You generally don’t see criminal charges filed against judges at any level of the court system. If it does happen, it’s used to address egregious and constant criminal activity by sitting judges. The most common path towards discipline relies on the court system itself, which allows courts to punish judges for misbehavior and, in rare cases, have them removed via internal processes.
But this is no ordinary US. This is Trump’s United States, where anyone who displeases the man who wishes he could be king is subjected to vindictive prosecutions. What happened to New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey (prosecutions currently paused due to Trump administration fuckery/fuck ups) can happen to anyone.
So here’s what happened to Milwaukee County judge Hannah Dugan. After being made aware of the fact that DEA and ICE agents were hanging around outside of her courtroom in hopes of arresting migrants who were doing nothing more than reporting for their court-ordered check-ins, Dugan decided to let the migrant whose criminal case she was currently handling slip out a side door, rather than go out the main door and directly into the hands of loitering federal officers.
According to the criminal complaint filed by Kash Patel’s FBI — something he celebrated on X briefly before deleting his post — this meant agents had to move quickly across nearly an additional 50-100 feet to arrest this person. A sworn affidavit by FBI special agent made it clear this was way too much stuff for officers to be doing, especially one with [checks affidavit again] seven years experience as a CPA[??][!!].
The federal government said this added up to obstruction. And it chose to criminally charge Judge Hannah Dugan rather than allow the Wisconsin court system to handle this on its own. There’s precedent for this, of course. The last time a judge faced criminal charges for acts that would normally be handled by the court system’s internal disciplinary procedures was in 2019 during Trump’s first term as president.
Hannah C. Dugan, a Wisconsin state judge, was found guilty on Thursday of obstructing federal agents, a high-profile victory for the Justice Department in a prosecution of a judge who it said was illegally aiding an undocumented immigrant.
Judge Dugan faces up to five years in prison and, as a person who has been convicted of a felony, she is likely ineligible to continue to hold office as a judge in Wisconsin, according to the State Constitution.
This wasn’t the end result of a lengthy investigation or the culmination of numerous complaints against Judge Dugan. This is nothing more than some federal agents bitching that they were momentarily inconvenienced and getting all the vindictiveness they wanted from Trump’s DOJ and Kash Patel’s FBI.
This isn’t over. This conviction can be appealed. And it appears the court handling this thinks there’s a case to be made. Normally, jury guilty verdicts are accompanied by sentencing dates. That didn’t happen here, which seems to indicate the judge handling the case isn’t necessarily convinced Judge Dugan’s actions rise to the level of a federal felony. But no matter how this ends up playing out, everyone should be on notice that Trump thinks “justice” and “revenge” are the same word.
If there’s anything the GOP/MAGA party can’t stand, it’s people who won’t fall in line. It openly courts fascism while still pretending its ultimate concern is the protection of (certain) civil liberties. It cheers on politically motivated prosecutions while still making mouth noises about “activist judges.” It’s a land of contrasts, to be sure. But the US — under this leadership — certainly isn’t “a place of honor.”
Today, Governor Larry Rhoden announced Operation: Prairie Thunder – a comprehensive, targeted public safety initiative to protect South Dakotans, especially in the Sioux Falls metro area.
“We are keeping South Dakotans strong, safe, and free. When it comes to safety, one of our biggest opportunities to move the needle is right here in Sioux Falls, and that’s where Operation: Prairie Thunder comes in,” said Governor Larry Rhoden. “We are taking decisive action to hold criminals accountable and protect our communities.”
Whew. Sounds like a lot. This July announcement claimed all kinds of good things would be happening in terms of crime prevention and enforcement. But it was actually just more of the usual “war on drugs” stuff: saturation patrols, a few more helicopters in the air, and a concentrated effort to round up anyone who may have given law enforcement the slip while paroled or on probation.
But the part that meant the most is this:
The comprehensive effort to support ICE’s work includes:
Equipping the South Dakota Highway Patrol to assist with ICE’s actions to keep America safe – a partnership that the Governor previously obtained;
Activating six SDNG soldiers to assist ICE with administrative functions; and
Enabling DOC to work with ICE to deport offenders and transfer violent offenders for federal incarceration and assist ICE with processing and transportation of illegal alien criminals.
In other words, it was just a convenient excuse to roll hard with local law enforcement while riding shotgun with Trump’s bigots-in-masks kidnappers.
Since this announcement, “Prairie Thunder” has moved past Sioux Falls and into other towns, including Yankton, Belle Fourche, and Huron. Press releases and appearances from Governor Rhoden claimed this saturation+ICE had been a huge success.
Troopers jailed 75 people in total across the two operations, according to the release — 42 on drug charges and 33 on non-drug charges — and 19 people were charged with drug offenses but not detained.
The patrol interviewed 25 people on behalf of ICE, the release said, 21 of whom were held for the federal agency.
But a lot of locals in a red-coded state weren’t convinced this had anything to do with real crime. The towns targeted by “Prairie Thunder” weren’t exactly hotbeds of criminal activity. Huron, in particular, is the state’s most diverse city, which raised obvious questions about why it was next on list after the Thunder had rolled through the state’s most-populous city, Sioux Falls.
[T]he November patrols raised concerns for the city’s Hispanic community, according to Republican state Rep.Kevin Van Diepen, who’s also a former police chief.
