The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Trump administration could resume deporting immigrants to countries other than their own without any chance to object on the grounds that they might be tortured. This may clear a legal path for the government to send men held at a U.S military base in Djibouti to the war-ravaged nation of South Sudan where they face an uncertain future, including the possibility of indefinite detention. Three justices, in a dissent, said the ruling exposes “thousands to the risk of torture or death.”

That may be a best-case scenario.

An Intercept investigation finds that the Trump administration has been hard at work trying to expand its global gulag for expelled immigrants, exploring deals with a quarter of the world’s nations to accept so-called third-country nationals — deported persons who are not their citizens.

To create this archipelago of injustice, the U.S. government is employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller, weaker, and economically dependent nations. The deals are being conducted in secret, and neither the State Department nor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will discuss them. With the green light from the Supreme Court, thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this network of deportee dumping grounds.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves thousands of people vulnerable to deportation to third countries where they face torture or death, even if the deportations are clearly unlawful,” said Leila Kang, a staff attorney at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a group that represents immigrants who filed suit.

The Supreme Court gave no explanations for its decision, which paused enforcement of a federal judge’s ruling that immigrants facing deportation must be given an opportunity to show that they may be tortured at their destination. Later Monday, a district judge in Massachusetts ruled that the order didn’t apply to the deportees in Djibouti. The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to allow it to immediately expel the men to South Sudan, claiming that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy was acting in “defiance” of the Supreme Court’s order.

The majority on the Supreme Court did not publish any explanation for their Monday ruling. In a 19-page dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the majority had disregarded a federal law that requires due process.

“Congress expressly provided noncitizens with the right not to be removed to a country where they are likely to be tortured or killed,” Sotomayor wrote, adding that the majority had endorsed a policy of lawlessness. “The Government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard.” She pointed to the cases of 13 immigrants who “narrowly escaped being the target of extraordinary violence in Libya”; another who “spent months in hiding in Guatemala,” and the men who “face release in South Sudan, which the State Department says is in the midst of ‘armed conflict’ between ‘ethnic groups.’”

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for ICE’s parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, called the ruling “a victory for the safety and security of the American people.”

Lawyers representing the immigrants at risk of being sent to countries — or even continents — that they have never visited in their lives disagree. “The ramifications of the Supreme Court’s order will be horrifying; it strips away critical due process protections that have been protecting our class members from torture and death,” said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.

Realmuto is representing some of the men whom the government attempted to expel to South Sudan, a nation that may, again, be teetering on the brink of civil war. Their rendition flight to South Sudan was diverted to Djibouti, when Murphy, the U.S. district judge, intervened in the case. The eight men — all previously convicted of violent crimes — have been detained on a U.S military base, Camp Lemonnier, ever since.

A top ICE official earlier this month detailed the appalling and unsafe conditions — including illnesses brought on by the environment — that deportees and the government officials guarding them face at Camp Lemonnier in a sworn legal declaration.

A recent memo by Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed that the Trump administration threatened dozens of nations with a travel ban while dangling third-country deportation deals to avoid the restrictions. An investigation by The Intercept finds that, with this new gambit, the U.S. has reportedly pursued deals with at least 53 countries, including many that are beset by conflict or terrorist violence or that the State Department has excoriated for human rights abuses. 

The State Department refused to provide a list of countries with which the U.S. has made agreements to accept deportees from third countries, citing the sensitivity of diplomatic communications.

The Trump administration began using the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, as a foreign prison to disappear Venezuelan immigrants in March. The Intercept — using open-source information — found that the U.S. has also explored, sought, or struck agreements with Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

“The sheer number of countries is absolutely unprecedented, as is including so many countries with problematic human rights records,” Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, told The Intercept. “The transactional deals the Trump administration is offering up turn migrants and refugees into pawns whose rights are of no concern. This just shows what is evident from other Trump administration policies: It does not believe the migrants have any rights.”

The nations targeted by the Trump administration recently expanded as a result of a memo, signed by Rubio, which was sent on June 14 to U.S. diplomats who work in 36 countries whose citizens may soon be restricted from entry into the United States. The cable, first reported by The Washington Post, castigated countries for failing to meet various criteria — from having “no competent or cooperative central government authority to produce reliable identity documents or other civil documents” to being state sponsors of terrorism. Rubio stated, however, that concerns with such nations could be “mitigated” if that country is willing to accept deportees from other countries.

The State Department did not comment on the memo or the impetus behind it, but provided a disingenuous statement that framed the U.S. efforts to forge third-country deportation deals in hypothetical terms. “In some cases, we might work with other countries to facilitate the removal of individuals, via third countries, who have no legal basis to remain in the United States,” a State Department spokesperson told The Intercept by email.

Many observers — and a minority of Supreme Court justices — noted that the push to send immigrants to far-flung detention facilities appears to be as bizarre as it is cruel.

“Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

Anwen Hughes, the senior director of legal strategy for refugee programs at Human Rights First, noted that there were Mexican nationals held in south Texas set to be deported to both Libya and South Sudan. “The Mexican border is right there. I’ve been doing immigration detention work for a very long time. I’ve never in my life seen Mexico refuse to take back one of its nationals, ever,” she told The Intercept. “The U.S. appears to be looking for really implausible destinations to send people. It’s not just punitive, it’s deliberately terrifying and honestly perverse.”

“Pressuring nations that are in a vulnerable situation vis-à-vis U. S. power and diplomacy to take nationals of countries they have nothing to do with is worrisome because it obviously sets the stage for some very serious abuses,” said Hughes.

The Trump administration is paying President Nayib Bukele’s government in El Salvador $6 million to imprison the Venezuelan nationals. A May federal court filing by Rubio referred to deportation negotiations between the Trump administration and both Libya and South Sudan.

Schacher said the Trump administration’s policies highlight its “disdain for immigrants,” and the premium in places on expelling them. “If it has to allow for some immigration from Africa, it will only allow it in exchange for deportation,” she noted. “It truly sees immigration as in the interest of sending countries and not in the interests of the U.S.— so it will demand an exchange.”

Due to the secret nature of agreements, it’s unclear what fate awaits people deported to these nations. The question of whether they would be deported again to their nation of origin, or another unrelated nation, where they face the possibility of persecution or abuse; be allowed to remain in the third country and under what circumstances; or be held in detention or prison, as in El Salvador, remains unknown.

Schacher noted that while almost all African countries and nations in the Americas are parties to the U.N. Refugee Convention, countries like Kosovo, Moldova, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Uzbekistan are not. If they were to expel immigrants they received as part of a deal with the Trump administration, they would have no obligation under international law to screen deportees to ensure they are not sent to a country where they face threats to their life or freedom.

Earlier this month, the U.S. struck a deal with Kosovo, Europe’s youngest country, to accept 50 deportees from other countries. The landlocked Balkan nation said the expelled immigrants would be “temporarily relocated” to Kosovo, while officials facilitate “their safe return to their home country.”

“I truly worry these places will become way stations or bridges for deportation from the U.S. to home countries,” Schacher told The Intercept. “Bhutan, not a signatory, has already accepted Nepalese from the U.S. and basically dumped them at the Indian border.” 

“In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach,” wrote Sotomayor, detailing the efforts of the government to dump deportees in far-flung and unsafe locales. “It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an Immigration Judge found he was likely to face torture there. Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel. An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya.”

The post Trump’s Global Gulag Search Expands to 53 Nations appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

As an attorney, Bill Essayli represented two January 6 defendants, arguing that men accused of crimes outside the U.S. Capitol were merely expressing their First Amendment rights. Now that he’s representing the Trump administration as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, he has a very different perspective on some of the protesters opposing mass deportation.

“They are injuring our officers. It is out of control, and since the state of California, the governor, can’t control his state, then yes, the federal government is going to step in. The National Guard is on its way, and we will have peace and order in Los Angeles,” said Essayli, who is serving as Donald Trump’s interim U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

Elected in 2022 as a Republican state assembly member representing California’s Inland Empire, the junior legislator rose quickly to a prized Justice Department post. Despite passing little legislation in his two terms in Sacramento, Essayli elevated his profile in the MAGA world by introducing bills seemingly designed to grab the attention of the far-right media world — and defending these extreme proposals loudly on Fox News.

Now he represents Trump administration’s interests in federal court in Los Angeles, where Essayli has hit demonstrators who took to the streets to protest Trump’s deportation campaign with conspiracy charges that carry stiff sentences, while claiming that he supports the right to peaceful protest.

Trump has yet to formally nominate anyone to serve as the U.S. attorney on a permanent basis. If he does tap Essayli, whose temporary appointment expires at the end of July, activists in California are calling on the state’s two U.S. senators to block his confirmation using an obscure privilege known as the “blue slip” process.

