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Guardian: Men freed from El Salvador mega-prison endured ‘state-sanctioned torture’, lawyers say

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Venezuelans back home under Maduro-Trump deal tell of isolation, beatings and dirty water – ‘a living nightmare’

On 14 March, [Ramos Bastidas] shared with his family that maybe he would be able to come back to Venezuela after all …. The next day, he was flown to Cecot.

“They could have deported him to Venezuela,” Alvarez-Jones. “Instead, the US government made a determination to send him to be tortured in Cecot.”

Venezuelans that the Trump administration expelled to El Salvador’s most notorious megaprison endured “state-sanctioned torture”, lawyers for some of the men have said, as more stories emerge about the horrors they faced during capacity.

When José Manuel Ramos Bastidas – one of 252 Venezuelan men that the US sent to El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison – finally made it back home to El Tocuyo on Tuesday, the first thing he did was stretch his arms around his family.

His wife, son and mother were wearing the bright blue shirts they had printed with a photo of him, posed in a yellow and black moto jacket and camo-print jeans. It was the first time they had hugged him since he left Venezuela last year. And it was the first time they could be sure – truly sure – that he was alive and well since he disappeared into the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) in March.

“We have been waiting for this moment for months, and I feel like I can finally breathe,” said Roynerliz Rodríguez, Ramos Bastidas’s partner. “These last months have been a living nightmare, not knowing anything about José Manuel and only imagining what he must be suffering. I am happy he is free from Cecot, but I also know that we will never be free of the shadow of this experience. There must be justice for all those who suffered this torture.”

The Venezuelan deportees were repatriated last week following a deal between the US and Venezuelan governments. Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, negotiated a prisoner swap that released 10 American citizens in his custody and dozens of Venezuelan political prisoners in exchange for the release of his citizens from Cecot.

This week, after undergoing medical and background checks, they are finally reuniting with their families. Their testimonies of what they experienced inside Cecot are providing the first, most detailed pictures of the conditions inside Cecot, a mega-prison that human rights groups say is designed to disappear people.

Ramos Bastidas and other US deportees were told that they were condemned to spend 30 to 90 years in Cecot unless the US president ordered otherwise, he told his lawyers. They were shot with rubber bullets on repeated occasions – including on Friday, during their last day of detention.

In interviews with the media and in testimony provided to their lawyers, other detainees described lengthy beatings and humiliation by guards. After some detainees tried to break the locks on their cell, prisoners were beaten for six consecutive days, the Atlantic reports. Male guards reportedly brought in female colleagues, who beat the naked prisoners and recorded videos.

Edicson David Quintero Chacón, a US deportee, said that he was placed in isolation for stretches of time, during which he thought he would die, his lawyer told the Guardian. Quintero Chacón, who has scars from daily beatings, also said that he and other inmates were only provided soap and an opportunity to bathe on days when visitors were touring the prison – forcing them to choose between hygiene and public humiliation.

Food was limited, and the drinking water was dirty, Quintero Chacón and other detainees have said. Lights were on all night, so detainees could never fully rest. “And the guards would also come in at night and beat them at night,” said his lawyer Stephanie M Alvarez-Jones, the south-east regional attorney at the National Immigration Project.

In a filing asking for a dismissal of her months-long petition on behalf of her clients’ release, Alvarez-Jones wrote: “He will likely carry the psychological impact of this torture his whole life. The courts must never look away when those who wield the power of the US government, at the highest levels, engage in such state-sanctioned violence.”

Ramos Bastidas has never been convicted of any crimes in the US (or in any country). In fact, he had never really set foot in the US as a free man.

In El Tocuyo, in the Venezuelan state of Lara, and had been working since he was a teenager to support his family. Last year, he decided to leave his country – which has yet to recover from an economic collapse – to seek better income, so he could pay for medical care for his infant with severe asthma.

In March 2024, he arrived at the US-Mexico border and presented himself at a port of entry. He made an appointment using the now-defunct CBP One phone application to apply for asylum – but immigration officials and a judge determined that he did not qualify.

