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      Judge blocks Kristi Noem from ending temporary protected status for Haitians

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      A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants before the program’s scheduled expiration date.Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Joe Biden’s extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians through 3 February. It called for the program to end on 3 August, and last week pushed back that date to 2 September.The US district judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, however, said the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem did not follow instructions and a timeline mandated by Congress to reconsider the TPS designation for Haitians.“Secretary Noem does not have statutory or inherent authority to partially vacate a country’s TPS designation”, making her actions “unlawful”, Cogan wrote. “Plaintiffs are likely to (and, indeed, do) succeed on the merits.”Cogan also said Haitians’ interests in being able to live and work in the United States “far outweigh” potential harm to the US government, which remains free to enforce immigration laws and terminate TPS status as prescribed by Congress.Donald Trump has made a crackdown on legal and illegal immigration a central plank of his second White House term.Cogan was appointed to the bench by George W Bush, also a Republican.In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, homeland security spokesperson, said Haiti’s TPS designation had been granted following the 2010 earthquake in that country, and was never intended as a “de facto” asylum program.“This ruling delays justice and seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers,” she said. “We expect a higher court to vindicate us.”Federal courts blocked Trump from ending most TPS enrollment during his first term.Nine Haitian TPS holders, an association of churches and a chapter of the Service Employees International Union filed the lawsuit on 14 March, saying Noem did not do a required review of current conditions in Haiti before ending TPS early.More than 1 million people, more than half of them children, are displaced within Haiti, where gang violence is prevalent despite a United Nations-backed security mission that began last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“While the fight is far from over, this is an important step,” Manny Pastreich, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, whose members include Haitian TPS holders, said in a statement.Noem shares Trump’s hardline stance on immigration issues, and moved to end TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelans as well as thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon.On 19 May, the US supreme court let TPS end for the Venezuelans, signaling that other terminations could be allowed.Noem has authority to grant TPS for six to eight months to people from countries experiencing natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary events.The Haitian plaintiffs also claimed the suspension of their TPS status was motivated in part by racial animus, violating their constitutional right to equal protection.Trump falsely said in a September 2024 debate with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, sparking fear of retaliation against Haitians. More

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      What’s in Trump’s major tax bill? Extended cuts, deportations and more

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      Senate Republicans on Tuesday passed Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill after spending all night voting on amendments. The bill, which the GOP has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now returns to the House of Representatives, which passed their version last month, before a Friday deadline the president has imposed for the legislation to be on his desk.Here’s what’s in the Senate’s version of the bill:Extending big tax cutsAfter taking office in 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered taxes and increased the standard deduction for all taxpayers, but generally benefited high earners more than most. Those provisions are set to expire after this year, but the “big, beautiful bill” makes them permanent, while increasing the standard deduction by $1,000 for individuals, $1,500 for heads of households and $2,000 for married couples, albeit only through 2028.Cutting tax on tips or overtimeThe bill has an array of new tax write-offs – but only while Trump is president. Several of the new exemptions stem from promises Trump made while campaigning last year. Taxpayers will be able to write off income from tips and overtime, and interest made on loans to purchase cars assembled in the United States. People aged 65 and over are eligible for an additional deduction of $6,000, provided their adjusted gross income does not exceed $75,000 for single filers or $150,000 for couples. But all of these incentives expire at the end of 2028, right before Trump’s term as president ends.Money for mass deportations and a border wallAs part of Trump’s plan to remove undocumented immigrants from the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will receive $45bn for detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. More than $50bn is allocated for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.Slashing Medicaid and food stampsRepublicans have attempted to cut down on the bill’s cost by slashing two major federal safety-net programs: Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps people afford groceries. Both are in for funding cuts, as well as new work requirements. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the Medicaid changes could cost as many as 10.6 million people their healthcare, and about eight million people, or one in five recipients, their Snap benefits.Cuts to green energyThe bill will phase out many tax incentives created by Congress during Joe Biden’s presidency meant to encourage consumers and businesses to use electric vehicles and other clean-energy technology. Credits for cleaner cars will end this year, as will subsidies for Americans seeking to upgrade their homes to cleaner or more energy-efficient appliances. While a draft of the bill targeted wind- and solar-energy projects with a new excise tax, senators voted to remove that at the last minute.State and local tax relief (Salt)One of the thorniest issues the bill addresses is how much relief to provide from state and local taxes (Salt), which many Americans must also pay in addition to their federal tax. Several House Republicans representing districts in Democratic-led states withheld their support from the bill until the Salt deductibility cap was raised from $10,000 to $40,000, but Senate Republicans made clear they would change that. The Senate’s version keeps the $40,000 cap, but only through 2028.Raising the debt ceilingThe bill will increase the US government’s authority to borrow, known as the debt limit, by $5tn. The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has predicted the government will hit the limit by August, at which point it could default on its debt and spark a financial crisis.More benefits for the rich than the poorWealthier taxpayers appear set to receive more benefits from this bill than poorer ones, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. Taxpayers in the lowest-income quintile will see a 2.5% decrease in their incomes, largely due to the Snap and Medicaid cuts, while the highest earners will see their incomes grow by 2.4%, the Budget Lab estimated. The impact could change based on which amendments the Senate adopts.A huge price tagDespite the GOP’s attempts to use the bill as a vehicle to rein in government spending, the bill would increase the deficit by $3.3tn through 2034, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Most of that price tag is the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. The heavy budgetary impact could complicate the bill’s chances of passing the House, where fiscal hardliners have demanded budget-deficit reductions. More

