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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Trump has detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen children

Trump has detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen children

By Jeff Ernsthausen, Mario Ariza, McKenzie Funk, Mica Rosenberg and Gabriel Sandoval This story was originally published by ProPublica The baby needed somewhere to go. So in the frantic hours before officers took her parents away to immigration detention, her mom turned to their pastor and his wife. As squad cars waited outside the family’s Lakeland, Florida, trailer home, she gave them a crash course in how to care for the 4-month-old. Briany, with her plump cheeks and full head…

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Cesar Chavez can no longer be called heroic. But the movement he led can be

Cesar Chavez can no longer be called heroic. But the movement he led can be

Geraldo L. Cadava writes: For many Latinos, Cesar Chavez seemed like a saint. There have in fact been efforts to canonize him. I lived in Los Angeles for a summer when I was an undergraduate, and I frequently drove down Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. Just about every institution I’ve belonged to has named something after him. In Tucson, I’ve met with University of Arizona professors in the Cesar E. Chavez Building. At Northwestern, where I am now a professor, a…

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New data shows where ICE has been most active this year

New data shows where ICE has been most active this year

The New York Times reports: The pace of ICE arrests nationwide has topped 1,100 per day on average in 2026, far higher than the rate last spring of roughly 600 arrests per day, despite a slight dip in recent weeks. New data analyzed by The New York Times reveals that the pace of these arrests has varied across the country in sometimes surprising ways. Some places that did not have high-profile ICE operations this year, such as Florida and San…

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Twin Cities residents to receive Profile in Courage Award from John F. Kennedy Library Foundation

Twin Cities residents to receive Profile in Courage Award from John F. Kennedy Library Foundation

MPR News reports: The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation announced Thursday that it’s awarding one of its 2026 Profile in Courage Awards to the “people of the Twin Cities of Minnesota” for their actions during the federal immigration enforcement surge. The foundation said it chose to honor Twin Cities residents “for risking their lives to protect their neighbors and immigrant community members from an unprecedented federal law enforcement operation, peacefully defending the human rights and values that serve as the…

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Duplicity: Israel publicly encourages Iranians to rise up but privately assesses they’ll be ‘slaughtered’

Duplicity: Israel publicly encourages Iranians to rise up but privately assesses they’ll be ‘slaughtered’

The Washington Post reports: Senior Israeli officials have told U.S. diplomats that Iranian protesters will “get slaughtered” if they take to the streets against their government even as Israel publicly calls for a popular uprising, according to a State Department cable reviewed by The Washington Post. The cable, circulated by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Friday, relayed an Israeli assessment that Iran’s regime is “not cracking” and is willing to “fight to the end” despite the Feb. 28 killing…

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Deportees sent by Trump to infamous Salvadoran megaprison are still stuck a year later

Deportees sent by Trump to infamous Salvadoran megaprison are still stuck a year later

The Washington Post reports: Brandon Sigaran Cruz was only 9 when his parents brought him and his brother to the United States, far away from the gangs recruiting young boys in the elementary schools of El Salvador. The next time he set foot in his native country was more than a decade later, on March 15 of last year, when the Trump administration deported the 21-year-old alongside more than 260 migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, an…

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War has already displaced nearly a million Lebanese, and aid groups warn of a humanitarian crisis

War has already displaced nearly a million Lebanese, and aid groups warn of a humanitarian crisis

The Associated Press reports: Fatima Nazha slept on the street for two days after she and her family fled their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs following an Israeli mass evacuation order. All of the schools the government turned into shelters were full, and the family couldn’t afford a hotel or an apartment, so she and her husband eventually moved into a tent in the country’s biggest stadium while their kids and grandchildren found shelter near the southern coastal city of…

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Trump’s secret police

Trump’s secret police

Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf write: Since the Pendleton Act of 1883, the U.S. federal government has rested on a simple promise: professionalism, merit-based recruitment, independent oversight. Over time, U.S. federal law enforcement became a global reference point—effective, technically sophisticated, built to serve the law rather than a leader. And it traveled. For decades, officers from across the world sought training through U.S. programs such as the FBI’s National Academy and the Justice Department’s ICITAP. Now that model is collapsing…

