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      While our eyes are on the welfare state’s destruction, Trump is building a police state | Judith Levine

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      Last week, the federal human resources department sent out a seven-page memo ordering agencies to submit detailed plans on how they will work with the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to slash their payrolls. To do this, they were to eliminate whole job categories – except one. Untouchable were positions “necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities”.While we’ve had our eyes on the wrecking ball–Doge pulverizing social services, environmental protection and scientific research, we’ve hardly taken notice of what is being constructed. In the footprint of the already shabby, now half-demolished US welfare state, the Trump administration is building a police state.In spite of Doge’s cuts to the FBI, the agency’s director, Kash Patel, is gearing up to turn the agency – whose job has always been to spy on US citizens, including enemies of the state as identified by the government in power – into Donald Trump’s personal secret police. At the state level, lawmakers are compiling their own enemies lists and filing bills to reward those who snitch on abortion seekers, transgender people, undocumented immigrants and school librarians suspected of harboring the wrong books.The Republican House budget includes $300bn in new funding for defense and border control. Among the Senate budget committee’s announced priorities are finishing the border wall, increasing the number of immigrant detention “beds”, hiring more border patrol agents, and investing in state and local law enforcement to assist in “immigration enforcement and removal efforts”. While no figures are provided in the attached budget, the Senate budget committee assures Americans that any new spending will be offset by reductions.Some of those reductions involve firing immigration judges and cutting federal supports to local police. Clearly, the right hand doesn’t know what the other right hand is doing. Still, cuts are not always cuts. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has instructed senior staff to shave 8% off the department’s $850bn annual expenditures. Programs addressing the climate crisis and “excessive bureaucracy” are high on the list, of course. But, as the Intercept points out, savings will be repurposed for the president’s pet projects. For instance: the Iron Dome, an enormously complex, costly – and, critics say, unfeasible, unnecessary and even futile – space-based missile-defense and “warfighting” system that has been a fantasy of tech-drunk Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan. In keeping with Trumpian décor and his “golden age of America”, the Iron Dome has recently been rechristened the Golden Dome.The Golden Dome might also be a symbol of what a state devoted to protecting itself from enemies real and imagined offers corporate America. Because as the civil service shrinks, private industry – particularly the overlapping defense and tech sectors – will fill in the blanks. Project 2025, which is essentially being cut and pasted into Trump’s executive orders, calls on the administration to “strengthen the defense industrial base”, stockpile ammunition and “modernize” the nukes, while streamlining procurement from private contractors and involving them in decisions about what to produce. With Tesla and SpaceX contracts worth $38bn and of course, control of Doge, Elon Musk is already at the table. SpaceX practically owns Nasa’s rocket launch and space travel programs, freaking out engineers familiar with its bargain-basement manufacturing practices – and failures. Next up: artificial intelligence to replace human expertise.Trump’s war on immigrants also promises a windfall. During his first term, and Joe Biden’s as well, the creation and operation of a “smart” border wall – comprising mobile towers, autonomous drones, thermal imaging, biometric data collection and artificial intelligence – funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to Silicon Valley and Wall Street. A 2022 report by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights on border militarization and corporate outsourcing called border security a “for-profit industry”, which perpetuates itself by lobbying for ever more draconian crackdowns on migrants.Those profits are about to explode. “The border security market is projected to reach $34.4 billion by 2029, from $26.8 billion in 2024,” with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics the biggest beneficiaries, according to the market research firm MarketsandMarkets.Private prison companies – the two largest contractors are GEO Group and CoreCivic – anticipate unprecedented revenues too. Implementation of the Laken Riley Act, which mandates locking up undocumented people charged not just with violent crimes but with offenses as trivial as shoplifting, will require a huge buildout of detention facilities; Project 2025 recommends 100,000 available beds daily. Flying deportees to their home countries could generate $40m to $50m of business, according to GEO’s executive chairperson. “We believe the scale of the opportunity before our company is unlike any we’ve previously experienced,” crowed the chief executive officer, J David Donahue, on the company’s quarterly earnings call.The removal of millions of migrants will necessitate more than software, planes and prisons. It will need personnel. And wouldn’t you know it, an enterprising group of military contractors including the CEO of Blackwater has submitted a proposal to the Trump administration to deputize a mercenary border patrol of 10,000 private citizens. The plan also recommends payments to bounty hunters. Estimated cost: $25bn.These surveillance technologies and tactics are not targeted solely at foreign and extraterrestrial invaders, however. Government drones kept watch over the Black Lives Matter protests of 2017; at a protest against Israel’s war on Gaza