Immigration Policy: Christian Ethics from a Christian Restorative Justice Perspective

Audio recording file and Powerpoint slides to a workshop that Mako gave to New Creation Albuquerque and Emmanuel Chapel in October 2024. The discussion of immigration starts at the 1:23:25 minute mark.

Debate on Facebook about Undocumented Immigrants, Tax Revenues, and Social Services

A debate on Facebook, Jun 12, 2025. Undocumented immigrants do use social services, but the second generation’s economic contributions make their presence a net boon for the U.S.

Debate on Facebook about Immigration and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Trump’s Deportations, and Denial of Due Process

A debate on Facebook, Apr 2025. Or see this link to a Google Doc.

Debate on Facebook about the Impact of Trump’s Immigration Policies

A debate on Facebook, Oct 24 - 29, 2020. While there is a range of immigration policies that could be morally acceptable, given larger economic and political policy positions, Mako argues against Trumpian rhetoric and priorities, as Trump’s vision against immigrants and scapegoating of them was one of the most dehumanizing and destructive lies he asserted.

Cambridge Institute on Religion and International Studies (website)

Karl Barth, On Refugees. Absurdity of Absurdities blog, from Oct 1942.

M. Daniel Carroll R., Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible. Baker Academic | Amazon page, May 1, 2008.

Robert Woodberry, The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy. American Political Science Review, May 2012.  Important human rights activism which serve as precedents.

Elaine Padilla and Peter C. Phan, Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology. Palgrave Macmillan | Amazon page, 2013.

Gary Haugen, The Poor Deserve Equal Protection Under the Law. Washington Post, Jan 26, 2014.

Elaine Padilla and Peter C. Phan, Theology of Migration in the Abrahamic Religions. Palgrave Macmillan | Amazon page, 2014.

Elaine Padilla and Peter C. Phan, Christianities in Migration: The Global Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan | Amazon page, 2016.

Ed Stetzer, Being Pro-Life Means Caring for All of Human Life. That Includes Being Pro-Refugee. Vox, Jun 26, 2017.

Carol Kuruvilla, Methodists Bring Church Charges Against Jeff Sessions for Border Policy. Huffington Post, Jun 19, 2018.

Seán P. O’Malley, The Human Consequences of Our Immigration Policies. Boston Globe, Sep 9, 2019.  An excellent example of Catholic engagement, and factual analysis

Obery Hendricks, Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith. Beacon Press | Amazon page, Jul 2021. Black theologian Obery Hendricks cogently critiques the unholy alliances between white evangelicals and the NRA, the modern antiabortion platform, big business and antilabor, and others. Chapter 5, on demonizing immigrants and Muslims, is important.

Skye Jethani, Racism and Immigration.  Holy Post, Nov 6, 2023.  A great overview of US history.

Rob Dalrymple, Immigration: They Aren’t Just Coming—We Drove Them Here. Determine Truth | Patheos, Jan 31, 2025.

Molly Lackey, A Congregation Older Than the Nation. Lutherans Engage, Summer 2025. “The 360-year-old Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Matthew in New York City has welcomed immigrants throughout the centuries.”

Daniel Montañez, “The Judges Were Fired… And Everyone Did What Was Right in Their Own Eyes”. The Center for Public Theology and Migration, Aug 5, 2025.

“The pressure of the executive branch to influence how the judicial branch should rule undermines the separation of powers and violates the checks and balances upon which our nation is built. When one branch of government impinges itself upon the role or function of another, constitutional rights and protections begin to crumble and democracy is on the road to failure. According to Pappas, “the very institutions that glue our society together are melting in front of our eyes. Our institutions are under attack.” Thus, the query of the David’s psalm seems relevant for today, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Ps. 11:3 (KJV)”

Chris Hayes, ‘Animals’: Feds Tackle Staff, Gas Students at Minneapolis High School, Witnesses Say. MS Now, Jan 8, 2025.

“Shortly after the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer, masked and armed Border Patrol agents entered the grounds of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis during dismissal. “If you thought that the awful tragedy yesterday would do anything to change the approach that the Department of Homeland Security is taking in Minnesota, you would be wrong,” says Chris Hayes. Sen. Richard Blumenthal joins to discuss.”