He said many residents believed that ICE — not state law enforcement — was behind the saturation patrols in the city of 14,000.
The governor had never announced this unexpected expansion of the program to other South Dakota cities. But it’s clear that Prairie Thunder is still an ongoing program. The city of Brookings (pop. 23,377) decided it wasn’t going to play nice with ICE or the governor’s desire to keep all of this under the radar. An extremely short post on the city’s official website let every resident know what was headed their way, as well as making it clear the city had no desire to pitch in with ICE’s deportation efforts:
The City of Brookings has been made aware that Operation Prairie Thunder, an anti-crime task force with the State of South Dakota, will be in the Brookings area Dec. 17-19. The City of Brookings will not be participating in these operations.
The governor voiced his disapproval with the city of Brookings Friday afternoon, suggesting that the broadcasting of when and where stings, saturations or any other temporary, concentrated policing will take place undermines law enforcement operations — and the men and women carrying out that work.
“For security reasons, we are not going to comment on operational specifics. It’s unfortunate that the City of Brookings would jeopardize an anti-crime operation and put the safety of our officers at risk by publishing this information,” he said in a statement provided to The Dakota Scout. “In South Dakota, we enforce the rule of law.”
This is dumb for several reasons. First, even the mayor of Sioux Falls issued statements distancing himself and his city’s police officers from ICE activity related to “Prairie Thunder.” So, even at the initial flash-point of the operation, politicians knew it would be bad for political business to be thought of as complicit in ICE raids.
Second, saturation patrols are often announced ahead of time by the cities and law enforcement agencies engaging in them. We hear radio announcements for these patrols ahead of every major holiday. Local cops also let people know ahead of time if they’re going to be running sobriety checkpoints. None of these notifications have ever been portrayed as “jeopardizing anti-crime operations” by local politicians.
Finally, go fuck yourself, Governor Rhoden. What ICE does has almost nothing to do with the “rule of law.” And the administration overseeing ICE only cares about the “rule of law” when it needs to get the Supreme Court to sign off on its latest constitutional violations. You’re nothing but a Kristi Noem understudy, which means you’re incapable (or unwilling) of doing anything that doesn’t align exactly with the New MAGA Order.
If ICE wants to perform a bunch of crimes of opportunity in Brookings, it should still be able to do so even if its officers are being filmed, insulted, or otherwise treated like the pariahs they are. You serve the state, not Donald Trump and his fleeting whims. If it won’t hurt your brain too much, try to remember that now and then.
This won’t matter to Donald Trump or the dozens of administration officials who live to please him. In all likelihood, it will just lead to Trump and his administration smearing one of this nation’s allies for being weak on crime and too supportive of people who are being murdered by the US government.
But it should matter to everyone else. The United States was once the leader of the free world, even with all of its current and historical flaws. It’s no longer interested in any version of “freedom” that doesn’t involve making people feel it’s alright to engage in open bigotry. And it no longer deserves to be called the “leader” of anything, since it’s in the process of devolving into an authoritarian state with white Christian nationalist desires.
The mass deportation program that has been running at full speed since Trump retook the Oval Office has been abjectly and objectively miserable. Irrational hatred is now just public policy, overseen by grinning “Village of the Damned”-esque kids with swastikas pinwheeling in their creepy, dead eyes.
Not the UK has been much better for most of its history. It spent a lot of its history engaging in open racism and bigotry-as-public-policy colonialism. Even now, its desire to be more harmful to immigrants, privacy rights, and anything not completely Union Jacked has seen it devolve in the same direction the United States is now headed, albeit with a bit more internal division.
But Trump has gone so far that not even this new wave of UK Exceptionalism is willing to endorse it. Sure, it’s willing to be awful towards its own populace regularly, but it’s not exactly ready to sign up for an eventual appearance at The Hague. Here’s Natasha Bertrand, reporting on a sudden severing of surveillance access by the UK government in response to the administration’s killings of people in international waters.
The United Kingdom is no longer sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in US military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
[…]
[S]hortly after the US began launching lethal strikes against the boats in September, however, the UK grew concerned that the US might use intelligence provided by the British to select targets. British officials believe the US military strikes, which have killed 76 people, violate international law, the sources said. The intelligence pause began over a month ago, they said.
The UK government did the right thing. Even if some in the UK government might be aligned with Trump in terms of going full Duterte, there’s no reason to continue to act as an accomplice in the extrajudicial killings. Even if the political winds fail to shift in the United States at the end of Trump’s second term, the man who has spent his entire presidential career antagonizing most of the rest of the world has made enough enemies that he won’t have many supporters if an internationally-backed prosecution attempt arises in the future.
Even military officials are starting to back away from the boat strike program, even as the Trump-beholden DOJ Office of Legal Counsel continues to issue questionable memos that claim “this all very legal, actually.” It certainly doesn’t look legal, which creates some problems in the court of public opinion. In courts that actually have the power to do something about it, these outrageous claims of absolute executive power have already worn thin.
As for the official US response, it’s limited to this for the moment:
The British embassy in Washington and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. A Pentagon official told CNN that the department “doesn’t talk about intelligence matters.”
