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Alternet: One Trump enabler has done more damage than the rest of them combined | Opinion

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John Roberts came to the U.S. Supreme Court professing the best of intentions. In his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, he promised to serve as chief justice in the fashion of a baseball umpire, calling only “balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” Two years later, in an interview with law professor Jeffrey Rosen, he mused that the court’s many acrimonious 5-to-4 decisions could lead to “a steady wasting away of the notion of the rule of law” and ultimately undermine the court’s perceived legitimacy as a nonpartisan institution.

Roberts said that as the court’s leader, he would stress a “team dynamic,” encouraging his colleagues to join narrow, unanimous decisions rather than sweeping split rulings.

“You do have to put [the Justices] in a situation where they will appreciate, from their own point of view, having the court acquire more legitimacy, credibility, that they will benefit from the shared commitment to unanimity in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise,” he reasoned.

Today, that reasoning is on the cutting-room floor. Although the court’s conservatives today outnumber its liberals by a 6-to-3 margin, the tribunal remains fractured and is widely regarded as just another political branch of government. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in mid-June, neither Republicans nor Democrats see the nation’s top judicial body as neutral. Just 20% of respondents to the poll agreed that the Supreme Court is unbiased while 58% disagreed.

Instead of healing divisions on the bench, Roberts and his Republican confederates old and new, including three justices nominated by Donald Trump, have issued a blistering succession of polarizing and reactionary majority opinions on voting rights, gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, gun control, abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance, the use of dark money in politics, equality for LGBTQ+ people, and perhaps most disastrous of all, presidential immunity.

The court’s reputation has also been tainted by a series of ethics scandals involving its two most right-wing members, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, over the receipt of unreported gifts from Republican megadonors. Alito came under added fire for flying an American flag upside down (sometimes used as a symbol of distress at mostly left-wing protests) outside his Virginia home just a few months after the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

The court’s lurch to the far-right accelerated in the recently concluded 2024-2025 term, driven in large part by the immunity ruling — Trump v. United States, penned by Roberts himself — and the authoritarian power grab that it has unleashed. The decision effectively killed special counsel Jack Smith’s election-subversion case against Trump. It also altered the landscape of constitutional law and the separation of powers, endowing presidents with absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken pursuant to their enumerated constitutional powers, such as pardoning federal offenses and removing executive officers from their departments; and presumptive immunity for all other “official acts” undertaken within the “outer perimeter” of their official duties.

Seemingly emboldened by the ruling, Trump has made good on his boast to be a “dictator on day one” of his second stint in the White House, releasing a torrent of executive orders and proclamations aimed at dismantling federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; eviscerating environmental regulations; imposing sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities; creating the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); authorizing mass deportations; and ending birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, among dozens of other edicts.

Trump’s executive orders have generated a myriad of legal challenges, some of which reached the Supreme Court this past term as emergency, or “shadow docket,” appeals. The challenges placed Roberts and his conservative benchmates in the uncomfortable but entirely predictable position of balancing the judiciary’s independence as a co-equal branch of government with their fundamental ideological support of Trump’s policy agenda. By the term’s end, it was clear that ideology had won the day.

One of the first signs that Trump 2.0 would cause renewed headaches for the court occurred at the outset of the president’s March 4, 2025, address to a joint session of Congress. As he made his way to the podium, Trump shook hands with retired Justice Anthony Kennedy and with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Elena Kagan. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary until he approached Chief Justice Roberts, whose hand he took, and with a pat on the shoulder could be heard saying, “Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget.”

Donald Trump greets John Roberts at the U.S. Capitol. Win McNamee/Pool via REUTERS

Whether Trump was thanking Roberts for his immunity ruling was ambiguous, but on March 18, Roberts was compelled to issue a rare public rebuke of the president after Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for issuing two temporary restraining orders (TROs) that halted the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in a statement released by the court.

The rebuke, however, came too late to stop the removal of two planeloads of Venezuelans to El Salvador in apparent defiance of Boasberg’s TROs, sparking concerns that Trump might ultimately defy the high court as well, and trigger a full-scale constitutional crisis.

The deportation controversy, along with several others, quickly came before the Supreme Court. On April 7, by a 5-to-4 vote with Justice Barrett in dissent, the majority granted the administration’s request to lift Boasberg’s TROs and remove the cases for further proceedings to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, where the named plaintiffs and other potential class members in the litigation (who had not yet been deported) were being detained under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). The court’s four-page per curiam order (Trump v. J.G.G.) was unsigned, and, in a small defeat for the administration, also instructed that the detainees had the right to receive advance “notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal” by means of habeas corpus petitions.

In a related unsigned eight-page ruling (A.A.R.P. v. Trump) issued on May 16, this time by a 7-to-2 vote with Justices Thomas and Alito in dissent, the court blocked the administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members held in northern Texas under the AEA, but also held that the detainees could be deported “under other lawful authorities.”

In another unsigned immigration decision released on April 10 (Noem v. Abrego Garcia), the court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a resident of Maryland married to a U.S. citizen who had been sent to his native El Salvador because of an “administrative error.” Ábrego García was brought back to the United States in early June, and was indicted on charges of smuggling migrants and conspiracy.

The court waited until June 23 to release its most draconian immigration decision of the term (DHS v. D.V.D.), holding 6 to 3 that noncitizens under final orders of removal can be deported to third-party countries, even ones with records of severe human-rights violations. And on June 27, in a highly technical but very important procedural ruling (Trump v. CASA) on Trump’s birthright citizenship order, the court held 6 to 3 that district court judges generally lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions. Although the decision did not address the constitutionality of the executive order or the substantive scope of the 14th Amendment’s provision extending citizenship to virtually all persons born in the country, it sent three legal challenges to the order back to three district court judges who had blocked the order from taking effect. The litigation continues.

The immigration cases were decided on the court’s “shadow docket,” a term of art coined by University of Chicago professor William Baude in a 2015 law review article. It describes emergency appeals that come before the court outside of its standard “merits” docket that are typically resolved rapidly, without complete briefing, detailed opinions, or, except in the CASA case, oral arguments.

The Supreme Court has a long history of entertaining emergency appeals—such as last-minute requests for stays of execution in death penalty cases—but emergency requests in high-profile cases proliferated during Trump’s first presidency. According to Georgetown University law professor and shadow-docket scholar Steve Vladeck, the first Trump Administration sought emergency relief 41 times, with the Supreme Court granting relief in 28 of those cases. By comparison, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations filed a combined total of eight emergency relief requests over a16-year period while the Biden administration filed 19 applications across four years.

