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Category: Law/Crime

ICEBlock: This iPhone app alerts users to nearby ICE sightings

ICEBlock: This iPhone app alerts users to nearby ICE sightings

CNN reports: Joshua Aaron has worked in and around the tech industry for around two decades. He built his first app — a blackjack game — at computer camp when he was 13. His newest app is designed for a very different purpose: to let users alert people nearby to sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their area. Aaron launched the platform, called ICEBlock, in early April after watching President Donald Trump’s administration begin its immigration crackdown. The…

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DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship

DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship

NPR reports: The Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship. Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes — and giving district attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online. The move is aimed at U.S. citizens who were not born in the country; according to data from 2023, close to 25 million immigrants…

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Three-time felon and star witness against Abrego García was due to be deported. Now he’s being freed

Three-time felon and star witness against Abrego García was due to be deported. Now he’s being freed

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration has agreed to release from prison a three-time felon who drunkenly fired shots in a Texas community and spare him from deportation in exchange for his cooperation in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, according to a review of court records and official testimony. Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally reentering the United States after having been deported. He also pleaded guilty to “deadly conduct”…

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Trump’s immigration arrests are seeing a wave of resistance

Trump’s immigration arrests are seeing a wave of resistance

HuffPost reports: Recent weeks have seen the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” program kick into overdrive. Militarized federal agents are working hard to meet the White House’s sky-high arrest quotas, and the number of people in immigration detention is surging past record highs. That means focusing even more on otherwise law-abiding people who happen to have irregular immigration statuses ― people who pay taxes, show up to court dates and check-ins, work hard to provide for their families, and followed previous administrations’ rules to apply for humanitarian protections. It also means interrogating people at swap…

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The Supreme Court aligns with Trump against the judiciary

The Supreme Court aligns with Trump against the judiciary

Ruth Marcus writes: The courts cannot protect us from President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional overreach. That is the terrifying lesson of Friday’s 6–3 Supreme Court ruling limiting the power of federal judges to issue broad orders blocking Trump’s policies from taking effect while the lawsuits challenging them make their way through the courts. The case, Trump v. CASA, involved one of the most blatantly unconstitutional of Trump’s orders: his bid to revoke, by executive fiat, the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship….

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The U.S. is about to embark on a terrifying experiment in mass statelessness

The U.S. is about to embark on a terrifying experiment in mass statelessness

Matt Watkins writes: Let’s say a child is born this year in El Paso, Texas. Her parents are undocumented but long-settled, working in construction and child care, respectively. They’ve lived in the United States for over a decade, pay taxes, raise their children, attend church, and volunteer at the elementary school. Their daughter arrives in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, 6 pounds and healthy, her name already chosen. A nurse congratulates the family and hands over an administrative…

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ICE detention centers are inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding

ICE detention centers are inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding

Wired reports: On April 28, a nurse at the Aurora ICE Processing Center near Denver called 911. A woman in custody, four months pregnant, had arrived at the facility’s medical unit, bleeding and in pain. As the staff rushed to get vitals, the dispatcher rattled off questions: How old was she? Was the pregnancy high risk? The nurse hesitated: “She just came to us three days ago.” On 911 audio obtained by WIRED, the dispatcher’s voice cuts in: “Is there…

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Experts view Trump’s call to end Netanyahu’s trial as an assault on judicial independence in Israel

Experts view Trump’s call to end Netanyahu’s trial as an assault on judicial independence in Israel

The Times of Israel reports: Pro-democracy activists, legal scholars, and non-governmental organizations on Thursday strongly criticized US President Donald Trump’s call for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial to be canceled, with some accusing the prime minister of actively having sought Trump’s intervention. And even the head of Republicans Overseas Israel rebuked the president for setting a precedent of US interference in Israel’s internal legal processes. Netanyahu’s criminal trial began in 2020. He is charged with the crime of fraud…

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Former Supreme Court Justice Kennedy warns ‘democracy is at risk’

Former Supreme Court Justice Kennedy warns ‘democracy is at risk’