LMAO. The Defense Department talks about “intelligence matters” in chats that have included journalists, family members, and family lawyers. And Trump himself has unilaterally (and very unofficially) declassified intelligence information by splattering it all over the pages of TruthSocial and X. All that’s being said here is that the government won’t talk about things it doesn’t want to discuss, right up until an administration official (or Trump himself) decides it’s time to get bitchy about this regime being treated like the untrustworthy piece of shit it is.
That will probably happen sooner, rather than later. As the CNN report notes, both Canada and Colombia have done the same thing, preventing the US military from using intelligence these countries have collected to target people in boats in international waters. Make America A Pariah Again is going just great.
Well, well, well. If it isn’t the system of checks and balances. We’ve missed you, buddy!
Long story somewhat short: ICE has been terrible for years, but it’s been much worse under Trump. During Trump’s first regime (~2016-2020), ICE got rocked by a court decision that prevented it from engaging in traffic stops just so it could arrest people for looking vaguely Mexican.
That settlement — secured with the assistance of the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) — was enacted in 2022 during the brief period between Trump Oval Office interloping.
Interlopement or not, it’s still the law of the land in Illinois. And that’s not playing well with Trump’s recent federal invasion of the Chicago area — one spearheaded by Nazi cosplayer Gregory Bovino, last seen violating the law much further south as the commander of a California-based Border Patrol unit.
Bovino chose to violate court orders so often during his short stint in Chicago, he’s been sent elsewhere by the Trump administration. It’s definitely not a sign of disapproval. It’s a vote of confidence that says the presidency will keep changing tables every time it loses a hand to the federal courts.
The Nava consent decree that forbids ICE from doing what it’s been doing in Chicago since before Trump re-grooved his ass marks in the chair behind the Resolute Desk.
And that means a lot of stops, arrests, and ensuing detentions are illegal. And because they’re illegal, people must be freed. The administration continues to act like there’s nothing in the law that prevents it from jailing people who present no flight risk or threat to public safety. That’s definitely not the law of the land and it’s definitely not the law in Seventh Circuit, which has already received notice of the administration’s appeal.
For now, however, that means a lot of people rounded up during Trump’s invasion of Chicago and ICE operations in the area preceding the anti-Democratic Party surge d/b/a “immigration enforcement” will no longer be imprisoned.
District Judge Jeffrey Cummings on Wednesday afternoon ordered the release of at least 313 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between June and early October.
[…]
Cummings has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to immediately release 13 detainees held in Texas, Missouri and other states that both the government and plaintiffs agree were detained in violation of the Castañon Nava settlement that prohibits warrantless immigration arrest in Illinois.
The order [PDF] itself doesn’t limit itself to 13 people, much less the 313 people stated by this Axios article. It says the government must take a look at more than twice this number and provide some sort of evidence as to why this other 300+ should continue to be detained.
To this end, by 12:00 p.m. CST on November 14, 2025, with respect to the subset of 615 individuals discussed on the record, defendants shall provide the Court with their names and specify which of the individuals in this group have been identified by defendants as posing a “high public safety risk” if they were released.
That deadline has come and gone. And the only thing the administration has done is file motions asking for this order to be stayed until this case can be heard by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court. It has offered nothing in defense of those arrests and continued detentions of people it’s unlikely to be able to prove must be indefinitely detained despite being arrested in violation of the Nava Agreement (2022). But it’s apparently hoping the court that didn’t feel Gregory Bovino should be forced to respect the law will have much to say about the consent decree violations it engaged in while Bovino was still running the show in Chicago.
We’ll see where this goes from here, but for the moment, this order [PDF], issued by federal judge Karin Immergut still stands:
For the above reasons, this Court concludes that Plaintiffs have demonstrated that Defendants violated 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and the Tenth Amendment and satisfy the requirements for a permanent injunction. Therefore, this Court PERMANENTLY ENJOINS Defendants Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Department of Defense, Kristi Noem, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from […] federalizing and deploying members of the National Guard in Oregon
This has already happened once. And, for reasons that went mostly unexplained by two of three judges ruling in favor of the administration, a stay was issued that allowed it to continue exploring its martial law options in a city Trump has already admitted he might have been lied to about in terms of civil unrest.
The judges blocking the injunction basically said we have to trust the government, even when it’s obviously lying to us — something pointed out in the sharp dissent written by the third judge in the case (Susan Graber). Her dissent noted that most of the protest involved people wearing inflatable animal costumes (and, memorably, nothing at all). It also noted the absolute dearth of calls from law enforcement for backup when dealing with Portland’s (non-threatening) protesters. Her dissent also pointed out how none of this could possibly add up to the clear and present danger the administration has used to justify the deployment of National Guard troops.
Judge Immergut makes many of the same points: there’s no real threat, the protests have been almost exclusively peaceful, and the government has lied so often it should not be granted judicial deference. The 106-page order practically dares the Ninth Circuit to again ignore the facts on the ground when it is inevitably appealed by the federal government.