But Customs and Border Protection agents had flagged Ramos Bastidas as a possible member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, based on an unsubstantiated report from Panamanian officials and his tattoos. So they transferred him to a detention facility, where he was to remain until he could be deported.

Despite agreeing to return to Venezuela, he remained for months in detention. “I think what is particularly enraging for José is that he had accepted his deportation,” said Alvarez-Jones. “He was asking for his deportation for a long time, and he just wanted to go back home.”

In December, Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees – so Ramos Bastidas asked if he could be released and make his own way home. A month later, Donald Trump was sworn in as president. Everything changed.

Ramos Bastidas began to see other Venezuelans were being sent to the military base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba – and he feared the same would happen to him. On 14 March, he shared with his family that maybe he would be able to come back to Venezuela after all, after officials began prepping him for deportation.

The next day, he was flown to Cecot.

“They could have deported him to Venezuela,” Alvarez-Jones. “Instead, the US government made a determination to send him to be tortured in Cecot.”

Men freed from El Salvador mega-prison endured ‘state-sanctioned torture’, lawyers say
Venezuelans back home under Maduro-Trump deal tell of isolation, beatings and dirty water – ‘a living nightmare’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/26/venezuela-el-salvador-prison

Alternet: Trump just made a big mistake — and he has no one to blame but himself | Opinion

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The Epstein scandal is the best thing to happen to the cause of freedom and democracy in a very long time. I don’t remember the last occasion when liberals could hope to break the grip that Donald Trump has had, not only on the Republicans but on the Washington press corps. With this story, there’s finally daylight between him and his base. MAGA is facing a crisis of faith and with that, there’s hope.

Which is why I was genuinely stunned yesterday to see former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismiss the Epstein scandal as just another distraction. “Whether it’s Jeffrey Epstein or Alcatraz, it’s all off the subject of what they’re doing with this budget that’s harmful to meeting the kitchen-table needs of the American people,” she said.

MSNBC’s James Downie put it well: “The public is pissed about Epstein in no small part because he was a rich guy who got away with heinous crimes, because he deliberately cultivated rich friends,” he said. “That’s an inequality story. The only way it could be closer to ‘kitchen-table issues’ is if the files were tucked in a goddamn pocketbook!”

Aside from that, she’s missing the bigger picture. The Epstein scandal has grown so fast that Trump now risks forfeiting the one thing that made him invincible in the eyes of many – that made it possible for him to credibly claim that he could shoot someone and never lose a supporter. That one thing is him being the exception to the rule.

In this case, the except to the rule of Epstein.

Fact is, the president was intimately involved with the disgraced financier and child-sex trafficker. (You can read about their history in today’s Times.) But the MAGA faithful never believed it, or if they did, they didn’t believe Trump deserved the same level of scrutiny. Why?

Because the cult of MAGA is animated by a conspiracy theory, one that holds that Trump was sent by God to fulfill a prophecy, as a hero who saves America from a secret cabal of powerful (Jewish) pedophiles who traffic young girls for sex to untouchable elites. In MAGA lore, Epstein came to represent this shadowy, malevolent confederacy. The idea was that Trump would get reelected in 2024 and bring them all to justice.

So even if there was concern about old pictures and videos of Trump palling around with Epstein, Trump couldn’t be that bad, because QAnon – the conspiracy theory’s name – said that Trump was MAGA’s champion. Enemies like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros were guilty and deserving of death, but Trump? He was the exception to that rule, the exception that would make America great again.

As long as MAGA believed in him as their savior, there was little he could do to lose their trust. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. He could lead a paramilitary takeover of the US government. He could literally betray some supporters with the understanding that their sacrifice was for the greater good of saving little girls from monsters.

But then Trump made a mistake. He took MAGA’s faith for granted. He and US Attorney General Pam Bondi believed they would go wherever he told them to, even if the US Department of Justice concluded that there was no list of Epstein clients and there was no blackmail ring. They pulled back the curtain to reveal that Trump is not only a mere man, but a con man. And if MAGA believed him, well, that’s on them.

