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    Judge bars Trump administration from cutting funding to University of California

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    The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late on Friday in a sharply worded decision.US district judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to the university based on alleged discrimination without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements.The administration over the summer demanded the University of California, Los Angeles, pay $1.2bn to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university to be targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations.It has also frozen or paused federal funding over similar claims against private colleges, including Columbia University.In her ruling, Lin said labor unions and other groups representing UC faculty, students and employees had provided “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke’, ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.“Agency officials, as well as the president and vice-president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of pre-eminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote.She added: “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”At UC, which is facing a series of civil rights investigations, she found the administration had engaged in “coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the first amendment and 10th amendment”.Messages sent to the White House and the US Department of Justice after hours on Friday were not immediately returned. Lin’s order will remain in effect indefinitely.The president of the University of California, James B Milliken, has said the size of the UCLA fine would devastate the UC system, whose campuses are viewed as some of the top public colleges in the nation.UC is in settlement talks with the administration and is not a party to the lawsuit before Lin, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden, a Democrat. In a statement, the university system said it “remains committed to protecting the mission, governance and academic freedom of the university”.The administration has demanded UCLA comply with its views on gender identity and establish a process to make sure foreign students are not admitted if they are likely to engage in anti-American, anti-western or antisemitic “disruptions or harassment”, among other requirements outlined in a settlement proposal made public in October.The administration has previously struck deals with Brown University for $50m and Columbia University for $221m.Lin cited declarations by UC faculty and staff that the administration’s moves were prompting them to stop teaching or researching topics they were “afraid were too ‘left’ or ‘woke’”.Her injunction also blocks the administration from “conditioning the grant or continuance of federal funding on the UC’s agreement to any measures that would violate the rights of plaintiffs’ members under the first amendment”.She cited efforts to force the UC schools to screen international students based on “’anti-western” or “‘anti-American’” views, restrict research and teaching, or adopt specific definitions of “male” and “female” as examples of such measures.Donald Trump has decried elite colleges as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism.His administration has launched investigations of dozens of universities, claiming they have failed to end the use of racial preferences in violation of civil rights law. The Republican administration says diversity, equity and inclusion efforts discriminate against white and Asian American students. More

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      US judge bars Trump from cutting off University of California funds

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      A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding and threatening hefty fines against the University of California amid the administration’s attempts to coerce elite US universities into adopting and promoting conservative ideals.US district judge Rita Lin of San Francisco issued the preliminary injunction late Friday, saying the government was not allowed to demand payments from the California school system over the administration’s claims that it violates civil rights by allowing antisemitism and practising affirmative action.In her ruling, Lin said that the plaintiffs – who include UC faculty, researchers and students – have submitted “overwhelming evidence” illustrating the Trump administration’s “concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.Lin ruled that the government had a “playbook of initiating civil rights investigations” at universities in order to cut federal funding, “bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune”.In July, the Trump administration froze $584m in federal funding for the University of California, Los Angeles, while accusing the university of discrimination and violating civil rights over its handling of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The administration claimed UCLA was “acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students”.In October, the administration proposed a deal to nine prominent universities in the US that promised funding in exchange for schools imposing policies and changes that included banning race or sex as considerations in admissions and hiring and removing departments that “purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas”.While the University of California school system was not offered the deal, the University of Southern California – a private institution – was.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, responded to the offer with a warning that any California universities that signed Trump’s proposed settlement would lose their state funding.Democracy Forward, a progressive legal advocacy group, called the Trump administration’s efforts to influence policy at universities “strong-arm tactics”.“This is not just a harmful attempt to stifle speech, it is a betrayal of the constitution and a dangerous step toward autocracy,” the group said in a statement. More

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      People held in ‘decrepit’ California ICE facility sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions