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      A private prison firm wants to detain immigrants in this Kansas town. Its residents are pushing back

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      It was a lovely May evening in Leavenworth, Kansas, but instead of strolling along the Missouri River or gardening, a group of locals sat on squeaky folding chairs at the public library to discuss their mission: how to stop a private prison behemoth from warehousing immigrants down the road.This was happening in a famously pro-prison town, home to one of the oldest federal penitentiaries, and where Donald Trump won more than 60% of the vote in 2024. Besides the military and the Veterans Affairs medical center, prisons are the largest employer in this community, 30 miles north-west of Kansas City. With federal immigration detention facilities around the country packed due to the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, the private prison industry is experiencing a boom. Stock prices of companies such as GEO Group and CoreCivic soared as they gained scores of contracts.But when CoreCivic applied earlier this year for a permit in Leavenworth to reopen a prison with a troubled history to hold immigration detainees, city officials balked. And local residents – including some former prison employees – pushed back.That evening at the library, the citizens waited to hear whether a federal judge would decide if Leavenworth had the right to tell CoreCivic to buzz off. Regardless of what happened in court, organizers of this “teach-in” were preparing attendees for the next possible round of the fight. Over homemade chocolate chip cookies and sun tea, they talked about how to get letters published in the Leavenworth Times and reminded attendees to politely pester elected officials.Local organizer (and cookie baker) Rick Hammett suggested to the crowd that political and corporate interests had stirred fears of immigrants ahead of the 2024 election cycle to benefit private prisons.“To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled,” Hammett said. “Which is how you end up with a scare tactic over migrants to drum up a reason to put people in jail.”In early June, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported the most immigrant arrests in a single day in its history: more than 2,200 people.Ashley Hernandez, an organizer for the Sisters of Charityof Leavenworth, lamented that CoreCivic has portrayed those who oppose the Ice detention facility as “out-of-town” agitators. But this room is full of locals, she noted. “They’re the outside organization.”The Sisters of Charity is a Catholic convent – they prefer the term “community” – that has been in Leavenworth longer than the prisons – even before statehood. Part of the Sisters’ mission is to “advocate for justice and systemic change” for exploited and marginalized people, Hernandez later explained.View image in fullscreenThe nuns “understand the history of injustices that have gone on in that prison, and they’ve never been OK with that”, she said.Leavenworth’s landmarks hint at a progressive past that dates to at least the 1850s, when Kansas opposed slavery and fought for admission to the US as a free state. The effort’s most radical proposal was the “Leavenworth constitution” which asserted that “all men are by nature equally free and independent”. Leavenworth’s city hall has statues of Lady Liberty and Abraham Lincoln; a nearby park has a plaque for women’s suffragist Susan B Anthony, who spent time here with her newspaper publisher brother. The landscape is dotted with little reminders that people who don’t have power can always fight for it.Many locals remember what happened when CoreCivic previously ran the detention center, housing mostly pretrial detainees for the US marshals from 1992-2021. They recall guards who were permanently injured by prisoner attacks and understaffing that undermined security, according to a federal audit.Mike Trapp, a local writer and activist who reserved the room for the library teach-in, said he’s seen some softening recently among his neighbors who were Trump voters. Even those who support the mass deportations “are on our side in not trusting CoreCivic to do the right thing”, he said.Scandals plagued the facility during its final years of operation – beatings, stabbings, suicides and alleged sexual assaults, according to court records. Leavenworth police said they were blocked at the gate from investigating crimes inside. The facility finally closed in 2021 as the Biden administration shifted away from