DHS hires social media propagandist who promotes white supremacism

DHS hires social media propagandist who promotes white supremacism

The New York Times reports: The Department of Homeland Security has hired a social media manager from the Department of Labor for a key communications job, despite posts he made on Labor Department media accounts that raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging. Peyton Rollins, 21, was hired this month to help run Homeland Security’s social media accounts, which have become public bullhorns for President Trump’s mass-deportation efforts and come under scrutiny of their own for appealing to right-wing extremists….

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El Paso airspace shut down after Pentagon deployed high-energy laser to shoot down a party balloon

El Paso airspace shut down after Pentagon deployed high-energy laser to shoot down a party balloon

CBS News reports: The unexpected but brief airspace closure in the Texas border city of El Paso stemmed from disagreements between the Federal Aviation Administration and Pentagon officials over drone-related tests, multiple sources close to the matter told CBS News. The Pentagon had undertaken extensive planning on the use of military technology near Fort Bliss, a military base that abuts the El Paso International Airport, to practice taking down drones. Two sources identified the technology as a high-energy laser. Meetings…

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Nature’s ‘engine is grinding to a halt’ as climate change gains pace, says study

Nature’s ‘engine is grinding to a halt’ as climate change gains pace, says study

Phys.org reports: Many ecologists hypothesize that, as global warming accelerates, change in nature must speed up. They assume that as temperatures rise and climatic zones shift, species will face local extinction and colonize new habitats at an ever-increasing rate, leading to a rapid reshuffling of ecological communities. A new study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and published in Nature Communications shows this is emphatically not the case. The researchers analyzed a massive database of biodiversity surveys,…

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Trump allies near ‘total victory’ in wiping out U.S. climate regulation

Trump allies near ‘total victory’ in wiping out U.S. climate regulation

The New York Times reports: In the summer of 2022, Democrats in Congress were racing to pass the biggest climate law in the country’s history and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declaring that global warming posed a “clear and present danger” to the United States. But behind the scenes, four Trump administration veterans were plotting to obliterate federal climate efforts once Republicans regained control in Washington, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with more…

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Working for ICE is actually less dangerous than being an elementary school student in America

Working for ICE is actually less dangerous than being an elementary school student in America

Garrett Graff writes: This week, Congress is debating what reform might be acceptable for the masked fascist secret police currently occupying major American cities in Democratic-run states — a supposedly civilian law enforcement agency that, in any other country, US journalists wouldn’t hesitate to label breezily “a right-wing paramilitary militia loyal to the regime that is staging a terror campaign against separatist regions led by key figures of the political opposition.” Today, the leaders of ICE and CBP will be…

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Immigrants who say their detention is illegal have filed more than 18,000 cases. It’s a historic high

Immigrants who say their detention is illegal have filed more than 18,000 cases. It’s a historic high

By Pratheek Rebala and Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica, and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune This story was originally published by ProPublica The Trump administration’s push for mass deportations has resulted in more than 18,000 challenges in federal court from immigrants claiming their detention is illegal, more than were filed under the last three administrations combined — including President Donald Trump’s first term. So far this year, immigrants are filing on average more than 200 of these cases, known as…

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ICE plans to lease offices throughout the U.S. as part of a secret, monthslong expansion campaign

ICE plans to lease offices throughout the U.S. as part of a secret, monthslong expansion campaign

Wired reports: Federal records obtained by WIRED show that over the past several months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have carried out a secret campaign to expand ICE’s physical presence across the US. Documents show that more than 150 leases and office expansions have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas. In many cases, these facilities, which are…

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ICE List: the small European website identifying immigration agents

ICE List: the small European website identifying immigration agents

The Guardian reports: It started as a cheeky response on social media to the US secretary for homeland security. Months later, however, a Europe-based project to unmask US immigration and custom enforcement (ICE) agents has racked up millions of views and mobilised hundreds of volunteers. “What we’re doing is a reaction to a problematic regime,” said Dominick Skinner, the Netherlands-based Irish national behind the website ICE List, of its mission to remove the anonymity that many of the armed federal…

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Immigration judge says Trump administration cannot deport Tufts student

Immigration judge says Trump administration cannot deport Tufts student

The New York Times reports: An immigration judge has found there were no grounds to deport a Turkish graduate student whose arrest by masked agents last year was an early salvo in the Trump Administration’s crackdown on migrants. The decision by the judge, Roopal Patel, came last month and was disclosed in federal court by lawyers for the student, Rumeysa Ozturk, this week. It effectively means that the government has no legal justification to deport Ms. Ozturk, a graduate student…

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Immigration raids in South Texas are starting to hit the economy

Immigration raids in South Texas are starting to hit the economy

The Wall Street Journal reports: At Monte Cielo, a new housing development in this growing region of South Texas, half-built homes are sitting empty. On a recent day, just a few workers hovered behind temporary wrap tacked to wall frames. The quiet scene comes after federal immigration agents have hit the development repeatedly, carrying out at least half a dozen raids there in recent months, builders said. The most recent was a few weeks ago. Some eight workers were arrested…

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The crime of being a witness

The crime of being a witness

Fintan O’Toole writes: Donald Trump’s desire to name everything from the Kennedy Center to the Gulf of Mexico after himself (“I wanted to call it the Gulf of Trump,” he declared in January) can seem almost comically childish. But it has become a killing joke: his regime brands those it executes “terrorists” and drags their names through the dirt. This renaming is an assertion of absolute power, and the United States is at a moment when Trump’s claim to dominion…

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The children held in detention in Dilley

The children held in detention in Dilley

By Mica Rosenberg This story was originally published by ProPublica Fourteen-year-old Ariana Velasquez had been held at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, with her mother for some 45 days when I managed to get inside to meet her. The staff brought everyone in the visiting room a boxed lunch from the cafeteria: a cup of yellowish stew and a hamburger patty in a plain bun. Ariana’s long black curls hung loosely around her face and she was wearing…

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Irishman with valid U.S. work permit held by ICE since September

Irishman with valid U.S. work permit held by ICE since September

The Irish Times reports: For five days, [Seamus] Culleton was held in a small cell overflowing with other detainees, then flown to a Buffalo, New York, Ice facility. In Buffalo he was interviewed by an Ice agent, who asked if he would sign a form agreeing to his deportation. Culleton said he refused, and instead ticked a box where detainees can state they wish to contest their arrest. He wrote down that his grounds for contesting were that he was…

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Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump’s 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows

Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump’s 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows

CBS News reports: Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in President Trump’s first year back in the White House had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News. The official statistics contained in the DHS document, which had not been previously reported publicly, provide the most detailed look yet into who ICE has arrested during the Trump administration’s far-reaching deportation operations…

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