From that one line, which Anil Kalhan dubbed “Kavanaugh Stops,” we see story after story of just how disconnected from reality, and the Constitution, Brett Kavanaugh was in that statement.
My name is George Retes. I am — I was born and raised here in Ventura, California, I’m 26 years old and I am an Iraq combat veteran…. I was going to work like normal. I show up. ICE is there. There’s kind of like a roadblock. I get out. I identify myself, that I’m a U.S. citizen, that I’m just trying to get to work…. I’m getting ready to leave and they surround my car, start banging on it, start shouting these contradictory orders…. Even though I was giving them no reason, they still felt the need to — one agent knelt my back and another agent knelt on my neck. And during that time, I’m just pleading with them that I couldn’t breathe…. I was an isolation. I was in basically this concrete cell. I was stripped naked in like a hospital gown. And they leave the lights on 24/7…. They just came out and they said that I was violent and that I assaulted agents. Why lie when it’s on video of everything that happened? Why lie?
That’s just one person’s story in that PBS piece. There are two others as well. And we already know hundreds of other US Citizens have been kicked, dragged, beaten, and detained for days. It feels like every few days we hear about more such stories. And those are only the ones that get attention. You have to assume that there are many more ones that haven’t yet reached the public.
It feels like perhaps Justice Kavanaugh owes us all an explanation. And an apology. And a new ruling that makes it much clearer that immigration enforcement officials have no right to just randomly stop and detain people without a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, and those facts need to be more than “skin color” or “they were being annoying to us.”
Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales from Texas went on Face the Nation on Sunday and said a lot of silly things, doing his best as a loyal Trump foot soldier to defend the indefensible, to make sense of the nonsensical, and to lie about all the rest.
However, I wanted to focus on one bit of the clip that I’ve watched over a dozen times, and still can’t figure out what Rep. Gonzales meant. And I’m writing this in hopes that some DC or Texas reporter asks Gonzales to explain. Here’s the clip:
Gonzales on Liam Ramos and his family: "They're not gonna qualify for asylum. So what do you do with all the people that go through the process and do not qualify for asylum? You deport them. I understand that 5-year-old and it breaks my heart. I also think, what about that 5-year-old US citizen?"
And here’s the transcript from CBS. I’m including a bit more than is in the clip just to get the full context of what he’s saying:
MARGARET BRENNAN: You have this facility, though, in your district, Dilley, and that is for family detentions. That’s where little five-year-old Liam Ramos from Minnesota was held before a judge, that’s the picture of him there, ordered him released. He was ordered released because his family has a pending asylum claim, a legal process. He had entered with U.S. government permission through a process that the Biden administration had deemed legal. The current administration does not. The CBPOne app. Liam’s father gave an interview to Telemundo and you read the transcript, he’s talking about this five-year-old. He’s not okay. He’s waking up at night crying. He’s worried he’s going to be taken again. It’s psychological trauma, according to the father. And the administration is still trying to deport him. Do you understand why they are so focused on this five-year-old and his dad if they did come in through the front door with U.S. government permission?
REP. GONZALES: Well, the front door was via an app that Biden knew exactly what he was doing, and he created this huge mess, and now President Trump is there to clean up.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –but he came in the front door, he wasn’t–
REP. GONZALES: –through an app–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –across the border–
REP. GONZALES: –through an app that wasn’t vetted. And bottom line is, he’s likely- they’re not going to qualify for asylum. So what do you do with all the people that go through the process and do not qualify for asylum? You deport them. I understand the five-year-old and it, you know, it breaks my heart. I have a five year old at home.I also think, what about that five-year-old U.S. citizen–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –You feel comfortable defending that?
REP. GONZALES: I feel comfortable- we have to have a nation of laws. If we don’t have a nation of laws–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –They were following the- the law that is- that is that’s the rub, is that a new administration deemed the last administration’s regulation not to be legal.
Again, there’s a lot of nonsense in there, including Gonzales trying to pretend that Liam Ramos and his father had not entered the right way and following the laws of the US for those seeking to come here just because it was “through an app.” That app was the legal process. They followed the law. They did it the right way. To magically make that out to be violating the law because the next administration no longer wants to support that path doesn’t change the underlying fact that they were doing things the legal way.
But, again, let’s leave that aside. I simply want to focus in on the question of what the fuck Gonzales meant when he said:
I understand the five-year-old and it, you know, it breaks my heart. I have a five year old at home.I also think, what about that five-year-old U.S. citizen–
What about them? Under what scenario, process, or idea is that hypothetical five-year-old US citizen harmed? I’ve been unable to think or a single possible scenario in which the US citizen five-year-old could be harmed by allowing Liam Ramos to go through the asylum process.
Perhaps Rep. Gonzales can enlighten us by completing his thought and explaining.
Seriously: what is the scenario here? Is pre-kindergarten a zero-sum game now? Does Liam Ramos’s presence in a classroom somehow harm the US citizen in the next seat?
Brennan cut him off before he could finish the thought, and nobody followed up. So we don’t know. But I’d really like someone in the DC or Texas press corps to ask him to complete that sentence. Because I can think of one very obvious way that five-year-old US citizens are being harmed right now—and it’s not by Liam Ramos.
It’s by watching their government kidnap their classmates.
Nicholas Grossman talked about how his own child is distraught because some of his classmates can no longer come to school for fear their parents may be kidnapped by ICE:
My first grader (a US citizen) came home from school crying because a friend from class (also a US citizen) hasn’t been coming to school because his parents (one of whom is not a citizen) are afraid of ICE.Little kids don’t have concepts of racism and xenophobia. That has to be taught. Or imposed.
Indeed, the NY Times went and actually spoke with Liam Ramos’ classmates, and they seem legitimately distraught that government agents kidnapped their friend and sent him halfway across the country to a dangerous concentration camp. The video on that page is absolutely heartbreaking. I don’t see how anyone with a soul could possibly support or justify what is being done to Ramos. And to claim it’s in the name of his US citizen classmates is even more obnoxious. Just a couple of the quotes from five year olds:
“You are scaring schools, people, and the world. You should be kind, helpful, and caring like normal police. Not dangerous, scary, and stealing people. I think you should make friends with the world.”
“You, right now, you’re making people really sad because you’re just taking them away without them doing anything.”
So, please, Rep. Gonazales, tell us what you were thinking. What about those five-year-olds? What about kidnapping their classmate makes them better off? What about any of this makes sense? They’re not criminals. They followed the official legal process. They came in through “the front door” following the official process of the government at the time.
At no point have they done anything wrong.
So please, Rep. Gonzales: finish the thought. What about that five-year-old US citizen?
Because those five-year-old US citizens have already given their answer. They’re not being harmed by Liam Ramos. They’re being harmed by a government that just taught them their friends can disappear without warning.
It’s darkly funny, in a way, to recall a racist trope that gets trotted out about immigration all the time: immigrants bring disease into the country. That in itself isn’t funny, obviously. The funny part is that it seems like we’re proving the opposite to be true under the Trump administration. As the measles outbreak in America continues to rage, immigration detention camps are starting to feel the effects.
Earlier this week reports indicated the Dilley detention center in Texas was going on a sort of soft lockdown due to confirmed cases of measles among those detained.
“ICE Health Services Corps immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin said medical officials were monitoring detainees and taking “appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection.”
“All detainees are being provided with proper medical care,” she added.
We are definitely in “prove it” territory when it comes to this administration and immigration questions. That’s all the more so if the government, as they’ve done via other excuses in the past, limits or restrains entry to these facilities from other lawmakers who want to check DHS’ homework and uses the measles outbreak as the reason for it.
