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Rolling Stone: ICE Raids Aren’t Just a Latino Issue – Black Communities Are Also at Risk

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“It’s not just Mexican people they are looking for,” one TikToker told her audience, “it’s all immigrants that are obviously not white” 

“When ICE detained Rodriguez in February, weeks after filing her green card application, there was no consideration that she’d just given birth two weeks prior. ”I was just taken away from the child. I was leaking breast milk all over. I was still bleeding because I just had a baby and was on medication but I didn’t get those back.‘”

On Feb. 18, two weeks after having her son via C-section, Monique Rodriguez was battling postpartum depression. The Black mother of two, who was born and raised in St. Catherine Parish in Jamaica, had come to the U.S. in 2022 on a six-month visa and settled in Florida with her husband. But after finding herself alone and overwhelmed from the lack of support, she spiraled. “My husband is American and a first-time dad and was scared of hurting the baby. He kept pushing the baby off on me, which I didn’t like. I was in pain and I was tired and overwhelmed. I got frustrated and I hit my husband,” she says. A family member called the police, resulting in Rodriguez’s arrest. Suddenly, a private domestic dispute led to more serious consequences: When Rodriguez’s husband arrived to bail her out the following day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was waiting to detain her. Despite being married and having a pending Green Card application, she became one of thousands of immigrants deported this year because of contact with police.

Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, ICE has been raiding immigrant communities across the nation. Prior to the raids, Black immigrants, like Rodriguez, have historically been targeted at higher rates due to systemic racism. With a host of complications, including anti-blackness and colorism in the Latino community — which often leaves Black immigrants out of conversations around protests and solidarity — the future is bleak. And Black immigrants and immigration attorneys are predicting a trickle-down effect to Black communities in America, making them vulnerable even more. 

On June 6, protests broke out in Los Angeles — whose population is roughly half Hispanic, and one in five residents live with an undocumented person. On TikTok, Latino creators and activists called on Black creators and community members to protest and stand in solidarity. But to their disappointment, many Black Americans remained silent, some even voicing that the current deportations were not their fight. “Latinos have been completely silent when Black people are getting deported by ICE,” says Alexander Duncan, a Los Angeles resident who made a viral TikTok on the subject. “All of a sudden it impacts them and they want Black people to the front lines.” Prejudice has long disconnected Black and Latino communities — but the blatant dismissal of ICE raids as a Latino issue is off base. 

For some Black Americans, the reluctancy to put their bodies on the line isn’t out of apathy but self-preservation. Duncan, who moved from New York City to a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in L.A., was surprised to find the City of Angels segregated. “One of my neighbors, who has done microaggressions, was like ‘I haven’t seen you go to the protests,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘Bro, you haven’t spoken to me in six months. Why would you think I’m going to the front lines for you and you’re not even a good neighbor?’” 

Following the 2024 elections, many Black Democratic voters disengaged. Nationally, the Latino community’s support for Trump doubled from 2016, when he first won the presidency. Despite notable increases of support for Trump across all marginalized demographics, Latino’s Republican votes set a new record. “Anti-Blackness is a huge sentiment in the Latino community,” says Cesar Flores, an activist and law student in Miami, who also spoke on the matter via TikTok. “I’ve seen a lot of Latinos complain that they aren’t receiving support from the Black community but 70 percent of people in Miami are Latino or foreign born, and 55 percent voted for Trump.” Although 51 percent of the Latino community voted for Kamala Harris overall, Black folks had the highest voting percentage for the Democratic ballot, at 83 percent. For people like Duncan, the 48 percent of Latinos who voted for Trump did so against both the Latino and Black community’s interest. “The Black community feels betrayed,” says Flores. “It’s a common misconception that deportations and raids only affect Latinos, but Black folks are impacted even more negatively by the immigration system.” 

The devastation that deportation causes cannot be overstated. When ICE detained Rodriguez in February, weeks after filing her green card application, there was no consideration that she’d just given birth two weeks prior. “I was just taken away from the child. I was leaking breast milk all over. I was still bleeding because I just had a baby and was on medication but I didn’t get those back.” Rodriguez thought her situation was unique until she was transported to a Louisiana detention center and met other detained mothers. “I was probably the only one that had a newborn, but there were women there that were ripped away from babies three months [to] 14 years old,” says Rodriguez. 

On May 29, her 30th birthday, Rodriguez was one of 107 people sent to Jamaica. Around the same time, Jermaine Thomas, born on an U.S. Army base in Germany, where his father served for two years, was also flown there. Though his father was born in Jamaica, Thomas has never been there, and, with the exception of his birth, has lived within the U.S. all of his life. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” says Rodriguez, who is now back in Jamaica with her baby and husband, who maintain their American citizenships. “My husband and his mom took care of the baby when I was away. But there’s no process. They’re just taking you away from your kids and some of the kids end up in foster care or are missing.” 

In January, Joe Biden posthumously pardoned Marcus Garvey, America’s first notable deportation of a Jamaican migrant in 1927. His faulty conviction of mail fraud set a precedent for convicted Black and brown migrants within the U.S. 

“Seventy-six percent of Black migrants are deported because of contact with police and have been in this country for a long time,” says Nana Gyamfi, an immigration attorney and the executive director of the Black Alliance For Just Immigration. A 2021 report from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants found that while only seven percent of the immigrant population is Black, Black immigrants make up 20 percent of those facing deportation for criminal convictions, including low-level, nonviolent offences. “If you’re from the Caribbean it’s even higher,” says Gyamfi. “For Jamaicans, it’s 98 percent higher. People talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act, but I’ve recently learned that the first people excluded from this country were Haitians.”