Up to that point, it really didn’t matter how much reporting there was about the actual relationship between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, because MAGA could explain away those facts as part of the QAnon prophecy. The (Jewish) media is part of the evil conspiracy against America, so naturally they are going to try to bring its savior down. Now that Trump has triggered a crisis of faith, things are different.

You can see the difference in Trump’s reaction to the latest by the Wall Street Journal. It reported Thursday that he gave Epstein a “bawdy” note on his 50th birthday in which he drew the outline of a naked woman. He signed his name at the bottom as if the signature were her public hair. He included imaginary dialogue in which Trump says, “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.” Trump concluded with saying: “Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

If you’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, which is what MAGA has been doing for the last decade, there’s nothing to see here. But if you’re unwilling – if, in fact, you feel betrayed by a leader who said he’d reveal the secrets of America’s enemies but instead chose to protect those secrets – this might look like what it seems to be: Two grown men joking about their fondness for sex with underage girls.

It used to be that Trump could gut it out knowing that the rightwing media apparatus was behind him all the way. They could altogether shout down legitimate mainstream reporting. But the rightwing media apparatus – which includes men like Steven Bannon, Tim Pool, Tucker Carlson and Benny Johnson – made itself as powerful as it is by advancing Trump, in one way or another, as the leader of the cult of MAGA. In their view, he was never supposed to put himself in league with the Jewish conspiracy, yet that’s what he did, and now that he’s done so, these rightwing media personalities can’t accept it.

Therefore, Trump is in a position he has never been in. He must earn back trust from the MAGA faithful, trust that he used to safely assume was his. That’s why he ordered the attorney general to seek the release of grand jury testimony in the Jeffrey Epstein case. But in doing so, he opened space for more questions by the press corps, more demands by the rightwing media personalities, and more opportunities for his most loyal supporters to second-guess the purity of his intentions.

That’s not a distraction. That’s the whole ball game. Fortunately, many Democrats are taking advantage of it. They’re calling for the release of more documents, raising awareness of Trump’s hypocrisy and in general, they’re sewing doubt by hyping the idea that he’s hiding something. Nothing else has cracked Teflon Trump, but this might.

Pelosi ought to know better.

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-maga-epstein-2673383670

Salon: “Cried every night”: ICE traumatizes a child with leukemia

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The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

“The Trump administration’s policy of detaining people at courthouses who are doing everything right, who are entirely law-abiding, who are trying to fulfill all the requirements that the US government asks of them — it violates our Constitution, it violates our federal laws. It also violates our sense of morality. Why are we targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including children, who are doing everything right?” Mukherjee said.

Jeff Migliozzi, the communications director for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant advocacy organziation, told Salon that “The Trump administration’s aggressive quota of 3,000 daily immigration arrests — a policy pushed by hardliners in the White House like known white nationalist Stephen Miller — is terrorizing communities.”

“The administration is directing resources and personnel from every possible corner of the government to conduct a multi-agency detention and deportation campaign at unprecedented scale,” Migliozzi said.. “This destructive agenda touches every corner of American life and civil society, as more and more people, including those who have been in the US for decades and are pillars of their community, are suddenly snatched by masked agents and taken away to remote detention sites. Street operations are resource-intensive, so the administration has increasingly turned to bait-and-switch tactics to drive up the numbers. ICE is now relying more on arrests at scheduled check-ins and at courthouses. These practices underscore not only the cruelty of this administration’s policy, but of the outdated and unfair immigration system. Here you have people doing everything they can to follow the instructions given to them, and then the rug is pulled out from under them. The result is separated families and shattered lives.”

Despite living in Los Angeles, the family was kept at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas for over a month. The center had been closed under the Biden Administration, but has been reopened as part of Trump’s push to deport as many immigrants as possible.