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      Seven people detained at California’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center have sued the US government, alleging they have been denied essential medications, frequently go hungry and are housed in a “decrepit” facility.The federal class-action complaint filed against ICE on Wednesday challenges the “inhumane conditions” at the California City detention center, which opened in late August inside a shuttered state prison. The suit alleges “life-threatening” medical neglect, with the plaintiffs saying they have been denied cancer treatment, basic disability accommodations and regular insulin for diabetes.The facility is run by CoreCivic, a private prison corporation, which is not a named defendant.Residents have raised alarms about the facility for two months, with some describing it as a “torture chamber” and “hell on earth” in interviews.California City is located in the remote Mojave desert, 100 miles (160km) north-east of Los Angeles. It can hold more than 2,500 people, increasing ICE’s California detention capacity by 36%. It currently detains more than 800 people, lawyers say.Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in an email that claims of “subprime conditions” at the detention center were “false”, writing: “No one is denied access to proper medical care.”The suit, which alleges constitutional violations, describes conditions as “dire”, saying: “Sewage bubbles up from the shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of the cells. People are locked in concrete cells the size of a parking space for hours on end.”Temperatures inside are “frigid”, and detained residents who cannot afford to buy roughly $20 sweatshirts “suffer in the cold, some wearing socks on their arms as makeshift sleeves”, the complaint alleges; meals are “paltry”, and people who cannot afford to buy supplemental food go hungry.Even though residents are detained for civil immigration violations, not criminal offenses, California City “operates even more restrictively and punitively than a prison”, the lawyers say. Families are forced to visit their relatives behind glass, with parents denied the ability to hug or touch their children, and the facility “sharply limits access to lawyers, leaving people bewildered and largely incommunicado”, the suit alleges.McLaughlin of the DHS said detained people were provided three meals a day and dietitians evaluated the meals to “ensure they meet the appropriate standards”. She said they “have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers”, adding: “ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons.”The residents are coming forward as the homeland security department continues to ramp up immigration raids nationally, bolstered by $45bn to expand ICE capacity, with the goal of detaining more than 100,000 people. Civil rights lawsuits have repeatedly raised concerns about detention conditions across the country.The plaintiffs are represented by the Prison Law Office, the Keker Van Nest and Peters law firm, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.Requests for medical attention “go unanswered for weeks or are never answered at all”, the complaint states. People with disabilities have allegedly struggled to access essential services, including wheelchairs. One man, whose glasses were confiscated at intake and had difficulty seeing objects in front of him, fell getting off his bunkbed and was hospitalized, the suit says.Jose Ruiz Canizales, a detained plaintiff who is deaf and does not speak, has been at California City since 29 August, but has only communicated once with staff through a sign language interpreter via video, the complaint says. When he tries to communicate, staff “often shrug their shoulders, walk away, or laugh at him”. The impact on his mental health was so severe, he was hospitalized for an anxiety attack.Yuri Alexander Roque Campos, another plaintiff, has a heart anomaly requiring daily monitoring and medication, but since he arrived at California City on 5 September, he has been denied medications “for days at a time”, his lawyers wrote, resulting in two emergency hospitalizations for severe chest pain. A hospital doctor allegedly told him “he could die if this were to happen again”, but the lawsuit says he has yet to see a cardiologist and still lacks consistent medication.Sokhean Keo, who previously spoke of his temporary hunger strike to protest about conditions, witnessed a friend’s suicide attempt at the facility and remains traumatized by flashbacks, lawyers wrote.