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    ‘It’s like they’re hunting’: US citizens and legal residents report increase in racial profiling by ICE

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    Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has led some people to take drastic measures to ensure their safetyIt was a normal Tuesday morning for Mohamed when he left his San Diego, California, house for his daily exercise in mid-January. But as he walked around the Colina del Sol park, four US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents approached and encircled the middle-aged father, who is using a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation from federal agents. The officers, Mohamed said, who wore jackets with ICE emblazoned on them and balaclavas that obscured their faces, asked for his green card before they began drilling him with questions about what he was doing in the park.“I was terrified,” Mohamed, a lawful permanent resident from Somalia, said through a translator. The ordeal ended shortly thereafter, but the experience has left a lasting impact on him. “I have high blood pressure,” Mohamed said about the encounter he believes was based on racial profiling. “I used to do my daily exercises; now I don’t even do that any more because I’m scared.” Continue reading… More

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      US cities increasingly compelled to police abuses by immigration agents

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      Federal agents face widespread accusations of misconduct – but Trump administration leaders won’t prosecute themUS citizens and permanent residents: have you been racially profiled by ICE?Rochelle Bilal, Philadelphia’s sheriff, warned ICE agents last week: “If any of them want to come in this city and commit a crime, you will not be able to hide.“Nobody will whisk you off,” she said. “You don’t want this smoke, ’cause we will bring it to you.” Continue reading… More

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      I witnessed the brutality of America’s prisons first hand. We need urgent reform | Alex Duran

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      It shouldn’t take suing departments of corrections or capturing atrocities on illegal cellphones to see what happens behind prison wallsWhen a camera records an act of lethal violence against someone in official custody, the state cannot hide what it typically keeps in the dark. That’s what happened when correction officers murdered Robert Brooks at Marcy correctional facility in New York. Restrained in handcuffs, Brooks was beaten to death by officers unaware that their own body-worn cameras were documenting every blow.The deaths of Brooks and another handcuffed man, Messiah Nantwi, were the catalysts of a recent investigation by the New York Times that found guards in New York prisons use violence at alarming rates. Because the public is largely unaware of what their tax dollars fund behind prison walls, these revelations are significant. But the violence is not unique to New York.Alex Duran is program director at Galaxy Gives and a co-producer of The Alabama Solution Continue reading… More

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      Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani are showing what ‘pro-family’ means | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The governor and mayor unveiled a plan for free childcare in New York City. Is the ‘family values’ party listening?I think we all need a little cheering up, don’t you? So allow me to interrupt the steady stream of violent authoritarianism and state-sponsored murder in your feed with some good news. New York City, which already provides free preschool for three- and four-year-olds, is a step closer to providing free universal childcare for two-year-olds. On Thursday, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a plan for the free childcare program, which they said will start by focusing on “high-need areas” and then gradually expand to cover the city. The mayor said he expected about 2,000 children to be covered by the program this fall.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading… More

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      America’s most crucial political faultline is in New York City | John R MacArthur