Neha Desai, a lawyer for the California-based National Center of Youth Law, which represents children in U.S. immigration custody, said she hopes the measles infections at Dilley are not used to “unnecessarily” prevent lawmakers and attorneys from inspecting the detention center in the near future, citing broader concerns about the facility.
“In the meantime, we are deeply concerned for the physical and the mental health of every family detained at Dilley,” Desai said. “It is important to remember that no family needs to be detained — this is a choice that the administration is making.”
It’s also worth remembering that the spread of disease is a recurring feature in the concentration camp industry. Deaths from disease as well. And, unlike the trope mentioned above, these are infections immigrants are getting from America, not bringing to her soil.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports one ICE detainee in the Florence Detention Center in Pinal County tested positive for measles on Jan. 21.
Two more measles cases have recently been confirmed among people who are also in federal custody in the county, according to a spokesperson for the Pinal County Public Health Services District. But the spokesperson did not provide details about which facility the other two infected individuals are in, or whether any of the three cases in the county are linked.
As Desai said in the quote above, this is a choice. Or, rather, a series of choices. It’s a choice made by Trump and his minions to carry out this inhumane, disorganized, haphazard campaign of brutality on illegal immigrants. This could have gone many ways, but Trump chose cruelty on purpose. It’s a choice to put RFK Jr. in charge of America’s health and then watch idly, leaning back with folded arms, as the country experiences the worst measles outbreak in decades over the past 13 months. It’s a choice to not pivot on any of the above.
State health officials are reporting 29 new cases of measles in the state since Friday, bringing the total number of cases in South Carolina related to the Upstate outbreak to 876. The South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) said there are currently 354 people in quarantine and 22 in isolation. The latest end of quarantine for these cases is Feb. 24.
Those numbers will continue to rise, but they are already breathtaking. 2025 saw a measles infection count nationwide of 2,267. South Carolina has generated nearly 40% of that total in one month in one state. 18 states have already had measles infections within their borders this year. The 2026 totals are going to make 2025 look like peanuts.
And it could potentially be hardest on the human beings who are shoved like sardines into these immigrant detention camps. Diseases like the measles will spread incredibly fast there. And, despite DHS’ claims to the contrary, I just can’t find it in me to believe that this administration is going to put a priority on detainee’s health.
Over the past week, two federal judges have issued rulings on immigration cases that aren’t just legally significant—they’re genuinely extraordinary documents. One includes a photo of a five-year-old in a Spiderman backpack, biblical citations, and closes with Ben Franklin’s warning about keeping the republic. The other spends 83 pages methodically dismantling a cabinet secretary’s decision, includes screenshots of her social media posts, and concludes that she “pounds X (f/k/a Twitter)” instead of following the law. Both judges reached back to the Founders to make their points. Both dropped any pretense of the typical judicial deference afforded to the executive branch. And both made crystal clear that they see what’s happening for exactly what it is.
Let’s start with the shorter one. Judge Fred Biery in the Western District of Texas issued a brief but devastating opinion granting habeas corpus to Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son, Liam—the child whose photo went viral wearing a blue hat with ears and a Spiderman backpack when he was kidnapped by federal agents in Minnesota and shipped to a detention center in Texas. Judge Biery didn’t mince words:
The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.
He then offered what he called a “civics lesson to the government,” including reminding them of some key parts that were in the Declaration we signed 250 years ago to be free from a monarch:
Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old ThomasJefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:
“He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.”
“He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”
“For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”
“He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.”
“We the people” are hearing echos of that history.
And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.
U.S. CONST. amend. IV.
And the startling conclusion to the civics lesson the US federal government got from a judge.
Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.
And in case anyone missed the point, Biery closed with a reference you don’t often see in federal court opinions: “Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: ‘Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?’ ‘A republic, if you can keep it.'” Followed by: “With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED.”
The ruling includes the photo of the five-year-old child, and two biblical citations. The first to “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'” and the second to… “Jesus wept.”
If Judge Biery’s ruling was a shot across the bow—short, sharp, impossible to miss—then Judge Ana Reyes’s 83-page ruling in the Haitian TPS (Temporary Protected Status) case is a full broadside. Where Biery reached for the Declaration and the Bible, Reyes brings receipts—83 pages of them—that lay bare just how far federal judges have moved from customary deference to open incredulity.
The ruling opens with a letter from George Washington in 1783 declaring that “America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions.”
Then it gets to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s position on immigration:
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has a different take.
The ruling then includes a screenshot of Noem’s X post declaring “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE. THEY ARE ALL KILLERS, LEECHES, AND ENTITLEMENT JUNKIES. WE DONT WANT THEM HERE.”
Judge Reyes notes dryly: “So says the official responsible for overseeing the TPS program.”
The plaintiffs in the case are five Haitian TPS holders whom Judge Reyes takes pains to introduce:
They are not, it emerges, killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies. They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse.
The ruling systematically dismantles every single aspect of Secretary Noem’s decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation. But the section on DHS’s supposed “consultation with appropriate agencies” is particularly brutal.
The TPS statute requires the Secretary to consult with appropriate agencies before making a termination decision. Here’s what that “consultation” actually looked like:
On Friday, September 5, 2025—that is, the same day that the NTPSA court set aside the Partial Vacatur of Haiti’s TPS designation—a DHS staffer emailed a State staffer at 4:55 p.m.: “Due to the litigation, we are re-reviewing country conditions in Haiti based on the original TPS deadline. Can you advise on State’s views on the matter?” The State staffer responded within 53 minutes: “State believes that there would be no foreign policy concerns with respect to a change in the TPS statue of Haiti.”
This was it. The full extent of the supposed consultation with appropriate agencies.
The judge notes that she believe she “must be missing something” and included a bit of the transcript from the hearing:
Court: So in the Federal Register notice, the Secretary wrote, “After reviewing country conditions and consulting with appropriate U.S. Government agencies, the Secretary determined that Haiti no longer meets the conditions for the designating as TPS”; right?
Government Counsel: Yes.
Court: What were the appropriate agencies that the Secretary consulted? . . .
Government Counsel: So, Your Honor, it’s the Department of State email found at 409 and 410. That is what we have. . . .
Court: No other agency was consulted?
Government Counsel: No other agency was consulted. . . .
Court: And the extent of the Department of State consultation was the email exchange at 409 and 410.
Government Counsel: That is my understanding
The judge’s response to this 53-minute email exchange being presented as statutory “consultation” is unsparing:
Congress did not vest the Secretary with Humpty Dumpty-like power to make the word “consultation” mean “just what [she] chooses it to mean—neither more nor less.”
It gets worse. The court notes that the State Department’s own Travel Advisory for Haiti—the document that literally says “Do not travel to Haiti for any reason”—was updated after Noem’s first termination attempt. The updated version, warning of worsened conditions, doesn’t even appear in the administrative record. The Secretary responsible for making this determination simply didn’t look at her own government’s assessment of the country’s safety.
Then there’s the pattern. As of this ruling, Secretary Noem has terminated TPS designations for every single country that has come up for review since taking office. Twelve countries. Twelve terminations. The ruling includes a handy chart:
Twelve for twelve. Judge Reyes notes this is “unprecedented in the thirty-five years since the establishment of the TPS program for a DHS Secretary to terminate every TPS designation that crosses her desk for review.”
