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      Eswatini opposition attacks US deal as ‘human trafficking disguised as deportation’

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      Civil society and opposition groups in Eswatini have expressed outrage after the US deported five men to the country, with the largest opposition party calling it “human trafficking disguised as a deportation deal”.The men, from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Cuba, were flown to the small southern African country, an absolute monarchy, last week as the US stepped up deportations to “third countries” after the supreme court cleared them last month.Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, is landlocked by South Africa and Mozambique and has a population of about 1.2 million. It is Africa’s last absolute monarchy and has been ruled by King Mswati III since 1986.The government estimated the five men would be held for about 12 months, a spokesperson, Thabile Mdluli, said, adding: “It could be slightly less or slightly more.”She said Eswatini was ready to receive more deportees, depending on the availability of facilities and negotiations with the US, which has also deported eight people to South Sudan after holding them for weeks in a shipping container in Djibouti, and more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador.Officials have said the men, who were put in solitary confinement, were safely imprisoned in Eswatini. However, they have refused to disclose the terms of the deal, other than to say the US was footing the costs of keeping the men locked up and that they would work with international organisations to deport them to their home countries.View image in fullscreenMany civil society organisations and politicians were not convinced. “This action, carried out without public consultation, adequate preparation, or community engagement, raises urgent questions about legality, transparency, and the safety of both the deported individuals and the people of Eswatini, especially women and girls,” said a coalition of seven women’s groups.The organisations delivered a petition to the US embassy on Monday calling for the US to take back the deportees, for the deportees’ human rights to be respected, and for Eswatini not to become a “dumping ground for unresolved problems from elsewhere”.The groups’ leaders held a protest outside the US embassy on Friday, where they sang, danced and held up signs with messages including: “Whose taxpayers?”, “Eswatini is not a prison for US rejects” and “Take the five criminals back to the US!!”Eswatini’s largest opposition party, the People’s United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), said in a statement: “Pudemo vehemently condemns the treacherous and reckless decision by King Mswati III’s regime to allow the United States of America to dump its most dangerous criminals on Swazi soil.“This is not diplomacy but human trafficking disguised as a deportation deal. It is an insult to all Emaswati who value peace, security, and the sanctity of our homeland.”The coordinating assembly of NGOs, an umbrella group, said the situation was “deeply alarming” and condemned the “stigmatising and dehumanising language used by US officials”. It called for the Eswatini-US agreement to be made public and to be suspended pending “genuine public consultation and transparent national dialogue”.View image in fullscreenTricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, said in a post on X on 16 July that the men, who she said had been convicted of crimes including child rape, murder and burglary, were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back”.She added: “These depraved monsters have been terrorising American communities but … they are off of American soil.”Eswatini’s prime minister, Russell Dlamini, told local media on Friday that the government was confident it would safely manage the prisoners. “Eswatini is currently holding inmates who have committed more dangerous crimes than those attributed to the five deportees,” he said.A prison service spokesperson, Baphelele Kunene, said the country’s citizens should not be afraid. “We can confirm that the five inmates in question have been admitted to one of our high-security centres where they are responding very well to the new environment,” he said. “Even though they come from the US, there is no preferential treatment for them as they are guided by the same prison regulations, eat the same food as others and are also expected to exhibit the same and equal amount of respect for prison protocols.”The US state department’s most recent human rights report on Eswatini, in 2023, said there were “credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; [and] political prisoners or detainees”.Political parties are banned from taking part in elections, which the system’s advocates argue makes MPs more representative of their constituents. In September, Pudemo’s leader, Mlungisi Makhanya, was allegedly poisoned in South Africa. The party said it was an assassination attempt, which Eswatini’s government has denied.The Department of Homeland Security has been contacted for comment. More

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

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

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      Atlanta reporter detained by Ice ‘punished for his journalism’, rights groups say