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      In New York, it’s progressives versus the party machine – and the city’s queen of tabloids offers some unexpected insightIf, like me, you’re a faithful reader of the New York Post, the election of Zohran Mamdani as the new mayor of Gotham was the best thing to happen to my native city – and to journalism – in a very long time. All through the run up to “Zoh’s” remarkable victory, the queen of tabloids outdid itself in hysterical brilliance – to such an extent that I and apparently tens of thousands of other New Yorkers were left excitedly panting for more, unable to share in the mourning that overtook rightwing commentators and pro-Trump operatives all across the land. Moreover, whether or not you voted for the Ugandan-born Muslim progressive/socialist, his improbable triumph furnished a great political education for anyone who bothered to pay attention, even if you weren’t a Post reader. Now, with Mamdani inaugurated and the unofficial municipal host of Nicolás Maduro, the deposed Venezuelan president, and his wife – jailed in Brooklyn and arraigned in federal court just a stone’s throw from city hall in Manhattan – Donald Trump’s newspaper mouthpiece is also an excellent way to make sense of the growing fissure inside the Democratic party about everything Mamdani represents.I didn’t say that the Post’s political reporting during the final month of the campaign was worth reading because it was accurate. Beginning with Miranda Devine’s 8 October column, whose headline proclaimed “The Dems are letting Antifa take over their cities”, the paper’s leading lights made analytical hash of what was really going on inside the Democratic party. “Portland and Chicago are emerging as the epicenter of anti-Trump resistance,” she warned. “[Governor JB Pritzker] and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are endangering the lives of ICE and Border Patrol personnel,” apparently taking their cue from the “antifa militants” of the first Trump term who “terrorized” the country during the riots that followed the killing of George Floyd. “It will be a relief,” wrote Devine, “to find out who has been funding these violent groups that appear for all the world to be Dem street militia. How else to explain years of Democrats gaslighting us and Democrat governors and mayors covering for Antifa.” Continue reading… More

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      ‘Soy inocente’: Maduro defiant in surreal New York courtroom spectacle

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      The Venezuelan leader entered a heartfelt not guilty plea – and told a member of the gallery he was a prisoner of warVenezuela crisis – latest updatesAt noon on Monday, Nicolás Maduro was escorted into a Manhattan federal courtroom following his capture early on Saturday in Caracas, completing the seized Venezuelan leader’s stunning journey from his capital city to a US courtroom.It was a surreal display amid the fallout of a brazen US military operation to grab Maduro that has roiled global politics and stunned observers in the US and overseas. Continue reading… More

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      The Guardian view on Zohran Mamdani’s task: a high-stakes test case for progressive ambition | Editorial

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      New York’s new mayor will face headwinds as he attempts to carry out a programme of civic renewal. But his affordability agenda speaks to the timesThe multiple firsts achieved by New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, have been well chronicled: he is the first Muslim to occupy that role, the first south Asian and the first to be born in Africa. He is also the youngest mayor of the largest city in the United States for over a century, having received more votes in November’s election than any candidate since the 1960s. And politically, he is probably the most leftwing incumbent of the office since Fiorello La Guardia in the 1930s and 40s.Hardly surprising then, that Mr Mamdani’s extraordinary rise to prominence should be accompanied by high expectations and tense anticipation. At last Thursday’s inauguration ceremony, he promised to “govern expansively and audaciously”. Whether he succeeds in doing so will have considerable ramifications for progressive politics more widely.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading… More

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      At Zohran Mamdani’s block party, I observed a simple truth: people want more politics, not less | Samuel Earle

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      Years of scandal and disappointment have left a void in our politics. But New York’s new mayor offers an alternative to more apathy: hope On 1 January, to mark his inauguration as mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani threw a block party. As he was sworn in outside city hall in front of a crowd of a few thousand of us, a nearby street in Manhattan was closed to traffic so that tens of thousands more could gather to watch the historic moment live on enormous screens. The weather – a cloudless blue sky and arctic winds – felt somehow fitting: a licence to dream and a warning against complacency.Mayors don’t usually take office amid such a festival atmosphere. A smaller, more exclusive event is normally adequate. But a key feature of Mamdani’s rise has been the desire for mass participation in politics. There was no chance this day was going to pass without an open-invitation party. Continue reading… More

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      Mamdani pledges ‘new era’ for New York and vows to govern ‘audaciously’

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      New mayor gives speech at inauguration and rescinds all orders signed by Eric Adams after corruption indictmentZohran Mamdani vowed to “reinvent” New York City in a speech on his first day as mayor, promising “a new era” for America’s largest city and an ambitious start to his term of office.The 34-year-old political star and democratic socialist, who a year ago was a virtually unknown state assemblyman, is the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of south Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa. He is also the first to be sworn in using the Qur’an. Continue reading… More