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    Bondi assigns prosecutor to lead investigation into Trump adversaries over Epstein ties – live updates

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    Attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation into Donald Trump’s political adversaries and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Earlier, Trump called the latest release of emails that renewed focus on the president’s relationship with the late sex-offender a “hoax”, and directed the justice department to launch a probe into former president Bill Clinton, Democratic donor and entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, and former treasury secretary Larry Summers (who served under Clinton). “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the president wrote on Truth Social earlier.Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”. She added: “As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is “withdrawing the nomination of Donald Korb” to be the Internal Revenue Service’s top lawyer, days before Korb was expected to be confirmed by the Senate.The president cited no reason for suddenly abandoning Korb in a brief post on his social media platform, but the reversal came just 24 hours after Laura Loomer, a far-right podcaster who holds unusual sway over Trump’s personnel decisions, posted a thread on X attacking Korb for supposedly “supporting Democrats and anti-Trump RINOs” and demanded that his nomination “should immediately be revoked.”Loomer, a racist conspiracy theorist whose closeness to Trump alarmed some of his allies in the run-up to the 2024 election, immediately took credit, telling her 1.8 million followers on X (a website she was banned from before it was bought by Elon Musk) that Korb was “Loomered”.As the author and double Pulitzer winner James Risen wrote in an assessment of Loomer’s informal role earlier this year, after she met with Trump in the Oval Office and handed him a list of people on the staff of the national security council that she believed were not loyal enough to Trump, leading to six of them being fired:
    Loomer’s power in the Trump administration is ill-defined. Her many critics say she has just been taking credit for moves that Trump was already planning. But Trump himself has said he takes her seriously, so it may be more accurate to describe her as Trump’s de facto national security adviser.
    My colleague, Lucy Campbell, notes that today’s decision to investigate several of the president’s political adversaries represents an apparent departure from a July memo issued by the justice department and the FBI, which stated officials had found nothing in the Epstein files that warranted the opening of further inquiries.Investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”, the memo said.

    Donald Trump directed the justice department to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with several prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and donor and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman. The president’s move, to focus on his rivals’ affiliations and relationships with Epstein, is seemingly his latest effort to distance himself from the renewed focus on his own relationship with the disgraced financier following the latest tranche of documents released by the House oversight committee. Trump went on to claim, baselessly, that the release of emails where Epstein said that the president “spent hours” at the late sex-offenders house, and that he “knew about the girls” was just “another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats”.

    In response, attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation at the behest of the president. Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”.

    Donald Trump has agreed to slash US tariffs on Switzerland to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters. The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms. In return, Switzerland will reduce tariffs “on a range of US products”, the statement said. “In addition to all industrial products, fish and seafood, this includes agricultural products from the US that Switzerland considers non-sensitive.”

