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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

This is what a police state looks like

This is what a police state looks like

Masha Gessen writes: “It’s the unmarked cars,” a friend who grew up under an Argentine dictatorship said. He had watched the video of the Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction. In the video, which Khalil’s wife recorded, she asks for the names of the men in plainclothes who handcuffed her husband. “We don’t give our name,” one responds. “Can you please specify what agency is taking him?” she pleads. No response. We know now that Khalil was detained by Immigration…

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Trump’s Salvadoran Gulag

Trump’s Salvadoran Gulag

Adam Serwer writes: One thing that could be said about many—and possibly all—of the more than 100 men removed from the United States by the Trump administration under the archaic Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is that Donald Trump has been convicted of more crimes than they have. Trump, after all, was convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury of his peers in New York City for faking business records in order to cover up his hush-money payment to…

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Israel’s latest vision for Gaza has a name: Concentration camp

Israel’s latest vision for Gaza has a name: Concentration camp

Meron Rapoport reports: Two weeks ago, the right-wing Israeli journalist Yinon Magal posted the following on X: “This time, the IDF intends to evacuate all residents of the Gaza Strip to a new humanitarian zone that will be arranged for long-term stay, will be enclosed, and anyone entering it will first be checked to ensure they are not a terrorist. The IDF will not allow a rogue population to refuse evacuation this time. Anyone remaining outside the humanitarian zone will…

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Trump wants the Supreme Court to let him have black sites where migrants have no constitutional rights

Trump wants the Supreme Court to let him have black sites where migrants have no constitutional rights

Mark Joseph Stern writes: The Trump administration inadvertently revealed on Monday that it is attempting to trap Venezuelan migrants in a catch-22 that would effectively block them from challenging their deportation and detention in an El Salvador prison. In a court filing, the government acknowledged that it had deported at least one migrant to El Salvador due to an “administrative error”—but argued that the individual had no right to contest his imprisonment because he is in the custody of a “foreign sovereign.” This…

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All Americans should defend campus protesters

All Americans should defend campus protesters

Xochitl Gonzalez writes: One day this fall, while on campus at Brown University, I was met by two students—cellphones raised, cameras recording. They had spun off from a larger group protesting Brown’s decision not to divest from Israel. They recognized me as a trustee of the university and saw an opportunity to take me to task. They followed me for perhaps a block or two, calling me a hypocrite. For at least one of the students, the war in Gaza…

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Venezuelans sent to El Salvador’s most infamous prison: ‘You’re here because of your tattoos’

Venezuelans sent to El Salvador’s most infamous prison: ‘You’re here because of your tattoos’

Mother Jones reports: On Friday, March 14, Arturo Suárez Trejo called his wife, Nathali Sánchez, from an immigration detention center in Texas. Suárez, a 33-year-old native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained that his deportation flight had been delayed. He told his wife he would be home soon. Suárez did not want to go back to Venezuela. Still, there was at least a silver lining: In December, Sánchez had given birth to their daughter, Nahiara. Suárez would finally have a chance to…

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How American colleges are suppressing political dissent

How American colleges are suppressing political dissent

The New York Times reports: At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, someone splattered red paint on a statue honoring Benjamin Franklin, the school’s founder. Within hours, campus workers washed it off. But the university was eager to find the culprit. A pro-Palestinian group had claimed responsibility on social media. The university examined footage and identified a student’s cellphone number using data from the campus Wi-Fi near the statue at the time it was vandalized. Campus police obtained a search…

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British Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House

British Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House

Quakers in Britain: Quakers in Britain strongly condemned the violation of their place of worship which they say is a direct result of stricter protest laws removing virtually all routes to challenge the status quo. Just before 7.15pm more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Meeting House. They broke open the front door without warning or ringing the bell first, searching the whole building and arresting six women attending the meeting in a…

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‘We want to live’: Rage at Israel fuses with ire at Hamas as protests rock Gaza