The ruling then gets into the substance of Noem’s reasoning—or lack thereof. The Secretary claims there are parts of Haiti “suitable to return to” but never identifies a single safe location. Indeed, the Court gave the government a chance to explain exactly where these “parts” of Haiti that were safe were, and was not impressed by the answer:
According to Secretary Noem, “data surrounding internal relocation does indicate parts of the country are suitable to return to.” But the Secretary cited no data to support this proposition and failed to identify a single safe location. In response to an inquiry from the Court, the Government cited an October 29, 2025, USCIS memo in the administrative record as the supporting analysis. “The memo,” it noted, “reflects that individuals have been internally displaced, thereby indicating that Haitian residents found certain areas in Haiti that could be suitable for return.” Butthe memo also fails to identify a single safe location by name or even geographic area. And the fact that, as the memo notes, 1.3 million Haitians—around twelve percent of the population—have been “internally displaced due to escalating violence” says nothing about whether they escaped to suitable areas. If anything, those areas are presumptively now less suitable for return, having been inundated with internal refugees.
Meanwhile, the administrative record is full of statements like these:
“Haiti’s crisis has reached catastrophic levels” — Human Rights Watch, January 2025
“The violence has increased dramatically in 2024” — Doctors Without Borders, January 2025
“Haiti is paralyzed” — Crisis Group, February 2025
“Top United Nations Officials Urge Swift Global Action as Haiti Nears Collapse” — UN Security Council, July 2025
“The people of Haiti are in a perfect storm of suffering” — UN Secretary-General Guterres, August 2025
Against all of this, Secretary Noem concluded that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian TPS holders from returning [to] safety.” Judge Reyes is incredulous that the Secretary’s analysis relies on “emerging signals of hope” rather than actual changed conditions:
Unable to identify present conditions supporting her conclusion, Secretary Noem turns instead to speculation about future improvement. Each source she cited speaks to how Haiti might improve in the future. She quoted a UN article referencing Secretary-General António Guterres’s statement that despite ongoing violence in Haiti, “‘there are emerging signals of hope.’’’ He cautioned that “these fragile gains” depend on “more decisive international support.”Emerging signals of hope, of course, are not actual change.Secretary-General Guterres’s full remarks to the UNSC underscore this point. They do not describe a nation on the brink of recovery. Rather, they describe a nation in crisis, whose future hinges on internal “unity” and “resolve from [the UNSC].”
The ruling also destroys the government’s “national interest” analysis, which focuses on immigrants attempting to enter the US illegally and those who overstay visas. The problem? TPS holders are already here. Legally:
Secretary Noem’s analysis also focused on those who “overstay their visas” and so remain in the country unlawfully. Id. She claimed that these overstayers “may be harder to locate and monitor,” increasing vulnerabilities in immigration enforcement systems. See id. She also said they “place an added strain on local communities by increasing demand for public resources, contributing to housing and healthcare pressures, and competing in an already limited job market.” Id. But Haitian TPS holders are not in this cohort either. They are in the U.S. lawfully. See Jan. 6 P.M. Hr’g Tr. at 85:15–87:12. Indeed, TPS holders are easy to locate because they regularly update their address information with DHS to maintain that status and their work authorization. See id. at 94:25–95:6. And Secretary Noem provides no data to support the overgeneralization that those who overstay their visas are a strain on their local communities. See Dkt. 122. They may well cause a strain, but terminating Haiti’s TPS termination not alleviate it because, again, Haitian TPS holders do not fall into this cohort.
Regarding that confusion of TPS visitors being here legally, meaning they literally cannot overstay their visas, the judge notes in a footnote how absurd part of the government’s argument is:
With respect, this borders on the absurd. The latter has zero relation to the former or reality.
When asked where in the record the Court could find data on TPS holders represented in “overstay” rates (based on those who maybe overstayed visas prior to getting TPS status), the government comes up empty. See if you sense where the judge loses patience:
The Government responds by speculating that maybe some Haitians overstayed their visas before obtaining TPS status.Maybe. Who knows? Not Secretary Noem.The Court asked the Government: “[w]here in the [CAR] can the Court find the percentage of TPS holders represented in the overstay rates?” The response: “The [CAR] does not contain data that is this finely dissected.” Which is to say, not enough people to even bother counting.
The equal protection analysis is where things get really pointed. Judge Reyes catalogs President Trump’s statements about Haitians and other nonwhite immigrants:
President Trump has made—freely, at times even boastfully—several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners. To start, he has repeatedly invoked racist tropes of national purity, declaring that “illegal immigrants”—a category he wrongly assigns to Haitian TPS holders—are “poisoning the blood” of America. He has, Plaintiffs allege, complained that recently admitted nonwhite Africans would “never ‘go back to their huts’ in Africa.” He has complained further that nonwhite immigration is an “invasion,” creating a “dumping ground” that is “destroying our country.” He has described immigrants as “not people,” “snakes,” and “garbage,” who have “bad genes.” He has also stated that he prefers immigrants from “nice”—predominantly white—countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark over immigrants from “shithole countries”
President Trump has referred to Haiti as a “shithole country,” suggested Haitians “probably have AIDS,” and complained that Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.” He has also promoted the false conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were “eating the pets of the people” in Springfield, Ohio. Even after that (ridiculous) claim was debunked, he claimed they were eating “other things too that they’re not supposed to be.” About two weeks after the Termination, he again described Haiti as a “filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting” “shithole country.” He stated: “I have also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.” Then continued, “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why cannot we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few, let us have a few, from Denmark.” It is not a coincidence that Haiti’s population is ninety-five percent black while Norway’s is over ninety percent white.
The ruling notes that Trump’s statements came close in time to Noem’s decisions, and that Noem herself has made her own views clear, as noted in the screenshot, calling Haitians “leeches, entitlement junkies, and foreign invaders” just three days after making the Termination decision.
And then we get to the conclusion. It’s worth quoting at length because you really don’t see this kind of language from the bench:
There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it.Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).
And then the kicker:
Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.
These rulings represent something we’ve been watching develop for months now: federal judges completely abandoning the traditional deference typically afforded to government positions, because the government has made clear it doesn’t deserve it. The DOJ’s credibility has been in freefall, and judges are no longer pretending otherwise. They’re reaching back to Franklin and Washington as genuine warnings about what happens when executive power operates unchecked by law or facts.
Some people will dismiss this as “activist judges.” But what we’re seeing is something different: judges trying to do their actual jobs—reviewing whether the government followed the law—and finding that the government isn’t even pretending to follow it anymore.
The administration is ignoring statutory requirements entirely, fabricating rationales after the fact, and treating judicial review as an inconvenience to be steamrolled rather than a constitutional check to be respected. We’re not talking about simple judicial disagreements of interpretation of the law. These opinions read more like desperate signals from the bench that something has gone very, very wrong.
I’ve seen some complaints—in particular about the first short ruling—that it doesn’t read in a very judicial manner. The lack of citations is a bit startling, and probably bodes ill if the government appeals. But that’s almost the point. When a judge includes a photo of a child in a Spiderman backpack, cites “Jesus wept,” and closes with Ben Franklin’s warning about keeping the republic—or when another judge spends 83 pages documenting that the Secretary of DHS ignored her own agencies, ignored the evidence, ignored the law, and instead “pounds X”—they’re writing for more than an appeals court. They’re writing for history. They’re writing for the public. They’re sick of the lies and the gaslighting, and the simple fascism of it all in a supposed constitutional democracy. And they want to make damn sure that someone, somewhere, is paying attention.
Before you read this post, I want you to try to recall the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard someone say. Go ahead and hold that memory in the back of your head.
Perhaps by now you’re tiring of all of these posts on America’s measles problem that we’ve endured for over a year now. This is so passe, you might be thinking. So, you know, 1990s. And you would have been right before 2025 and the installation of a gravel-mouthed anti-vaxxer as the Secretary of HHS. Sadly, 2025 saw more cases of measles in America than at anytime in the previous several decades and a current outbreak in South Carolina, one which is already spreading to far-flung states across the country, has been left unaddressed.