private prison contracts.The city changed its ordinance since CoreCivic initially opened a prison here, just six miles south of the federal government’s own massive medium-security penitentiary, which has been operating since 1903. The rules now require a new prison operator to seek a city permit. CoreCivic paid a fee and applied for a permit in February to reopen its facility, now called the Midwest Regional Reception Center. But the firm quickly reversed course as residents’ opposition mounted.CoreCivic argued in court filings that because it retained employees in Leavenworth, it never really closed – and didn’t need a permit to reopen the facility. City leaders responded by suing in federal court, and then state court, seeking to block CoreCivic from repopulating the facility. In filings, the city argued the company previously ran an “absolute hell hole”, and the infamous American prison town did not want this one.In an editorial in the Kansas Reflector, critics of reopening the prison fumed: “CoreCivic has repeatedly shown that it is incapable of running a humane facility. Now, the company flouts city approval to move forward with an ICE center based on false promises.”View image in fullscreenSome in Leavenworth opposed the new facility because they feared undocumented immigrants could be released locally, leading CoreCivic to repeatedly promise that any agreement with Ice would strictly prohibit that.In early June, a state district judge sided with the city and issued a temporary injunction, saying the company needed a permit.David Waters, a lawyer for the city, said the case is about following the permitting process and not about “immigration policy, writ large”.A week later, CoreCivic filed a motion asking the district court judge to reconsider, arguing that the city failed to prove reopening the facility would cause “irreparable” future harm or that the company needed a permit.Leaders at CoreCivic have dismissed critics, saying the company has had more than 1,600 applicants for 300 jobs with a starting salary of $28.25 an hour, plus benefits.“We maintain the position that our facility, which we’ve operated for almost 30 years, does not require a Special Use Permit to care for detainees in partnership with ICE,” said Ryan Gustin, senior director of public affairs, in an email.He touted the company’s promises to Leavenworth: a one-time impact fee of $1m, a $250,000 annual fee and an additional $150,000 annual fee to the police department. This is in addition to the over $1m in annual property taxes CoreCivic already pays, Gustin said.The Reception Center originally expected “residents” as of 1 June. The company has posted numerous photos of its warden handing out $10,000 checks to veteran’s causes and the Salvation Army.In legal filings, CoreCivic argued that preventing the opening of its 1,000-plus bed facility would cost it more than $4m a month. In a federal financial disclosure filed in May, the company stated its letter agreement for the Leavenworth facility with Ice authorized payment up to nearly $23m for a six-month period “while the parties work to negotiate and execute a long-term contract”.Gustin said most of the concerns about safety and security of the facility were “concentrated in an 18-month period” over 30 years of operations and attributed staffing shortages to the Covid-19 pandemic and a tight labor market. “As with any difficult situation, we sought to learn from it,” he said.When CoreCivic previously operated the Leavenworth detention center, Tina Shonk-Little was detained there for about 16 months for insurance fraud. She described for the crowd that night at the Leavenworth library how medical and dental care in the facility was scant.“If you had a toothache, they just pulled it,” she said. Her smile bears the scars.View image in fullscreenShe recoiled when Hammett cited public records showing CoreCivic’s CEO earned more than $7m last year. Corporate leaders at CoreCivic and GEO Group gushed on recent earnings calls about the “unprecedented opportunity” they’re facing with Trump in office. Ads and text messages show CoreCivic is offering new guards $2,500 signing bonuses.Across the river in rural Missouri, cash-strapped sheriff’s departments are signing up to hold Ice detainees in small jails for $110 per night, per head, and to transport them as far as Kansas City for $1.10 per mile. Emails obtained through public records requests show that about a week after Trump was elected, CoreCivic leadership began contacting Leavenworth city officials about reopening their facility there.