Guardian: The desperate drive to secure passports for thousands of US-born Haitian kids – before it’s too late

Advocates in Springfield, Ohio – a city thousands of Haitians now call home – fear the fallout of Trump’s DHS revoking temporary protected status for Haitian nationals

Among the group is a small number of charity volunteers working to avoid a potential humanitarian disaster: that thousands of US-born Haitian children could become stateless, or separated from their families.

“In the last several months we realized that the closer we got to the deportations and revocation of statuses meant that all these people who have babies … if they don’t have passports for their children, how are they going to take them out of the country with them?” says Casey Rollins, a volunteer at the local St Vincent de Paul chapter.

“All you have to look at is the previous [Trump] administration.” A Reuters report from 2023 found that nearly 1,000 children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border in 2017 and 2018 had never been reunited.

Springfield is home to about 1,217 and counting American-born Haitian children under the age of four, with several thousand more dependants under the age of 18. While the number of adults in the Ohio town of 60,000 people legally in the country on TPS is not known, local leaders estimate 10,000 to 15,000 Haitian nationals have come to Springfield, drawn by employment opportunities, since 2017. In April, data provided by the Springfield city school district to the Springfield News-Sun found that the district had 1,258 students enrolled as English language learners in K-12 schools, though that doesn’t mean all are children of Haitian descent.

For three months, Rollins, volunteers at Springfield Neighbors United and others have been working with dozens of Haitians who turn up at charity organizations seeking advice and help every day. One of the most requested issues from parents, Rollins says, is figuring out how to apply for birth certificates for their children, before it’s too late.

“If we can’t stop the deportations, we want to help get them a passport. That way, if they are deported or go to Canada or another welcoming nation, they’d be able to take the child,” she says.

“If it takes three or four months [to complete the bureaucratic process from securing a birth certificate to acquiring a passport], we have got to get moving on this.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/04/passports-haitian-kids-tps-trump-administration

Metro: IDF kills women and children in Gaza beachfront café bombing

Israel unleashed one of its largest bombardments in weeks, killing at least 58 people, including a cafe filled with 20 people.

Women, children and one journalist were killed while in a beachfront cafe in Gaza City, according to medics on the ground.

The cafe was one of the few businesses to continue operating – at extremely diminished capacity – during the 20-month war, serving as a gathering spot for residents seeking internet access and a place to charge their phones.

Videos circulating on social media showed bloodied and disfigured bodies on the ground and the wounded being carried away in blankets.

The Trump regime tries to suppress the truth about this genocide and attempts to deport any Palestinian immigrants who oppose this genocide.

Whatever it takes, this genocide must end and will end.

MSNBC: The Trump admin is going after Maryland courts for doing exactly what courts are supposed to do

The suit challenges a May 28 order issued by the district’s chief judge concerning the handling of habeas corpus petitions.

In a move more characteristic of a 17th-century English king than a 21st-century American president, the Trump administration last week filed a lawsuit against every sitting federal judge in the state of Maryland.

The charge? That one judge’s attempt to preserve due process for individuals challenging their deportations is disrupting the president’s immigration policies. This unprecedented lawsuit is a dangerous attack on an independent judiciary and escalates the ongoing struggle between the executive and judicial branches. And it brings America one step closer to a constitutional crisis.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the U.S. government and the Department of Homeland Security in U.S. District Court in Maryland against all 15 active and senior-status judges in that district, as well as the district’s clerk of court. The suit challenges a May 28 order issued by the district’s chief judge concerning the handling of habeas corpus petitions — legal actions that contest the government’s detention of individuals as unlawful.

The May 28 order expressly addresses the “recent influx” of habeas petitions concerning people subject to deportation, an influx triggered by the administration’s aggressive immigration policies. DHS is trying to move quickly to deport people whom it has identified as illegal aliens; in response, many detainees are filing lawsuits to block those deportations. DHS is proceeding with deportation before courts can hear the cases, and judges are scrambling to manage what the May 28 order describes as “hurried and frustrated hearings” in which “clear and concrete information about the location and status of the [detainees] is elusive.” To ensure that detainees are afforded due process — the U.S. Constitution guarantees due process to all “persons” in the United States, not just “citizens” — the May 28 order prohibits the government from deporting a prisoner for two days after a habeas petition is filed, giving the presiding judge time to review the case.

Several appellate courts have similar standing orders.

But here, the administration has taken the extraordinary step, apparently for the first time in our nation’s history, of pre-emptively suing all the judges responsible for implementing a ruling it claims is unlawful.

This lawsuit is not about immigration policy. It is a frontal assault on judicial authority, raising separation of powers principles that predate the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

This attempted power grab should alarm anyone who values our constitutional framework.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-doj-suing-marylands-federal-judges-rcna215771

NBC News: Debate over ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention center a personal one for members of Miccosukee and Seminole tribes

The homes of Miccosukee and Seminole people, as well as their ceremonial sites, surround the detention center on three sides.