Fueled by Trump’s authoritarian overreach, the court’s shadow docket exploded to more than 100 cases in 2024-2025 while the merits docket shrank to 56. Not surprisingly, the upsurge has generated significant pushback, with a variety of critics contending the shadow docket diminishes the court’s already limited transparency, and yields hastily written and poorly reasoned decisions that are often used by the conservative wing of the bench to expand presidential power, essentially adopting the “unitary executive” theory as a basic principle of constitutional law. Popularized in the 1980s, the unitary theory posits that all executive power is concentrated in the person of the president, and that the president should be free to act with minimal congressional and judicial oversight.

Although shadow-docket rulings are preliminary in nature, they sometimes have the same practical effect as final decisions on the merits. For example, on May 22, in an unsigned two-page decision (Trump v. Wilcox), the Supreme Court stayed two separate judgments issued by two different U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judges that had blocked the Trump administration from firing members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) without cause. The decision remanded the cases back to the D.C. Circuit and the district courts, but even as the board members continue to litigate their unlawful discharge claims, they remain out of work.

Shadow-docket rulings also have an impact on Supreme Court precedents, often foreshadowing how the court will ultimately rule on the merits of important issues. The Wilcox decision called into question the precedential effect of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, decided in 1935, which held that Congress has the constitutional power to enact laws limiting a president’s authority to fire executive officers of independent agencies like the NLRB, which oversees private-sector collective bargaining, and the MSPB, which adjudicates federal employee adverse-action claims.

The three appointed to the court by Democrats dissented. Writing for herself and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Kagan accused the Republican-appointed majority of political bias and acting in bad faith. “For 90 years,” she charged, “Humphrey’s Executor v. United States… has stood as a precedent of this court. And not just any precedent. Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control.”

Quoting Alexander Hamilton, she added, “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents.” She castigated the majority for recklessly rushing to judgment, writing, “Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law.”

The court also issued other pro-Trump emergency shadow-docket rulings in the 2024-2025 term, permitting the administration to bar transgender people from serving in the military and to withhold $65 million in teacher training grants to states that include DEI initiatives in their operations and curriculums. The court similarly used shadow-docket rulings to endorse DOGE’s access to Social Security Administration records and to insulate DOGE from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Yet despite the court’s deference, Trump complained about his treatment at critical junctures throughout the term. After the shadow-docket ruling blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act in May, he took to Truth Social, his social media platform, writing in all caps, “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” It also has been widely reported that Trump has raged in private against his own appointees—especially Justice Barrett—for not being sufficiently supportive of his executive orders and initiatives, and his personal interests.

Meanwhile, back on the merits docket, with Roberts at the helm and with Barrett and the conservatives united, the court has continued to tack mostly to the right, giving Trump nearly everything he wants. On June 18, Roberts delivered a resounding victory to the Make America Great Again movement with a 6-to-3 opinion (United States v. Skrmetti) that upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender transition medical care for minors. The decision will have wide-ranging implications for 26 other states that have enacted similar bans. Echoing the sentiments of many liberal legal commentators, Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern described the ruling as “an incoherent mess of contradiction and casuistry, a travesty of legal writing that injects immense, gratuitous confusion into the law of equal protection.”

Joe Biden delivers remarks on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

In other high-stakes merits cases, the court, by a vote of 6 to 3, approved South Carolina’s plan to remove Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program because of the group’s status as an abortion provider; and held 6 to 3 that parents have a religious right to withdraw their children from instruction on days that “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks are read.

Progressives searching for a thin ray of hope for the future might take some solace in the spirited performance of Justice Jackson, the panel’s most junior member, who has become a dominant force in oral arguments, and a consistent voice in support of social justice. Dissenting from a 7-to-2 decision (Diamond Alternative Energy LLC v. Environmental Protection Agency) that weakened the Clean Air Act, she ripped the majority for giving “fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens.”

Eras of Supreme Court history are generally defined by the accomplishments of the court’s chief justices. The court of John Marshall, the longest-serving chief justice who held office from 1801 to 1835, is remembered for establishing the principle of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison. The Court of Earl Warren, whose tenure stretched from 1953 to 1969, is remembered for expanding constitutional rights and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The Roberts Court will be remembered for reversing many of the Warren era’s advances. But unless it suddenly changes course, it will also be remembered as the court that surrendered its independence and neutrality to an authoritarian president.

One Trump enabler has done more damage than the rest of them combined | Opinion

https://www.alternet.org/trump-enabler

This U.S. Citizen Recorded an Immigration Arrest. Officers Told Him To Delete It or Face Charges.

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The peaceful traffic stop in Florida turned violent after immigration officers arrived and used chokeholds and a stun gun to make arrests.

Immigration officers were caught on video celebrating proudly after using chokeholds and a stun gun to arrest two undocumented immigrants in Florida. The owner of the video, an 18-year-old American citizen, was threatened and charged after he refused to delete the footage revealing the harsh tactics used by immigration authorities to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals.

Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was on his way to work on the morning of May 2 with his mother and two other men in North Palm Beach, Florida, when the vehicle was pulled over by a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) officer, reported The Guardian. The initial reason for the stop is unclear, but after the FHP called in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, the peaceful traffic stop quickly turned violent.

Laynez-Ambrosio began recording when CBP agents arrived, and a female officer can be heard asking if anyone in the car is an undocumented immigrant. One of Laynez-Ambrosio’s friends answered that he was. “That’s when they said, ‘OK, let’s go,'” Laynez-Ambrosio told The Guardian. Before anyone was able to exit the vehicle, CBP officers became aggressive. “[One officer] put his hand inside the window,” he said, “popped the door open, grabbed my friend by the neck and had him in a chokehold.”

In the video, he can be heard telling the officers, “You can’t grab me like that,” while three officers pull the second man from the van, and tell him to “get your fucking head down, on the ground.” When the man lands on his feet while being pulled from the vehicle, officers push him to the ground and then pull him back to his feet while one officer keeps him in a headlock. Laynez-Ambrosio, who was also forced to the ground, can be heard yelling, “That’s not how you arrest people. If y’all going to arrest people, y’all have to arrest people regular.” He then tells his friend, in Spanish, “Don’t resist. Don’t resist.” The commotion ends when an officer uses his stun gun on Laynez-Ambrosio’s friend, who falls to the ground, crying out in pain. 

“You’re scaring the dude,” Laynez-Ambrosio says to an officer shortly after. “That’s not how you arrest people.” “Why?” an officer callously responds. After asserting his “rights to talk,” an officer tells Laynez-Ambrosio, “You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” 

The recording continues after the three men are in custody and captures the officers’ candid remarks. A couple of officers can be heard cracking jokes about how one man smells and bragging about the stun gun use. One officer remarks on how “they’re starting to resist more now.” Another responds, “We’re going to end up shooting some of them… because they’re going to start fighting.” 

“Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] with a $30,000 bonus,” one officer says amidst post-arrest celebrations. 

After his arrest and six-hour detention at a CBP station, Laynez-Ambrosio told The Guardian he was threatened with charges if he didn’t delete the exposing video. When he refused, he was charged with obstruction without violence for having allegedly interfered with CBP officers’ arrest—a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and one year of incarceration. He was ultimately sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course. The two undocumented men were transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami. Laynez-Ambrosio “believes they were released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, but said it has been difficult to stay in touch with them.”

