President Donald Trump has threatened to unleash ‘the most powerful and lethal weapons ever built’ if Russia supplies nuclear warheads to Iran.
A 68-year-old Mexican-born man has become the first Ice detainee in at least a decade to die while being transported from a local jail to a federal detention center, and experts have warned there will likely be more such deaths amid the current administration’s “mass deportation” push across the US.
Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado’s exact cause of death remains under investigation, according to Ice, but the Guardian’s reporting reveals a confusing and at times contradictory series of events surrounding the incident.
The death occurred as private companies with little to no oversight are increasingly tasked with transporting more immigration detainees across the US, in pursuit of the Trump administration’s recently-announced target of arresting 3,000 people a day.
“The system is so loaded with people, exacerbating bad conditions – it’s like a ticking time bomb,” said Amilcar Valencia, executive director of El Refugio, a Georgia-based organization that works with detainees at Stewart detention center and their families.
Avellaneda Delgado lived most of the last 40 years in the US, raising a large family, working on tobacco and vegetable farms – and never gaining legal immigration status. He was arrested in Statenville, Georgia on 9 April due to a parole violation – and died on 5 May in the back of a van about half-way between the Lowndes county jail and Stewart detention center.
His family say their search for answers has been frustrating, and have hired an attorney to help. Two of Avellaneda Delgado’s six children who lived with their father told the Guardian he had no health conditions before being detained – but somehow was put in a wheelchair during the weeks he spent in jail, and was unable to speak during a family visit. The Guardian learned that he was given medications while in jail.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/22/ice-detainee-death-georgia
Pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was released from detention Friday evening, ending more than three months of custody in a test of the executive branch’s power to unilaterally act against legal U.S. residents.
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Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin lashed out at “rogue” U.S. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz, saying he had no authority to order Khalil’s release.
“This is yet another example of how out of control members of the judicial branch are undermining national security,” McLaughlin said. “Their conduct not only denies the result of the 2024 election, it also does great harm to our constitutional system by undermining public confidence in the courts.”
Government attorney Dhruman Sampat had argued that Congress has given the executive branch sweeping powers to determine who could be removed from the county.
The courts should not have the authority to interfere, Sampat said.
Another round of national anti-Trump demonstrations is being planned across the U.S. for July 17 under the banner of Good Trouble Lives On, a reference to the late civil rights icon, Congressman John Lewis.
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Good Trouble Lives On demonstrations are being planned for dozens of American cities on July 17 including the likes of New York, Washington D.C, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco with attendees invited to “March in Peace, Act in Power.”
The name is a reference to Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and an advocate of peaceful protests, who famously called for “good trouble” during the civil rights era.
According to its downloadable “Host Toolkit” for organizers, the protests have three main goals. These are demanding an end to “the extreme crackdown on civil rights by the Trump administration,” “the attacks on Black and brown Americans, immigrants, trans people, and other communities,” and “the slashing of programs that working people rely on, including Medicaid, SNAP, and Social Security.”
Good Trouble Lives On is being supported by a range of other groups including the 50501 Movement, which also helped organize the “No Kings” demonstrations.
https://www.newsweek.com/anti-trump-protests-update-national-day-action-planned-july-17-2088233
Donald Trump won the presidency in part on promises to deport immigrants who have criminal records and lack permanent legal status. But his earliest executive orders—trying to undo birthright citizenship, suspending critical refugee programs—made clear he wants to attack immigrants with permanent legal status too. In our series Who Gets to Be American This Week?, we’ll track the Trump administration’s attempts to exclude an ever-growing number of people from the American experiment.
President Donald Trump’s immigration raids have disrupted life in Los Angeles in a way the mayor is comparing to COVID; they’ve created a climate of fear that’s driving people into hiding and hurting local businesses. This week, the president promised to expand those raids in blue cities, all in a futile attempt to hit 1 million deportations by the end of the year. After suggesting last week that ICE would stop targeting the agriculture and hotel industries, which disproportionately rely on immigrant labor, the administration also walked back that guidance.
And a troubling trend is emerging: As Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts get more aggressive and reckless, several elected officials who attempted to conduct oversight or question what is being done have been arrested.
