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      ‘People are scared to go out’: fear of Ice agents forces cancellation of US summer festivals

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      For Orlando Gutierrez in Kansas City, the thought of cancelling his community’s summer Colombian Independence Day festival first surfaced “the week after the inauguration” in January, “when the raids started happening”. The decision was rooted in “trying to be safe”, Gutierrez said. “We’re not talking about folks that are irregular in terms of their immigration status. You only have to look a certain way and speak a certain language and then you’re in danger.”For decades prior to 2025, the event had gone on interrupted – “in rain, in extreme heat” – and hosted thousands of Colombians and non-Colombians alike, Gutierrez said. “Our mission is to share our culture with people that don’t know it,” he added. “To not have the opportunity – that’s where it hurts the most.”In Donald Trump’s second term as president, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been historically expansionist: it now aims for an unprecedented 3,000 minimum arrests a day. Its agents have thrown undocumented people, residents with protected legal status, and even American citizens into a deportation system that increasingly does not respect due process.Out of fear of being targeted indiscriminately, cultural and musical events from coast to coast – block parties and summer concerts in California; Mexican heritage celebrations in Chicago; soccer fan watch parties in Massachusetts – have been postponed or canceled altogether. Even religious gatherings are no longer perceived as safe from Ice. In San Bernardino, California, Bishop Alberto Rojas has dispensed his congregation from the obligation to attend mass out of fear of deportation raids.Every decision to cancel is heartbreaking. In Philadelphia, Carnaval de Puebla, which was scheduled for April, made the call to cancel in February, said organizer Olga Rentería. “We believe this is not a time to celebrate,” Rentería explained, “but a time to remain united, informed, and strong.” In Los Angeles, organizers of Festival Chapín, a celebration of Guatemalan culture, have postponed the event from this August to October. “It was really hard to take that decision,” Walter Rosales, a restaurateur and one of the event’s organizers, told the Guardian. “We have a lot of attendees; more than 50,000 people every year. People have hotels, they have flights. We hire people to be there. But I think it was the best [choice.] The first thing we want is the security of the people.”View image in fullscreenRosales said he hopes that by waiting a few months, Festival Chapín can take place amid a different political climate, one in which Ice sticks to promises made by Trump to target primarily undocumented people with criminal records.But mass raids are likely to get more frequent: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, legislation forced through Congress by Republicans and signed into law by Trump on the Fourth of July, will slash social programs while funding Ice at levels comparable to the budget of the US army.It means that even huge stars are questioning whether concerts are safe for their fans. When the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny announced a recent tour that skips the continental US altogether, social media speculation centered on the notion that the artist did not want to put his fans in Ice’s crosshairs. That theorizing was in part fueled by Bad Bunny’s own dips into the wider political conversation: he’s called Ice agents “sons of bitches” on social media and his “NUEVAYoL” video – in which the Statue of Liberty is garlanded with the Puerto Rican flag – is a lovely and grand ode to New York’s immigrants.View image in fullscreenOf avoiding the US on his upcoming tour, the artist himself has only said that, after touring regularly in the US in recent years, more dates at this time were “unnecessary”. (A representative for Bad Bunny did not respond to a request for comment.)Gabriel Gonzales, the bandleader of the Los Angeles Latin music ensemble La Verdad, said some of their gigs have had to be cancelled this summer. “A lot of people are very scared to go out,” he said. “It’s kind of like the pandemic all over again.”But as La Verdad continue to perform around Los Angeles and elsewhere, Gonzales is finding new meaning in playing live amid the Trump administration’s policies.“It’s not like a rebellion,” he said. “It’s more like a resistance. As musicians, we are there to take people away for a few moments. I see communities pulling together and I feel like everything is going to be OK.”For Joyas Mestizas, a Seattle-based Mexican folk dance youth group, which cancelled their annual festival this year, the plan is to be “more creative” going forward. “But we’re not going anywhere,” said the group’s co-director, Luna Garcia. “If I have to teach kids out of my basement, I’ll do it. The kids are going to dance.”For some organizers of cultural events for Latino communities, pushing through and executing their plans despite fears of raids has become its own kind of crusade.In July, federal agents were spotted on the premises of Chicago’s National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture just days before the institution was scheduled to hold its annual Barrio Arts Festival. The museum said the agents entered the property, “refused multiple requests to present a warrant, badge, or identification”, and “informed museum staff that they were assessing entry and exit points for upcoming events that may draw undocumented attendees”.