Kevin Briggins, Minneapolis, ICE, and the Christian Response. Informed Takes | Substack, Jan 26, 2026. Briggins acknowledges Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the white victims of ICE/CBP, but not the non-white victims. He also does not inquire into the reason Trump sent agents into Minneapolis in particular, provocatively. He also assumes he can invoke Acts 17:28 about nations and boundaries and territories today.

Wikipedia, Center for Security Policy (Wikipedia article) staffed by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists like Frank Gaffney

Jacob I. Stowell, Steven F. Messner, Kelly F. McGeever, Lawrence E. Raffalovich, Immigration and the Recent Violent Crime Drop in the United States: A Pooled, Cross-Sectional Time-Series Analysis of Metropolitan Areas. American Psychological Association, 2009.

Federation for American Immigration Reform, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers. FAIR, 2013.

Dylan Matthews, North Carolina Needed 6,500 Farm Workers. Only 7 Americans Stuck It Out. Washington Post, May 15, 2013.

Innes Bowen, Who Runs Our Mosques? UK Spectator, Jun 14, 2014.

Terry Gross, America's Forgotten History Of Mexican-American 'Repatriation'. NPR, Sep 10, 2015.

Ali F. Rhuzkan, An Engineer Explains Why Trump's Wall Is So Implausible. The National Memo, Sep 21, 2015.

Economist, German Flexibility: No One Was Sure Germany Could Handle Its Migrant Crisis. It Turns Out It Can. Economist, Oct 24, 2015.

Morgan Lee, Why Are There Only 53 Christians Among America's 2,184 Syrian Refugees. Christianity Today, Nov 20, 2015.

Jack Holmes, This Old Clip of Reagan Talking About Immigration Will, Very Likely, Blow Your Mind. Esquire, Jan 7, 2016.  quoting Bush and Reagan in 1980

Betsy Cooper, Daniel Cox, Rachel Lienesch, Robert P. Jones, How Americans View Immigrants, and What They Want from Immigration Reform: Findings from the 2015 American Values Atlas. PRRI, Mar 29, 2016.  and Leonardo Blair, Majority of White Evangelicals Believe Immigrants Threaten American Values, Study Finds. Christian Post, Mar 29, 2016.

Annalisa Merelli, 1,700 Years Ago, the Mismanagement of a Migrant Crisis Cost Rome Its Empire. Quartz, May 7, 2016.  although the idea of a "fall" of the Western Roman Empire is debated, versus a decentralizing and recentralizing in the Carolingian regime, and a shift in power from the Latins to the Frankish Germanic, who would have been surprised to hear of a "fall" of the Western Empire because they thought of themselves as "Romans"; the point is still important to consider.

American Immigration Council, Did My Family Really Come “Legally”? Today’s Immigration Laws Created a New Reality. American Immigration Council, Aug 10, 2016.

James West, Former Models for Donald Trump’s Agency Say They Violated Immigration Rules and Worked Illegally. Mother Jones, Aug 30, 2016. “It’s like modern-day slavery.” See also Calton Jock, This report outlines the known, alleged, and circumstantial connections between Russian individuals, organizations (including criminal and intelligence services), and the networks surrounding Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Caltonjock, Aug 27, 2025. See also Wendy A. Lawrence, Trump’s Teen Modeling Agency Recruited Where Epstein Trafficked. Medium, Dec 29, 2025. “Treasury Files Reveal Trump and Epstein Used Same Russian Banks to Move Teenage Girls from Eastern Europe”

Joseph Nevins, How US Policy in Honduras Set the Stage for Today's Mass Migration. The Conversation, Oct 31, 2016.  and Jeff Faux, How US Foreign Policy Helped Create the Immigration Crisis. The Nation, Oct 18, 2017.  highlight how we've dealt people massive injustice for cheap bananas

The Young Turks, Trump's Plans for Muslims Are Terrifying. The Young Turks, Nov 16, 2016.  comments on Steve King, Claire Lopez, etc.

