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    With his immigration bill, Canada’s prime minister is bowing to Trump | Tayo Bero

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    There are many stereotypes about Canada – that we are a nation of extremely polite people, a welcoming melting pot, and that we’re the US’s laid-back cousin who lives nextdoor.But right now, the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, is bucking all of that lore after pressure from the US in the form of Donald Trump’s “concerns” about undocumented migrants and fentanyl moving across the US-Canada border. In response, the recently elected Liberal PM put forward a 127-page bill that includes, among other worrying provisions, sweeping changes to immigration policy that would make the process much more precarious for refugees and could pave the way for mass deportations.If passed, Carney’s Strong Borders Act (or Bill C-2) would bar anyone who has been in the country for more than a year from receiving refugee hearings. That would apply retroactively to anyone who entered the country after June 2020. If they arrived on foot between official ports of entry, meanwhile, they would have to apply for asylum within 14 days of entering Canada – a disastrous outcome for people fleeing Trump’s persecution. The bill also gives the immigration minister’s office the authority to cancel immigration documents en masse.This bill has been widely condemned by politicians and advocacy groups such as Amnesty International and the Migrants Rights Network, who are rightly worried about just how much havoc a change like this could wreak. Jenny Wai Ching Kwan, a member of parliament for Vancouver East, told reporters the bill would breach civil liberties and basic rights.So what excuse does Canada have for this kind of 180 on its immigration legacy? According to the government, the aim of this legislation is to “keep Canadians safe by ensuring law enforcement has the right tools to keep our borders secure, combat transnational organized crime, stop the flow of illegal fentanyl, and crack down on money laundering”.In reality, Bill C-2 contains measures that the public safety minister, Gary Anandasangaree, has admitted were a response to “the concerns that have been posed by the White House”.“There are elements that will strengthen [our] relationships with the United States,” he said in a press conference. “There were a number of elements in the bill that have been irritants for the US, so we are addressing some of those issues.”Tim McSorley, the national coordinator for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, condemned the federal government over the senselessness of this move. “If the government is serious about addressing concerns regarding illegal gun and drug trafficking, it must introduce legislation specifically tailored to that goal, as opposed to a wide-ranging omnibus bill,” he said.The demonization of immigrants has been a talking point for populist leaders throughout the west, so it’s not surprising to see Carney lean into that rhetoric in order to appease Trump. Spurred on by the xenophobic rhetoric coming out of the US, Britain, and large swaths of Europe, anyone who comes from away is forced to bear the blame for the economic messes and ensuing societal erosion these countries have found themselves battling.By feeding directly into this pipeline, Carney makes Canada not the powerful country poised to beat Trump at his dangerous games (elbows up, my foot), but a cowardly ally in the US’s campaign of terror against immigrants.

    Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump officials create searchable national citizenship database

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      The US Department of Homeland Security has for the first time built a national citizenship database that combines information from immigration agencies and the social security administration.The database was created in collaboration with the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) in an effort to bridge the gaps between disparate information sources to make it easier to determine whether someone is a citizen, according to NPR, which first reported the details of the database.The database is the result of an expansion of the systematic alien verification for entitlements (Save) program, made up of smaller databases within the homeland security department, and an integration with information from the Social Security Administration. The centralized repository is searchable and can be accessed by state and local election officials to look up the names of anyone trying to vote to determine if they are citizens, according to NPR. Until now, election officials had to ask potential voters for documents verifying their citizenship or rely on a hard-to-navigate patchwork of databases.In response to a request for comment, the DHS said: “Integration with the Social Security Administration (SSA) significantly improves the service offered by Save.”Previously, agencies involved in voting were required to use numbers issued by the DHS to look up voter registrations, which they may not have had access to but may have been more likely to possess social security numbers, according to the statement. The citizenship database may also soon integrate state department of motor vehicles (DMV) data, NPR reported.The DHS statement also describes the motivations for the creation of the database: “Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, USCIS is moving quickly to eliminate benefit and voter fraud among the alien population.” Voter fraud is rare in the US, experts say; consequences include fines or jail time.The citizenship database is one of the first results of Doge’s efforts to gain access to and merge information on Americans from agencies across the federal government, including the Internal Revenue Service, in the first few months of the Trump administration.Reports indicate Doge is attempting to create a single data hub that enables access to these vast troves of information on Americans in an effort to eliminate the separation of information in isolated or protected silos. The attempt to connect various sources of personal information, which Doge has said is needed to root out fraud, and allow it to be accessed in one place has sparked several lawsuits.In response, union members in Maryland have sued the office of personnel management, the treasury department and the education department for sharing personal information with Doge officials “who had no need to know the vast amount of sensitive personal information to which they were granted access”, according to their suit.“Defendants admit that the [Social Security Administration] granted Doge personnel broad access to millions of Americans’ sensitive PII [personally identifiable information],” US district judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of Maryland wrote in a decision ordering a temporary block on the Social Security Administration sharing information with Doge.“This intrusion into the personal affairs of millions of Americans – absent an adequate explanation for the need to do so – is not in the public interest.”The database in question was created with little engagement of the public, something that is requisite for building these types of mass surveillance databases. The Privacy Act of 1974 requires federal agencies to notify the public if there are new ways they plan to use or collect Americans’ personal information. Legal experts have also questioned whether this sort of a centralized database sidesteps many of the privacy and security protections implemented within each agency.The consolidation of personal information into a mass database is unprecedented and has sparked concern among immigration and privacy advocates. The creation of a centralized repository brings together pieces of information that were previously within the purview of separate agencies, and potentially makes it easier for government officials to look up individual’s data from across the government. Many worry about how else this database could be used.“The premise of noncitizen voter fraud is one that officials, including President Trump, have used as a pretext to discredit and intimidate entire communities,” said Citlaly Mora, spokesperson for immigration legal project Just Futures Law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This database is the latest iteration of Doge’s attempt to weaponize the data of the millions of people that live in the US They are building this database without transparency and without consulting the public about how their data will be used, a brazen violation of our privacy rights. Given this administration’s track record of failing to follow proper processes, we should all be concerned.”The rollout of the citizenship database, which is an upgraded version of an existing network of data sources, comes after the New York Times reported that software firm Palantir was selected to help develop a “mega-database” for the Trump administration.In a letter to the company, 10 Democratic lawmakers said the database, which would collect the tax and other personal information on all Americans in a single repository, would potentially be a violation of federal law.“The unprecedented possibility of a searchable ‘mega-database’ of tax returns and other data that will potentially be shared with or accessed by other federal agencies is a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump’s administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other Americans,” the letter reads.Palantir has repeatedly denied that it was building a master database.It said: “Palantir is neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens. We do not operate the systems, access the data, or make decisions about its use.” More