(In a statement, homeland security said agents “staged and held a quick briefing in the Museum’s parking lot in advance of an enforcement action related to a narcotics investigation”.)In response to the presence of the federal agents, the museum decided not to cancel the festival – but, rather, to ensure it would go forward without endangering its attendees. Veronica Ocasio, the museum’s director of education and programming, said that in the days before Barrio Arts, she and her team “met non-stop” in order to create “as tight a security plan as we could”. The museum is located inside Chicago’s Humboldt Park; in order to cover the park’s 200 acres, Ocasio and her co-organizers assembled a group of volunteer immigration advocates who created a trigger warning and stood guard on rotation for the entirety of the two-day festival. If Ice agents were spotted, the museum was ready to shut down the event, close the gates, and bunker in place – holding attendees inside until the agents left. The plan then called for Ocasio and other museum employees to stand out front with immigration attorneys, holding the fort.View image in fullscreenDelia Ramirez, an Illinois congresswoman, was also a key part of the museum’s plan. In order to head off potential Ice raids, Ramirez as well as other elected officials were on the premises “around the clock”, she said. “State representatives, city council folks, the mayor. All to protect constituents from homeland security.”“The president has taken away people’s healthcare so he can hire more Ice agents to terrorize communities,” added Ramirez, but that doesn’t mean “there’s no oversight or accountability. At a time where the federal government wants to harm you, we will keep each other safe”. For Ramirez, Barrio Arts Festival was “a beautiful showing of people saying to Ice, ‘not here, not now, not ever’.”Beyond her support for local cultural events, Ramirez is attempting to push back on Ice action more broadly: she’s a co-sponsor of the No Anonymity in Immigration Enforcement Act which would prohibit Ice from the now-common practice of carrying out their deportation actions while masked. “People are freaking the hell out,” she said. “They don’t know whether it’s an Ice agent who is going to criminalize them with no due process or it’s someone who wants to rob them. No other law enforcement agency does this.”Ultimately, not only did the Puerto Rican event in Chicago go on without interruption, but it was “our largest, most well attended Barrio Fest in our twenty-five year history”, Ocasio said. “We stood against intimidation and we created a blueprint for festivals in the city of Chicago.” The museum has already shared the safety plan it developed on the fly with organizers of upcoming events representing the local Colombian and Mexican communities.Ahead of New York’s Colombia Independence Day festival – held in July in Corona, a working class neighborhood in Queens – organizers were similarly concerned about the possibility of Ice raids. They took precautions by bordering off the event, marking it as private, and creating a single entrance point where they would have stopped Ice agents operating without a warrant, organizers told the Guardian. Like Chicago’s Barrio Arts Festival, they had lawyers on hand from a local legal services organization. Ultimately, like Barrio Arts, they too set a new attendance record, with around 20,000 festival goers.View image in fullscreenCatalina Cruz, a New York state assembly member who helped plan the Colombian festival, said that all the precautions she and her fellow organizers took “doesn’t explain why so many people came out – from all over the city and beyond”. She credited attendees with a certain kind of mental fortitude: “I’m not in their minds, but I don’t think they were giving a fuck about the president.”Of course, that fuzzy feeling of having put on a successful mass event for the Latino community in the era of all-pervading fear of Ice isn’t a panacea. As Cruz put it: “What would have really stopped [Ice] if they wanted to get in? As we have seen in the case of California” – where federal agents have forcefully and en masse raided parks and working farms – “not a goddam thing.”Newly flush with cash thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill, Ice is now actively recruiting waves of new agents – to, in their words, “defend the homeland” – by offering $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, has promised to “flood the zone” with Ice agents in New York and other sanctuary cities.But on that Sunday in Queens, the Colombian festival ticked along beautifully with no sight or sound of the federal government’s aggressive deportation machine. Vendors pushed street-cart ceviche and plastic pouches full of high-octane primary-color beverages: “Coctelitos, coctelitos!” Seemingly every other person wore the powerful yellow jersey of the Colombian national soccer team. Twentysomethings salsa’d next to older family members grooving in their wheelchairs.When a performer with serious pipes sang the Star Spangled Banner, everybody perked up. When she followed it up with the national anthem of Colombia, throat-bursting singalongs broke out. After she wrapped up, the DJ smashed the ehh-ehh-EHH horns and, all together, folks chanted: “Viva Colombia! Viva Colombia!” More