The constant rumbling of passing dump trucks drowns out the once familiar chirping of birds at the family home of Mae’anna Osceola-Hart in Everglades National Park.

“It’s all-day, all-night truck noise,” says the 21-year-old photographer who describes herself as part Miccosukee and part Seminole, two Florida tribes at the heart of the debate over the detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The homes of Miccosukee and Seminole people, as well as their ceremonial sites, surround the detention center on three sides.

Osceola-Hart’s great-grandfather Wild Bill Osceola fought against the development of an airport at the same site where the ICE facility’s construction is now underway.

In 1968, authorities in Dade County, now known as Miami-Dade County, began building the Big Cypress Jetport on land the Miccosukees used for ceremonial practices. The Dade County Port Authority referred to the project as the “world’s largest airport,” with six runways designed to handle large jets, and officials were quoted as calling the environmental and tribal leaders who opposed it “butterfly chasers.”

The airport became a flashpoint for resistance, but in 1969, a coalition including Osceola-Hart’s great-grandfather, fellow tribesmen and conservationists persuaded Florida Gov. Claude R. Kirk Jr. that the airport would damage the Everglades. He ordered construction be stopped. One runway, approximately 10,000 feet in length, was left behind as a training ground for pilots.

Osceola-Hart is proud of her great-grandfather’s efforts to stop the 1960s development, but she is disappointed the Miccosukees lost land they considered sacred. “We got kicked out of ceremonial grounds,” she says.

Finding a safe place to live has been an ongoing battle for the tribes in Florida. Seminoles retreated into the Everglades after the Seminole wars ended in 1858.

Leaders of both tribes are constantly advocating for the preservation of the national park’s wildlife and vegetation, but they don’t have authority over how the land is used.

“It’s a long, fraught battle,” says William “Popeye” Osceola, secretary of the Miccosukee Tribe, describing how tribes are constantly fighting for rights over the land they have lived on for more than a century.

William Osceola tells young members of his tribe to stay engaged to protect their rights. “Some of these fights, they come in different forms, but it’s still the same fight.” he said.

Osceola-Hart agrees. “This is history repeating itself,” she says.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alligator-alcatraz-detention-center-personal-rcna215824

Closer to the Edge: Alligator Auschwitz

Trump built a concentration camp in the Everglades, filled it with tents, barbed wire, and migrants — then laughed about the alligators guarding it.

Donald Trump stood in the middle of a swamp and laughed about who might die there. He didn’t whisper. He didn’t slip up. He smiled for the cameras, gestured like a stand-up comic, and offered survival tips to migrants facing heatstroke and armed guards: “Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this. Your chances go up about one percent.” That’s the punchline. That’s the policy. That’s the sound of a dictator test-marketing genocide as a joke, to see if the country still flinches. And the crowd? They laughed. They always laugh.

Alligator Auschwitz isn’t hyperbole. It’s location-specific horror. It’s a mass detention facility in the Everglades, surrounded by barbed wire and alligators, built in eight days with no due process, no air-conditioning, no press access, and no shame. The people inside are dehydrated, afraid, and invisible. The man who built it treats it like a tourist attraction. He called it “professional.” He called it “beautiful.” He called the alligators “officers” who don’t need to be paid. This is not immigration enforcement. This is fascism with a swamp aesthetic — cruelty as spectacle, stripped of pretense, staged for applause.

There are no live feeds. No outside monitors. No civilian oversight. There is heat. There are guards with AR-15s. There are 5,000 beds and not a single guarantee of due process. Detainees are locked inside tents where the temperature regularly tops 100°F. If they’re sick, they wait. If they’re injured, they pray. If they try to escape, they run through terrain where the president of the United States fantasizes about gators doing the job of bullets. And we’re supposed to treat this as politics. As news. As just another item in the news cycle. But this isn’t a policy dispute. It’s a moral collapse.

Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He built a concentration camp with branding. He took the iconography of American wilderness — swamps, gators, razor wire — and turned it into a prison so brutal, so theatrical, that it becomes part of the campaign. It is the campaign. Alligator Alcatraz isn’t just a facility. It’s a commercial. A threat. A fantasy. And the only reason more people aren’t calling it Alligator Auschwitz is because they’re too afraid of the implications — of what it means to admit that America is already back in the business of building camps.

When the media says “controversial,” they mean “unthinkable but happening.” When they say “deterrent,” they mean “torture as a warning shot.” And when they say “joke,” they’re pretending there’s still a line to be crossed. But there is no line. There is a swamp. And in it, thousands of people are vanishing behind a wall of heat, isolation, and performative indifference. This is the kind of place that future generations look back on and ask, “How did no one stop it?” And the only honest answer is: we didn’t want to believe it was real.

It is real. It is here. And it is happening in our name.

This is Alligator Auschwitz. And if we don’t call it what it is now, history will — with blood in its mouth..

https://www.closertotheedge.net/p/alligator-auschwitz

Newsweek: Trump admin shares meme of ICE alligators outside Florida prison

The Trump regime’s Carnival of Cruelty continues!