“I’m bringing this lawsuit to try to help end the suffering and pain that I see in here,” Keo said in a statement shared by his attorneys. “ICE is playing with people’s lives, and they treat people like they’re trash, like they’re nothing.”When residents do see doctors, “the care they receive is dangerously poor”, according to the complaint, with providers failing to document exams, address abnormal lab results or order timely treatment.Fernando Viera Reyes, a plaintiff transferred to California City in late August, had a pending biopsy appointment to formally diagnose and begin treatment for prostate cancer, but his request to see a doctor went unanswered for weeks, and he still has not seen a urologist nor received testing for his condition, the suit says. His bloodwork and bleeding with urination suggests his cancer may have metastasized, his lawyers said.Plaintiff Fernando Gomez Ruiz, a father of two and LA resident for 22 years, was arrested by ICE in early October while at a food truck outside a Home Depot, the complaint says. Since his arrival at California City in mid-October, he has not received regular insulin for his diabetes, leading to elevated blood sugar and a “large, oozing ulcer on the bottom of his foot”, the suit says. He says he has been forced to cover his wound with “soiled bandages and bloody shoes” and is worried he will need amputation.The DHS did not respond to the detailed healthcare claims in the lawsuit, but McLaughlin said ICE provided “comprehensive medical care from the moment” people are detained: “This includes medical, dental, and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.” She said ICE “provides necessary accommodations for disabilities”.Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesperson, declined to comment on the litigation and specific claims, but said in an email on Thursday after publication that the “safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority”. CoreCivic’s ICE facilities follow federal detention standards, are “monitored very closely by our government partners” and are required to undergo regular reviews and audits to “ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for all”, he said.“We’re proud of our dedicated team at [California City] who work hard every day to keep those in our care safe while providing for their needs,” he said, adding “staff are held to the highest ethical standards” outlined in the company’s “human rights policy”. The company told the Guardian in September that it provided “high-quality healthcare, available 24/7”.The plaintiffs also accused staff of “abusive” behavior and “unreasonable use of force”. On 29 September, staff entered the cell of a person detained in “administrative segregation”, a form of restricted housing, and hit him with riot shields, even though he was already handcuffed, and held him down with their knees on his back, the complaint says.On 3 October, Gustavo Guevara Alarcon, another plaintiff, said he witnessed an officer pepper-spraying a man who did not speak English, after the man did not understand the officer and turned to walk away.In another alleged incident on 9 October described in the lawsuit, people were screaming for help due to an attempted suicide, and a person stepped out of his cell to observe. A staff member, who was holding a drill for maintenance work, ordered the person to get his “ass inside”, threatening to “make a hole in your chest”, and the man allegedly got a disciplinary write-up for being outside his cell.“California City’s punishing conditions are punishing by design,” said Tess Borden, a supervising staff attorney at the Prison Law Office. “ICE and DHS are using detention as a threat to immigrants who decide to stay in America, and they’re making good on that threat at California City. Many people have agreed to deportation, and some even attempt to take their own lives, because the conditions at the facility are so unbearable.”McLaughlin did not respond to accounts of the specific incidents, but said ICE placed people in segregation for “their own protection or protection of others”, adding: “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority … ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.” More