“This tradition was made for exactly these kinds of things, where an attorney is just not acceptable as an appointee. He’s not there for justice but for partisan purposes,” said Jacob Daruvala, the director of the Stop Essayli campaign and a former constituent involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy.

Essayli did not respond to a request for comment sent through his office.

Steep Charges

Essayli was sworn in as the interim U.S. attorney in Los Angeles on April 2, following his appointment by Attorney General Pam Bondi under a federal statute that allows him to stay in the post for 120 days.

He brought to the post more experience than some of the administration’s other interim appointments — such as Ed Martin in Washington, D.C. — having previously participated in the office’s prosecutions of the 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting attack as an assistant U.S. attorney.

Since his appointment, however, Essayli has quickly alienated career prosecutors, protesters in Los Angeles, and top politicians across the state.

One of his first moves was to sign his name to a rare post-trial plea deal for a sheriff’s deputy who had already been convicted of excessive force for pepper-spraying a woman outside a supermarket. Soon thereafter, several federal prosecutors withdrew from the case and resigned from the office, according to the Los Angeles Times.

As the demonstrations over ICE raids in Los Angeles heated up over the past month, Essayli was out front on local media defending the administration’s aggressive response.

At one press conference, Essayli said the administration had “no choice” but to send in the National Guard.

“Our agents and our law enforcements were overwhelmed,” he said.

He also made charging decisions that riled up elected officials and grassroots protesters alike. His office slapped union leader David Huerta, the state SEIU chief, with charges that carry a six-year maximum for confronting federal agents at a worksite raid on June 6.

The charges against Huerta galvanized state Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, who was briefly detained after attempting to question Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem at a June 12 press conference. Essayli was present as Secret Service agents ejected and handcuffed Padilla, who was released without being arrested. In an interview this week, Essayli accused Padilla of perpetrating a “stunt” and blamed him for the incident.

“He’s a very large person,” Essayli told Fox 11. “He’s very tall, he’s got a big demeanor. And he started charging, pushing his way through the security, shouting. We didn’t know he was here. We didn’t know who he was at the time. And then he started shouting, and then he was dragged out.”

Federal prosecutors have cast their eye well beyond powerbrokers such as Huerta. Another high-profile charge came against a member of a community organizing group called Centro CSO who was allegedly spotted on news cameras handing out face shields to demonstrators in downtown Los Angeles.

The man, Alejandro Orellana, faces charges of conspiracy to commit civil disorders and aiding and abetting civil disorders that carry up to five years in prison. As Fox News and other outlets whipped up an online frenzy about the face shield distribution — seeing it as evidence of a well-funded conspiracy behind the immigration protests — FBI agents zeroed in on Orellana and raided his house.

In a statement, a group supporting Orellana said he was guilty only of “providing aid to the community being tear-gassed.” Essayli defended the charges in the same interview with Fox 11.

“He wasn’t handing them out at the beach. He was there in downtown Los Angeles, and he’s handing them out to people who are dressed and behaving similarly to the people who have been committing riots. These are people hiding their faces, wearing black from top to bottom,” Essayli said. “Why would a peaceful protester need a face shield?”

Seeking to diminish the popular outrage over ICE raids, national Republicans have floated claims that various groups are the hidden hand funding the protests. Essayli sounded a similar note in his interview, promising that prosecutors would go after protest funders.

“We’ll get to the bottom of that,” he said.

Essayli said last week that he has already brought about 20 charges.

Defending J6

In a prior life as an attorney in private practice, Essayli espoused radically different views about the protesters who gathered around the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

For a time he represented Alan Hostetter, a former police chief who came to the Capitol with a hatchet in his backpack and joined protesters who pushed through a line of police officers defending the building.

Essayli criticized prosecutors after Hostetter was charged, noting that the indictment did not directly accuse him of violence.

“He was there to support the objection to the election, which members of Congress did do. I am concerned because we are getting to a dangerous place where we’re trying to criminalize political differences,” Essayli said.

Hostetter would go on to represent himself at trial. He was convicted and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

Essayli made similar arguments in defense of Brandon Straka, a social media influencer charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct in connection with the Capitol riot.

“Defendant and others present on January 6 were engaged in a protest to express their dissatisfaction with the manner in which the 2020 presidential election was conducted and certified,” he wrote in one legal brief. “Doing so in a peaceful manner was well within their First Amendment rights.”

Prosecutors never accused Straka of entering the Capitol, but they said he helped whip up the crowd with statements on social media and in person. In a sentencing memo, Essayli accused federal prosecutors of trying to load far too much responsibility for the breach of the Capitol onto his client’s shoulders.

“There was no conspiracy. This was a demonstration that unfortunately spiraled out of control,” Essayli said.

Straka and Hostetter would go on to receive pardons from Trump.

Targeting Trans Rights

Essayli served only two and a half years in the California State Assembly, where he represented Corona and other suburbs east of Los Angeles and became the body’s first Muslim member.

During his time in the state capitol, Essayli raised his public profile despite little legislative success.

He recorded one of the highest rates in the Legislature for missed votes. Explaining his own meager track record of legislation, Essayli said he used his bills to “communicate issues” and spark debate.

His style, as much as his conservative beliefs, rankled colleagues across the aisle. He once called some Democrats in the state Legislature “pedophile protectors” for blocking his bill to end sanctuary state protections for people convicted of sex crimes against minors.

“If he can use it for political theater, he is going to do it, no matter who it hurts.”

In the Assembly, Essayli also pursed a forced outing bill for transgender students that had little chance of passing. When it went nowhere, he went on a tour of southern California school districts urging them to impose similar policies requiring staffers to inform parents if their children use names or pronouns that differ from their sex assigned at birth.

It was during the debate over that bill that Essayli and another lawmaker, Democratic Assembly Member Corey Jackson, got into a verbal confrontation that resulted in another lawmaker physically preventing Jackson from moving toward Essayli, the Sacramento Bee reported.

In an interview last week, Jackson said he had heard from some of Essayli’s Republican colleagues that they were glad to have him gone.

“At the end of the day, this guy is an ideologue, and all of his decisions are based upon ideology,” Jackson said. “It’s based upon key MAGA principles. It is that that guides his actions, not the law.”

“If he can use it for political theater, he is going to do it, no matter who it hurts,” Jackson added.

Lacking in power in the Democrat-controlled Assembly, Essayli turned to Fox News, where he became a frequent late-night guest. Weeks after Trump’s election to a second term, he appeared in the 11 p.m. slot denouncing Democratic jurisdictions that were promising not to cooperate with mass deportations.

Rare Power for Senate Democrats

Under Senate tradition, members of the home-state delegation are given an effective veto over U.S. attorney nominees via the “blue slip” process. That means Essayli’s chance of winning the nomination could rest on convincing Padilla and his fellow Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, according to University of Richmond law school professor Carl Tobias, an expert on the confirmation process.

“If either senator says no from California, it’s over for this nominee. That may be the hardest obstacle,” Tobias said. “That’s what the White House has to work with: Padilla.”

Padilla, Schiff, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

“I think Donald Trump was trying to choose the most anti-California person he could, and that was Bill Essayli.”

LGBTQ+ activists have been among those urging Padilla and Schiff to block Essayli if Trump formally nominates him for the job on a permanent basis.

Daruvala, the Inland Empire resident mounting the Stop Essayli campaign, said he was motivated by Essayli’s position on trans kids’ rights. He believes Essayli received the interim appointment essentially to anger state Democrats.

“I think Donald Trump was trying to choose the most anti-California person he could, and that was Bill Essayli,” he said.

Even if Essayli never receives Senate confirmation, however, he could find himself rewarded by Trump. Martin, the short-lived U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., received an appointment as the Justice Department’s top pardon attorney after receiving pushback in the U.S. Senate.

The post Trump Appointee Prosecuting LA Protesters Defended Jan. 6 Suspects appeared first on The Intercept.

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Anya was hiding. Crouched behind the counter at a car wash in Westchester, just outside Los Angeles International Airport, she kept quiet while her co-workers scattered outside. Some ran toward the In-N-Out Burger, others behind the Ralphs. One worker drove away in the car he was detailing. “La Migra” was here.

Federal immigration agents managed to take five of her colleagues into custody, said Anya, a Ukrainian Russian asylum-seeker who asked to have her name changed to protect her pending case. And less than 24 hours later — with the car wash short-staffed and shaken — plain-clothed, undercover agents surrounded the business in unmarked white SUVs.

“You guys came yesterday,” Anya’s boss said in a video of the raid reviewed by The Intercept. 

“Did we get car washes?” an agent joked in return. They left with two more workers in handcuffs.

Across Los Angeles County, ICE’s operations played out differently. When combat-ready federal agents gathered in large numbers at staging areas in Paramount and Compton on June 8, protesters swiftly mobilized collective resistance efforts and emergency patrols. Agents responded to large crowds with tear gas, flash bangs, and so-called “less-lethal” weapons. Organizers maintain that this grassroots mobilization sabotaged enforcement operations, putting agents on the defensive and preventing them from conducting raids for the rest of the day.