at New York University, a student called my attention to a police drone circling above. In 2021 SpaceX signed a $1.8bn contract with the Pentagon’s National Reconnaissance Office for a network of low-orbiting spy satellites called Starshield. “A US government database of objects in orbit shows several SpaceX missions having deployed satellites that neither the company nor the government have ever acknowledged” but were identified by experts as Starshield prototypes, Reuters reported. It is unclear whether the network will be used for military or domestic spying, but its reach is vast. Said one Reuters source: “No one can hide.”The transformation of the US government is not just a matter of replacing an accountable civil service with self-interested private contractors. “It seems like they are using [Doge] to reshape the purpose of the government rather than execute it more efficiently,” Max Stier, president of the non-partisan Partnership for Public Service, told the Washington Post.That purpose, Trump tells us, is public safety from threats without and within. But a capitalist police state redefines public safety. Safety does not include housing or food security, disease prevention or disaster relief. The state protects companies, not workers, consumers or the environment. The “public” in “public safety” also attains new meaning: it embraces only native-born practitioners of the state religion, political loyalists and favored profiteers.As this inner circle shrinks, the outside expands. There are citizens and what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls “margizens”, those who live in a country but do not benefit from its rights or protections. Not only are the margizens denied safety; they are deemed dangerous. To keep the nation “proud and prosperous and free”, as Trump described his America, the state will need to humiliate, impoverish, pursue, imprison and punish almost everyone.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist and the author of five books. Her Substack is Poli Psy More

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      Two leaders of group suspected of smuggling 20,000 immigrants arrested in LA

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      Two alleged leaders of a criminal organization suspected of smuggling 20,000 people without permanent legal residency into the US from Guatemala have been arrested in Los Angeles, federal prosecutors said on Monday.Eduardo Domingo Renoj-Matul, known as “Turko”, and his lieutenant, Cristobal Mejia-Chaj, were taken into custody Friday and have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges related to smuggling migrants across the border over five years, the US attorney’s office said. A federal judge ordered the men, who themselves are in the country illegally, jailed without bond until their trial in April.The indictment names Renoj-Matul as the head of a vast human smuggling ring operating for at least a dozen years that primarily transports people to the US from Guatemala.The criminal network was responsible for the deaths of seven immigrants without legal status – including a four-year-old child – who were killed in a November 2023 vehicle crash in Oklahoma, prosecutors said.A driver who has been in custody in Oklahoma since that crash, Jose Paxtor-Oxlaj, was also charged in the California indictment, according to the court documents. Another man, Helmer Obispo-Hernandez, a lieutenant in the organization and a supervisor of a team of drivers, faces charges as well. He is believed to be in Guatemala, officials said.Attorneys for the four men could not be located on Monday for comment.Renoj-Matual was assisted by associates in Guatemala who solicited people who each paid between $15,000 and $18,000 to be smuggled to the US through Mexico, prosecutors said.For an additional fee, the migrants were transported and moved to various destinations in the United States, including Los Angeles and Phoenix. Some of the migrants who were not able to pay the fees were held hostage in a stash house near downtown Los Angeles, according to prosecutors.“These smuggling organizations have no regard for human life and their conduct kills,” acting US attorney Joseph T McNally said in a statement. “The indictment and arrests here have dismantled one of the country’s largest and most dangerous smuggling organizations.”If convicted of all charges, the defendants could face a statutory maximum sentence of death or life imprisonment. More

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      Midwestern cities fear fallout of Trump revoking Haitian residents’ status

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      Like so many midwestern manufacturing-centric communities, Lima, Ohio, has dealt with slow-motion decline for decades. Famed for producing oil in the late 1800s and the Abrams army tank, its population has been on the wane since the 1970s.But in recent years, the city has experienced a small turnaround.A Procter & Gamble chemical plant east of the city has recently undergone a $500m expansion, adding more than 100 new jobs. Part of the chemical giant’s expansion has seen it donate tens of thousands of dollars in college scholarships to local students and millions of dollars to local road projects.One 2024 real estate report suggested Lima was one of the hottest property markets in the country for young people.That’s despite states such as Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, once the heart of industrial America, finding themselves fighting a shrinking homegrown population.Immigrants from Haiti such as Amos Mercelin, who is one of several thousand people from the devastated Caribbean country now living in the Lima area, have stepped in to fill the labor shortage.“I worked first at a plastics factory, then I did 12-hour shifts at a Fedex [warehouse]. Now I work with a healthcare organization,” he says.