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      Tributes paid to police officer after gunman kills four in shooting at Manhattan skyscraper – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.Read our full report here:In other developments this morning:

      Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.

      Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.

      An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.

      The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication.
      US House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed his concern over the “horrific shooting”, and said he was “praying hard” for the NYPD officer.“May God watch over our city during this challenging moment,” Jeffries wrote in a post.A large police presence converged on the area around the tower, according to Reuters journalists near the scene.“I just saw a lot of commotion and cops and people screaming,” said Russ McGee, a 31-year-old sports bettor who was working out in a gym adjacent to the skyscraper, told Reuters in an interview near the scene.The office building at 345 Park Avenue occupies an entire city block and houses the corporate offices for the National Football League and the headquarters of investment firm Blackstone. It also holds offices for JP Morgan Chase.According to an ESPN reporter, Jeff Darlington, an NFL security alert was sent to employees: “Do not exit the building. Secure your location and hide until law enforcement clears your floor. Please switch phones to silent.”This shooting is the 254th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun-related violence, who defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed or injured by firearms.President Donald Trump has met with the Scottish first minister John Swinney at his Aberdeenshire golf club.The president is opening a second course at his Menie Estate property on Tuesday and it is understood the first minister met with Trump shortly before the ceremony.The leaders spoke for around 15 minutes, before posing together for pictures in front of a US flag and the saltire of Scotland ahead of the opening of a second course at the president’s golf club in Aberdeenshire.Swinney has previously said he would push the president on an exemption to tariffs for Scotch whisky and raise the situation in Gaza, which also came up in the meeting between Trump and prime minister Keir Starmer on Monday.Meanwhile, Trump was spotted on the driving range of his golf club during a delay in the opening ceremony for a new course.Trump could be seen hitting shots from the driving range just yards where the first tee of the new course, where he is expected to be the first to tee off.President Donald Trump is opening a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family’s luxury properties and playing golf.Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr, are cutting the ceremonial ribbon and playing the first-ever round at the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie, on the northern coast of Scotland, AP reported.The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity and the still-raging scandal over the case of Jeffrey Epstein.It was mostly built around golf – and walking the new course before it officially begins offering rounds to the public on 13 August, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand.Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, was designed by Eric Trump. The course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event later this week, after Trump leaves.Signs promoting the event had already been erected all over the course before he arrived on Tuesday, and, on the highway leading in, temporary metal signs guided drivers on to the correct road.Golfers hitting the course at dawn as part of that event had to put their clubs through metal detectors erected as part of the security sweeps ahead of Trump’s arrival.Several dozen people, some dressed for golf, including wearing golf shoes, had filled the sand trap near the tee box to watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony shortly before it was scheduled to start.Another group of people were watching from the other side in tall grass growing on sand dunes flanking the first hole.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.We start with the news that a gunman killed four people at a Manhattan skyscraper that houses the headquarters of the NFL and the offices of several major financial firms before turning the gun on himself, New York officials have said.An NYPD officer identified as Didarul Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a father of two whose wife is pregnant, was among those killed. He was working off-hours as a security guard at the time, New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters, describing him as a “true blue hero”.Authorities offered few details about the three other victims killed by the suspect – two men and a woman. A third male was gravely wounded by the gunfire and was “fighting for his life” in a nearby hospital, the mayor said.Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, confirmed that “the lone shooter has been neutralized”. New York police also said the shooter acted alone and was dead.Tisch said the gunman, identified as Shane Tamura, a 27-year-old Las Vegas resident with a history of mental illness, had driven cross-country to New York in recent days.The shooting spree in the evening rush hour began in the lobby of the Park Avenue tower in Midtown Manhattan. Tisch said that surveillance videos showed the gunman exiting a double-parked Black BMW between 51st and 52nd street on Park Avenue.Read our full report here:In other developments this morning:

      Ghislaine Maxwell asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction for taking part in and facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with the late sex offender struck by federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008 should have barred any of his co-conspirators from prosecution as well.

      Donald Trump said that he did indeed bar Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for “inappropriate” behavior. But the president explained that what was inappropriate was not, as his aides have suggested, doing something lewd or illegal, but hiring away staff from the club.

      An Israeli settler who was sanctioned by Joe Biden as a violent extremist, but removed from the sanctions list by Trump, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday after the fatal shooting of a Palestinian activist. The Palestinian man who was killed was denied entry to the United States last month when he arrived in San Francisco for a series of planned talks sponsored by faith groups, including a progressive Jewish synagogue.

      The US justice department filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge who has clashed with the administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador over private comments first reported by a far-right publication. More

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      Can Democratic socialists get Zohran Mamdani across the finish line?