As ICE raids escalated across Los Angeles in early June, sending protesters into the streets and immigrant communities into hiding, the contrast between how the consequential weekend unfolded in different parts of the city was stark. Divergent outcomes in majority Latino areas further east with a long history of organizing and those largely disconnected from grassroots support highlighted the crucial role of community-led defense in the absence of meaningful government protection.

Unlike Compton or Paramount, the airport-adjacent Westchester is geographically and socially isolated from more established community organizing networks. And while LA’s sanctuary laws prohibit local police from working with ICE, organizers argue that the local law enforcement agencies can’t be trusted to keep immigrants safe.

“Workers need to know their rights, whether it’s at the workplace or at their home, and they feel empowered to exercise those rights,” said Flor Melendrez, executive director of the labor advocacy group CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. Car wash workers, street vendors, and day laborers working in high-visibility, outdoor spaces face heightened risk for arrests as “easy targets” for ICE raids, while often lacking access to critical resources and workplace protections. Organizers said more than 26 car wash workers were arrested across at least six businesses in the set of raids began on June 6.

According to the owner of the car wash, agents pressured workers into answering questions like where they were born. 

“They didn’t read their rights or anything at all. They just took them away immediately,” Anya said. She told The Intercept the second raid was over in a matter of minutes.

Miles away from Anya, in a predominantly Latino neighborhood east of the Los Angeles River, a middle school teacher named Ruth was on her way to her school’s graduation ceremony when she noticed a group of day laborers running in her direction from the Home Depot parking lot.

“I started taking off my heels and putting on my flats. I got my megaphone and ran out of my car,” she told The Intercept. “I was ready.” 

Abandoned food stands and belongings scattered the parking lot. Ruth confirmed with witnesses that a handful of federal agents made a brief appearance but left without making arrests.

Ruth, who asked to be identified only by her first name so she wouldn’t be identified at school, is a member of the Community Self-Defense Coalition, a volunteer-led group that patrols neighborhoods for ICE activity. She’s trained to identify undercover agents and vehicles; document raids; collect names and contact information to notify family members; and locate the detained and connect them to resources and legal assistance. 

Ruth has embraced organizing as a way to defend her community when existing institutions meant to protect people instead facilitate their persecution.

While California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, have condemned the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on immigration, community organizers and local immigrant rights groups point to a discrepancy between rhetoric and reality. So-called sanctuary policies prohibit local officials from assisting with federal immigration enforcement, but observers have called these into question after seeing members of the Los Angeles Police Department cracking down on protests against ICE and seemingly protecting federal agents during raids.

To Ruth and other community defense organizers, LA’s sanctuary laws are a “myth.” The LAPD and the sheriff’s department “are working with ICE,” she said. “They’re protecting them. They’re not protecting us.”

While the LAPD has dismissed these allegations, a senior Department of Homeland Security official credited the increase in ICE arrests in part to “enhanced cooperation from local law enforcement partners.”

The Community Self Defense Coalition steps in to provide the protection that local law enforcement agencies won’t. When Ruth encounters ICE agents, she also notifies the Rapid Response Network hotline, which operates as an early warning system for community members to report ICE activity. If necessary, the network alerts the surrounding community so that those who are vulnerable to arrest can avoid the area, while others can mobilize in defense.

“If we don’t stand up and organize to defend our communities,” Ruth said, “who’s gonna do it?”

ICE’s mass raids across Los Angeles County have led to the arrest of at least 300 people since June 6, according to immigrants’ rights groups. But immigration lawyers and rights advocates maintain that the number is likely much higher, as groups continue to gather information from witnesses and family members. The detained have seemingly disappeared into the immigration detention system, as families and immigrant rights organizations struggle to locate them.

The enforcement tactics on display at Anya’s car wash and across Los Angeles are part of ICE’s latest push to meet a steep daily quota of 3,000 arrests nationwide. Since late May, arrests have increased dramatically from an average of 600 to over 2,000 per day, according to the Department of Homeland Security. 

In a statement released June 8, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that ICE has arrested the “worst of the worst illegal alien criminals in Los Angeles.”

There is little reason to believe DHS.

“These are warrantless arrests targeting workers with no criminal background. We have laws that protect people’s rights, regardless of whether or not we’re documented, and those aren’t being respected,” said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center, a member organization of the Rapid Response Network. ICE agents — undercover, masked, or in tactical gear — have targeted working-class immigrants conducting raids in previously banned “sensitive areas” without judicial warrants. They’re separating families and instilling fear, Soriano Versoza said, for political theater. People are afraid to go to work, drive their kids to school, or even seek medical care.

Soriano Versoza noted that many of the detained continue to be denied access to legal assistance, particularly those being held in the federal detention center in downtown LA. Even elected officials, exercising their power of congressional oversight, have been refused entry into detention centers.

“I was present during the raid. I saw with my own eyes the pains of the families, crying, screaming, not knowing what to do, just like me,” said the daughter of Jorge Arrazola, a car wash worker taken in a raid at a press conference organized by CLEAN. Like many of those arrested in the raids, Arrazola was his household’s sole breadwinner, leaving his loved ones economically devastated and forced to fend for themselves.

CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, along with other groups and unions, have organized rights workshops and distributed red cards, or “Know Your Rights” cards, which outline how to assert rights in an encounter with federal immigration agents.

CLEAN and another group, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, have also implemented “adopt a car wash” or “adopt a corner” programs to set up volunteers to warn workers of approaching ICE agents or provide direct support and documentation during raids.

Anya’s car wash is now receiving support from CLEAN. But it was too late to protect against the initial raids. She and her bosses have located some but not all of her co-workers. One of her colleagues has already been deported to Mexico, and another has since been transferred to an ICE detention center in Texas. “I’ve known these people and seen them every day for two years,” Anya told The Intercept. Some had worked at the car wash since it opened in the early 2000s.

They have families, she said, who are desperately trying to find them. 

“I don’t know where they are. I don’t know how they’re being treated,” Anya said. “I feel helpless and hopeless.”

The post Community Defense Groups Take the Last Stand Against ICE in LA appeared first on The Intercept.

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a federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to immediately release Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student activist who has been held in a Louisiana detention center since his arrest in early March.

The judge had previously ruled that Khalil could not be held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement based on a vague federal statute focused on potential “adverse foreign policy consequences” of his presence in the country. The latest ruling rejected the government’s arguments that Khalil, who missed the birth of his son while in detention, posed a flight risk, much less a danger to the community.

“No one should fear being jailed for speaking out in this country,” said Alina Das, co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law, who represented Khalil in court, in an emailed statement. “We are overjoyed that Mr. Khalil will finally be reunited with his family while we continue to fight his case in court.”

Khalil’s case is just the latest instance in which federal courts have ruled against the Trump administration’s dogged efforts to detain and deport noncitizens who protested Israel’s war in Gaza, many of them students who are in the U.S. on visas or green cards.

One under-scrutinized federal agency has been crucial to this effort: Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which markets itself as an elite force that targets human traffickers, drug smugglers, and war criminals. But under the second Trump administration, HSI has turned its surveillance apparatus on a different kind of target: noncitizens on college campuses with critical views of Israel.

As it built dossiers on Khalil and others, HSI deployed its full suite of investigative tools and techniques to “identify individuals within the parameters” of President Donald Trump’s executive orders about rooting out purported antisemitism, as one HSI agent explained in an affidavit.

For each target, HSI agents used surveillance tools to build a dossier, which was then passed to the State Department to confirm that the target was, in the eyes of the U.S. government, sufficiently antisemitic to be deported.

“The government hasn’t made a plausible argument that these students actually pose a threat to the national security of the United States.”

To track down protesters for arrest, HSI agents conducted “pattern of life” surveillance, The Intercept found, which meant monitoring targets’ movements and associates. HSI agents executed search warrants on college dorms based on flimsy affidavits, issued subpoenas for financial records and other data, and even put a trace on one target’s WhatsApp account.

“It’s notable that these components, which purportedly focus on threats to national security and public safety, are spending their time hunting down student protesters for their protected speech,” said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which is suing the Trump administration for targeting pro-Palestinian campus activists. “From what I’ve seen, the government hasn’t made a plausible argument that these students actually pose a threat to the national security of the United States.”

For years, watchdogs have warned that Congress needs to rein in HSI. During the first Trump administration, HSI monitored protest plans, called in aerial surveillance of the George Floyd demonstrations, and helped compile a database of journalists and immigration advocates to target at the border.

When Trump returned to the White House in January, HSI wasted little time in using its broad, fuzzy authority to target and track down critics of Israel’s war on Gaza.