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      As Ice deports children, what futures do we lose? | Ariel Dorfman

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      Two children – a nine-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister – are playing at “house”, pretending to be their father and mother. Absorbed in the game, they repeat the words their parents have been whispering to each other when they thought their progeny were not listening.Playing like innocent children all over the world play and have played since the beginning of history. But, here and now, in America, the words some endangered children may be exchanging are far from innocent.What do we do if they come for you, my love, if I never see you again? Who do I call, who do I turn to? What if they also take me? And the children, what if they also come for the children?I can sadly envisage many boys and girls in this country today playing that game, asking each other questions like these while their undocumented family awaits the knock on the door, alert to the sound of a van outside ready to transport them away and rush them off to a distant land.It is not the first time I have had to imagine such a distressing situation. Almost 50 years ago, while in exile in Amsterdam, I wrote a story, My House Is on Fire, featuring a pair of siblings who ask precisely those questions while playing a similar supposedly naive game. I set the story in Chile, a land then under the savage boot of the military, using my fiction as a way of returning to the country forbidden to me as I tried to figure out how those children would cope psychologically with the threat of agents of the state roaming the streets in search of dissidents to arrest and disappear, what sort of permanent scars of dread would be carved into the souls and bodies of those kids forced to become adults before their time.It is tragic and disgraceful that the fate of a boy and a girl in yesteryear’s dictatorial Chile can resonate so perversely in today’s America, that their Latin American destiny of apprehension and mistrust echoes what is being perpetrated in so many homes across this land that once beckoned to foreigners to come and build a different sort of future.Though it is, alas, the current United States on to which I am projecting the Chilean experience of those conjectured children, other countries and other youngsters have come to mind over the past half-century as suffering parallel afflictions: Jewish children in the time of the Nazis and Palestinian children in the time of Israeli onslaughts, and Sudan and Brazil, Iran and Belarus, Turkey and Rwanda and Egypt and on and on, a deluge of nations where so many children have asked, at one time or another, what happens if they take away my parents, what happens if they come for me?It is likely that my identification with, and sympathy for, that array of unfortunate young victims may have stemmed from my own life experiences. Even if I had no recollection of what it meant to leave my Argentinian homeland at the age of two and a half when my rebellious father had been forced to flee to New York to escape the wrath of that country’s fascistic military, memories of that trauma must have resurfaced when – by then I was nine years old – the red scare in the United States instilled fear in so many families with leftwing ideas or activities, leading our own family to once again take flight, this time to Chile. And history was going to repeat itself when, after Augusto Pinochet’s coup of 1973, my six-year-old son, Rodrigo, followed his father and mother into remote realms, became himself a refugee. And the curse of banishment plagued us yet again in 1986, when I was arrested at the Santiago airport by Pinochet’s secret police, who proceeded to expel me from the country along with our seven-year-old son, Joaquín, already born into expatriation during our Dutch exile.Not strange, then, that I should be haunted by the tragedy of so many forsaken youthful lives being irreversibly twisted, what it does to each boy, each girl, to live in perpetual terror of deportation or death. But I have recently been troubled by a question about another kind of social repercussion: what do we lose, those who watch such persecution and do little or nothing to avert it, what does society lose by hunting down these children and, ultimately, removing them from our midst?We would, needless to say (and yet it must be said), find ourselves depreciated by the vanishing of even one of these defenseless minors, forfeiting the cosmic galaxy of skills and dreams and endowments that each of them promises, how they might enrich us for generations to come. Given that this self-evident truth has been insufficient to stir enough public opinion to get such maltreatment to cease, it might make sense, in our celebrity-driven and success-soaked society, to exemplify that loss in a more dramatic and spectacular fashion.Faced with that ominous question, what do we lose?, I answer with a name that cannot be indifferent or unrecognizable to anyone: Mozart, we risk losing future Mozarts. Can we deny that each deported child has within himself, within herself, the potentiality to become another Mozart?Instead of that musical genius I could, of course, suggest any number of other amazingly gifted human beings. There could be an Albert Einstein lurking inside the head of one of the boys being whisked right now to some unknown destination, there could be a Madame Curie inside one of the girls going through that ordeal. A Cervantes, a George Eliot, a Bob Dylan, a Taylor Swift, a Nelson Mandela, an Abraham Lincoln, a Harriet Tubman, a Simón Bolivar, a Garibaldi, a Monet, a Sappho, a Meryl Streep – who knows what miracles are being snuffed out with each stalked child?Let me insist, however, on Mozart as the most luminous paragon in this experiment bent on rattling consciences. True that, during his childhood, he never faced the threat of harassment by cruel authorities. And yet, I am sure he would understand the anxieties and uncertainties that trouble today’s migrant youngsters in the US. One can imagine, as I have done in my novel Allegro, what such a sensitive child must have felt when he was separated from his family and was forced to accept adult tasks and responsibilities, pondering who to trust in a world suddenly full of strangers. Like me at his age, like my own children, like so many imperiled children in the US, Mozart also must have worried about death, must have feared being abandoned at an early age.Who could better represent the latent aspirations and possible talents of many of those contemporary youngsters whose violent passing from among us should fill us with shame and grief? The most famous child prodigy of all time, composing music at the age of five, playing the piano for monarchs once he was seven: I can conjure up no more eloquent and renowned spokesperson for vulnerable children everywhere.Let us, therefore, call on the ghost of Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart to return to Earth and excoriate those victimizers who are ordering and carrying out such acts of merciless repression against his young outcast counterparts in the US and beyond its frontiers.I can hear him telling them to beware of the consequences of terrorizing and deporting a child. You are not only, I can hear him say with that voice which once sang to the world some of the most immortal and consoling melodies ever created, committing a crime against humanity. You are, Mozart would warn them, committing a crime against beauty and the compassionate imagination of our species.