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      Protests as rightwing Charlie Kirk activist group makes final campus tour stop

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      Turning Point USA, the influential rightwing college group founded by Charlie Kirk, has brought Kirk’s message to a campus with a long history of leftwing activism two months after his death.An event at the University of California, Berkeley, on Monday evening marked the chaotic last stop of the American Comeback tour, which Kirk had just begun at the time of his death at Utah Valley University. In the aftermath of Kirk’s fatal shooting, the events have come to serve as memorials, with prominent conservative speakers, including JD Vance, highlighting the staggering impact the controversial rightwing influencer’s death has had on American politics.Since Kirk’s killing in September, allegedly by a 22-year-old gunman, Donald Trump has sought to use the incident to attack Democrats, liberal groups and donors. The president has warned of an “enemy within” while he and allies have launched attacks on political opponents, actions that scholars have described as authoritarian and anti-Democratic.Meanwhile, people have been fired or disciplined from their jobs over comments, or perceived commentary, about Kirk’s killing or the beliefs he publicly espoused.The Berkeley event, hosted by the campus’s TPUSA chapter, featured Rob Schneider, the comedian and actor who has become a champion of conservative causes, and Christian author Frank Turek. It was met with a large protest as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Zellerbach Hall on Monday evening.People shouted “Fascists out of Berkeley” and carried signs with slogans such as “We won the war, why are there still Nazis” and “No safe space for fascist scum”, and Palestinian flags. Meanwhile, dozens of police officers gathered around an entrance, clearing a path for people to enter, and helicopters circled overhead.View image in fullscreenThere were at least three arrests during the protests, including two people detained after a violent altercation, the Daily Californian reported.There was anxiety on campus ahead of the event, said Sophie Mason, a freshman who stopped by the protest after class and said it was the “talk of the town”.“There was a lot of tension. People were worried,” she said.Two hours after the event started, the crowd outside showed no signs of tiring. They briefly broke into chants of “fuck Charlie Kirk.”Protesters at times focused on the large showing of law enforcement, yelling “CHP go home” in reference to the California Highway Patrol team assembled at the frontline of the demonstration.Dozens of officers stood blocking a throughway to the building where the TPUSA event was under way, some with body mounted cameras.Earlier Monday morning, police arrested four students for alleged vandalism after they attempted to hang a large cardboard bug on a gate ahead of the event, Berkeley’s campus newspaper the Daily Californian reported.UC Berkeley, known as the birthplace of the campus free speech movement of the 1960s, has hosted controversial events before. In 2017, thousands of students protested the scheduled appearances of the rightwing provocateur and former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos and the conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Both events were ultimately cancelled, but the city saw violent clashes between opposing groups of protesters.Monday night’s event, which the Berkeley chapter of TPUSA described as an opportunity to “be a part of the movement built on Charlie’s legacy”, was sold out. The chapter has more than doubled since Kirk’s death, organization leadership have said.Given the campus history of protest, Monday night’s demonstrations felt normal, said Tyara Gomez, a third-year student. Although this one had far more police officers, she said.The protest was largely peaceful but was marked by tense moments. A crowd appeared to accost a man who shouted a racial slur, and circled protesters. There were clashes between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators and attendees, and fears of gun violence. Early on, as the crowds reached their peak, a car drove by, seemingly broadcasting the sound of gunshots, sending dozens of people fleeing while others crowded behind concrete pillars, unsure whether a shooting was taking place.Among them was Mayte, who did not feel comfortable sharing her last name and was visiting with her boyfriend. Mayte crammed behind a the concrete structure with her dog and several other people as the vehicle passed. “You can’t tell if its fireworks or gunshots. It’s scary,” she said.She had felt compelled to watch the demonstration, which was as much a protest against TPUSA as it was against Trump and his agenda. “It’s sad what’s happening. I’m the daughter of immigrants.”Mason, the freshman, said she was perplexed why Turning Point USA had chosen to host the event at the famously liberal campus, but that she was pleased to see the turnout. “I’m glad a lot of people came together and showed up.” More

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      They flew to New York to help Mamdani – now they want to bring the hope to LA