    The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a rare condemnation of president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and advocated for “meaningful immigration reform”. In a special message, the first of its kind in 12 years, the bishops said that “we are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.” In response, White House border czar, Tom Homan, hit back. “The Catholic church is wrong, I’m sorry. I’m a lifelong Catholic,” he said. “I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic church in my opinion.”
    Attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation into Donald Trump’s political adversaries and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Earlier, Trump called the latest release of emails that renewed focus on the president’s relationship with the late sex-offender a “hoax”, and directed the justice department to launch a probe into former president Bill Clinton, Democratic donor and entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, and former treasury secretary Larry Summers (who served under Clinton). “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the president wrote on Truth Social earlier.Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”. She added: “As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, has responded to Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the ongoing Epstein investigation – which included the release of three emails this week where Epstein said that the president “knew about the girls” and “spent hours” at his home – is a “hoax” and “Russia scam”.“Our Oversight investigation has Donald Trump panicked and desperate,” Garcia said. “He is trying to deflect from serious new questions we have about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”He added:
    The President has not explained why he won’t release the files to the American people. Or why sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a cushy low-security prison after her interview with Trump’s former personal lawyer.
    Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said that she was put on non-disciplinary administrative leave for “speaking up in my personal capacity” about the “harms that I have been witnessing” inside the agency. In a video posted to TikTok on Thursday, Norton said that being put on leave was “designed to scare and silence me. It was designed to scare and silence my colleagues, and it was designed to scare and silence everyone.”According to Stat News, Norton was also one of the organizers of the “Bethesda Declaration” letter signed by hundreds of NIH staffers, calling on director Jay Bhattacharya to listen to their concerns about the direction of the agency.Given that the president has no public events or meetings scheduled today, a White House official tells the press pool that Donald Trump “held calls with Thailand and Cambodia in an effort to mediate the most recent conflict” and “engaged with Malaysia as well to help end the violence”.Federal immigration agents will conduct their next major operation in Charlotte, according to the county’s sheriff.In a statement on Thursday, Garry McFadden confirmed that his office was “contacted by two separate federal officials confirming that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel will be arriving in the Charlotte area as early as this Saturday or the beginning of next week”.The sheriff added: “At this time, specific details regarding the federal operation have not been disclosed and the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) has not been requested to assist with or participate in any enforcement actions.”In an interview with NPR this week, McFadden said “we cannot control what is going to go on. We just have to better understand it and be prepared to respond and react.”Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, has hit back against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after they issued a rare condemnation of the administration’s immigration agenda.“Secure borders save lives, and I wish the Catholic church would understand that,” Homan said, speaking to reporters outside the White House today. “So the Catholic church is wrong, I’m sorry. I’m a lifelong Catholic … I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic church in my opinion.”The border czar declined to comment on whether options for land strikes in Venezuela had been presented to Trump, or whether ICE agents would soon be conducting their next major operation in Charlotte, North Carolina.Further to my last post on the announcement of a framework agreement, the White House has said in a statement that the US, Switzerland and Liechtenstein aim to conclude negotiations to finalize their trade deal by the first quarter of 2026.Of the $200bn pledged Swiss investments in the United States, at least $67bn will come in 2026, it said, adding that the investments will target a range of sectors including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, aerospace and gold manufacturing.Earlier we reported that US trade representative Jamieson Greer said that the US has “essentially reached a deal with Switzerland”, after the country was hit with a 39% tariff on Swiss exports to the US.My colleague Callum Jones reports that Donald Trump has agreed to slash US tariffs on Switzerland to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters.The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms.The Trump administration agreed to limit US tariffs on Switzerland and Liechtenstein “to a maximum of 15%” under the deal, according to a statement from the Swiss government.This brings US tariffs on Switzerland in line with those on the European Union – allowing Swiss exporters the same treatment as rivals in neighboring countries.In return, Switzerland will reduce tariffs “on a range of US products”, the statement said. “In addition to all industrial products, fish and seafood, this includes agricultural products from the US that Switzerland considers non-sensitive.”Swiss officials also committed to granting a series of quotas for US goods that can be exported to Switzerland on a duty-free basis, including 500 tonnes of beef, 1,000 tonnes of bison meat and 1,500 tonnes of poultry.“The date for implementing these market access concessions will be coordinated with the US to ensure that customs duties are reduced at the same time,” the statement said.A series of exchanges between child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary, showing a relationship as confidantes emerged among the emails released by Republican legislators this week.The exchanges, from 2013 to early 2019, showed the two men sharing personal – and sometimes unseemly – views about politics and relationships.“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,” Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”At the time, Harvard was wrestling with an admissions debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position in a scandal after making sexist comments about female academics, went on to say in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ In [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”After the Wall Street Journal revealed a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers told the paper that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.In the massive trove of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate released by Republican lawmakers this week are documents that show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.Trump wrote on Truth Social today that he would be asking the DOJ and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and business leaders.In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’ contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being rebuffed.“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.”Summers reiterated his regret to the Harvard Crimson on Wednesday. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”The only remaining criminal case against Donald Trump has been revived after the head of Georgia’s prosecutor’s council appointed himself to replace Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, who was removed from the election interference case in September.Pete Skandalakis, a Republican and the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, the state body that provides legal training and is often charged to mitigate prosecutorial conflicts, wrote in a statement on Friday that he would be taking over for Willis.A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to help find enough votes to beat Biden.The case remains the only criminal prosecution of Trump remaining, but it has been on life support after Willis was disqualified by the Georgia supreme court, which ruled that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, revealed in dramatic court filings in January 2024, created an impermissible appearance of a conflict of interest.Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. While president, Trump is protected from state-level prosecutions, but the other 14 remaining defendants are still subject to prosecution.“The filing of this appointment reflects my inability to secure another conflict prosecutor to assume responsibility for this case,” Skandalakis said. “Several prosecutors were contacted and, while all were respectful and professional, each declined the appointment.”Trump’s move, to focus on his rivals’ affiliations and relationships with Epstein, is seemingly his latest effort to distance himself from the renewed focus on his own relationship with the disgraced financier, who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, and the extent to which he was aware of his conduct.The president continued to post on Truth Social today, notably saying that he will direct attorney general Pam Bondi and the FBI to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s “involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorganChase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him”.Trump went on to claim, baselessly, that this is “another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats”.Flight logs state that former president Bill Clinton travelled on Epstein’s private jet several times. According to several emails from Epstein, released by the House oversight committee, Clinton never visited his private island. Meanwhile, Reid Hoffman – the longtime Democratic donor and venture capitalist – has said he engaged with Epstein in a fundraising capacity for the Massachussets Institute of Technology. Larry Summers, former treasury secretary under Clinton, was a friend of Epstein’s and several emails between the two appear in the committee’s most recent release.In the tranche of documents published this week, Epstein said that Donald Trump “spent hours” at Epstein’s home with one of his victims in an email to co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. The president has maintained the correspondence released by House Democrats was part of the ongoing “hoax” around Epstein, and simply a deflection from their performance during the government shutdown.Several Republican senators have expressed disapproval about a provision tucked into the stopgap spending bill passed this week, which would allow lawmakers to sue the federal government because their phone records were subpoenaed in 2023 by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.“There needs to be accountability for the Biden DOJ’s outrageous abuse of the separation of powers, but the right way to do that is through public hearings, tough oversight, including of the complicit telecomm companies, and prosecution where warranted,” said senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of the eight lawmakers whose phone data the FBI sought and obtained.For his part, House speaker Mike Johnson has pledged to repeal the provision next week, and many House Republicans are incensed about the language in the bill.“Interesting seeing my colleagues express outrage over this provision yet still vote for it when they could have been strong and not let the Senate jam the House,” said GOP member Greg Steube, who represents the Florida suncoast. “There was no reason this needed to be in the bill to reopen the government. The Senate used a crisis to pass an unethical provision and now the House is complicit.”Donald Trump has claimed on social media that Democratic lawmakers are doing “everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again”. This comes after emails released this week by the House oversight committee seem to suggest that the president may have known about Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct.In his post on Truth Social a short while ago, Trump added that the latest batch of documents are being used to “deflect” from Democrats’ “bad policies and losses, specially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where there party is in total disarray and has no idea what to do”.The president has yet to address the emails, or the wider record release, which included more than 20,000 pages. On Thursday, he took no questions from reporters at an executive order signing in the East Room. He has, however, been resolute about his stance online. White House officials have recapitulated his claims that the new information is merely a distraction.“Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish,” Trump wrote on Friday. “Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem! Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”Americans should “raise hell” to protect US national parks through the “nightmare” of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a former National Park Service director, amid alarm over the impact of the federal government shutdown.Jonathan Jarvis claimed the agency is now in the hands of a “bunch of ideologues” who would have no issue watching it “go down in flames” – and see parks from Yellowstone to Yosemite as potential “cash cows”, ripe for privatization.Jarvis, who led the NPS from 2009 to 2017, faced intense scrutiny, a five-hour grilling in Congress and calls for his resignation after closing all 401 national park sites during a previous shutdown, in October 2013.He was certain, despite the backlash, that it was the right thing to do: keeping them open with a skeleton staff would have put parks and their visitors at risk, his team concluded.Over the past month, hundreds of NPS veterans including Jarvis, 72, have watched aghast as most of the agency’s workers were furloughed during the longest shutdown in US history – while the Trump administration kept all national parks open.There have been consequences.A fire at Joshua Tree national park burned through about 72 acres. Yosemite faced a wave of illegal Base jumping. Yellowstone grappled with bear jams.Vandalism included graffiti in Arches national park. A stone wall at Gettysburg national military park was damaged. Trash started to gather at various sites.Thousands of NPS workers are typically around to guide visitors safely through parks, point them in the right direction, swiftly rescue them from danger, keep traffic moving, monitor wildlife and protect the landscape.“You take all of that away – all of those employees – you basically are, on one hand, creating unsafe conditions for the visitor,” Jarvis said, adding: “And you’re putting basically these irreplaceable resources at risk.” More