      Ariel Dorfman, an emeritus distinguished professor of literature at Duke University, is the Chilean American author of the play Death and the Maiden and, more recently, the novels The Suicide Museum and Allegro. More

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      Trump’s barbarism is turning his biggest strength into a liability | Osita Nwanevu

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      If you can bear to hear it, there are still more than 1,300 days remaining in the Trump administration. That’s an interminably long time given all the havoc the president has been able to wreak since January alone; the chaos and cruelty of the term so far also happen to have used up his political capital remarkably quickly. The New York Times average of polls, which found him at 52% approval on inauguration day, had him at 51% disapproval on Wednesday. That collapse is less a problem for Trump specifically ⁠– assuming, perhaps optimistically, that he won’t appear on a ballot again ⁠– than it is for the Republican party, which will have to answer for the mess he’s made in next year’s midterms and beyond. And one of the challenges they seem likely to face is a changed public opinion landscape on immigration ⁠– a strength that Trump’s barbarism, just as in his first term, seems to be turning into a liability.While it remains his strongest issue, polls have shown the public’s confidence in Trump on immigration declining steadily since January ⁠– averages suggest the public is newly and evenly split on his handling of it and some polls taken around the 100-day mark even found an outright majority of Americans disapproving. It’s no mystery why. The shock-and-awe campaign the administration is waging against immigrants legal and not has produced a steady stream of headlines that sound awful to all but Stephen Miller and the nativist fanatics driving Trump’s agenda. The deportation of a four-year-old citizen suffering from a rare form of cancer. The end of temporary protected status for 9,000 Afghan refugees even as the administration welcomes Afrikaners supposedly fleeing “white genocide”, a myth most voters who don’t frequent white supremacist forums are probably unfamiliar with. The use of the immigration enforcement apparatus to pursue and persecute critics of Israel’s war in Gaza. Even as voters succumbed to a panic over the migrant surge under Biden, moves like this under Trump and a public backlash to them were inevitable.What should be especially dismaying to the president’s supporters ⁠– and especially heartening to the rest of us ⁠– is the administration’s absolute failure to win over the public on the Kilmar Ábrego García case. That battle was probably lost as soon as it was conceded that he was deported by mistake, but it’s notable that none of the efforts to muddy the waters and obfuscate the main issues at hand with lies and character assassination have worked. The escalatory rhetoric ⁠– Ábrego García is not an innocent man but a member of MS-13, not merely a member of MS-13 but one of “the top MS-13 members”, not merely one of “the top MS-13 members” but a terrorist ⁠– has been almost comic. The complaints that the media has been stretching the facts of the case have been pathetic. “Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, fumed last month, “you would think we deported a candidate for father of the year”.The administration was surely pleased when the domestic violence claims made by Ábrego García’s wife several years ago, which she dismisses now, began picking up traction in the press. And it is just as surely disappointed that a majority of Americans believe Ábrego García should be returned to America anyway ⁠– which suggests that the principles at stake in the case matter more and matter to more people than cynics might assume. Wholly irrespective of who Ábrego García is ⁠or what he might have done – and there remains no solid evidence at all that he belongs to MS-13 – he is entitled to due process under the law and fair treatment by our government. The fact that many Americans remain committed to this ideal here ⁠– despite the president’s best efforts to render Ábrego García unsympathetic, despite all that’s been done to frame undocumented immigration as an invasion and a society-breaking crisis ⁠– is one of the brightest glimmers of light against the pall Donald Trump and the right have cast over this country.Bright as it is, there are Democrats who are determined not to see it. Infamously in Axios last month, one anonymous House member ⁠– some nameless, brainless invertebrate, croaking from the bottom of a boot ⁠– warned the party against defending immigrants like Ábrego García or the makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero, also deported as a gang member for having tattoos. Trump, they said, was “setting a trap for the Democrats, and like usual we’re falling for it […] we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser”. In an appearance on Fox News Radio, the Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar argued that Ábrego García, in particular, was “not the right case” for Democrats to take up. “This is not the right issue to talk about due process,” he said. “This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States.”Fortunately, most Americans disagree. And there is an opportunity here, for those with the good sense and courage to take it, to use the public’s dismay at the Ábrego García case and the realities of Trump’s immigration agenda to sell it on an alternative vision for our immigration policy and an alternative set of culprits for the problems immigrants have proven easy scapegoats for.Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents supposedly on the prowl for the thugs and thieves who’ve ruined communities and degraded our public infrastructure would be better off kicking down the doors of Congress than smashing the windows of asylum seekers. And, of course, if preserving law and order means that criminals who are sucking our public resources dry and who pose a danger to women ought to be dealt with harshly, we should insist on bringing the convict, grifter, and accused rapist in the White House to justice. The chief priority of his administration is terrorizing people for committing the crime of coming to this country and working harder for it than he ever has. His agenda here is corrosive to our values. It is degrading to our society. It materially profits no one. In important ways, it hurts us all.More and more Americans are wising up to this. Fewer and fewer are willing to stand for it.