On June 27, the Trump administration announced the removal of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Haitians starting in September, putting thousands of migrants in jeopardy given Haiti’s political climate. Though a judge ruled it unconstitutional, the threat to Black migrants remains. “You have Black U.S. citizens being grabbed [by ICE] and held for days because they are racially profiling,” says Gyamfi, referring to folks like Thomas and Peter Sean Brown, who was wrongfully detained in Florida and almost deported to Jamaica, despite having proof of citizenship. “Black people are being told their real IDs are not real.” With much of the coverage concerning the ICE raids being based around Latino immigrants, some feel disconnected from the issue, often forgetting that 12 percent of Latinos are Black in the United States. “A lot of the conversation is, ‘ICE isn’t looking for Black people, they’re looking for Hispanics,’” Anayka She, a Black Panamanian TikTok creator, said to her 1.7 million followers. “[But] It’s not just Mexican people they are looking for, it’s all immigrants that are obviously not white.” 

“A lot of times, as Black Americans, we don’t realize that people may be Caribbean or West African,” she tells Rolling Stone. Her family moved to the U.S. in the 1980s, after her grandfather worked in the American zone of the Panama Canal and was awarded visas for him and his family. “If I didn’t tell you I was Panamanian, you could assume I was any other ethnicity. [In the media], they depict immigration one way but I wanted to give a different perspective as somebody who is visibly Black.” America’s racism is partly to blame. “Los Angeles has the largest number of Belizeans in the United States but people don’t know because they get mixed in with African Americans,” says Gyamfi. “Black Immigrants are in an invisibilized world because in people’s brains, immigrants are non Black Latinos.”

The path forward is complex. Rodriguez and Sainviluste, whose children are U.S. citizens, hope to come back to America to witness milestones like graduation or marriage. “I want to be able to go and be emotional support,” says Rodriguez. 

Yet she feels conflicted. “I came to America battered and bruised, for a new opportunity. I understand there are laws but those laws also stated that if you overstayed, there are ways to situate yourself. But they forced me out.” 

Activists like Gyamfi want all Americans, especially those marginalized, to pay attention. “Black folks have been feeling the brunt of the police-to-deportation pipeline and Black people right now are being arrested in immigration court.” In a country where mass incarceration overwhelmingly impacts Black people, Gyamfi sees these deportations as a warning sign. “Trump just recently brought up sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prison colonies all over the world. In this climate, anyone can get it.” 

ICE Raids Aren’t Just a Latino Issue — Black Communities Are Also at Risk
Tensions are mounting between Black and Hispanic communities amid the ICE raids and deportations, but solidarity is the only way to fight back.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/ice-raids-latino-issue-black-communities-1235384699

LA Times: ICE seizes 6-year-old with cancer outside L.A. court. His mom is fighting for his release

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A Central American asylum applicant arrested outside an L.A. immigration court is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for her immediate release and that of her two children, including her 6-year-old son stricken with cancer.

The Honduran woman, not named in court documents, filed a petition for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility. She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras, as her children cry and pray nightly to be released from a Texas holding facility, according to court documents.

She and her two children, including a 9-year-old daughter, are facing two removal proceedings concurrently: a previous removal proceeding involving their asylum request and this recent expedited removal process.

The woman claims the government violated many of their rights, including the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.

Her attorneys noted that DHS determined she was not a flight risk when she was paroled and that her detention was unjustified.

The woman’s lawyers also argued that she was not given an opportunity to contest her family’s detention in front of a neutral adjudicator, and that the family’s 4th Amendment right to not be unlawfully arrested was violated.

The Honduran mother is being represented by several groups, including attorney Kate Gibson Kumar of the Texas Civil Rights Project”So often, you’ll hear all the rhetoric in this country that immigrants should be doing it ‘the right way,’ and it’s ironic in this case because we’re in a situation where this family did it ‘the right way’ and they’re being punished for it,” Kumar told The Times on Friday morning. “They followed the process, went where they were supposed to go and did everything that was asked of them.”

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio on Tuesday. Kumar said a Texas judge issued an order late Thursday evening that compelled the government to respond to the habeas corpus petition by July 1.

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, countered in an email to The Times on Friday morning that the legal process was playing out fairly.

“This family had chosen to appeal their case — which had already been thrown out by an immigration judge — and will remain in ICE custody until it is resolved.”

One of the focal points of the lawsuit is the fate of the woman’s son.

The youth was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 3 and has undergone chemotherapy treatments, including injecting chemotherapeutic agents into his cerebrospinal fluid, according to court documents.

He began treatment in Honduras and completed two years of chemotherapy, at which point the mother believes he no longer has leukemia cells in his blood, according to court documents.

The son, however, needs regular monitoring and medical care for his condition, according to court documents.

Last year, the family fled to the United States to “seek safety” after they were subject to “imminent, menacing death threats” in Honduras, according to court documents.

They applied for entrance while waiting in Mexico and received a CBP One app appointment in October to apply for asylum. They presented themselves at an undisclosed border entry, were processed and were paroled in the U.S., according to court documents.

They were scheduled to appear before a Los Angeles immigration court and moved to the area to live with family.