In my last post on this topic, I complained that those in charge of these agencies are “barely talking about this.” Now that one of those leaders has talked about it publicly, however, I think I understand why they were kept in silence previously.
After a year of ongoing measles outbreaks that have sickened more than 2,400 people, the United States is poised to lose its status as a measles-free country. However, the newly appointed principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ralph Abraham, said he was unbothered by the prospect at a briefing for journalists this week.
“It’s just the cost of doing business with our borders being somewhat porous for global and international travel,” Abraham said. “We have these communities that choose to be unvaccinated. That’s their personal freedom.”
Okay, where to begin? Let’s just start by pointing out that Abraham is a long-time anti-vaxxer. He has advocated for alternative treatments to all kinds of diseases for which we have actual medicine. He has also advocated for natural immunity over vaccines on the regular. Now that this clown is nominally running the CDC, while America is facing its worst measles crises in over thirty years, the response is as flippant as, “Shit happens because, you know, immigrants.”
“When you hear somebody like Abraham say ‘the cost of doing business,’ how can you be more callous,” said pediatrician and vaccine specialist Paul Offit, in an online discussion hosted by the health blog Inside Medicine on Jan. 20. “Three people died of measles last year in this country,” Offit added. “We eliminated this virus in the year 2000 — eliminated it. Eliminated circulation of the most contagious human infection. That was something to be proud of.”
That would be idiotic even if Abraham were right. But he’s not right. As CBS points out in its post, we’ve always had occasional infections from foreign visitors and sources in America, but nothing like these outbreaks. Only 10% of infections over the last year or so came from outside the country. The rest were domestic spread. And while border policy surely has ebbed and flowed over the past 30 years, there wasn’t some drastic change made in the last year that would explain any of this away.
Now, in all fairness, Abraham has also added that getting two doses of the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent a measles infection. I’m sure saying it was painful for him, but he did it. Still, because the stupidest possible people are running our country right now, the CDC is also studying the genomic makeup of measles infections from different parts of the country. But Timothy, you’re surely saying, that sounds like good science and something they’d use to help fight the disease.
Nope, wrong. They’re desperately trying to show that the outbreaks are from disparate strains to argue that it hasn’t been 12 months of continuous spread of a single strain to claim that we shouldn’t lose our elimination status.
If the CDC’s genomic analyses show that last year’s outbreaks resulted from separate introductions from abroad, political appointees will probably credit Kennedy for saving the country’s status, said Demetre Daskalakis, a former director of the CDC’s national immunization center, who resigned in protest of Kennedy’s actions in August.
And if studies suggest the outbreaks are linked, Daskalakis predicted, the administration will cast doubt on the findings and downplay the reversal of the country’s status: “They’ll say, who cares.”
Indeed, at the briefing, Abraham told a reporter from Stat that a reversal in the nation’s status would not be significant: “Losing elimination status does not mean that the measles would be widespread.”
The phrase “criminal negligence” leaps to mind. That appears to be the work product of our public health officials at the moment. Neglect and attempts to coverup for that neglect on technicalities.
Welcome back, measles. I guess you’ll be staying with us a while.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. The original version has even more horrifying photographs and videos of agents engaging in this kind of behavior.
Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns.
An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out. An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.
After George Floyd’s murder by a police officer six years ago in Minneapolis — less than a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good last week — police departments and federal agencies banned chokeholds and other moves that can restrict breathing or blood flow.
But those tactics are back, now at the hands of agents conducting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Examples are scattered across social media. ProPublica found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using these life-threatening maneuvers on immigrants, citizens and protesters. The agents are usually masked, their identities secret. The government won’t say if any of them have been punished.
In nearly 20 cases, agents appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits “unless deadly force is authorized.”
About two dozen videos show officers kneeling on people’s necks or backs or keeping them face down on the ground while already handcuffed. Such tactics are not prohibited outright but are often discouraged, including by federal trainers, in part because using them for a prolonged time risks asphyxiation.
We reviewed footage with a panel of eight former police officers and law enforcement experts. They were appalled.
This is what bad policing looks like, they said. And it puts everyone at risk.
“I arrested dozens upon dozens of drug traffickers, human smugglers, child molesters — some of them will resist,” said Eric Balliet, who spent more than two decades working at Homeland Security Investigations and Border Patrol, including in the first Trump administration. “I don’t remember putting anybody in a chokehold. Period.”
“If this was one of my officers, he or she would be facing discipline,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a longtime police chief in Seattle who also served as Customs and Border Protection commissioner under President Barack Obama. “You have these guys running around in fatigues, with masks, with ‘Police’ on their uniform,” but they aren’t acting like professional police.
Over the past week, the conduct of agents has come under intense scrutiny after an ICE officer in Minneapolis killed Good, a mother of three. The next day, a Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot a man and woman in a hospital parking lot.
Top administration officials rushed to defend the officers. Speaking about the agent who shot Good, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said, “This is an experienced officer who followed his training.”
Officials said the same thing to us after we showed them footage of officers using prohibited chokeholds. Federal agents have “followed their training to use the least amount of force necessary,” department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Officers act heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
Both DHS and the White House lauded the “utmost professionalism” of their agents.
Our compilation of incidents is far from complete. Just as the government does not count how often it detains citizens or smashes through vehicle windows during immigration arrests, it does not publicly track how many times agents have choked civilians or otherwise inhibited their breathing or blood flow. We gathered cases by searching legal filings, social media posts and local press reports in English and Spanish.
Given the lack of any count over time, it’s impossible to know for certain how agents’ current use of the banned and dangerous tactics compares with earlier periods.
But former immigration officials told us they rarely heard of such incidents during their long tenures. They also recalled little pushback when DHS formally banned chokeholds and other tactics in 2023; it was merely codifying the norm.
That norm has now been broken.
One of the citizens whom agents put in a chokehold was 16 years old.
Tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan and his father were getting McDonald’s before school when their car was pulled over by unmarked vehicles. Masked immigration agents started banging on their windows. As Arnoldo’s undocumented father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, drove off, the terrified teenager began filming on his phone. The video shows the agents repeatedly ramming the Bazans’ car during a slow chase through the city.
Bazan Carrillo eventually parked and ran into a restaurant supply store. When Arnoldo saw agents taking his father violently to the ground, Arnoldo went inside too, yelling at the agents to stop.
One agent put Arnoldo in a chokehold while another pressed a knee into his father’s neck. “I was going to school!” the boy pleaded. He said later that when he told the agent he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop.
“I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe,” Arnoldo told ProPublica, showing where the agent’s hands had closed around his throat. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die.”
DHS’ McLaughlin accused Arnoldo’s dad of ramming his car “into a federal law enforcement vehicle,” but he was never charged for that, and the videos we reviewed do not support this claim. Our examination of his criminal history — separate from any immigration violations — found only that Bazan Carrillo pleaded guilty a decade ago to misdemeanor driving while intoxicated.
McLaughlin also said the younger Bazan elbowed an officer in the face as he was detained, which the teen denies. She said that Arnoldo was taken into custody to confirm his identity and make sure he didn’t have any weapons. McLaughlin did not answer whether the agent’s conduct was justified.
Experts who reviewed video of the Bazans’ arrests could make no sense of the agents’ actions.
“Why are you in the middle of a store trying to grab somebody?” said Marc Brown, a former police officer turned instructor who taught ICE and Border Patrol officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. “Your arm underneath the neck, like a choking motion? No! The knee on the neck? Absolutely not.”