      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Venezuelans deported by Trump are victims of ‘torture’, lawyers allege

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      Lawyers for 252 Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in El Salvador for two months have alleged that the migrants are victims of physical and emotional “torture”.A law firm hired by the Venezuelan government said that it had been unable to visit the migrants in the mega-prison where they are locked up.The lawyers are seeking “proof of life”, but say they have come up against a wall of silence from President Nayib Bukele’s administration and the Central American nation’s justice system.Grupo Ortega filed a habeas corpus petition with the supreme court on 24 March seeking an end to what it calls the “illegal detention” of the Venezuelans, but is still waiting for a ruling.“They are treating them like common criminals,” lawyer Salvador Ríos said, after the migrants were shown dressed in prison clothing, shackled and with shaved heads.“This is torture,” both physically and psychologically, Rios said in an interview with AFP.The lawyers delivered a letter in early May to Bukele, a key ally of Donald Trump, requesting authorization to visit the Venezuelans, but so far without success.AFP sought a comment from the Salvadorian presidency about the case and the lawyers’ efforts, but has not received a response.Félix Ulloa, the Salvadorian vice-president, told the French media outlet Le Grand Continent that his government merely provides a “service that we could call prison accommodation”.Trump’s administration has paid Bukele’s government millions of dollars to lock up migrants it says are criminals and gang members.Trump invoked rarely used wartime legislation in March to fly migrants to El Salvador without any court hearing, alleging they belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, a charge that their families and lawyers deny.The Venezuelans, as well as 36 deported Salvadorian migrants, are being held in a maximum-security prison built by Bukele to house thousands of suspects arrested during his sweeping crackdown on street gangs.Images of the Venezuelans entering the Cecot mega-prison in shackles illustrate the brutality, Ríos said.“The damage is not only physical, but also psychological,” Ríos said.In their letter to Bukele, the lawyers sought permission to interview the prisoners, either in person or virtually, which could serve as “proof of life”.They asked Bukele to release the list of the 252 Venezuelans, something that Washington has not done either.One Salvadorian migrant who was initially incarcerated in Cecot – but in April was moved to a prison farm – is Kilmar Ábrego García, a US resident deported due to what the United States itself admitted was an administrative error.A Venezuelan identified in US court documents as “Cristian” was also mistakenly expelled.In both cases, US judges unsuccessfully ordered the Trump administration to facilitate their return to the United States.Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, said this week that the situation “raises serious concerns regarding a wide array of rights that are fundamental to both US and international law”.“Families we have spoken to have expressed a sense of complete powerlessness in the face of what has happened and their pain at seeing their relatives labelled and handled as violent criminals, even terrorists, without any court judgment as to validity of what is claimed against them,” he said in a statement.Isael Guerrero, another lawyer with Grupo Ortega, described the detentions as “completely illegal” because the Venezuelans “are not being legally prosecuted in any court” in El Salvador.The firm’s head, Jaime Ortega, said they were “100% migrants”.“Not a single one of them is being prosecuted” in the United States for their alleged membership of the Tren de Aragua gang, he said.The fate of the Venezuelans now depends entirely on Bukele, as “the expulsion completely nullifies US jurisdiction”, Ortega said.In April, Bukele offered to trade the 252 Venezuelans for an equal number of political prisoners held by President Nicolás Maduro’s government. More

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      Ice has become Trump’s private militia. It must be abolished | Mehdi Hasan

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      On Friday, the Democratic mayor of Newark was arrested and detained in his own city by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents. His crime? Trying to gain access and inspection rights to a privately operated detention center that he says is in violation of multiple city lawsuits.Three Democratic members of Congress accompanied Ras Baraka to the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, as they exercised their own congressionally mandated right to enter Ice detention facilities for oversight purposes, without prior notice.While Baraka was taken away in handcuffs, two of the House Democrats – Bonnie Coleman Watson and LaMonica McIver – were shoved and manhandled by Ice agents outside the facility. The third, Rob Menendez, angrily accused Ice of feeling “no weight of the law and no restraint on what they should be doing. And that was shown in broad daylight today when they not just arrested the mayor of Newark but when they put their hands on two members of Congress standing behind me. How is this acceptable?”It’s a good question. Elected Democrats are now under both legal and physical assault from a rogue agency, which behaves less like federal law enforcement and more like Donald Trump’s private militia. And yet, elected Democrats refuse to call for its abolition. They seem to have decided that the continued existence of Ice is “acceptable”.Despite the feverish claims from Republican politicians and Fox anchors about the Democratic party being “soft” on immigration enforcement, we’re a long way from 2018, when “abolish Ice” was an actual slogan on the left and deployed by both prominent progressive activists and rising Democratic party stars, such as then newly elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Even Kirsten Gillibrand, a moderate New York senator, said she wanted to “get rid of [Ice], start over, reimagine it and build something that actually works”. Kamala Harris, then a California senator, said she believed in “starting from scratch” with Ice.These days, however, elected Democrats, even of the progressive variety, have run a mile from the one-time campaign to dismantle Ice. The new Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, Greg Casar, for example, told Semafor last month he had “changed” his mind on “Abolish Ice”. Ocasio-Cortez did not utter the words “abolish Ice” on her recent “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Bernie Sanders. And nor, for that matter, did the independent senator from Vermont, who once said he wanted to “break up” Ice.What on Earth are elected Democrats, especially progressives, waiting for? How many more abuses of power and violations of the law does Ice have to commit? How unpopular does Trump have to get on the issue of immigration – especially on the issue of Ice deportations – before the so-called opposition take a much bolder stance on the future of Ice?Consider some of the Ice horror shows from the past 30 days alone:

      On 8 May, Ice agents “held a young girl’s face to the ground” while they detained her mother in Worcester, Massachusetts. A video of the incident from Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra shows the teenage girl screaming as multiple agents and officers chase her and grab her legs.

      On 7 May, Ice agents detained Jensy Machado, a US citizen, in northern Virginia with “guns drawn”, to quote the Virginia Democratic congressman Don Beyer. Despite his attempt to show his Real ID and prove his legal status, they put him in cuffs.

      On 5 May, Ice agents detained Daniel Orellana, a 25-year-old Guatemalan, at a gas station in Framingham, Massachusetts. When they were told they had apprehended the wrong man, according to Orellana’s girlfriend, one of the agents said: “OK, but we’re going to take you anyway.”

      On 4 May, a group of Ice agents detained a man filling up gas in his truck at a gas station in Oxnard, California – and left his children behind on their own. “They arrested someone,” said an eyewitness. “They left the children inside the truck.”

      On 26 April, court papers filed by the Department of Homeland Security admitted that Ice agents did not have a warrant when they arrested the Palestinian activist and green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil in March.

      On 24 April, in the middle of the night, Ice agents burst into the home of a family of US citizens in Oklahoma City, while executing a search warrant issued for someone else. The agents ordered the family outside into the rain in their underwear, the mother said, and confiscated their phones, laptops and all their cash savings as “evidence”.