“They don’t want to do better. They are in it for profit,” Shonk-Little said. “They could give two shits about the people. The more people they have, the better off they are because it’s more money in their pocket.”Shonk-Little expressed sympathy for the corrections officers who worked there. “God bless the corrections officers who did what they could with what they had,” she said.Toward the back of the room sat Bill Rogers, a brick wall of a man who spends nearly two hours a day in the gym. He was one of those guards. A few minutes after her speech, Rogers stood suddenly, looking like a frog was lodged in his throat, as his eyes welled with tears.He spoke directly to Shonk-Little: “What courage … to come here. And everything you said was right. It was true. I remember. And as a former officer, I apologize. That’s all I can say.”She responded: “I’m sorry you were treated the way you were treated also.”They hugged.At a coffee shop the next morning, Rogers explained he was a high school dropout and heavy equipment operator who thought $20 an hour, plus benefits, working for CoreCivic sounded like a good gig.“I just needed a job,” he recalled. He started working as a correctional officer in 2016 and initially loved it.“I bet you 85% of those inmates I met? I would have hung out with them on the street. They were just decent people who made a mistake. I really believe that,” he said.Not long after Rogers started, the voluntary overtime shifts became mandatory. A 2017 audit by the Department of Justice found that understaffing was hurting safety and security at the facility. In recent court filings, lawyers for Leavenworth accused CoreCivic of gross mismanagement of the previous facility, resulting in “rampant abuse, violence and violations of the constitutional rights of its detainees and staff”.They referenced one incident in November 2018, when CoreCivic didn’t report the death of an inmate to city police for six days.It’s that death that haunts Rogers’ dreams. Dillon Reed was only 29 when he ended up at the Leavenworth facility on a drug charge, but Rogers remembered he was a funny, sweet kid who reminded him of his adult son.View image in fullscreen“He made me laugh,” Rogers said.Reed had an addiction, and alcohol and drugs were rampant inside the prison, Rogers said. On Thanksgiving Day in 2018, Reed was found dead in his cell. Rogers was working in a different section of the facility, but he was called to remove Reed’s body from his cell. An autopsy later showed that Reed likely died of sudden cardiac death, with a mixture of alcohol and drugs in his system.Rogers still can’t talk about it without getting choked up. Calling an ambulance quickly could have saved Reed, he said.“When that door came open? I didn’t see an inmate. I saw a young man … and I saw my son,” he said. “I don’t care that he was an inmate … he was a human soul. He shouldn’t have died. We had a job to do, and it didn’t happen that day.”In 2020, Rogers was stabbed in the hand and had his head split open with a cafeteria tray by combative prisoners. Later that year, he was so fed up with the lack of security, he said, that when a prisoner came at him, he shoved the man against the wall – and was fired.Some of Rogers’ former detention officer friends will not talk to him anymore, because he’s been speaking out, he said. He said they tell him: “You didn’t do shit when you worked there, and now you’re running your mouth.”Marcia Levering, a former CoreCivic colleague of Rogers, is also speaking out about the attack by a prisoner that nearly killed her. She was working in February 2021, shortly before the facility closed, when a colleague opened the wrong security door. A prisoner who was angry at her beat her senselessly and stabbed her multiple times. She spent two months in the hospital and is now permanently disabled, struggling to pay her rent.“They’re not looking out for the safety of their inmates or staff,” Levering said of CoreCivic. “They’re looking out for their own self-interest, which is taking the taxpayers’ money to line the pockets of their higher-ups.”Lawyers for the city of Leavenworth filed a motion last week asking the state district judge to formalize the temporary injunction. The motion states that the “federal government might apply pressure on CoreCivic to defy or look for loopholes in this Court’s orders”, while noting that the company has “accelerated” activity at the detention center.Meanwhile, residents are planning a march against the detention center on 19 July. They plan to meet 10 days earlier at MoMos to make homemade protest signs.

