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      Throwing their bodies on the gears: the Democratic lawmakers showing up to resist Trump

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      A flock of Ice agents, some masked, some sporting military-operator fashion for show, smooshed the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, up against a wall and handcuffed him in the hallway of a federal courthouse in early June, shuffling the mild-mannered politician into an elevator like the Sandman hustling an act off the stage 10 miles north at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.Like at the Apollo, Lander’s arrest was a show. News reporters and cellphone camera-wielding bystanders crowded the hall to watch the burly federal officers rumple a 55-year-old auditor asking for a warrant.“I’m not obstructing. I’m standing here in this hallway asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said. “You don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens.”“This is an urgent moment for the rule of law in the United States of America and it is important to step up,” Lander told the Guardian after the arrest. “And I think the dividing line for Democrats right now is not between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and folders. We have to find nonviolent but insistent ways of standing up for democracy and the rule of law.”The act of showing up is resonating with voters who have seen the limits of social media activism. Be it Senator Cory Booker’s speech in April or the arrest of lawmakers trying to inspect an Ice detention facility, the images of administration opponents physically interposing themselves as a disruption hearken back to an earlier era in American politics, of sit-ins and full jails, where opponents meant to grind the apparatus of government to a halt as a means of resistance.“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Mario Savio, a student leader in the free speech movement, a campaign of civil disobedience against restrictive policies on student political activity, said 60 years ago during a campus protest. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”That can look like Booker’s 25-hour record-breaking stand at the dais from 31 March through 1 April this year, presenting a litany of protest against the actions of the first 71 days of the Trump administration in the longest speech in Senate history. Technically, it was not a filibuster, unlike the previous record-holder, the South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond’s speech delaying passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1957.As an act of political protest, it required presence. The rules of a Senate floor speech are exacting. No sitting. No breaks. Continuous, corporeal effort. As the spectacle grew, Booker acknowledged that Democratic voters had been demanding more of their leaders.“I confess that I have been imperfect,” Booker said. “I confess that I’ve been inadequate to the moment. I confess that the Democratic party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue. I confess we all must look in the mirror and say: ‘We will do better.’”Activists had been in the street from the day of Trump’s inauguration. But Booker’s speech was a demarcation point after which Democratic leaders started confronting the right more directly. It also marked them being confronted in return.Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge, allowed a man to leave through the back doors of her courtroom, allegedly in response to the presence of immigration officers waiting to arrest him. FBI agents subsequently arrested Dugan in her Milwaukee courtroom on 25 April, charging her with obstruction.The FBI director, Kash Patel, posted comments about her arrest on X almost immediately, and eventually posted a photograph of her arrest, handcuffed and walking toward a police cruiser, with the comment: “No one is above the law.” Digitally altered photographs of Dugan appearing to be in tears in a mugshot proliferated on social media. Trump himself reposted an image from the Libs of TikTok website of Dugan wearing a Covid-19 mask on the day of her arrest.Three days later, Trump issued an executive order to create “a mechanism to provide legal resources and indemnification”, including “private-sector pro bono assistance”, for cops it describes as “unjustly incur[ring] expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law”.The order also seeks “enhanced sentences for crimes against law enforcement officers”, and calls for federal prosecution of state or local officials who the administration says obstruct law enforcement.View image in fullscreenTaken together, the order sent a clear signal to federal police agencies to take the gloves off – that accusations of misconduct would be defended against and that placing the bodies of public officials into handcuffs and squad cars was fair game.Three days after that, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, suggested more arrests were on the way. “Wait till you see what’s coming,” he said in response to a question about future arrests of officials.But the warnings have not stopped Democrats from showing up at Ice detention centers and other demonstrations.Four more elected or appointed Democratic officials and one Democratic senator’s staffer have been detained, arrested or charged by federal agents since Trump’s executive order. Each of the arrests has become a media spectacle.Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, visited Delaney Hall, a privately owned Ice detention facility he accuses of violating safety protocols, on 9 May. He was with three members of Congress at the time, who have the explicit right by law to inspect Ice facilities. Video captured by body-worn cameras shows a tangle of bodies as Ice agents arrest him, with beefy federal officers bending him over in handcuffs as they walk him through an outraged crowd.Amid the scrum is the freshman representative LaMonica McIver in her red coat, who stands out in videos as she walks through the gate. She appears to bump a masked law enforcement officer as she’s caught in the chaotic scene. Her intentions are far from clear, and witness video from other angles contradicts the government’s claim that members of Congress stormed the facility.Ten days later, the acting US attorney, Alina Habba, charged McIver with forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers, even after dropping similar charges against Baraka. For the administration and its supporters, the high-visibility arrests play out as payback for what they see as the politically motivated prosecution of Trump and of January 6 rioters. The Republican representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina filed a House resolution to expel McIver. Baraka’s arrest and McIver’s charge became fodder for conservative media.But it also galvanized Newark. Protesters filled the streets awaiting Baraka’s release.“History will judge us in this moral moment,” he told the crowd. “These people are wrong. And it’s moments like this that will judge us all – as cowards or, you know, as heroes.”Three weeks later, a staffer for the representative Jerry Nadler – whose name has not been released – allegedly impeded homeland security agents searching for “rioters” at a protest about immigration enforcement abuses. The agents handcuffed and detained her. Video circulated widely on social media and cable television.View image in fullscreenOn 8 June, as protesters flooded downtown Los Angeles intent on gumming up the streets around the Metropolitan detention center, the Democratic representative Jimmy Gomez of California posted a video on Instagram describing how chemical irritants had been deployed around the detention building. “They’re spraying something to try to get us to leave,” he said. “This is just to prevent us from doing our jobs.”Homeland security briefly released guidance last week asking members of Congress to give Ice facilities 72 hours of prior notice before visiting a facility. The demand conflicts with federal law allowing members of Congress immediate access for inspections. The guidance is no longer posted on the DHS website.The Democratic senator Alex Padilla of California attempted to confront the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, about protests in Los Angeles on 12 June. Before he could get a word in, when he approached to ask a question, Secret Service and FBI agents dragged Padilla out of the room and handcuffed him. The DHS falsely claimed that Padilla had failed to identify himself, releasing a statement describing Padilla’s inquiry as “disrespectful political theatre”.“The only political theater happening in Los Angeles is Trump using thousands of troops in Los Angeles as political props in response to overwhelmingly peaceful protests,” Padilla said in response.It has only been half a year that Trump has been president, but Democrats and other critics are finding that it’s the balance of civil rights tactics with 2025 TikTok-era virality that is cutting through the noise. Paired with some of the biggest protests in American history, it seems they are only getting started.“Authoritarians are looking to stoke fear and conflict and send a signal [that] if they are going to do this to elected officials – if they’re going to do it to white male US citizens with passports or elected officials, I think their goal is to make everyone afraid,” Lander said.“There is a pattern here, you know, from Senator Padilla to Ras Baraka to me, and an on-the-record statement from the attorney general about … trying to quote-unquote ‘liberate’ cities from their elected officials,” he added. “So, I take them at their word.” More