The Department of Homeland Security has shared an apparently AI-generated meme depicting alligators as ICE agents outside of a Florida detention center.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is a new migrant detention center being developed on a remote airstrip in the Everglades. The facility aims to house up to 5,000 detainees and uses the area’s natural isolation and wildlife as part of its security measures.

“Coming soon!” DHS said in a post on X.

The remote facility is expected to cost Florida approximately $450 million annually to operate. The proposal comes as President Donald Trump‘s administration looks to conduct what it describes as the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Critics say that the center’s remote location and rapid deployment raise ethical and legal questions about the treatment of migrants, transparency, and due process. Supporters say the project is a cost-efficient step to handle increased immigration enforcement.

The image shared by DHS shows alligators wearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) baseball caps outside the fences of the detention center.

The meme and plans have sparked outrage from critics over inhumane conditions and concerns from environmental groups.

“A horrendous lack of humanity,” Georgetown lecturer Brett Bruen, who served as director of global engagement during the Obama administration, said in a post on X.

Former CIA officer Christopher Burgess described the post as “Disgusting.”

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-meme-ice-alligator-alcatraz-florida-2092148

Mediaite: WATCH: Trump Suggests He’ll Pressure CNN/NYT Reporters to Give Up Their Sources On Iran Strike Stories — And Then Prosecute the Leakers

President Donald Trump is suggesting his administration will pressure reporters into giving up sources on their recent stories on the impact of the military strike on Iran — and then potentially prosecuting those sources.

In an interview on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, anchor Maria Bartiromo asked Trump about a social media post on Thursday in which he wrote: “The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!”

“They should be prosecuted,” Trump said again — in the Fox News interview which was taped on Friday and aired on Sunday.

“Who specifically?” Bartiromo asked.

“You can find out,” Trump said. “If they wanted, they could find out easily.”

The president has repeatedly come down on CNN and The New York Times in recent days for breaking stories on the impact of last Saturday’s attack on Iran — even threatening to sue them over reporting he has called “unpatriotic.” Both outlets reported on preliminary intelligence assessments which found that the damage of the strikes were far less than the president claimed.

Trump has repeatedly insisted three Iranian nuclear sites were “obliterated.” The preliminary intelligence assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency said the bombings only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months.

Trump went on to explain how he would go about finding out the leakers.

“You go up and tell the reporter, ‘national security, who gave it?’” Trump said. “You have to do that. And I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”

And I suspect the media response will be, “Go fuck yourself.” Trump was publicly applauding himself as the great victor and strategist, when in fact the bombings that he ordered were an abysmal flop.

Law & Crime: ‘Rightfully done and justly suffered’: Judge swats down Jan. 6 defendant’s restitution and fine return request

A pardoned Jan. 6 defendant and former U.S. Marine who sought to recover fines and restitution he paid after his Capitol riot conviction got swatted down Friday by a federal judge, who reminded him that a pardon does not make one’s conviction or the exaction of monetary penalties “erroneous”  — meaning no refunds.

“As the Supreme Court explained in Knote … once a conviction has been ‘established by judicial proceedings,’ any penalties imposed are ‘presumed to have been rightfully done and justly suffered,’ regardless of whether the defendant later receives a pardon,” wrote U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in a nine-page order for defendant Hector Vargas Santos, 29, of Jersey City, New Jersey.

Suck it up, Bubba!

Daily Digest: Mexico Roars: Sheinbaum torches Kristi Noem over controversial comments

… the Mexican President did not hesitate to put the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in her place.

In a message on her Twitter account, Sheinbaum was very firm: “In response to a question from a media outlet, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security mistakenly mentioned that I encouraged violent protests in Los Angeles. I inform you that this is absolutely false.”

Kristi Noem [hsf] accused the president during a press conference at the White House: “Claudia Sheinbaum came out and encouraged more protests in L.A., and I condemn her for that,” as reported by Reuters.

Sheinbaum has sought to distance herself from these events and address Kristi Noem’s accusations: “We do not agree with violent actions as a form of protest; the burning of police cars seems more like an act of provocation than resistance.”

https://thedailydigest.com/singapore/archivo/kristi-noem-sparks-international-feud-with-sheinbaum-mexico-hits-back-hard

Fox News: Trump blasts Powell, says any replacement would be better for refinancing $9T debt

Former president vows to appoint someone who will slash interest rates to help refinance $9T in national debt

President Donald Trump said he would welcome anyone but Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates as the U.S. is faced with having to refinance about $9 trillion in debt.

Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo sat down with Trump for an interview that aired Sunday, when she asked the president how he was going to deal with the $9 trillion in debt that is due this year.

Trump said he was going to refinance the $9 trillion as short-term debt because “we have a stupid person” at the Federal Reserve.

The president explained his desire for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates so the U.S. does not have to pay for 10 years of debt at a higher rate.

Our root problem is that we have an extremely stupid child in the White House.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-blasts-powell-says-any-replacement-would-better-refinancing-9t-debt