Both children enrolled in local public schools, attended Sunday church and were learning English, according to court documents.

“They’re asylum seekers fleeing from violence, who had an appointment at the border, were paroled into the country and the government made an assessment that they didn’t have to be detained,” Kumar said. “There should be some sort of protection for this family, which is doing everything right.”

The trio arrived at court May 29 for a hearing for their asylum request and were caught off guard when a Homeland Security lawyer asked for their case to be dismissed, according to court documents.

The woman told an immigration judge “we wish to continue [with our cases],” according to court documents.

The judge granted the dismissal and the Honduran mother and two children were immediately arrested by plainclothes ICE agents upon leaving the courtroom in the hallway, according to court documents. The woman had a June 5 medical appointment scheduled for her son’s cancer diagnosis, which he couldn’t attend because of the arrest.

The family was detained for hours on the first floor before being taken to an undisclosed immigration center in the city, according to court documents.

All three “cried in fear” and the young boy urinated on himself and remained in wet clothing “for hours,” according to court documents.

The trio were placed on a flight to San Antonio along with several other families. The date of the flight was not available.

After landing, the family was transported to a detention center in Dilley, Texas, where they remain.

“Fortunately, the minor child in question has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year, and has been seen regularly by medical personnel since arriving at the Dilley facility,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin added that no family member had been denied emergency care.

“The implication that ICE would deny a child the medical care they need is flatly FALSE, and it is an insult to the men and women of federal law enforcement,” she said. “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

The children have cried each night and prayed “for God to take them out of the detention center,” according to court documents.

The mother claims that the federal government did nothing to monitor her son’s leukemia for days.

Her lawyers have also sought the boy’s release for medical treatment, a request that was not fulfilled.

ICE seizes 6-year-old with cancer outside L.A. court. His mom is fighting for his release
A Honduran woman is fighting to prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras as her 6-year-old son battles acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-26/mother-of-6-year-old-l-a-boy-battling-leukemia-files-lawsuit-to-stop-immediate-deportation

LA Times: Hiltzik: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke

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Stephen Miller, the front man for Donald Trump’s deportation campaign against immigrants, took to the airwaves the other day to explain why native-born Americans will just love living in a world cleansed of undocumented workers.

“What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?” he asked on Fox News. “Here’s what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. … There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.” Etc., etc.

No one can dispute that the world Miller described on Fox would be a paradise on Earth. No waiting at the ER? School districts flush with cash? No drug deaths? But that doesn’t obscure that pretty much every word Miller uttered was fiction.

Trump aide Stephen Miller concocts a fantasy about L.A.

The gist of Miller’s spiel — in fact, the worldview that he has been espousing for years — is that “illegal aliens” are responsible for all those ills, and exclusively responsible. It’s nothing but a Trumpian fantasy.

Let’s take a look, starting with overcrowding at the ER.

The issue has been the focus of numerous studies and surveys. Overwhelmingly, they conclude that undocumented immigration is irrelevant to ER overcrowding. In fact, immigrants generally and undocumented immigrants in particular are less likely to get their healthcare at the emergency room than native-born Americans.

In California, according to a 2014 study from UCLA, “one in five U.S.-born adults visits the ER annually, compared with roughly one in 10 undocumented adults — approximately half the rate of U.S.-born residents.”

Among the reasons, explained Nadereh Pourat, the study’s lead author and director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, was fear of being asked to provide documents.

The result is that undocumented individuals avoid seeking any healthcare until they become critically ill. The UCLA study found that undocumented immigrants’ average number of doctor visits per year was lower than for other cohorts: 2.3 for children and 1.7 for adults, compared with 2.8 doctor visits for U.S.-born children and 3.2 for adults.

ER overcrowding is an issue of long standing in the U.S., but it’s not the result of an influx of undocumented immigrants. It’s due to a confluence of other factors, including the tendency of even insured patients to use the ER as a primary care center, presenting with complicated or chronic ailments for which ER medicine is not well-suited.

While caseloads at emergency departments have surged, their capacities are shrinking.

According to a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences, from 1993 to 2003 the U.S. population grew by 12%, hospital admissions by 13% and ER visits by 26%. “Not only is [emergency department] volume increasing, but patients coming to the ED are older and sicker and require more complex and time-consuming workups and treatments,” the report observed. “During this same period, the United States experienced a net loss of 703 hospitals, 198,000 hospital beds, and 425 hospital EDs, mainly in response to cost-cutting measures.”

President Trump’s immigration policies during his first term suppressed the use of public healthcare facilities by undocumented immigrants and their families. The key policy was the administration’s tightening of the “public charge” rule, which applies to those seeking admission to the United States or hoping to upgrade their immigration status.

The rule, which has been part of U.S. immigration policy for more than a century, allowed immigration authorities to deny entry — or deny citizenship applications of green card holders — to anyone judged to become a recipient of public assistance such as welfare (today known chiefly as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) or other cash assistance programs.

Until Trump, healthcare programs such as Medicaid, nutrition programs such as food stamps, and subsidized housing programs weren’t part of the public charge test.

Even before Trump implemented the change but after a draft version leaked out, clinics serving immigrant communities across California and nationwide detected a marked drop off in patients.

A clinic on the edge of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that had been serving 12,000 patients, I reported in 2018, saw monthly patient enrollments fall by about one-third after Trump’s 2016 election, and an additional 25% after the leak. President Biden rescinded the Trump rule within weeks of taking office.