In detention, Mukherjee said that the boy suffered from easy bruising and bone pain, both symptoms of leukemia, and missed a June 5 medical appointment related to his cancer treatment. His sister barely ate in detention, she added.

In response to a request for comment from Salon, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “ICE does not consider a six-year-old child a ‘flight risk’ or a ‘criminal’—that is a disgusting accusation and devoid of any reality. ”

McLaughlin claimed that the family entered the United States illegally and that “Any implications that ICE would deny a child proper medical care are FALSE,” adding that “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

“On May 29, 2025, an immigration judge in California dismissed the family’s immigration case and they were served orders of expedited removal,” McLaughlin said. “ICE took custody of the family following the judge’s decision and pending further proceedings. The child arrived at the Dilley facility on May 30, 2025, and was seen by a nurse during intake. Fortunately, the child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year and was seen regularly by medical personnel while at the Dilley facility. During this time, the family chose to appeal their case. On July 2, the child, his mother, and his sister were released on parole.”

The Dilley detention facility has been subject to renewed scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores Settlement, a 1990s-era policy stemming from the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores, which set basic standards for the treatment of children in detention and required the government to release children from detention without unnecessary delay.

Recent testimony about conditions at ICE facilities has raised concerns over violations of the agreement, with one girl describing situations in which adults and children were fighting over an insufficient amount of water at one facility.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” the girl said in testimony related to conditions in immigrant detention. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Mukherjee said that the family had followed all the rules in coming to the United States, but were still arrested by ICE. And, despite claims from the Trump administration that they’re focusing their efforts on criminals, neither the small children nor the mother had been accused of a crime. The family arrived in the United States in October, applying for asylum after they faced death threats in Honduras. The names and details of the family have not been released due to the threats they face in Honduras.

“So this particular family did everything right. They came to the U.S. border after fleeing imminent and menacing death threats in their home country of Honduras. They didn’t cross the border illegally. They waited for permission to enter the United States using a CBP one appointment. At that point, DHS paroled the family into the United States, which necessarily entailed a determination that the family did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Mukherjee said. “The family did exactly what the federal government asked them to do.”

According to Mukherjee, as soon as the family stepped out of their May 29 hearing, plain clothes ICE officers detained them, a move that she said “clearly violates both the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.”

“When Trump was campaigning for president, and since he’s become president, and high-level officials in the Department of Homeland Security constantly say that we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’” Mukherjee said. “These are the people who are doing everything right.”

Their release followed a suit filed by the mother of the family, demanding the family’s immediate release. Mukherjee told Salon that the family intends to continue its legal battle to remain in the United States.

“Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia – Salon.com
The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/cried-every-night-ice-traumatizes-a-child-with-leukemia

Salon: “Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia

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As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

“The Trump administration’s policy of detaining people at courthouses who are doing everything right, who are entirely law-abiding, who are trying to fulfill all the requirements that the US government asks of them — it violates our Constitution, it violates our federal laws. It also violates our sense of morality. Why are we targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including children, who are doing everything right?” Mukherjee said.

Jeff Migliozzi, the communications director for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant advocacy organziation, told Salon that “The Trump administration’s aggressive quota of 3,000 daily immigration arrests — a policy pushed by hardliners in the White House like known white nationalist Stephen Miller — is terrorizing communities.”

“The administration is directing resources and personnel from every possible corner of the government to conduct a multi-agency detention and deportation campaign at unprecedented scale,” Migliozzi said.. “This destructive agenda touches every corner of American life and civil society, as more and more people, including those who have been in the US for decades and are pillars of their community, are suddenly snatched by masked agents and taken away to remote detention sites. Street operations are resource-intensive, so the administration has increasingly turned to bait-and-switch tactics to drive up the numbers. ICE is now relying more on arrests at scheduled check-ins and at courthouses. These practices underscore not only the cruelty of this administration’s policy, but of the outdated and unfair immigration system. Here you have people doing everything they can to follow the instructions given to them, and then the rug is pulled out from under them. The result is separated families and shattered lives.”