Florida has led the nation in cooperation with federal immigration authorities, sparking privacy and civil liberty concerns for both undocumented immigrants and American citizens alike. But rather than change course, the Trump administration has doubled down on mass deportation goals and recently appropriated nearly $75 billion to dramatically increase immigration detention capacity and immigration arrests to reach 3,000 arrests per day. The appropriation includes funding for hiring, retention, and performance bonuses for federal immigration officers.

“The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,” Laynez-Ambrosio’s attorney, Jack Scarola, told The Guardian. “Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.” 

Scarola’s warning appears to be right. The Department of Homeland Security posted on Monday that it will “stop at nothing to hunt [undocumented immigrants] down.” The brutal tactics used by federal officers under the Trump administration, against mostly nonviolent immigrants—including people on their way to work and who pose no threat to public safety—will only serve to degrade constitutional protections and subject more people to the government’s abuse of power.

https://reason.com/2025/07/29/this-u-s-citizen-recorded-an-immigration-arrest-officers-told-him-to-delete-it-or-face-charges

CBS News: U.S. citizen told “you have no rights” during immigration arrest speaks out

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Video of an 18-year-old U.S. citizen being violently arrested in Florida by immigration agents back in May has drawn heavy scrutiny, with advocates saying the expansion of state and local law enforcement’s role in illegal immigrant crackdowns contributed to the incident. 

Border Patrol and the Florida Highway Patrol were conducting immigration enforcement on May 2 when they detained Kenny Laynez, a high school senior who was on his way to work as a landscaper with two other co-workers and his mother, who was driving.

Video Laynez recorded of the arrest shows an officer telling him, a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in the country, “You got no rights here. You’re an amigo, brother.”

“It hurts me, hearing them saying that I have no rights here because I look like, um, you know, Hispanic, I’m Hispanic,” Laynez told CBS News. 

The car was pulled over for having too many people sitting in the front seat. Two passengers were undocumented, according to Laynez, and officers are seen on the video using a Taser. The teens’ two co-workers were both detained, and Laynez says he has been unable to contact them.

“We’re not resisting. We’re not committing any crime to, you know, run away,” Laynez said, recalling the arrest.

Laynez’s phone continued recording after he was detained, capturing an exchange in which an officer tells another, “They’re starting to resist more. We’re gonna end up shooting some of them.”

Another officer replies, “Just remember, you can smell that too with a $30,000 bonus.”

Florida Highway Patrol did not comment.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection told CBS News in a statement that the individuals “resisted arrest” and said immigration agents are facing a surge in assaults while doing their job. The statement made no mention that a U.S. citizen had been detained.

The video comes as Florida is set to deputize more than 1,800 additional law enforcement officers to conduct immigration operations as part of a statewide crackdown.

“Laws are just, you know, they’re no longer being respected. They’re no longer being upheld,” said Mariana Blanco, director at the Guatemala Maya Center, an advocacy group that opposes Florida’s new crackdown. “Deputizing these agents so quickly, it is going to bring severe consequences.” 

U.S. citizen told “you have no rights” during immigration arrest speaks out: “It hurts me”
Border Patrol and the Florida Highway Patrol arrested Kenny Laynez, an 18-year-old high school senior who was on his way to work as a landscaper, back in May.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kenny-laynez-arrest-you-have-no-rights-interview

Boing Boing: American fascism: ICE arrests U.S. citizen, then tells him to “shave your beard”

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You know you’ve fallen into fascist territory when ICE agents arrest a U.S. citizen who has no criminal record and then tell him to shave his beard. Which is what happened to a 33-year-old Houston man whose looks got him arrested and detained.

Miguel Ponce Jr, born in Texas, was on his way to work when Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents pulled him over. Even after showing his valid ID and explaining that he was an American citizen with a clean record, he was hauled away. The government goons handcuffed him and detained him at “another location” for hours.

“I pretty much felt kidnapped,” he told KHOU via Newsweek. “[They] told me I have a deportation order, put me in handcuffs, and took me to another location.”

No amount of explaining how he was born in College Station and had never been arrested penetrated these ICE agents — who did not have a warrant. Insisting that he looked like a violent criminal on their wanted list, they continued to interrogate him. Until, that is, he finally showed them his tattoos — which did not match those of the suspect.

That’s when the incompetent agents sent him home, not with an apology but with some strong advice: “They said: ‘Shave your beard off so we won’t mistake you again,'” Ponce recounted. When MAGA talks about their freedoms, choosing how to look has apparently been removed from the list.

From Newsweek:

A man says he was left shocked and offended after immigration agents allegedly asked him to shave off his beard after a case of mistaken identity, a request he found both humiliating and unjustified.

“I’ll never shave my beard, that was disrespectful, the audacity,” Ponce told Newsweek in an exclusive statement.

After presenting his ID, Ponce was asked to exit his vehicle. Despite repeatedly stating that he was a U.S. citizen, he says the agents did not produce a warrant. Instead, they showed him a photograph of someone they claimed he resembled.

Ponce was handcuffed and held for approximately 90 minutes to two hours, during which time he says he was repeatedly dismissed when insisting they had the wrong person. …

“The agents seemed to think it was a game, telling me that multiple people use my social security number, and when I asked if they could show me proof, they just changed the subject,” Ponce said. “I kept telling them I’m not who they want, they just said, ‘just ’cause you keep saying it doesn’t make it true.'”

American fascism: ICE arrests U.S. citizen, then tells him to “shave your beard”
U.S. inches further into fascism as ICE arrests a Texas-born, U.S. citizen, then tell him to “shave your beard”
American fascism: ICE arrests U.S. citizen, then tells him to “shave your beard”

Harpar’s Bazaar: What Should Artists Do When Alligator Alcatraz Moves Next Door?

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The Florida Everglades are home to a diverse community of artists. The Trump administration targeted this area to build a controversial ICE detention center, and residents are fighting back.

On June 14, Dakota Osceola was wrapping up the day, selling her bead art and necklaces at a festival in Miami, when she heard the news from a friend.

A new immigrant detention facility, to be named Alligator Alcatraz, would be built on a 10,500-foot-long old airport strip inside the Big Cypress National Preserve in the Florida Everglades.

“How is this happening right now?” she thought.

Home of the indigenous Miccosukee and Seminole people, the Everglades are the largest wetland ecosystem in the United States and the land where Osceola’s family grew up. This territory is considered a sacred place to tribe members and a national wildlife treasure to Floridians. But in less than 10 days, a portion of the Everglades was seized by the state and paved over to make room for a new prison built to hold up to 3,000 immigrants, a move supported by the Trump administration as a means to detain undocumented people.

