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      Ice is about to become the biggest police force in the US | Judith Levine

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      On Thursday, congressional Republicans passed Trump’s 1,000-page budget, and the president signed it on Saturday. The rich will get obscenely richer. The poor will be hungrier and sicker, work more precarious, and the planet unrelentingly hotter. The symmetry is elegant: cuts to healthcare and food programs average about $120bn each year over the next decade, while the tax cuts will save households earning more than $500,000 about $120bn a year.Trump got what he wanted. But enriching himself and his wealthy friends at the expense of everyone else has long been his life purpose. It was not until he became president, with the Heritage Foundation’s wonks, the deportation czar Stephen Miller, and six loyal supreme courtiers behind him, that he could reshape the US in his own amoral, racist, violence-intoxicated image. In fact, the latter goal may be dearer to him than the former.The night before the Senate vote, JD Vance summed up the administration’s priorities: “Everything else,” including the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit estimates and “the minutiae of the Medicaid policy”, he posted, “is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions”.The vice-president’s indifference to the lives of millions of Americans – particularly to the class of Americans from which this self-described “hillbilly” hails – enflamed the Democrats and the left. But his comment also woke everyone up to another major set of appropriations in the budget. As Leah Greenberg, co-chair of the progressive activist group Indivisible, put it on Twitter/X: “They are just coming right out and saying they want an exponential increase in $$$ so they can build their own personal Gestapo.”The press had been focused on the wealth gap the budget turns into the San Andreas fault. It had been dutifully mentioning increases in funding for the military – to an unprecedented $1.3tn – and “border security”.Set aside for a moment that phrase’s implication, that the US is being invaded – which it isn’t – and it is still not apt. The jurisdiction of the federal police force that this budget will finance promises to stretch far beyond immigration; its ambitions will outstrip even the deportation of every one of the nearly 48 million immigrants in the country, including the three-quarters of them who are citizens, green-card holders or have temporary visas.The colossal buildup of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will create the largest domestic police force in the US; its resources will be greater than those of every federal surveillance and carceral agency combined; it will employ more agents than the FBI. Ice will be bigger than the military of many countries. When it runs out of brown and Black people to deport, Ice – perhaps under another name – will be left with the authority and capability to surveil, seize and disappear anyone the administration considers undesirable. It is hard to imagine any president dismantling it.Ice will receive $45bn for immigrant detention, to be spent over four years – more than the Obama, Biden and first Trump administrations combined. The agency says it is planning on a total of 100,000 beds. But grants to the states loosely slated for “enforcement” total $16.5bn. If they use the money to build and lease more detention camps, the American Immigration Council estimates, capacity could reach 125,000, just under the population of the federal prisons.Dipping into a pot totaling $170bn, the Department of Homeland Security intends to hire 10,000 new Ice agents, bringing the total to 30,000, as well as 8,500 border patrol agents. For comparison, the FBI has about 23,700 employees, including 10,000 special agents.Like Ice’s budget, DHS’s is fat with redundancies: $12bn to DHS for border security and immigration; $12bn to Customs and Border Protection for hiring, vehicles and technology; $6.2bn for more technology. And then there’s over $45bn to complete the jewel in the king’s crown: Trump’s “beautiful” border wall. That’s on top of approximately $10bn spent during his first term for a project he promised would cost less than $12bn – and be bankrolled by Mexico.To balance the expenses of the hunt, the government will raise revenue from its prey. The cruelty written into the fees seems almost an afterthought. According to the New York Times’s breakdown, for a grant of temporary legal residence, for instance, a refugee pays $500 or $1,000, depending on whether they are fleeing armed conflict or humanitarian crisis. There’s a new $250 fee to apply for a visa for a child who’s been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent.Immigrants must fork over as much as $1,500 for status adjustments ordered by a judge. And if they are arrested after a judge’s removal order for missing a hearing, they will be charged $5,000. The budget does not specify whether you pay for a downward adjustment to your status or what it costs to be snatched when you do show up at court, which is now regular Ice procedure.Observed as from a Google satellite, the outlines of a wide-ranging, increasingly coherent police state come into focus. The boundaries between federal and local, military operations and civilian law enforcement are smudged. During the anti-Ice protests in Los Angeles, Trump federalized the national guard to put down an uprising that didn’t exist, and an appeals court let him. The marines, restricted by the Posse Comitatus Act from civilian law enforcement, detained a US citizen anyway. To circumvent the prohibition against deploying the military to enforce immigration law, the president declared an “invasion” at the southern border, and the Pentagon took more territory under its control. Last week it added 140 miles of land to the marine air station in Arizona and has announced plans for 250 miles more, in Texas, under the air force’s aegis. Heather Cox Richardson reports that national guard troops have been deployed by Governor Ron DeSantis to “Alligator Alcatraz”, the new immigrant lockup in the Florida Everglades. Two hundred marines have been sent to Florida to back up Ice, and Ice agents will be stationed at marine bases in California, Virginia and Hawaii. The military budget earmarks $1bn for “border security”.A budget is the numerical representation of its makers’ values. So the upward redistribution of wealth that this budget exacerbates and the police state it invests trillions of dollars in are of a piece. What connects them is not just the profit to be made building, leasing and managing the infrastructure. When people lack food, medicine and housing, when public spaces deteriorate and families have little hope of security, much less mobility, rage and crime rise. And when that happens, the police – whether Ice or the marines, local cops or private security officers – will be mobilized to put down dissent and protect the oligarchs’ property from a desperate populace.

      Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism 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

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      How US cities have long planned for a Trump-led escalation against protests

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      The White House’s escalating response to street protests echoes talk before Donald Trump’s inauguration of forcibly quelling resistance in urban America. Those plans are now the present.After the use of federalized national guard units and marines in response to protests in Los Angeles, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) plans to deploy Swat-style special response teams to Seattle, Philadelphia, northern Virginia, New York and Chicago – cities led by Democrats that have long been the target of Trump’s invective – before expected protests this weekend, according to reports by NBC and others.The militarization on the streets and in immigration raids dramatically marks the places the administration wants to punish dissent.Late last month, the Department of Homeland Security also posted a list of jurisdictions it said were noncompliant with federal law regarding immigration enforcement. These “sanctuary jurisdictions” included entire states like California and New York, and an expansive list of counties and municipalities ranging from the metropolis of Los Angeles to tiny Hooker county, Nebraska, with a population of about 700.The list appeared to closely match the Detainer Acceptance Tracker, an internal document of Ice that identifies “limited and non-cooperative institutions”. The tracker declares a jurisdiction out of “compliance” if its local jail wouldn’t continue to hold a prisoner set for release when Ice had issued a detention notice, or wouldn’t give Ice what it considers adequate warning when that prisoner had a release pending.The list perplexed and infuriated state and local officials. Cities like Athens in Georgia or Memphis in Tennessee face strong state prohibitions against the adoption of immigration sanctuary policies. After an outcry, DHS withdrew the list, but it telegraphed the administration’s targets for increased immigration enforcement.Days later, Ice began aggressive raids.Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, was asked last month why the administration wasn’t arresting the leaders of so-called sanctuary cities. Homan smirked. “Wait till you see what’s coming,” he replied.Cities have long been planning their responses to a Trump-led crackdown.Seattle’s government has pledged to resist cooperation with Ice and the city has a history of strident public protest. Its leadership has been unambiguous about where they stand.“At some point, I will probably go to jail and be in prison because we have an administration that has threatened to jail politicians … and has threatened to jail a governor,” newly appointed Seattle police chief Shon Barnes told the city council this week at his confirmation hearing. “I will do everything in my power to protect anyone in Seattle from anyone who comes to this city with the intention to hurt them or inhibit their first amendment rights.”Barnes’s prediction connects with a pair of executive orders Trump issued on 28 April calling on DHS to identify and defund sanctuary cities and increase immigration enforcement by driving military equipment into local police officers’ hands. One of the orders contains a provision that calls on the attorney general to “prioritize prosecution” of officials who “willfully and unlawfully direct the obstruction of criminal law” including by trying to stop law enforcement officers from carrying out these “duties”.View image in fullscreenPhiladelphia district attorney Larry Krasner, long a firebrand figure in city politics, carefully asked for peaceful protest, and pledged to uphold the rule of law as the city manages public demonstrations. But he described the use of federal troops as a provocation, and Trump as a wannabe dictator and criminal.“The notion that we’re actually going to talk to somebody like that in a way that is reasonable makes no sense because we all know what he’s actually up to,” he said at a press conference Thursday. “What he’s actually up to is setting up a military overthrow of the United States, and he’s doing it like every wannabe dictator and successful dictator has done in the past, which is that you have to scare the population and convince them that there’s a bonafide emergency when there isn’t.”The Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson called for “constitutional policing” as both upgunned Ice units and protesters descend on the city this weekend. In a press conference Wednesday, Johnson said he believes his city has been targeted by the administration and by conservatives for policies perceived to be supportive of illegal immigration, specifically noting how Texas governor Greg Abbott trafficked immigrants to the city as a political stunt.