Despite living in Los Angeles, the family was kept at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas for over a month. The center had been closed under the Biden Administration, but has been reopened as part of Trump’s push to deport as many immigrants as possible.

In detention, Mukherjee said that the boy suffered from easy bruising and bone pain, both symptoms of leukemia, and missed a June 5 medical appointment related to his cancer treatment. His sister barely ate in detention, she added.

In response to a request for comment from Salon, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “ICE does not consider a six-year-old child a ‘flight risk’ or a ‘criminal’—that is a disgusting accusation and devoid of any reality. ”

McLaughlin claimed that the family entered the United States illegally and that “Any implications that ICE would deny a child proper medical care are FALSE,” adding that “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

Bullshit!!! It’s all about cruelty and terror!

“On May 29, 2025, an immigration judge in California dismissed the family’s immigration case and they were served orders of expedited removal,” McLaughlin said. “ICE took custody of the family following the judge’s decision and pending further proceedings. The child arrived at the Dilley facility on May 30, 2025, and was seen by a nurse during intake. Fortunately, the child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year and was seen regularly by medical personnel while at the Dilley facility. During this time, the family chose to appeal their case. On July 2, the child, his mother, and his sister were released on parole.”

The Dilley detention facility has been subject to renewed scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores Settlement, a 1990s-era policy stemming from the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores, which set basic standards for the treatment of children in detention and required the government to release children from detention without unnecessary delay.

Recent testimony about conditions at ICE facilities has raised concerns over violations of the agreement, with one girl describing situations in which adults and children were fighting over an insufficient amount of water at one facility.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” the girl said in testimony related to conditions in immigrant detention. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Mukherjee said that the family had followed all the rules in coming to the United States, but were still arrested by ICE. And, despite claims from the Trump administration that they’re focusing their efforts on criminals, neither the small children nor the mother had been accused of a crime. The family arrived in the United States in October, applying for asylum after they faced death threats in Honduras. The names and details of the family have not been released due to the threats they face in Honduras.

“So this particular family did everything right. They came to the U.S. border after fleeing imminent and menacing death threats in their home country of Honduras. They didn’t cross the border illegally. They waited for permission to enter the United States using a CBP one appointment. At that point, DHS paroled the family into the United States, which necessarily entailed a determination that the family did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Mukherjee said. “The family did exactly what the federal government asked them to do.”

According to Mukherjee, as soon as the family stepped out of their May 29 hearing, plain clothes ICE officers detained them, a move that she said “clearly violates both the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.”

“When Trump was campaigning for president, and since he’s become president, and high-level officials in the Department of Homeland Security constantly say that we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’” Mukherjee said. “These are the people who are doing everything right.”

Their release followed a suit filed by the mother of the family, demanding the family’s immediate release. Mukherjee told Salon that the family intends to continue its legal battle to remain in the United States.

“Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia – Salon.com
The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/cried-every-night-ice-traumatizes-a-child-with-leukemia

CNN: DHS posted an image calling for help locating ‘all foreign invaders.’ It was previously circulated by far-right accounts

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On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a striking graphic on its official X account. Uncle Sam, a symbol of American patriotism, is depicted nailing a poster to a wall that reads, “Help your country… and yourself.” Written underneath the poster is the sentence, “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,” and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement hot line.

The post — which DHS and the White House also posted to Instagram — prompted a flood of criticism, with some social media users comparing the post to authoritarian propaganda. On Thursday, at least two far-right X accounts claimed to have a hand in creating or disseminating the image before it was shared by DHS. A source within DHS told CNN the agency did not create the graphic.

…

The Uncle Sam graphic is reminiscent of media used previously by other governments to provoke fear, especially of immigrants, said Elisabeth Fondren, a journalism professor at St. John’s University who has studied government propaganda and communications during war times.

“This poster fits within a long history of anti-immigrant rhetoric and, yes, state propaganda,” Fondren said. “It evokes these remnants of Cold War, fake propaganda by the Russians, or, you know, authoritarian fear mongering messages … but what I think is so interesting is that this is a call to action in an environment where we’re not in a war.”