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      As Trump targets birthright citizenship, the terrain is once again ‘women’s bodies and sexuality’

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      One day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, five pregnant immigrant women – led by an asylum seeker from Venezuela – sued over the president’s executive order limiting automatic birthright citizenship, out of fear that their unborn children would be left stateless.The case went before the supreme court, which sided with the Trump administration Friday by restricting the ability of federal judges to block the order.The legal drama recalls a scene a century and a half earlier, when a different cohort of immigrant women went to the country’s highest court to challenge a restrictive California law. In 1874, San Francisco officials detained 22 Chinese women at the port after declaring them “lewd and debauched” – a condition that allowed for denial of entry.The supreme court sided with the women and struck down the law, delivering the first victory to a Chinese litigant in the US. But its ruling also established the federal government’s exclusive authority over immigration, paving the way for the passage of the Page Act of 1875, the first piece of federal legislation restricting immigration.Trump’s hardline immigration-enforcement strategy, which has focused on birthright citizenship and sparked a family-separation crisis, bears resemblance to the restrictive laws against Chinese women in the late 19th century, which historians say led to lasting demographic changes in Chinese American communities. Political campaigns of both eras, experts say, sought to stem the growth of immigrant populations by targeting women’s bodies.“What the Page Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act and birthright citizenship all have in common is the battle over who we deem admissible, as having a right to be here,” said Catherine Lee, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University whose research focuses on family reunification in American immigration. “And the terrain on which we’re having these discussions is women’s bodies and women’s sexuality.”The Page Act denied entry of “lewd” and “immoral” women, ostensibly to curb prostitution. While sex workers of many nationalities immigrated to the US, experts say local authorities almost exclusively enforced the law against women of Chinese descent. More than curbing immigration, Lee said, the legislation set a standard for determining who was eligible for citizenship and for birthing future generations of Americans.The law placed the burden of proof on Chinese women themselves, research shows. Before boarding a ship to the US, the women had to produce evidence of “respectable” character by submitting a declaration of morality and undergoing extensive interrogations, character assessments and family background checks.At the same time, doctors and health professionals smeared Chinese women as carriers of venereal diseases, Lee said. J Marion Sims, a prominent gynecologist who led the American Medical Association at the time, falsely declared that the arrival of Chinese women had caused a “Chinese syphilis” epidemic.Bill Hing, a law and migration studies professor at the University of San Francisco and author of Making and Remaking Asian America, said the Page Act was “an evil way at controlling the population” to ensure that the Chinese American community wouldn’t grow.The law did drastically alter the demographics of the Chinese population. In 1870, Chinese men in the US outnumbered Chinese women by a ratio of 13 to 1. By 1880, just a half decade after the law’s passage, that gap had nearly doubled, to 21 to 1.One legacy of the Page Act, Hing said, was the formation of “bachelor societies”. The de facto immigration ban against Chinese women made it virtually impossible for Chinese men to form families in the US, as anti-miscegenation laws forbade them from marrying women outside their race.Today, Hing said, attempts to repeal birthright citizenship is another way of suppressing the development of immigrant populations. “It falls right into the same intent of eliminating the ability of communities of color to expand,” he said.View image in fullscreenTrump’s January executive order, which would deny citizenship to US-born babies whose parents aren’t citizens or green-card holders, employs a gendered line of argument similar to that of the Page Act, Lee said. (The government has lost every case so far about the executive order, as it directly contradicts the 14th amendment.)In a 6-3 vote Friday, the supreme court ruled that lower courts could not impose nationwide bans against Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The ruling, which immigrant rights advocates say opens the door for a partial enforcement of the order, doesn’t address the constitutionality of the order itself.“Birthright citizenship assumes that women are having sex,” Lee said, “and whether she’s having sex with a lawful permanent resident or a citizen determines the status of her child.”Congressional Republicans continue to employ gendered and racialized rhetoric in their attacks on birthright citizenship and so-called “birth tourism”, the practice of pregnant women traveling to the US specifically to give birth and secure citizenship for their children. Political and media attention on the latter issue has been disproportionately focused on Chinese nationals.Last month, the Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced a bill that bans foreign nationals from “buying” American citizenship. She called “birth tourism” a “multimillion-dollar industry” exploited by pregnant women from “adversaries like communist China and Russia”.Although the extent of “birth tourism” is unknown, studies have shown that it comprises just a small portion of US-born Chinese infants. Many are born to US citizens or permanent residents, who form more than a majority of the foreign-born Chinese population. (A decade ago, Chinese “birth tourists” accounted for just 1% of all Chinese tourists visiting the US.)Virginia Loh-Hagan, co-executive director of the Asian American Education Project, said a long-lasting ramification of the Page Act is the “exploitation, fetishization and dehumanization” of Asian women that has led to deadly hate crimes, such as the spree of shootings at three Asian-owned Atlanta spas in 2021.“If immigrants in this country were denied the opportunity to build families and communities,” Loh-Hagan said, “then they have less community strength, less voice and power in politics and governance of this country.” More