      On 22 April, Ice agents detained a mother and her two-year-old daughter, a US citizen, during a routine check-in with the agency in New Orleans and then deported the mother back to Honduras with her American child. A Trump-appointed federal judge said he had a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process”.

      Also on 22 April, Ice agents in plain clothes, without badges or warrants, detained two men during a raid on a courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia. Two bystanders who dared to ask those agents to show them a warrant were ordered not to “impede” the arrest and have since been threatened with prosecution by Ice.

      On 14 April, Ice agents stopped an undocumented Guatemalan couple in their car in New Bedford, Massachusetts, while looking for another man. When Juan Francisco and Marilu Méndez’s lawyer told them over the phone to stay in the car until she got there, the Ice agents used a large hammer to smash the rear window of the car and drag them out.

      Also on 14 April, we learned that Ice agents detained a 19-year old Venezuelan asylum seeker and deported him to the Cecot prison in El Salvador – despite his lack of criminal convictions or even tattoos. During the arrest, according to his father, one Ice agent said: “No, he’s not the one,” as if they were looking for someone else, but another agent said: “Take him anyway.”
      All of these incidents are just from the past month. Go back further, and I could go on and on and on.So where are the Dems on this? Why aren’t they calling for an end to a lawless, violent, deadly, institutionally racist, sexually abusive agency, whose employees’ union endorsed Trump for president in both 2016 and 2020, and whose former acting director, Tom Homan, has become this administration’s gung-ho “border czar” and “the face of Trump’s cruelty”, to quote my Zeteo colleague John Harwood?Forget about talk of “reform”. At this point, there is no way to improve or “fix” Ice. It has to be abolished. Shut down. Scrapped. To quote Gillibrand in 2018, the entirety of immigration enforcement in the United States must be “reimagined”.Meanwhile, as some Democrats obsess over opinion polls and worry about looking “soft” on the border, the actual experts on authoritarianism are sounding the alarm. The political scientist Lee Morgenbesser has compared Ice to a “secret police” and says the agency “is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism”. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls Ice the “foot soldiers” of the “fascists”. Even the “anti-woke” libertarians over at Reason magazine say Ice is on a “militaristic mission that effectively turns nonviolent immigrants into fugitives”.Why would a future Democratic president or Democratic-controlled Congress want to keep such a Gestapo-like outfit? And, sorry, but when did it become a political taboo to call for the abolition of a government agency? Republicans have spent decades trying to shut down a plethora of federal government departments. The current Trump administration has gutted USAID, established under John F Kennedy in 1961. Trump has signed an executive order to try to force the “closure” of the Department of Education, which was first conceived of by Andrew Johnson in 1867. Republicans in Congress have introduced a bill to abolish the IRS, which goes back to 1862 and Abraham Lincoln.So why can’t timid Democrats call for the abolition of Ice, which was created only in 2003 by George W Bush, making it even younger than Leonardo DiCaprio’s current girlfriend?Both Ice and its Republican supporters in Congress see an opportunity right now. “The agency,” reports the New York Times, “is hoping to receive a large windfall from Republicans in Congress so it can spend as much as $45bn over the next two years on new detention facilities, a more than sixfold increase from what Ice typically spends to detain migrants.”If Democrats are serious about stopping fascism, then they have to do everything in their power to prevent the ongoing expansion and further empowerment of Homan and his army of masked Ice thugs.And if Democrats are ever able to win back office, there is only one right move here, politically, financially, and, above all else, morally: abolishing Bush and Trump’s Ice, once and for all.

      Mehdi Hasan is a broadcaster and author, and a former host on MSNBC. He is also a Guardian US columnist and the editor-in-chief of Zeteo More

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      I used to laugh at my Chilean father’s paranoia about life in the US – not any more