DHS revamped its training curriculum after George Floyd’s murder to underscore those tactics were out of bounds, Brown said. “DHS specifically was very big on no choking,” he said. “We don’t teach that. They were, like, hardcore against it. They didn’t want to see anything with the word ‘choke.’”
After agents used another banned neck restraint — a carotid hold — a man started convulsing and passed out.
In early November, ICE agents in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, stopped a young father, Carlos Sebastian Zapata Rivera, as he drove with his family. They had come for his undocumented wife, whom they targeted after she was charged with assault for allegedly stabbing a co-worker in the hand with scissors.
Body camera footage from the local police, obtained by ProPublica, captured much of what happened. The couple’s 1-year-old daughter began crying. Agents surrounded the car, looking in through open doors.
According to the footage, an agent told Zapata Rivera that if his wife wouldn’t come out, they would have to arrest him, too — and their daughter would be sent into the foster system. The agent recounted the conversation to a local cop: “Technically, I can arrest both of you,” he said. “If you no longer have a child, because the child is now in state custody, you’re both gonna be arrested. Do you want to give your child to the state?”
Zapata Rivera, who has a pending asylum claim, clung to his family. His wife kept saying she wouldn’t go anywhere without her daughter, whom she said was still breastfeeding. Zapata Rivera wouldn’t let go of either of them.
Federal agents seemed conflicted on how to proceed. “I refuse to have us videotaped throwing someone to the ground while they have a child in their hands,” one ICE agent told a police officer at the scene.
But after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed.
The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death.
“Even milliseconds or seconds of interrupted blood flow to the brain can have serious consequences,” Dr. Altaf Saadi, a neurologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told us. Saadi said she couldn’t comment on specific cases, “but there is no amount of training or method of applying pressure on the neck that is foolproof in terms of avoiding neurologic damage.”
In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him.
“Carotid restraints are prohibited unless deadly force is authorized,” DHS’ use-of-force policy states. Deadly force is authorized only when an officer believes there’s an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury” and there is “no alternative.”
In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.
“These statements were lies,” Zapata Rivera alleges in an ongoing civil rights lawsuit he filed against the ICE agent who used the carotid restraint. His lawyer told ProPublica that Zapata Rivera was disoriented after regaining consciousness; the lawsuit says he was denied medical attention. (Representatives for Zapata Rivera declined our requests for an interview with him. His wife has been released on bond, and her assault case awaits trial.)
A police report and bodycam footage from Fitchburg officers at the scene, obtained via a public records request, back up Zapata Rivera’s account of being denied assistance. “He’s fine,” an agent told paramedics, according to footage. The police report says Zapata Rivera wanted medical attention but “agents continued without stopping.”
Saadi, the Harvard neurologist, said that as a general matter, determining whether someone had a seizure is “not something even neurologists can do accurately just by looking at it.”
DHS policy bars using chokeholds and carotid restraints just because someone is resisting arrest. Agents are doing it anyway.
When DHS issued restrictions on chokeholds and carotid restraints, it stated that the moves “must not be used as a means to control non-compliant subjects or persons resisting arrest.” Deadly force “shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject.”
But videos reviewed by ProPublica show that agents have been using these restraints to do just that.
In Los Angeles in June, masked officers from ICE, Border Patrol and other federal agencies pepper-sprayed and then tackled another citizen, Luis Hipolito. As Hipolito struggled to get away, one of the agents put him in a chokehold. Another pointed a Taser at bystanders filming.
Then Hipolito’s body began to convulse — a possible seizure. An onlooker warned the agents, “You gonna let him die.”
When officers make a mistake in the heat of the moment, said Danny Murphy, a former deputy commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, they need to “correct it as quickly as possible.”
That didn’t happen in Hipolito’s case. The footage shows the immigration agent not only wrapping his arm around Hipolito’s neck as he takes him down but also sticking with the chokehold after Hipolito is pinned on the ground.
The agent’s actions are “dangerous and unreasonable,” Murphy said.
Asked about the case, McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said that Hipolito was arrested for assaulting an ICE officer. Hipolito’s lawyers did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Hipolito limped into court days after the incident. Another citizen who was with him the day of the incident was also charged, but her case was dropped. Hipolito pleaded not guilty and goes to trial in February.
Some of the conduct in the footage isn’t banned — but it’s discouraged and dangerous.
Placing a knee on a prone subject’s neck or weight on their back isn’t banned under DHS’ use-of-force policy, but it can be dangerous — and the longer it goes on, the higher the risk that the person won’t be able to breathe.
“You really don’t want to spend that amount of time just trying to get somebody handcuffed,” said Kerlikowske, the former CPB commissioner, of the video of the arrest in Portland.
Brown, the former federal instructor and now a lead police trainer at the University of South Carolina, echoed that. “Once you get them handcuffed, you get them up, get them out of there,” he said. “If they’re saying they can’t breathe, hurry up.”
Taking a person down to the ground and restraining them there can be an appropriate way to get them in handcuffs, said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer turned law professor who also works at the University of South Carolina. But officers have long known to make it quick. By the mid-1990s, the federal government was advising officers against keeping people prolongedly in a prone position.
When a federal agent kneeled on the neck of an intensive care nurse in August, she said she understood the danger she was in and tried to scream.
“I knew that the amount of pressure being placed on the back of my neck could definitely hurt me,” said Amanda Trebach, a citizen and activist who was arrested in Los Angeles while monitoring immigration agents. “I was having a hard time breathing because my chest was on the ground.”
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said Trebach impeded agents’ vehicles and struck them with her signs and fists.
Trebach denies this. She was released without any charges.
“No, no!” one bystander exclaims. “He’s not doing anything!”
DHS’ McLaughlin did not respond to questions about the incident.
Along with two similarchoking incidents at protests outside of ICE facilities, this is one of the few videos in which the run-up to the violence is clear. And the experts were aghast.
“Without anything I could see as even remotely a deadly force threat, he immediately goes for the throat,” said Ashley Heiberger, a retired police captain from Pennsylvania who frequently testifies in use-of-force cases. Balliet, the former immigration official, said the agent turned the scene into a “pissing contest” that was “explicitly out of control.”
“It’s so clearly excessive and ridiculous,” Murphy said. “That’s the kind of action which should get you fired.”
“How big a threat did you think he was?” Brown said, noting that the officer slung his rifle around his back before grabbing and body-slamming the protester. “You can’t go grab someone just because they say, ‘F the police.’”
In November, Border Patrol agents rushed into the construction site of a future Panda Express in Charlotte, North Carolina, to check workers’ papers. When one man tried to run, an officer put him in a chokehold and later marched him out, bloodied, to a waiting SUV.
Freelance photographer Ryan Murphy, who had been following Border Patrol’s convoys around Charlotte, documented the Panda Express arrest.
“Their tactics are less sophisticated than you would think,” he told ProPublica. “They sort of drive along the streets, and if they see somebody who looks to them like they could potentially be undocumented, they pull over.”
Experts told ProPublica that if officers are targeting a specific individual, they can minimize risks by deciding when, where and how to take them into custody. But when they don’t know their target in advance, chaos — and abuse — can follow.
“They are encountering people they don’t know anything about,” said Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director at ICE.
“The stuff that I’ve been seeing in the videos,” Kerlikowske said, “has been just ragtag, random.”
There may be other factors, too, our experts said, including quotas and a lack of consequences amid gutted oversight. With officers wearing masks, Shuchart said, “even if they punch grandma in the face, they won’t be identified.”
As they sweep into American cities, immigration officers are unconstrained — and, the experts said, unprepared. Even well-trained officers may not be trained for the environments where they now operate. Patrolling a little-populated border region takes one set of skills. Working in urban areas, where citizens — and protesters — abound, takes another.