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      Trump DoJ ally denies claim he urged defying court orders on immigration

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      Emil Bove, a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump, denied to senators on Wednesday a whistleblower’s claim that he suggested prosecutors ignore orders from judges who ruled against the president’s immigration policy.In a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee to consider his nomination to serve as a federal appeals court judge, Bove, currently the principal associate deputy attorney general at the justice department, also rejected assertions from Democrats that corruption charges against New York City mayor, Eric Adams, were dropped in order to secure his cooperation with the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.The hearing convened hours after reports emerged that former justice department attorney Erez Reuveni filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging that Bove said prosecutors “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’” in instances when they rule against Trump’s immigration policies.“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove said in response to questions from the committee’s chair, Chuck Grassley.A former New York City-based federal prosecutor, Trump hired Bove as an attorney to defend him against the four state and federal indictments he faced before winning re-election last year. He then appointed Bove as acting justice department deputy attorney general his first weeks back in the White House, during which time he fired prosecutors who brought charges against January 6 rioters and requested a list of FBI agents who worked on the cases. He also oversaw legal motions to drop charges against Adams, which prompted the resignation of seven veteran prosecutors in New York who refused to cooperate.During his confirmation hearing for a seat on the appeals court overseeing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands, Republican lawmakers signaled no objections to moving his nomination to the Senate floor, while Bove described himself as unfairly maligned.“There is a wildly inaccurate caricature of me in the mainstream media,” Bove said in his opening remarks. “I am not anybody’s henchman. I’m not an enforcer. I’m a lawyer from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this.”Democrats described Bove as exactly what he claims not to be, with the committee’s ranking member, Dick Durbin, saying he “led the effort to weaponize the Department of Justice against the president’s enemies. Having earned his stripes as a loyalist to this president, he’s been rewarded with this lifetime nomination.”Durbin went on to allege that ending Adams’s prosecution amounted to “a quid pro quo” arrangement in which a federal judge “foiled your plans” by ordering the charges dismissed with prejudice, meaning they could not be brought again.“In order to get Mayor Adams to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration policy, you were prepared to drop the charges against him?” Durbin asked.Bove, who showed little emotion in responding to Democrats’ skeptical questioning, replied: “That’s completely false.”Durbin demanded details of Bove’s decision to fire prosecutors who worked on January 6 case, noting that in a memo, he echoed Trump’s words in describing the prosecutions as “a grave national injustice”.“I did and continue to condemn unlawful behavior, particularly violence against law enforcement. At the same time, I condemn heavy handed and unnecessary tactics by prosecutors and agents. Both of those things I submit are characteristic of these events,” Bove said, adding that the prosecutors were fired because they were specifically tasked with working on January 6 cases.Asked if he condemned Trump’s decision to pardon all those who were convicted or prosecuted over the insurrection, Bove replied: “It’s not for me to question president Trump’s exercise of the pardon power any more than it would be for me to question president Biden’s commutation of death sentences or his pardons of drug traffickers.”Republicans often angled their questions toward standing up Trump’s claim that he faced unfair prosecutions by a justice department that had become “weaponized” under Biden. Senator John Kennedy asked Bove to detail a time he saw a justice department employee act “predominantly on the basis of his or her political beliefs”.Bove replied that he witnessed such conduct only while serving as a defense attorney for Trump, where he alleged that members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team took “positions about the need to go to trial quickly … that I found, in my experience, to be completely inconsistent with normal practice, which led me to draw in inferences of the nature that you’re suggesting”.None of the two federal indictments Smith secured against Trump went to trial prior to his election victory last November. More