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      View image in fullscreen“Don’t open the door to nobody,” my father warned throughout my childhood – right up until the day he died. He trusted no politicians, no organized religion and definitely no strangers knocking unannounced.Lately, his words echo louder than ever.In California, where I teach at university, the year began with wildfires. They’re out now, but there is no containment for the political blaze sweeping through higher education. One after another, Donald Trump’s executive orders have scorched the landscape: slashing funding, silencing communication, terminating grants, capping research.Each one feeds the fire. As Trump remarked in his address to Congress, he’s “just getting started”.So between grading papers and making dinner, the real questions linger: will I still have a job next year? Will my department survive? Will my students be safe? Will my work be banned for using words like disability or inequality?These questions aren’t paranoid. They’re familiar.They’re the same kinds of questions my father asked himself in 1975 before fleeing Chile for the US, trading a brutal dictatorship for freedom.The speed and ease with which words like “purge”, “erasure” and “forced removal” have flooded our lexicon, crammed into news updates about attacks on minority groups and immigrants, brings to mind 11 September 1973.Though I wasn’t born yet, that day lives beneath my skin as one of Chile’s daughters. On that day, the military overthrew the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and ushered in a 17-year dictatorship under Gen Augusto Pinochet.View image in fullscreenThe new regime tortured and murdered thousands of Allende supporters. And because Pinochet feared free speech and a free press, public debate and intellectual freedoms, he specifically targeted writers, academics, students and artists.Authoritarian regimes always do.Now consider what’s happening today to those on Trump’s growing enemy list. This includes the recently detained Palestinian activist and legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, my alma mater. Trump hasn’t even tried to hide his desire for retribution; instead, he vowed that Khalil’s arrest would be the first of “many to come”.Since then, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has revoked 300 scholars’ visas and federal agents have detained at least a dozen students and professors, often without clarity on charges or alleged crimes other than protesting and speaking out.The case of the Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk– arrested in broad daylight by plainclothes Ice agents – stands out for me. Her only known offense was co-authoring an op-ed in the campus newspaper that criticized the university’s response to students’ demands to divest from companies with ties to Israel over the Gaza conflict.Some ideas are now deemed so dangerous they must be erased, free speech be damned.View image in fullscreenWith the thought police now in full force in my country – our country – I can’t help but think of the killing of Víctor Jara, the Chilean singer-songwriter often dubbed the Bob Dylan of Chile. His curly hair, olive skin and Mapuche features so resemble my father’s that I tear up watching black-and-white performances of El Derecho de Vivir en Paz (The Right to Live in Peace).Born into an impoverished peasant family and a fierce supporter of working-class and Indigenous people, he threaded their stories into song. “We’ve had enough of that music that doesn’t speak to us, that entertains us only for a moment, but leaves us empty,” he said. “We began to create a new kind of song. It was music that was born out of total necessity.”Jara was closely aligned with Allende’s leftist Popular Unity coalition, even rewriting the lyrics to its anthem, Venceremos (We Shall Prevail), which made him a prime target for the opposition.Like many workers, Jara responded to Allende’s call on the morning of 11 September to occupy their workplaces in defiance of the unfolding coup. As a professor at the State Technical University, he went to campus. Despite a strict curfew – anyone found on the streets risked being shot – hundreds of students and faculty sought refuge in university buildings, which were later shelled by tanks and raked with machine gun fire.A survivor, Osiel Núñez Quevado, recalled in a documentary: “Without absolutely no warning, they began machine-gunning the university’s central building. They got everybody out, putting professors and students on the floor with hands on their heads. There among them, was Víctor.”Pinochet’s forces found Jara’s message so threatening that when he was identified among the prisoners brought to Estadio Chile – the stadium later turned into a detention center and renamed to honor the singer’s memory – he was singled out for torture in an especially cruel way.Soldiers broke his hands and wrists, then taunted him to play his guitar and sing. Badly beaten and bloodied, in the two hours before his death he secured a pen and paper from a friend and gathered the strength to write his final song, Estadio Chile.He defiantly performed Venceremos before his captors killed him with a gunshot to the head, further riddling his body with 44 bullet wounds before dumping his corpse in the street.View image in fullscreenSuch brutality, forever seared into the consciousness of Chileans like my father, has shaped generations across national borders, thousands of miles, and decades. The ghosts of a decimated democracy haunted Dad’s nightmares, and they continue to haunt me.When I turned 18, my father actively discouraged me from voting, fearing that my name could end up on a list used against me one day, that I could be killed like one of los desaparecidos – the thousands of Chileans who were abducted by state forces during Pinochet’s rule, never to be seen again.The deeper I dig into history, the more parallels I uncover between then and now.I recently learned about Chile’s failed coup in June 1973, which eerily resembles the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. Riding on growing discontent within the military, Lt Col Roberto Souper launched an unsuccessful attempt against Allende. Though poorly coordinated, it served as a kind of dress rehearsal, helping the military understand the conditions necessary for success in a future attempt.The commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, Gen Carlos Prats, helped squelch the rebellion. But by August, having lost the military’s support, Prats resigned and personally recommended his replacement: his second-in-command, Pinochet. (The following year, while in exile, Prats and his wife Sofía were killed in a car bombing in Buenos Aires, carried out by Chile’s secret police.)Pinochet swiftly pardoned those arrested during the failed coup attempt – mostly men from various branches of the military – and assigned them to guard the Estadio Nacional, where so many were tortured and killed.The similarities are impossible to ignore: a failed insurrection, full pardons for the perpetrators, and ensuing vengeance.As the attorney Almudena Bernabéu observes, “Dictatorial regimes are fueled by arrogance and by the ability to deny that their power will ever end.”View image in fullscreenEmboldened and once again in power, Trump’s ire threatens most of the American public, save for a small segment of wealthy oligarchs.And just as in Chile, where poverty soared in the dictatorship years, the most vulnerable Trump voters will suffer most from rising prices and cuts to crucial social safety net programs.Allende’s wide-ranging platform had promised to alleviate extreme inequality, at a time when 28.5% of Chileans lived in poverty. He had pursued a number of reforms including increasing wages, providing free milk to poor children and nationalizing the copper industry. He won a close race, after having garnered nearly 37% of the vote, partly thanks to worker and peasant turnout.But his victory came at a time of extreme political polarization and foreign interference. The National Security Archive contains a trove of documents exposing the US government’s efforts to eradicate the perceived communist threat by attempting to prevent Allende’s win and then undermining his presidency with anti-leftist propaganda and economic encroachment to destabilize the country.Severe inflation and scarcity had left people like my father – an intended beneficiary of Allende’s policies – disgruntled. His frustrations help me understand the deep dissatisfaction and distrust felt by the large swathes of midwestern voters who supported Trump.Dad had never graduated from high school. He had toiled in nitrate mines in the Atacama desert, loaded cargo on ships, hauled trash in buildings – dirty jobs that left his hands calloused and his psyche bruised – eventually securing a union job as an elevator operator and later doorman.He would often recount his dissatisfaction with Allende, given long food lines and the exorbitant prices for black market goods, and had been especially stung by the indignity of a waiter at a “nice” restaurant handing him newspaper to wipe his hands instead of napkins.Between the lack of economic opportunity, especially for those like Dad born into the working class, and the violence and repression during the dictatorship, my father emigrated in 1975. He joked: “I left because I wanted to be rich.”Chile’s right wing capitalized on growing discontent, organizing the 1971 protest March of Empty Pots and Pans, which, according to a CIA memorandum, “drew more support from angry Chilean housewives than had been anticipated even by the sponsors”.View image in fullscreenArtists, writers and intellectuals continued to offer Allende strong support, including Chile’s celebrated poet Pablo Neruda, his friend and adviser. Neruda died just 12 days after the coup, before he could seek refuge in Mexico, prompting the recently confirmed speculation that he had been poisoned.This is Pinochet’s legacy: layers and layers of horrific secrets that are still being unveiled, which might explain why Dad urged me never to vote for fear of being tracked down.I had the privilege, then, of laughing off such worries. “Don’t be paranoid, Dad. They don’t keep track of who you voted for here,” I said, explaining secret ballots. He wasn’t convinced.Suddenly, Dad doesn’t seem so paranoid any more.I’ve never been good at keeping my big mouth shut. My father was a masterly kvetcher and, as a New Yorker, I consider complaining my birthright. While I enjoy commiserating as a way to connect with others, my griping also helps me search for answers, question what we take for granted, and untangle vexing puzzles.Perhaps naively, I once believed tenure would grant more academic freedom – that our right to dissent would be protected. But as we slide toward authoritarianism, the train’s moving in reverse. Instead of my horizon expanding as I near that milestone, I feel the walls closing in.Earlier in my career, when I voiced doubts, a mentor wisely cautioned: “You don’t want to twist yourself into a pretzel for a job you don’t want any more.” How far will we twist, bend, compromise, modify, avoid – or hide? One of my personal heroes, the photographer Bill Cunningham, memorably declined food and drink while working events, explaining: “Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty is the most expensive.” What price are we willing to pay for an academic job?I inherited many things from my father – his hazel eyes, his acid reflux, his politics of fear – and his stubbornness. I’ve come too far to hide now. I spent years ashamed of my socioeconomic background and ethnic surname, but I’ve come to see that what once made me feel like an outsider also sharpened my tools – especially the way I observe the world as a sociologist.And I’ve gained a deeper respect for my father’s distrust. He never returned to Chile, yet despite the pain bound up in that homeland, he held on to a fierce love for it –he never burned the bridge back. That bridge may one day provide me with an escape route, thanks to my eligibility for Chilean residency through him.Dad’s lifelong fear kept him metaphorically sleeping with one eye open, always listening for danger in the distance. Now, it’s helping me prepare for a new era of terror. I will still vote. I will still speak my mind – because he often couldn’t. But I’m no longer naive about the repercussions.Lately, I’ve caught myself practicing the words: “I was once a college professor.” It’s been a meaningful ride, but if it ends, so be it. I’d rather say, “I used to be a college professor” than “I once stood up for my beliefs and values.” Because what good is all this education if I haven’t learned the most important lesson?In that case, I might as well light the match myself.