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      While the excitement for mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has radiated through New York, his win has also energized young activists across the country – particularly some in Los Angeles, who flew to the east coast to canvass for Mamdani and now want to bring their experiences westward.Standing near the poll site at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neda Davarpanah – a screenwriter and actor based in Los Angeles – was inspired by Mamdani’s campaign for mayor so she flew out to New York in late October to canvass on the Upper East Side.Davarpanah had walked alongside the picket lines in Hollywood in 2023 as a newly minted Writers Guild of America member. Despite initial momentum, she felt the energy from the frontlines of the strikes had dissipated in the last year. That energy reignited when Mamdani entered the picture.“We felt so motivated and energized to help people in a city we don’t even live in because of the broader impact on the country,” she said.Many of the people interviewed are part of the 4,000 young members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Los Angeles chapter who felt inspired by Mamdani’s campaign and its national implications. Looking ahead, they want to bring the hope and lessons from field organizing back to Los Angeles.New York and Los Angeles have very different geographies and spreads of power. In Los Angeles, city council members’ elections tend to have more weight compared to a mayoral race. And given the DSA-LA chapter has endorsed five candidates so far in the city council and local school board elections, there are plenty of volunteer efforts for these hopefuls to work on in the coming year.View image in fullscreenLeslie Chang, who serves as the East San Gabriel Valley coordinator for Democratic Socialists of America, flew out during the primaries to canvass for Mamdani. She volunteered to canvass in Chinatown, where she spoke the language, and the Red Hook public housing projects.“These were tough conversations,” Chang said, noting residents felt left out in the city’s development. “They would say: look at the condition of this place that I live in. We are still waiting for repairs from the hurricane. Why should I give a shit who is running for office if my life hasn’t gotten better?”During her volunteer field training, Chang met two New York City council members who were vouching for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. They told Chang to give out their phone numbers to start conversations with constituents.“I thought that was really powerful, because in almost all of the canvases that I do here [in Los Angeles], there isn’t that level of engagement,” she said. After canvassing, there was even a social event for volunteers to get to know one another and discuss what strategies worked best.Paul Zappia, an animator and illustrator who also serves in DSA-LA leadership, first met the mayor-elect in 2023 at the DSA national conference in Chicago, where Mamdani served as a keynote speaker. He flew out in late October to canvass with friends in Bushwick. At the beginning of his shift, the field lead asked why each volunteer had come out.“I shared with everybody that I was here from Los Angeles because the victory of Zohran Mamdani is bigger than New York City,” said Zappia, who attributes his involvement in politics to the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign.View image in fullscreenEven walking to lunch a few blocks away, he encountered another canvassing group. “It’s just a bunch of people who are there on their free time and want to spend a couple hours on their Saturday together with other people that also care about their fellow working class people. And it was just such a blast,” he said.The geography and public transportation layout of New York’s five boroughs makes it easier to canvas in groups. Zappia said he could feasibly knock on hundreds of doors in a one-block radius there. In Los Angeles, a street could be filled with mostly single-family homes. And with the abundance of Ring doorbell cameras, people can easily decline a visitor from the comfort of their couch.Clayton Ryles, 31, only canvassed for one afternoon in Manhattan’s Chinatown in late October and felt the contrast between Mamdani’s campaign and others. In September last year, Ryles canvassed for Kamala Harris with his fellow United Auto Worker labor organizers in Las Vegas. Knocks on doors yielded intrepid voters who were “upset and suspicious”. Despite many people being pro-union, they felt that their cost of living was too high under Joe Biden.“Nobody was excited about the election. Everybody was like this is being inflicted upon us. We have to decide one way or another. For Zohran, most of the people were enthusiastic about what could happen with his mayoral tenure,” Ryles said.Davarpanah agreed, pointing to the call and response levels of Mamdani’s speech when crowds could clearly repeat phrases such as “fast and free buses” and “universal childcare”.“You can name them. Harris 2024 was not successful in articulating a vision,” she said. “A policy vision that materially impacts your constituents is something every candidate should take to heart. This is what actually inspires people to get involved when they actually see what you’re going to deliver.”View image in fullscreenAcross social media, users have been making posts about how California, and Los Angeles specifically, needs a Mamdani.For Zappia, that means bringing back hope after a tough year that started with the Altadena wildfires and has continued with ICE raids, cutbacks to Snap benefits, and rising inflation, among many other difficulties.“People are just really looking for a sort of sign that things can turn around. In order to actually affect the change that we want to see, we have to first believe that we can actually do it,” he said.“And what happened in New York City is proof that it can be done, it’s proof that organized people can beat organized money.” More

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      ‘Huge victory’ in Portland as judge’s final order bars Trump from sending national guard

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      A federal judge in Oregon on Friday blocked Donald Trump from deploying national guard troops to Portland, ruling there was no evidence of widespread violence to justify federal intervention.The US district court judge, Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, delivered her final order in the case on Friday. She found that protests near Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility were “predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence”.Earlier this week, Immergut barred Trump’s administration from deploying the national guard to Portland until at least Friday, saying she “found no credible evidence” that protests in the city had grown out of control before the president federalized the troops earlier this fall.In Friday’s ruling, she concluded that most altercations occurred between protesters and counter-protesters, not between protesters and federal agents. Immergut also acknowledged that while she “may lack jurisdiction to enjoin President Trump in the performance of his official duties”, her injunction only bars the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from deploying members of the national guard to Oregon.This is the latest development in weeks of legal back and forth in Portland, Chicago and other US cities as the Trump administration has moved to federalize and deploy the national guard in city streets to quell protests.The ICE facility in south-west Portland has been the site of ongoing protests since June, when Portland police declared one a riot. The city of Portland and the state of Oregon sued the Trump administration in September after the president announced he had directed the defense department to federalize and deploy the Oregon national guard.Immergut previously issued a temporary restraining order barring the deployment of the national guard in Oregon, a decision the Trump administration appealed.The judge heard three days of witness testimony from law enforcement officers and officials describing conditions around the ICE facility. Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield called Friday’s ruling “a huge victory”.“The courts are holding this administration accountable to the truth and the rule of law,” Rayfield said. “From the beginning, this case has been about making sure that facts, not political whims, guide how the law is applied. Today’s decision protects that principle.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling. More