On June 28, in the scorching heat, Osceola decided to go voice her opposition to this detention camp. Grassroots organizations such as Friends of the Everglades and Unidos Immokalee voiced environmental and human-rights concerns. Alongside independent activists, artists from the South Florida community joined with their protest art and signs to defend the home that has inspired them and that they love.

Outside the gates of the detention facility, and in the center of the Everglades, hundreds of Floridians gathered, chanting and holding up signs. Miccosukee tribal elder and environmental activist Betty Osceola, with Love the Everglades Movement, used her megaphone to address the crowd and keep people safe. Demonstrators lined up on the narrow road, north of the Tamiami Trail, as dozens of trucks with machinery entered the old Dade-Collier Airport, where the facility was being built. In the weeks since, different organizations have continued to arrange protests and gatherings weekly in front of these gates. There have been peaceful prayer vigils with no signs allowed, a protest asking to shut down the Everglades concentration camp, and family members of detainees gathered along with grassroots human-rights organizations, and a Catholic archbishop is waiting to see if he can hold a mass at the gates.

Outside the gates of the detention facility, and in the center of the Everglades, hundreds of Floridians gathered, chanting and holding up signs. Miccosukee tribal elder and environmental activist Betty Osceola, with Love the Everglades Movement, used her megaphone to address the crowd and keep people safe. Demonstrators lined up on the narrow road, north of the Tamiami Trail, as dozens of trucks with machinery entered the old Dade-Collier Airport, where the facility was being built. In the weeks since, different organizations have continued to arrange protests and gatherings weekly in front of these gates. There have been peaceful prayer vigils with no signs allowed, a protest asking to shut down the Everglades concentration camp, and family members of detainees gathered along with grassroots human-rights organizations, and a Catholic archbishop is waiting to see if he can hold a mass at the gates.

A member of the Seminole tribe, Osceola was aware of how hard the tribes fought in the 1970s to stop the construction of the old airport due to the environmental damage it would cause to the fragile ecosystem of the Glades. That battle was won when the construction came to a halt due to growing opposition from environmentalist groups. But now, into that abandoned air strip, the construction trucks started coming in, creating more and more traffic inside the Big Cypress National Preserve. Then, a sign with the words “Alligator Alcatraz” went up overnight, sparking sinister national jokes, memes, and merch about the alligators eating anyone who tries to escape this jail.

Protesters had different reasons to voice their opposition to the detention center: It would harm a fragile ecosystem and is not environmentally sound; it is an inappropriate use of FEMA funds; conditions there are inhumane. When Florida lawmakers visited the facility on a limited tour, they described 32 people per cage in the sweltering heat, exposed to bug infestations and fed meager meals, with prisoners crying for help and even one person pleading, “I’m a U.S. citizen!”

An important point ignored in national coverage is that the construction involves a seizure by the state of Miami-Dade-owned land under the guise of an emergency. The Miccosukee tribe joined other environmental groups, such as Love the Everglades, in suing federal and state agencies for failing to conduct an environmental review, as required by federal law, before initiating the project. Meanwhile, the ACLU is suing the Trump administration because of a lack of access to counsel at the detention center.

“I see my relatives, my family, in those cages. They came here undocumented, overstayed their visas, and eventually became citizens,” says Aubrey Brown, a Florida-based storyteller and artist who contributed to the protest sign art. Brown, who shares stories about Florida’s history with her 40,000 followers on social media, couldn’t stay silent and decided to speak up against the detention center, risking backlash. “I’ve always tried to stress that history and politics are inextricably intertwined,” she adds. Challenging the false narrative used by the president to make others believe there is nothing but fierce alligators and swamps in the Everglades, Brown argues, “People must understand that the Everglades is not a wasteland; this is people’s home. The Glades are wild, sacred, and free. It’s where the Seminoles went to hide from being captured, and it is where I go when I want to get away from everything.”

Acting as if no people exist in the Everglades, the federal government decided to seize land belonging to Miami-Dade County, completely ignoring the sovereignty of tribal nations at Big Cypress and that both their ceremonial and ancestral burial grounds stand near the facility.

“When it comes to my Seminole and Miccosukee friends, people treat them like they are not here anymore and are a relic of history,” Brown adds.

Once considered a swing state, Florida is now ground zero for the MAGA base supporting cruel anti-immigration policies. Built undercover, this facility was estimated to cost taxpayers $450 million a year. However, according to a review of purchases, the state has already spent $250 million on it in less than one month.

President Trump said that the facility would cage “some of the most vicious people on the planet” to be deported. Yet, a report released by the Miami Herald debunked this narrative, showing that hundreds of the detainees have no criminal charges.

Kidnapped without a warrant, stripped of their civil rights, and placed into a black hole where attorneys cannot reach their clients, only a third of detainees have a criminal conviction. But the public cannot see the nature of the sentence they received. ICE has so far offered the press only top-level statistics, which do not show whether a sentence is for a traffic violation or a murder attempt. Not only do the reports withhold details about the alleged offenses of each detainee, but ICE has not made public the records specifying how it targets the people it takes to detention centers, especially those without criminal charges. In response, The Guardian has decided to sue the Trump administration for withholding public documents from the press, which are a matter of clear public interest right now.

Maria Theresa Barbist, a Miami-based artist and psychologist who explores trauma, memory, and collective healing in her works, attended and made signs for the protest. “I am from Austria, and we have a dark history there. We have done this before. We have put people in concentration camps, and we know how this story ends. It’s our responsibility as descendants of Nazis never to let that happen again,” she says.

“The Nazis did not start with Auschwitz; they started with driving people out of their homes and putting them into camps. It was not just Jewish people, it was immigrants too,” she adds.

“This is not the first concentration camp being placed; they are just getting warmed up. Project 2025 is going to extend for at least the next four years,” says Eddie Aroyo, an artist who explores themes of power structures and attended the protest. “This is about absolute conquest,” he adds, referring to a conservative white nationalist agenda that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity.

Democratic Florida representative Maxwell Frost visited the detention center on July 13 and shared on social media, “I didn’t see any Europeans who overstayed their visa. I saw nothing but Latino men and Haitian men. They are targeting specific types of people. And it’s the type of people that look like me.”

A few miles away from the detention camp, artist and native Floridian Sterling Rook, who attended the protest, is currently completing an artist residency in the Everglades National Park. Hosted by AIRIE (Artists in Residence in Everglades), this program allows artists to explore work related to the environment. The first day he entered the residency was also the day the first buses carrying migrants arrived in the Everglades. “It’s beautiful out here, but now I think about this every day, how 30 miles away from here there are people in tents in a terrible situation,” he says. “I’m not necessarily a political artist, but you become political just by the nature of your situation,” he adds. Rook used his residency time to work on a Glades skiff boat, which is known for navigating the marshy waters of the Everglades.

“As a performance, I would love to ride it out into ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ maybe leave it there as a symbol of rescue and escape. But I also struggle with self-censorship,” he says.