“It was hard, but I knew these were just first steps.” Many Haitians, he says, work at food production plants scattered around the area, where cold temperatures and harsh physical conditions are a part of the job.But come August, when temporary protected status (TPS) for more than half a million Haitians is set to end following an announcement by the Department of Homeland Security on 20 February, that growth could be jeopardized. For Mercelin, thousands of other Haitians and the businesses that depend on them, that could be catastrophic.Cities such as Lima and Haitians such as Mercelin aren’t alone.In a part of the country hit hard in the aftermath of the Great Recession, about 1,000 Haitians are believed to live in the Findlay area, a city 30 miles north-east of Lima, where one automotive company reportedly relies on immigrants for half its workforce.Ninety miles to the south, in Springfield, about 15,000 Haitians have contributed to the city’s housing and financial revival. While the city’s property tax revenue was less than $800m in 2018, in 2023, it reached $1bn for the first time. Last year, it grew again, by 40%. While the property tax revenue increase has in part been fueled by rising property valuations, it also coincides with the growth in the number of tax-paying Haitians.The Trump administration’s move to end TPS has led to worry among city officials in Springfield.“They have strengthened our local economy by filling key roles in manufacturing and healthcare, even as their rapid arrival has strained public services and housing,” Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, a Republican, said in a statement.“I firmly believe in protecting our borders and reforming our immigration policies. Hasty changes and swift deportation will cause hardworking immigrants to be lost, negatively impacting our economy.”In Lima, where Haitians have been blamed by some for rising rents and housing shortages, some are expressing similar concerns.“I’m worried for our workforces if there should be a mass exodus [of Haitian immigrants] because some of our plants and factories need them,” says Carla Thompson, a city council representative.“People are making money from renting to them, providing services, employing them. All of that is going to go away and those were jobs that our plants and factories needed filled. If we go back to the same population that we had, how do those jobs get filled in the future?”Voicemails and emails sent to several businesses in Lima, Springfield and Dayton – areas with broadly high levels of support for Donald Trump – known to employ Haitian immigrants were not responded to or comment was declined on whether they would be affected by the end of TPS for Haitians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA representative of a Springfield-based company that employed Haitian workers and whose owner faced death threats last fall at the height of the Trump-induced anti-immigrant controversy said its leadership had stopped taking media requests.For Thompson in Lima, it’s not only businesses that could lose out if Haitians are forced to leave the country in August.“I know the landlords have been loving it because I haven’t heard any complaints about [Haitians] not paying rent,” she says.While larger midwestern cities such as Columbus, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh have mostly weathered the long-term regional population decline and the 2008 Great Recession that followed, smaller cities such as Lima, Springfield and Dayton have struggled.Residents say that’s why the influx of immigrant communities in recent years seeking a low cost of living and plentiful job opportunities have played such an important economic role.Thompson says she got word from the mayor of Findlay that crime in areas that Haitians had moved to had fallen. But she believes there is a racist undertone to the plan to end the TPS program for Haitians, which the Department for Homeland Security claims “has been exploited and abused” for decades.“The backlash against this group has been ridiculous and there’s no way in my mind that it’s not connected to the fact that they are brown-skinned,” she says.“Racism has been an issue. Some people are probably excited that TPS is being stopped.”For Mercelin, who has been in Lima for a year, the prospect of the end of TPS is disastrous.“Some Haitians are talking about applying for asylum to help them stay here, but I can’t,” he says. “I have a daughter in Haiti and if I apply for asylum, it means I can’t go back there for something like seven years.“That’s something I just cannot do.” More

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      ‘They worship death’: Trump ‘border czar’ reveals extremist views in interview

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      Donald Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, and far-right media personality Tucker Carlson talked about a bizarre range of extremist and racist conspiracy theories in an interview just weeks before Homan took office and was trusted with implementing a wide-ranging crackdown on migrants.The conversation included Carlson’s claim that Mexican cartels come “from cultures that have practiced human sacrifice for thousands of years”, connected the racist “great replacement” theory to Biden’s immigration policy, and advocated the arrest of elected US leaders who opposed Donald Trump’s policies on migrants.On immigration policy, Homan expressed a desire to get the Department of Defense to assist with “intelligence” and “targeting” domestically and took the view that Immigration and Border Enforcement (Ice) should arrest “a mayor or a governor” that “harbored” immigrants in sanctuary cities.Meanwhile, Homan faces questions over the network of associations he built up in his non-profit work during the interval between his appointment in the first Trump administration and his new White House role.While the interview has been fleetingly reported previously, the details of Homan’s conspiracy theory-laden conversation with Carlson have not.With Trump’s deportation efforts seeing Ice agents attempting to take enforcement actions in schools, colleges and workplaces around the US, Homan’s business dealings and extremist political views have come under scrutiny as the public face of the nationwide crackdown.UN ‘pulling’ Biden’s ‘strings’In the podcast interview, recorded for Carlson’s online show and published to X, YouTube and other platforms on 18 December, Homan painted Biden’s border policy as a “great replacement”-style effort to flood the country with potential Democratic voters, and both men characterized the previous administration’s immigration policy as the outcome of a conspiracy involving NGOs, religious charities and the UN.At one point, Homan accused the Biden administration of having deliberately worked to “unsecure the border”.Carlson asked: “What do you think the goal was?”Homan responded: “I think they see a future political benefit. I think they think these people will be future Democratic voters.