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      Mario Guevara, a Salvadoran journalist imprisoned in a south Georgia immigration detention center after being arrested covering a “No Kings Day” protest in June, is being “punished for his journalism”, first amendment rights groups said.“The charges were dropped, yet he remains detained by Ice,” said José Zamora, the regional director for the Americas at the Committee to Protect Journalists, during a press conference on Tuesday morning at the Georgia capitol with Guevara’s attorneys and family. “Let’s be clear, Mario is being punished for his journalism. He is now the only journalist in prison in the US in direct retaliation for his reporting.”A police officer from the city of Doraville in north DeKalb county arrested Guevara on 14 June on misdemeanor charges of pedestrian in the roadway, failure to disperse and obstruction while Guevara was covering a protest in an immigrant-heavy neighborhood. Guevara is widely followed by a Spanish-speaking audience for his coverage of immigration raids in Georgia, and more than 1 million people were watching his livestream on Facebook when he was arrested.Guevara, a native of El Salvador, has been in the US for more than 20 years. While his petition for asylum was rejected in 2012, his deportation was administratively closed in an appeal, and he has both a work permit and a pending application for a green card, his attorney Giovanni Diaz said.Though charges from the protest were quickly dropped, the sheriff of nearby Gwinnett county laid a second set of unrelated misdemeanor traffic charges shortly after Guevara’s arrest. The Gwinnett county solicitor subsequently dropped those charges as well, but not before Gwinnett’s sheriff’s office seized his cell phone with a search warrant.Guevara’s cell phone has not been returned, and it is unclear where it is, what data has been transferred from it or whether that data has been shared with federal agencies, Diaz said.“Everybody’s saying we don’t see a warrant in the system,” Diaz said, describing his office’s inquiries with the sheriff and other agencies. “So, one of two things happened. Some other agency that hasn’t contacted us took it – US attorney’s [office], Ice, somebody else has it – or the phone was just plain stolen.“I think it’s par for the course, considering the government’s conduct in this case. We’re doing this, at least initially, to see if we get the phone back, but again, if they don’t give the phone back, its another reason to file a lawsuit in federal court.”Guevara’s family was forced to make an extortion payment after another inmate threatened him while he was briefly held in general population in the federal prison in Atlanta. Guevara is now being held in isolation, which may help protect him, but also limits his ability to report on conditions at the Folkston immigration center, set to become the largest Ice detention center in the US.“With every day that passes, we are losing time that we will never get back,” said his daughter Katherine Guevara. “I know so many others in the same situation understand it all too well. I’m deeply disappointed with this country. This is not just about one journalist. This is about what kind of country we want to be. If a government can punish a reporter for doing his job, what message does this send? What protections are left for the rest of us?” More

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      Pentagon withdraws all 700 marines from Los Angeles – live updates

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      The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the entire deployment of 700 active-duty US marines is being withdrawn from Los Angeles.The redeployment of the marines comes after 2,000 National Guard troops were withdrawn from the city last week. The troops were sent to the city last month by the federal government after violence broke out on the fringes on protests against immigration enforcement sweeps in LA.According to Parnell, the deployment of the marines, which state and city officials called unnecessary and provocative at a time when protests against immigration raids were already under control, had achieved it aim.“With stability returning to Los Angeles, the Secretary has directed the redeployment of the 700 Marines whose presence sent a clear message: lawlessness will not be tolerated”, Parnell said in a written statement. “Their rapid response, unwavering discipline, and unmistakable presence were instrumental in restoring order and upholding the rule of law. We’re deeply grateful for their service, and for the strength and professionalism they brought to this mission.”Citing concerns over possible violations of bribery laws, senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden wrote on Monday to David Ellison, whose company Skydance is about to buy CBS owner Paramount, to ask if he struck a “secret side deal” with Donald Trump in exchange for federal approval of the purchase, or played any part in the decision to cancel Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s late-night CBS show.In their letter, the senators asked Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison is the co-founder of Oracle and a friend of Trump, to reply to 7 detailed questions, probing whether he was involved in any “quid-pro-quo arrangement” that could violate the law.The questions about a possible secret side deal were prompted, in part, by Trump’s own claims, after he accepted $16 million from Paramount to drop his lawsuit over the routine editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year, that the deal was worth twice as much.There have been recent reports that Ellison has been considering a possible role for the conservative journalist Bari Weiss in remaking CBS News.Among the questions Ellison is asked to reply to by 4 August are:

      “Is there currently any arrangement under which you or Skydance will provide compensation, advertising, or promotional activities that in any way assist President Trump, his family, his presidential library, or other Administration officials?” the senators ask Ellison in the letter.

      “Have you personally discussed with President Trump, any of his family members, any Trump Administration officials, or presidential library fund personnel any matters related to the Paramount-Skydance transaction?”