Undocumented immigrants are sure to be less likely to access public healthcare services, such as those available at emergency rooms, as a result of Trump’s rescinding “sensitive location” restrictions on immigration agents that had been in effect at least since 2011.

That policy barred almost all immigration enforcement actions at schools, places of worship, funerals and weddings, public marches or rallies, and hospitals. Trump rescinded the policy on inauguration day in January.

The goal was for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents “to make substantial efforts to avoid unnecessarily alarming local communities,” agency officials stated. Today, as public shows of force and public raids by ICE have demonstrated, instilling alarm in local communities appears to be the goal.

The change in the sensitive locations policy has prompted hospital and ER managers to establish formal procedures for staff confronted with the arrival of immigration agents.

A model policy drafted by the Emergency Medicine Residents Assn. says staff should request identification and a warrant or other document attesting to the need for the presence of agents. It urges staff to determine whether the agents are enforcing a judicial warrant (signed by a judge) or administrative warrant (issued by ICE). The latter doesn’t grant agents access to private hospital areas such as patient rooms or operating areas.

What about school funding? Is Miller right to assert that mass deportations will free up a torrent of funding and cutting class sizes in half? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Most school funding in California and most other places is based on attendance. In California, the number of immigrant children in the schools was 189,634 last year. The total K-12 population was 5,837,700, making the immigrant student body 3.25% of the total. Not half.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the estimated 30,000 children from immigrant families amounted to about 7.35% of last year’s enrollment of 408,083. Also not half.

With the deportation of immigrant children, the schools would lose whatever federal funding was attached to their attendance. Schools nationwide receive enhanced federal funding for English learners and other immigrants. That money, presumably, would disappear if the pupils go.

What Miller failed to mention on Fox is the possible impact of the Trump administration’s determination to shutter the Department of Education, placing billions of dollars of federal funding at risk. California receives more than $16 billion a year in federal aid to K-12 schools through that agency. Disabled students are at heightened risk of being deprived of resources if the agency is dismantled.

Then there’s fentanyl. The Trump administration’s claim that undocumented immigrants are major players in this crisis appears to be just another example of its scapegoating of immigrants. The vast majority of fentanyl-related criminal convictions — nearly 90% — are of U.S. citizens. The rest included both legally present and undocumented immigrants. (The statistics comes from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.)

In other words, deport every immigrant in the United States, and you still won’t have made a dent in fentanyl trafficking, much less eliminate all drug deaths.

What are we to make of Miller’s spiel about L.A.? At one level, it’s echt Miller: The portrayal of the city as a putative hellscape, larded with accusations of complicity between the city leadership and illegal immigrants — “the leaders in Los Angeles have formed an alliance with the cartels and criminal aliens,” he said, with zero pushback from his Fox News interlocutor.

At another level, it’s a malevolent expression of white privilege. In Miller’s ideology, the only obstacles to the return to a drug-free world of frictionless healthcare and abundantly financed education are immigrants. This ideology depends on the notion that immigrants are raiding the public purse by sponging on public services.

The fact is that most undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible for most such services. They can’t enroll in Medicare, receive premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or collect Social Security or Medicare benefits (though typically they submit falsified Social Security numbers to employers, so payments for the program are deducted from their paychecks).

A 2013 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that low-income immigrants use public benefits for which they’re eligible, such as food stamps, “at a lower rate than native-born low-income residents.”

If there’s an impulse underlying the anti-immigrant project directed by Miller other than racism, it’s hard to detect.

Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who last week blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in Los Angeles, ruled that during their “roving patrols” in Los Angeles, ICE agents detained individuals principally because of their race, that they were overheard speaking Spanish or accented English, that they were doing work associated with undocumented immigrants, or were in locations frequented by undocumented immigrants seeking day work.

Miller goes down the same road as ICE — indeed, by all accounts, he’s the motivating spirit behind the L.A. raids. Because he can’t justify the raids, he has ginned up a fantasy of immigrants disrupting our healthcare and school programs, and the corollary fantasy that evicting them all will produce an Earthly paradise for the rest of us. Does anybody really believe that?

Commentary: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke
Will mass deportations make wait times at the ER get shorter and schools have more money? The truth is just the opposite

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-07-15/stephen-miller-says-americans-will-live-better-lives-without-immigrants-hes-blowing-smoke

Western Journal: Dem Gov Who Bragged About Hiding Illegal Alien in Home Gets More Bad News: A Subpoena

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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is term-limited and will be replaced next January; considering he has an approval rating somewhere between George Santos and Norovirus, my assumption is that he won’t be seeking higher office for at least a little while.

That being said, he might not be out of the news when his successor gets elected this November — all thanks to a stupid admission he made during what The New York Times charitably described as “a freewheeling discussion at a New Jersey college” back in February.

According to a Friday report in the Times, Murphy is being subpoenaed by interim U.S. attorney Alina [Bimbo #4] Habba, the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, regarding comments he made about hiding a woman who he intimated might have been an illegal immigrant in his attic.

“FBI agents have since sought to interview at least four witnesses in connection with the comments, two of the people said, with one adding that the governor had been subpoenaed but not questioned,” the paper reported.

“Two of the people with knowledge of the investigation involving Mr. Murphy’s comments indicated that it was separate from any Justice Department inquiry related to New Jersey’s so-called sanctuary policy, which has been upheld by a federal appeals court. There has been no public sign of that inquiry moving forward.”