For example, here’s the judge taking the government down a few notches (and suggesting contempt findings are perhaps just as inevitable as the administration’s routine disregard for legal precedent) for pretending it didn’t have time to comply with the first order while it simultaneously scrambled troops from out-of-state in an attempt to skirt the expected restraining order:
Ordinarily, this Court would be inclined to accept Defendants’ explanation for their violation of the First TRO [temporary restraining order] given that “the first shift” at the Portland ICE facility commenced prior to this Court’s issuance of the First TRO. However, in light of the following facts, this Court is deeply troubled by Defendants’ continued deployment of Oregon National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility in violation of the First TRO. In the seven hours that Defendants took to “convey the message” of the First TRO “to people on the ground,” Defendants simultaneously “convey[ed] the message” to the U.S. Army Northern Command to send 200 of the federalized California National Guard personnel in Los Angeles to Portland. In other words, Defendants had time to order and coordinate the transport of federalized California National Guardsmen from Los Angeles to Portland but needed more time to communicate with the Oregon National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility.
The dissent to the Ninth Circuit opinion — combined with the administration’s attempt to circumvent the court order blocking deployment of Oregon National Guard troops by sending in a bunch of troops from other states — has resulted in a successful petition for an en banc hearing by Judge Susan Graber. That means the government is far less likely to see its bluster, outright lies, and end around plays entertained by a far more representative group of Ninth Circuit judges.
Furthermore, the alleged “escalation” cited by the Trump administration is simply a lie, as those who’ve been on the ground (Portland Police Bureau officials) have already (credibly, according to the court) testified:
Any riotous activity affecting the Portland ICE building peaked in June and had subsided for months before the President’s September 27, 2025 callout of the National Guard to Oregon. Regarding the nature of the crowd and its behavior, this Court finds the following. First, the size of the crowds decreased dramatically from June to September. Second, the number of officers briefly increased in response to the peak activity in mid-June, but it quickly subsided and remained at a low steady state until September 27, 2025. Third, the crowd was not directed by an organized group. Fourth, members of the crowd were rarely armed. Fifth and finally, the crowd’s shift in focus from the ICE building and the federal personnel in June to counter protester disputes in September demonstrates that much of the activity since mid-June had little to no effect on the ICE building and federal operations.
And these are things that were happening most of time, according to local law enforcement leaders:
From September 19 to September 28, immediately before the National Guard callout, there was “[n]othing much” going on outside the ICE building. Throughout the protests, PPB Commander Schoening testified that protesters wore “inflatable costumes.” Similarly, PPB Assistant Chief Dobson described “folks in costumes” at the ICE Facility, as well as “other almost festive-type events going on down there,” including “dance parties.”
Also: the government — the federal government, that is — can’t seem to stop lying:
To the extent that it lacks corroboration from other sources of evidence, the Court does not find reliable ICE/ERO Field Office Director Wamsley’s characterization of the damage to the Portland ICE Facility, which suggested damage was more extensive than that which is reflected in the rest of the record.
[…]
There is no credible evidence, however, that all the doors and windows of the ICE facility were broken. No other witness described damage to this degree, including Commander W.T., who was at the Portland ICE Facility every other week the entire summer. Additionally, Director Wamsley testified that she did not know whether there would be any photos of this damage or whether there was any documentation of the repair estimates.
It does it all the time, even when it has to know its lies will be exposed:
Furthermore, PPB reporting from June 14 show additional inconsistencies in the federal government’s version of events. PPB Captain Schoening’s activity log documented: “ICE calling saying they are barricaded in the building and fire lit. Difficult to get accurate information from them. What they say is happening is frequently contradicted by video feeds and subsequent activity. Air 1 shows no fire.” Also, shortly after they reported being barricaded, PPB observed an FPS employee exit a door and noted that FPS “ha[d] been using th[at] door regularly for employee ingress/egress. Th[at] door was reported earlier to be barricaded.”
You think that’s bad? Get ready for this one:
FPS [Federal Protective Services] reported a fire to PPB, but the “fire” turned out to be candles lit for a vigil set up by demonstrators.
In fact, most of the “violence” observed by federal officers was either unprovoked attacks by officers against protesters or instigated by Trump fans who rolled up on peaceful protests in hopes of picking a fight.
This Court finds that many reported disturbances at the ICE Facility after July 4 did not involve law enforcement at all. This Court also received evidence regarding disruptive behavior between individuals within the vicinity of the ICE building since June. Specifically, this Court received evidence regarding altercations between protesters and counter-protesters. Based on that evidence, this Court finds the following: Violence between protesters and counter-protesters occurred outside the Portland ICE building from June to September 27, 2025, but had, at most, a minimal effect on federal law enforcement’s protection of the building and federal personnel.
106 pages. Read it all. Lie after lie after lie from the administration and the small team of DOJ lawyers still willing to appease Trump, rather than seek justice:
As related to the time period immediately before the President’s callout of the National Guard, this Court heard testimony from FPS officers that PPB does not respond to their requests and that FPS stopped calling PPB altogether. The Court does not find this testimony to be credible.
[…]
The Court finds that there is no credible evidence that protest activities at the ICE facility created more than a minimal interference with Defendants’ ability to enforce Title 8 immigration laws in Portland. Director Wamsley testified herself that “altercations between protesters” do not “inhibit the execution of federal immigration law.”