      “Has Skydance agreed or have you personally agreed to make changes to Skydance’s content or Paramount’s or CBS’s content at the request of the Trump Administration, to facilitate approval of the transaction?”
      The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the entire deployment of 700 active-duty US marines is being withdrawn from Los Angeles.The redeployment of the marines comes after 2,000 National Guard troops were withdrawn from the city last week. The troops were sent to the city last month by the federal government after violence broke out on the fringes on protests against immigration enforcement sweeps in LA.According to Parnell, the deployment of the marines, which state and city officials called unnecessary and provocative at a time when protests against immigration raids were already under control, had achieved it aim.“With stability returning to Los Angeles, the Secretary has directed the redeployment of the 700 Marines whose presence sent a clear message: lawlessness will not be tolerated”, Parnell said in a written statement. “Their rapid response, unwavering discipline, and unmistakable presence were instrumental in restoring order and upholding the rule of law. We’re deeply grateful for their service, and for the strength and professionalism they brought to this mission.”Democrats this afternoon are forcing another vote to push for the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, further placing pressure on Republican lawmakers, according to a report from Politico.The Democratic lawmakers are planning to offer Republican representative Thomas Massie’s bill as an amendment during a Rules Committee meeting Monday afternoon. Massie’s bill, a bipartisan effort, seeks to push for the release of Epstein-related documents.On Monday, Politico also reported that the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson does not have plans to put forward a Republican-led alternative Epstein bill before August’s recess break.The White House is removing the Wall Street Journal from the group of reporters covering Trump’s trip to Scotland, Politico reports.The Wall Street Journal’s removal from this upcoming weekend’s press pool follows the paper’s report that alleged Trump wrote a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. Trump has sued the paper and its owners for its report, demanding $10 billion.“Due to the Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Politico. “Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump, and the White House has taken significant steps to include as many voices as possible.”According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump wrote a “bawdy” note to Epstein for his 2003 birthday.The Trump administration has flouted court orders in just over one-third of the lawsuits filed against its policies, a Washington Post analysis found. The Post’s analysis says it suggests a “widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system” by the White House.A number of plaintiffs that have sued the Trump administration say that agencies and officials are ignoring rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence and quietly acting in defiance of court rulings.Since Trump took office, there has been a battle between the White House and the judiciary, during which officials have defied numerous court orders. Trump administration officials have repeatedly criticized federal judges as “activist judges.”According to the Post, despite judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents agreeing that the administration is flouting court orders, “none have taken punitive action to try to force compliance.”The Post analyzed 337 lawsuits filed against the Trump administration since January. Courts have ruled in 165 of the lawsuits. And the Post found that the Trump administration is accused of defying court orders in 57 of those cases.Two suspects are in custody for the alleged shooting and wounding of a customs officer in New York, officials said on Monday, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports.During a press conference on Monday, homeland security secretary Krsiti Noem and Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, also said the episode was a direct result of New York’s sanctuary city policies and the approach to border security under Joe Biden’s presidency.On Saturday night, an off-duty customs officer was shot and wounded during an apparent attempted robbery. The officer was not in uniform at the time and police said there was indication he was targeted because of his occupation.A suspect in the incident, Miguel Francisco Mora Nunez, was later taken into custody after turning up at a hospital in the Bronx with gunshot wounds to the leg and groin.During Monday’s press conference, Noem also focused on the profile of Nunez, who she said had been arrested four times since entering the US illegally in 2023. She also discussed the profile of his accomplice, Christhian Aybar-Berroa, saying he had “entered the country illegally in 2022 under the Biden Administration and was ordered for final removal in 2023 by an immigration judge.”“There’s absolutely zero reason that someone who has scum of the earth like this should be running loose on the streets of New York City,” Noem said, referring to Nunez. “Arrested four different times in New York City and because of the mayor’s policies and was released back to do harm to people and to individuals living in the city. Make no mistake, this officer is in the hospital today, fighting for his life because of the policies of the mayor of the city and the city council and the people that were in charge of keeping the public safe.”Homan said “sanctuary cities are cities for criminals.” He said the administration would “flood the zone” with immigration, customs and enforcement (Ice) officials to detain undocumented people in sanctuary cities.“What we’re going to do [is deploy] more agents in New York City to look for that bad guy so sanctuary cities get exactly what they don’t want – more agents in the community and more agents in the worksite,” he said.“I’m sick and tired of reading in the media every day how Ice is not doing what the Trump administration has promised, that we’re not arresting criminals, that most of the people we arrested are not criminals. I look at the numbers every day. The numbers I looked at [are] 130,000 arrests and 90,000 criminals. Do the math. That’s 70%.”Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has blamed the sanctuary city policies applied by Democratic mayors for the wounding of an off-duty Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer in an attempted robbery, allegedly carried out by undocumented immigrants, one of whom was reportedly subject to a deportation order, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports.The 42-year-old officer sustained gunshot wounds to his face and arm after being attacked in a Manhattan park shortly before midnight on Saturday night.He was shot after drawing his service weapon after being approached by two men on a scooter as he sat on a bench with a female companion. The officer was not in uniform at the time and police said there was indication he was targeted because of his occupation.At a news conference on Monday, Noem, flanked by Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, and several law enforcement officials, said the episode was a direct result of the sanctuary city policy adopted by New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, as well as the approach to border security adopted during Joe Biden’s presidency. Noem also criticized Adams during the conference.Noem’s criticism of Adams came despite widespread reports of a deal made between the mayor and the Trump administration that involved New York giving greater cooperation than before on immigration. The agreement was reached around the same time that the justice department moved to dismiss federal corruption charges against Adams, although the mayor has insisted there was no quid pro quo.Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles had also suffered crime waves, according to Noem, because their mayors and municipalities were “protecting criminals” by declaring them sanctuary cities, whereby local authorities give only limited cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies.President Donald Trump has appointed Mike Rigas, a Bush-era official from the General Services Administration (GSA), as acting administrator of the agency, Politico reports.The move is seen as a further step by the White House to curb Elon Musk’s influence in the GSA, which is one of the federal agencies that Musk’s initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) nearly fully controlled.Rigas previously worked under the Trump administration as Deputy Secretary of State for management and resources. The former acting administrator was selected by a Musk ally to lead DOGE. The Rigas appointment is seen as a strategic move by the White House to rein in DOGE leadership.Border czar Tom Homan said Monday that immigration officials will escalate operations in New York and other so-called sanctuary cities.“Sanctuary cities are now our priority,” Homan said. “We’re gonna flood the zone.”Homan’s comments follow an attempted robbery and shooting of an armed, off-duty customs officer in Manhattan this weekend. The New York City Police Commissioner said the officer was not likely targeted due to his employment.When two men approached the off-duty officer to rob him and a companion in a Manhattan park, the officer withdrew a gun and engaged in a shootout with one of the robbers. The robber was arrested after being taken to a hospital. The customs officer is recovering from gunshots.Trump administration officials have said that so-called sanctuary policies were to blame for the shooting. New York and other cities have policies that limit local government cooperation in federal immigration matters.President Donald Trump threatened to appeal a federal judge’s decision in Massachusetts amid the ongoing and escalating battle between his administration and Harvard University.In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the federal judge hearing the case is a “TOTAL DISASTER” and that when “she rules against us, we will IMMEDIATELY appeal, and WIN.”Massachusetts district judge Judge Allison Burroughs heard arguments from lawyers with Harvard and the federal government on Monday, in a case that may decide whether the Trump administration’s attempts to cut billions of dollars in university funding is legal. Burroughs has not yet ruled on Monday’s arguments.In his Truth Social post, Trump also said Harvard is “anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America.”The US Border Patrol chief patrol agent for the El Centro Sector in southern California posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) saying that federal immigration officials “are not leaving” Los Angeles until “the mission is accomplished.”“Better get used to us now because this is going to be normal very soon,” Gregory K. Bovino, the Border Patrol agent said in a video. “I don’t work for [Los Angeles mayor] Karen Bass, the federal government doesn’t work for Karen Bass.”Border Patrol and other immigration officials have been conducting operations in Los Angeles to arrest, detain and deport undocumented immigrants. The operations gained widespread backlash in early June. Protests, opposing immigration arrests, engulfed certain areas of the city.Texas’s Republican-led state legislature is pushing to redistrict the state in a way that would favor Republicans when electing House representatives, the Washington Post reports.During the state’s special legislative session, beginning today, Trump is pushing for lawmakers to redistrict the state to add up to five more House districts.National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an anti-gerrymandering group, threatened to file lawsuits to stop attempts to redistrict the state.The special session was called by Texas’s state governor Greg Abbott after devastating floods in central Texas.Four US senators met with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney amid the looming 1 August deadline to strike a new trade and security deal.The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is being renegotiated and has faced strain from the Trump administration regarding a few key points, including lumber, digital services taxes and metal tariffs.This is the second congressional delegation to visit the Canadian prime minister in the past three months, Politico reports.Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, from Washington, is pushing for the Trump administration to bolster the US government’s weather disaster readiness, after recent tragic floods, hurricanes and wildfires, and as the administration seeks to slash resources.This comes as the Trump administration is pushing to drastically reduce the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).The Trump administration is looking to cut the NOAA’s budget by 27%, a reduction of $2.2 billion.In a letter, Sen. Cantwell made five recommendations. They include modernizing weather data collection, funding more research and modernizing alert systems.“Communities across the United States are experiencing more frequent, intense, and costly flash floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, atmospheric rivers, landslides, heatwaves, and wildfires,” Cantwell wrote. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create the world’s best weather forecasting system that would provide Americans with much more detailed and customized alerts days instead of minutes ahead of a looming extreme weather event.” More