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      Was it his charisma, communication skills or his captivating short-form videos? His high-profile endorsements or his clothing style? These elements were said to have contributed to Zohran Mamdani’s record-setting success in New York’s June mayoral primary.But another major factor in his win may have been his ties to the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).Known for its endorsement of the Vermont independent senator and socialist Bernie Sanders’s run for president, as well its role in electing the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the group has re-energized US left political movements in recent years, even while eliciting critique and fear from conservatives and some Democrats.In Mamdani’s campaign, a stunning 60,000 volunteers knocked on 1.6m doors across New York City, home to 3.6m housing units. The effort reportedly led to conversations with a quarter of all New Yorkers who voted in the primary.Though the campaign has not yet released data showing how many of those volunteers were mobilized by NYC-DSA itself, Gustavo Gordillo, a co-chair of the chapter, says his organization turned out thousands. Though other organizations, such as the grassroots political group Drum Beats, also brought out volunteers, he said the chapter had an “unparalleled field operation in New York City”.“New York City DSA formed the heart of the field team,” he said.But the road ahead for Mamdani, who is a state assemblymember, may still be bumpy. Mainstream Democrats have been slow to embrace the democratic socialist, who ran on universalist material policies like a rent freeze and fast and free buses.In the past, centrists and conservatives have defeated DSA primary winners in elections that looked eminently winnable, such as India Walton in the 2021 Buffalo mayoral race. And rightwingers have already launched heavy smear campaigns against Mamdani, with polls showing the race could be tight. Fellow Democrat and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whom Mamdani defeated, switched to an independent party run just to stay in the game, and incumbent Eric Adams is vying to keep his seat.The Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, a centrist, said: “Mamdani’s primary victory in the nation’s cultural financial and media capital is the greatest challenge faced by traditional Democrats in more than 50 years.“The future for the Democrats is unclear,” he said.Asked if mainstream Democrats should embrace the young socialist, he said much of the base the party needs to energize to win elections in New York and elsewhere is moving to the right, and “will not accept” a socialist.View image in fullscreenEven so, NYC-DSA says it is ready for the battle, and if Mamdani wins, it could catapult the group from the sidelines to the center of the party.“The opposition is in total disarray right now [and] their fragmentation is only going to be a source of weakness,” said Gordillo. “We’re ready to mount an offensive campaign that replays a lot of what succeeded in the primary with the army that we’ve amassed.”Electing socialistsWhen formed in 1982, DSA had 6,000 members nationwide; that number grew modestly over the next 25 years. Then, in the mid-2010s, in the wake of democratic socialist Sanders’s run for president – and Donald Trump’s subsequent 2016 presidential victory – membership began to soar.Today, DSA boasts 80,000 members who oppose capitalism and advocate for the public ownership and democratic control of key sectors and resources such as healthcare, and the shift of power to workers from corporations.Though socialism was once a dirty word in the US, especially after crackdowns on socialists and communists in the 1950s, more than half of young Americans hold a positive view of it today, according to the rightwing Cato Institute thinktank.Though DSA factions have often sparred over the role elections and endorsements should play in the movement, the group has increasingly entered the sphere in recent years. The national group is supporting candidates in municipal elections from Ithaca, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, with local chapters backing additional candidates in Boston’s mayoral race, council runs in Richmond, California, Detroit, Michigan, and others. In Minneapolis, a DSA-backed mayoral candidate, state senator Omar Fateh won his primary this month, ; unlike Mamdani, Fateh has also won endorsement from local party officials.View image in fullscreenThe New York City chapter, now home to 10,000 members, began prioritizing elections in 2017, creating an electoral working group. Since then, it has secured two New York City council seats and six New York state assembly seats, including Mamdani’s, which he has held since 2020. Another 250-plus DSA-backed officials hold office nationwide, including progressive “Squad” democrats in Congress: Rashida Tlaib and Greg Casar, and Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson.NYC-DSA employs a methodical volunteer model for each of its endorsed candidates. It has also been highly selective about who it chooses to support.“You have to go speak to multiple branches of the chapter, talk to the electoral working group, go through multiple rounds of votes within DSA,” said the DSA-backed New York state senator Jabari Brisport, who represents a Brooklyn district.The robust endorsement pays off, Brisport said. “When you’re running with a DSA endorsement, you really have a whole operation of dedicated volunteers who want to advance socialism,” he said. “They help with everything from field organizing to comms to fundraising.”For NYC-DSA, electoral campaigns are not only focused on single candidates but also on building support for their movement, said Phara Souffrant Forrest, another DSA state assemblymember from Brooklyn.“When DSA campaigns for a candidate … we’re organizing their district around shared values like housing justice, healthcare for all and workers’ rights,” she said.The chapter does not use paid canvassers, though Mamdani’s campaign hired roughly 50 for specialized outreach.“Our main asset, which money can never buy, are volunteers who are passionate, who feel ownership over a campaign because the win would be personal for them,” said Sarahana Shrestha, a DSA assemblymember representing a south-eastern New York district.Her campaign brought in many voters who had otherwise “given up on electoral politics”, she said. DSA members appeared to do the same in the mayoral primary, mobilizing thousands of new voters.‘Cadre candidates’Some DSA endorsees – such as Ocasio-Cortez, who the group supported in her 2018 campaign – receive DSA backing upon request once they have launched their campaigns. Others, like Mamdani, are “cadre candidates” who have strong pre-existing ties to the organization and are recruited by and from the chapter.Since joining NYC-DSA in 2017, Mamdani has been deeply involved with the organization, helping lead other electoral campaigns and working closely with the chapter on his successful 2020 assembly run.View image in fullscreenOnce in office, Mamdani became an integral part of NYC-DSA’s socialists in office committee, designed to facilitate chapter communications with elected socialists. Today, many of his staffers are chapter leaders. And when launching his mayoral campaign, “he said that he would not run at all if he did not receive our endorsement,” the NYC-DSA organizer Michael Thomas Carter wrote in Drop Site News.“While the coalition that coalesced around his campaign was much broader than NYC-DSA, in this very direct sense our organization is responsible for his mayoral run,” he wrote.This commitment to the chapter has been a throughline in Mamdani’s career, said Gordillo.“He’s been really tested to learn how to exercise leadership while also being accountable to a base, because he’s done that in DSA pretty often,” he said.Mamdani has championed some NYC-DSA campaigning efforts he did not pioneer, such as the successful fight for a bill to expand publicly owned renewable energy, which Gordillo helmed. But he has been a leader on other initiatives, such as the “Not on Our Dime!” bill, which aims to pressure Israel to follow international law and on which he was the lead sponsor. (Ending US support for Israel’s military is a key issue for DSA, whose national organization ended its support for Ocasio-Cortez and former New York congressman Jamaal Bowman over insufficient support for the issue.)View image in fullscreenThat back-and-forth has continued through the mayoral campaign, with the chapter’s political operatives also helping him make connections and shape his platform.“He met with our Labor Working Group a lot to learn more about what were the top demands for different unions where we have a lot of member density,” said Gordillo, who is a union electrician by day.Transformative changeMamdani won more votes than any other mayoral candidate in New York City primary election history. Brisport said that’s a testament not only to the power of NYC-DSA’s organizational skills, but also to the popularity of their political values.“Clearly there is something in the air that is shifting, because open socialists are running for office and winning, showing that our ideas are good, workable things that people actually need,” he said.Mamdani’s embrace of the democratic socialist label has been a boon for NYC-DSA, with about 4,000 members joining since he launched his mayoral campaign. It will also be a test for the chapter and for American socialism.“Zohran ran as an open democratic socialist and the billionaire class, the most powerful forces in the world and in the city, are aligning against him,” Gordillo said. “They will be finding every moment to amplify anything that they can say is a mistake or a failure, and because he ran in a way that was so tied to the movement, I think that any of his shortcomings will also be attributed to us.”The chapter is now preparing to mobilize volunteers around the general election, but also organizing to support Mamdani’s key policies like a proposal to increase taxes on the rich. The organization is prepared to hold Mamdani accountable to socialist values, but also to communicate his successes to the public, said Gordillo.“We will make sure that the billionaire class and corporate interests can’t just fearmonger about him, or hide it when he fulfills his campaign promises,” he said.“The fate of the left in New York rests on the success of the Mamdani administration, so ensuring that there is a successful mayoralty is going to have to become our top priority.” More