Politico reports: Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy warned Thursday that acrimonious political discourse and threats to judges are eroding the ability of the United States to serve as an example of democracy worldwide. “Many in the rest of the world look to the United States to see what democracy is, to see what democracy ought to be,” Kennedy said during an online forum about threats to the rule of law. “If they see a hostile, fractious discourse, if they…

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Trump’s masked henchmen challenge local police, sowing fear across LA and the rest of America

Trump’s masked henchmen challenge local police, sowing fear across LA and the rest of America

The Los Angeles Times reports: Increasingly aggressive immigration raids carried out by masked federal agents, sometimes using unmarked vehicles, are creating problems for local law enforcement agencies. Police have little or no insight into where the federal enforcement actions are taking place but often have to deal with the aftermath, including protests and questions from residents about what exactly happened. In some cases, local cops have been mistaken for federal agents, eroding years of work to have immigrant communities trust…

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Emil Bove, now a federal court of appeals nominee, proposed defying court orders, former DOJ colleague says

Emil Bove, now a federal court of appeals nominee, proposed defying court orders, former DOJ colleague says

Politico reports: A top Justice Department official who has been nominated for a federal judgeship suggested to colleagues that the administration would defy court orders in order to carry out President Donald Trump’s aggressive plan for mass deportations, according to a whistleblower letter submitted by another attorney who was present. The official, Emil Bove, proposed ignoring court orders as administration lawyers strategized in March over expected legal challenges to the president’s plan to assert wartime powers to rapidly deport some…

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The Supreme Court just stripped thousands of immigrants of their right to due process

The Supreme Court just stripped thousands of immigrants of their right to due process

Ian Millhiser writes: In a short, one-paragraph order, the Republican justices ruled on Monday evening that President Donald Trump may effectively nullify a federal law and an international treaty that is supposed to protect immigrants from torture. The Court’s order in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. does not explain the GOP’s justices’ reasoning, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor responds to their silent decision in a 19-page dissent joined by her two Democratic colleagues. The Court’s order is only temporary, and…

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Why the Senate’s Byrd Rule could mean big trouble for Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

Why the Senate’s Byrd Rule could mean big trouble for Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

Time reports: She wasn’t elected and she doesn’t cast votes. But over the past week, Elizabeth MacDonough, the quietly powerful Senate parliamentarian, may have had more influence over Donald Trump’s legislative agenda than anyone else in Washington. After meeting with Republicans and Democrats behind closed doors, MacDonough in recent days has significantly shrunk the size of the President’s sweeping tax-and-spending package known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” by striking several measures that violated an arcane, decades-old Senate rule known…

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Provision in GOP tax bill that would threaten judicial power breaks Senate rules, says parliamentarian

Provision in GOP tax bill that would threaten judicial power breaks Senate rules, says parliamentarian

HuffPost reports: A provision in the GOP’s tax-and-spending bill that would make it nearly impossible for anyone to sue the Trump administration for breaking laws is on track to be stripped from the bill after the Senate parliamentarian said it violates the chamber’s rules. This provision, which is in Senate Republicans’ version of the One Big Beautiful Act, would require anyone seeking an emergency court order ― that is, a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction ― against the…

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‘It felt like kidnapping,’ Mahmoud Khalil says in first interview after release

‘It felt like kidnapping,’ Mahmoud Khalil says in first interview after release

The New York Times reports: Mahmoud Khalil sat in a Manhattan apartment dotted with posters and signs calling for his freedom and described the moment 105 days before when plainclothes immigration agents had handcuffed him in the building lobby. “All the ‘Know Your Rights’ information and fliers I read and familiarized myself with were useless,” Mr. Khalil said. “There are no rights in such situations.” “It felt like kidnapping,” he said. Mr. Khalil, a 30-year-old Columbia University graduate and U.S….

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The people being disappeared by ICE in Los Angeles

The people being disappeared by ICE in Los Angeles

Emily Witt writes: On Tuesday, June 17th, Nancy Urizar was at her job working in the fund-raising department of a Jesuit boys’ high school in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts when her phone rang. “It was just a normal day for me,” she said. “It was twelve, and I had just come back from lunch.” On the other end of the line was her father’s landlord. Some friends of her dad’s had come over, the landlord told her, and…

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