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      People held in ‘decrepit’ California ICE facility sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions

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      Seven people detained at California’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center have sued the US government, alleging they have been denied essential medications, frequently go hungry and are housed in a “decrepit” facility.The federal class-action complaint filed against ICE on Wednesday challenges the “inhumane conditions” at the California City detention center, which opened in late August inside a shuttered state prison. The suit alleges “life-threatening” medical neglect, with the plaintiffs saying they have been denied cancer treatment, basic disability accommodations and regular insulin for diabetes.The facility is run by CoreCivic, a private prison corporation, which is not a named defendant.Residents have raised alarms about the facility for two months, with some describing it as a “torture chamber” and “hell on earth” in interviews.California City is located in the remote Mojave desert, 100 miles (160km) north-east of Los Angeles. It can hold more than 2,500 people, increasing ICE’s California detention capacity by 36%. It currently detains more than 800 people, lawyers say.Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in an email that claims of “subprime conditions” at the detention center were “false”, writing: “No one is denied access to proper medical care.”The suit, which alleges constitutional violations, describes conditions as “dire”, saying: “Sewage bubbles up from the shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of the cells. People are locked in concrete cells the size of a parking space for hours on end.”Temperatures inside are “frigid”, and detained residents who cannot afford to buy roughly $20 sweatshirts “suffer in the cold, some wearing socks on their arms as makeshift sleeves”, the complaint alleges; meals are “paltry”, and people who cannot afford to buy supplemental food go hungry.Even though residents are detained for civil immigration violations, not criminal offenses, California City “operates even more restrictively and punitively than a prison”, the lawyers say. Families are forced to visit their relatives behind glass, with parents denied the ability to hug or touch their children, and the facility “sharply limits access to lawyers, leaving people bewildered and largely incommunicado”, the suit alleges.McLaughlin of the DHS said detained people were provided three meals a day and dietitians evaluated the meals to “ensure they meet the appropriate standards”. She said they “have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers”, adding: “ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons.”The residents are coming forward as the homeland security department continues to ramp up immigration raids nationally, bolstered by $45bn to expand ICE capacity, with the goal of detaining more than 100,000 people. Civil rights lawsuits have repeatedly raised concerns about detention conditions across the country.The plaintiffs are represented by the Prison Law Office, the Keker Van Nest and Peters law firm, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.Requests for medical attention “go unanswered for weeks or are never answered at all”, the complaint states. People with disabilities have allegedly struggled to access essential services, including wheelchairs. One man, whose glasses were confiscated at intake and had difficulty seeing objects in front of him, fell getting off his bunkbed and was hospitalized, the suit says.Jose Ruiz Canizales, a detained plaintiff who is deaf and does not speak, has been at California City since 29 August, but has only communicated once with staff through a sign language interpreter via video, the complaint says. When he tries to communicate, staff “often shrug their shoulders, walk away, or laugh at him”. The impact on his mental health was so severe, he was hospitalized for an anxiety attack.Yuri Alexander Roque Campos, another plaintiff, has a heart anomaly requiring daily monitoring and medication, but since he arrived at California City on 5 September, he has been denied medications “for days at a time”, his lawyers wrote, resulting in two emergency hospitalizations for severe chest pain. A hospital doctor allegedly told him “he could die if this were to happen again”, but the lawsuit says he has yet to see a cardiologist and still lacks consistent medication.Sokhean Keo, who previously spoke of his temporary hunger strike to protest about conditions, witnessed a friend’s suicide attempt at the facility and remains traumatized by flashbacks, lawyers wrote.“I’m bringing this lawsuit to try to help end the suffering and pain that I see in here,” Keo said in a statement shared by his attorneys. “ICE is playing with people’s lives, and they treat people like they’re trash, like they’re nothing.”When residents do see doctors, “the care they receive is dangerously poor”, according to the complaint, with providers failing to document exams, address abnormal lab results or order timely treatment.Fernando Viera Reyes, a plaintiff transferred to California City in late August, had a pending biopsy appointment to formally diagnose and begin treatment for prostate cancer, but his request to see a doctor went unanswered for weeks, and he still has not seen a urologist nor received testing for his condition, the suit says. His bloodwork and bleeding with urination suggests his cancer may have metastasized, his lawyers said.Plaintiff Fernando Gomez Ruiz, a father of two and LA resident for 22 years, was arrested by ICE in early October while at a food truck outside a Home Depot, the complaint says. Since his arrival at California City in mid-October, he has not received regular insulin for his diabetes, leading to elevated blood sugar and a “large, oozing ulcer on the bottom of his foot”, the suit says. He says he has been forced to cover his wound with “soiled bandages and bloody shoes” and is worried he will need amputation.The DHS did not respond to the detailed healthcare claims in the lawsuit, but McLaughlin said ICE provided “comprehensive medical care from the moment” people are detained: “This includes medical, dental, and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.” She said ICE “provides necessary accommodations for disabilities”.Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesperson, declined to comment on the litigation and specific claims, but said in an email on Thursday after publication that the “safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority”. CoreCivic’s ICE facilities follow federal detention standards, are “monitored very closely by our government partners” and are required to undergo regular reviews and audits to “ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for all”, he said.“We’re proud of our dedicated team at [California City] who work hard every day to keep those in our care safe while providing for their needs,” he said, adding “staff are held to the highest ethical standards” outlined in the company’s “human rights policy”. The company told the Guardian in September that it provided “high-quality healthcare, available 24/7”.The plaintiffs also accused staff of “abusive” behavior and “unreasonable use of force”. On 29 September, staff entered the cell of a person detained in “administrative segregation”, a form of restricted housing, and hit him with riot shields, even though he was already handcuffed, and held him down with their knees on his back, the complaint says.On 3 October, Gustavo Guevara Alarcon, another plaintiff, said he witnessed an officer pepper-spraying a man who did not speak English, after the man did not understand the officer and turned to walk away.In another alleged incident on 9 October described in the lawsuit, people were screaming for help due to an attempted suicide, and a person stepped out of his cell to observe. A staff member, who was holding a drill for maintenance work, ordered the person to get his “ass inside”, threatening to “make a hole in your chest”, and the man allegedly got a disciplinary write-up for being outside his cell.“California City’s punishing conditions are punishing by design,” said Tess Borden, a supervising staff attorney at the Prison Law Office. “ICE and DHS are using detention as a threat to immigrants who decide to stay in America, and they’re making good on that threat at California City. Many people have agreed to deportation, and some even attempt to take their own lives, because the conditions at the facility are so unbearable.”McLaughlin did not respond to accounts of the specific incidents, but said ICE placed people in segregation for “their own protection or protection of others”, adding: “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority … ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.” More