There’s no “rebellion” happening here, the judge says, quoting the same law the administration is now abusing on a regular basis. There’s no concerted effort to seize control of federal property. There are no persistent attacks on federal or local law enforcement. There’s no organized group hoping to seize power. This is exactly the sort of thing this particular administration is incapable of handing: a persistent display of opposition that rarely, if ever, engages in the sort of behavior that might justify the deployment of military troops. The protesters are a fly the government can’t swat, whose mere existence is annoying enough the Commander-in-Chief and his immediate underlings have to constantly lie about to salvage their unconstitutional acts. And, despite all of their power, they’re losing this battle. Let’s see if the Ninth Circuit is willing to make this loss permanent.
America isn’t the land of the free. We abandoned that title when we returned Donald Trump to office — the same person who refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and, immediately upon his return to power, pardoned almost everyone who engaged in an attempted insurrection on his behalf.
The so-called “party of free speech” has repeatedly made it clear that the First Amendment means everyone should be subjected to their hateful speech, but will never be extended to those who oppose the current leadership and/or simply wish to document the evil acts of those currently in power.
The GOP’s extreme hypocrisy during both Trump administrations makes the usual hypocrisy expected of politicians look like a mostly-benign side effect of existing in a democratic republic. Under Trump, there’s nothing benign about the hypocrisy, which no longer contains even the minimum of plausible deniability we’ve come to expect from more competent, less bigoted politicians.
Activists, journalists, and the occasional opinionated college student have all been targeted for expressing their displeasure with this government and its policies. Turning ICE, DHS, and the DOJ into politicized weapons of administration vengeance has ensured maximum pain in return for acts that used to be considered protected by enshrined constitutional rights.
That’s no longer the case. Rights are now privileges under Trump, which means they’ll only protect people the GOP likes. For everyone else, there’s the constant threat of government retaliation — an act that has long been considered illegal by every federal court, but now is destined to become quasi-codified by a Supreme Court that is just as beholden to Trump as any of his Cabinet appointees.
This may be an exceedingly long preamble to the subject matter discussed in this post. But I don’t want any reader to skip over the reality of the current situation before they decide to start being bitchy and pedantic in the comment threads. This country is being destroyed from within by those “leading” it. These are the symptoms of deliberate internal rot. This isn’t just about some guy having his rights ignored and his life expectancy cut short by a deliberately cruel administration.
“The charges were dropped, yet he remains detained by Ice,” said José Zamora, the regional director for the Americas at the Committee to Protect Journalists, during a press conference on Tuesday morning at the Georgia capitol with Guevara’s attorneys and family. “Let’s be clear, Mario is being punished for his journalism. He is now the only journalist in prison in the US in direct retaliation for his reporting.”
The Trump administration learned only one thing from this blowback: to stock its prisons with more people in “direct retaliation” for “reporting,” ensuring Guevara could never be considered an anomaly. That it’s been unable to make these charges stick says more about the ridiculousness of its efforts than any belated recognition that locking up people for using their First Amendment rights might be a bad idea.
Guevara was placed in a detention center run by GEO Group, which has gone all starry-eyed now that ICE has billions of extra dollars to play with and needs more detainment facilities immediately from whatever government contractor is first to respond with literally any bid.
On top of that, Guevara’s phone was seized by federal officers, but as of the end of July, his legal reps had yet to see a warrant justifying its continued detention, much less any searches the government has most likely already performed.
Guevera’s case made the news, as was to be expected when the government arrests journalists (no matter their country of origin) for performing journalism. Just as predictably, the Trump administration has chosen to amp up the punishment of Mario Guevara because his very existence remains problematic for a government that occasionally has to pay lip service to long-held rights.
So, this is what the Trump administration has decided to do with El Salvadoran native Mario Guevara, who fled his country to avoid being imprisoned and tortured by local militia groups: under the cover of night, it has vanished him back to the land he fled, as The Guardian reports:
Guevara has been a media mainstay in the Atlanta area for about 20 years, after fleeing El Salvador to escape leftwing militias in 2004. Though he has a work permit and two of his children are American citizens, he has operated under the “administrative closure” of deportation orders for much of that time.
Immigration officials put him on a plane at 4am on Friday morning, family members said.
Guevara’s final destination is El Salvador, something that follows (as The Guardian reports puts it) the “longest imprisonment” of any reporter arrested for acts of journalism “in United States history.”
This latest act of betrayal of American ideals follows more than 100 days of detention, even though all criminal charges were dropped, leaving Guevara only with dubious claims about legal residency by ICE.
Speaking of ICE, immigration officers told Guevara this his documentation of public activities by public officials in public places was literally a threat to the US government in general.
Despite clearly identifying himself as press, Guevara was arrested by local law enforcement in June while reporting on a protest against the Trump administration near Atlanta. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) then took him into custody. Prosecutors quickly dropped the charges after confirming he was complying with law enforcement, and an immigration judge granted him bond. Immigration officials, however, refused to release him, claiming that livestreaming law enforcement activity makes him a threat.
This is, of course, the current administration’s stance on documenting any federal mass deportation activity. DHS and ICE have both issued statements about the supposed increasing threat to officers (mostly to justify the never-needed-before mask use by federal officers) and the DHS itself has issued guidance to other law enforcement agencies stating that filming law enforcement (itself a protected First Amendment activity) is a threatening act worthy of criminal charges.