“But we don’t even have to get there, Tucker,” added Homan, saying that Biden’s census rules allowed “all these illegal aliens to be counted in sanctuary cities, which is going to result in more seats in the house for the Dems”.While the idea that an elite was conspiring to orchestrate mass immigration for political gain at the ballot box was mostly confined to the white supremacist racist far right for decades, in recent years “great replacement”-style conspiracy theories such as this have increasingly been voiced by mainstream conservatives and Republicans.Later in their conversation, Homan and Carlson sought to extend the purported conspiracy theory well beyond the Biden administration. Carlson suggested a wide-ranging plot involving international bodies such as the UN and NGOs and Homan responded by calling for an investigation.Homan said: “I think under the Trump administration there needs to be an investigation.”He revealed that “I’ve had numerous conversations with Mark Green, who is the head of homeland oversight.” Green is a Tennessee Republican who chairs the House’s homeland security committee and is an ex-officio member of the oversight, investigations and accountability committee, which has oversight over the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.Homan said Green “plans on having some oversight hearings on this when it comes to the NGOs. I think they were complicit.”He then asserted without evidence that “certainly the United Nations were south of our border, working on this global illegal immigration to the United States”.Homan rounded out the conspiracy theory, saying: “This was by design. Do I think Joe Biden had the expertise to do it? No, I think someone’s pulling his strings.“This is something that needs to be investigated, people need to be held accountable,” he added.Cartels ‘have operational control of the south-west border’The two returned obsessively throughout their conversation to the issue of drug cartels, which they claimed had deprived the US of sovereignty over parts of perhaps five US states and the entire south-west border.Early in the conversation, Homan stated his basic position on the cartels: they should be “designated terrorist organizations and wiped off the face of the earth”.Later, Carlson asked Homan about what he said “informed people” had told him: “In parts of New Mexico, Arizona, California, even Florida, Texas, there is real control, in the way they control Mexico.”In those locations, purportedly, “they’re basically a state within a state, they have their own armored personnel carriers, tanks, you know”. He then asked Homan: “Do you think that’s real, do you think they have that kind of beachhead here?”“Absolutely,” Homan answered, continuing that “I’ve seen the intelligence reports, they have military-grade weapons. It’s not just my opinion, they have control, operational control of the south-west border.”‘They worship death’Later in the conversation, Homan and Carlson attributed the cartels’ motivations in part to their worship of “satanic” ideas or “death”, seeking to tie that to their “cultures” which “practice human sacrifice”.Carlson began by claiming to “know that in El Salvador when MS-13 ran the country, before Bukele, there was a religious component of voodoo witchcraft to MS-13 where they were worshipping the devil openly.”Nayib Bukele is the authoritarian, populist president of El Salvador, whose promotion of cryptocurrency and brutal crackdown on gangs in the country have won him fans on the “new right” in the US and beyond.Earlier this month, Marco Rubio met with Bukele in El Salvador, and the latter offered to hold deportees and US citizens alike in its vast network of prisons. That network includes the largest prison in the Americas, built to accommodate 40,000 people, which is around half the number Bukele has locked up since his war on the gangs commenced.Later in the podcast conversation, Carlson claimed that devil worship was a “component of the cartels, you see it in Mexico as well”, and asked Homan: “Have you come across that?”“Yeah,” Homan answered. “They worship death.”“Formally worship it?” Carlson shot back.“Yeah,” Homan answered. “I won’t call it religious, but even Texas [department of public safety] have found some of these places where the cartels are operating, they got statues there and memorabilia worshipping death as a consequence of not letting them do their business.”Homan may have been referring to Santa Muerte, a Mexican “folk saint” whose currency among cartel members has been an intermittent focus of US conservative media coverage of crime at the border, and enforcement actions in Mexico, where “the Mexican army, under orders from the Mexican state, has obliterated thousands of shrines dedicated to the folk saint across the country”.Researchers have found, however, that Santa Muerte devotion is not confined to criminals, and is also found “increasingly [among] police and others involved in law enforcement”.Carlson appeared to assert that there was a connection between cartels and the historical practice of human sacrifice in some pre-colonial Meso-American cultures, saying: “And these are from cultures that have practiced human sacrifice for thousands of years.