“I will say that it is clear that there is more intentionality around the Trump’s administration to attack Democratically-run cities,” Johnson said. “This president’s desire to not only militarize and criminalize, but his commitment to drive chaos, is something that I’ve said from the very beginning is not only reckless but it’s incomprehensible, quite frankly. So, we’re going to protect people’s right to assemble while also ensuring that Chicagoans can get through their day-to-day.”Just as city leaders have been anticipating a crackdown, Trump administration leaders have been expecting people to respond.In speeches made to private groups in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought – one of the main architects of Project 2025 and current chief of the office of management and budget – argued for the use of the Insurrection Act to use the military to put down protests he predicted would emerge from administration policies.“We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say: ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said.The Center for Renewing America, a Christian conservative thinktank founded by Vought, also argued in a policy brief in 2024 that the president has sweeping authority to use the military as a tool for immigration enforcement, and called on a future president Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.Trump campaigned on a pledge to use the military to assist in immigration enforcement.View image in fullscreen“I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further,” he told Time magazine. “We have to do whatever we have to do to stop the problem we have.”In that interview, Trump lambasted “Democratic-run cities” for failing to address “migrant crime”, arguing that the use of the military would be justified in these places. “I’ve used the National Guard in Minneapolis. And if I didn’t use it, I don’t think you’d have Minneapolis standing right now, because it was really bad,” he said. “But I think in terms of the National Guard. But if I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military, per se.”The Posse Comitatus Act has been widely understood to prohibit troops from engaging in domestic law enforcement functions targeting civilians without the invocation of the Insurrection Act. But Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants should be considered “invaders” and not civilians for purposes of that law.The US district court judge Charles R Breyer rebuked the Trump administration late Thursday for its activation of national guard units in California, and for its broader argument that decisions made by the president about how to use the military lay beyond judicial review. The 36-page order required Trump to return control of the units to the state governor, Gavin Newsom, by noon Friday.An appellate panel of the ninth circuit court put Breyer’s ruling on hold late Thursday evening, leaving Trump’s use of the military in cities in a state of legal limbo for now. But Breyer’s ruling notes that Trump’s assertion that protests constitute a threat of rebellion does not justify national guard activation, and declares that failing to work with the governor violates the law.Contrast this with how conservative states with large progressive cities are approaching protests this weekend. The Texas governor Greg Abbott has already activated national guard units, with 5,000 troops being sent to manage “No Kings Day” protests across the state.In Georgia, a protest Wednesday on Buford Highway in Brookhaven – the heart of metro Atlanta’s immigrant community – ended in teargas and six arrests, with charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assaulting a peace officer.“In Georgia, if you engage in violence for the purpose of changing public policy, you can be charged with Domestic Terrorism,” wrote the Georgia attorney general, Chris Carr, on Thursday. “So, for those trying to make their weekend plans, the bottom line is this – we will defend the right to peacefully protest, and we will not hesitate to bring Domestic Terrorism charges for those who earn it. We are not California or New York. We are Georgia. We don’t make excuses for criminals here. We prosecute them.”Progressive leaders of American cities on the edge right now are matching the tone of this rhetoric.“What we have seen in Los Angeles is really not about immigration,” Johnson said in Chicago. “This is not about policy. This is about power. We have a tyrant in the White House who has a complete disregard for our constitution and the dismissing of our democracy.” More

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      Detainees at New Jersey immigration center revolt as chaos unravels