This self-censorship comes from a place of very real fear about political persecution of artists who speak up. “There are genuine and considerable threats when speaking out against any of these violent governmental policies, especially in Florida,” says Johann C. Muñoz-Tapasco, an artist and organizer affiliated with the local collective Artists for Artists Miami (A4A: MIA). “Numerous artists have chosen to disengage from sought-after exhibition platforms and institutions altogether. Others have lost their jobs and clients. Many more have self-censored as a form of self-preservation.”

Federal and state funding cuts to the arts, combined with the elimination of National Endowment for the Arts grants and Florida’s political climate, have led many artists, organizations, and institutions that depend on this funding to limit freedom of expression, fearing retaliation or even more economic cuts. AIRIE did not respond to my request for a statement on its stance on this issue. The majority of Florida’s art institutions and organizations have remained silent.

A4A: MIA is currently discussing collaborative projects and planning actions against this detention facility, but it recognizes that American artists have been woefully unprepared to respond to the rise of fascism. “Since the postwar era, the ways artists validate their work and fund their practices have been tied to the tastes and whims of those in power,” misael soto, a Miami-based artist, educator, and organizer affiliated with this organization, stated. “Now those at the top whom we’ve been dependent on, on whichever side of the political spectrum, are mostly kneeling to fascism. Artists have to come to terms with how they sustain their practices and how this is intrinsically tied to their art.”

Mae’anna Osceola-Hart, a photographer and member of the Panther Clan and the Seminole tribe, participated in organizing the protest and lives within walking distance of the detention camp. Her grandfather was one of the tribe members who fought the development of the Dade-Collier Airport. These days, the traffic on the Big Cypress reserve is becoming increasingly dangerous, and she describes seeing the wildlife already being displaced. “The deer and bears now walk on the side of the road,” she says.

“My heart sinks, seeing how this concentration camp is affecting the land that protected us indigenous people since time immemorial, the environmental impacts it’s already causing, along with how it’s already harming human beings and their rights. Just yesterday, I saw three cars coming in with people wanting to take a photo in front of the [Alligator Alcatraz] sign, treating it like a roadside attraction,” she says.

“It feels like a fever dream.”

What Should Artists Do When Alligator Alcatraz Moves Next Door?
The Florida Everglades are home to a diverse community of artists. The Trump administration targeted this area to build a controversial ICE detention center, and residents are fighting back.

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a65488687/artists-fight-alligator-alcatraz

USA Today: ‘Atrocious:’ lawyers, family and friends of detainees describe ICE detention

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One man, Nexan Aroldo Asencio, was forced to sleep on the wet, foul-smelling floor of the bathroom, according to his wife.

  • The comments paint a similar portrait to the description from Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader at Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts who was held in Burlington for six days.
  • The unusually large volume of immigrants in detention meant a backlog was created at the office in Burlington, Massachusetts.
  • “Two days, he was sleeping on the bathroom floor,” one detainee’s wife said her husband told her. “It was a small room and it had a toilet and a sink, but it was always wet the floor.”

Family members and lawyers of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the agency’s office in Burlington, Massachusetts, say their clients have been held for days in overcrowded holding cells with inadequate and unclean drinking water, little food and no opportunity to bathe.

One man, Nexan Aroldo Asencio, has even been forced to sleep on the wet, foul-smelling floor of the bathroom, according to his wife.

“He said, ‘It’s horrible here in Burlington: I’m sleeping on the bathroom floor. It smells like piss. It smells like poop,'” Christina Maria Toledo, Aroldo Ascencio’s wife, told USA TODAY.

“‘Everyone’s coming in and out. It’s so packed. The only thing they gave me crackers and water that was dirty,'” she said her husband told her.

Derege Demissie, a lawyer who has represented several people who have been held in the facility, told USA TODAY the conditions are “untenable.”

“They’re atrocious, they’re just ridiculous,” he said. “They had at one point up to 18 women there in a small room, with one toilet, and there’s a camera over the toilet.

“They don’t have a bed. They don’t have a blanket. They don’t have a pillow. They have only a mylar blanket like you get in the marathon.”

The comments paint a similar portrait to the description given by Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader at Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts, who was held in the Burlington ICE facility for six days. Lawyers for da Silva and other detainees say the holding cells are overflowing because recent widespread ICE raids have brought in more immigrants than ICE’s facilities are equipped to handle.

“Nobody deserves to be down there,” da Silva, 18, told reporters upon his June 5 release. “You sleep on concrete floors. The bathroom – I have to use the bathroom in the open with like 35-year-old men. It’s humiliating.”

In a statement, ICE contradicted some of the claims by detainees and noted that their stays are temporary.

“The ICE field office in Burlington is intended to hold detainees while they are going through the administrative intake process,” the agency said in an emailed response to USA TODAY. “Afterwards, they are usually moved to a detention facility. There are occasions where detainees might need to stay at the Burlington office for a short period that might exceed the anticipated administrative processing time. While these instances are a rarity, the Burlington field office is equipped to facilitate a short-term stay when necessary. Detainees pending processing are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”

Immigration raids cause overcrowding

The ICE Boston field office in Burlington, Massachusetts, looks like any suburban office: a low-slung, concrete and dark-glass building that could just as easily be a school or customer call center. If ICE detention facilities are the equivalent of jail, where one is held during court proceedings, the office is the police station. The detainees normally spend a few hours there while they’re being processed and awaiting transfer.

But ICE has recently been conducting raids in Massachusetts that brought in nearly 1,500 undocumented immigrants by June 3. The arrests have caused widespread fear among immigrants in Massachusetts towns such as Milford.

Plymouth County Correctional Facility, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is the only ICE detention center in the state. The number of ICE detainees there more than doubled in the first three months of this year, according to an April 10 report from WCVB.

The unusually large influx of immigrants in detention meant a backlog was created at the office in Burlington, causing people arrested on an immigration violation to be held for days in a facility unequipped for the purpose, according to lawyers for the detainees.

“This is not set up for overnight detention,” Demissie said. “It’s just a holding place to process people for a few hours, but they’ve arrested so many people, they’ve created an overcrowding situation.”

Those caught in the dragnet are often surprised to be stuck in a holding cell for days on end.

“He was there the whole time, six days, and he was supposed to be there one to three hours,” said Coleen Greco, the mother of one of Gomes da Silva’s volleyball teammates.

“Two days, he was sleeping on the bathroom floor,” Aroldo Asencio’s wife Toledo said he told her. “It was a small room and it had a toilet and a sink, but it was always wet the floor, it looked like it was piss everywhere and it stunk, he said.”

After some people were transferred out of the facility, Aroldo Asencio was transferred from the bathroom to a holding cell.

Gomes da Silva said after his release on June 5 that there were approximately 40 men in a windowless holding cell without beds.