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      ‘MigraWatch’ trainings to ‘Whistlemania’ events: Chicagoans fight back against ICE raids

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      Anaís Robles didn’t expect to get teargassed. The co-owner of Colibrí Cafe, the coffee shop that opened this year in Chicago’s East Side neighborhood, saw commotion outside in mid-October and ran to see what happened.Robles saw federal agents donning masks and decided to step back, she was half a block away when the teargas canisters hit. “People were just in the streets, so to clear out the area, they teargas all of us, and like, multiple teargas [canisters],” she said.Robles recalled the burning sensation as she walked back to the coffee shop with her eyes closed.ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents have been raiding almost every part of Chicago in the Trump administration’s wide-ranging “Operation Midway Blitz”, which started on 9 September 2025. The National Center for Immigrant Justice and Illinois Coalition on Immigrant and Refugee Rights estimated that since the start of the operation, about 1,300 people had been illegally detained, and that violations of a court order to stop warrantless arrests were ongoing. Mayor Brandon Johnson even called this week for the United Nations to investigate the force being used on city streets.But Chicagoans are also fighting back.View image in fullscreenThey are organizing to protect life in a city that in so many ways is defined by the many waves of immigration from eastern European to Latin American, with Mexican-born immigrants making up nearly 40% of all foreign-born immigrants in the city. And with entire communities now on edge, and vibrant streets filled with immigrant-owned businesses have turned into ghost towns, many residents have dedicated countless hours and funds to keeping the city intact.Donald Trump has long targeted the Democrat-led city for its crime rate, calling it the murder capital of the world, on social media, even though the city experienced its lowest murder rate since 1962 this summer.His feud goes as far back as 2016, when he had to withdraw from hosting a rally citing “security concerns”, as fights broke out between counter-protesters and attenders. Or as far back as 2014, when the then mayor, Rahm Emanuel, called Trump Tower’s embellishment with the future president’s last name, “tasteless”.Since Trump’s first term, residents have been organizing against his impact on the city. But those efforts have ramped up in response to “Operation Midway Blitz”. Residents have hosted ICE Watch trainings, accompanied students for safety, passed out whistles to neighbors to blow when ICE is spotted, and by donating money to those most affected by the raids.View image in fullscreenDiego Morales, a volunteer with Puño, or Pilsen Unidos por Nuestro Orgullo said their MigraWatch trainings have consistently reached capacity. Morales has trained more than 2,000 people in how to spot ICE as well as what rights people have that could keep them safe or quickly release them from detention. He has done this since 2016, when Trump first got elected.“Ideally, we want to reach, like, a critical mass of trained people in the city of Chicago, so that you know everybody going about their day – whether they’re [a] bus driver, whether there’s somebody walking down the street going to a book shop, whether they’re a student coming in and out of school – has these sorts of tools and is connected to the network in some way and can activate,” he said.Meanwhile, a local West Side group, Belmont Cragin United, has been hosting what has been dubbed “Whistlemania” events, where volunteers gather at a local restaurant to pack whistles, community resource guides, and zines on how to gather a crowd of people when ICE is nearby. Hundreds of people attended these events at locations all over the city’s West Side and packed more than 17,000 kits, according to Block Club Chicago.“We’re showing them in deeds and actions that we care about them, that the city of Chicago and our neighbors care about these individuals, even if the federal government doesn’t,” Alonso Zaragoza told Block Club Chicago, a Chicago-based non-profit media outlet.View image in fullscreenMorgan Martinez, the owner of Solar Intentions, an astrology-themed local sober gathering space in the city’s Edgewater neighborhood, has been active in efforts to educate residents about ICE.“We’ve been able to become part of local rapid response teams that are entirely community driven: from community patrolling at local businesses and schools to organizing mutual aid, local community organizers are informative, dedicated to protecting our neighbors at all costs,” said Martinez.Solar Intentions also held a fundraiser for another local business called Edgewater Tacos, which has been struggling since the ICE raids started in September. Martinez said she was inspired to fundraise when she heard that Edgewater Tacos had to close for an entire weekend; locals suggested donations to make up for lost revenue. That fundraiser raised thousands for the neighborhood business.In the city’s Little Village neighborhood, the Street Vendors Association of Chicago is making sure that the vendors who sell mango with chamoy, paletas, Mexican corn and other snacks are able to stay afloat without the fear of going out to potentially be detained by ICE, by fundraising on their behalf. One of the first people detained in Operation Midway Blitz was a flower vendor on the city’s Southwest Side.“The vendors are small businesses, and you went from seeing 20 vendors to seeing two vendors out there. And sometimes it’s not even the actual vendors, but it’s their kids that are vending for them out of fear,” said Maria Orozco, a development coordinator at SVAC.Orozco, whose own parents are street vendors, said the organization raised over $230,000 for street vendors. Despite working long hours and fighting exhaustion, she and her colleagues will continue to do so to ensure street vendors can access aid.Martinez for her part will be doing the same.“This administration wants us to feel defeated and fatigued from the violence against our local communities, and it may tempt us towards numbness. But the real truth is that when we are present in our bodies, we’re present with each other, which allows to stand up for our communities,” she said. More