“HSI has a really broad, often unchecked authority that in moments like these can allow them to turn it into a weapon,” said Spencer Reynolds, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, who previously worked as senior intelligence counsel in the Department of Homeland Security.

“The Department does little to promote oversight and accountability of its operations,” Reynolds said of HSI, pointing to the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate or defang DHS’s civil liberties office as amplifying the risks of abuse.

“We’ve seen this happen in the past,” Reynolds said, “and it can result in abusive targeting.”

ICE did not respond to The Intercept’s questions for this story.

 

HSI sprang into action in late January, after Trump issued an executive order purportedly aimed at antisemitism, according to an affidavit filed by a high-ranking HSI official in the case of Momodou Taal, a Cornell University grad student.

HSI investigators launched a “proactive” review of “open-source information to identify individuals subject to the Executive Order,” wrote Roy M. Stanley III, who leads the counterterrorism unit within HSI’s Office of Intelligence. As part of this review, HSI conducted “targeted analysis to substantiate aliens’ alleged engagement of antisemitic activities.”

In the Knight Institute’s lawsuit, another official, Andre Watson, who leads HSI’s national security division, explained that “HSI Office of Intelligence proactively reviews open-source information to identify individuals within the parameters of” Trump’s executive order.

“The HSI Office of Intelligence is typically focused on identifying actual security threats,” said DeCell of the Knight Institute.

And just because the underlying information is open source, meaning available on the public internet, DeCell explained, “doesn’t mean the government isn’t using more advanced tech as part of its “boil the ocean” approach to surveillance.”

In fact, ICE officials’ references to “open-source” searches potentially refer to HSI’s massive database, called RAVEn, said Reynolds, of the Brennan Center. RAVEn uses large-language models to collate material from across ICE’s systems and the public internet, including social media posts and news stories.

For Taal, HSI’s open-source trawl turned up online articles about his participation in Gaza protests and run-ins with the Cornell administration. In mid-March, HSI referred its findings to the State Department, which revoked Taal’s visa the same day, according to other court filings.

After initially filing suit to challenge the revocation of his visa, Taal decided to leave the U.S. in late March rather than risk being detained like Khalil.

Court records across multiple cases reflect this general workflow: HSI agents use surveillance tools to build a dossier — an “HSI Subject Profile,” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred to them in memos.

“There seems to be a two-way street here” between HSI and the State Department, DeCell noted, by which HSI agents provide reports that “support the State Department’s decision to revoke a visa.”

HSI drafted “subject profiles” on Khalil and at least two other Columbia students targeted for their ties to Gaza protests, court records show: Yunseo Chung and Mohsen Mahdawi.

In many cases, Rubio quickly ratified HSI’s findings and ordered the targets should be deported under a rarely used provision for “adverse policy interests.” As in Taal’s case, Rubio signed off on the deportations of Khalil, Chung, and Mahdawi within 24 hours. He even did so in a single letter that gave ICE the green light to detain both Khalil and Chung.

But in some cases, HSI’s intel was a stretch even for Rubio’s staff.

HSI’s dossier on Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student, quoted from an op-ed she co-wrote calling on Tufts to “disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel,” the Washington Post reported. The State Department pushed back somewhat, determining the op-ed wasn’t sufficient evidence of antisemitic activity or support for a terrorism organization.

The State Department did not respond to The Intercept’s questions about whether Rubio’s staff had disagreed with HSI’s determinations as to any other targets beside Öztürk.

All the same, based on HSI’s threadbare findings, Öztürk’s visa could still be revoked at Rubio’s discretion, the State Department wrote in a reply memo later filed in court. “Due to ongoing ICE operational security, this revocation will be silent,” wrote John Armstrong of the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs to Watson on March 21. “The Department of State will not notify the subject of the revocation.”

Four days later, as Öztürk walked to a Ramadan dinner, six plain-clothed ICE agents surrounded her, placed her under arrest, and whisked her out of Massachusetts and ultimately to a detention center in Louisiana, where she was held for several weeks before a federal judge ordered her release in early May. 

Mahdawi also won his release in May, which the federal government has appealed in tandem with Öztürk’s case. Despite HSI agents’ best efforts, Chung has never been detained, and earlier this month a federal judge issued an injunction that prohibits ICE from taking her into custody.

HSI has not just taken lead on flagging people who criticized Israel on university campuses, but also in tracking down and arresting them through various surveillance tactics.

In Khalil’s case, even before Rubio signed off on their findings, HSI placed Khalil under “pattern of life” surveillance, according to an immigration court filing. As an ICE attorney explained, this meant gathering information about Khalil’s “frequent locations, people he associates with, and various other information essential to law enforcement activities.”

When Rubio gave the go-ahead, HSI agents were already parked outside Khalil’s campus apartment in New York City. Despite not having an arrest warrant, they took him into custody and quickly hustled him to a facility in Louisiana.

HSI special agents also staked out and arrested Badar Khan Suri, a scholar at Georgetown University, after Rubio determined he should be deported in mid-March. In May, a federal judge ordered his release.

When HSI struggled to locate targets, they used legal processes like subpoenas and search warrants to try to track them down.

In Chung’s case, ICE surveilled her campus apartment for five days and visited her parents’ home in Virginia but still couldn’t find her. So HSI agents sent administrative subpoenas to Columbia — seeking video footage from her dorm building and data showing when Chung swiped in and out of the building over an eight-day period, court records show.

Citing student privacy laws, a Columbia spokesperson would not answer whether the university complied with ICE’s administrative subpoenas, which would not be legally enforceable without a separate court order. “The University seeks legal advice for any type of warrant or subpoena, judicial or administrative,” the spokesperson wrote by email to The Intercept, adding that decisions about compliance “are made by the University after legal review to ensure there is a lawful requirement and, if so, the University must then comply.”

HSI agents also obtained and executed judicial search warrants for the dorm rooms of Chung and another Columbia student on the theory that Columbia was “harboring” them in violation of federal law.

The search warrant application materials, which were unsealed in mid-May, showed an assistant special agent in charge of HSI’s New York office filed a wildly inaccurate affidavit.

The affidavit misstated basic facts and federal law, attorneys told The Intercept, including that Chung, a lawful permanent resident with a green card, was in the country unlawfully.

When Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman who grew up in the West Bank, was arrested by New York City cops last spring at a Gaza demonstration at Columbia University, she was not a prominent activist or a recognizable leader in the student pro-Palestine movement like Khalil or Mahdawi.

She wasn’t even a Columbia student or otherwise affiliated with the school. Kordia had gone into the city for the day from her home in Paterson, New Jersey, she says in a lawsuit challenging her detention at an ICE facility in Texas.

Kordia was one of dozens of people arrested the same day in April 2024 that NYPD stormed Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. Kordia was not part of the contingent of students who occupied the hall, but was arrested outside the closed campus gates after police told the crowd to disperse.

All charges against Kordia were later dropped without any court appearances. Her case was sealed, and her name did not make it into news coverage of the protest or onto lists by pro-Israel groups like Betar.

But her low profile didn’t stop Kordia, whose student visa had expired while her green card application was in process, from being targeted by HSI.

Early in March, HSI began investigating Kordia for “national security violations,” according to court records. And agents in HSI’s Newark office threw considerable investigative resources into profiling Kordia.

HSI agents subpoenaed her financial records, put a trace on her WhatsApp account, and asked NYPD for records about her arrest. They interviewed Kordia’s mother, who is an American citizen; several of her acquaintances; and even the tenants of an apartment Kordia once rented.

In mid-March, the week after HSI agents arrested Khalil at his apartment on Columbia’s campus, they detained Kordia in New Jersey and flew her to the Texas detention center.

After the Department of Homeland Security put out a gleeful statement, Kordia quickly became known as the “second Columbia student” arrested by ICE over Gaza protests — even as Columbia made clear she was never enrolled. It’s a basic error that ICE still can’t keep straight, claiming in a recent press release that Kordia is “another Columbia Student who actively participated in anti-American, pro-terrorist activities on campus.”

Kordia remains in ICE detention thousands of miles from her family. Together with others targeted by HSI because of their ties to protests over Gaza, her case underscores the Trump administration’s commitment to targeting dissent with advanced surveillance tools and federal manpower.

“The government is deploying resources that are purportedly focused on identifying threats” but instead “rounding up students protesting on their own college campuses,” summarized the Knight Institute’s DeCell. “That raises significant First Amendment concerns, and it raises a chilling effect for anyone here in the U.S. on a visa.”

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On the morning of April 23, around 7 a.m., the FBI, along with other local and state police, battered down the doors of four residences across Ann Arbor, Canton, and Ypsilanti, Michigan. The homes belonged to pro-Palestine student organizers at University of Michigan. 

The raids were the latest move by the University of Michigan and the state against student organizers following the protest encampments last spring. The school has seen particularly harsh repression of campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. 