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoman answered: “I got a video on my phone showing a member of the cartel skinning a man alive.”He added: “Skinning him alive on video to send a message that if you snitch on the cartels they’re not gonna just kill you, they’re gonna make you suffer immensely.”‘Why can’t I arrest a mayor or a governor?’Homan also asserted Ice’s right to arrest elected officials responsible for so-called “sanctuary cities”, which do not cooperate with Ice operations within their boundaries.He said: “I as an agent … have arrested United States citizens for knowingly harboring an illegal alien in their home.”He continued: “If I can arrest a US citizen for violating those crimes, why can’t I arrest a mayor or a governor who has given their staff explicit instructions to impede us and to hide from us?”Homan added: “We need to prosecute these people and send a message that this is unacceptable.”That is a message Homan has continued to assert since taking office. Last week, Homan warned that the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may “be in trouble” over a webinar about Ice that was hosted by her office.The congresswoman on Wednesday aired a “Know Your Rights With ICE” webinar on her Facebook page which advised attendees of “trends” of arrests by Ice in New York and explained what rights they have. Ocasio-Cortez did not attend it.But Homan told Fox News: “So maybe AOC’s gonna be in trouble now, but I need the [office of the attorney general] to opine on that … Impediment is impediment, in my opinion.”On Friday, Homan and the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, appeared in a joint interview on Fox News, where Adams endorsed a Trump executive order which would allow Ice agents to operate at the city’s Rikers Island jail.In the Fox and Friends studio, Homan said of Adams and his promises of cooperation: “If he doesn’t come through … I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, Where the hell is the agreement we came to?”Adams is at the center of a political firestorm after top justice department attorneys in New York and Washington DC resigned in the face of orders to drop their prosecution of the New York mayor over corruption allegations.Financial entanglementsLike every senior administration appointee to date, Homan is an unstinting supporter of Trump, and a full-throated 2020 election denialist. This, and his espousal of anti-immigrant rhetoric, have led to controversy but also to associations with far-right extremists, and sprawling business relationships that some say present conflicts of interest.Between his departure from the first Trump administration and his appointment as border czar, a White House role, Homan had stints as a Fox News contributor, was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and was credited as a contributor in “Mandate for Leadership”, the central document of Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint for the second Trump administration.Apart from these blue ribbon conservative appointments, Homan has involved himself in several interrelated non-profit organizations.The Border911 Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, was founded in 2023 in Virginia, Homan’s state of residence. At the same time, he also founded Border911 Inc, a 501(c)(4) organization. (501(c)(4)s differ from 501(c)(3)s in that donations to them are not tax-deductible, but they are permitted to engage in electoral advocacy.)Both the Border911 Foundation and Border911 Inc were spin-offs from the America Project (TAP), a Michael Flynn-founded election-denial non-profit that was reportedly funded to the tune of $27m by rightwing overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.Homan was reportedly TAP CEO for part of 2023. His appointment to that role occasioned a fundraising gala at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that year.From early 2024, Homan was out at TAP and focused on the Border911 Foundation and Border Inc, as well as a Trump-endorsed for-profit consultancy Homeland Strategic Consulting LLC, which, Homan boasted, secured “tens of millions of dollars of federal contracts” for his clients.Throughout the campaign season, the Border911 Foundation was a virtual speaker’s agency for a stable of rightwing anti-immigration activists, many of them former law enforcement officials who appeared at rallies organized by the non-profit or by political candidates, such as Arizona’s Kari Lake, throughout south-western border states.Previous reporting has highlighted seeming irregularities in tax filings by the non-profits. Coda reported that in 2023, “both of Homan’s Border911 organizations reported almost the same expenses – about $87,000 – but the 501(c)(4) claimed zero revenue”. Non-profit compliance experts expressed concerns to the outlet that “the tax-exempt charity money may have been passed through” the 501(c)(4).Steve Lentz, an attorney acting as a spokesperson for both Border911 organizations, told Coda that this was due to errors in the filings, “There was an entry in the [501](c)(4) [filing] that shouldn’t have been there,” he said, and said it would be amended.The Guardian’s review of the filings indicates that amendments were subsequently made.The Transparency non-profit Accountable.US, however, has raised concerns about what it says is a potential for conflicts of interest arising from the 501(c)(3) non-profit and its board in newly published research.Partly the worries arise from ambiguities in Homan’s public statements about his relationship with the foundation while he is in office.Accountable.US says that while Homan has said that he will take a “leave of absence” from Border911, he has also appeared to claim that the non-profit will continue to act as “data-mining site” that will provide “real up-to-date data on anything related to the border”, including “apprehensions”, “ICE arrests” and other information.And some of the foundation’s board members work for federal government contractors.Charles Sowell is chair of the Border911 Foundation’s board. He is also the founder and CEO of SE&M Solutions, a security and IT consulting firm