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      An Arizona town is dreading plans to turn its prison into an ICE facility: ‘It’s morally objectionable’

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      In an Arizona town where farmers have long wrested a living off the arid land, reports that a former prison complex may be turned into an immigration detention center have sparked a fierce backlash, with residents seeing the potential transition as the latest undesirable symbol of the Trump administration’s massive escalation of immigration enforcement.The facility in Marana, a town of about 63,700 people located north of Tucson, sprawls across a flat expanse of desert studded with scrubby bushes and hardy trees. It was shuttered almost two years ago, and the Management and Training Corporation, the private company that owns it, informed the town manager of company plans to operate a detention center in the prison.During a town hall meeting on 23 October, residents crowded into a school auditorium to learn more from representatives of local government and advocacy organizations about the plan. Many attenders spoke against the jailing of immigrants amid Donald Trump’s crusade to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible.Karla Jones, one of the attenders, said she abhorred the idea of having a nearby detention center to hold immigrants – whose only crime in many cases is lacking US legal status, a civil offense – for extended periods of time. “That’s breaking up families,” she said. “And it’s people who are paying taxes, it’s people who are working. So I don’t want my community to support that.”Federal legislation passed in July provided $45bn for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to build more detention centers for adults and children as part of a larger $75bn, four-year package for the federal agency. To vastly increase detention capacity, the federal government is relying heavily on for-profit private companies that run prisons.The Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC) is one of those companies. MTC built the Marana prison in the mid-1990s, when the population in the then largely farming community was about 2,000. It was the first private prison in the state.In 2013, Arizona bought the prison for $150,000. In December 2023, the state – citing high costs and a decreasing incarcerated population – closed it. This past summer, after Arizona lawmakers rejected a bill that would have leased the prison for $1 a year to the federal government for use as an immigration detention center – MTC paid the state $15m to get it back.View image in fullscreenMarana’s town manager, Terry Rozema, said there was little the town could do to prevent the use of the building complex as a detention center. “The facility is privately owned by MTC and is already properly zoned for use as a prison or an ICE facility. As such, the town doesn’t have authority to restrict its future use as long as it meets current zoning,” Rozema said in an emailed statement.Emily Lawhead, MTC’s director of communications, declined an interview but wrote in an email that the company was “in discussions with several public agencies that may have a need for additional bed space”. ICE did not respond to questions regarding plans to use the onetime prison, but an agency spokesperson cited the need for “greater detention capacity” due to “a significant number of arrests”.MTC already operates five immigration detention centers in California, New Mexico and Texas.Its record in Arizona is spotty. In 2015, the state canceled a contract with the company after a riot at a prison it operated in the town of Kingman left more than a dozen incarcerated people and guards injured. A subsequent investigation by the Arizona department of corrections concluded that the company had “a culture of disorganization, disengagement and disregard” for state policies. MTC did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about those allegations, but the company has previously described the investigation’s findings as flawed.Jennifer Allen, a member of the board of supervisors for Pima county, where Marana is located, said that given reports about the poor conditions facing ICE detainees across the country, she and her constituents were concerned about the treatment of people in the Marana facility if it were to be converted and about oversight of the facility. She criticized the federal government for showering immigration enforcement with resources while simultaneously cutting funding for social safety net programs for older adults, children and other vulnerable populations.At the town hall, the federal government received plenty of criticism for its aggressive immigration agenda. Many attenders spoke against not just having a detention center in the vicinity, but also about the impact of social harms of the crackdown. Some residents brought signs bearing the slogan “Stop the kidnappings, protect your neighbors”, alluding to forceful arrests of immigrants in their homes, at work and in the streets.Speaking to the crowd, Tucson resident Maximiliano Torres likened the Trump administration’s detention and deportation campaign to Arizona’s 2010 Senate Bill 1070, commonly known as the “show me your papers” law that empowered police to conduct immigration enforcement. Although police can still inquire about immigration status, it’s no longer required because courts have largely struck down the law as unconstitutional.Recalling the law’s impact, Torres told the crowd: “They turned [crossing the border without authorization] into a criminal act, so they could justify putting those people in prison and forcing the federal government to pay private prisons.”While Trump has repeatedly promised immigration enforcement efforts would be focused on undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, statistics show that those being held in detention are primarily people without criminal convictions. As of September, 71.5% of the 59,762 immigrants in detention had no criminal conviction, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Many convictions involved traffic violations and other minor offenses.Under the Biden administration, immigrants with strong community ties and no serious brushes with the law would generally be released and be asked to check in with ICE periodically, since the government prioritized deporting people with criminal convictions, said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center. “Now everybody gets arrested, everybody gets detained,” she said.The Trump administration has significantly expanded mandatory detention to keep immigrants in confinement during proceedings to remove them from the country, she said. “More and more often, people are just giving up and agreeing to be deported instead of sitting in jail trying to fight their case,” the attorney said.In Marana, resident Tom Flynn left the town hall clutching one of the protest signs. He detests the possibility of an immigrant detention center in his town. “No 1, it’s morally objectionable,” he said. “No 2, it’s a detriment to the overall economy; it reduces the number of people who have been in the area, it depresses home values. And it’s so obviously politically driven.”Marlis Dinning said what she heard at the town hall about the possible detention center was disturbing. “It seems like all of this has happened behind closed doors,” she said. She’s against the detention of immigrants, many of them asylum seekers who entered the country legally, and who now “have no way to get citizenship”, she said.After the town hall, Jones was feeling quite unsettled by the overall discussion. But she vowed to participate in the mounting community pressure to keep the detention center at bay. “I really hope we can stop it from opening,” she said. More

