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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Political prosecution of Kat Abughazaleh: ‘Today it’s Kat. Tomorrow it could be any one of us’

Political prosecution of Kat Abughazaleh: ‘Today it’s Kat. Tomorrow it could be any one of us’

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice. This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win. pic.twitter.com/szOSZa1h3z — Kat Abughazaleh (@KatAbughazaleh) October 29, 2025 Evanston Now reports: The indictment charges all six individuals, including an Oak Park trustee, a Democratic committeeperson from Chicago and a Cook County Board candidate, with impeding a federal officer stemming from the Sept. 26 incident….

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ICE wants Texas to become the backbone of a private industrialized deportation machine

ICE wants Texas to become the backbone of a private industrialized deportation machine

Wired reports: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is exploring plans to launch a privately-run, statewide transportation system in Texas. The agency envisions a nonstop operation, funneling immigrants detained in 254 counties into ICE facilities and staging locations across the state. Early planning documents reviewed by WIRED describe a statewide transport grid designed for steady detainee transfers across Texas, with ICE estimating each trip to average 100 miles. Every county would have its own small, around-the-clock team of contractors collecting immigrants…

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ICE agent assaults woman who asked if he’s a good Christian

ICE agent assaults woman who asked if he’s a good Christian

  HuffPost reports: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers forcibly detained a father and his two children in southwest Colorado on Monday while they were on their way to middle school, sparking a mass protest outside the agency’s Durango field office in an effort to get the kids released back to their mom. Video from the protest outside the facility shows masked and unidentified federal officers tear-gassing protesters on Tuesday afternoon as they stood in the street and attempted to…

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Judge orders Bovino not to terrorize children on Halloween and orders him to report to her court daily

Judge orders Bovino not to terrorize children on Halloween and orders him to report to her court daily

Chicago Sun-Times reports: U.S. Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino appeared at Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Tuesday for a preliminary injunction hearing as part of an ongoing lawsuit over the feds’ treatment of protesters during the ongoing immigration blitz. Bovino agreed to return to U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis courtroom every weekday at 6 p.m. to give her updates until a Nov. 5 preliminary hearing on the case. Mayor Brandon Johnson called U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino a “barbaric…

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ICE’s hiring surge is already a disaster

ICE’s hiring surge is already a disaster

Garrett Graff writes: [I]t turns out, if you’re hiring for a pariah agency using nakedly fascist and racist messaging and recruiting for a job where you get to be jeered by your neighbors and are so hated that you literally refuse to show your face, and trying to attract people who will get excited to cos-play as a Navy SEAL in full tactical gear to dress up like you’re taking Fallujah while facing down people in inflatable frog costumes and…

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Border Patrol’s Bovino seen as role model for ICE following leadership purge

Border Patrol’s Bovino seen as role model for ICE following leadership purge

Washington Examiner reports: The Trump administration has begun to purge Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in offices in five major U.S. cities and fill some of those top posts with senior Border Patrol agents who will take over interior immigration enforcement in those regions, according to five sources familiar with the plans. ICE leaders in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego were relieved of their jobs and moved to other posts within the federal agency last Friday, the…

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This county was the ‘model’ for local police carrying out immigration raids. It ended in civil rights violations

This county was the ‘model’ for local police carrying out immigration raids. It ended in civil rights violations

By Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria This story was originally published by ProPublica Manuel Nieto Jr. and his sister had just pulled into a gas station to buy cigarettes and Gatorade when he noticed a sheriff’s deputy standing over two Latino men on the ground. Their north Phoenix neighborhood was on alert. Sheriff’s deputies had been targeting day-labor centers in the area and making traffic stops — arresting people who couldn’t prove their immigration status. They had one thing in common:…

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As Palestinians agree to let technocrat committee run Gaza, an appeal for Marwan Barghouti’s release

As Palestinians agree to let technocrat committee run Gaza, an appeal for Marwan Barghouti’s release

The Guardian reports: The main Palestinian factions have said they have agreed that an independent committee of technocrats would take over the running of Gaza after Hamas said it had received “clear guarantees” from mediators that “the war has effectively ended”. A joint statement published on the Hamas website said the groups had agreed in a meeting in Cairo to hand “over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent ‘technocrats’, which will manage…