The investigation began after remarks Murphy made at an event hosted by progressive group Blue Wave New Jersey.

“There is someone in our broader universe whose immigration status is not yet at the point that they are trying to get it to,” Murphy said.

“And we said, ‘You know what? Let’s have her live at our house above our garage.’

“And good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her,” he added, defiantly.

At the time, border czar Tom Homan said that Murphy’s remarks were definitely on his radar.

“I think the governor is pretty foolish,” Homan said. “I got note of it, won’t let it go. We’ll look into it.”

“And if he’s knowingly — knowingly — harboring, concealing an illegal alien, that’s a violation of Title 8, United States Code 1324. I would seek prosecution, or the secretary would seek prosecution.”

Meanwhile a representative for the governor told the New York Post that Murphy had been “misinterpreted” and that no undocumented garage-dwellers were at the governor’s house.

“No one’s ever lived in the home” in the way Murphy described, the spokesperson said, adding that the individual he was referring to was legally in the country, as well.

Well, now that he’s potentially under subpoena, we’ll see how much of that is true — although both sides are keeping tight-lipped about where this is going.

“The governor’s office declined to comment on the federal inquiry on Friday. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office also declined to comment,” the Times reported.

“A person close to Mr. Murphy said the governor was not aware of any pending investigation against him.”

That being said, it could inject Murphy into a gubernatorial race that the Democrats definitely don’t want him involved in. Murphy won a second term by a slimmer-than-expected margin to MAGA favorite Jack Ciattarelli, a former member of the New Jersey General Assembly who’s running for the GOP again.

The Democrats, meanwhile, went safe with moderate-ish U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a veteran and watered-down wannabe Hillary type. (No bathroom servers, though — yet.)

The poll numbers, however, have already been closer than Dems would like when you consider that they’ve been running away from Murphy and wokeness.

If both of those were to rear their ugly heads in the heat of the campaign season, it’d be a heck of a shame — one Republicans and immigration hawks would welcome, both as an opportunity and as an example of where thoughtless progressive allyship will get you.

Dem Gov Who Bragged About Hiding Illegal Alien in Home Gets More Bad News: A Subpoena
Gov. Phil Murphy is being subpoenaed by interim U.S. attorney Alina Habba for comments he made about hiding an illegal alien in his home.
Dem Gov Who Bragged About Hiding Illegal Alien in Home Gets More Bad News

Raw Story: Omaha restaurants close as DHS sparks panic for workers

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Two Omaha restaurant locations have closed after their owner reported receiving a subpoena from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeking the immigration status of its employees.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Fernando’s Omaha said it was cooperating with the DHS inquiry. However, the subpoena resulted in the loss of some workers, causing the two restaurant locations to close temporarily.

“We understand this situation may raise concerns for our team and community. We want to assure everyone that we are handling this matter with the utmost sensitivity and respect for all individuals involved. We deeply appreciate the contributions of all our employees,” the statement said.

“This review, unfortunately, resulted in the departure of some valued co-workers. This impacts our ability to fully staff operations and may temporarily affect hours and service levels.”

“The loss of colleagues is difficult and can affect the morale and productivity of our remaining team members. To our team, we express our sincere gratitude for your resilience during this time of uncertainty. We are committed to returning to full operations as soon as possible,” Fernando’s Omaha added.

Raw Story: Omaha restaurants close as DHS sparks panic for workers

https://www.rawstory.com/dhs-immigration

Straight Arrow News: DOJ whistleblower says Trump appointee ordered defiance of courts

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“They’re putting attorneys who have dedicated themselves to public service in the impossible position of fealty to the President or fealty to the Constitution – candor to the courts or keeping your head low and lying if asked to do so,” Reuveni told The New Yorker. “That is not what the Department of Justice that I worked in was about. That’s not why I went to the Department of Justice and stayed there for fifteen years.” 

Shortly after three planes filled with alleged Tren de Aragua gang members took off for an El Salvador supermax prison in March, a judge issued a verbal order with a simple instruction to government lawyers:  turn the planes around. The planes, however, continued to El Salvador. 

Now, a whistleblower says a top Department of Justice (DOJ) official authorized disregarding the judge’s order, telling his staff they might have to tell the courts “f- you” in immigration cases.

The official was Principal Associate Attorney General Emil Bove, whom President Donald Trump nominated to be a federal judge. Leaked emails and texts from whistleblower and former DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni, released during the week of July 7, came days before a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Bove’s nomination to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the committee approves, Bove’s nomination will advance to the full Senate.

At Bove’s direction, “the Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,” Reuveni told The New York Times.

Bove is perceived by some as a controversial choice for the lifetime position. He served on Trump’s defense team in the state and federal indictments filed after Trump’s first term in the White House.

In 2024, after Trump appointed him acting deputy attorney general, Bove ignited controversy over his firing of federal prosecutors involved in cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and over his role in dismissing corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Early this year, the federal government was using an arcane 18th-century wartime law – the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – to remove the alleged gang members from the United States without court hearings. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia ruled the removals violated the men’s right to due process, setting up the conflict with the DOJ.

The leaker’s emails and texts suggest Bove advised DOJ attorneys that it was okay to deplane the prisoners in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. 

The messages also cite Bove’s instruction for lawyers to consider saying “f- you” to the courts.