While no arrests were made, all electronics were seized into FBI custody and at least two DNA samples were collected, according to local attorneys representing the subjects of the raids. The warrants were from Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office and signed by a judge in the 45th District Court in the small town of Oak Point, Michigan, but attorneys also say they have yet to see probable cause for the search and seizures. Nessel, a Democrat, still has not unsealed and shared the affidavits for the warrants with lawyers or the residents they raided.

“These raids were very much seen as an escalation by the state attorney general.”

“These raids were very much seen as an escalation by the state attorney general, who’s expressed quite a bit of an extreme reaction against the students’ activism on the University of Michigan campus,” said John Philo, executive and legal director of the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, the group representing the targets of the raids. “In terms of probable cause for the warrants, it’s entirely unknown at the moment. The search warrants were issued based on a complaint and the judge has ordered for the affidavit to be suppressed. It’s a terribly unusual thing.”

Nessel, who asked the FBI to carry out the raids, has positioned herself publicly as one of President Donald Trump’s biggest opponents. She also has extensive personal, political, and financial ties to the University of Michigan, which bypassed local prosecutors by enlisting Nessel to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters.

According to Philo and Liz Jacob, also of the Sugar Law Center, the FBI presented warrants in Ann Arbor and Canton before entering the premises, but refused to show any at the Ypsilanti residence. 

“Folks were shocked, especially to see that the FBI was executing an attorney general warrant,” Jacob told The Intercept in an interview. “I’ve never seen that in my experience, and we have not seen that in Michigan around pro-Palestine protests or on any other protests, to my knowledge.”

Following the raids, officials denied any connection to the students’ political protest, claiming the FBI was becoming involved in a “vandalism investigation.” In its official press release following the raids, Nessel’s office claimed the 12 “coordinated” vandalism incidents that occurred across the state — including graffiti that read “Free Palestine” — totaled to damages of $100,000.

Student organizers have cast doubt on Nessel’s denial that the raids were not related to their pro-Palestine protest.

“This is about the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians, and the fact that the state does not care about Americans in any way,” said Ira, a Muslim organizer with TAHRIR, a coalition that advocates against the University of Michigan’s complicity in the genocide against Palestinians, who asked to use only their first name for fear of retaliation from the school. “It’s not just about us being targeted right now. All of these people — not just the Trump administration, but these Democrats — who are claiming to fight for Americans are the ones who are attacking and repressing us.”

“Shotgun Approach”

Last October, Nessel filed felony criminal trespass charges against seven student protesters who were arrested last May at a University of Michigan encampment. Those charges were dropped in May, just before a judge was to decide whether or not to disqualify Nessel over alleged bias. Nessel cited “legal delays and controversies surrounding the case” as to why she dropped the charges. 

Local organizers, however, fear that the FBI raids are only a stepping stone to something bigger — and that the dropping of the charges is only a temporary relief.

Affidavits are typically sealed in cases when there is a confidential informant working with law enforcement who could be compromised. Philo said this would be difficult to understand in this case, especially considering that none of the students raided have any prior criminal activity or pending criminal charges or accusations against them. For what has been alleged, the warrants appeared to be an extreme measure for a vandalism investigation, according to both Sugar Law Center and student organizers who spoke with The Intercept.

“The scope and scale of what is alleged does not seem to warrant three law enforcement agencies descending on the homes of students, who by all calculations and known facts, have been accused of a crime in the past,” said Philo, who describes his clients as “pretty diligent and responsible students.” 

The attorney general’s raid executed a “shotgun approach” to further chill protest in solidarity with Palestine, he said. 

“To do this in that context with the FBI, state troopers, and local law enforcement,” he said, “sends a clear message that this is well beyond trying to determine who committed spray painting incidents.”

While it may be considered unusual for the FBI to become involved in a vandalism investigation, it is not uncommon for the FBI to join forces with local and state law enforcement agencies to work in a joint terrorism task force context, said Mike German, who worked as a special agent in the FBI for six years and is now a fellow at the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program.

“In that context, it’s not uncommon for a situation — where a person is alleged to have violated some state law — for them to use the state authorities to pursue that angle of investigation while also gathering evidence for a future terrorism investigation,” he explains. 

While German does not have any specific information about the Michigan cases, he says this does follow a pattern aligned with the government’s increased surveillance of citizens coupled with the FBI’s lax approach to far-right violence. He added that the raids in Michigan appear to be part of a broader escalation and expansion of power of the FBI since the September 11 attacks, particularly with the passing of more and more domestic terrorism statutes at federal and state levels. Just having increased powers, German said, created a motivation for using them.

“It has created an insatiable appetite for information,” he said. “Anywhere that they can get data and information to put into their databases, they’ll take those opportunities.”

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Cities and towns throughout the United States are expected to see growing protests this weekend against President Donald Trump’s deportation regime and aggressive tactics to repress and intimidate protesters. After witnessing the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of tear gas, bean-bag munitions, and rubber bullets at recent protests, anyone planning to attend demonstrations this weekend likely knows they could encounter police aggression.

But not all police forces opt for the same tactics — and protesters can keep themselves safer if they know what to expect. 

Different cities’ police departments are, in theory, constrained by local and state laws, though that doesn’t mean police always follow them. Take California, where legislators passed a law in 2021 prohibiting police from shooting rubber bullets and pepper spray at protesters, except in response to a “reasonable,” objective threat to life or of serious injury. The LAPD still fired rubber bullets at protesters last weekend, and there’s little sign they’ll refrain in the days to come. 

While it’s impossible to predict how exactly a police department or federal force will respond to a protest, past precedent and legal limitations can help demonstrators prepare to keep themselves safe. Beyond Los Angeles, The Intercept reviewed police practices in six major cities where protests are expected this weekend, plus best practices for attendees to defend themselves.

Rubber bullets are just one type of what’s called “less-than-lethal” ammunition — a misnomer, according to legal advocates who have represented protesters severely injured by police using them. Police might also shoot bean bags or water cannons, which are similarly not supposed to kill the person they hit, but can still inflict serious injury. Several cities temporarily banned tear gas, another popular choice, after protests against police brutality in 2020. It’s banned in war, but not for police responding to public demonstrations and showed up in response to recent protests against ICE and earlier protests against the genocide in Gaza. 

Other departments rely more on tactics like kettling, when police encircle protesters and keep them from dispersing, often used in concert with curfews, which give law enforcement a pretext for making arrests for people who don’t comply, or are physically barred by police from doing so.

“The key really no matter where you are or what you’re doing is situational awareness,” said Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel to the National Press Photographers Association. “When you start to see officers on bikes encircling you, you need to have probably thought of this before, but certainly at that point, look for a place to exit.”

Osterreicher is also a uniform reserve sheriff’s deputy in Erie County, New York. He has trained police departments around the country in how to uphold constitutional rights, and his trainings have helped shape guidelines for how police should interact with the press. But in the event that police don’t follow those guidelines, Osterreicher said, press and protesters need to know how to protect themselves. 

“I do understand the challenges of law enforcement, but I understand also that I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. The last time I looked, the First Amendment was still part of the Bill of rights,” he said. “So it’s really important that police understand you know what they should and shouldn’t be doing.” 

Knowing your rights is essential, Osterreicher said. But knowledge won’t keep tear gas out of your eyes. For that, protest attendees should have the right protective gear — and know how and when to use it.

Protective Equipment

If you have a gas mask, you need to be sure you know how it works, how to put it on, and that it fits properly. “If it’s not fitting properly, it’s going to be worse getting gas inside the mask than not having a mask at all,” Osterreicher said. If you’re using eye goggles, be sure they meet safety standards and won’t shatter if police hit them. 

Other gear, like ballistic helmets, can protect from projectiles — but eye-catching combat gear can cut both ways. Protest attendees should be aware of how they may be perceived by police. A gas mask or a combat helmet may protect you — but it could also make you a target, Osterreicher said. 

Journalists in particular should find ways to distinguish themselves from other protesters, he added, like not wearing all black. “You really need to figure out a way to be safe, but distinguish yourself,” Osterreicher said. 

To get the best sense of how to prepare, we took a look at precedents for police repression tactics across the country.

Chicago

Chicago Police have been notorious for using aggressive tactics to police protests for decades, going back to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Ahead of the 2024 DNC, as protesters objecting to the United States’ arming Israel to commit genocide in Gaza prepared to fill the streets, Chicago’s inspector general warned that the police department’s crowd-control tactics like kettling, use of pepper spray, and general lack of knowledge of First Amendment rights could cause “escalating tensions” and violations of protesters’ constitutional rights. 

“Such use of these tactics could also escalate police-crowd tensions. Indiscriminate use of containment tactics could trap both persons conducting crimes along with peaceful protestors, instigating resistant behavior from individuals who might have otherwise cooperated with police instructions,” the inspector general’s report noted. Police arrested more than 70 people at a demonstration outside of the Israeli Consulate during the convention, including several journalists.