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      One day inside the deportation machine at a federal immigration court in New York

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      A brother is torn from his sister. A father arrives for his immigration hearing with his family, only to find that they will be leaving without him. A woman, seemingly relieved after emerging from her hearing, finds that her life is about to change when she is apprehended by federal officials waiting just outside the door.These are just some of the moments that happened on a single day in the Jacob K Javits federal building at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, the largest federal immigration courthouse in Manhattan.Courthouse detentions have been one of many flashpoints in the Trump administration’s expanding crackdown on immigration, as federal authorities seek to arrest 3,000 people a day. There have been reports of arrests at courthouses across the country, from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Chicago, turning routine hearings into scenes fraught with anxiety and fear. A recently filed class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration seeks to bar the practice of courthouse arrests.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenImmigration court presents an especially precarious situation. Not showing up for a hearing can have serious consequences, but as the Guardian observed in the hallways outside courtrooms in New York, showing up also has serious consequences. Even though some people had been granted follow-up hearings, they were detained by federal officials in the hallway and rushed to a stairwell for holding elsewhere in the building. On 18 June, representatives Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman attempted to conduct oversight on the building’s 10th floor, where people have been held, sometimes for days at a time, but were rebuffed by federal officials. Recently released footage shows the harsh conditions faced by people held on the 10th floor.What follows is a visual timeline of a single day inside the halls of the Jacob K Javits federal building, where some people found their lives forever changed.8.57am – A family walks towards a courtroom past masked federal agents. Only the father has a hearing, and his family would not be allowed to enter the room with him. They would have to wait elsewhere.View image in fullscreen9.51am – A federal agent checks a stack of documents containing identifying information for people slated for detention.View image in fullscreen10.11am – Federal agents load a detained man into an elevator.View image in fullscreen10.17am – Federal agents wait.View image in fullscreen10.30am – Federal agents lead a detained man to a stairwell.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen11.25am – The New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, left, escorts a man to the elevator after his hearing. Lander has made regular appearances at the federal building to observe cases and help people leave the building. He was arrested on 17 June as he was attempting to help escort someone out. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”, though video evidence of the encounter debunks that allegation. He was subsequently released the same day.View image in fullscreen11.45am – After successfully escorting a man to the elevator, Lander then returns to a courtroom to observe another case. At 11.45am, he stands in the doorway and announces to federal agents that a man named Carlos has been granted a follow-up hearing in 2029. He asks the assembled agents if they would allow him to return for that hearing. No one says anything in response.View image in fullscreen11.46am – Chaos breaks out as multiple federal agents grab Carlos while his sister screams.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen11.55am – Court employees had informed a sketch artist that she wouldn’t be allowed inside the courtrooms at the federal building, despite the fact that such artists are generally permitted in courtrooms where cameras are banned, as in high-profile federal trials. The sketch artist resorts to drawing the scene in the hallway. She would subsequently be allowed into the courtroom.View image in fullscreen12.58pm – A half-eaten snack bar sticks out of a tactical vest.View image in fullscreen1.51pm – After emerging from a hearing, a woman is immediately apprehended by a masked federal agent who asks for her name and to look at her documents. Upon reviewing her documents, the agent tells her she can leave. “Have a nice day,” he says in Spanish.View image in fullscreen2.11pm – Federal agents detain the father from the family observed at 8.57am and lead him to a stairwell. The Guardian later observed a photojournalist telling the man’s family in Spanish that he had been arrested. Their oldest child broke down in tears as the other two slept, after waiting for him for hours after their arrival. The mother said he had no criminal history and that their asylum cases were in progress.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen2.58pm – The last woman to emerge from her hearing holds a stack of documents in her hand, and she smiles briefly before a masked agent whose T-shirt reads “police” apprehends her. Her smile fades to an expression of fear as she learns that she will not be allowed to leave. Federal agents then rush her to a stairwell.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen More

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      ‘Wells Fargo is complicit’: seven arrested at climate protests outside bank’s offices