      Stacy Torres is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America.
      Spot illustrations by Angelica Alzona. More

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      JD Vance had ‘exchange of opinions’ with senior cardinal, Vatican says

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      The US vice-president, JD Vance, had “an exchange of opinions” with the Vatican’s secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia.The Holy See has responded cautiously to the Trump administration, in keeping with its tradition of diplomatic neutrality.It has expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and cuts in international aid, and has called for peaceful resolutions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.Those concerns were reflected in the Vatican statement, which said the talks were cordial and that the Vatican expressed satisfaction with the administration’s commitment to protecting freedom of religion and conscience.“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” the statement said.“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”The reference to “serene collaboration” appeared to refer to Vance’s accusation that the US conference of Catholic bishops was resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to obtain federal funding. Top US cardinals have pushed back strongly against the claim.Parolin told La Repubblica on the eve of Vance’s visit: “It is clear that the approach of the current US administration is very different from what we are used to and, especially in the west, from what we have relied on for many years,.”As the US pushes to end the war in Ukraine, Parolin reaffirmed Kyiv’s right to its territorial integrity and insisted that any peace deal must not be “imposed” on Ukraine but “built patiently, day by day, with dialogue and mutual respect”.Vance was spending Easter weekend in Rome with his family and attended Good Friday services in St Peter’s Basilica after meeting Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. On Saturday, after the Vance family’s introduction to Parolin, they had a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.It was not immediately clear where they would celebrate Easter. Pope Francis, for his part, according to official liturgical plans released on Saturday, indicated he hoped to attend Easter mass on Sunday, which usually draws thousands to St Peter’s Square.The pope and Vance have tangled over immigration and the Trump administration’s plans to deport people en masse. Francis has made caring for those who migrate a hallmark of his papacy and his progressive views on social justice issues have often put him at odds with members of the more conservative US Catholic church.The pope also changed church teaching to say that capital punishment was inadmissible in all cases. After a public appeal from Francis just weeks before Trump took office, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row. Trump is an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, identifies with a small Catholic intellectual movement that is viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings and often described as “post-liberal”.Post-liberals share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. They envision a counter-revolution in which they take over government bureaucracy and institutions such as universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting upon their vision of the “common good”.Just days before the pope was admitted to hospital in February, Francis criticised the Trump administration’s deportation plans, warning that they would deprive people of their inherent dignity. In a letter to US bishops, he also appeared to respond to Vance directly for having claimed that Catholic doctrine justified such policies.Vance had defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as ordo amoris. He said the concept delineated a hierarchy of care – to family first, followed by neighbour, community, fellow citizens and, last, those elsewhere.In his 10 February letter, Francis appeared to correct Vance’s understanding of the concept.“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the good Samaritan, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”Vance has acknowledged Francis’ criticism but has said he will continue to defend his views. During an appearance on 28 February at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Vance did not address the issue specifically but called himself a “baby Catholic” and acknowledged there are “things about the faith that I don’t know”. More

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      A Nicaraguan asylum seeker checked in with Ice every week. He was arrested anyway

