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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

‘I lost everything’: Venezuelans were rounded up in a dramatic midnight raid but never charged with a crime

‘I lost everything’: Venezuelans were rounded up in a dramatic midnight raid but never charged with a crime

By Melissa Sanchez, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella and Mariam Elba This story was originally published by ProPublica On the night of the raid, heavily armed federal agents zip-tied Jhonny Manuel Caicedo Fereira’s hands behind his back, marched him out of his Chicago apartment building and put him against a wall to question him. As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited…

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How the shutdown of USAID has already killed hundreds of thousands of people

How the shutdown of USAID has already killed hundreds of thousands of people

  Atul Gawande writes: It was January, my final week in the outgoing Administration. In a few days, Donald Trump would be inaugurated as President. I had come to the United States Agency for International Development in early 2022, leaving my surgery practice and public-health research in Boston to lead the agency’s global-health efforts. Now I’d be returning to my previous life. I spent my last days at U.S.A.I.D. in meetings with our civil- and foreign-service leaders, thanking them. Their…

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Bovino’s ‘American Gestapo’ expected to leave Chicago this week

Bovino’s ‘American Gestapo’ expected to leave Chicago this week

Chicago Tribune reports: Federal immigration agents part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” may soon leave Chicago, according to multiple sources who said the controversial mission was rapidly winding down after a contentious two months of enforcement raids that have set the city and suburbs on edge. Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, the top official on the ground leading the Trump administration’s efforts, was expected to depart Chicago for another assignment within days, and most of the Border Patrol agents under…

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Documents cast doubt on the viability of Trump’s Gaza peace initiative

Documents cast doubt on the viability of Trump’s Gaza peace initiative

Politico reports: Some Trump administration officials are deeply concerned that the Gaza peace deal between Israel and Hamas could break down because of the difficulty implementing many of its core provisions, as private documents obtained by POLITICO and circulating among U.S. officials underscore the lack of a clear path forward. The compendium of documents was presented last month during a two-day symposium of a few hundred people for U.S. Central Command and members of the newly created Civil-Military Coordination Center,…

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Israeli soldiers speak out on killings of Gaza civilians

Israeli soldiers speak out on killings of Gaza civilians

The Guardian reports: Israeli soldiers have described a free-for-all in Gaza and a breakdown in norms and legal constraints, with civilians killed at the whim of individual officers, according to testimony in a TV documentary. “If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” Daniel, the commander of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank unit, says in Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, due to be broadcast in the UK on ITV on Monday evening. Some of the IDF soldiers who…

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Hearings that can last less than two minutes for hundreds of thousands of anonymous deportees

Hearings that can last less than two minutes for hundreds of thousands of anonymous deportees

Caitlin Dickerson writes: One morning in March, as ICE was building momentum in carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign, dozens of people who had recently been detained throughout Virginia were being rushed through preliminary hearings. The government was using Zoom to save time, so Judge Karen Donoso Stevens sat in a mostly empty courtroom, adjourning some proceedings in less than two minutes each. Donoso Stevens yelled at a man to “stop talking!” while his own case was being heard…

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‘Mega detention centers’: ICE considers buying large warehouses to hold immigrants

‘Mega detention centers’: ICE considers buying large warehouses to hold immigrants

NBC News reports: The Trump administration is exploring buying warehouses that were designed for clients like Amazon and retrofitting them as detention facilities for immigrants before they are deported, a move that would vastly expand the government’s detention capacity, according to a Homeland Security Department official and a White House official. The precise warehouses that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may buy have not yet been determined, but the agency is looking at locations in the southern U.S. near airports where…

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Federal officials ban religious gatherings in front of the Broadview ICE facility

Federal officials ban religious gatherings in front of the Broadview ICE facility

Block Club Chicago reports: Federal authorities told demonstrators Friday that there would be “no more prayer” in front of or inside the Broadview ICE facility, in a move that mystified local leaders and raised legal questions. A federal representative delivered the news to a huddle of faith leaders and activists standing outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility Friday, speaking after faith leaders were denied entry to the building for the third time Friday. Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills, whose…

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Accounts from the men that Trump sent to El Salvador where they were tortured