      This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook More

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      Trump news at a glance: Republicans scramble to pass ‘one big, beautiful bill’ as deadline looms

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      Senate Republicans are racing to meet Donald Trump’s self-imposed 4 July deadline to pass the president’s massive tax-and-spending “one big, beautiful bill”. In a marathon session, senators convened at the Capitol to propose amendments to the legislation over many hours.Democrats, who universally oppose the bill, are expected to use the process to force their opponents into politically tricky votes that they will seek to wield against them in elections to come.Even if it passes the Senate, the bill will still need to go back through the House, which is being called back to session for votes as soon as Wednesday.Here’s the latest:US Senate Republicans make final push to pass Trump’s one big beautiful billAs the marathon session kicked off on Monday morning, Senate majority leader John Thune sounded optimistic that the measure would soon clear his chamber. “Let’s vote. This is good for America, this is good for the American people, it is good for working families,” he said.Chuck Schumer the Senate minority leader said the bill “steals people’s healthcare, jacks up their electricity bill, take away their jobs – all to pay for tax breaks for billionaires”. He said Democrats would offer amendments to “see once and for all if Republicans really meant all those nice things they’ve been saying about ‘strengthening Medicaid’ and ‘protecting middle-class families’, or if they were just lying”.Republican Senator Thom Tillis said “this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” a few hours after announcing he would not seek re-election in politically competitive North Carolina.Read the full storyDoJ moves to strip US citizenship from some naturalised AmericansThe Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.Read the full storyWhite House says Canada ‘caved’ to Trump demand to scrap tech taxThe United States has said that Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney “caved” to demands from the White House after his government abruptly scrapped their digital services tax on US technology companies, which was set to go into effect on Monday.“It’s very simple. Prime minister Carney and Canada caved to president [Donald] Trump and the United States of America,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a daily briefing.Read the full storyTrump administration reportedly concludes Harvard violated students’ civil rightsThe Trump administration has concluded that Harvard University violated federal civil rights law in its handling of Jewish and Israeli students, and it threatened the school with a potential “loss of all federal financial resources” as a result, according to the Wall Street Journal.In a Monday letter addressed to the Harvard president, Alan Garber, administration attorneys stated that the university was aware Jewish and Israeli students felt unsafe on campus but failed to take meaningful action. The letter, obtained by the Journal, accused Harvard of “deliberate indifference” toward those concerns.Read the full storyTrump signs executive order on lifting some Syria sanctions Donald Trump has signed an executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria in a move that the White House says will help stabilise the country after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.Read the full storyUS dollar has worst first half in more than 50 years amid Trump tariffsThe US dollar has had its worst first half-year in more than 50 years, as the financial markets over the last six months were dominated by geopolitical crises and Donald Trump’s trade war.The dollar has fallen by 10.8% against a basket of currencies since the start of 2025. That is its worst performance over the first six months of any year since 1973, and the worst half-year since the second half of 1991.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      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 Trump administration is on track to oversee one of the deadliest years for immigrants in detention after the recent deaths of two men – one from Cuba and another from Canada – while in federal custody.

      The US supreme court agreed on Monday to hear a case that could further erode restrictions on money in politics, in a challenge that comes in part from vice-president JD Vance.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened 29 June. More

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      Two more Ice deaths put US on track for one of deadliest years in immigration detention