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      Who are the contenders for Nancy Pelosi’s long-held San Francisco seat?

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      Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that, after nearly four decades in Congress, she will not seek re-election has reignited interest in the race for her long-held San Francisco seat.The retirement of the former speaker of the House was long-anticipated, and two Democrats had already declared their intent to run. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who previously served as the chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Scott Wiener, a state senator, kicked off their campaigns this year.In statements released on Thursday, both candidates praised Pelosi with Wiener describing her as the “greatest speaker in United States history”.“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is more than a legislator – she is an icon of American politics. She led the fight for healthcare and obliterated Trump when he tried to repeal it,” Wiener said, adding that her “finest moments” were fighting for marginalized people, including during the Aids crisis.Chakrabarti said Pelosi “set the standard for Democratic leadership with determination, discipline and tactical brilliance” and that her retirement marked the start of a “long-overdue generational shift”.“Thank you, Speaker Emerita Pelosi, for your decades of service that defined a generation of politics and for doing something truly rare in Washington: making room for the next one,” he said.Still, Chakrabarti is trying to put some daylight between himself the Democratic party grandees.The 39-year-old progressive, who worked for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016, announced his candidacy in February by arguing that it was time for change and that Democratic leaders were unprepared to handle Trump’s second presidency.Chakrabarti, a software engineer who graduated from Harvard, formally launched his campaign at a rally in San Francisco’s Mission District last month. He recently said in a statement Democrats needed a “new kind of leader who is not a part of the establishment, because the establishment has failed us”. Chakrabarti pledged to back universal healthcare and childcare, ban stock trading for members of Congress and “to stop funding the genocide in Gaza”.Since launching, Chakrabarti’s campaign had built “one of the largest grassroots operations in San Francisco history” with more than 2,000 volunteers, he said.Wiener, 55, is a Harvard-educated attorney and prominent San Francisco Democrat who has served in the state legislature since 2016. He authored a recently passed bill banning federal and state law enforcement from wearing masks and has promoted legislation to address California’s housing crisis and expand climate action.He has long been interested in Pelosi’s seat, but said he would run only if Pelosi decided to step down. In 2023, Wiener formed an exploratory committee that has already raised $1m for a future congressional run.Announcing his candidacy last month, Wiener said “we need more than rhetoric and good intentions from Democrats” and that he was seeking office to stand up to Trump as the president wages a “full-on war against immigrants and LGBTQ people” and the cost of living continues to increase.The San Francisco Chronicle reported there has been speculation that Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, a Democratic strategist, might run, while Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, is also said to be considering running. More