…

Perhaps from here:

The image of the Uncle Sam poster was posted on X last Friday, around the time tensions in Los Angeles escalated, by podcaster C. Jay Engel, who describes himself as “Christian nationalist adjacent” and has claimed that “nations cannot survive replacement migration.” After DHS shared the Uncle Sam image, Engel posted: “This image came from my account. NEVER STOP POSTING.”

“The question is, ‘Is there room for like-minded Christians and patriots in Tennessee?’” the podcaster, Engel, said in an October podcast, in response to a listener’s question. “Yes, there’s an imperative for like-minded Christians to gather and fight with us.”

Or maybe:

Although Engel circulated the image of the Uncle Sam poster, another X user claimed to have created the image. That pseudonymous X account, which has the words “Wake Up White Man” in its biography, is full of nativist rhetoric and reposted another X user who declared: “Whites deserve our own nations, like everyone else is allowed to have.” The pseudonymous account appears to have been the first to post the image.

It’s beyond disgusting that Homeland Security is sourcing such material from white supremacists.

DHS defends social media post calling for public to help ICE locate ‘all foreign invaders’ | CNN Politics
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a striking graphic on its official X account. Uncle Sam, a symbol of American patriotism, is depicted nailing a poster to a wall that reads, “Help your country… and yourself.” Written underneath the poster is the sentence, “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,” and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement hot line.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/12/politics/dhs-social-media-post-ice-deportations-criticisms

Bloomberg: US Borrowers Face Higher Interest If Trump’s ‘Revenge Tax’ Becomes Law

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A measure in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill that’s meant to penalize foreign investors may also raise interest costs for some US borrowers.

The so-called Section 899 provision takes aim at nations such as Canada, the UK and France that have digital services taxes or other corporate tax rules the US deems unfair. Investors and companies from those countries may see gradually higher tax rates on income they earn from US assets — which some analysts have called a “revenge tax.” 

But Section 899 would affect loan interest payments in a way that would hurt some US companies, according to legal experts. Many lending agreements require borrowers to cover such tax hikes if they’re enacted after the deal is signed. 

These requirements are known as withholding tax gross-up obligations. Borrowers remit the withholding tax to the US government, but they must “gross up” their payment to ensure the lender still receives the full amount of interest owed.

US Borrowers Face Higher Interest If Trump’s ‘Revenge Tax’ Becomes Law

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-04/section-899-us-borrowers-face-higher-interest-if-trump-tax-plan-wins

Daily Mail: Homeland Security ‘fact checks’ Aussie who was deported from the US

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  • Nikki Saroukos was detained and deported 
  • She claims department’s reasons were ‘unjustified’  
  • Department defended its position in a social media post

The US government has launched an extraordinary attack on an Australian woman who complained she was detained, stripped and held overnight in a federal prison while trying to visit her American boyfriend. Former NSW Police officer Nikki Saroukos, 25, was detained by US border officials when she arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii on May 17. The 25-year-old thought it would be a routine visit to see her husband who has been stationed as a US Army lieutenant on the Pacific island and US state since August 2023.

Mrs Saroukos had successfully visited Hawaii three times in recent months on an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) under the Visa Waiver Program. At no point was she given a reason for her detention on May 17, beyond the fact that border officials did not believe that she was visiting her husband. Mrs Saroukos said she was ‘treated like a criminal’ and claimed she was denied her rights, subject to invasive searches, humiliating treatment and a night in a federal detention facility before being deported back to Australia.

The US Department of Homeland Security fired back at Mrs Sourokos and issued a ‘fact check’ on her claims in a post shared to social media platform X on Saturday. The department defended its officers who determined Mrs Saroukos was ‘travelling for more than just tourism’, and took aim at the brief duration of her marriage. ‘Nicolle Saroukos’s recent long-term trips to the United States and suspicious luggage resulted in her being reasonably selected for secondary screening by CBP,’ the post read.