Accounts from the men that Trump sent to El Salvador where they were tortured

The New York Times reports: They said they were shackled, beaten, shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed until they passed out. They said they were punished in a dark room called the island, where they were trampled, kicked and forced to kneel for hours. One man said officers thrust his head into a tank of water to simulate drowning. Another said he was forced to perform oral sex on guards wearing hoods. They said they were told by officials…

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ICE is sending a chill through the construction industry

ICE is sending a chill through the construction industry

NPR reports: As cars and trucks zoom by, Rurick Palomino points to the underside of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge that spans the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., where his crew of about 30 workers is doing demolition work and pouring concrete as part of a $128 million federally-funded refurbishment. A Peruvian immigrant who came to the United States 25 years ago, Palomino — a U.S. citizen — built his construction firm from scratch after earning an engineering degree and learning…

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Israeli military lawyers warned there was evidence of Gaza war crimes, former U.S. officials say

Israeli military lawyers warned there was evidence of Gaza war crimes, former U.S. officials say

Reuters reports: The U.S. gathered intelligence last year that Israel’s military lawyers warned there was evidence that could support war crimes charges against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza – operations reliant on American-supplied weapons, five former U.S. officials said. The previously unreported intelligence, described by the former officials as among the most startling shared with top U.S. policymakers during the war, pointed to doubts within the Israeli military about the legality of its tactics that contrasted sharply with…

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ICE is repeatedly arresting American citizens — and lying about it

ICE is repeatedly arresting American citizens — and lying about it

Harry Litman writes: A recent report from ProPublica documents the detentions of some 170 American citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during its anti-immigration operations. But the implications of the report go considerably further, suggesting an agency completely out of control and flouting the Fourth Amendment at every turn. The report is a harrowing demonstration of ICE overreach. It puts the lie to the declaration of the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson that “we don’t arrest U.S. citizens for immigration…

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Pope Leo, speaking in support of immigrants, offers his strongest criticism of Trump so far

Pope Leo, speaking in support of immigrants, offers his strongest criticism of Trump so far

BBC News reports: Pope Leo has called for “deep reflection” on how migrants are treated in the United States, where he said many people were deeply affected by the controversial policy of mass deportation. In some of his strongest criticism to date of President Donald Trump’s administration, the first ever US-born pope also warned that the US bombing of Venezuelan ships, suspected of carrying drugs, risked increasing tensions in the region. Emerging to address a bank of TV cameras outside…

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Sean Dunn, also known as ‘sandwich guy,’ found not guilty of assault

Sean Dunn, also known as ‘sandwich guy,’ found not guilty of assault

  The Associated Press reports: A former Justice Department employee who threw a sandwich at a federal agent during President Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington was found not guilty of assault on Thursday in the latest legal rebuke of the federal intervention. A viral video of the sandwich tossing made Sean Charles Dunn a symbol of resistance to Trump’s deployment of federal agents to combat crime in the nation’s capital. His misdemeanor acquittal is another setback for prosecutors,…

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‘Strung up and tortured’: Elizabeth Tsurkov recounts 2 ½ years being held hostage in Iraq

‘Strung up and tortured’: Elizabeth Tsurkov recounts 2 ½ years being held hostage in Iraq

The New York Times reports: They handcuffed her, hung her up from the ceiling and beat her senseless. They shocked her with electricity and forced her into positions that injured her back and shoulders. When she lost consciousness, they threw water on her face to wake her so the torture could resume. Elizabeth Tsurkov endured two and a half years of captivity in Iraq, held in solitary confinement by an Iran-backed militia. Ms. Tsurkov, 38, said it was a marathon…

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‘I have papers’: Child care worker detained by ICE officers inside a Chicago day care

‘I have papers’: Child care worker detained by ICE officers inside a Chicago day care

  The 19th reports: As parents dropped their children inside a Spanish immersion day care in Chicago Wednesday morning, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers stormed the building to detain a child care worker, a scene that before this year would have been unheard of in the United States. Child care centers were previously protected under a “sensitive locations” directive that advised ICE to not conduct enforcement in places like schools and day cares. But President Donald Trump removed that…

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