Alice Speri, Donald Trump's Mass Deportations Would Cost Billions and Take Years to Process. The Intercept, Nov 18, 2016.  

Slavoj Žižek, Refugees, Conservatism, and Cultural Incompatibility. Big Think, Dec 4, 2016.  touches on what creates and drives refugees (conflict, political instability, corporate neo-colonialism) and the effects of refugee settlement. cultural conflicts)

Glenn Kessler, Trump's Claim That It Is 'Very Tough' for Christian Syrians to Get to the United States. Washington Post, Jan 28, 2017.

Joby Warrick, Jihadist Groups Hail Trump's Travel Ban as a Victory. Washington Post, Jan 29, 2017.

Jon Finer, Sorry, Mr. President, the Obama Administration Did Nothing Similar to Your Immigration Ban. Foreign Policy, Jan 30, 2017.

Jayson Casper, What Arab Church Leaders Think of Trump Prioritizing Persecuted Christian Refugees. Christianity Today, Jan 30, 2017.

Zack Beauchamp, Trump Says Obama Banned Refugees Too. He's Wrong. Vox, Jan 31, 2017.

Alice Salles, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and What You’re Not Being Told About Trump’s Travel Ban. Anonymous, Feb 1, 2017.  Nixon's petrodollar deal with Saudi Arabia

Andrew D. Perrine, How One Small Virginia Town Embraces Immigration - And is Better For It. Washington Post, Feb 10, 2017.

Tanvi Misra, Are Refugees Dangerous? In Nine of Ten Cities That Accepted the Largest Number of Refugees, Crime Went Down - Sometimes Dramatically. The Atlantic Citylab, Feb 14, 2017.

Relevant Magazine, Survey: 76% of 'White Evangelical Protestants' Agree with the President's Refugee Ban. Relevant Magazine, Feb 17, 2017.

Peter Bergen, Trump's Travel Ban is Useless. Terrorists Mostly Come from Our Own Backyard. Washington Post, Jun 5, 2017.

Ed Stetzer, Being Pro-Life Means Caring for All of Human Life. That Includes Being Pro-Refugee. Vox, Jun 26, 2017.

Amanda Taub, Canada's Secret to Resisting the West's Populist Wave. New York Times, Jun 27, 2017.

Ryan Devereaux, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Will Remove "Nation of Immigrants" from Mission Statement. The Intercept, Feb 22, 2018.

Joseph W. Tobin, If You’re a Patriot and a Christian, You Should Support the Dream Act. New York Times, Feb 26, 2018.  on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' position

Jacqueline Stevens, When Migrants Are Treated Like Slaves. New York Times, Apr 4, 2018.  re: border stops and incarceration

John Burnett, Illegal Immigration Does Not Increase Violent Crime, 4 Studies Show. NPR, May 2, 2018.

Kathryn Johnson, Trump Has Ended Temporary Protected Status for Hundreds of Thousands of Immigrants. Here's What You Need to Know. American Friends Service Committee, May 4, 2018.

Tanvi Misra, Inside the Massive U.S. 'Border Zone'. CityLab, May 14, 2018.

Bill Chappell, 55 Palestinian Protesters Killed, Gaza Officials Say, As U.S. Opens Jerusalem Embassy. NPR, May 14, 2018.  

Jaana Juvonen and Jennifer Silvers, Separating Children from Parents at the Border Isn’t Just Cruel. It’s Torture. Washington Post, May 15, 2018.  and against international law

The Young Turks, Tomi Lahren Gets Owned on Immigration. The Young Turks, May 15, 2018.

Philip Bump, The Group Least Likely to Think the U.S. Has a Responsibility to Accept Refugees? Evangelicals. Washington Post, May 24, 2018.  and Brandon Showalter, White Evangelicals Most Supportive of Separating Migrant Children From Parents, But Most Oppose: Poll. Christian Post, Jun 27, 2018.

Mike Hale, Review: A New Film Investigates the Time America Banned an Entire Race. New York Times, May 28, 2018.