Officials claimed she had packed more clothing than was necessary for a three-week stay. ‘Officers determined that she was traveling for more than just tourism. She was unable to remember her wedding date just four months prior,’ the post read. ‘Saroukos met her now-husband during a trip on December 13, 2024, the same day her ex-partner left her. The two spent only eight days together before she returned to Australia on December 21. ‘Saroukos then got married on January 24, 2025, after only knowing her husband for just over a month.’

The department also accused Mrs Saroukos of having ‘unusual activity on her phone’ and making false claims about her husband’s military service. ‘During screening, CBP (Customs and Border Protection) noted there was unusual activity on her phone, including 1000 deleted text messages from her husband because she claimed they caused her “anxiety”,’ the post read. ‘Saroukos even claimed that her husband was going to leave the US military, despite him telling CBP he was adding her to his military documents. ‘If you attempt to enter the United States under false pretenses, there are consequences.’

Mrs Saroukos vehemently denied having any plans to live in the US permanently and slammed Homeland Security’s reasons for putting her in a jail cell as ‘unjustifiable’. While she agreed with the department’s timeline of her relationship, she claimed it failed to mention she had been talking to her husband on a dating app for months before they met in person. Mrs Saroukos also denied the department’s claims that she had met her now-husband on the same day she split from her former-partner. She explained she had split from her ex-partner earlier in the year, but had stayed in ‘separate rooms’ when they holidayed together in Hawaii.

Mrs Saroukos added she relocated to a different hotel when her ex left the island and reached out to meet her future husband three days later. When asked about why she was unable to remember her wedding date, Mrs Saroukos said her mind went blank as she was interrogated for hours. ‘I was crying at this point. I was under immense stress,’ she told news.com.au . ‘With the decision of them coming out and saying ‘she didn’t remember her (wedding) date’, I’m like it’s not a criminal offence to forget a date? I mean, I don’t even remember people’s birthdays let alone a date under that amount of stress.’

Mrs Saroukos said she had deleted the 1,000 text messages as they were when she and her partner were having a disagreement and she did not want to re-read them. She claimed officials could have easily read the conversation by recovering the messages from the deleted section on her iPhone. ‘It’s not a bloody crime to delete text messages between you and your partner,’ Mrs Saroukos said. ‘It’s my [expletive] phone. I’m not committing an offence. They’ve just grabbed that and run with it and they’re missing out the fact they actually read the deleted text messages and there was nothing (illegal) there.’

She added she had no intention of applying for a green card as a military spouse, despite the discrepancies in her and her husband’s statements about the future. Mrs Saroukos said the long-term plan had always been for her husband to apply for a visa and move to Australia after he left the military. She claimed her husband only mentioned applying for a green card while she was being questioned as the ordeal was proving difficult for her to travel. Mrs Saroukos was travelling to Hawaii with her mother for a planned three weeks together, being joined by her working husband on weekends. After clearing customs, however, it became clear things would not be as simple as they had been on her many previous visits.

The pair were taken to a holding area at the Daniel K Inouye International Airport in Honolulu where their bags and documents were inspected. ‘We went through customs and border security, as per usual, and we got stopped to check our passports,’ she told Daily Mail Australia. ‘He [customs officer] went from being super calm, very nice, even giving my mum a compliment, to just instantly turning. ‘He yelled at the top of his lungs and told my mum to go stand at the back of the line because she was being nosy and asking too many questions.

‘Everyone in the airport kind of just froze because his voice literally echoed three rooms over… that’s how loud he was.’ The mother and daughter were then taken downstairs where officers searched their luggage. They were then taken to a private room where the 25-year-old was forced to hand over her phone and passcode. Her mother, who was questioned in the same room, was soon allowed to leave but Mrs Saroukos had to stay, and it would be nearly 24 hours before the two would see each other again.