DHS and Bovino did not respond to questions about their agents’ preparation or about the chokehold in Charlotte.
Experts may think there’s abuse. But holding officers to account? That’s another matter.
Back in Houston, immigration officers dropped 16-year-old Arnoldo off at the doorstep of his family home a few hours after the arrest. His neck was bruised, and his new shirt was shredded. Videos taken by his older sisters show the soccer star struggling to speak through sobs.
Uncertain what exactly had happened to him, his sister Maria Bazan took him to Texas Children’s Hospital, where staff identified signs of the chokehold and moved him to the trauma unit. Hospital records show he was given morphine for pain and that doctors ordered a dozen CT scans and X-rays, including of his neck, spine and head.
From the hospital, Maria called the Houston Police Department and tried to file a report, the family said. After several unsuccessful attempts, she took Arnoldo to the department in person, where she says officers were skeptical of the account and their own ability to investigate federal agents.
Arnoldo had filmed much of the incident, but agents had taken his phone. He used Find My to locate the phone — at a vending machine for used electronics miles away, close to an ICE detention center. The footage, which ProPublica has reviewed, backed the family’s account of the chase.
The family says Houston police still haven’t interviewed them. A department spokesperson told ProPublica it was not investigating the case, referring questions to DHS. But the police have also not released bodycam footage and case files aside from a top sheet, citing an open investigation.
“We can’t do anything,” Maria said one officer told her. “What can HPD do to federal agents?”
Elsewhere in the country, some officials are trying to hold federal immigration officers to account.
In California, the state Legislature passed bills prohibiting immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring them to display identification during operations.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law that allows residents to sue any officer who violates state or federal constitutional rights. (The Trump administration quickly filed legal challenges against California and Illinois, claiming their new laws are unconstitutional.)
In Minnesota, state and local leaders are collecting evidence in Renee Good’s killing even as the federal government cut the state out of its investigation.
Arnoldo is still waiting for Houston authorities to help him, still terrified that a masked agent will come first. Amid soccer practice and making up schoolwork he missed while recovering, he watches and rewatches the videos from that day. The car chase, the chokehold, his own screams at the officers to leave his dad alone. His father in the driver’s seat, calmly handing Arnoldo his wallet and phone while stopping mid-chase for red lights.
The Bazan family said agents threatened to charge Arnoldo if his dad didn’t agree to be deported. DHS spokesperson McLaughlin did not respond when asked about the alleged threat. Arnoldo’s dad is now in Mexico.
Asked why an officer choked Arnoldo, McLaughlin pointed to the boy’s alleged assault with his elbow, adding, “The federal law enforcement officer graciously chose not to press charges.”
How We Did It
ProPublica journalists Nicole Foy, McKenzie Funk, Joanna Shan, Haley Clark and Cengiz Yar gathered videos via Spanish and English social media posts, local press reports and court records. We then sent a selection of these videos to eight police experts and former immigration officials, along with as much information as we could gather about the lead-up to and context of each incident. The experts analyzed the videos with us, explaining when and how officers used dangerous tactics that appeared to go against their training or that have been banned under the Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy.
We also tried to contact every person we could identify being choked or kneeled on. In some cases, we also reached out to bystanders.
Research reporter Mariam Elba conducted criminal record searches of every person we featured in this story. She also attempted to fact-check the allegations that DHS made about the civilians and their arrests. Our findings are not comprehensive because there is no universal criminal record database.
We also sent every video cited in this story to the White House, DHS, CBP, ICE, border czar Tom Homan and Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin provided a statement responding to some of the incidents we found but she did not explain why agents used banned tactics or whether any of the agents have been disciplined for doing so.
We’ve always known the ultimate goal was to subject everyone to biometric collections, whether it’s at border crossings or international airports. At some point, the tech will move inland and become an annoying part of traveling from Point A to B because national security or whatever the fuck.
The acceleration was a bit more limited during the Biden years, but the desire to turn everyone into data points for government exploitation remained. Now that Trump is back in office, what was previously used to track inherently suspicious foreigners (that would be all the ones that aren’t white) will soon be used to track everyone.
This was first pitched by the DHS back in November, as “Papers Please” reports. Public comments are being accepted, but probably not being welcomed unless they’re sufficiently congratulatory of this expansion of surveillance power. Here’s what Papers Please has to say about it in its recent post:
As part of an array of proposals and rules issued by components of the US Department of Homeland Security to collect a widening array of biometric information and systems from widening categories of individuals, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is proposing a new rule that would authorize collection of any form of biometric information or samples from anyone, including US citizens, “encountered” by USCIS or “associated with” any applicant for admission to the US, US residency, or US citizenship.
The proposed rule would give USCIS blanket authority, at its discretion, to order any such individual to report to any location worldwide specified by USCIS, and to submit to collection of facial images (“digital image, specifically for facial recognition”), fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, retinal scans, voice prints, and/or DNA samples.
“Associated with” is a pretty broad term — one that could cover any business employing foreigners or any school accepting applicants with student visas. And that’s not Papers Please editorializing the DHS/USCIS proposal. That’s a direct quote of its Federal Register posting:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposes to amend its regulations governing biometrics use and collection. DHS proposes to require submission of biometrics by any individual, regardless of age, filing or associated with an immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, unless exempted; expand biometrics collection authority upon alien arrest; define ‘‘biometrics;’’ codify reuse requirements; codify and expand DNA testing, use and storage; establish an ‘‘extraordinary circumstances’’ standard to excuse a failure to appear at a biometric services appointment; modify how VAWA self-petitioners and T nonimmigrant status applicants demonstrate good moral character; and clarify biometrics collection purposes.
This means family members, friends, immigration lawyers, and the above-mentioned schools and businesses could all be expected to submit their biometric information to the DHS. There’s also the weird thing about “good moral character,” which presumably means someone’s character aligns with the current MAGA leadership, no matter its evident lack of good moral character. It also seeks to codify stuff it’s already doing and expand its power to do more of that same stuff elsewhere for other reasons and under other conditions.
The laundry list of people expected to bring their eyeballs, faces, and fingerprints to the DHS is described in a bit more detail later in the DHS proposal:
Using biometrics for identity verification and management will assist DHS’s efforts to combat trafficking, confirm the results of biographical criminal history checks, and deter fraud. Therefore, DHS proposes in this rule that any applicant, petitioner, sponsor, supporter, derivative, dependent, beneficiary, or individual filing or associated with a benefit request or other request or collection of information, including U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals and lawful permanent residents, and without regard to age, must submit biometrics unless DHS otherwise exempts the requirement.
If you ask me, this is less about a hunger for data than an attempt to dissuade people from assisting migrants, students, or temporary laborers from seeking a path to permanent residence. Our immigration processes have left us largely unaffected by terrorists or international criminal cartels, despite the government’s persistent (and consistently louder) claims otherwise. A vast majority of immigrants are hardworking, tax-paying people who commit fewer crimes than US citizens.
Then there’s this, which says the DHS will now be allowed to track/reject/kick out applicants based on their sexual identity:
Similarly, under this rule, DHS may expressly require, request, or accept raw DNA or DNA test results (which include a partial DNA profile) as evidence to determine eligibility for immigration and naturalization benefits or to perform any other functions necessary for administering and enforcing immigration and naturalization laws. For example, DHS may request DNA evidence to prove or disprove an individual’s biological sex in instances where that determination will impact benefit eligibility.
Neat. As if this whole shit show needed any more Nazi added to it. As was noted above, the public has been invited to comment on this proposal. But I can almost guarantee you the opposition will be ignored in favor of ensuring the GOP has a Fatherland to rule for the foreseeable future.