Because Guevara managed to attract international attention with his unjustified arrest and lengthy detention, the government has decided to punish him by sending him back to the country he left because he feared for his life.
That’s extremely disheartening because it means shaming the government is no longer enough on its own to provoke change. Sure, plenty of governments decide to become even more vindictive when shamed, but that desire for revenge often results in mistakes that can be undone by federal courts. Now, it appears even the federal courts are powerless (because the Supreme Court is unwilling to oppose Trump) to right wrongs by forcing the government to pay for its mistakes.
This doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t be named and shamed for it being shitty on pretty much every conceivable level. It’s still worth doing, because every bit of exposure has the possibility to help. But we should temper our expectations for positive changes. That’s not meant to be defeatist. Every bit of resistance is worth the effort. If nothing else, we should not be deterred from documenting this rise of authoritarianism as it’s happening. The truth still needs to be told, even if those who find it inconvenient are doing all they can to erase it from the permanent record.
It’s probably too much to ask, but I hope California law enforcement agencies will remember who to direct their hate at if this bill becomes law. It’s not the “liberals” running the state. It’s the Trump administration and its mass deportation efforts. ICE and its actions have always been controversial, but it took a group of bigots serving non-consecutive terms to really unleash its inherent ugliness.
What we’ve been seeing since Trump’s return to office has been ICE and anti-brown people sentiment at its worst. ICE raids Home Deport parking lots, neighborhoods, and swap meets, rather than performing targeted arrests of truly dangerous undocumented immigrants. But this insistence on masking officers and hiding outward designations of their originating agency is something specifically tied to Trump’s second administration.
Lawmakers in California passed a bill on Thursday banning most local and federal law enforcement officers from covering their faces during operations, including immigration enforcement.
Senate Bill 627, known as the No Secret Police Act, was introduced by Democratic state Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Jesse Arreguin of Berkeley in June after immigration operations ramped up across the state as part of President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The bill will now head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for final approval.
The bill [PDF] opens up with the legislators’ refusal to allow law enforcement to take advantage of preexisting double-standard:
Existing law makes it a misdemeanor to wear a mask, false whiskers, or any personal disguise, as specified, with the purpose of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification while committing a public offense, or for concealment, flight, evasion, or escape from arrest or conviction for any public offense.
This bill would make it a crime for a law enforcement officer to wear a facial covering in the performance of their duties, except as specified. The bill would define law enforcement officer as anyone designated by California law as a peace officer who is employed by a city, county, or other local agency, and any officer or agent of a federal law enforcement agency or law enforcement agency of another state, or any person acting on behalf of a federal law enforcement agency or agency of another state. The bill would make a violation of these provisions punishable as an infraction or a misdemeanor, as specified. By creating a new crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
This won’t stop ICE and other federal officers from wearing masks while terrorizing the populace, of course. But it will at least prevent local law enforcement from blending in with Trump’s masked goon squads, which might discourage them from pitching in with questionable “round up all the brown people” raids performed by ICE and its federal partners.
Added to the bill are a lot of official legislative declarations — ones that point out the numerous problems created by officers who choose to disguise themselves when performing their public duties.
(a)[T]he routine use of facial coverings by law enforcement officers has significant implications for public perception, officer-community interactions, and accountability.
(b) Whether intentional intended or not, members of the public may experience fear or intimidation when approached by officers whose faces are obscured. This perception can heighten defensive behaviors and unnecessarily escalate situations.
(c) Facial coverings limit the visibility of facial expressions, which are essential components of nonverbal communication. In high-stress or emotionally charged interactions, the inability to read an officer’s expression may lead to misinterpretation of tone or intent, increasing the risk of conflict escalation.
(d) The visibility of an officer’s face is vital for promoting transparency, facilitating communication, and building trust between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.
(e) When officers are not readily identifiable, it increases the risk of impersonation by unauthorized individuals, which further undermines public trust, endangers public safety, and hinders legitimate law enforcement operations.
This exposes the lie that is used most frequently by law enforcement: that masking up makes officers “safer.” It doesn’t. It creates a ton of negative side effects, many of which endanger people on both sides of the law enforcement equation. What it definitely does not do is make officers “safer.”
On top of that, there’s the damage done to the public’s relationship with law enforcement, which has never been great. Destroying trust only takes a few self-serving actions by cops who’d rather have their power completely decoupled from any responsibility. Rebuilding this trust takes maximum effort and years of work — something almost no law enforcement agency (federal or local) is willing to do. So, the baseline is trust that has likely been irreparably damaged. And now, law enforcement seems to think the best way to do cop business is by destroying what little trust remains by dressing up like cartel death squads while enforcing civil laws pertaining to citizenship.
Cops will no doubt complain about this new mandate if it’s codified. Fuck them. They had all the time in the world to repair their relationship with the public. And if they’ve chosen to be more like ICE in its current iteration, they absolutely need to have this dubious privilege taken out of their hands.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem today announced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will waive age limits for new applicants so even more patriots will qualify to join ICE in its mission to arrest murderers, pedophiles, gang members, rapists, and other criminal illegal aliens from America’s streets.
All ICE law enforcement recruits will be required to go through medical screening, drug screening, and complete a physical fitness test.