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      Seven people were arrested as hundreds of climate and Indigenous rights activists participated in non-violent demonstrations at Wells Fargo’s corporate offices in New York City and San Francisco on Wednesday, in what marks the launch of a summer of civil disobedience against billionaires and corporations accused of cowering to Donald Trump.In New York City, dozens of protesters stormed the lobby of the bank’s corporate offices, disrupting employees by blocking the entrance and calling out what they describe as Wells Fargo’s complicity in the climate crisis.Wells Fargo, currently ranked 33rd in the Fortune 500 list, became the first major bank to abandon its climate commitments – just weeks after the president signed a slew of executive orders to boost fossil fuels and derail climate action. The US bank is among the biggest financiers of planet-warming oil and gas companies, with $39bn in fossil fuel investments in 2024 – a 30% rise on the previous year, according to the most recent annual Banking on Climate Chaos report.“As dozens of teenagers die in climate-driven floods in Texas and thousands die in heatwaves around the world, it’s unconscionable that a bank like Wells Fargo would just completely walk away from its climate goals,” said Liv Senghor with Planet Over Profit, the non-profit group that led the New York protests.In San Francisco, seven people were arrested as activists blocked every entrance of the bank’s global headquarters for several hours, with members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribal nation locked themselves to a sleeping dragon tripod.The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River tribes spearheaded the 2016 and 2017 fight against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) – the opposed fossil fuel pipeline built through Lakota lands that Wells Fargo helped finance.“DAPL was built through the Lakota Unceded Treaty Territory, without proper consent. That land holds our history, our spirit, and our ancestors. We’re in a time where we should be protecting the Earth, not pushing more oil through it. We owe that to our people and the future generations,” said Trent Ouellettefrom Waste Wakpa Grassroots.Wednesday’s protests were part of the Stop Billionaires Summer campaign – a series of planned civil disobedience to disrupt the tech billionaires and corporations backing the Trump administration’s dismantling of democratic rights and climate action. It follows last year’s summer of heat campaign targeting Citibank, another major fossil fuel funder.This year Wells Fargo is being specifically targeted by a coalition of non-profit organizations, who accuse the bank of capitulating to Trump and supporting the rise of planetary destruction, autocracy and land occupation – in the US and Palestinian territories.In San Francisco, about 150 activists also painted a giant community mural outside the bank’s headquarters with the words “Wells Fargo Funds Genocide”, pointing to the bank’s investment in companies that provide tech and/or AI to the state of Israel including Palantir – which also has contracts with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).“Today’s actions are just the beginning of a response to Wells Fargo’s enabling of the rise of authoritarianism,” said Leah Redwood with the Oil and Gas Action Network, who helped organize the San Francisco protest. “Wells Fargo is complicit in so many injustices … the climate crisis or union busting or Trump’s mass deportations or the atrocities in Gaza.”Last week, protesters across the US targeted Palantir, accusing the tech company of facilitating Trump’s expanding surveillance, immigration crackdown and Israel’s human rights violations across the occupied Palestinian territories.Wells Fargo is among the US’s largest banks, worth almost $270bn, and with more than 4,000 branches across 39 US states and territories.It is also among the biggest financiers of fossil fuels since 2021 – the year that the International Energy Agency warned the world that there could be no more fossil fuel expansion – if there was any hope of avoiding total climate catastrophe. Since then, the bank’s investments in fossil fuels have topped $143bn, according to Banking on Climate Chaos.In 2021, Wells Fargo’s chief executive, Charles Scharf, described the climate crisis as “one of the most urgent environmental and social issues of our time”.In February, Wells Fargo dropped two key commitments – the sector-specific 2030 financed and facilitated emissions reductions targets and its goal to achieve net zero emissions in its lending and underwriting by 2050.At the time, the bank said: “When we set our financed emissions goal and targets, we said that achieving them was dependent on many factors outside our control,” adding that “many of the conditions necessary to facilitate our clients’ transitions have not occurred.”The announcement comes just months after Wells Fargo quit the world’s biggest climate coalition for banks – the Net-Zero Banking Alliance – followed by the rest of its US banking peers. That exodus started one month after last year’s election victory for Trump.According to a recent investigation by Rolling Stone, the Texas attorney general boasted about how his office “bullied” Wells Fargo into abandoning the alliance and other climate pledges.In addition to dropping its climate pledges, the bank has also abandoned its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals – ending policies requiring diverse candidates for senior-level roles.A summer of non-violent disruption is planned for Wells Fargo including a national day of coordinated action on 15 August, in an effort, activists say, to pressure the bank to reinstate its climate targets, stop union busting, and end its financial ties with companies accused of destroying both people and the planet.Climate activists are also preparing to support unionization efforts at the bank, where workers have already voted to unionize at 28 branches. Wells Fargo currently faces more than 30 allegations of union-busting.Wells Fargo declined to comment on the protests or any of the allegations about its investments and policies. More

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      Videos reveal harsh conditions inside Ice’s New York City confinement center