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      Judge orders release of hundreds arrested during Chicago immigration raids

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      A federal judge has ordered the release of hundreds of people who were arrested over the last few months in the Chicago area amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids across the city.On Wednesday, US district judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the justice department to produce a list showing which of the 615 possible class members are still in custody by 19 November, the Chicago Tribune reports.According to Cummings, he would allow the members’ release on a $1,500 bond as long as they have no criminal history or prior removal order. The ACLU of Illinois said that the order will mean the immediate release of 13 people who have been detained by federal officials.As part of Wednesday’s order, Cummings also prohibited the government from pressuring detainees to agree to voluntary deportation while their cases are pending, the Chicago Tribune added.The order comes after Donald Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz launched a series of aggressive immigration raids across Chicago during which federal agents have been accused of using excessive force against protesters including deploying tear gas and pepper spray.In a statement to the Guardian, ACLU’s Illinois chapter hailed Cummings’ decision, with its deputy legal director Michelle Garcia noting the 13 immediate releases.“In addition, more than 600 additional individuals may be released in a week on bond or ankle monitoring, while the parties determine if their arrests violated the consent decree,” Garcia added, referencing a 2022 consent decree that had been previously established concerning warrantless arrests in the Chicago area.The ACLU and the National Immigrant Justice Center had filed a lawsuit over allegations that federal agents violated the 2022 agreement by issuing warrantless arrests amid the latest immigration crackdowns across the city.Garcia went on to say: “Most importantly, the court committed to enforcing our agreement with the federal government – a step that creates a pathway for even more of the hundreds of people illegally arrested and detained during Operation Midway Blitz to be released. The court is holding ICE and CBP accountable for breaking the law.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, justice department lawyer William Weiland described Cummings’ decision as “highly significant” and requested that he halt any release order so he could consult with his superiors, the Chicago Tribune reported. Weiland further noted that at least 12 of the 615 individuals posed a substantial security concern and that the government needed more time to complete their vetting, the outlet added.Cummings has directed both the plaintiffs and defendants to file a status report by 21 November.Just last month, a coalition of immigration advocates – led by the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the MacArthur Justice Center – filed a lawsuit against federal authorities, alleging “torturous” conditions at an ICE facility in the Chicago area. More

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      Texas’s Eagle Pass voters turned to Trump. A year later, some have doubts