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      Migrants at Ice jail in Miami made to kneel to eat ‘like dogs’, report alleges

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      Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates “like dogs”, according to a report published on Monday into conditions at three overcrowded south Florida facilities.The incident at the downtown federal detention center is one of a succession of alleged abuses at Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) operated jails in the state since January, chronicled by advocacy groups Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South from interviews with detainees.Dozens of men had been packed into a holding cell for hours, the report said, and denied lunch until about 7pm. They remained shackled with the food on chairs in front of them.“We had to eat like animals,” one detainee named Pedro said.Degrading treatment by guards is commonplace in all three jails, the groups say. At the Krome North service processing center in west Miami, female detainees were made to use toilets in full view of men being held there, and were denied access to gender-appropriate care, showers, or adequate food.The jail was so far beyond capacity, some transferring detainees reported, that they were held for more than 24 hours in a bus in the parking lot. Men and women were confined together, and unshackled only when they needed to use the single toilet, which quickly became clogged.“The bus became disgusting. It was the type of toilet in which normally people only urinate but because we were on the bus for so long, and we were not permitted to leave it, others defecated in the toilet,” one man said.“Because of this, the whole bus smelled strongly of feces.”When the group was finally admitted into the facility, they said, many spent up to 12 days crammed into a frigid intake room they christened la hierela – the ice box – with no bedding or warm clothing, sleeping instead on the cold concrete floor.There was so little space at Krome, and so many detainees, the report says, that every available room was used to hold new arrivals.“By the time I left, almost all the visitation rooms were full. A few were so full men couldn’t even sit, all had to stand,” Andrea, a female detainee, said.At the third facility, the Broward transitional center in Pompano Beach, where a 44-year-old Haitian woman, Marie Ange Blaise, died in April, detainees said they were routinely denied adequate medical or psychological care.Some suffered delayed treatment for injuries and chronic conditions, and dismissive or hostile responses from staff, the report said.In one alleged incident in April at the downtown Miami jail, staff turned off a surveillance camera and a “disturbance control team” brutalized detainees who were protesting a lack of medical attention to one of their number who was coughing up blood. One detainee suffered a broken finger.All three facilities were severely overcrowded, the former detainees said, a contributory factor in Florida’s decision to quickly build the controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” jail in the Everglades intended to eventually hold up to 5,000 undocumented migrants awaiting deportation.Immigration detention numbers nationally were at an average of 56,400 per day in mid-June, with almost 72% having no criminal history, according to the report.The daily average during the whole of 2024 was 37,500, HRW said.The groups say that the documented abuses reflect inhumane conditions inside federal immigration facilities that have worsened significantly since Trump’s January inauguration and subsequent push to ramp up detentions and deportations.“The anti-immigrant escalation and enforcement tactics under the Trump administration are terrorizing communities and ripping families apart, which is especially cruel in the state of Florida, which thrives because of its immigrant communities,” said Katie Blankenship, immigration attorney and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South.“The rapid, chaotic, and cruel approach to arresting and locking people up is literally deadly and causing a human rights crisis that will plague this state and the entire country for years to come.”The Guardian has contacted Ice for comment. More

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      Ice chief says he will continue to allow agents to wear masks during arrest raids