 When Reuveni asked DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials if they would honor the judge’s order to stop the planes to El Salvador, he received vague responses or none at all.

While the email and text correspondence allude to Bove’s instruction, none of the messages appear to have come directly from Bove himself. The official whistleblower complaint was filed on June 24.

Bove denies giving that instruction. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Bove said he “never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order.”

The leak prompted outrage from both sides of the political spectrum. Some say deporting people without trial to a supermax prison in El Salvador violates due process rights and a  DOJ lawyer telling other lawyers to ignore a court order should put him in contempt of court. 

However, Attorney General Pam Bondi – who served as one of Trump’s defense attorneys during his first Senate impeachment trial in 2020 – responded on X, saying there was no court order to defy. 

“As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order. And no one was ever asked to defy a court order,” the attorney general wrote Thursday, July 10, when the emails and texts were released. 

Bondi was referring to the DOJ’s immediate emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit of Appeals requesting a stay of Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. The DOJ did not turn the planes around, arguing that a verbal order by the lower court is not binding and that the planes had already left U.S. airspace.

On March 26, the DOJ lost its appeal, with the D.C. Circuit voting 2-1 to uphold Boasberg’s ruling. The DOJ appealed again, this time to the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower courts had interfered with national security and overreached on executive immigration power. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the DOJ, 6-3, and lifted the lower court’s injunction on April 9.

Bondi accused the whistleblower Reuveni of spreading lies. She said on X that this is “another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts.” 

“This ‘whistleblower’ signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department,” Bondi wrote.

Reuveni worked at the DOJ for 15 years, mostly in the Office of Immigration and Litigation. Bondi fired Reuveni in April for failing to “zealously advocate” for the United States in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was accidentally deported to the El Salvador prison and whose return the Supreme Court eventually ordered.

Bondi and other Trump administration officials have fired many DOJ and FBI employees, saying the administration has broad constitutional power to do so. 

“They’re putting attorneys who have dedicated themselves to public service in the impossible position of fealty to the President or fealty to the Constitution – candor to the courts or keeping your head low and lying if asked to do so,” Reuveni told The New Yorker. “That is not what the Department of Justice that I worked in was about. That’s not why I went to the Department of Justice and stayed there for fifteen years.” 

DOJ whistleblower says Trump appointee ordered defiance of courts
A Trump judicial nominee told DOJ lawyers to ignore court orders to return planes carrying alleged gang members, a whistleblower claims.

https://san.com/cc/doj-whistleblower-says-trump-appointee-ordered-defiance-of-courts

Daily Express: Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem explodes over ‘false’ FEMA failure report as flood deaths soar

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The DHS head has been accused of being unprepared to handle the natural disaster, which killed 129 people and left 160 missing, but she denies the claims.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem accused The New York Times of politicizing the deadly Texas floods following the publication of a report that sharply criticized her handling of the catastrophic disaster.

“It’s just false,” [Bimbo #2] Noem said about the damning report on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. “It’s discouraging that during this time, when we have such a loss of life and so many people’s lives have turned upside down, that people are playing politics with this because the response time was immediate.”

The investigation revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which operates under the DHS, left “nearly two-thirds” of thousands of desperate victims without answers when they placed distress calls during the July Fourth weekend deluge in Central Texas, a disaster that has taken 129 lives while 160 remain missing. It came as an extraordinary throwback photo revealed Noem’s face BEFORE plastic surgery – but she still denies any procedures.

[Bimbo #2] Noem, who critics have nicknamed “ICE Barbie” due to her tendency to dress up for immigration-related photo-ops, has come under intense fire for her management of the event, especially regarding the overhauls she has implemented at the massive federal agency.

Numerous detractors, including Texas legislators, have charged her with being ill-equipped to manage the natural disaster, allegations she has forcefully rejected.

The former South Dakota governor terminated “hundreds of contractors at call centers” as part of cost-cutting measures, along with other modifications, that purportedly weakened the federal emergency response to the calamity.

CNN reports that she is facing allegations of hindering search and rescue operations by instituting a new policy requiring her personal approval for any contracts or grants exceeding $100,000.

She has forcefully denied the findings of the report, which she insinuates was driven by hidden political motives.

“I’m not sure where it came from,” [Bimbo #2] Noem told NBC. “The individuals who are giving you information out of FEMA, I’d love to have them put their names behind it because anonymous attacks to politicize the situation is completely wrong.

“The false reporting has been something that is inappropriate and it’s something that I think we need to clear up.”

In an ironic twist, she proceeded to make a political statement herself, asserting that her management of the natural disaster surpassed what the Biden administration could have achieved.

“This response was by far the best response we’ve seen out of FEMA, the best response we’ve seen out of the federal government in many, many years and certainly much better than what we saw under Joe Biden,” she claimed.

Amidst the devastating aftermath of the floods, there has been growing concern that U.S. President Donald Trump might act on his repeated threats to dismantle FEMA. Nonetheless, [Bimbo #2] Noem addressed these worries, arguing that such fears are unfounded.

“The president recognizes that FEMA should not exist in the way that it always has been,” she remarked. “It needs to be redeployed, in a new way, and that’s what we did during this response.”

Addressing concerns, she also noted that other federal resources can be utilized in addition to FEMA.

Kristi “Bimbo #2” Noem is a pathological liar who couldn’t tell the truth if her life depended on it.