Michael Paarlberg, Child Abuse Is Now Part of America's Official Immigration Policy. The Guardian, Jun 14, 2018.

Stephen Colbert, Jeff Sessions Cites the Bible in Separating Children from Parents. The Late Show, Jun 14, 2018.

Mark Joseph Stern, Trump's DOJ Contradicts His Claim That Democrats Are to Blame for Family Separation. Slate, Jun 15, 2018.

Bethany Mandel, How Did the GOP Find Itself Separating Families? The Atlantic, Jun 19, 2018.  the party of family values is now defending a government agency that is forcibly separating children from their parents; see also McKay Coppins, The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants. The Atlantic, Jun 19, 2018.  see also Dara Lind and Dylan Scott, Flores Agreement: Trump's Executive Order to End Family Separation Might Run Afoul of a 1997 Court Ruling. The Atlantic, Jun 20, 2018.

Julia Ainsley, Trump Admin's 'Tent Cities' Cost More Than Keeping Migrant Kids with Parents. NBC News, Jun 20, 2018.

Charlie Baily and Schuyler Henderson, The Clinical Case for Keeping Families Together. NBC News, Jun 20, 2018.  clinical practitioners with over a decade of research on Central American families

Todd Tucker, How Mexico Could Force America's Hand on Immigrants. Politico, Jun 22, 2018.  through the Organization of American States (OAS), remarkably and ironically; highlights the possibility that international institutions might play a viable legal role

Justin Rohrlich and Adam Rawnsley, A Native American Tribe Has a $800 Million Contract to Run ICE Detention Centers. Daily Beast, Jul 6, 2018.  “The National Congress of American Indians has called Trump’s immigration policies ‘simply immoral.’ One member group, though, is taking a very different approach.”

Kathleen B. Jones, What the Nazis Taught Philosopher Hannah Arendt About the Rights of Refugees. Sojourners, Jul 17, 2018.  explores the context of European ethno-nation-states as the challenge of post-Imperial Europe.

Ian Bremmer, Trump’s Not the Problem. He’s a Symbol of 4 Bigger Issues. Big Think, Aug 1, 2018.  Neoliberal globalization drains work and wealth from people, making them resent immigrants for the opportunities and benefits they receive in the country; veterans return from wars feeling dejected and despondent; technology automates jobs away and drives people apart through social media. Compares populist movements to Japan, which largely rejected neoliberalism, immigration, war, and social media.

Democracy Now, Melania Trump’s Parents Become U.S. Citizens Through Process Trump Wants to Eliminate. Democracy Now, Aug 10, 2018.  re: what Trump calls "chain migration"

David S. Glosser, Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle. Politico, Aug 13, 2018.  subtitled, "If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out."

Kathleen Frydl, Why We Should Abolish ICE - and the DEA Too. Vox, Aug 14, 2018.  On how a punitive organizational purpose and lack of measurable outcomes and accountability shapes recruitment and the behavior of personnel hired

Scott Martele, Now Trump Is Targeting Vietnamese Refugees. Los Angeles Times, Sep 5, 2018.

Daniel Larison, Iranian Christian Asylum Seekers Remain Stuck in Limbo. The American Conservative, Sep 5, 2018.  notes how the Trump administration is going back on its word to even provide asylum and refuge for Christians, without explanation

Caitlin Dickerson, Detention of Migrant Children Has Skyrocketed to Highest Levels Ever. New York Times, Sep 12, 2018.  to 12,800

Melissa del Bosque, Border Patrol Union Endorses Extremist Video Featuring White Nationalists. The Intercept, Oct 23, 2018.

Scott McConnell, The Coming Battle for European Civilization. The American Conservative, Nov 8, 2018.  concerning mainly immigration into Europe

Sonia Moghe and Rosa Flores, Shelters Holding Nearly 15,000 Migrant Children Near Capacity. CNN, Dec 13, 2018.

Randall, Rep Ted Lieu Defies Orders Not to Play Audio of Child Detainees. AsAm News, Dec 31, 2018.  said, "Ripping kids away from their parents is immoral. I believe in Jesus Christ. Every single thing in the Gospel goes against family separation."