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      Unrest and protests have erupted in and around a controversial immigration detention center in New Jersey, with police and federal officials clashing with protesters after detainees reportedly pushed down a wall in revolt at the conditions they are being held in.About 50 detainees pushed down a wall in the dormitory room of the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, on Thursday night, according to an immigration lawyer representing one of the men held there.“It’s about the food, and some of the detainees were getting aggressive and it turned violent,” the lawyer, Mustafa Cetin, told NJ Advance Media. “Based on what he told me it was an outer wall, not very strong, and they were able to push it down.”Following the uprising, a crowd of protesters gathered at the facility and videos posted on social media show them blocking vehicles being driven by law enforcement officials and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents who sought to quell the disturbance.Amid the chaos, there were reports that four inmates were unaccounted for on Friday morning. A group called NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice said that there were “reports of gas, pepper spray, and a possible fire” inside the center.On Friday afternoon, the US Department of Homeland Security said that authorities are looking for four detainees who escaped from the federal detention center and additional resources were bring brought in to look for them, the Associated Press reported.Delaney Hall is run by a private prison company called GEO Group, which holds a $60m contract with the Trump administration to hold as many as 1,000 people at a time within the facility and has a controversial history over conditions at centers.The center reopened following a refurbishment last month but has faced controversy, with local politicians claiming that it doesn’t hold the correct work permits and certificate of occupancy, posing safety risks. GEO Group has denied this.Shortly after its reopening, LaMonica McIver, a Democratic representative, was arrested after joining an oversight visit of the center. On Wednesday, McIver was indicted and charged with assaulting and interfering with immigration officers, charges which she has called “a brazen attempt at political intimidation”.Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was also arrested at the site in that incident, for trespassing, but those charges have been dropped.“We are concerned about reports of what has transpired at Delaney Hall this evening, ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees,” Baraka said in a statement about the latest unrest at the center.He added: “This entire situation lacks sufficient oversight of every basic detail, including local zoning laws and fundamental constitutional rights.”Ice has yet to comment on the situation at Delaney Hall. The clashes follow protests in several US cities over the detention of migrants and others by the Trump administration, most notably in Los Angeles, where Trump has deployed the military, a extremely rare and controversial move that is being challenged in court by the state of California. More

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      Has Trump turned the US into a police state? – podcast

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      The Guardian view on Trump and deportation protests: the king of confected emergencies | Editorial

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      Donald Trump will celebrate his birthday with a North Korean-style military parade costing tens of millions of dollars this weekend. He has gratefully accepted the early gift of the demonstrations, which have spread across the country, with more scheduled for Saturday. The president’s immigration crackdown spurred overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Los Angeles. Ordering in troops, over the governor’s head, then inflamed the situation and allowed the agent of chaos to portray himself as its nemesis once more.Mr Trump has diverted attention from his rift with Elon Musk, the stalling of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill, the court-ordered return of the wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego García and the impending impact of tariffs. But underlying the manufactured crisis is a deeper agenda: reigniting fear of undocumented migrants, delegitimising protest, and thus expanding his power. Migrant families, and those who have taken to the streets to support them, are portrayed as “animals” and the perpetrators of “invasion and third-world lawlessness” – requiring Mr Trump to amass more might to protect America.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, rightly described this as an assault on democracy. As he noted, “authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.” Due process has been discarded. American citizens are among those being swept up in raids. Mr Trump has said that Mr Newsom himself should be arrested. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, calls the protesters “insurrectionists” – though his boss, of course, pardoned the actual insurrectionists of the January 6 Capitol attack.Mr Trump’s tactics are familiar in both the broad and narrow sense. In his book On Tyranny, published in 2017, the historian Timothy Snyder urged readers to listen for “dangerous words” such as “emergency” and reminded them that “the sudden disaster” requiring the suspension of freedoms “is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book”.Mr Trump drew a bleak portrait of American carnage in his inaugural speech and described himself as “the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy”. Since his re-election he has declared emergencies to push through tariffs, loosen energy regulations and ramp up deportations. His methods are transparent – and sometimes blocked by courts – yet still effective. For his supporters, each rock thrown, each billow of smoke, is fresh evidence of the menacing “other” encroaching upon their home.Yet if his methods are familiar, they are also going further. He has moved from xenophobia to echoing fascist tropes of migrants “poisoning the blood” and portrays an enemy within,suggesting that Mr Newsom and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, are trying to aid “criminal invaders”. In his first term, Mr Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act (and, reportedly, said that troops should “just shoot” Black Lives Matter protesters). Gen Mark Milley and others are no longer present to hold him back. Alarmingly, he warns that any protests at his parade will face “very heavy force”.All those who stand against Mr Trump’s weaponised bigotry and hunger for untrammelled power must make it clear that they are defending the law and not defying it. Responsibly challenging the abuse and entrenchment of power is not only the right of citizens, but a duty. More