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      The Trump administration is on track to oversee one of the deadliest years for immigrant detention as of late after the recent deaths of two men – one from Cuba and another from Canada – while in federal custody.A 75-year-old Cuban man died last week while being held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), CBS News reported, citing a notification sent to Congress. This would mark the 13th death in its facilities during the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October.At least two of those have been classified as suicides.In comparison, Ice reported 12 deaths in the fiscal year 2024.Advocates and immigration attorneys say deteriorating conditions inside an already strained detention system are contributing to the rise in deaths, which has unfolded as the administration aggressively ramps up efforts to deport millions of migrants.Under the past three administrations, the worst year saw 12 deaths in Ice custody. If the current pace continues, the total for 2025 could double those numbers.Critics say the system is collapsing under the pressure of Ice’s target of detaining about 3,000 people each day. As of mid-June, more than 56,000 migrants were being held – that is 140% of the agency’s stated capacity.“These are the worst conditions I have seen in my 20-year career,” Paul Chavez, litigation and advocacy director at Americans for Immigrant Justice, told the New York Times. “Conditions were never great, but this is horrendous.”Among the recent fatalities are 49-year-old Johnny Noviello, a Canadian who was found unresponsive on 23 June at a detention facility in Miami. Another is Jesus Molina-Veya, 45, who died on 7 June while in Ice custody in Atlanta.Molina-Veya, from Mexico, was found unconscious with a ligature around his neck, according to officials. His death remains under investigation.In response to Noviello’s death, the Canadian government has pressed US authorities for more information.“The government of Canada was notified of the death of a Canadian citizen while in custody in the United States. Canadian consular officials are urgently seeking more information from US officials. I offer my sincere condolences to the family,” Anita Anand, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, wrote on X.Despite the high death toll, immigration enforcement remains a top funding priority for the Trump administration. Border and immigration enforcement have been making up two-thirds of federal law enforcement spending.Under Trump’s proposed “big, beautiful bill”, the US would commit $350bn to national security, including for the president’s mass deportation agenda. More

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

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

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

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

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      US sees spate of arrests of civilians impersonating Ice officers

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      Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.The man, Fernando Diaz, was arrested by Huntington Park police after officers said they found a loaded gun and official-looking documents with Department of Homeland Security headings in his SUV, according to NBC Los Angeles. Officers were impounding his vehicle for parking in a handicapped zone when Diaz asked to retrieve items inside, the police said. Among the items seen by officers in the car were “multiple copies of passports not registered under the individual’s name”, NBC reports.Diaz was arrested for possession of the allegedly unregistered firearm and released on bail.The Huntington Park police chief and mayor accused Diaz of impersonating an immigration agent at a news conference, a move Diaz later told the NBC News affiliate he was surprised by.Diaz also denied to the outlet that he had posed as an officer with border patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). At the news conference, police showed reporters paper they found inside his car with an official-looking US Customs and Border Protection header.The arrest is one of several cases involving people allegedly impersonating immigration officials, as the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants intensifies.Experts have warned that federal agents’ increased practice of masking while carrying out immigration raids and arrests makes it easier for imposters to pose as federal officers.Around the country, the sight of Ice officers emerging from unmarked cars in plainclothes to make arrests has become increasingly common.In March, for instance, a Tufts University student was seen on video being arrested by masked Ice officials outside her apartment, after her visa had been revoked for writing an opinion article in her university newspaper advocating for Palestinian rights. And many federal agents operating in the Los Angeles region in recent weeks have been masked.In late January, a week after Trump took office, a man in South Carolina was arrested and charged with kidnapping and impersonating an officer, after allegedly presenting himself as an Ice officer and detaining a group of Latino men.In February, two people impersonating Ice officers attempted to enter a Temple University residence hall. CNN reported that Philadelphia police later arrested one of them, a 22-year-old student, who was charged with impersonating an officer.In North Carolina the same week, another man, Carl Thomas Bennett, was arrested after allegedly impersonating an Ice officer and sexually assaulting a woman. Bennett reportedly threatened to deport the woman if she did not comply.In April, a man in Indiantown, Florida, was arrested for impersonating an Ice officer and targeting immigrants. Two men reported to the police that the man had performed a fake traffic stop, and then asked for their documents and immigration status.Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Guardian last week that the shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, by a suspect who allegedly impersonated a police officer, highlights the danger of police not looking like police.“Federal agents wearing masks and casual clothing significantly increases this risk of any citizen dressing up in a way that fools the public into believing they are law enforcement so they can engage in illegal activity. It is a public safety threat, and it’s also a threat to the agents and officers themselves, because people will not immediately be able to distinguish between who is engaged in legitimate activity or illegitimate activity when violence is occurring in public,” he said. More