It was a chilly afternoon in January, just a week after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, when I met Yineska, a Venezuelan mother who had been living in the United States for nearly two years. Trump’s election, she told me, had put her in a bind. On his first day back in office, Trump announced that he planned to end the humanitarian parole program that had allowed her, her children and more than 100,000 other Venezuelans to come to the United States in recent years. She feared that the new life she had worked so hard to build was about to unravel.
I went to her home and we talked for hours in the small kitchen. She told me about her two boys, Sebastián and Gabriel, and about Eduard, her partner, who worked as a cook in a restaurant nearby in Doral, Florida, a city beside Miami. She described how difficult it had been to leave her family and small business behind in a once-thriving part of Venezuela, now hollowed out by years of economic decline. The journey to the U.S. was grueling. It took almost seven months for Yineska, her boys and a nephew to cross the dangerous Darién Gap and then Mexico before reuniting with Eduard in Miami.
They managed to rent a safe space to live on the edge of Doral, found work and enrolled the boys in school. Yineska’s oldest was excited about getting an American high school diploma. And then, with the swipe of his pen, the president threatened to take away the stable lives they had finally begun to build. I could hear the fear in her voice as we spoke.
I introduced myself to Yineska because I knew she wasn’t alone. I’m a journalist and filmmaker at ProPublica, and I moved to the U.S. from Venezuela nearly a decade ago. I was fortunate to arrive with a visa that allowed me to work legally.
As I watched Trump’s second presidential campaign, I sensed what might be coming. His return to office would thrust so many Venezuelans who had recently settled in the U.S. between two storm clouds: an American government turning against them and a repressive regime back home that offered no future. Many of my Venezuelan friends saw something entirely different. They believed his return would be a blessing for our community, that he would cast out only those who had brought trouble and shield the rest.
When I left Yineska’s house that first night, I wrote in my notebook: “This is a good family. A working family. They represent so many Venezuelans who came here seeking safety and opportunity — and, in many ways, they represent me, too.”In her story, I saw the chance to highlight the quiet anxiety growing in some corners of Doral that the sense of safety we had found in America could disappear overnight.
Doral is the heart of the Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S. About 40% of those who live there emigrated from my country to escape the deep economic, political and social collapse that has unfolded in the nearly 12 years President Nicolás Maduro has been in power. His authoritarian grip and the country’s unraveling economy caused nearly 8 million people to flee, mostly to other Latin American countries and the Caribbean. It’s the largest mass displacement in the Western Hemisphere’s recent history.
When I came to the U.S., most Latinos were facing the first waves of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. At the time, Trump called Mexican people “bad hombres.” Venezuelans, by contrast, were not viewed negatively. Trump took a hard line against Maduro, imposing heavy economic sanctions meant to weaken his autocratic hold on power. The stance earned Trump broad support among Venezuelan exiles in the U.S., especially in South Florida and in Doral. In the final days of his first term, Trump recognized the danger Venezuelans faced if they were forced to return and issued a memorandum that temporarily shielded those already in the U.S. from deportation.
In the following years, President Joe Biden opened several temporary pathways that allowed more than 700,000 Venezuelans to live legally in the U.S. His administration granted humanitarian parole to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, like Yineska and her sons, allowing them to reside and work in the U.S. for up to two years if they passed background checks and secured financial sponsors. He also expanded Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans already living here, which prevented them from being sent back to an unstable Venezuela and granted them work permits.
After securing humanitarian parole and entering the U.S. in April 2023, Yineska and her two sons made their way to Florida to reunite with Eduard. He was in Miami and had applied for TPS. Traveling with Yineska was a nephew who applied for asylum. All of them entered the U.S. legally.
Even as some in the community benefitted from Biden’s policies, many Venezuelans counted themselves among the Latinos who argued that the Biden administration was giving asylum-seekers preferential treatment and not carefully vetting those entering the country. They said that lax oversight had allowed criminals, including members of the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, to cross into the U.S. They also wanted Biden to take a stronger stance against Maduro. In 2024, the Venezuelan American vote helped Trump win handily in Miami-Dade County.
Since Trump returned to the White House, that loyalty has been shaken. His administration has targeted Venezuelans in some of its most dramatic and punitive operations. In February, the federal government flew more than 230 Venezuelans to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where men described being beaten and berated. The administration branded them “the worst of the worst.”
My colleagues found that the U.S. government knew the vast majority had not been convicted of any crime here. Its own data indicated that of the 32 men with convictions, only six were for violent crimes. In response to that reporting, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted, without providing evidence, that the deportees were “terrorists, human rights abusers, gang members and more — they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”
At the same time, the Trump administration has sought to end legal protections for families like Yineska’s. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in April that Temporary Protected Status “was only supposed to be used in times of war or storm or destruction in the home countries of these migrants. It was completely abused.”
“It’s as if you’re standing on a rug that’s pulled from under you,” Yineska told me during one of our many conversations in her kitchen. For Venezuelan families like hers, the idea of “temporary relief” feels detached from reality. They have followed the rules and envisioned a future for their children. To tell them that their safety has an expiration date while their home country remains mired in the same crisis they fled — and is now in the crosshairs of the U.S. military — is a painful contradiction.
Venezuelans I spoke with, including Yineska and Eduard, said migrants who break the law should face consequences, but those who follow the rules should have an opportunity to stay. And even as they confront the administration’s crackdown, many still cheer Trump’s hard-line stance against Maduro because they see a glimmer of hope that Venezuela might finally move toward a brighter future, something Venezuelans everywhere — myself included — dream of. But the future is dimming for those in Doral with temporary status. I see the impact every day. Restaurants are quieter. More apartments are listed for rent. The energy that once defined this community isn’t the same.
I am now a U.S. citizen, but this milestone feels bittersweet as I watch friends pack their belongings to seek opportunities abroad. Few plan to return to Venezuela.
As the hostility of the administration pressed down on people like Yineska and her family, they worried they, too, would be forced to pack their bags. My new film, “Status: Venezuelan,” follows them as they weigh fear against hope, struggling to decide whether to fight for the life they have built or leave everything behind.
The president, who drapes himself in the flag so inappropriately you’d think it would be filing HR complaints on a daily basis, is now preventing some the best potential US citizens from becoming US citizens.
Ever since Trump’s unexpected second appearance in the Oval Office began, it was immediately clear the bigoted efforts he fired up during his first term were only a prelude to the incessant cruelty he’s engaged in now. Trump leveraged a tragedy into an opportunity to shut down migration efforts from 10 countries. A few days later, the DHS (via dog-killing frontmouth Kristi Noem) said the racist plague had expanded to cover another nine countries.
While this took place, Trump converted his personal animus towards political opponents into truly racist invective targeting an entire country:
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he did not want Somali immigrants in the U.S., saying residents of the war-ravaged eastern African country are too reliant on U.S. social safety net and add little to the United States.
[…]
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump told reporters near the end of a lengthy Cabinet meeting. He added: “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
Trump continues to insist there’s no better place in the world than the United States. Then he makes it clear the only people welcome to avail themselves of his version of American exceptionalism are whites who probably already live here. Everyone else from anywhere else can go fuck themselves… if they can find time to do so between being persecuted/tortured to death in their countries of origin.
Immigrants approved to be naturalized went to Faneuil Hall Thursday — known as the country’s cradle of liberty — for that long-awaited moment to pledge allegiance to the United States. But instead, as they lined up, some were told by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that they couldn’t proceed due to their countries of origin.