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      Pam Bondi denies knowing Ice agents wore masks during raids despite video evidence

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      The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.Challenged at a Wednesday Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing by Gary Peters, a Democratic senator for Michigan, Bondi, who as the country’s top law officer has a prominent role in the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, implied she was unaware of plain-clothed agents concealing their faces while carrying out arrests but suggested it was for self-protection.“I do know they are being doxxed … they’re being threatened,” she told Peters. “Their families are being threatened.”Bondi’s protestations appeared to strain credibility given the attention the masked raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have attracted on social media and elsewhere.Civil rights campaigners and democracy experts have criticised the raids as evocative of entrenched dictatorships and police states, and say it is a warning sign that the US is descending into authoritarianism.Peters said he understood officers’ concerns at being doxxed but said the failure to wear identifying insignia endangered both themselves and detainees.“The public risk being harmed by individuals pretending to be immigration enforcement, which has already happened,” he told Bondi. “And these officers also risk being injured by individuals who think they’re basically being kidnapped or attacked by some unknown assailant.“People think: ‘Here’s a person coming up to me, not identified, covering themselves. They’re kidnapping.’ They’ll probably fight back. That endangers the officer as well, and that’s a serious situation. People need to know that they’re dealing with a federal law enforcement official.”Bondi reiterated her proclamation of ignorance, saying: “It sounds like you have a specific case and will be happy to talk to you about that at a later time, because I’m not aware of that happening.”She turned the tables later in the hearing after Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee, condemned Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and the Democratic vice presidential candidate in last year’s election, for comparing Ice agents with Nazi Gestapo officers.“This is dangerous for our agents, it’s wrong, and it cuts against and it undercuts the rule of law,” said Hagerty, who invited Bondi to explain how she intended to tackle “leftwing radicals” who he said were attacking Ice agents.In response, the attorney general said that it was protesters who were concealing their identities when assailing officers.“Those people are the ones who have really been wearing the mask and trying to cover their identities,” she said, citing the recent demonstrations in Los Angeles, against which Donald Trump deployed national guard units. “We’ve been finding them. We have been charging them with assault on a federal officer.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska who has some voiced criticism of the Trump administration, told Bondi that her constituents were worried that resources had been transferred to immigration crackdowns at the expense of tackling violent crime.“We don’t have much of an Ice presence in Alaska,” she said. “All of a sudden, we’re now on the map. We have those that are being detained in our local jail that were flown up to the state several weeks ago to be detained up there.”She also cited the case of a restaurant owner who had been detained by Ice agents after living in the Alaskan city of Soldotna for 20 years. “His children are all integrated into the community,” Murkowski said.“The specific ask is whether or not immigration enforcement is being prioritized over combatting violent crime. And senator, before you walked in, I think senators on both sides of the aisle shared that same concern.”Bondi replied: “It is not and it will not. A lot of it does go hand in hand though, getting the illegal aliens who are violent criminals out of our country.” More

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      DoJ leader suggested defying courts over deportations, whistleblower says