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“Overwhelmingly, Americans do not want ICE raids that focus on those without criminal records. That’s why polls show that Trump is losing voter approval on these key issues,” Mukherjee said.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/donald-trump-brad-lander-ice-raid-los-angeles.html
Illegal immigrant workers in the agriculture and hospitality industries continue to be targeted for arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following President Donald Trump’s recent decision not to exempt them from his deportation operation.
On Monday, 84 workers who lack legal immigration status were arrested at a southwest Louisiana racetrack, the agency announced Wednesday.
Fourteen farmworkers who work for Lynn-Ette & Sons in upstate New York’s Orleans County were taken into custody by federal immigration authorities last Friday as the White House mulled over whether to target working immigrants or focus on criminals.
The United Farm Workers union told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that it has recently identified workers in Georgia, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington who were arrested or deported, going beyond the known arrests in California, New Mexico, and Nebraska reported last week.
Rebecca Shi, CEO for the American Business Immigration Coalition, said ICE raids are being reported “across red, blue, and purple states alike.”
“We’ve heard growing concern from our members across multiple sectors,” Shi said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “What we’re seeing is a pattern of sudden, chaotic raids that don’t appear to be narrowly focused on dangerous individuals. Instead, they’re sweeping up essential workers who are doing critical jobs and contributing to their communities.”
California’s two U.S. senators demanded on Wednesday that the Trump administration stop using personal data of millions of Medicaid enrollees — including their immigration status — as part of its sweeping deportation campaign.
In a letter to top administration officials, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla expressed alarm over an Associated Press report last week that detailed how deportation officials had obtained the sensitive data over the objections of career health officials. They wrote that health officials needed to stop sharing the information and that the Department of Homeland Security should “destroy any and all such data” it had obtained.
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The AP reported that CMS transferred the data last week to DHS officials. Internal CMS records obtained by the AP showed the Medicaid agency fought the request, arguing that sharing the data would violate rules and federal law. Trump appointees overruled them, giving CMS a 54-minute deadline to share the information with DHS, according to emails obtained by AP.
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“We are deeply troubled that this administration intends to use individuals’ private health information for the unrelated purpose of possible enforcement actions targeting lawful noncitizens and mixed status families,” the senators wrote.
The legal disciplinary board for attorneys in California has affirmed a recommendation that former law professor John Eastman be disbarred over his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to favor President Donald Trump.
On Friday, a three-judge panel on the California State Bar Court’s Review Department ruled on two separate requests by Eastman and the Office of Chief Trial Counsel – seeking review of a March 2024 decision recommending he lose his law license.
The panel, effectively a court of appeal in the Golden State’s lawyer discipline system, declined to disturb the lower court’s ruling.
Tensions escalated during “No Kings” protests against Donald Trump on the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, 14 June, as police sought to disperse demonstrators with abrupt orders to leave.
Protesters were pushed back by officers on horseback, and law enforcement also fired flash bangs and canisters of tear gas to clear out demonstrators after the formal event ended.
Millions of people were estimated to have joined the protests in more than 2,000 communities, which took place the same day as a military parade in Washington, D.C., for the Army’s 250th anniversary, which coincided with the president’s birthday.
Demonstrations protested what organisers described as Mr Trump’s authoritarian agenda, including recent immigration raids that have rattled communities across the country, including in LA.
https://www.the-independent.com/tv/news/trump-no-kings-protest-la-tear-gas-video-b2770322.html
A popular Oregon vineyard owner was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody outside his church in Oregon on Thursday.
Moises Sotelo-Casas was detained outside of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Newberg, about 25 miles outside of Portland. His daughter, Alondra Sotelo-Garcia, told KGW8 that he’s now being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.
She found out about her father’s detention when a neighbor spotted his truck and told her mother, she said. After confirming the car indeed belonged to her father, she tracked his location to an ICE detention facility in Portland and saw him later that day.
“I was crying, I was a mess,” she told the outlet. “He was in chains at his feet,” she said. “Shoelaces were taken off, his belt was off, he didn’t have his ring, he didn’t have his watch. Everything was taken from him.”
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She said she understands that ICE is seeking to detain criminals, but reiterated that’s not who her father is.
The TV station said it couldn’t find any records for Sotelo-Casas.