The same situation is playing out at naturalization events across the country as USCIS directed its employees to halt adjudicating all immigration pathways for people from 19 countries deemed to be “high risk”.
That’s right. People who have spent years jumping through all the citizenship hoops (which includes a test 99% of natural-born American citizens couldn’t pass) are being fucked out of their effort by a bunch of racists who have been given the keys to the American Dream kingdom.
This is heartbreaking. And it’s just as heartbreaking even if you don’t often engage with recent American citizens or migrants doing everything they can to remain in this land of opportunity. And it’s obviously targeted. The whole process didn’t get shut down. It only targeted the people this administration feels are more worthless than others.
“People are devastated and they’re frightened,” Breslow told GBH News. “People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony.”
This is where I get personal, mainly because there are still too many commenters willing to wade in and spew stereotypes and bad faith arguments all over the the comment thread.
Outside of Techdirt, I am otherwise employed. Most of my recent work experience involves manufacturing. My current job spreads that to things like meat processing and food prep. I have had the privilege to work beside some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever encountered. And few of those people were white, natural-born US citizens.
I have witnessed the sheer joy of coworkers returning from citizenship ceremonies like these. I have seen them struggle with not only the weirdness of the American language, but the subsets created by heavy industry without ever seeing any one of these amazing people express any desire to give it all up.
I have watched an absolute fireball of a young man — an El Salvadoran refugee — work 100+ hours week after week to turn his dreams into a reality. I also had the pleasure of watching this person obtain his US citizenship after being jerked around by the bureaucracy that always makes this sort of thing more difficult than it should be, even when not overseen by a cadre of white Christian nationalists. I also saw this man turn his hours of servitude to multiple employers into the most impractical of second vehicles: a 2019 Maserati GT, which is not the sort of car one would expect anyone to buy in a state that spends 4 months a year covered in snow. (To be fair, his primary vehicle is a 2014 Ford F-150.)
These immigrants are amazing. And their work ethic embodies the American ideal of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Meanwhile, the more privileged in our midst have been buying “rolling coal” flip switches and turning the American flag into something that can be brandished with ill intent, completely erasing its long history as a symbol of hope. On top of it all, there’s the new Trump administration, which sees bootstraps as Achilles tendons and immediately starts slashing away at them.
Many of the best people I know weren’t born here. The people I do know who make the most noise about patriotism are mainly hypocrites whose claims about using their Second Amendment rights to protect the rest of the Constitution are as empty as their claims that it’s always everyone but them to blame for the shithole Trump is desperate to turn this country into.
We are ruled by people who have never truly engaged with anyone who doesn’t completely align with their views and preconceptions. The real world is filled with people who are wonderful and open and giving and never ask for anything more than to be treated as fellow human beings. This administration wants those people gone and, if possible, scrubbed from history. But these are the people I would go full “ride or die” for: the people who have seen the worst the world has to offer and still remain optimistic and helpful and considerate despite having lived through things most Americans can’t possibly imagine.
The people running the government have never experienced joy. The only way they can interact with optimism is by pushing the narrative that the glass is half-empty and insisting it’s the “others” among us who have taken the best part of the glass’s content and left us to deal with what’s left over. It’s all lies. And yet it will always work because, while it’s impossible to get a majority of Americans to agree on a hero, it’s insanely easy to get most Americans to agree on a scapegoat.
A recent shooting involving a former Afghani US counter-terrorism asset who worked with the CIA (!!!) has become the tragedy the Trump administration apparently needed to go from “consistently racist” to “openly racist.” The wounding of two National Guard troops led directly to the president spending the holiday doing what he always does on holidays: ranting about a bunch of shit rather than just wish the people he supposed to serving a happy Thanksgiving.
Trump went on a multi-day Truth Social bender, beginning with multiple invective-filled posts on Thanksgiving that led to a marathon 158-post (!!!) barrage over a three-hour period starting late Monday (December 1) night.
Trump dropped back-to-back “bangers” on Truth Social, both loaded with bigoted language that made it clear the US — under Trump — is only interested in importing white people.
This post first blamed Biden for some stuff before moving on (within the space of a sentence) to declaring the termination of asylum/visa applications from nations Trump considers to be unworthy of entering the former Land of Opportunity.
I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.
It appears the administration will decide which countries fit the “Third World” descriptor on a case-by-bigoted-case basis. This means the ten countries considered too inherently dangerous to be allowed to be part of the migration ecosystem are (lol) in the minority. If you’ve been paying attention, the original list of countries whose residents are forbidden from entering the US contains a lot of countries this administration wants to send deportees like Kilmar Abrego Garcia to, despite much-friendlier countries (Costa Rica, for example) offering to take Garcia off the US government’s hands.
Mr. Trump’s June proclamation imposed a near-total restriction on the entry of people from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The Trump administration has halted all immigration applications filed by people from 19 countries, its latest move to restrict legal immigration pathways following the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., last week, according to internal government guidance and a source familiar with the move.
[…]
It also partially suspended the entry of travelers and immigrants from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
The latest proclamation means all 19 of these countries are on Trump’s shit list. The limitations are now effectively a complete ban on migration. And former residents of the listed nations can expect to be deported ASAFP. (“Feasibly.”)
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is recommending that the Trump administration’s travel ban list include between 30 to 32 countries, marking an increase from the current list of 19 countries, according to a source familiar with the matter.
[…]
Noem said Monday that, following a meeting with President Donald Trump, she recommended a “full travel ban” on “every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
Huh. Will the US of A be added to that list, considering it generates plenty of “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” on its own? The simple fact is that immigrants commit fewer crimes, pay more than their share of taxes, and generally do everything they can to stand on their own two feet, even when the government insists on depriving them of their bootstraps every time a bunch of bigots seize an inordinate amount of power.
And that leads us back to what’s always been propelling this mass deportation surge: the GOP’s racism, currently embodied by an aged, obese man with bad hair who has never wanted for anything in his life: Donald Trump.
His immediate follow-up (one [1] minute later [!!]) to his pseudo-Thanksgiving well-wishing was this post, which immediately attacked political opponents not just because they opposed him, but because they were not as white as Trump is (current level of spray tan notwithstanding).
I’m going to quote quite a bit of it (for which I kind of apologize) because you have to see all of this for yourself and ABSOLUTELY KNOW this has all been written by a man who currently holds the office of the President of the United States. (All emphasis mine.)
YOUR WALL OF TEXT AWAITS.
The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels. They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form. They put up with what has happened to our Country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher. This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.). As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc…
Yeah. This is “racist grandpa” shit except that it’s being said by perhaps the most powerful man in the world. There are lies about the costs immigrants create, followed by a bunch of stereotypes, the casual use of the word “retarded” to describe another politician, and the well-past-the-point-of-insinuation claims that Ilhan Omar not only married her brother but comes from a country that shouldn’t even be considered a country.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he did not want Somali immigrants in the U.S., saying residents of the war-ravaged eastern African country are too reliant on U.S. social safety net and add little to the United States.
[…]
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump told reporters near the end of a lengthy Cabinet meeting. He added: “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
[…]
Trump also renewed his criticism of Omar, whose family fled the civil war in Somalia and spent several years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the U.S.
“We can go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way, if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Trump said. “Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
Man, I can only hope that when the face-eating leopard party really starts stripping faces off the MAGA faithful, their asylum requests will be rejected with the same callous shrugging about how these people are “garbage” that shouldn’t be allowed to enter other countries because the United States “stinks” and their pasty white nationalists “contribute nothing” to the world at large. And I also hope these little Mussolini wannabes the GOP caters will take a look at history and wonder whether it’s truly worth it to be the worst Americans imaginable just because it plays well with the Nazis.