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      Emil Bove, the Department of Justice’s principal associate deputy attorney general, who Donald Trump nominated for the US court of appeals for the third circuit, reportedly said the department “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’” when it came to orders blocking the deportation of undocumented people.Former attorney at the justice department, Erez Reuveni, claimed Bove said the agency should violate court orders. In a whistleblower letter to members of Congress first obtained by the New York Times, Reuveni painted the scene of a lawless justice department willingly to defy the courts and fire the people who stood in their way.“Mr. Reuveni was stunned by Bove’s statement because, to Mr. Reuveni’s knowledge, no one in DOJ leadership – in any Administration – had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with a ‘fuck you,’” says the letter, written by his lawyers at the Government Accountability Project.The comments came in the context of Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport people on removal flights in mid-March, the letter contends, after Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what”.At the time of Bove’s alleged comments, Reuveni, who was in the meeting, said he was in disbelief. But in the three weeks that followed, his disbelief became “a relic of a different time” as the department undermined the courts and rule of law. In three separate cases Reuveni was involved in, he found “internal efforts of DOJ and White House leadership to defy (court orders) through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation”.Reuveni was a career attorney who had served across multiple administrations for 15 years in the department, including the first Trump administration.Reuveni says he directly witnessed and reported to his superiors a host of misconduct, including “DOJ officials undermining the rule of law by ignoring court orders; DOJ officials presenting ‘legal’ arguments with no basis in law; high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials misrepresenting facts presented before courts; and DOJ officials directing Mr. Reuveni to misrepresent facts in one of these cases in violation of Mr.Reuveni’s legal and ethical duties as an officer of the court”.Reuveni had notified the court in the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador who has since returned to the US, that Ábrego García’s deportation had been a “mistake”. He said he refused his superiors’ directive to file a brief to the court that would have misrepresented the facts of the case. He was subsequently put on administrative leave and then terminated on 11 April. Trump administration officials have said Reuveni didn’t “vigorously” or “zealously” defend his client, the United States.“Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of lawyer,” the whistleblower letter says. “Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired, and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBove is set for a confirmation hearing on his judicial nomination before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, where the whistleblower’s claims are sure to enter into questioning.The White House and justice department have denied Reuveni’s claims, according to the New York Times. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general and Bove’s boss, called Reuveni’s accounts “falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations” and questioned the timing of its release ahead of Bove’s confirmation hearing. More

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      Judge orders release of Kilmar Ábrego García as he awaits federal trial

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      A Tennessee judge on Sunday ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, whose mistaken deportation has become a flashpoint in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, while he awaits a federal trial on human smuggling charges. But he is not expected to be allowed to go free.At his 13 June detention hearing, prosecutors said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) would take Ábrego García into custody if he were released on the criminal charges, and he could be deported before he has a chance to stand trial.US magistrate judge Barbara Holmes has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to discuss the conditions of Ábrego García’s release. The US government has already filed a motion to appeal the judge’s release order.Holmes acknowledged in her ruling on Sunday that determining whether Ábrego García should be released is “little more than an academic exercise” because Ice will probably detain him. But the judge wrote that everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence and “a full and fair determination of whether he must remain in federal custody pending trial”.Holmes wrote that the government failed to prove that Ábrego García was a flight risk, that he posed a danger to the community or that he would interfere with proceedings if released.“Overall, the Court cannot find from the evidence presented that Ábrego’s release clearly and convincingly poses an irremediable danger to other persons or to the community,” the judge wrote.Ábrego García has pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify the deportation mistake after the fact.The acting US attorney for the middle district of Tennessee, Rob McGuire, argued on 13 June that the likely attempt by Ice to try to deport him was one reason to keep him in jail.But Holmes said then that she had no intention of “getting in the middle of any Ice hold”.“If I elect to release Mr Ábrego, I will impose conditions of release, and the US Marshal will release him.” If he is released into Ice custody, that is “above my pay grade”, she said.The judge suggested that the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security could work out between themselves whether the government’s priority is to try him on the criminal charges or deport him. No date has been set for the trial.Will Allensworth, an assistant federal public defender representing Ábrego García at the detention hearing, told Holmes that “it’s not necessarily accurate that he would be immediately deported.”A 2019 immigration judge’s order prevents Ábrego García, who had been living in Maryland, from being deported to his home country of El Salvador, Allensworth said in court. That’s because he faces a credible threat from gangs there, according to court papers.The government could deport him to a third country, but immigration officials would first be required to show that third country was willing to keep him and not simply deport him back to El Salvador, Allensworth said.The smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee during which Ábrego García was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. Although officers suspected possible smuggling, he was allowed to go on his way with only a warning. He has pleaded not guilty.At the detention hearing, McGuire said cooperating witnesses have accused Ábrego García of trafficking drugs and firearms and of abusing the women he transported, among other claims. Although he is not charged with such crimes, McGuire said they showed Ábrego García to be a dangerous person who should remain in jail pretrial.Ábrego García’s attorneys have characterized the smuggling case as a desperate attempt to justify the mistaken deportation. The investigation was launched weeks after the US government deported Ábrego García and the supreme court ordered the administration to facilitate his return amid mounting public pressure.The US is now expected to try to deport him again with much of the world watching and the outcome hard to predict.Most people in Ice custody who are facing criminal charges are not kept in the US for trial but deported, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor, said.The US will probably try to deport Ábrego García quickly without going before an immigration judge, the professor said. The government would not need a conviction to deport him because Ábrego García came to the US illegally.“The legal standard is laxer,” García Hernández said. “The government’s argument is on stronger legal footing.”However an immigration judge rules, the decision can be appealed to the board of immigration appeals, García Hernández said. And the board’s ruling can then be contested in a federal appeals court. More