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‘We estimate that nearly one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed’

‘We estimate that nearly one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed’

Mohamed Suleiman writes: The last time Hajj Suleiman Abdel-Nabi witnessed a normal olive harvest was three years ago. Days before the “ceasefire” went into effect on October 10, the 75-year-old farmer took a saw to what remains of his three-dunam (about three quarters of an acre) olive farm in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi area. Alongside the massive destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure wrought by Israel’s two-year war on Gaza, the toll on agriculture and farmland in the enclave has been…

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Robert Malley talks about the Gaza ceasefire and U.S. double standards on Israel

Robert Malley talks about the Gaza ceasefire and U.S. double standards on Israel

  For more on the state of the Gaza ceasefire and the future of Palestine, we speak with Robert Malley, co-author with Hussein Agha of the new book Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. Malley is a veteran negotiator involved in previous U.S.-backed peace talks between Israel and Palestinian leadership. He says despite the many flaws in the Trump plan, including “deciding everything for Palestinians without Palestinians having a voice,” it has at least…

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What happened in Gaza is far worse than many Americans want to believe

What happened in Gaza is far worse than many Americans want to believe

Lydia Polgreen writes: For many Americans, there might be a temptation to disbelieve the enormity of what has happened in Gaza. After all, it is a catastrophe funded by our money, made possible by our weapons, condoned by our government and carried out by one of our closest allies. It’s little wonder that some want to downplay the damage. Their defense is to cast doubt on the numbers. It goes something like this: The death toll, counted by the Hamas-run…

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Prominent Jews across the globe call on UN and world leaders to sanction Israel

Prominent Jews across the globe call on UN and world leaders to sanction Israel

The Guardian reports: Prominent Jewish figures around the world are calling on the United Nations and world leaders to impose sanctions on Israel over what they describe as “unconscionable” actions amounting to genocide in Gaza. Over 450 signatories, including former Israeli officials, Oscar winners, authors and intellectuals have signed an open letter demanding accountability over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The letter’s release comes as EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday amid reports…

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Federal thugs head to San Francisco Bay Area to incite ‘backlash, chaos and violence.’ Don’t be baited

Federal thugs head to San Francisco Bay Area to incite ‘backlash, chaos and violence.’ Don’t be baited

San Francisco Chronicle reports: The Trump administration has dispatched more than 100 federal agents, including from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to Coast Guard Base Alameda and they will begin to arrive Thursday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and a source familiar with the operation. The surge of federal agents was seen as a likely precursor to President Donald Trump deploying National Guard troops to San Francisco. In other cities around the nation, the administration has increased immigration enforcement…

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‘Access to good food should be a universal right’

‘Access to good food should be a universal right’

Hannah Goldfield writes: One morning in late September, the writer and former Times columnist Mark Bittman walked into the Lower East Side Girls Club, a rec center in Alphabet City and the site of what would become, in less than eight hours, his first restaurant. At 6 P.M., an inaugural group of guests would arrive for the soft opening of Community Kitchen, a not-for-profit fine-dining experiment that Bittman spent years concocting, and which had found a home—for the next few…

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Stephen Miller is directing Trump’s war on drug boats

Stephen Miller is directing Trump’s war on drug boats

Jonathan Blitzer writes: Late this summer, James Story, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela for three years of Donald Trump’s first term and for two of Joe Biden’s, felt that anything was possible in the relationship between Washington and Caracas. It had been six years since the U.S. closed its Embassy in Venezuela, to protest the rule of the Socialist authoritarian Nicolás Maduro. The issue of how to dislodge Maduro’s regime has been an American political conundrum for at…

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‘We come offering bread and prayer, hope for justice and healing — we leave washing pepper spray out of each other’s eyes’

‘We come offering bread and prayer, hope for justice and healing — we leave washing pepper spray out of each other’s eyes’

Religion News Service reports: Last Friday (Oct. 17), the Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist minister in the Chicago area, stood alongside other protesters demonstrating outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Illinois. As a line of Illinois State Police began marching toward her and other demonstrators, gripping wooden batons, footage shows the pastor with her hands raised in prayer. Officers then pushed into the protesters, forcing them back. One officer shifted his stance, reared back and…

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