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      Along southern Texas, the Rio Grande forms the US-Mexico border, an arrangement established after the end of the Mexican-American war. Eagle Pass, which had been known as El Paso del Águila, became the first US settlement on the Rio Grande.Swimming across the river has remained treacherous ever since. But migrants never stopped risking their lives to set foot on US soil – and in 2023, those numbers reach record highs as Eagle Pass, the seat of Maverick county, became the epicenter of growing backlash over the Biden administration’s immigration policies.In 2024, for the first time in a century, the Hispanic-majority border county voted for a Republican: Donald Trump. Trump won 14 out of 18 counties along the southern border, gaining the most support there of any Republican in three decades. But he made his biggest gains in Maverick, with 59% of the votes, increasing his support by 14% from 2020.While many supported Trump’s policies on border security, one year later some residents in Eagle Pass are increasingly uncomfortable with the tactics the administration has used across the country in keeping with its mass deportation agenda. Since Trump’s inauguration, federal agents have disrupted communities as they arrest parents who are with their children, show up at schools or daycare facilities, and accidentally sweep up US citizens.The intensity of the national crackdown is jarring for residents like Manuel Mello III who have been on the frontlines of border issues for decades. The chief of the Eagle Pass fire department, Mello explained that border crossings have always been part of the city’s history.Mello said his grandmother would pack food and water for those migrants that passed by. She would give them las bendiciones, or blessings in Spanish, and send them off. But what he saw at the Rio Grande in the last year of the Biden administration was unlike anything he had witnessed in his 33 years in the fire department.“We would get between 30 to 60 emergency calls a day about migrants crossing the river with a lot of injuries, some with broken femurs or this lady who had an emergency childbirth,” Mello said.In all 2024, the Eagle Pass fire department received more than 400 emergency calls and reported eight drownings. This year, the department has responded to fewer than 100 calls and reported only three drownings, according to numbers shared with the Guardian.“Now Eagle Pass has gone back to normal, but this is still a broken system. Because you’re deporting people doesn’t mean that you’re fixing it,” Mello said.A mile away, Ricardo Lopez and a group of friends gathered at a McDonald’s, as they do every week, to discuss some of the challenges facing Eagle Pass, a town in which 28,o00 people live.Not long after ordering coffee, Lopez and his friends, all bilingual men of Mexican descent, realized it has been almost a year since the last elections. They remembered the evolution of what was then an extraordinary series of events: from thousands of migrants swimming across the Rio Grande each day to foreign journalists wandering the town’s streets and Texas national guard troops grabbing lunch at local restaurants.“I think most people that live here can agree that it was the illegal immigration that was causing all the problems and that [Joe] Biden didn’t respond to the needs of the border,” said Lopez, 79, who recently ran for city council in Eagle Pass and lost. “After the last election I asked some of my friends, why did you vote for Trump? And they put it back to me: don’t you see what is happening? Though I don’t like the guy, he fixed the problem.”Just hours after taking office for a second time, Trump signed an order declaring a national emergency that allowed additional US troops to arrive at the southern border. But Trump didn’t only try to cut down on illegal immigration. The administration also terminated a mobile phone app created under Biden known as CBP One, which had allowed tens of thousands of people waiting in Mexico to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum.Since then, residents like Lopez have seen a dramatic change in Eagle Pass.At the height of the spike in migration in December of 2023, the border patrol recorded over 2,300 crossings a day in the Del Rio sector, home to Eagle Pass. In September of this year, it averaged just 30 crossings a day there, government data shows.Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics project, a nonpartisan polling initiative by the University of Texas at Austin, said Maverick county was a reflection of broader political dynamics in the state, where Republicans were seeking to expand their appeal in blue-collar areas, including among Latinos.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Texas is a changing competitive landscape and more diverse than the country as a whole. If you try to appeal to Hispanics based on their Hispanicness, you might be missing the mark. And I think Democrats have probably failed in engaging with this group of people,” Blank said.Shortly after Biden entered the White House, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, had also launched Operation Lone Star in a bid to deter illegal immigration. The effort quickly raised concerns about its tactics, including the busing of thousands of migrants to Chicago, New York and Washington DC.As part of the initiative, an 80-acre base camp was built in Eagle Pass to house 1,800 Texas national guard soldiers. Troops deployed there by Texas and other Republican-led states have been seen standing on the US side of the border setting up coils of razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, ordering migrants to swim back to Mexico.Texas says Operation Lone Star had led to more than 500,000 apprehensions of undocumented people.On a recent afternoon, the Guardian observed armed Texas national guard troops walking and watching over the US-Mexico border atop shipping containers. No migrants were seen crossing the river from Mexico. In Piedras Negras, there wasn’t razor wire preventing access to the Rio Grande.While the migration dynamics have changed at the border, some longtime residents are not just concerned about the impact on people. They’re also worried about the degradation of the environment as a result of Trump and Abbott’s crackdown.Abbott used a natural disaster declaration to install floating buoys separated by saw-blades in the river as a part of Operation Lone Star. Shortly after, Jessie Fuentes, the owner of a kayaking company in Eagle Pass, filed a lawsuit, seeking to stop the installation of floating barriers.“The river was part of my grandfather’s upbringing, my father’s upbringing and mine, more than 200 years of experience as a family, and now it’s been mistreated with this militarization,” said Fuentes.“The river can’t defend itself so I sued the Texas government.” More

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      Olivia Rodrigo condemns Trump administration’s use of her music for ‘racist, hateful propaganda’