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      Mahmoud Khalil reunites with family after more than 100 days in Ice detention

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      Mahmoud Khalil – the Palestinian rights activist, Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident of the US who had been held by federal immigration authorities for more than three months – has been reunited with his wife and infant son.Khalil, the most high-profile student to be targeted by the Trump administration for speaking out against Israel’s war on Gaza, arrived in New Jersey on Saturday at about 1pm – two hours later than expected after his flight was first rerouted to Philadelphia.Khalil smiled broadly at his cheering supporters as he emerged from security at Newark airport pushing his infant son in a black stroller, with his right fist raised and a Palestinian keffiyeh draped across his shoulders. He was accompanied by his wife, Noor Abdalla, as well as members of his legal team and the New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“If they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine,” he said at a brief press conference after landing. “I just want to go back and continue the work I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, a speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished.”“This is not over, and we will have to continue to support this case,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “The persecution based on political speech is wrong, and it is a violation of all of our first amendment rights, not just Mahmoud’s.”The Trump administration “knows that they’re waging a losing legal battle,” added Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens.Khalil embraced some of his supporters, many of whom were also wearing keffiyehs in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.Khalil was released from a Louisiana immigration detention facility on Friday evening after a federal judge ruled that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional and ordered his immediate release on bail.Khalil was sent to Jena, Louisiana, shortly after being seized by plainclothes US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in the lobby of his university residence in front of his heavily pregnant wife, who is a US citizen, in early March.The 30-year-old, who has not been charged with a crime, was forced to miss the birth of his first child, Deen, by the Trump administration. Khalil had been permitted to see his wife and son briefly – and only once – earlier in June. The American green card holder was held by Ice for 104 days.In ordering Khalil’s immediate release on Friday, federal judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, found that the government had failed to provide evidence that the graduate was a flight risk or danger to the public. “[He] is not a danger to the community,” Farbiarz ruled. “Period, full stop.”The judge also ruled that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter by detaining them was unconstitutional.Speaking to reporters outside the Jena detention facility where an estimated 1,000 men are being held, Khalil said: “Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this. That doesn’t mean there is a right person for this. There is no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.”“No one is illegal – no human is illegal,” he said. “Justice will prevail no matter what this administration may try.”The Trump administration immediately filed a notice of appeal, NBC reported.Khalil was ordered to surrender his passport and green card to Ice officials in Jena, Louisiana, as part of his conditional release. The order also limits Khalil’s travel to a handful of US states, including New York and Michigan to visit family, for court hearings in Louisiana and New Jersey, and for lobbying in Washington DC. He must notify the Department of Homeland Security of his address within 48 hours of arriving in New York.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKhalil’s detention was widely condemned as a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s assault on speech, which is ostensibly protected by the first amendment to the US constitution. His detention was the first in a series of high-profile arrests of international students who had spoken out about Israel’s siege of Gaza, its occupation of Palestinian territories and their university’s financial ties to companies that profit from Israeli military strikes.Khalil’s release marks the latest setback for the Trump administration, which had pledged to deport pro-Palestinian international students en masse, claiming without evidence that speaking out against the Israeli state amounts to antisemitism.In Khalili’s case, multiple Jewish students and faculty had submitted court documents in his support. Khalil was a lead negotiator between the Jewish-led, pro-Palestinian campus protests at Columbia in 2024. And during an appearance on CNN, he said, “The liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.”In addition to missing the birth of his son, Khalil was kept from his family’s first Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and his graduation from Columbia while held in custody from 8 March to 20 June.Trump’s crackdown on free speech, pro-Palestinian activists and immigrants has triggered widespread protests and condemnation, as Ice agents ramp up operations to detain tens of thousands of people monthly for deportation while seeking – and in many instances succeeding – to avoid due process.Three other students detained on similar grounds to Khalil – Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri and Mohsen Mahdawi – were previously released while their immigration cases are pending. Others voluntarily left the country after deportation proceedings against them were opened. Another is in hiding as she fights her case.On Sunday, a rally to celebrate Khalil’s release – and protest against the ongoing detention by thousands of other immigrants in the US and Palestinians held without trial in Israel – will be held at 5.30pm ET at the steps of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in upper Manhattan. Khalil is expected to address supporters, alongside his legal representatives.“Mahmoud’s release reignites our determination to continue fighting until all our prisoners are released – whether in Palestine or the United States, until we see the end of the genocide and the siege on Gaza, and until we enforce an arms embargo on the Israel,” said Miriam Osman of the Palestinian Youth Movement. More