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Trump’s concentration camps

Trump’s concentration camps

Tim Dickinson writes: Donald Trump’s brutal ICE detention facilities have been blasted as “concentration camps.” This is a freighted term — summoning more than a century of deplorable history. But experts in the field have no hesitation in using these words to describe the network of facilities that the federal government is using to literally warehouse tens of thousands of immigrants — men, women, and even children — snatched out of their communities by masked federal agents. The activist group…

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Former Jimmy Kimmel writer, Bess Kalb: ‘I thought we were entering a new golden age of free speech’

Former Jimmy Kimmel writer, Bess Kalb: ‘I thought we were entering a new golden age of free speech’

  Bess Kalb testified before the House Judiciary Committee on February 23: I am a comedy writer, I wrote for Jimmy Kimmel Live for eight years, and I am an author who recently got back from a national tour for my picture book series, Buffalo Fluffalo. So the fact that I am sitting here in a navy blue business suit in the capitol building at a hearing about the First Amendment means something has gone very, very wrong. I gotta…

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Americans’ sympathies have shifted dramatically away from Israelis in favor of Palestinians, poll shows

Americans’ sympathies have shifted dramatically away from Israelis in favor of Palestinians, poll shows

The Associated Press reports: American sympathies in the Middle East have shifted dramatically toward the Palestinians, according to new Gallup polling, after decades of overwhelming support for the Israelis. That shift accelerated during the war in Gaza. Three years ago, 54% of Americans sympathized more with the Israelis, compared to 31% for the Palestinians. Now, their support is about evenly balanced, with 41% saying their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, and only 36% saying the same about the Israelis….

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Jailed for ‘standing up’: DHS assault victim Aliya Rahman arrested at State of the Union address

Jailed for ‘standing up’: DHS assault victim Aliya Rahman arrested at State of the Union address

  We speak with Minneapolis resident Aliya Rahman, who attended Tuesday’s State of the Union address as a guest of Congressmember Ilhan Omar. Rahman was removed from the chamber Tuesday and spent several hours in jail following what she describes as an aggressive arrest by Capitol Police — all for silently challenging Trump during the speech. “There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up,” says Rahman….

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DHS assault victim Aliya Rahman arrested at State of the Union address

DHS assault victim Aliya Rahman arrested at State of the Union address

  We speak with Minneapolis resident Aliya Rahman, who attended Tuesday’s State of the Union address as a guest of Congressmember Ilhan Omar. Rahman was removed from the chamber Tuesday and spent several hours in jail following what she describes as an aggressive arrest by Capitol Police — all for silently challenging Trump during the speech. “There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up,” says Rahman….

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Your car’s tire sensors could be used to track you

Your car’s tire sensors could be used to track you

TechXplore reports: Researchers at IMDEA Networks Institute, together with European partners, have found that tire pressure sensors in modern cars can unintentionally expose drivers to tracking. Over a ten-week study, they collected signals from more than 20,000 vehicles, revealing a hidden privacy risk and highlighting the need for stronger security measures in future vehicle sensor systems. Most modern cars are equipped with a Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS), mandatory since the late 2000s in many countries for their contribution to…

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Elon Musk’s destruction of USAID has left massive death and destruction in its wake

Elon Musk’s destruction of USAID has left massive death and destruction in its wake

Bill McKay writes: This decade has seen the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in violent conflicts: in the Tigray War in Ethiopia, in civil war in Myanmar, in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and most recently in the RSF massacres in the Sudanese city of Al-Fashir, to name just a few. Yet the largest act of mass murder of this decade, and of this century so far, was not…

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With foreign backing, Israel’s solar energy boom is powering apartheid

With foreign backing, Israel’s solar energy boom is powering apartheid

Sofia Fani Gutman, Carolina Pedrazzi and Andrey X report: “How do you charge your phones?” we asked. “With the sun,” Ahmad replied, nodding toward the small cluster of solar panels behind him. For 47 years, the tiny hamlet of Naba’a Al-Ghazzal, part of the community of Al-Farsiya, has survived on the northern edge of the Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Home to around 20 members of the Daraghmeh family — including Ahmad, the community’s informal leader — all…

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