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      Two videos have surfaced shedding light on what is happening behind closed doors at a New York federal building where people are being confined after being seized by officers on their way out of immigration court on the 12th floor, with the footage offering a rare look inside a controversial and closely guarded space that is part of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown.The filming, shared by the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), captures one of several rooms at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, on the building’s 10th floor, where accounts have emerged of people being detained in wholly unsuitable conditions with few basic provisions, but there had been no public access to direct evidence.The footage in question shows about two dozen men confined in bare rooms, some lying on the floor wrapped in aluminum emergency blankets while others sit on benches, the City reported on Tuesday.One clip shows two toilets just feet away from where people sleep, separated by a low wall. The video was secretly recorded by a man who had been detained after an immigration court appearance last week, according to the City, which first obtained the footage from the NYIC.The man who filmed the scenes had reportedly managed to have a phone in his possession despite the usual protocol by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) of confiscating personal items at arrest. Reports of people being held for protracted periods in deprived conditions in the Manhattan building have followed weeks of controversy about Ice officers turning up at immigration courts across the country, where they are usually not present, and apprehending people. The footage shows people held in the same building as one of the main immigration courts in New York City. It was sent to state assembly member Catalina Cruz’s office. Until now, photos or videos from the 10th floor have not emerged in public.“The American dream,” the unseen and unnamed detainee says as he films. “Immigration, 26 Federal Plaza.”In a separate audio message also shared with the City , the same man adds: “They haven’t given us food, they haven’t given us medicine. We’re cold. There are people who’ve been here for 10, 15 days inside. We’re just waiting.”Concerns about what goes on inside the federal building had been growing. Advocates, attorneys and immigrants themselves have described the 10th floor as overcrowded, with no beds, showers, or adequate access to food or healthcare.“Ice is kidnapping so many people from New York’s immigration courts that they had to create a new detention facility on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza. But instead of sharing the truth with the public, Ice has skirted accountability by consistently lying about what’s happening on the 10th floor, and breaking the law by not allowing Congress members to view the conditions,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the NYIC, in a statement.“The 10th floor detention facility must be shut down immediately, and regularly inspected to ensure that Ice adheres to federal guidelines as mandated by law,” Awawdeh added.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in earlier statements about the facility that “any claim that there is overcrowding or sub-prime conditions is categorically false”.Ice also maintains that the 10th floor is not used for detention. Officially, the agency describes the space as a processing center, and therefore not subject to congressional inspection rules that apply to detention facilities, where national lawmakers have to be allowed to visit. “26 Federal Plaza is not a detention center. It is a federal building with an Ice law enforcement office inside of it,” said McLaughlin.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut data from Ice detention logs analyzed by the City revealed that from September 2023 through late June this year, people were held there in what Ice calls the “NYC Hold Room” for an average of 29 hours. Some stayed for several days.The space remains off-limits to both journalists and lawmakers, even though members of Congress are supposed to be allowed to make unannounced visits to detention sites. Several Democrat representatives have been denied entry.Detainees and advocates continue to speak about grim conditions, including sparse food offerings, no showers or clothing changes, and people crammed into a single room with only the floor or hard benches to rest on, according to Gothamist.Meanwhile, Ice has been granted a huge budget boost. Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” dedicates roughly $170bn for immigration and border-related operations – a sum that would make Ice the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. More

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      Leftists are determined to date each other – and not settle for liberals: ‘Politics are the new religion’