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      Court strikes down Louisiana law requiring display of Ten Commandments in schools

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      A panel of three federal appellate judges has ruled that a Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in each of the state’s public school classrooms is unconstitutional.The ruling on Friday marked a major win for civil liberties groups who say the mandate violates the separation of church and state – and that the poster-sized displays would isolate students, especially those who are not Christian.The mandate has been touted by Republicans, including Donald Trump, and marks one of the latest pushes by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms. Backers of the law argue the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms because they are historical and part of the foundation of US law.Heather L Weaver, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said Friday’s ruling “held Louisiana accountable to a core constitutional promise: public schools are not Sunday schools, and they must welcome all students, regardless of faith”.The plaintiffs’ attorneys and Louisiana disagreed on whether the appeals court’s decision applied to every public school district in the state or only the districts party to the lawsuit.“All school districts in the state are bound to comply with the US constitution,” said Liz Hayes, a spokesperson for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs.The appeals court’s rulings “interpret the law for all of Louisiana”, Hayes added. “Thus, all school districts must abide by this decision and should not post the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.”Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said she disagreed and believed the ruling only applied to school districts in the five parishes that were party to the lawsuit. Murrill added that she would appeal the ruling, including taking it to the US supreme court if necessary.The panel of judges reviewing the case was unusually liberal for the fifth US circuit court of appeals. In a court with more than twice as many Republican-appointed judges, two of the three judges involved in the ruling were appointed by Democratic presidents.The court’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed last year by parents of Louisiana schoolchildren from various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates language in the US constitution’s first amendment guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding government establishment of religion.The ruling also backs an order issued last fall by US district judge John deGravelles, who declared the mandate unconstitutional and ordered state education officials not to enforce it and to notify all local school boards in the state of his decision.The state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, signed the mandate into law last June.Landry said in a statement on Friday that he supports the attorney general’s plans to appeal.“The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our laws – serving both an educational and historical purpose in our classrooms,” Landry said.Law experts have long said they expect the Louisiana case to make its way to the US supreme court, testing the court on the issue of religion and government.Similar laws have been challenged in court.A group of Arkansas families filed a federal lawsuit recently challenging a near-identical law passed in their state. And comparable legislation in Texas currently awaits Governor Greg Abbott’s signature.In 1980, the supreme court ruled that a Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the US constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. The court found that the law had no secular purpose but served a plainly religious purpose.And in 2005, the supreme court held that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the US constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state capitol in Austin. More