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      Olivia Rodrigo has criticized the Trump administration after one of her songs was featured in a government video promoting deportation efforts.A clip posted on the official Department of Homeland Security and White House Instagram accounts encouraged undocumented immigrants to voluntarily leave the US. The video used a segment of Rodrigo’s song all-american bitch as its soundtrack.Rodrigo, who is Filipino American, reportedly condemned the use of her music in a comment on the post, writing: “don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.” The comment was later taken down, but not before screenshots were captured and circulated widely.The video, uploaded Tuesday as Americans voted in several states, opens with the loud intro of the track as ICE agents are shown detaining people, accompanied by the caption: “IF ICE FINDS YOU.” It then transitions to scenes of immigrants seemingly choosing to self-deport, underscored by the song lyrics: “All the time/I’m grateful all the time/I’m sexy and I’m kind/I’m pretty when I cry.”The caption concludes with a warning: “LEAVE NOW and self-deport using the CBP Home app. If you don’t, you will face the consequences.”After Rodrigo’s response went viral on Friday, Instagram removed the soundtrack from the clip. An error message, reading “This song is currently unavailable”, is currently displayed.In a statement shared with the Guardian, a DHS spokesperson said: “America is grateful all the time for our federal law enforcement officers who keep us safe. We suggest Ms. Rodrigo thank them for their service, not belittle their sacrifice.”The department did not confirm whether they had removed the original comment by Rodrigo from the post.Rodrigo joins a growing list of artists who have objected to Trump or his administration using their music without consent, with others including Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones and the singer Jess Glynne.Glynne voiced her anger when one of her songs was similarly used, writing on Instagram: “This post honestly makes me sick. My music is about love, unity, and spreading positivity – never about division or hate.”This isn’t the first time Rodrigo has spoken out against the Trump administration. She publicly condemned ICE raids that took place in Los Angeles earlier in the year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe singer, 22, wrote on Instagram: “I’ve lived in LA my whole life and I’m deeply upset about these violent deportations of my neighbors under the current administration. LA simply wouldn’t exist without immigrants. Treating hardworking community members with such little respect, empathy, and due process is awful.”Rodrigo previously collaborated with the federal government under very different circumstances. In 2021, she visited the White House wearing a vintage pink Chanel suit to meet then-president Joe Biden and Dr Anthony Fauci, recording a video to encourage youth vaccination during the Covid-19 pandemic.From the White House podium, she said: “I am beyond honored and humbled to be here today to help spread the message about the importance of youth vaccination. I’m in awe of the work President Biden and Dr Fauci have done and was happy to help lend my support to this important initiative.” More

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      ‘Huge victory’ in Portland as judge’s final order bars Trump from sending national guard

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      A federal judge in Oregon on Friday blocked Donald Trump from deploying national guard troops to Portland, ruling there was no evidence of widespread violence to justify federal intervention.The US district court judge, Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, delivered her final order in the case on Friday. She found that protests near Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility were “predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence”.Earlier this week, Immergut barred Trump’s administration from deploying the national guard to Portland until at least Friday, saying she “found no credible evidence” that protests in the city had grown out of control before the president federalized the troops earlier this fall.In Friday’s ruling, she concluded that most altercations occurred between protesters and counter-protesters, not between protesters and federal agents. Immergut also acknowledged that while she “may lack jurisdiction to enjoin President Trump in the performance of his official duties”, her injunction only bars the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from deploying members of the national guard to Oregon.This is the latest development in weeks of legal back and forth in Portland, Chicago and other US cities as the Trump administration has moved to federalize and deploy the national guard in city streets to quell protests.The ICE facility in south-west Portland has been the site of ongoing protests since June, when Portland police declared one a riot. The city of Portland and the state of Oregon sued the Trump administration in September after the president announced he had directed the defense department to federalize and deploy the Oregon national guard.Immergut previously issued a temporary restraining order barring the deployment of the national guard in Oregon, a decision the Trump administration appealed.The judge heard three days of witness testimony from law enforcement officers and officials describing conditions around the ICE facility. Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield called Friday’s ruling “a huge victory”.“The courts are holding this administration accountable to the truth and the rule of law,” Rayfield said. “From the beginning, this case has been about making sure that facts, not political whims, guide how the law is applied. Today’s decision protects that principle.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling. More

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      An Arizona town is dreading plans to turn its prison into an ICE facility: ‘It’s morally objectionable’