That’s the room Aroldo Asencio was moved to after his first two nights in Burlington. Among his cellmates was Gomes da Silva, a fellow Milford resident. Gomes da Silva sent Toledo a voice memo in which he stated, “Your husband was treated just like everyone there with no respect – they treated all of us inhumanely.”

Like Gomes da Silva, Aroldo Asencio said he had no access to a shower in Burlington, Massachusetts. His first shower came after he was transferred to a longer-term detention facility in Vermont, four and a half days later.

“He wasn’t able to do anything, not brush his teeth, nothing,” Toledo said.

“They have no sanitary products, like soap,” said Demissie, the immigration lawyer who had several clients in the facility.

For a pillow, Gomes da Silva told his volleyball coach, Andrew Mainini, he used his shoes. The metallic blanket was so thin that he was able to fold it up into a bracelet to bring home with him as a souvenir.

‘I don’t want cake, I want my daddy’

Aroldo Asencio is an immigrant from Guatemala who works as a framer, building houses. He and his wife, who is a native-born U.S. citizen from New Jersey, started a construction business in March. They have two four-year-old sons and Aroldo Asencio has already obtained an I-130, a document that recognizes his marriage to a citizen and is a step in the process of applying for a green card.

According to ICE, of the 1,500 immigrants arrested in Massachusetts before June 3, just under 800 of them have criminal records in the United States or abroad.

Aroldo Asencio has no criminal record, Toledo said. He was arrested by ICE agents on May 30 who were looking for his brother Victor, who got arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol last year.

Shortly after Aroldo Asencio left for work that morning, Toledo heard her 4-year-old son Damian screaming, “Daddy!” because his father was outside. She and her twin sons watched the ICE agents arrest her husband.

“It was one officer that went to him and another one, maybe 10 seconds later, grabbed him aggressively, went to put cuffs on,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Why you being so aggressive? He’s not resisting.’ His shirt was ripped. And another officer went to grab him, and they’re being rough with him. And I’m telling them, ‘He’s not fighting, you don’t need to grab him. And my kids are watching. My kids have asthma, and I don’t need them to be crying the way they are.’”

The reason the arrest occurred right in front of their home, Toledo explained, is that when ICE stopped Aroldo Asencio, he didn’t know who they were and he ran home.

“He gets pulled over, but when he looks back, it’s just a regular SUV. But all he sees is people running out of it with masks on. So he gets scared and runs off, and they’re yelling ‘Victor,’ but he’s not Victor.”

Aroldo Asencio and Toledo explained who he was and shared his immigration status, but the ICE agents arrested him anyway.

“They asked about his status, and I’m like, ‘He has an approved I-130. And they said, ‘If you show us, we’ll let him go,’ Toledo said. But even after she showed them the paperwork, they didn’t release him.

Instead, he was transported to the police station and then to Hartford, Connecticut, and later to Burlington, without notifying his wife.

“It was two days I didn’t know anything about him,” Toledo recalled. Eventually, he was able to call her from detention at the ICE office in Burlington.

Toledo says her children, whose fourth birthday her husband missed on June 11, remain disturbed by what happened to their father and his ongoing absence.

“My son Jhon is the one that’s very attached to his father,” Toledo said. “He didn’t want to blow out the candles on his birthday, because he said, ”I don’t want cake, I want my daddy.’”

Demissie represents a client, Kary Diaz Martinez, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic whom he said is also married to a U.S. citizen and has no criminal record.

At a deportation hearing in Boston on June 3, Martinez was released on her own recognizance by a judge, but ICE arrested her when she exited.

“She did what she was supposed to do: appeared at her hearing,” Demissie noted. “In the meantime, she’s married to a U.S. citizen and would be entitled to seek permanent residency here through what is called an adjustment of status. ICE is basically blocking that whole process.”

“There is no reason to arrest her,” Demissie continued, adding that the “inhumane conditions” violated her constitutional rights.

Demissie filed a motion to get Martinez released on the grounds that the conditions in Burlington were inhumane. ICE then found room for her in a Chittenden, Vermont detention facility. They allowed Demissie to meet with this client at a courthouse, after refusing to let them meet in person.

‘Like cat food’

A constant theme in the testimony of ICE detainees in Burlington is the extreme inadequacy of the food and water.

“When they asked for more food or water, they wouldn’t give it to them,” Toledo said, citing her conversations with her husband.

“They described it as like cat food,” Demissie said, referring to his clients’ description of the food they were given.

That may be because the building lacks the equipment needed for cooking.

“We have no kitchens and no dining rooms, and therefore we cannot keep people overnight or over the weekend,” Bruce Chadbourne, then-New England regional director of ICE, said at a public meeting in 2007.

ICE did not respond to a request from USA TODAY to verify if this is still the case.

In response to an inquiry for a previous story on Gomes da Silva’s conditions, ICE said he was provided meals, including sandwiches.

Whatever Gomes da Silva ate in captivity, it clearly wasn’t enough, according to Mainini, his volleyball coach.

“He seemed thin,” said Mainini, who saw Gomes da Silva the night he was released. “As someone who works out with him and sees him daily, he looked thinner than just six days earlier. And it was pretty noticeable in his face, specifically.”

“ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said in a prior statement in response to Gomes da Silva’s allegations. “ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.”

Among the traumas Gomes da Silva described to Greco was that ICE asked his cellmates to sign papers in English, which they did not understand. Gomes da Silva speaks Portuguese and Spanish, so he translated the documents, which were often deportation orders. Some of the men then broke down in tears when he told them what the papers said.

Greco said that Gomes da Silva emerged from captivity famished and immediately ordered a 20-piece chicken McNuggets from McDonald’s.

“He talked the entire ride home,” said Greco, who picked him up because Gomes da Silva’s parents are afraid to leave their house and risk ICE arresting them. (His father was the target when Gomes da Silva was pulled over, according to ICE.)

“I said, ‘You don’t have to talk to me,'” the family friend recalled. “He said, ‘No, I want to tell all these stories.'”

‘Atrocious:’ lawyers, family and friends of detainees describe ICE detention
Lawyers, family and friends of ICE detainees in Burlington, Massachusetts describe “horrible” conditions including insufficient food and clean drinking water, and no soap, showers, or beds.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/13/ice-detention-describe-horrible-conditions/84173121007

Independent: Border Patrol carries out raid at Home Depot parking lot 600 miles from US-Mexico border

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Activists say that a U.S. citizen observing the operation was among those arrested

“The Border Patrol should do their jobs – at the border – instead of continuing their tirade statewide of illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, told Cal Matters.

While the Border Patrol can operate within 100 miles of any U.S. border, including the California coast and nearby cities, a federal judge held in April that the agency cannot conduct warrantless immigration stops throughout California’s Eastern District, which includes Sacramento.

Border agents arrested at least 11 people during a Thursday raid outside a northern California Home Depot — including a U.S. citizen who was volunteering as an observer, according to local activists.