“We are ENDING the age cap for ICE law enforcement,”said Secretary Noem. “Qualified candidates can now apply with no age limit. JOIN.ICE.GOV.”
Obviously, joining ICE doesn’t actually mean doing all the things listed above. ICE is no longer in the business of removing “murderers, pedophiles, gang members, and rapists” from the streets. If ICE limited itself only to foreigners who have committed serious crimes, it would have no one left to arrest.
And having no one left to arrest means it will never meet the standard set by the Trump administration, which apparently starts at 3,000 arrests per day. Complicating matters is the fact that Noem’s DHS has pretty much gutted the DHS’s investigative wing, which used to handle actual criminals like pedophiles before they were forced to join ICE in chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots.
Also notice the operative words being used in this DHS announcement: “age cap.” While the DHS may say some things about lowering minimum age for entry to 18, the real purpose of this revamp is to rope in a demographic that may be predisposed to casual racism and institutional bigotry.
Currently, ICE applicants must be 21 years old and no older than 37 or 40, depending on what position they are applying for.
In an interview with Fox & Friends, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said applicants could be as young as 18.
“We no longer have a cap on how old you can be or you can continue at age 18, sign up for ICE and join us and be a part of it. We’ll get you trained and ready to be equipped to go out on the streets and help protect families,” Noem said.
As is to be expected from someone who probably adheres to the “speak English or leave” mantra, Noem doesn’t seem capable of speaking intelligible English. Lord only knows what the phrase “you can continue at age 18” means since that’s presumably the new age range baseline for applicants.
As for the top end, the sky’s the limit, which means ICE is probably cranking out tons of LARGE PRINT employment applications in anticipation of the incoming surge of guys willing to hang up their golf clubs for a chance to pretend they’re Josh Brolin’s character in “Sicario.”
The ICE application suggest you must be fit and ready and assume personal responsibility for choosing such a “dangerous” job. But let’s not kid ourselves. Most of the action seen by ICE these days involves raiding businesses and standing around scratching their balls in the hallways of court buildings while waiting to arrest people showing up for their scheduled immigration hearings.
There’s not much danger out there for ICE, even if there have been [squints at spreadsheet] nearly 80 more alleged assaults on officers as compared to this same time frame in 2024. What might be a sticking point for new applicants is the insistence on masking, which is something most applicants probably got all shitty about back in 2020 because it made their noses and mouths a bit warmer when accosting retail employees forced to provide service to a nation of ungrateful assholes during a worldwide pandemic.
Masks are a thing at ICE, and that possibly even includes its lawyers. So, if you think this might impede the oxygen flow from the tank you’re pulling behind you, perhaps it’s time to settle back into retirement and your well-worn recliner, rather than think you’ve found an easy way to clear an extra $50k this year.
As Noem, the DHS, and ICE surely know, most of the youths are not seeking a job with the nation’s largest employer of kidnappers. This age thing only applies to the upper end of the age demographic — one that not only houses more active voters, but also more active bigots. And letting everyone know standards are being relaxed and showered with federal cash means ICE will certainly be attracting plenty of other people who have the same general physique of cops, but actually haven’t felt the need to engage in public service until it became clear they could be mean to minorities on main.
The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to expedite its ejection of anyone not white enough to be considered worthy of citizenship. ICE raids occur daily, performed by masked officers who look more like cartel thugs than US law enforcement officers.
The excuse for evoking a law last used to dump anyone looking vaguely Asian into US internment camps during World War II is this: the Venezuelan government is supposedly encouraging and financially supporting the export of Tren de Aragua gang members to the US for the apparent purpose of… well, no one really knows.
The Trump administration won’t speculate on the alleged goals of this (completely fake) foreign government operation. But it’s more than willing to speculate that literally anyone with tattoos who happens to be more brown than white is probably a gang member. If they’re not MS-13, they’re Tren de Aragua. Either way, they’re getting sent to foreign torture camps and/or war-torn nations the US government doesn’t feel threaten Israel enough to get directly involved.
While the courts have stepped in now and then to prevent this abuse of the Alien Enemies Act by the administration, the greater threat to its AEA-related hallucinations have been intelligence assessments generated by its own intelligence agencies. Every report to date has failed to find any evidence at alllinking Tren de Aragua (TdA) to the Venezuelan government.
The administration views these assessments as failures, not because they’re wrong, but because they don’t agree with the narrative being pushed by Trump and DHS head Kristi Noem. And when that happens, people who actually know what they’re doing get fired and replaced with yes men or — especially with DOGE in the mix — don’t get replaced at all.
That’s a big problem, especially for an agency literally named the “Department of HOMELAND SECURITY.” If you’re going to ignore Intel because it doesn’t fit the narrative, you’re actually making the homeland way less secure, as plenty of otherwise pro-Trump entities are making clear now that Kristi Noem has decided to ditch a DHS component that isn’t willing to say what she or Trump wants to hear.
Four major law enforcement groups are sounding the alarm in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about potential cuts to the intelligence-gathering arm of her agency.
The Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies (ASCIA), Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA) and National Fusion Center Association (NFCA) warn that any potential changes to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) current structure could have a negative ripple effect on state and local law enforcement.