Philadelphia

Police in Philadelphia tend to be quick to attack protesters one-on-one. Videos of Philadelphia Police pushing protesters to the ground and beating them with batons this week at anti-ICE protests went viral. Another video showed a police officer kneeling on the neck of a protester wearing a keffiyeh — a tactic prohibited in the city after 2020 protests. Police also reportedly threw bikes at protesters on Tuesday. Philadelphia police have also historically used flash-bang grenades, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and bean-bag rounds to disperse crowds. 

With more protests expected this weekend, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said the police would maintain public safety and order during protests. District Attorney Larry Krasner said protesters would be protected but that those who violated the law would face consequences.

New York City

The New York City Police department settled a lawsuit in 2023 to reform protest tactics after its response to 2020 protests against police brutality. The settlement set up a system to reform the department’s protest response by reducing the number of officers sent to respond to protests, prioritizing deescalation, and banning the practice of kettling. The settlement also provided a pathway to enforce limits on the use of pepper spray, batons, and bicycle strikes that the department had not previously followed.

That means those tactics should — in theory — be less prevalent in New York. The NYPD is less likely to use tear gas against protesters than police in many other major cities, but protest attendees should still be aware of their surroundings and maintain an exit plan for any situation. NYPD officers, too, are known for their long history of brutalizing protesters and using kettling tactics to trap demonstrators. A new bill introduced in March would bar the NYPD from deploying the militarized Strategic Response Group to protests and ban or restrict tactics including kettling, tear gas, pepper spray, and acoustic weapons — but it hasn’t been passed so far. 

Seattle

The Seattle Police Department has been known to use pepper spray and tear gas against protesters. They have also used long-range acoustic devices to communicate orders to crowds. But since protests in 2020, the use of tear gas has been effectively banned. Police are only supposed to use pepper spray or balls if an individual poses a threat, and it must be reported to a supervisor. 

This week, Seattle’s chief of police said he expected to be arrested because he supports protesters’ and residents’ First Amendment rights. 

Atlanta

Atlanta Police officers demonstrated a unique form of violence and aggression against protesters in their response to protests against Cop City, an 85-acre police training complex for which the city of Atlanta destroyed large swaths of its forest. As demonstrators objected to the destruction in 2023, police carried out a multi-agency raid and killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, shooting him at least 57 times. Atlanta Police also attacked protesters with garden tools after they tried to plant trees. 

Police in Altanta used tear gas against protesters during campus protests against the genocide in Gaza last year. The Atlanta Police Department said that while other responding agencies used rubber bullets, their officers did not, though it did confirm the use of chemical irritants. Atlanta police have said they do not train officers in kettling, though they’ve been accused of kettling protesters in past demonstrations. 

Houston

During 2020 protests, Houston’s police chief said the department would avoid using tear gas or rubber bullets on protesters, and the city was one of the few to not have a curfew imposed as protests began— although the National Guard was deployed to the city in 2020. Houston was the only major city in Texas where police did not use rubber bullets or tear gas against protesters in 2020 — but they did use pepper spray, and one officer on horseback trampled a protester. Officers are also supposed to get permission from the chief to use tear gas or rubber bullets. 

Last year, Houston Mayor John Whitmire called on police to crack down on protesters against the genocide in Gaza who demonstrated outside of his house. Whitmire has rejected federal aid to manage protests this weekend and applauded organizers for working with Houston Police to prepare. But Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott was the first governor to request National Guard assistance in quelling the recent anti-ICE protests, deploying the troops throughout Texas on Thursday. Police responding to protests this week in Austin and Dallas used tear gas and pepper spray against demonstrators.

What About the Feds?

The deployment of federal troops in U.S. cities has shocked observers and drawn fears of martial law — but in many cases, it’s local police departments that have the most prominent role in repressing protests. Still, it’s important to know if federal agents in your city will appear at protests alongside police this weekend.

Several other major cities anticipating protests this weekend have received notice that federal agents are being deployed. ICE is also reportedly planning to deploy teams in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, and Northern Virginia ahead of expected protests.

The post How to Stay Safe Protesting ICE — and What to Expect From Cops in Your City appeared first on The Intercept.

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When President Donald Trump threatened to send troops against the Black Lives Matter movement five years ago, some members of his own party offered guarded criticisms.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., then serving as the majority whip, said he opposed using the military.

“I would prefer that these things be handled by the state and local authorities,” he said. “You want to de-escalate, rather than escalate.”

Over the past week, however, Thune has been one of many Republican leaders endorsing Trump’s call to send U.S. Marines to Los Angeles amid the anti-ICE protests as deportation operations expanded. The near-unanimous chorus is a sign of how thoroughly Trump has consolidated his grip on Republicans — and how fiercely the party’s base turned against protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Although the party was split five years ago, some Republicans at the time rejected Trump’s inflammatory calls for military force.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump tweeted on May 29, 2020. Days later, as federal police tear-gassed protesters outside the White House, Trump said in a Rose Garden address that governors should “dominate the streets” with the National Guard — or he would “deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

The tear-gassing episode — where Trump was accused of using force so that he could stage a photo op in the area — drew condemnations from several Republicans in the Senate, including then-Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.

“If your question is, ‘Should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op?’ the answer is no,” Scott said soon after. (An Interior Department probe later cleared Trump of using tear gas to set up his photo op.)

The caution was far from unanimous among Republicans: There were always supporters of Trump’s military talk, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

“The military has been called up a number of times to defend the nation. The natural route is to use the National Guard. That is appropriate. If necessary, the military should be used and there is a long tradition of that,” Cruz said in June 2020.

Now, five months into his second term, Trump has a far firmer grip on the Republican Party, and the critiques of his tough talk have been harder to find.

Thune, now the Senate majority leader, gave unequivocal support for Trump’s decision to send in troops.

“At the end of the day, it’s about preventing chaos and preserving law and order,” Thune said Wednesday.

Other Republicans have used Trump’s decision to declare they were right all along about deploying troops on protesters.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who wrote a controversial New York Times op-ed in 2020 calling for Trump to “Send in the Troops,” wrote a follow-up this week in the Wall Street Journal titled “Send In the Troops, for Real.”

Against Trump’s nearly unprecedented decision to take over the California National Guard, and then send in Marines, only a handful of prominent Republicans have expressed reservations.

One of them was Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Sometimes thought of as a centrist, but rarely breaking with her party on votes, Collins said she opposed using the Marines against protests — but was fine with sending in the National Guard.

“I would draw a distinction between the use of the National Guard and the use of the Marines,” she said earlier this week. “Active-duty forces are generally not to be involved in domestic law enforcement operations.”

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As protests against immigration crackdowns spread from Los Angeles to cities around the United States this week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., leveraged the perceived unrest to target nonprofits supporting the very communities the Trump administration has put under siege. 

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and the Marines, while the Los Angeles Police Department carried out a brutal response to protests objecting to workers’ arbitrary detention by masked ICE agents in Los Angeles. After fueling the chaos in support of Trump’s deportation regime, Republicans used the moment to target nonprofit leaders and discredit protesters as “bought and paid-for flash mobs.” 

In a letter to multiple nonprofit organizations serving immigrant and Latino communities — including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, also known as CHIRLA, and Unión del Barrio — Hawley accused the organizations of “aiding and abetting criminal conduct” by “bankrolling civil unrest.”

“Credible reporting now suggests that your organization has provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged in these disruptive actions,” wrote Hawley, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, in one version of the letter. “Let me be clear: bankrolling civil unrest is not protected speech. It is aiding and abetting criminal conduct. Accordingly, you must immediately cease and desist any further involvement in your organization funding, or promotion of these unlawful activities.”

The letter demands that the organizations preserve a large number of records from November 5, 2024, onward, including “donor lists,” “media or public relations strategies,” and all internal communications and financial documents related to protests.

Hawley did not elaborate on any sources for his claims, and he did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. But in an interview on Fox News, he doubled down on his accusations. 

“These aren’t spontaneous at all. They’re about as authentic as astroturf. They are bought and paid-for flash mobs, and I want to know who’s doing the buying and the paying. That’s why today I’ve launched an investigation,” Hawley said on Wednesday. 

CHIRLA denied fueling violence, saying the group won’t be intimidated by the Missouri senator. 

“Our mission is rooted in non-violent advocacy, community safety, and democratic values,” wrote CHIRLA executive director Angelica Salas in a statement reported by LAist. “We will not be intimidated for standing with immigrant communities and documenting the inhumane manner that our community is being targeted with the assault by the raids, the unconstitutional and illegal arrests, detentions, and the assault on our first amendment rights.”