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      Los Angeles protests: a visual guide to what happened on the streets

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      After a series of immigration raids across the city of Los Angeles on Friday inspired mostly peaceful protests involving a few hundred people, the situation escalated on Saturday when the US president, Donald Trump, took the unprecedented step of mobilizing the national guard – the country’s military reserve units – claiming the demonstrations amounted to “rebellion” against the authority of the US government. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, called the decision “purposefully inflammatory”. Here’s a look at what actually happened on the streets.Most of the events took place in downtown Los Angeles, in a fairly localized area. The vast majority of the gigantic metropolis was not affected.Friday 6 June, morning. Federal immigration officers raid multiple locations across Los Angeles, including a Home Depot in Westlake; centers where day laborers gather looking for work; and the Ambiance clothing store in the fashion district. The Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights (Chirla) says there are raids at seven sites.Friday 6 June, afternoon. David Huerta, the president of California’s biggest union, is arrested while apparently doing little more than standing and observing one of the immigration raids. Footage shows the 58-year-old head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) being knocked down by a masked agent. He was taken to a hospital, then transferred to the Metropolitan detention center in downtown LA. “What happened to me is not about me; this is about something much bigger,” he says in a statement from the hospital. “This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening.” In a statement the US attorney Bill Essayli claims Huerta “deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle” and says he was arrested on suspicion of interfering with federal officers.Friday 6 June, afternoon. Demonstrators gather outside the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where Huerta and others are being held. There is a tense but largely non-violent standoff with police.7pm: The LAPD declares unlawful assembly in the area and deploys teargas to break up the crowd.8.20pm: The police force declares a city-wide tactical alert.Saturday 7 June, morning. As border patrol agents are seen gathering opposite another Home Depot location, this time in the largely Latino, working-class neighborhood of Paramount, news spreads on social media of another raid. A couple of hundred protesters gather outside the Paramount Business Center. Sheriff’s deputies block off a perimeter near the 710 Freeway and Hunsaker Ave.12pm. Border patrol vehicles leave the center, with officers firing teargas and flash grenades at protesters. Some follow the convoy of federal vehicles up Alondra Blvd, throwing rocks and other objects; a few others set up a roadblock near the Home Depot.Saturday 7 June, 4pm. The area near the Home Depot confrontation is declared an unlawful assembly and protesters are warned to leave. Approximately 100 people gather further west in the neighborhood of Compton, at the intersection of Atlantic Ave and Alondra Blvd, where three fires are set, including a vehicle in the middle of intersection. Rocks are thrown at LA county sheriff’s deputies, and officers retreat to the bottom of bridge to the east.7pm. The Trump administration announces it will deploy the national guard, claiming the limited protests were a “rebellion” against the US government. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, immediately denounces the move, the first time a US president has mobilized US military forces in a domestic political situation without the request of the state’s governor since 1965.The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, also announces that 500 marines at Camp Pendleton in California have been placed on high alert.Saturday 7 June, evening. Federal agents emerge in a phalanx from inside the Metropolitan detention center to confront approximately 100 protesters, firing teargas and “less lethal” weapons at them.9.30pm. Officers and vehicles force the crowd on Alondra Blvd back west, and by midnight most protesters have dispersed.Sunday 8 June, morning. After curfews are declared across LA county overnight from 6pm-6am, by Sunday morning about 300 national guard troops are deployed to the city. Two dozen appear to news crews outside the federal complex, as though intent only on posing for photographs.10.30am. Protesters begin congregating near the Metropolitan detention center, where national guard troops have arrived to support immigration officials – though they do not appear to be engaging in active policing.1pm. Thousands of protesters gather in downtown LA.Sunday 8 June, afternoon. The LAPD again declares the protest an unlawful assembly, ordering everyone to leave, but still the protests continue. Police patrol on horseback and report several arrests. Journalists and protesters are reportedly struck by projectiles, while LA police say two officers are injured after being struck by motorcyclists attempting to “breach a skirmish line”. Ice officers and other federal agents use teargas and pepper balls in an attempt to disperse the crowds. Throughout the afternoon, there are isolated episodes of vandalism – graffiti sprayed on buildings and vehicles, and a protester who damages the side mirror of a parked car. A line of spray-painted Waymo driverless cars, one with a smashed windshield, are later set on fire.Downtown Los AngelesSunday 8 June, afternoon. Hundreds of protesters block the 101 Freeway. They take over two lanes.Evening. Tensions have risen, with demonstrators throwing garbage and rocks at police. Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, double down on their plea to protesters to stay peaceful. “Protest is appropriate to do, but it is just not appropriate for there to be violence,” Bass says, while the LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell, calls the violence “disgusting” and says officers have been pelted with rocks, and shot at with commercial grade fireworks. Crucially, he notes that those engaging in violence were not among the people demonstrating against the immigration raids, but are “people who do this all the time”. More