The officers demanded a written statement on her reasons for travel, income and personal information regarding her relationship with her husband. Some time later, she was required to sign a declaration stating she had no cartel affiliations before being subjected to an oral DNA swab and fingerprinting. She was then told that her entry to the US had been rejected and she would spend the night in a federal detention facility before being deported back to Australia. Ms Saroukos then requested a phone call to her husband but officers assured her they would inform him on her behalf – a promise she would learn the following day they had not made good on.

She was then handcuffed and marched through the airport in full view of the public before being subjected to a full body cavity search at Honolulu Federal Detention Facility. Ms Saroukos was then processed and given a blanket. She was told she had missed the cut-off for dinner and would have to go hungry and was denied a shower on the basis there were no available towels. At 8.40pm, she was locked in a cell with a Fijian woman who had also been detained upon attempting to enter the country for a wedding.

After a sleepless night, Ms Saroukos returned to the airport under police custody and received a call from the Australian embassy. She requested they inform her mother she had been booked on a 12.15pm flight so that she might also book a ticket. Several hours later, she was once again escorted by officers in view of the public to her gate and made to board the flight ahead of all other passengers. Reflecting on the ordeal, Ms Saroukos said she felt ‘disgusted’ and vowed never to return to the US. ‘I felt like I was targeted, and they treated me like I was a criminal, and they kept telling me that I had done nothing wrong, but yet their actions don’t reflect what they were telling me,’ Mrs Saroukos said. ‘I never want to return back to the United States. ‘They’ve pretty much traumatised me [from] ever returning back there, which automatically strains my marriage as well, because my husband lives over there.’

Homeland Security ‘fact checks’ Aussie who was deported from the US
Homeland Security has defended its actions for deporting an an Aussie woman after she was detained, stripped and held overnight in a federal prison while trying to visit her American husband.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14770973/Homeland-Security-Nikki-Saroukos-US-deport.html

Independent: Musk tried to block massive Trump-backed Mideast AI deal unless he was included: report

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Elon Musk rushed to the Mideast to hold up a massive Trump-endorsed American AI operation in Abu Dhabi unless it included him, according to a new report

Retiring DOGE hatchet man Elon Musk rushed to the Middle East during Donald Trump’s visit there earlier this month to block a massive American AI partnership with the United Arab Emirates backed by the president – unless it included him, according to a new report. That apparently explains the tech billionaire’s sudden appearance at a Trump meeting with Saudi Arabia officials during the president’s three-country Middle East tour.

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Trump’s team scrambled to soothe an irritated Musk so the president could announce the deal while he was in the Middle East, the Journal reported.

It wasn’t immediately clear if some kind of accommodation was worked out for the tech boss who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans, or if he is now part of the deal. He could not immediately be reached for comment. His company has not been named as a participant in the business by any announcement of the deal.

Poor F’Elon!

Musk tried to block Trump-backed Mideast AI deal unless he was included: report
Elon Musk rushed to the Mideast to hold up a massive Trump-endorsed American AI operation in Abu Dhabi unless it included him, according to a new report

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/musk-trump-middle-east-ai-deal-b2759700.html

Reuters: Exclusive-Hacker who breached communications app used by Trump aide stole data from across US government

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A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month intercepted messages from a broader swathe of American officials than has previously been reported, according to a Reuters review, potentially raising the stakes of a breach that has already drawn questions about data security in the Trump administration.

Reuters identified more than 60 unique government users of the messaging platform TeleMessage in a cache of leaked data provided by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a U.S. nonprofit whose stated mission is to archive hacked and leaked documents in the public interest. The trove included material from disaster responders, customs officials, several U.S. diplomatic staffers, at least one White House staffer and members of the Secret Service. The messages reviewed by Reuters covered a roughly day-long period of time ending on May 4, and many of them were fragmentary.

?url=httpswww.reuters.comworldushacker-who-breached-communications-app-used-by-trump-aide-stole-data-across-us-2025-05-21

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hacker-who-breached-communications-app-used-by-trump-aide-stole-data-across-us-2025-05-21