The inquiry marks the latest chapter of the GOP’s war on progressive-aligned nonprofits. Other Republicans have attempted to target CHIRLA and other nonprofits focused on immigrant rights. On Thursday, House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., and Subcommittee Chair Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., launched an investigation into more than 200 nonprofit organizations, including CHIRLA, alleging that they “helped fuel the worst border crisis in our nation’s history.”

The congressmen also accused the organizations of “actively advising and training illegal aliens on strategies to avoid cooperation with immigration officials.” In addition to CHIRLA, the House subcommittee called out Catholic Charities USA and Southwest Key Programs for their resettlement efforts. 

The letter demands that organizations provide a full accounting of federal grants, contracts, and payments received during the Biden administration, as well as information on whether they’ve sued the federal government and the services they provide to immigrants.

The post Josh Hawley Blames Nonprofits for “Bankrolling Civil Unrest” in LA Without Evidence appeared first on The Intercept.

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Two Palestinian peace activists from the occupied West Bank were detained upon landing in the San Francisco airport Wednesday and face deportation after immigration officials unexpectedly revoked their visas.

Eid Hathaleen and Awdah Hathaleen, cousins from the Masafer Yatta village of Um Al Khair, have been unreachable for the past day, according to organizers and a local lawmaker advocating on their behalf. As of Thursday, they were believed to remain in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody at San Francisco International Airport. The United States is expected to deport them to Jordan, where their flight to U.S. departed. 

The cousins were scheduled to begin a speaking tour hosted by a California synagogue and local churches — and were visiting the U.S. with valid tourist visas, organizers said. Eid, a leader in his village, has been on several speaking tours over the past decade and has documented Israeli settler violence — including the Israeli government’s destruction of his village and his own home in July 2024. Awdah — an activist, English teacher, and journalist — has reported on past Israeli attacks on their village for +972 Magazine. 

CBP officials did not disclose the reason for the pair’s detainment and did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. Organizers say the men are being targeted for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. The Trump administration has imprisoned and attempted to deport activists who advocate for Palestinian human rights — including Columbia University organizers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk — under the guise of combating antisemitism. 

“These were Palestinian activists and humanitarians who were here to bridge relations with the Jewish community,” said Ben Linder, who helped organize the tour and is co-chair of J Street Silicon Valley, a local chapter of the liberal pro-Israeli lobby. “They were being sponsored by Jewish synagogues — these are exactly the people we need in our country right now, to bridge the divide that we have happening globally. Yet our federal government is denying them a voice.”

Phil Weintraub, lead organizer with the Face to Face committee of the Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont, California, which planned to host the speaking tour, went to the San Francisco airport Wednesday to pick up Eid and Awdah. After he didn’t hear from them for several hours, Weintraub alerted other organizers and attorneys. 

Their whereabouts were unknown until Bilal Mahmood, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, was notified and rushed to the airport Wednesday evening. CBP officials confirmed to him that both Eid and Awdah were in their custody.

“Once I showed up and literally banged on the doors of Border Patrol, they finally called back and and also exited their offices and informed us of what was happening,” Mahmood told The Intercept.

Mahmood has spent the past week attending protests against the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration raids across the United States. In San Francisco, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained 15 undocumented immigrants, including a toddler, who had shown up at a federal office for an ICE check-in, according to Mission Local. The day after Eid and Awdah’s detention, federal agents ejected California Sen. Alex Padilla, pinned him to the ground, and handcuffed him for asking questions at Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s press conference.

Padilla was quickly released. But the peace activists from the West Bank, far more marginalized than a U.S. senator, remained in custody and unreachable on Thursday. Mahmood said their detainment was part of President Donald Trump’s broader attack on immigrants. 

“This is everything from ICE raids to the travel ban to now leveraging the federal government’s powers to deny free speech,” he told The Intercept. 

Erin Axelman, co-director of the film “Israelism,” a documentary about young American Jews who grappled with Israel’s abuse of Palestinians, has joined other organizers in advocating for Eid and Awdah’s release. 

“This is obviously part of the pattern of incredible Palestinian peacemakers and activists being detained and deported simply for their very reasonable freedom of speech,” Axelman told The Intercept. “Any Palestinian voice is threatening to the Trump administration at this point and it seems like simply existing as a Palestinian is enough to get you detained or deported by the Trump administration.”

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Seventy-five House Democrats voted on Monday in support of a resolution that praised President Donald Trump’s deportation regime.

The vote came as Trump deployed more than 1,700 National Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to crush protests against increased U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and mass arrests.

Sponsored by Rep. Gabe Evans, R-Colo., a pro-Israel Republican, the bulk of the resolution was dedicated to condemning the attack last month in Boulder, Colorado, against pro-Israel demonstrators calling for the release of hostages in Israel.

Tucked into the text was a line praising ICE, expressing “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.”

While some Democrats are busy joining Republican colleagues to praise ICE, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is seeking to pass a law that holds police accountable for violence against protesters. Her bill, introduced in late May, would apply penalties to law enforcement for using force in response to a demonstration.

“Now, more than ever, it’s important that we’re doing everything we can to protect Americans’ right to free speech and peaceful protest,” Omar said. “That’s why I introduced legislation to make law enforcement violence against protesters a federal crime.”

The military response to the protests is not just about immigration, said Omar, but represents another step in Trump’s efforts to crush dissent.  

“In my district and across the country, we’re seeing the Trump Administration use militarized force to silence, intimidate, and brutalize, not just protestors for exercising their First Amendment right, but also members of the press,” Omar said in a statement to The Intercept. “This appears to be part of a broader more sinister and deeply un-American agenda to surveil and criminalize individuals for their political views.”

While the bill praising ICE got 75 votes from Democrats and 205 Republicans, with seven co-sponsors, Omar’s bill has only garnered three co-sponsors. Another resolution Omar introduced late last month that condemns police brutality, especially in response to protests, has no cosponsors.

Of the handful of bills related to protests introduced in Congress this session, the vast majority are aimed at increasing penalties for protesters; restricting people convicted of federal or state crimes in relation to protests from receiving federal student aid; and designating some forms of protest as domestic terrorism. Few bills, on the other hand, seek to introduce new protections. There are currently only two Democratic bills this session related to protecting protesters — both have been introduced by Omar.

Even when bills seek to shore up protesters’ rights, some are aimed at defending Trump supporters, not protesters in general. One from a far-right member of Congress seeks to bar detention for nonviolent political protesters in the name of a man who participated in the January 6 attacks on the Capitol and, following his conviction, died by suicide in custody.

Omar is one of several progressive members of Congress who denounced Trump’s use of state force to quash dissent and affirmed the rights of protesters. On Monday, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, called Trump’s actions a distraction and described them as illegal and authoritarian.

“Trump’s threats have nothing to do with keeping people safe — it’s about political theater. He’s scapegoating immigrants to distract from the GOP’s real agenda: ripping health care away from millions to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-rich,” Casar said in a statement. “We stand with Angelenos, and we stand with immigrant families everywhere. The President must return command of the National Guard to Governor Newsom.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., said the arrival of the military in Los Angeles was “evidence of our country’s descent into fascism.”

“It’s an abuse of power and a dangerous escalation that will only destabilize our communities,” Tlaib wrote. “I stand with those defending our immigrant neighbors and our fundamental rights.”

Denouncing Whose Violence?

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called on protesters to remain nonviolent.

“Dr. King defeated racist government officials & ended segregation through disciplined non-violent resistance,” Sanders tweeted. “Defeating Trumpism, oligarchy & authoritarianism requires that same level of discipline. Violent protests are counterproductive and play right into Trump’s playbook.”

Comments like Sanders’s that blame protesters for violence justify Trump’s response, said California attorney Thomas Harvey, who has worked with student protesters demonstrating against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Trump has “falsely characterized resistance to these ICE abductions as insurrection and rebellion to justify federalizing the National Guard in CA and authorized Secretary of Defense Pete Hesgeth to use the military on U.S. soil anywhere he decides,” Harvey said. “To make matters worse, the armchair quarterbacks in the Democratic Party and punditry, most of whom have never organized a protest or dealt with the kind of state violence we’re seeing today, dare to admonish protesters for engaging in what they call violence.”

Sanders’s comments were “incorrect and completely ahistorical,” Harvey added.

“King himself changed his views on violence, especially riots, as the Civil Rights Movement went on and the U.S. government resisted meaningful change. But any serious person knows that civil rights protesters fought the police in the streets in the 1960s, just as anti-ICE kidnapping protesters are willing to do today,” he said.

People protesting in Los Angeles responded to an already violent situation, said Ricci Sergienko, an attorney and organizer in Los Angeles.

“Is our current situation ‘peace’? Why would anyone be shocked at this response by the people?”