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      ‘I’m paranoid all the time’: surveillance and fear in a city of immigrants as White House ramps up deportations

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      Two months after fleeing death threats in Colombia, Juan landed a construction job in New York. But on his first day, the bulky GPS monitor strapped to his ankle caught the manager’s attention. It wouldn’t fit inside standard work boots. The boss shook his head. “Come back when you’ve resolved your status,” he said.Since arriving in the US with his teenage daughter to seek asylum, Juan has lived in a state of constant anxiety. “It feels like I committed a crime, like they’re going to arrest me at any moment,” he said, speaking near the migrant shelter where they now live in Queens. Juan started wearing oversized pants to hide the monitor, a style he finds uncomfortable. “I’m paranoid all the time,” he said.Genesis, a 25-year-old from Panama, lives in the same shelter as Juan with her two-year-old. She has worn an ankle monitor for more than 18 months. “When I go to the park with my son, other parents don’t want their kids to play with him,” she said. The stigma of the monitor, she added, makes her feel like a bad mother. Genesis fled after members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal group from Venezuela, threatened her life there, she said.Juan and Genesis are among the more than 12,000 immigrants in New York enrolled in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) schemes called Alternatives to Detention (ATD) and the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP).View image in fullscreenMost of them are asylum seekers from Central or South America who came to the city seeking safety and the chance to work, according to a recent report from the American Bar Association, a national group of lawyers. They don’t have any criminal convictions, yet without legal status, they live under constant surveillance as their cases wend their way through the badly backed-up US immigration court system.Under ATD-ISAP, people can be monitored through GPS ankle bracelets, wrist-worn trackers, telephone check-ins or a mobile app called SmartLINK.The number of undocumented people under electronic monitoring related to their lack of immigration status alone is believed to have more than doubled since 2021, when the number in the US was about 85,000, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac) at Syracuse University, although the organization “advises the public to be extremely cautious” about data on this from Ice.Ice’s internal budget for ATD-ISAP has increased from $28m in 2006 to nearly $470m by the end of 2024.While attention in the second Trump administration has been on detention and deportation, electronic monitoring is still a significant factor in many immigrants’ lives and has been increasingly so in recent years.Ice promotes ATD-ISAP as a “humane and cost-effective” alternative to detention, but while it is certainly better than being locked up, lawyers and advocates argue it embeds unnecessary state control into homes, workplaces and public spaces, trapping people in cycles of fear, stigma and instability.View image in fullscreenThose assigned body-worn monitors often report skin irritation, discomfort and the need for frequent charging. When the battery runs low, the device emits a loud alert that draws unwanted attention. “People made comments while I was working at McDonald’s. I’m not a criminal,” Genesis said. Even routine activities like showering can trigger connectivity issues, leading to phone calls from ISAP officers or sudden demands for in-person check-ins.SmartLINK, by contrast, requires participants to submit geotagged selfies, typically once a week, rather than being tracked continuously throughout the day.ATD-ISAP is managed by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the private prison giant Geo Group. In 2020, Donald Trump’s first administration awarded the company a five-year, $2.2bn contract.Regardless of the type of surveillance assigned, participants remain under acute risk of arrest and deportation. Some have started the asylum application process; others came relatively recently from Texas when that state was bussing asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities, and so far are merely trying to find their footing, perhaps a lawyer and some advice about starting the process to get papers and a work permit.View image in fullscreenThey are expected to report in person to the ISAP office with little notice. The office is located in a basement near Ice’s 26 Federal Plaza headquarters in lower Manhattan. Appointments are usually scheduled during working hours, forcing many to miss work, arrange childcare or lose out on daily wages, all while being in terror of arrest and summary detention.On weekday mornings, people