The operation, which took place in the Sacramento area, nearly 600 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, is the latest show of force from the Border Patrol in the state, which joined a full-cavalry raid in a Los Angeles park earlier this month.

“There is no such thing as a sanctuary city,” Border Patrol El Centro sector chief Gregory Bovino said Thursday in a video filmed in front of the state capitol building, referring to jurisdictions that don’t voluntarily assist with federal immigration enforcement.

“There is no such thing as a sanctuary state,” Bovino added in the clip, which features images of masked agents arresting men, soundtracked by the Kanye West song “Power.”

At least 11 people unlawfully in the U.S. were arrested in the early-morning operation, according to the Department of Homeland Security, including an immigrant man officials said was a “serial criminal” with past charges including illegal entry, possession of marijuana for sale, and felony burglary.

Bovino, in the video, said the arrests included a man who appears to have past fentanyl trafficking charges, and an individual arrested for impeding or assaulting a federal officer

So only 2 of 11 were actually criminals, plus you illegally bagged 1 U.S. citizen. Major fail!

However, Andrea Castillo said her husband Jose Castillo is a U.S. citizen and was among those arrested.

Video shared with KCRA shows Andrea Castillo yelling at agents as a group of masked officers pile Jose into an unmarked black minivan.

“Leave him alone, he’s a U.S. citizen!” she can be heard saying.

In the footage, one of the agents threatens to mace Castillo, and later says, “Google me,” when she asks for his badge number.

During the exchange, agents say they are detaining Jose Castillo because they believe he slashed the tires on a federal vehicle.

The activist group NorCal Resist said Jose Castillo was volunteering on behalf of the organization to document the operation, but did not impede officers. The group added that he has since been released.

Local lawmakers are questioning whether the operation violated a recent court order. Assembly member Rhodesia Ransom, whose district includes nearby Stockton, has reportedly asked the state attorney general’s office to investigate if federal officers are running afoul of state and federal laws or the U.S. Constitution with the operations.

“The Border Patrol should do their jobs – at the border – instead of continuing their tirade statewide of illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, told Cal Matters.

While the Border Patrol can operate within 100 miles of any U.S. border, including the California coast and nearby cities, a federal judge held in April that the agency cannot conduct warrantless immigration stops throughout California’s Eastern District, which includes Sacramento.

The ruling came in response to a series of operations at the beginning of the year targeting farmworkers in Kern County, which critics said were based on little more than the men’s appearance.

“You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston said in court at the time.

A separate ruling last week barred the Border Patrol from making similar raids in the district including Los Angeles, after a lawsuit accused federal agents of making indiscriminate arrests in locations like Home Depot parking lots.

When asked about the alleged arrest of a U.S. citizen and the legal criticisms, federal officials pointed to a Homeland Security press release announcing the operation, which did not mention either subject.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of much of the administration’s immigration policy, has reportedly pressed immigration officials to reach 3,000 arrests per day, including by targeting hubs for day laborers like Home Depot parking lots.

The Trump administration’s recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill” domestic spending legislation contains about $170 billion in wider immigration and border funding, which officials say will fuel a surge in domestic immigration operations.

Border Patrol raids Home Depot parking lot 600 miles from US-Mexico border
Activists say that a U.S. citizen observing the operation was among those arrested

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/border-patrol-raid-sacramento-home-depot-b2791909.html

Latin Times: Florida Arrested Two Migrants Under a Law That a Federal Judge Had Already Blocked

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According to reporting by The Marshall Project and the Tampa Bay Times, at least 27 people have been arrested under the law since the injunction.

At least two people were charged under Florida’s immigration law after a federal judge had issued an order halting its enforcement.

The law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in February, made it a first-degree misdemeanor for undocumented individuals to enter Florida after living in another U.S. state. In April, however, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the law, citing likely constitutional violations.

Despite that ruling deputies in St. Johns County arrested two men in late May — one with an active federal immigration detainer — on charges of illegal entry. Prosecutors later dismissed or vacated the charges.

These arrests occurred more than a month after the judge’s order and were disclosed in Uthmeier’s biweekly report, a sanction imposed by Williams after she found him in civil contempt. Uthmeier said in his July report that he only became aware of the two cases at the end of June after requesting information from state and local law enforcement.

According to reporting by The Marshall Project and the Tampa Bay Times, at least 27 people have been arrested under the law since the injunction. In some cases, individuals were detained after minor traffic infractions. One U.S. citizen was reportedly arrested as a passenger in a speeding car.

After Judge Williams issued her original order, Uthmeier sent a memo to state and local law enforcement officers telling them to refrain from enforcing the law, even though he disagreed with the injunction. But five days later, he sent a memo saying the judge was legally wrong and that he couldn’t prevent police officers and deputies from enforcing the law, as the Associated Press points out.

Uthmeier also publicly the law in social media. In a June 17 post he wrote of the ruling:

“If being held in contempt is what it costs to defend the rule of law and stand firmly behind President Trump’s agenda on illegal immigration, so be it”

James Uthmeier = dumb fucking fool! It never ceases to amaze me that some of these idiots could pass a high school civics class, let alone graduate from law school.

Florida Arrested Two Migrants Under a Law That a Federal Judge Had Already Blocked
According to reporting by The Marshall Project and the Tampa Bay Times, at least 27 people have been arrested under the law since the injunction

https://www.latintimes.com/florida-arrested-two-migrants-under-law-that-federal-judge-had-already-blocked-586976

Independent: Mom and her four American-born children detained after visiting Canadian border: ‘What authoritarianism looks like’

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Jackie Merlos, her 9-year-old triplets and 7-year-old son held by border patrol for more than two weeks, family says

Merlos’ sister, a legal resident of Canada, had stepped across the boundary while saying goodbye, “which triggered this unfounded accusation,” they said.

So hugging your sister goodbye at an international border gets you 2+ weeks in detention with no charges, no attorney, and no visitors?

Four American-born siblings and their mother have been held inside a border patrol facility for more than two weeks after her arrest by federal law enforcement agents near the U.S.-Canada border.

Kenia Jackeline Merlos, her nine-year-old triplets and seven-year-old son, were visiting her sister at Peace Arch State Park in Washington state on June 28 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents took them into custody.

Merlos’ mother, who joined the family on the trip, was also detained, but it remains unclear where she is being held.

The Department of Homeland Security accused Merlos of “attempting to smuggle illegal aliens” into the country, according to a statement. Merlos had requested that her children stay with her during her detention, the agency said.

Merlos’ husband Carlos was detained several days later outside the family’s home in Portland, Oregon. He is currently being held inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Tacoma, Washington. The couple’s immigration status is unclear.

“What began as a simple family trip to Peace Arch Park — a place Jackie had safely visited in the past to visit family in Canada — has turned into a devastating immigration nightmare,” according to a statement from family friends helping raise money for the family’s legal defense.