that touts its “access to senior leaders in government” and “hopes to secure local and federal contracts using the best experts in the government consulting industry”.The Border911 Foundation’s director, Mark Hall, meanwhile, is currently the US security lead and chief security officer for Dragados USA, a construction contracting firm, where he claims to lead security for “a $6bn international border crossing construction project” whose cost indicates that it is likely the Gordie Howe international bridge between the US and Canada, which is budgeted for that figure.While there is no evidence of wrongdoing from these board members, a mass deportation effort on the scale promised by Trump, Homan and other administration immigration hawks such as Stephen Miller could be a bonanza for US government contractors.Accountable.US fears the worst. Its executive director, Tony Clark, said in a statement: “Homan appears to be using division, fear and chaos in a way to pad his friends’ pockets. Why should anyone believe Homan won’t steer lucrative government contracts to members of his ‘non-profit’ board?” More

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      ACLU sues to block White House from sending 10 immigrants to Guantánamo

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      Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 undocumented immigrants detained in the US to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, their second legal challenge in less than a month over plans to hold up to 30,000 people there for deportation.The latest federal lawsuit so far applies only to 10 men facing transfer to the naval base in Cuba, and their attorneys said the administration will not notify them of who would be transferred or when. As with a lawsuit the same attorneys filed earlier this month for access to people already detained there, the latest case was filed in Washington and is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.At least 50 people are known to have been transferred already to Guantánamo Bay, and the civil rights attorneys believe the number now may be about 200. They have said it is the first time in US history that the government has detained non-citizens on civil immigration charges there. For decades, the naval base was primarily used to detain foreigners associated with the 11 September 2001 attacks.Trump has said Guantánamo Bay, also known as “Gitmo”, has space for up to 30,000 people and that he plans to send “the worst” or high-risk “criminal aliens” there. The administration has not released specific information on who is being transferred, so it is not clear which crimes they are accused of committing in the US and whether they have been convicted, or merely charged or arrested.“The purpose of this second Guantánamo lawsuit is to prevent more people from being illegally sent to this notorious prison, where the conditions have now been revealed to be inhumane,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney and lead counsel on the case. “The lawsuit is not claiming they cannot be detained in US facilities, but only that they cannot be sent to Guantánamo.”The 10 men are from nations including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Venezuela, and their attorneys say they are neither high-risk criminals nor gang members. In a 29 January executive order expanding operations at Guantánamo Bay, Trump said that one of his goals was to “dismantle criminal cartels”.Their attorneys described their latest lawsuit as an emergency filing to halt imminent transfers and challenge the Trump administration’s plans. They contend that the transfers violate the men’s right to due legal process, guaranteed by the fifth amendment to the US constitutionThe latest lawsuit also argues that federal immigration law bars the transfer of non-Cuban migrants from the US to Guantánamo Bay and that the US government has no authority to hold people outside its territory, and that the naval base remains part of Cuba legally. The transfers are also described as arbitrary.The men’s attorneys allege that many of the people who have been sent to Guantánamo Bay do not have serious criminal records or even any criminal history. Their first lawsuit, filed 12 February, said people sent to the naval base had “effectively disappeared into a black box” and could not contact attorneys or family. The US Department of Homeland Security, one of the agencies sued, said they could reach attorneys by phone.In another, separate federal lawsuit filed in New Mexico, a federal judge on 9 February blocked the transfer of three immigrants from Venezuela being held in that state to Guantánamo Bay. Their attorneys said they had been falsely accused of being gang members.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe migrant detention center at Guantánamo operates separately from the US military’s detention center and courtrooms for foreigners detained under George W Bush during what Bush called the post-9/11 “war on terror”. It once held nearly 800 people, but the number has dwindled to 15, including accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, who was assigned to Guantánamo when he was on active duty, has called it a “perfect place” to house undocumented immigrants, and Trump has described the naval base as “a tough place to get out of”.A United Nations investigator who visited the military detention center in 2023 said conditions had improved, but that military detainees still faced near constant surveillance, forced removal from their cells and unjust use of restraints, resulting in “ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law”. The US said it disagreed “in significant respects” with her report. More

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      Ice contractor plans for surveillance boom under Trump migrant crackdown