“Our current situation is a complete provocation by the state — tearing families apart and throwing people into concentration camps is violence,” Sergienko said. “They are kidnapping people and locking them in the LA federal detention center basement without food or water. This, on top of the violence already faced against every day Angelenos. From seven unhoused people dying on the streets every day to rent and evictions to continuous police harassment. How do you expect people to act? Is our current situation ‘peace’? Why would anyone be shocked at this response by the people?”

The protests in Los Angeles should come as no surprise given its history of mass action, Sergienko said. Riots broke out in 1992 after police brutally beat Rodney King. In 1965, the Watts Rebellion came in response to widespread racist police abuse. Protests in 2020 against police brutality and in 2024 against Israel’s genocide in Gaza are part of that same thread, he said.

“There is a long history of this kind of action in Los Angeles,” he said. “Politicians don’t dictate how people in this city are going to respond.”

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As federal agents abducted at least 118 immigrants throughout Los Angeles County over the weekend, local leaders swatted away suggestions of collaboration on immigration enforcement — and sought to keep the blame squarely on federal authorities.

“LA was peaceful before Friday,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who joined her fellow California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom in blaming the Trump administration for escalating tensions by deploying federal troops. As of Tuesday, Trump has deployed 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to the city so far.

Trump’s militarized response was certainly escalatory, several protesters told The Intercept. But while National Guard troops mostly stood around outside federal buildings, it was the Los Angeles Police Department whose members brutalized protesters with batons, tear gas, and so-called “less-lethal” munitions, drawing blood and bruising people who turned out to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.

“Hearing the governor and Karen Bass talking about LAPD coming in to ‘protect the peace’ — this is so absurd,” said Robert Meraz, a 51-year-old public defender from Van Nuys. He joined an estimated 10,000-person march on Sunday, when an LAPD officer fired a bean-bag munition into his left arm.

Meraz was at the front of the group marching from LA City Hall to the federal detention facility several blocks away. There, federal agents were holding detainees swept up on Friday, when ICE arrested 14 workers at the Ambiance Apparel warehouse near the garment district and at least 40 more at car washes, street vendors, and waiting for work assignments in a Home Depot parking lot. Rights groups said the detainments, captured on viral videos, have been based on race and appearance of individuals.

Meraz works in Alameda County, but he was in the area visiting family when he joined the march. The child of immigrants from Mexico, Meraz told The Intercept that his own relatives sought work in front of Home Depot when he was growing up.

“And so then I’m hearing that ICE is just going around swooping up fools at Home Depot,” he said. “That was just too much.”

At the federal detention center, most of the recent detainees had yet to speak with an attorney, family members and attorneys told The Intercept. Federal officials illegally denied entry to members of Congress, including California Democratic Reps. Jimmy Gomez and Maxine Waters. Attorneys seeking access to their clients told The Intercept that some women being detained had to sleep outside, in tents without blankets, due to overcrowding.

About 100 yards away, LAPD officers intercepted the crowd and pushed it back, Meraz recalled. The cops declared an unlawful assembly, authorized the use of less-lethal munitions, and began to fire at protesters. 

“I was definitely walking backwards,” Meraz said, holding an ice pack against bandages soaked in blood, “but I guess not backwards fast enough.” He said an officer held a bean-bag-loaded weapon against Meraz’s gut before firing, and Meraz managed to block it with his arm. He said an emergency room doctor warned of possible long-term muscle or nerve damage, which could affect the mobility of his arm and hand.

The Los Angeles Police Department was coming off of a routine funding boost. Days earlier, Bass had signed a new city budget that increased the department’s $1.86 billion budget to $1.98 billion, including money to hire 240 new recruits. The mayor defended the LAPD’s actions on Sunday as necessary crowd-control measures.

According to the Los Angeles City Charter, LAPD officers are tightly restricted from supporting federal immigration actions. In November, LA expanded its sanctuary city policies to prohibit the use of city resources, including police, for immigration operations. And since 1979, LAPD officers have been barred from asking people’s immigration status or making immigration-related arrests. On top of that, California’s statewide sanctuary laws ban local law enforcement officers from many immigration enforcement actions. 

Suspicions that police may have violated some of those sanctuary restrictions added to the ire behind LA’s protests. On Friday, the LAPD formed a line just outside Ambiance Apparel while federal agents performed their raid, during which they violently arrested protester and Service Employees International Union California and SEIU-USWW President David Huerta.

“You’re LAPD — why are you collaborating with ICE?” another protester yelled in a video of the confrontation on Friday.

While the LAPD declined to comment on why its officers were present during the raid, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell has stated publicly that his officers responded to calls for service from federal agencies for “emergency assistance to protect lives,” just like it would any member of the public.

“Our job is not to divide communities or politicize law enforcement,” McDonnell said. “Our job is simply to keep everyone safe.” He insisted that the LAPD does not coordinate with ICE on civil enforcement.

“I was using my freedom of speech, what I’m allowed to do, and they ended up shooting at me.”

Such statements rang hollow for protesters who marched in downtown Los Angeles over the weekend. At the protest on Sunday, one demonstrator left the crowd with his right arm raised as blood dripped from his hand, where an LAPD projectile had struck him. A man named Miguel, who declined to give his last name, was struck in the chest by an LAPD munition while protesting near the Federal Building, leaving a bloody, circular imprint on his skin.

TV news reports highlighted vandalism and property crimes: graffiti criticizing ICE on federal offices and courthouses, rocks hurled at armored vehicles, burglaries at downtown business, driverless Waymo ride-hailing cars set on fire, and Lime scooters tossed over the side of the highway.

“If you are going to entertain violence,” Bass said, speaking to reporters inside City Hall, “you are going to suffer the consequences of that.”

But protesters argued that the focus on private property distracted from the violence done to demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights — and to immigrants facing deportation for seeking work opportunities.

“I wasn’t throwing nothing, I wasn’t causing no harm — I was using my freedom of speech, what I’m allowed to do, and they ended up shooting at me,” said John Gonzalez, an 18-year-old protester who helped occupy the 101 Freeway on Sunday. Some members of the crowd tossed rocks at the armored officers, but many just stood and watched, recorded on their phones, or joined in chanting their objections to ICE.

California Highway Patrol officers, part of a state-run force, fired flash-bang projectiles and “less-lethal” munitions up toward crowds protesting along the railing. During the protest, Gonzalez lifted his shirt to reveal a large bruise along his side.

Video recordings from throughout the weekend showed other aggressive tactics. One video from Sunday showed a man getting beaten by mounted LAPD officers charging at him and swinging batons. Another recording showed one protester trampled by officers on horseback. In a live broadcast from near a federal courthouse, an LAPD officer pointed their weapon in an Australian reporter’s direction before firing and striking her in the leg. Agents with the Department of Homeland Security and some National Guard troops fired pepper-ball bullets and tear gas on smaller groups of protesters and journalists outside the downtown federal detention facility throughout the weekend.

Back at City Hall, Los Angeles resident Alicia Cohen was struck in the heel by a rubber bullet. She was a part of a small group of protesters who had weathered tear gas and LAPD projectiles throughout the day. She told The Intercept she was not surprised by the LAPD’s brutality, given her past experiences protesting in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd.

“The people that are supposed to protect us are not protecting us.”

“The people that are supposed to protect us are not protecting us,” said Cohen, who told The Intercept she’d attended Kent State University, where the legacy of violent protest repression made her especially wary of the National Guard. “It’s ICE terrorizing us, it’s LAPD terrorizing us, and I think the ‘violent actions’ that are happening outside are symptoms of the aggression that is shown when LAPD and the feds get aggressive.”

Meraz also took exception to the idea that the protesters had initiated the violence. 

It was “infuriating,” Meraz said, “just hearing the language that the news was using. They were like, ‘Violent protesters.’ I’m like, ‘What?’”

Immigration raids continued across Los Angeles County on Monday, including in Venice, Culver City, and Huntington Park, with more expected throughout the week. 

Protests persisted too, entering their fifth consecutive day on Tuesday as demonstrations were planned to take place in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles. Other demonstrations were planned across southern California, as anti-ICE protesters showed out in other cities such as San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and Dallas.

Huerta, of SEIU, was released on Monday. Federal prosecutors charged him with felony conspiracy to impede an officer.

LA city council members are expected to bring a motion on Tuesday to request information from the LAPD on its use of resources during the recent federal operations. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, a regular critic of police spending, said his office is requesting more information about LAPD’s presence near ICE raids.

Family members of the workers detained in the garment district, who were mostly from the indigenous Zapotec community, held a press conference in front of the Ambiance Apparel warehouse on Friday, demanding their release, legal representation, accountability from their employers, and adherence to city and state sanctuary policies. Among the speakers was Carlos Gonzalez, whose older brother José Paulino was detained Friday.

“I also want to ask, where is the sanctuary California promised us,” Gonzalez said, “when your police departments choose to defend ICE officials instead of its own people?”

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