This doesn’t sound great! Most cops and cop shops will vote conservative because the right wing never has anything bad to say about cops and is far more willing to help increase law enforcement budgets by consistently claiming it’s never been more dangerous to be an American or an American cop, no matter what crimes stats might actually say.
Occasionally though, cops do want to do their jobs. And this removal of I&A just because it won’t tell Trump what he wants to hear undercuts their ability to assess and defuse actual threats to national security. More cynically, shutting down this intelligence gathering wing of the DHS makes it a bit more difficult to treat anyone remotely “swarthy” as a potential criminal and makes it much harder to treat anti-police violence protesters as threats to the nation.
These concerns are not addressed at all by the DHS’s statement:
“DHS component leads have identified redundant positions and non-critical programs within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. The Department is actively working to identify other wasteful positions and programs that do not align with DHS’s mission to prioritize American safety and enforce our laws,” the spokesperson said.
This is, of course, just another lie. The real reason DHS’s I&A arm is being severed is because it contributes to reports that undermine administration narratives, like the TdA hallucination that currently serves as the sandy bedrock of Trump’s Alien Enemies Act revival.
This government is so transparently self-interested it should generate revulsion in any true American. Unfortunately, we don’t have as many of those in the United States as we may have previously thought, especially now that the government is removing thousands of people who love America more than those simply lucky enough to be born here in white skin. Too many of those people desire to be tread upon, having converted their Gadsden flags back into doormats now that Trump is back in office.
The Trump Administration’s constant escalation of its mass deportation programs now means ICE, CBP, and other federal agencies must come up with thousands of arrests a day. This never had anything to do with removing criminals from the country and, even if you once believed that might be the case, an unending string of raids by ICE has clearly demonstrated this is all about removing as many non-whites from the US as possible.
Keeping up with the administration’s body count demands means ICE has been forced to pull out all the stops. Fortunately for ICE, the administration is pitching in with the PULL ALL THE STOPS process, flooding the Los Angeles area with thousands of military troops and constantly expanding executive power to cover anything that might be challenged in court.
Everything is moving inland, which means the nation’s external borders no longer matter. Immigration via border crossings — both legal and illegal — has pretty much ground to a halt thanks to Trump’s antipathy towards (non-white) foreigners. That means all the action is now happening dozens, if not hundreds of miles from US borders.
And that action now includes the conversion of border crossing tech to field use, allowing ICE (and their federal partners) to bypass legal constraints that prevent government agents from demanding identification from any random person they happen to come across. Thanks to what is hopefully going to be a steady stream of government leaks, Joseph Cox and 404 Media are reporting/warning ICE is capable of identifying people even when those people aren’t legally obligated to show ID.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face by simply pointing a smartphone camera at them, according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. The underlying system used for the facial recognition component of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. Now, that system is being used inside the U.S. by ICE to identify people in the field.
[…]
“The Mobile Fortify App empowers users with real-time biometric identity verification capabilities utilizing contactless fingerprints and facial images captured by the camera on an ICE issued cell phone without a secondary collection device,” one of the emails, which was sent to all Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) personnel and seen by 404 Media, reads. ERO is the section of ICE specifically focused on deporting people.
An activist warning others of ICE activity may have been subjected to this tech during an extremely sketchy stop by a bunch of pissed off, masked federal officers. The driver of the car had his face captured by no less than four different officers, as this recording shows.
Of course, it’s impossible to tell from this angle whether the officers were using the Mobile Fortify app or whether they were just going to run the driver’s face through other facial recognition tech once they got back to the office. But the emails seen by 404 Media make it clear ICE has literally mobilized the facial recognition system CBP and Border Patrol use at border crossings to identify people.
One is the Traveler Verification Service, which runs facial images against images already collected by the CBP. The other is a bit more vague, which suggests images captured by the mobile app might be run through any number of contracted services, which include Clearview’s facial recognition tech, which ICE is currently paying $3 million a year to utilize.
The second is the Seizure and Apprehension Workflow. This is what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) describes as an “intelligence aggregator,” bringing together information related to searches and seizures.
“The app uses CBP’s Traveler Verification Service and the Seizure and Apprehension Workflow that contains the biometric gallery of individuals for whom CBP maintains derogatory information for facial recognition,” the email reads. The exact definition of derogatory information in this context is not clear but 404 Media has previously reported on a database that ICE uses to find “derogatory” speech online.
Both ICE and CBP refused to comment on the leaked email. And there’s no reason they would. To comment is to confirm the validity of the leak.
Even if you can ignore the inherent problems with facial recognition tech, especially when the source images are less than ideal, there’s no denying the nasty implications of this expansion of the border to cover anywhere ICE officers might be operating. Plenty of ICE raids have occurred hundreds of miles from the border. And even the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) is now wandering far inland to engage in operations that aren’t even remotely related to customs enforcement and/or border protection.
And, once again, the deployment of facial recognition tech against anyone ICE officers feel like aiming it at makes a mockery of legal protections US residents (legal or otherwise) are entitled to. The government is not allowed to just run around shouting “papers, please” to anyone they happen to encounter while doing its government work. A phone app that bypasses these protections is nothing more than an en masse rights violation, especially when government agents feel comfortable targeting people who are doing nothing more than simply existing where these agents are performing masked kidnappings and/or hassling people for performing the public duty of watching the watchers.