can be seen lining up outside the building while anxious loved ones wait nearby. “It’s very difficult to have a normal life,” said a man from Guatemala whose wife has been monitored for three years. He asked to remain anonymous. “We can’t even leave the city,” he added.Some people enrolled in the ADP program were arrested amid record enforcement earlier this week, NBC reported, in a national ramping-up of efforts on the orders of senior Trump administration officials, including in New York.The effects of surveillance aren’t limited to those being tracked. Entire neighborhoods are feeling its presence.Liliana Torres, a psychologist who offers weekly mental health support in Spanish to newly arrived immigrants, said that cameras, patrol cars and even the sound of sirens regularly spark panic among her clients. “Everyday elements of the city become triggers,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis fear is especially felt in areas of the city such as Corona, home to New York’s largest Latin American immigrant community. Local business owners reported a noticeable drop in customers the first few months of the Trump administration.View image in fullscreen“People think they’re going to take all of us,” said a nail salon worker who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns around her legal status. “But we can’t afford to stay home. We have to work.”Vendors at Corona Plaza say police presence has increased in recent months, especially since the launch of Operation Roosevelt last fall, a citywide crackdown on unlicensed vending and sex work. The measures disproportionately affected undocumented residents. Neighbors and advocates worry the heightened enforcement signals deeper coordination between the New York police department and federal immigration authorities.“There’s a noticeable uptick in the use of digital surveillance tools, including social media monitoring and data-sharing with local agencies,” said Veronica Cardenas, an immigration attorney who left her role as an Ice prosecutor in 2023 after witnessing first-hand the treatment immigrants receive. “More people who would have previously been considered low priority are now at risk.”View image in fullscreenFear spreads online, too. “We see people on TikTok saying Ice is coming when it isn’t,” said Niurka Meléndez, founder of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA), a volunteer-run group that connects asylum seekers to legal and social services. “Or worse, spreading confusion about immigration law.”VIA has been leading a regular event called Miracle Mondays at the St Paul & St Andrew United Methodist church in Manhattan since 2022. Once considered sanctuary spaces, churches are no longer off limits to Ice, prompting VIA to take extra precautions. Event locations are now shared privately via WhatsApp, rather than being posted publicly on social media.In response to growing fears, the Venezuelan-led group has also started organizing legal clinics in neighborhoods such as Corona to reach those too afraid to attend the church. At one such event in March, dozens of Latin American migrants gathered to ask lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group how they could regularize their immigration status.“If I give birth here and they deport me, will they keep my baby?” asked Stefani, a Venezuelan woman eight months pregnant. One lawyer responded cautiously, explaining that while she would have the right to bring her baby with her, the government can still act in ways that disregard the law. Lawyers also handed out one-page notices saying that individuals with pending asylum cases cannot be detained without due process.View image in fullscreenLocal community groups such as Ice Watch have adapted to this new climate by educating communities about their rights. Ice Watch tracks immigration enforcement and sends real-time alerts via encrypted Signal chats across the five boroughs. Its members also conduct training to teach people how to recognize Ice agents, document encounters and support those being targeted. Social workers, English teachers activists and small business owners are often among those who attend.For Juan, who fled Colombia after gang members shot his father in the head, life in New York has come at the cost of constant paranoia and a sense that genuine safety remains out of reach. His 16-year-old daughter notices everything. “She sees how I live and blames herself,” he said. At times, they’ve talked about returning to Colombia, but the risk of being kidnapped and tortured by mobsters is very real for him and his family.“I fear something worse than death could happen if I go back,” Juan said.Despite the stress, he holds on to small signs of progress, such as watching his daughter attend school and slowly but steadily pick up English. “I need to give her at least the option to have a better life than I had,” he said. More