, then–Attorney General Bill Barr also reportedly told prosecutors to consider using the “seditious conspiracy” law against rioters. The law, passed during the Civil War to round up Confederate guerrillas, punishes any group of people that violently opposes the authority of the U.S. government. The government did not end up pursuing those charges.

The most obvious measure is one that Trump has already hinted at using: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. After protesters disrupted Trump’s dinner last week, Trump told reporters that he asked the attorney general “to look into that in terms of RICO, bringing RICO cases against them. Criminal RICO. Because they should be put in jail, what they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”

Originally designed to go after the mafia, the RICO Act allows prosecutors to charge an entire organization for criminal behaviors. In September 2023, the state of Georgia tried to use its own state-level RICO law to prosecute members of Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a new police training center. A judge threw out the charges last week.

As many critics have pointed out, Antifa doesn’t exist—at least not as a centralized organization. Anti-fascist is a label that many different left-wing and anarchist activists around the country have adopted, along with similar tactics and aesthetics. But the vagueness of the label can help rather than hinder the Trump administration, if its goal is to crack down on political enemies.

The RICO Act allows prosecutors to define more or less anything they want as a mafia organization, and the charges are nearly impossible to defend against, partly because the government can seize the defendant’s assets before trial, making it impossible to pay a defense lawyer.

Trump’s reference to “those funding ANTIFA” is a hint that he wants to tie Antifa rioting to various progressive donors, as in earlier attempts to go after the Palestinian movement. In May 2024, the House Oversight Committee and House Education Committee demanded information from a wide range of philanthropists—George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Pritzker family’s Libra Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—about their connection to campus protests.

At the time, Foundation for Middle East Peace President Lara Friedman told Reason that this investigation was meant “to demonize parts of the tax-exempt sector that a part of the Republican Party views as a key target in the war on woke….If you make this about supposedly fighting antisemitism, you bring parts of the Democratic Party with you.” 

Now that the Republicans are in power, they may calculate that the war on woke no longer needs Democratic support, and they can go after their targets much more directly. But it doesn’t take much imagination at all to see what the retaliation by a future Democratic administration might look like.

The Biden administration used seditious conspiracy charges to pin the January 2021 riot at the Capitol on the leaders of the right-wing Proud Boys, whom Trump later pardoned. Trump himself was charged under Georgia’s RICO law in 2023 for alleged election interference, a case that is currently on pause but could be resumed in the future.

Of course, Trump’s declaration about domestic terrorism was empty bluster in 2020. Given how much blood the Trump administration tastes from its successful attacks on critical media, and the fact that Democrats have broken the seal on other forms of domestic repression, this time might turn out to be more serious. The tools are there for a political crackdown—not a full descent into dictatorship, but for an escalation of the current surveillance state.

What does it mean for Trump to designate Antifa a ‘terrorist organization’?
America doesn’t have an official list of domestic terrorist organizations, but the declaration could mean heavier political surveillance.

https://reason.com/2025/09/18/what-does-it-mean-for-trump-to-designate-antifa-a-terrorist-organization