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      It finally happened while he was waiting to get his hair cut.Alberto Lovo Rojas, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, had been feeling uneasy for weeks, worried that immigration officials would arrest him any moment. But he had pushed the worry aside as irrational – after all, he had a permit to legally work in the US, and he had been using an app to check in monthly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Still, something felt off. The Trump administration had promised mass deportations, and in the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Ice had asked him to do extra check-ins each weekend. “I even messaged the Ice office through my app, to ask if something was wrong,” Rojas said.His last check-in with Ice was on 5 February – all normal. On 8 February, they came for him.He was outside Great Clips in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. The barbershop had been crowded, so he put his name down for a cut and decided to wait in his car.Hours later, he was moved into the north-west detention center in Tacoma, awaiting deportation to Nicaragua – which he fled in 2018 amid a violent crackdown against nationwide anti-government protests. Rojas fears he’ll be targeted again.“I’m afraid to go back, I’m afraid for my life,” he told the Guardian. “I’m afraid I will never see my children again.”Rojas, 42, is one of potentially hundreds of people who have been detained in recent weeks despite complying with Ice requirements to regularly check-in. Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian has estimated, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests – 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.View image in fullscreenLawyers and immigration advocates told the Guardian they believe that in order to oblige the president’s demand for mass arrests and deportation, immigration officials are reaching for the “low-hanging fruit” – people that Ice had previously released from custody while they pursued asylum or other immigration cases in a backlogged immigration court system.Most of these people do not have criminal histories and have dutifully been complying with the government’s orders to routinely report to immigration officials. Some have pending asylum cases, or are appealing their deportation orders. Others, like Rojas, had been denied their claims to stay in the US, but were released on supervision.In Rojas’s case, he was allowed to stay in Spokane with his wife and children – who had pending asylum cases – and apply yearly for a permit to legally work.“I just don’t understand,” Rojas’s wife, Dora Morales said. “Why would they want to arrest him now?Rojas had left Nicaragua with his uncle in September 2018.Both men had participated in Nicaragua’s April rebellion of 2018, a movement that started among university students. The movement was incited by unpopular changes to the social security system, but quickly grew into a massive movement calling for democratic reforms.Government forces immediately responded with crushing brutality, shooting at young protesters. “I felt a lot of pain, sadness to see mothers crying for their children,” Rojas said. He felt called to join the cause.Send us a tipIf you are connected to someone who has been deported or is in fear of deportation and have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian, please use a non-work device to call or text immigration reporter Maanvi Singh via the Signal messaging app at 929-418-7275.Rojas was well-known in his neighborhood, and he started to help organize protests and arrange transportation for those interested in attending.But as the demonstrations grew, so did the backlash. Police and pro-government paramilitary groups killed hundreds of students, human rights activists and journalists. His uncle was beaten and shot twice by Nicaraguan paramilitary officers.They had to leave, Rojas said. They went into hiding and eventually made their way out of the country, through Honduras and Guatemala before arriving at the US-Mexico border.“I never broke an immigration law,” Rojas said. He did exactly as he was directed – waiting a week in a notorious hielera – a frigid Customs and Border Protection holding cell where newly arrived immigrants slept on concrete floors. Then he was transferred to Phoenix, Arizona; flown to a detention center in Memphis, Tennessee; then Mississippi, where officials interviewed him to assess his eligibility for asylum in the US; and finally sent to Louisiana while his case was assessed.In July of 2019, a judge denied his asylum application, and he remained in detention while his lawyers appealed. And then – finally – in May 2020, as Covid-19 rapidly spread through the facility where he was held, Rojas’s fate changed. Following a class-action lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that Ice must consider the release of all detainees whose age or health conditions put them at elevated risk of Covid infection.Rojas is missing a kidney – a complication from a car accident when he was a child – and was especially at risk of complications from a coronavirus infection. So they let him go. “It was such a miracle,” he said.View image in fullscreenWhile Rojas was in detention, Morales and the couple’s two young sons, Alberto Jr and Matteo, had managed to escape Nicaragua as well. The family reunited in Spokane. He found work in construction, then on a ranch – and eventually, he was able to get a job as a mechanic at the Corwin Ford dealership in Spokane.“It was almost like some stereotypical, all-American dream. I mean, he was literally working for Ford!” said his friend Lizzy Myers. “He had just gotten this new lease on life, and he was really doing well.”Rojas and Morales had met – years ago – at church. He fell in love with her singing voice, and she managed to chat him up by asking for his help with English. In Spokane, the couple were once again able to attend mass together.Rojas began playing pick-up soccer with a local league. He’s been coaching his eldest in the sport as well. “And they are both improving so much – they are really getting quite good,” Rojas said. Last year, the family welcomed their newest member – baby Santiago – whom they baptized in Spokane’s St Peter church.Rojas’ lawyers reassured him that so long as he complied with Ice’s orders to routinely check in, and applied to renew his work permit each year, he’d be fine.“When the president won the election, he said he would arrest the criminals,” Rojas said. “I was worried. But also, I am not a criminal.”But then, Trump took office and rolled back a Biden-era memo prioritizing the deportation of people with criminal records or who posed threats to public safety. Now, all immigrants in the US without a legal status are subject to arrest, including those who have been checking in and cooperating with Ice. To meet the president’s goal for “mass deportations”, immigration officials have become more indiscriminate in their enforcement, a Guardian analysis last month found.The US arrested more immigrants in February 2025 than any month in the last seven years. Still, no one in his community believed that Rojas would be one of them.“We were all just shocked,” said Susy Glamuzina, his close friend and co-worker. Glamuzina had rushed to Morales’s side as soon as Rojas was arrested and had been driving the family over to Tacoma to visit Alberto in detention. “I just thought, you know, he had a baby who was born here,” she said.View image in fullscreenTheir boss reassured Alberto he’d hold Rojas’s job until he returned, and offered to pitch in for his legal fees. Marcus Riccelli, a Democratic state senator representing Spokane, who played soccer in the same league as Rojas, heard about the case, offered to help find Rojas legal representation and called in a favor to help his family file paperwork to delay his deportation. Meanwhile, friends have jumped in to help Morales with childcare and connect their children – who had been struggling since Rojas’s arrest – with counselors to help them process the trauma.Glamuzina and his friends have already planned a party for when he returns home. “Alberto is really missed. We want him back. And I’ll tell you – if they need any personal testimonies for his case, I can have 20 people in Tacoma in a heartbeat.”A GoFundMe page for his legal fees started by Myers has so far raised nearly $17,000.The family has been using the funds to pay for legal fees, and their lawyers have filed a motion to reopen Rojas’ asylum case. They’re also hoping Rojas will be released soon.He worries about health complications due to his missing kidney if he were to contract any infections while in detention.Morales has chided Rojas for not eating enough. Mealtimes in the detention centre have been irregular, and Rojas has not been in the mood to eat.“I see my husband is getting thinner in detention,” she said. “And I told him, I don’t want to see you thinner, because it would make me sadder than I already am!”It has been difficult, for both of them, not to think about what will happen if he is deported.Morales said news that Rojas has been detained in the US has already spread through their town in Nicaragua, and she worries that government-appointed neighborhood committees will be waiting, ready to alert authorities of Rojas’s arrival. If he isn’t imprisoned or worse, Morales said she worries he could end up exiled – the Nicaraguan government stripped citizenship from hundreds of opponents.“I am preparing for the worst,” Rojas said. “I am praying and I am preparing myself spiritually for what is to come.” More