‘We want to live’: Rage at Israel fuses with ire at Hamas as protests rock Gaza

Ruwaida Amer reports: For the past two days, Palestinians across the Gaza Strip have taken to the streets to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal onslaught and to Hamas’ rule of the territory. Beginning in the northern city of Beit Lahiya, demonstrations quickly spread to other parts of the enclave including Shuja’iyya in the north, Nuseirat and Deir Al-Balah in the center, and Khan Younis in the south. The protests are the largest since the war began, and the most…

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The disappearing of Rumeysa Ozturk is state-sponsored terrorism

The disappearing of Rumeysa Ozturk is state-sponsored terrorism

Will Bunch writes: You’ve probably seen something like this before — but only in a movie, and only in a film that was seeking to capture the horrors of daily life under Joseph Stalin at the peak of his 1930s purges across the USSR, or maybe a Gestapo thriller set in Nazi Germany. At 5:30 p.m. on a spring day on an urban residential street, a young woman in a bright white coat, hijab, and sneakers, engrossed in her mobile…

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U.S. to revoke legal status of more than a half-million migrants, urges them to self deport

U.S. to revoke legal status of more than a half-million migrants, urges them to self deport

CBS News reports: The Trump administration will be revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of Latin American and Haitian migrants welcomed into the U.S. under a Biden-era sponsorship process, urging them to self-deport or face arrest and removal by deportation agents. The termination of their work permits and deportation protections under an immigration authority known as parole will take effect in late April, 30 days after March 25, according to a notice posted by the federal government. The…

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I negotiated for Israeli prime ministers. Netanyahu is lying

I negotiated for Israeli prime ministers. Netanyahu is lying

Daniel Levy writes: It has taken less than two months for normal service to be resumed – a White House that is the plaything of the prime minister of a client state, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Having briefly flirted with leading the ‘ceasefire over war’ camp, the US is back to bombing Yemen, threatening Iran with military action, and undermining its own negotiations in the service of greenlighting Israel’s resumed bombing of Gaza. Trump has apparently been reminded who is the…

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Venezuelan migrant deportations based on conjecture instead of hard evidence

Venezuelan migrant deportations based on conjecture instead of hard evidence

Slate reports: After the Trump administration rounded up hundreds of Venezuelan migrants around the country—without notice or court hearings—and sent them off to a prison in El Salvador, we’re finally getting details on who was deported and why. And the more we learn, the more obvious it becomes why the government is so eager to expel these individuals without any semblance of due process. It claims that these men are terrorists by virtue of their alleged membership in the Tren…

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Israel’s return to war is a prelude to mass expulsion

Israel’s return to war is a prelude to mass expulsion

Ben Reiff writes: Two months after agreeing to a ceasefire deal that should have ended the war, Israel has resumed its bombardment of the Gaza Strip with an intensity that recalls the earliest days of the onslaught. Israeli airstrikes have killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more since the early hours of this morning, and the army has ordered thousands of residents of the towns and neighborhoods spanning the perimeter of the Strip to flee their homes. Israel has again fully sealed off Rafah…

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Arrest of immigrant-rights advocate is a ‘Putin-style persecution of political dissidents’

Arrest of immigrant-rights advocate is a ‘Putin-style persecution of political dissidents’

The New York Times reports: An undocumented woman in Denver who became a symbol of immigrant resistance during President Trump’s first term as she evaded deportation was arrested at work on Monday by federal immigration agents, her family and immigrant activists said. Jeanette Vizguerra, 53, had been on her break at a Target store near Denver when immigration agents took her into custody, said Jordan Garcia, an immigrant-rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee who has known Ms. Vizguerra…

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Trump said to ‘green-light’ renewal of Gaza strikes, killing over 400 Palestinians

Trump said to ‘green-light’ renewal of Gaza strikes, killing over 400 Palestinians

The Times of Israel reports: US President Donald Trump gave Israel a “green light” to renew military operations against Hamas in Gaza, US media reported Tuesday, as the international community lamented the collapse of the hostage-ceasefire deal. Trump made the decision after Hamas refused to release more hostages, an Israeli official was quoted as telling The Wall Street Journal. Israel let the US know that it was resuming strikes on Gaza before carrying them out, the official added, echoing other…

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