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      Zohran Mamdani gave Hinge an unofficial boost last month when the New York mayoral candidate revealed that he met his wife, Rama Duwaji, through swiping. “There is still hope on those dating apps,” he said on the Bulwark podcast a week before his stunning victory in the Democratic primary. The tidbit spread over social media, cementing the 33-year-old democratic socialist’s status as a millennial everyman. A subsequent Cosmopolitan headline read: “Zohran Mamdani could make history (as the first NYC mayor to meet his wife on Hinge).”Representatives for Hinge would not comment, but plenty of eligible New Yorkers did, claiming they would redownload the app due to Mamdani’s success, in spite of their dating fatigue. “Now I’m clocking in like it’s a full-time job,” one user posted on TikTok. “If he can find love on that app maybe I can,” another wrote in a caption.However, they could run into an ideological hurdle while filling out their profiles. Alongside answering basic questions – “Do you smoke, drink or do drugs? Where did you go to college?” – Hinge ask singles to choose their political affiliation: liberal, conservative, moderate, not political, or the mysterious “other”.Some people to the left say the label “liberal” does not encapsulate their socialist views. They associate it with establishment figures such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – or Mamdani’s rival, former governor Andrew Cuomo. Many liberals deem proposals by Hinge’s golden boy (freezing rent, taxing the super-rich, making buses free) too radical. A socialist might want to distance themselves from such center-leaning liberalism and instead embrace the “hot commie summer” that hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb warned his fellow billionaires of.“There’s a real appetite to date leftists now,” said Abby Beauregard, fundraising chair for Democratic Socialists of America’s New York chapter. She said that Mamdani’s victory reinvigorated the dating scene in in the city, “but it’s really hard to find explicitly leftist dating spaces. Most dating apps have a liberal option, but no leftist option, and it’s not a turn-on to see ‘other’, because that could mean anything.” (For instance, far-right or communist.)So lefty singles are finding more explicit ways to signal their politics to like-minded love matches, on Hinge and beyond.View image in fullscreenSome have turned their dating profiles into mini-manifestos, writing out their entire belief system as answers to the apps’ prompts. It’s common to see watermelon emojis as euphemisms for solidarity with the Palestinian people. Some users will warn that they’ll swipe left on Terfs (the acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminists), cops or Donald Trump supporters.“It’s important for me to see those signifiers,” said Caroline, a 38-year-old florist who lives in Queens. (She and other sources are going by their first name for privacy reasons.) “There’s a nice feeling on the apps right now with people being proud to be communists or leftists, and they’re saying that.”But she’s wary of anyone who comes off as too lefty. “That seems kind of tryhard,” she said. “It can read as too performative, that you’re fishing for alt-girls or you’re a centrist who just wants someone freaky from Bushwick.”Tinder, OK Cupid and the kink-friendly app Feeld allow users to write their own bios, unlike Hinge, and they can choose within those bios whether they reveal their political affiliations. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Tinder also launched profile “stickers” so users could signal the issues they felt strongly about, such as “voting for reproductive rights”.For her part, Caroline, who uses Feeld, wrote in her profile that she’s “far left” and “COVID-cautious”. That feels like enough for her. “Saying ‘I love vaccines!’, ‘free Palestine!’ or ‘fuck Trump!’ would be trite. It’s all implied.”Dennis Mulvena describes himself as “very left-leaning”. He used to keep his affiliations private on Hinge because he believed there was room for nuance in discussing politics, but recently listed himself as liberal.“With the return of Trump in the last two years, it’s important to have that out there,” said Mulvena, 30, who works in customer service for a car manufacturer. “Admittedly gay people who live in Brooklyn tend to lean left, but I have had the experience of going on a date with someone who then revealed he was part of his college’s Young Republicans club.” That was the last time he assumed that everyone he matched with would share the same views as him.According to an NBC News poll from April, the partisan gap between gen Z women, who are more likely to say they are Democrat, and gen Z men, who have shifted right, is the widest of all generations. And, increasingly, a person’s politics have an impact on their perceived desirability. While past generations may have thought nothing about a conservative and liberal romantic pairing (“don’t talk about politics or religion at the dinner table”), 60% of 18- to 24-year-olds think it’s important to date or marry someone who shares their political beliefs.“Politics is the new religion,” said Dr Jess Carbino, a former sociologist for Bumble and Tinder who studies dating apps. “It’s become the way that people choose to frame how they look at the world and their values.”Lily, a 23 year-old socialist who was recently laid off, is wary of seeing someone identify as “not political” on Hinge. “I’m immediately scared of what that means,” they said. “As a queer person living through everything that’s happening in this country, I need to know someone has a baseline care for people and their community.”In New York, more voters between the ages of 25 and 34 – a mix of gen Z and younger millennials – turned out to vote in the Democratic primary than any other age cohort, indicating a vigor for leftist politics. Recently, Lily has seen young people write on Hinge that they’d only go out with someone who voted for Mamdani or that they’d never go out with a Cuomo supporter. They have seen multiple people answer the Hinge prompt “when was the last time you cried?” with: “when Zohran won”. (They presume these were happy tears.)This is not to say New York is a young Bolshevik paradise: conservatives in the city are also trying to find each other. Some have gone into voluntary exile from mainstream dating apps, creating their own options. “Our dating apps have gone woke,” reads the description for Date Right Stuff, one such app backed by Peter Thiel. “Connect with people who aren’t offended by everything.”In March, Date Right Stuff hosted a singles event at New York’s Trump Tower called “make America hot again”. It was a coming-out night for what the app’s former chief marketing officer Raquel Debono called “city conservatives”, or Republicans who prefer urban life to small towns and tradwifedom.They are not the only ones going off-app: the Mamdani effect on New York’s lefties could not be contained to Hinge.In early July, young people gathered inside a cocktail bar on the Lower East Side for a “sexy socialist singles” event hosted by New York’s DSA. Those looking for something casual – or, as the host put it, “if you just want fast and free, like Zohran’s buses” – were sent to one part of the bar, while those who wanted “a slow burn, like taxing the fucking rich” went to another. At one point, organizers directed polyamorous attendees to a room upstairs, where they could mingle with other non-monogamous individuals.Upstairs, Sven, 25, an economics master’s student who lives in Bushwick, said that young people view the DSA as a social club just as much as a platform for socialist candidates. “I saw a post on Reddit talking about how all Zohran’s canvassers are hot, and we have soccer leagues and book clubs,” they said. “It’s a great way to make friends.”Downstairs, back in monogamyville, Lauren, a video editor who lives in Astoria (the Queens neighborhood Mamdani represents as a New York assemblymember), waited for a friend who was off flirting. “There’s definitely an energy when I wear my Zohran T-shirt out,” she said. “People are revved up. They’ll call you from across the street saying, ‘What’s up?’ or ‘I love that guy.’ It’s a real conversation starter.”New York’s DSA will continue its sexy socialist mixers in youth hubs Bushwick and Williamsburg, and in the Upper West Side for those over 30. In the meantime, singles will have to keep parsing political signifiers on dating apps. More