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      In an Arizona town where farmers have long wrested a living off the arid land, reports that a former prison complex may be turned into an immigration detention center have sparked a fierce backlash, with residents seeing the potential transition as the latest undesirable symbol of the Trump administration’s massive escalation of immigration enforcement.The facility in Marana, a town of about 63,700 people located north of Tucson, sprawls across a flat expanse of desert studded with scrubby bushes and hardy trees. It was shuttered almost two years ago, and the Management and Training Corporation, the private company that owns it, informed the town manager of company plans to operate a detention center in the prison.During a town hall meeting on 23 October, residents crowded into a school auditorium to learn more from representatives of local government and advocacy organizations about the plan. Many attenders spoke against the jailing of immigrants amid Donald Trump’s crusade to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible.Karla Jones, one of the attenders, said she abhorred the idea of having a nearby detention center to hold immigrants – whose only crime in many cases is lacking US legal status, a civil offense – for extended periods of time. “That’s breaking up families,” she said. “And it’s people who are paying taxes, it’s people who are working. So I don’t want my community to support that.”Federal legislation passed in July provided $45bn for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to build more detention centers for adults and children as part of a larger $75bn, four-year package for the federal agency. To vastly increase detention capacity, the federal government is relying heavily on for-profit private companies that run prisons.The Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC) is one of those companies. MTC built the Marana prison in the mid-1990s, when the population in the then largely farming community was about 2,000. It was the first private prison in the state.In 2013, Arizona bought the prison for $150,000. In December 2023, the state – citing high costs and a decreasing incarcerated population – closed it. This past summer, after Arizona lawmakers rejected a bill that would have leased the prison for $1 a year to the federal government for use as an immigration detention center – MTC paid the state $15m to get it back.View image in fullscreenMarana’s town manager, Terry Rozema, said there was little the town could do to prevent the use of the building complex as a detention center. “The facility is privately owned by MTC and is already properly zoned for use as a prison or an ICE facility. As such, the town doesn’t have authority to restrict its future use as long as it meets current zoning,” Rozema said in an emailed statement.Emily Lawhead, MTC’s director of communications, declined an interview but wrote in an email that the company was “in discussions with several public agencies that may have a need for additional bed space”. ICE did not respond to questions regarding plans to use the onetime prison, but an agency spokesperson cited the need for “greater detention capacity” due to “a significant number of arrests”.MTC already operates five immigration detention centers in California, New Mexico and Texas.Its record in Arizona is spotty. In 2015, the state canceled a contract with the company after a riot at a prison it operated in the town of Kingman left more than a dozen incarcerated people and guards injured. A subsequent investigation by the Arizona department of corrections concluded that the company had “a culture of disorganization, disengagement and disregard” for state policies. MTC did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about those allegations, but the company has previously described the investigation’s findings as flawed.Jennifer Allen, a member of the board of supervisors for Pima county, where Marana is located, said that given reports about the poor conditions facing ICE detainees across the country, she and her constituents were concerned about the treatment of people in the Marana facility if it were to be converted and about oversight of the facility. She criticized the federal government for showering immigration enforcement with resources while simultaneously cutting funding for social safety net programs for older adults, children and other vulnerable populations.At the town hall, the federal government received plenty of criticism for its aggressive immigration agenda. Many attenders spoke against not just having a detention center in the vicinity, but also about the impact of social harms of the crackdown. Some residents brought signs bearing the slogan “Stop the kidnappings, protect your neighbors”, alluding to forceful arrests of immigrants in their homes, at work and in the streets.Speaking to the crowd, Tucson resident Maximiliano Torres likened the Trump administration’s detention and deportation campaign to Arizona’s 2010 Senate Bill 1070, commonly known as the “show me your papers” law that empowered police to conduct immigration enforcement. Although police can still inquire about immigration status, it’s no longer required because courts have largely struck down the law as unconstitutional.Recalling the law’s impact, Torres told the crowd: “They turned [crossing the border without authorization] into a criminal act, so they could justify putting those people in prison and forcing the federal government to pay private prisons.”While Trump has repeatedly promised immigration enforcement efforts would be focused on undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, statistics show that those being held in detention are primarily people without criminal convictions. As of September, 71.5% of the 59,762 immigrants in detention had no criminal conviction, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Many convictions involved traffic violations and other minor offenses.Under the Biden administration, immigrants with strong community ties and no serious brushes with the law would generally be released and be asked to check in with ICE periodically, since the government prioritized deporting people with criminal convictions, said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center. “Now everybody gets arrested, everybody gets detained,” she said.The Trump administration has significantly expanded mandatory detention to keep immigrants in confinement during proceedings to remove them from the country, she said. “More and more often, people are just giving up and agreeing to be deported instead of sitting in jail trying to fight their case,” the attorney said.In Marana, resident Tom Flynn left the town hall clutching one of the protest signs. He detests the possibility of an immigrant detention center in his town. “No 1, it’s morally objectionable,” he said. “No 2, it’s a detriment to the overall economy; it reduces the number of people who have been in the area, it depresses home values. And it’s so obviously politically driven.”Marlis Dinning said what she heard at the town hall about the possible detention center was disturbing. “It seems like all of this has happened behind closed doors,” she said. She’s against the detention of immigrants, many of them asylum seekers who entered the country legally, and who now “have no way to get citizenship”, she said.After the town hall, Jones was feeling quite unsettled by the overall discussion. But she vowed to participate in the mounting community pressure to keep the detention center at bay. “I really hope we can stop it from opening,” she said. More

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      ICE plans to open call center to help law enforcement locate unaccompanied minors

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      US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to open a new call center to help law enforcement agencies track down unaccompanied migrant children.According to a homeland security department Request for Information (RFI) notice released this week, ICE stated there was an “immediate need to establish and maintain” a call center equipped with “data-enabled technology”.The agency said the center’s purpose was to “support partner encounters in the field … focused on locating unaccompanied alien children”.The facility, slated to open in Nashville, Tennessee, will operate 24 hours a day and is expected to handle between 6,000 and 7,000 calls daily. The document did not specify why Nashville was chosen for the call center. ICE anticipates the center will open by March and reach full operational capacity by June.In the RFI, ICE also asked potential contractors to outline what kinds of “enabling technology” they would recommend to “integrate partner and alien data with our systems to maximize call efficiency and reduce call time”.In response to a Guardian request for comment, assistant homeland security secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement: “Your reporting is inaccurate,” without providing any details.ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In addition to the planned call center, CoreCivic Inc, the nation’s second-largest private prison operator, is headquartered in Nashville. Since Donald Trump took office in January, the company has reported strong financial gains, announcing $538.2m in earnings for the second quarter of this year, a 9.8% increase over the same period last year.The surge in profits for private prison companies, along with those of technology firms such as Palantir, which recently secured a $30m contract with ICE to build a database aimed at streamlining detentions and deportations, comes amid an escalation in immigration raids nationwide. These actions have provoked fierce backlash from the public, Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups alike.Reports of the planned ICE call center come as the Trump administration appears to have revived the practice of family separations in its renewed effort to deport millions, according to multiple cases reviewed by the Guardian. Immigration attorneys and former officials say the move is intended to pressure immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US voluntarily.Meanwhile, in a memo obtained by the Guardian last month, the Trump administration laid out plans to offer migrant children $2,500 as a “one-time resettlement support stipend” in exchange for their self-deportation.This latest escalation builds on policies from Trump’s first term, which included a “zero-tolerance” approach that directed the justice department to prosecute anyone who crossed the border without legal status. That policy led to the separation of at least 5,500 migrant children from their parents and guardians at the US-Mexico border.After widespread backlash from the public, as well as from both Democrats and Republicans, Trump signed an executive order in 2018 to formally end the family separation policy. More