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      Armed US immigration agents drive off with toddler after arrest of father

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      Masked, heavily armed federal immigration agents arrested a US citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then entered his car and drove away with his toddler, who is also a US citizen, in the backseat.The child’s grandmother said the incident had left the whole family shaken. “I am devastated by what has happened to my son and demand an explanation,” she said at a press conference on Wednesday.The 32-year-old father was picked up during a major enforcement operation at the Home Depot in LA’s Cypress Park neighborhood on Tuesday morning. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), five undocumented immigrants were also arrested.Later that morning, Maria Avalos, the 32-year-old’s mother, got a call from an unidentified number. It was agents with the US Border Patrol, asking her to come pick up her one-year-old granddaughter. “We didn’t know what happened to her while she was in their care, and they wouldn’t give us information about when my son would be released or where he was,” Avalos said at a press conference on Wednesday.Avalos said she still has not been able to speak to her son to find out where he is being held. The incident was captured on video and first reported by the Los Angeles Times.Avalos said she had to wait for hours at an immigration office in downtown Los Angeles to take custody of her granddaughter, and was made to provide a birth certificate. “My granddaughter didn’t even know what was happening. She’s too small. She didn’t know what was happening to her father,” she said.The DHS has alleged that the 32-year-old “exited his vehicle wielding a hammer and threw rocks at law enforcement while he had a child in his car”. The agency did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about why agents drove away with the child rather than wait for another family member to come pick her up from the parking lot.The agency added: “He was arrested for assault and during his arrest a pistol was found in his car, that is reported stolen out of the state of New York. The individual has an active warrant for property damage.”Avalos did not comment on the agency’s accusations, and said that the family is searching for a lawyer to represent her son. She believes he was targeted because of the color of his skin, she said.It frightened her, she added, to later see videos from bystanders who had recorded her son’s arrest. In a video reviewed by the Guardian, bystanders are heard yelling in alarm as multiple heavily armed agents extort the father, and then enter his car and drive away. The agent in the passenger seat is holding a gun in his hands.At one moment, the father drops his weight to the ground, but masked agents pull him up and continue escorting him away from his daughter.“I was sad to see my son throw himself on the floor to stop them from taking his daughter,’ she said. “He was protecting his daughter.” She was also alarmed to see masked agents, who were heavily armed, drive away with her granddaughter. “This is something very, very frightening, because it’s not clear who these people are,” she said.Immigrants’ advocates have raised alarm about the incident, which is one of several cases where agents have arrested parents or guardians in front of their children. This summer, officials in Waltham, Massachusetts confirmed that a 13-year-old was abandoned on the street after an immigration raid. In southern California, a 19-year-old and a minor child were left behind after their father was arrested at a gas station.“Surely there is a better way of enforcing their policies in a way that does not separate families or place tender aged children like this child in questionable circumstances,” said Renee Garcia, the communications director at the legal aid nonprofit ImmDef. “I think that it’s absolutely traumatizing for a child to be placed in that situation.”“This is insane, what we are witnessing in this country,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the communications director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (Chirla), an advocacy organization. “This should not be happening.”Avalos said she is hoping her son will be able to return home soon. “My son is a good, quiet, hard-working person. He works in the restaurant industry and just got his new job. And his family is everything to him,” she said.“He is the best dad. And his little girl follows him wherever he goes. She is safe now, though. She needs her father. And I need my son back.” More