Merlos’ sister, a legal resident of Canada, had stepped across the boundary while saying goodbye, “which triggered this unfounded accusation,” they said.

The family’s arrest and detention has alarmed legal advocates and members of Congress who are pressing Donald Trump’s administration for their swift release from custody. Customs and Border Protection policy largely prohibits holding people in custody for more than 72 hours.

“Every effort must be made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing, transfer, release, or repatriation as appropriate and as operationally feasible,” according to CPB guidelines.

“Trump said he would go after ‘the worst of the worst.’ Instead, his immigration machine is abducting Oregonians without cause — including four U.S. citizen children in my district,” said Democratic Rep. Maxine Dexter, who accused CBP of misleading her office about the family’s location.

The congresswoman confirmed that Merlos, who is originally from Honduras, and her children were being held inside a detention center near Ferndale, Washington, during a visit to the facility last week. She was not able to speak with the family but did enter the facility and see them.

“It is wholly unprecedented for CBP to detain any individual for weeks without cause — let alone four U.S. citizens,” Dexter said in a statement. “This is what authoritarianism looks like. Citizen children abducted. Community members disappeared. If we allow this to become normal, we surrender who we are. We cannot look away. We cannot back down.”

Merlos has not been charged with a crime. Federal immigration authorities have not provided any documents to support allegations against her, according to attorney Jill Nedved.

Family friend Mimi Lettunich, who is also a godparent to her youngest child, said Merlos sent her a text message after she was brought into custody. “Mimi, I’ve been detained,” the message said, Lettunich told Oregon Public Broadcasting.

“I’ve known them about 20 years,” Lettunich said. “They’re wonderful people.”

The Merlos family is “the kind of people we want in our community,” Dexter said in a statement on social media. “Kind, hardworking, small business owners, and devoted to their neighbors. The kind of people we are proud to call ours.”

Over the last two weeks, the family has been held “in a windowless cell, without access to legal counsel,” according to Dexter. “Treated not as citizens, not as children, but as threats.”

The Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda has deployed virtually every federal law enforcement agency to support immigration enforcement operations across the country. Nearly 60,000 people are currently in immigration detention centers, and the president has approved legislation that earmarks tens of billions of dollars over the next decade to expand detention center capacity and hire more immigration officers.

The Independent has requested additional comment from Homeland Security.

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

Mom and her four American-born children detained after visiting Canadian border
Jackie Merlos, her 9-year-old triplets and 7-year-old son held by border patrol for more than two weeks, family says

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/jackie-merlos-canada-border-family-arrested-b2788868.html

LA Times: Contributor: Alligator Alcatraz, the concentration camp in Florida, is a national disgrace

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The first detainees have started arriving at Alligator Alcatraz, Florida’s immigrant detention center in the Everglades. The facility went up on a former airstrip in eight days and will have an initial capacity of 3,000 detainees. Florida’s Republican state Atty. Gen. James Uthmeier, the driving force behind the project, posted on X recently that the center “will be checking in hundreds of criminal illegal aliens tonight. Next stop: back to where they came from.”

Alligator Alcatraz — the camp’s official name — raises logistical, legal and humanitarian concerns. It appears intentionally designed to inflict suffering on detainees, and to allow Florida politicians to exploit migrant pain for political gain. Some of the first people held there have already reported inhumane conditions.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is a misnomer. Alcatraz was home to dangerous criminals, including Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly. These were violent offenders who had been tried and convicted and sent to the forbidding island fortress.

In contrast, we don’t know whether detainees sent to Alligator Alcatraz will have had their day in court. We don’t know whether they will receive due process in immigration courts or be charged with a crime. We do know that the majority of people whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting have no criminal records. Remember, simply being in the U.S. without authorization is not a crime — it is a civil infraction. And the ranks of the undocumented include many people who once had lawful status, such as people who overstayed their visas and people with temporary protected status and other forms of humanitarian relief that the current administration has rescinded. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center, reports that 71% of immigrant detainees have no criminal record.

In Florida, ICE has arrested an evangelical pastor, a mother of a newborn and a U.S. citizen. These are the kinds of people who might end up spending time in Alligator Alcatraz. In fact, Florida state documents show that detainees there could include women, children and the elderly.

Alligator Alcatraz will place detainees in life-threatening conditions. The site consists of heavy-duty tents and mobile units, in a location known for intense humidity and sweltering heat. Tropical storms, hurricanes and floods pass through the area regularly. On a day when the president visited, there was light rain and parts of the facility flooded. This is not a safe place for the support staff who will be working there, nor is it for detainees.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has praised the “natural” security at Alligator Alcatraz as “amazing.” When asked if the idea was for detainees to get eaten by alligators if they try to escape, President Trump replied, “I guess that’s the concept.” However, escapes from immigration detention are rare. The June escape by four men from a New Jersey detention center made headlines, in part because it was such an unusual occurrence (three of the escaped detainees are back in custody). So the construction of a detention center with a “moat” of forbidding wildlife is just performative cruelty.

Consider the gleeful ways that Florida Republicans have promoted Alligator Alcatraz. The state GOP is selling branded merchandise online, such as hats and T-shirts. On his website, the attorney general is hawking his own products, including Alligator Alcatraz buttons and bumper stickers. But immigration detention is a serious matter. It should not be treated like a cheap spectacle, with souvenirs available for purchase.

Immigrant advocacy groups are rightfully alarmed by Alligator Alcatraz. They’re not the only ones: Environmental groups have protested its impact on the surrounding ecosystem, while Indigenous tribes are angry because the camp sits near lands that are sacred to them. The author of a global history of concentration camps has concluded that Alligator Alcatraz meets the criterion for such a label.

The most troubling aspect of Alligator Alcatraz is that it may be a harbinger of things to come. The budget legislation that the president signed into law on July 4 allocates $45 billion for immigration detention over the next four years. Other states may follow Florida’s example and set up detention centers in punishing locales. This will likely happen with little oversight, as the administration has closed the offices that monitored abuse and neglect in detention facilities.

Yes, Homeland Security and ICE are mandated by law to arrest people who are in the country without authorization and to detain them pending removal. That is true no matter who is president. Yet Alligator Alcatraz is a state project, outside the normal scope of federal government accountability. On Thursday, state lawmakers who sought to inspect the facility were denied entry.

In embracing Alligator Alcatraz, the administration is testing the limits of public support for the president’s immigration agenda. According to a June Quinnipiac survey, 57% of voters disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration. A more recent YouGov poll found that Alligator Alcatraz is likewise unpopular with a plurality of Americans.

Alligator Alcatraz is not a joke. It is a dehumanizing political stunt that puts immigrant detainees at genuine risk of harm or death.

Contributor: Alligator Alcatraz, the concentration camp in Florida, is a national disgrace
The camp appears designed to inflict suffering on detainees and to allow Florida politicians to exploit migrant pain for political gain.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-07-14/alligator-alcatraz-florida-immigration-detention