Kristi Noem explodes over ‘false’ FEMA failure report as flood deaths soar
The DHS head has been accused of being unprepared to handle the natural disaster, which killed 129 people and left 160 missing, but she denies the claims.

https://www.the-express.com/news/politics/177412/kristi-noem-fema-report-response

Irish Star: Trump’s swollen ankles spark fresh health fears as president appears squeezed into shoes

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One social media user said Trump’s ankles were the ‘craziest’ thing they saw all day watching the FIFA Club World Cup

Photos taken of President Donald Trump at the FIFA Club World Cup on Sunday showing what appear to be his severely swollen ankles have sparked new health fears among social media users.

Donald and Melania Trump attended the finals match at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey as part of a broader effort to expand U.S. involvement in the sport ahead of next year’s World Cup, which will be hosted largely in America. Trump received a mix of cheers and boos when he was shown on the stadium screen, and was booed later while he presented medals to the match winners.

The president was photographed during the event from a head-on angle while he sat next to the first lady, offering an unobstructed frontal view of his shoes and ankles. Commenters on X were quick to fixate on his visibly swollen ankles. It comes as a lip reader reveals Donald Trump’s raunchy request to Melania – and her response.

“What in the h— is going on with Trump’s legs and feet? Look at how his shoes are completely untied,” one X user wrote. “Whatever he’s hiding is getting worse.”

“HEART FAILURE causes fluid accumulation in the lower legs,” another commenter wrote. “His heart is too weak to pump blood through his kidneys efficiently so they can’t remove excess fluid from the body.”

According to WebMD, venous insufficiency is one of the more common of swollen ankles and feet, where blood pools in the legs due to weakened valves. Injuries such as sprains and fractures can trigger inflammation, and prolonged sitting or standing can increase pressure in the lower extremities.

Leg swelling can also be a sign of deep vein thrombosis, congestive heart failure, or kidney or liver disease.

Social media users have speculated for years about the state of the 79-year-old president’s mental and physical health, though allegations have increased in recent months in the wake of several marks or sores seen on his right hand and the back of his neck. Another common concern is that he has dementia, a degenerative disease that reportedly runs in his family.

The president’s cognitive decline quickly becomes a topic of conversation on social media after he makes social gaffes at live events, posts rambling tirades on Truth Social, and forgets or fabricates important dates, names or events.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump frequently mocked Joe Biden for his own alleged mental and physical ailments, calling him unfit to serve in the role.

With a bit of luck, perhaps King Donald will be “86”d into a nursing home or a memory care unit!

Trump’s swollen ankles spark fresh health fears as feet appear squeezed in shoes
One social media user said Trump’s ankles were the ‘craziest’ thing they saw all day watching the FIFA Club World Cup

https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/trumps-swollen-ankles-spark-fresh-35556008

Rolling Stone: Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi Fires Top DOJ Ethics Adviser

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Pam “Bimbo #3” Bondi don’t need no stinkin’ ethics!!!

Attorney General Pam [Bimbo #3] Bondi – who has been purging the Justice Department of anyone tied to the Jan. 6 prosecutions as well as the prosecutions of President Donald Trump – fired the lawyer personally advising her and the department’s thousands of employees on ethics, Bloomberg reported Sunday. 

Joseph Tirrell, who began his career in the Navy and spent almost two decades in the federal government, was fired last Friday via a brief letter from [Bimbo #3] Bondi, who gave no reason for the termination. The same day, Bondi fired 20 DOJ employees who were involved in prosecuting Trump. She has also recently fired employees related to the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol. Tirrell had advised Special Counsel Jack Smith on ethics related to the prosecution of Trump, Bloomberg reported.

“My public service is not over, and my career as a Federal civil servant is not finished,” Tirrell wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. “I took the oath at 18 as a Midshipman to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ I have taken that oath at least five more times since then. That oath did not come with the caveat that I need only support the Constitution when it is easy or convenient.” 

“I believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,'” he wrote. “I also believe that Edmund Burke is right and that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.'”

Tirrell was responsible for advising Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other DOJ leaders on financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, gifts, and recusals. He also helped guide the 117,000 Justice Department employees on ethics rules. He previously served as an ethics attorney at the FBI.

He reportedly approved Jack Smith’s $140,000 in free legal fees from a major Washington, D.C., law firm. In February, [Bimbo #3] Bondi instructed a working group to investigate “Weaponization by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump.” Smith resigned in January. 

[Bimbo #3] Bondi has been under fire for possible ethics violations. Earlier this month, the Miami Herald reported that the DOJ dropped its investigation into pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s potential foreign corruption violations. Bondi was previously an outside legal counsel for Pfizer. 

Trump has also taken aim at ethics in his administration. Earlier this year, he ordered the Justice Department to pause investigations into foreign bribery cases, although the investigations eventually resumed. The Trump Organization, the president’s family business empire, fired its ethics attorney after they represented Harvard in a suit against the government for freezing its federal funding. 

“The rules don’t exist anymore,” another fired DOJ official, Patty Hartman, told CBS News last week. 

Hartman, previously a top public affairs specialist at the FBI and federal prosecutors’ offices, had worked on press releases related to prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riots. The Justice Department began purging employees who worked on these prosecutions as soon as Trump took office. Trump issued a mass pardon for all 1,500 defendants hours after he was sworn in, including some of the most violent offenders. 