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      The head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said on Sunday that he will continue allowing the controversial practice of his officers wearing masks over their faces during their arrest raids.As Donald Trump has ramped up his unprecedented effort to deport immigrants around the country, Ice officers have become notorious for wearing masks to approach and detain people, often with force. Legal advocates and attorneys general have argued that it poses accountability issues and contributes to a climate of fear.On Sunday, Todd Lyons, the agency’s acting director, was asked on CBS Face the Nation about imposters exploiting the practice by posing as immigration officers. “That’s one of our biggest concerns. And I’ve said it publicly before, I’m not a proponent of the masks,” Lyons said.“However, if that’s a tool that the men and women of Ice to keep themselves and their family safe, then I will allow it.”Lyons has previously defended the practice of mask-wearing, telling Fox News last week that “while I’m not a fan of the masks, I think we could do better, but we need to protect our agents and officers”, claiming concerns about doxxing (the public revealing of personal information such as home addresses), and declaring that assaults of immigration officers have increased by 830%.While data from January 2024 to June 2024 does show 10 reported assaults on Ice officers compared to 79 during the same period last year, those six months have also seen Ice agents descend in record numbers on streets, businesses, farms and public spaces, rounding up and detaining mostly Latino people as part of a massive Trump administration push to rid the US of as many as 1 million immigrants every year.Videos have flooded social media showing Ice agents wearing masks over their faces, detaining people without immediately identifying themselves, refusing to answer questions or explaining why people are being detained, and pushing them into unmarked cars with tinted windows.“I do kind of push back on the criticism that they don’t identify themselves,” Lyons said. “Men and women of Ice, and our DoJ partners, and local law enforcement partners who do help us are identified on their vest.” The only identification many agents wear is body armor marked with the word “police”, despite not being police officers.The interview was described as the first major network sit-down at Ice headquarters in Washington.Lyons also confirmed in the interview that Ice obtained and is using Medicaid data to track down immigrants believed to be in the US unlawfully, despite undocumented people not being eligible to receive Medicaid.White people comprise the largest share of Medicaid recipients, at 39.6%.A June report from the Pew Research Center found that 84.2% of Medicaid recipients are born in the US, 6.6% are naturalized citizens and 9.2% are foreign-born non-citizens authorized to be in the US.As well as the tens of thousands of arrests, there have been several reported cases of masked criminals posing as Ice officers, such as a man in Raleigh, North Carolina accused in January of kidnapping and raping a woman, threatening to deport her if she didn’t comply, or a man in Brooklyn attempting in February to rape a 51-year-old woman. In April 2025, a Florida woman posed as an immigration officer to briefly kidnap her ex-boyfriend’s wife from her job.Ice agents have also been reported to overstate assaults, such as in New York City mayor candidate Brad Lander’s arrest by immigration officers, where Lander was accused of assaulting officers despite charges being dropped later that day.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCritics say using a mask allows Ice agents to obscure accountability and avoid transparency for their actions.“The use of masks is one among a panoply of legal issues presented by the administration’s recent actions against immigrants and visitors (and some citizens) but a significant one that can – and should – be immediately addressed and remedied,” said the New York City Bar Association in a statement on the practice.A coalition of 21 state attorneys general, including New York’s Letitia James, wrote to Congress last week urging it pass legislation prohibiting “federal immigration agents from wearing masks that conceal their identity and require them to show their identification and agency-identifying insignia”. In California, state legislators last month proposed the No Vigilantes Act, which would require federal agents to provide identification, including their last name and badge or ID number.“We have a Los Angeles Police Department that has to deal with crime in this city every single day – and they’re not masked, and they stay here,” said the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, in a Sunday interview with ABC News.“I don’t think you have a right to have a mask and snatch people off the street.” More

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      Ice secretly deported Pennsylvania grandfather, 82, after he lost green card

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      An 82-year-old man in Pennsylvania was secretly deported to Guatemala after visiting an immigration office last month to replace his lost green card, according to his family, who have not heard from him since and were initially told he was dead.According to Morning Call, which first reported the story, long-time Allentown resident Luis Leon – who was granted political asylum in the US in 1987 after being tortured under the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – lost his wallet containing the physical card that confirmed his legal residency. So he and wife booked an appointment to get it replaced.When he arrived at the office on 20 June, however, he was handcuffed by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, who led him away from his wife without explanation, she said. She herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.The family said they made efforts to find any information on his whereabouts but learned nothing.Then, sometime after Leon was detained, a woman purporting to be an immigration lawyer called the family, claiming she could help – but did not disclose how she knew about the case, or where Leon was.On 9 July, according to Leon’s granddaughter, the same woman called them again, claiming Leon had died.A week later, however, they discovered from a relative in Chile that Leon was alive after all – but now in a hospital in Guatemala, a country to which he has no connection.According to Morning Call, the relative said Leon had first been sent to an immigration detention center in Minnesota before being deported to Guatemala – despite not appearing on any Ice detention deportation lists.A recent supreme court decision ruled the Trump administration could deport immigrants to other countries beside their country of origin.In his nearly 40 years living in the US, Leon spent his career working in a leather manufacturing plant, and raised a family. He had since retired.His condition at the hospital in Guatemala is unknown. He suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and a heart condition, according to his family, who said they are planning to fly to Guatemala to see him.An Ice official told the Morning Call it was investigating the matter. More