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      The Geo Group, the largest single private contractor to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said it was building out its surveillance business to be able to monitor hundreds of thousands or millions more immigrants than it already does.The Geo Group, a private prison corporation and parent company of BI Inc, has contracted with Ice for nearly 20 years to manage the agency’s electronic monitoring program. It currently tracks approximately 186,000 immigrants using devices such as ankle monitors, smart watches and a facial recognition app, according to public Ice data. Due to increasing demand from Donald Trump’s administration, which has promised mass deportations, company executives said that they expect that number to grow past its previous peak of 370,000 to 450,000 immigrants within the next year. The remarks were made during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday morning.“A little over two years ago, the ISAP contract utilization peaked at approximately 370,000,” George Zoley, the executive chair of the Geo Group, said on an earnings call on Thursday, referring to the agreement between Ice and Geo. “Returning to that utilization level would generate incremental revenues of $250m and even more if the contract exceeds the prior peak of utilization.”While the company is still ramping up its production of additional GPS units in anticipation of an expanded Ice contract, executives said they are able to monitor “several hundreds of thousands” of people and are trying to position themselves to be able to monitor millions of people. Zoley said that the Geo Group, and its competitor in running private prisons and detention centers, Core Civic, are in expedited discussions with Ice to expand current contracts for detention facilities as well as electronic monitoring.“It’s a fluid situation, but it’s picking up pace, if I may say,” he said. “We’ve gone from conceptual proposals … to substantive pricing and operational discussions. But the procurement process is moving at a speed that is unprecedented. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”The company’s vast electronic monitoring program was instituted as an alternative to detention in 2004 and has been entrusted to Geo group subsidiary BI Inc since then. Many of those forced to wear the ankle monitors, designed and produced by BI, have complained the devices can overheat, shock them or have been put on too tightly. The company has pitched its smart watch location tracker and smart phone app, called SmartLink, as a lower-level of surveillance than the monitor. Executives said on Thursday’s earnings call, however, that they expect a return to a reliance on the physical ankle monitors.“I think there is going to be a preference in the beginning for the ankle monitors which represents the high-security level of monitoring,” Zoley said.Though the company has yet to receive an indication from Ice on when the agency expects to reissue a new contract for the electronic monitoring program, called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, executives say they believe the agency is focused on expanding the number of people being tracked through the existing program. The Geo Group is investing $16m into building out its inventory of ankle monitors in order to “be in a position to scale up the federal government’s utilization of ISAP by several hundreds of thousands to upwards of several millions of participants as required”, according to Zoley.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCompany executives also said they believed that under the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with violent crimes or theft, those detained will be required to be monitored under the ISAP program “indefinitely” if there is not enough capacity in detention facilities. The executives signaled their intent to expand the company’s surveillance program so that it could monitor an estimated 7 to 8 million people on the non-detained docket who entered the US through non-authorized pathways and then are released into the US. They are also building up capabilities to monitor the estimated 9.5 to 10 million people in the US who are otherwise undocumented in anticipation of Ice’s requests.“Given the size of the population our view is in addition to increased detention capacity … the Laken Riley Act will require significant ramp-up of electronic monitoring services to ensure proper trafficking of persons on non-detained docket and their compliance of the requirements of their immigration court proceedings,” Zoley said. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, Trump’s first cabinet meeting and confusion over who leads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).Jimmy KimmelTrump announced another disquieting idea on Wednesday – to allow foreigners to purchase new “gold card” visas for $5m apiece – and Jimmy Kimmel was not happy about it. “What a good idea – I’ve always said our immigration system should run more like the customer rewards program at a casino in Atlantic City,” he joked on Wednesday evening.“Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting,” Kimmel continued. “This is basically what he does at Mar-a-Lago. He’s selling memberships to a country club, but this club is actually our country. The land of the free, and by free I mean $5m bucks.”Trump also said he would consider selling the visas to Russian oligarchs: “I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people, it’s possible.”“Let me tell you something: he may know oligarchs, but not as well as they know him,” Kimmel quipped.Kimmel also mocked Elon Musk, who tried to defend Doge’s slash-and-burn approach to civil servant layoffs as an organization that owned up to mistakes. During Trump’s first cabinet meeting, Musk conceded that Doge “accidentally” canceled USAid’s Ebola prevention program, but “restored it immediately”.“Oh, well, that’s fine then,” Kimmel joked. “He only canceled our Ebola prevention for a couple of days, calm down, everybody.“That’s not an excuse,” he added. “Just ask the doctor – ‘As soon as I realized I unplugged my mother’s life support to charge my iPhone, I immediately plugged it back in.’”Stephen ColbertOn Wednesday, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, “and everybody was there”, said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It was a who’s who of why them?”