Hartman was fired last Monday and warned that there were more firings to come. Three other employees tied to the prosecutions of Jan. 6 have been fired in the past month, CBS News reported.

“There used to be a line, used to be a very distinct separation between the White House and the Department of Justice, because one should not interfere with the work of the other,” Hartman told CBS News. “That line is very definitely gone.”

“We appear to be driving straight into an abyss that holds no memory of what democracy is, was, or should be,” the now-former DOJ official added on social media.

Pam Bondi Fires Top DOJ Ethics Adviser
Attorney General Pam Bondi fired a top ethics lawyer at the Justice Department amid a purge of anyone connected to the Jan. 6 or Trump prosecutions.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pam-bondi-fires-top-doj-ethics-lawyer-1235384777

Popular Information: Trump manufactures a crisis in LA

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For years, President Trump has dreamed of mobilizing the military against protesters in the United States. On Saturday night, Trump made it a reality, ordering the deployment of 2,000 members of the California National Guard — against the wishes of state and local officials — in response to protests against federal immigration raids on workplaces in and around Los Angeles. By the time Trump issued the order, the protests consisted of a few dozen people at a Home Depot.

The move violated longstanding democratic norms that prohibit military deployment on American soil absent extraordinary circumstances. The last time the National Guard was mobilized absent a request from local officials was in 1965 — to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama marching from Selma to Montgomery.

Trump strongly advocated for using the military to quell racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. He encouraged governors to deploy the National Guard to “dominate” the streets. “If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” Trump said.

Behind the scenes, Trump was even more ruthless. According to a 2022 memoir by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Trump asked Esper if the military could shoot at people protesting George Floyd’s murder. “Can’t you just shoot them?” Trump allegedly asked. “Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

On another occasion that summer, according to a book by journalist Michael Bender, Trump announced that he was putting Army General Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in charge of quelling the protests. This reportedly led to a shouting match:

“I said you’re in f—ing charge!” Trump shouted at him.

“Well, I’m not in charge!” Milley yelled back.

“You can’t f—ing talk to me like that!” Trump said. …

“Goddamnit,” Milley said to others. “There’s a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?”

The lawyers, including Attorney General Bill Barr, sided with Milley, and Trump’s demand was tabled. (Trump called Bender’s book “fake news.”)

During a March 2023 campaign rally in Iowa, Trump pledged to deploy the National Guard in states and cities run by Democrats, specifically mentioning Los Angeles:

You look at these great cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, you look at what’s happening to our country, we cannot let it happen any longer… you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in, the next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it, and we’re going to show how bad a job they do. Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.

In October 2023, the Washington Post reported that Trump allies were mapping out executive actions “to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”

In an October 2024 interview on Fox News, Trump again pushed for the National Guard and military to be deployed against “the enemy within,” which he described as “radical left lunatics.”

“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” Trump said. “And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Were there “violent mobs”?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard was necessary because “violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles, California.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the National Guard would “support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles” in response to “violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement.”

These claims were directly contradicted by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which described Saturday’s protests as “peaceful.”

The LAPD statement said it “appreciates the cooperation of organizers, participants, and community partners who helped ensure public safety throughout the day.”

There were some reports of violence and property damage in Paramount and Compton, two cities located about 20 miles south of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it “arrested one person over the protest in Paramount” and “two officers had been treated at a local hospital for injuries and released.” As for property damage, “one car had been burned and a fire at a local strip mall had been extinguished.”

Trump’s order, however, says the unrest in California is so severe it constitutes “a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” that necessitates the mobilization of military personnel. Although any violence and property destruction is a serious matter, local law enforcement appears fully capable of responding to the situation.

Trump’s Unusual Legal Theory

The Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits using the military for domestic law enforcement without specific statutory (or Constitutional) authority. The most famous exception to the Posse Comitatus Act is the Insurrection Act, which permits the President to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement under specific circumstances. But, historically, the Insurrection Act has “been reserved for extreme circumstances in which there are no other alternatives to maintain the peace.” It also requires the president to issue a proclamation ordering “the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.”

Trump, however, invoked a different federal law, 10 U.S.C. 12406. That provision lacks some of the legal and historical baggage of the Insurrection Act, but it also confers a more limited authority. That is why Trump’s proclamation authorizes the National Guard to “temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur.” In other words, the National Guard is not authorized to engage in law enforcement activities, but to protect others doing that work. It remains to be seen whether the administration will respect these limitations in practice.

Trump is Confused

At 2:41 a.m. on Sunday morning, Trump posted: “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest.” At the time, the National Guard had not yet arrived in Los Angeles. Trump had spent the evening watching three hours of UFC fighting in New Jersey.

Trump also asserted, without evidence, that those protesting the immigration raids were “paid troublemakers.”

The National Guard arrived in Los Angeles much later on Sunday morning, when the streets were already quiet.

Trump told reporters on Sunday that he did not consider the protests an “insurrection” yet. About an hour later, Trump claimed on Truth Social that “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try to stop our deportation operations.”

Trump’s order mobilizing the National Guard, however, likely inflamed tensions — and that may have been the point. Federal and state authorities clashed with protesters in downtown LA on Sunday afternoon. Law enforcement “used smoke and pepper spray to disperse protesters outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Trump manufactures a crisis in LA
For years, President Trump has dreamed of mobilizing the military against protesters in the United States.

https://popular.info/p/trump-manufactures-a-crisis-in-la