“As commander in chief, Trump made it immediately clear who is in charge: Elon Musk,” Colbert continued. Musk, who attended the meeting, introduced himself as “humble tech support” because “that is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing”.“Well, of course. I mean, we’ve all had that call with tech support,” Colbert mocked. “Hello? Yes, you’re computer’s frozen? Have you tried turning it off and then firing 4,000 people with an email.”Trump rambled on in nonsense fashion about Doge, somehow landing on the topic of circumcision. “That long, rambling response actually reminds me of circumcision, because somebody really should have cut that dickhead off,” Colbert quipped.While Musk is supposedly head of Doge, the White House continues to insist that he’s not in court filings and through its press secretary. Finally, on Tuesday, for reasons that remain unclear, the White House stated the agency is led by the career civil servant Amy Gleason. “Why Gleason? We don’t know for sure!” said Colbert.At the time of the announcement, Gleason was on vacation in Mexico. When reached by reporters, she declined to comment. “I am not surprised,” said Colbert. “It’s really hard to speak clearly when you’re under a bus.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic mocked Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, which he described as “green card privileges plus”.“Oh? Green card privileges plus? See, I was still getting America with ads,” Lydic joked. “Quick question: if I’m unhappy with America, can I cancel my subscription after seven days?”According to Trump, the gold card visas will be “a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money.“Did this guy just put a cover charge on America?” Lydic wondered. “It’s $5m to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring three hot girls with you.“I mean, I guess this beats the old way of becoming a citizen? Which was to marry Donald Trump,” she added.“Now you might be thinking, wait a second, if the US is just going to put citizenship up for sale, doesn’t that mean can any monster can buy one as long as they’re rich? Well, according to Trump, yes,” she continued, pointing to Trump’s comment that he knows Russian oligarchs who are “very good people”.“Seems like Trump watched Anora, and his takeaway from that movie was ‘we need to do more to help out that rich Russian teenager. He’s so good at sex!’” Lydic joked. More

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      Trump threatens fines and prison time for undocumented immigrants who don’t join registry

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      The Trump administration will require undocumented immigrants aged 14 and older to register with the federal government or face possible fines or prosecution.The US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that under the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order signed by Donald Trump last month undocumented immigrants must also provide their fingerprints, while parents must ensure children under 14 are registered. The department will provide “evidence” of their registration and those 18 and over must carry that document at all times.The announcement comes as the US president has sought to harshly crackdown on immigration and implement a mass deportation campaign. Since taking office, his administration has attempted to suspend a refugee resettlement program (a judge blocked the cancellation), moved to cut off legal aid for immigrant kids (although it later walked back that decision), sought to allow immigration raids in schools and churches (another judge blocked such efforts in some houses of worship) and has begun sending undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo.Under the program announced this week, undocumented immigrants 14 and older in the US for 30 days or more will be required to register and undergo fingerprinting. Parents and guardians must register children under 14, and once children reach that age they must reapply and be fingerprinted, DHS said on its website. Those who do not comply can face criminal penalties, including misdemeanor prosecution, and fines.According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the registry, undocumented immigrants will also be required to provide their home addresses and that failing to register could result in fines of up to $5,000 and six months in prison.The law has long been on the books, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said in an interview on Fox News, but she will start enforcing it as the Trump administration seeks to use “every single tool at [its] disposal” to implement the president’s promised immigration crackdown. By registering, undocumented immigrants can avoid criminal charges and the federal government will “help them” return to their home country, allowing them to eventually return to the US, she said.“If they don’t register, they are breaking the federal law, which has always been in place,” Noem said. “We’re just going to start enforcing it to make sure these aliens go back home and when they want to be an American they can go and visit us again.“We’re going to use this tool to make sure we’re following our law to provide people an opportunity to go home and come back and be a part of our country’s future in the right way,” she continued.According to the National Immigration Law Center, the Alien Registration Act of 1940 is the only time the federal government implemented a “comprehensive campaign to require all noncitizens to register”. The immigration advocacy group warned that the registry would be used to help find targets for deportation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Any attempt by the Trump administration to create a registration process for noncitizens previously unable to register would be used to identify and target people for detention and deportation,” the center said.Associated Press contributed to reporting More