Sean McMinn and Renee Klahr, Where Does Illegal Immigration Mostly Occur? Here's What The Data Tell Us. NPR, Jan 10, 2019.

Joe Ward and Anjali Singhvi, Trump Claims There Is a Crisis at the Border. What’s the Reality? New York Times, Jan 11, 2019.

Victoria Law, End Forced Labor in Immigrant Detention. New York Times, Jan 29, 2019.  Congress is allowing private contractors to exploit detained immigrants

Kate Linthicum, Cindy Carcamo, Molly O’Toole, Immigrant Rights Attorneys and Journalists Denied Entry Into Mexico. Los Angeles Times, Feb 1, 2019.  “Two U.S. immigrant rights attorneys and two journalists who have worked closely with members of a migrant caravan in Tijuana said they had been denied entry into Mexico in recent days after their passports were flagged with alerts by an unknown government.”

Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, Hispanics, Not Trump, Are the Biggest Engine Of U.S. Economic Growth. New York Times, Feb 11, 2019.  references the study by Gonzalo Huertas and Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, The Economic Benefits of Latino Immigration: How the Migrant Hispanic Population’s Demographic Characteristics Contribute to US Growth. Peterson Institute for International Economics, Feb 2019.

Tom Jones, Mari Payton, Bill Feather, Source: Leaked Documents Show the U.S. Government Tracking Journalists and Immigration Advocates Through a Secret Database. NBC San Diego, Mar 6, 2019.  “The documents detail an intelligence-gathering effort by the United States and Mexican authorities, targeting more than 50 people including journalists, an attorney, and immigration advocates”

Ariel Malka, Yphtach Lelkes, and Christopher J. Soto, Are Cultural and Economic Conservatism Positively Correlated? A Large-Scale Cross-National Test. British Journal of Political Science, Jul 2019.  more common to be negatively correlated.

Garrett M. Graff, The Border Patrol Hits a Breaking Point. Politico, Jul 15, 2019. “Behind this week’s migrant-center horrors lies an agency plagued by years of dysfunction—and Trump is only its latest problem.” A great article on the history of the Border Patrol, from the perspective of the agents, the organization’s health, and the organization’s goals.

Renae Merle, As Workplace Raids Multiply, Trump Administration Charges Few Companies. Washington Post, Aug 9, 2019.

“ICE has announced cases against five companies for immigration violations since 2017… Prosecuting corporations, as opposed to individual workers or managers, for immigration-related offenses was also relatively rare during the Obama administration, but it has slowed further under the Trump administration, according to a database maintained by Duke University and the University of Virginia and data reviewed by The Washington Post.

The Corporate Prosecution Registry tracks cases in which companies, rather than individuals, are charged with violating federal law, and it includes cases resolved with plea agreements as well as deferred and non-prosecution agreements.

There were at least 88 such cases against companies for immigration violations between 2009 and 2016 during the Obama administration and at least five companies prosecuted for immigration violations since Trump took office in 2017, according to the data on corporate prosecutions and a review of news releases from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University examined federal data for a one-year period — April 2018 through March 2019 — and found that no companies were prosecuted for knowingly hiring undocumented workers. “Actual prosecution of employers for employing immigrants without proper documentation actually has been relatively rare,” the report states.

Of the five immigration cases pursued against corporations under Trump, the largest was in 2017, against Asplundh Tree Experts, according to the Duke-University of Virginia database. The Pennsylvania company pleaded guilty and paid $95 million, the largest fine ever levied by ICE, for employing undocumented workers. The case was the culmination of a six-year investigation.

Meanwhile, Trump’s businesses have faced questions about their own hiring practices.

This year, The Washington Post found that Trump’s company employed undocumented immigrants for years at its golf clubs — hiring them as maintenance workers, groundskeepers and housekeepers. Latin American employees, including some who entered the United States illegally, built fountains and waterfalls, sidewalks and rock walls at the company’s winery and its golf courses for years, The Post reported Friday.

The Post has spoken to more than 40 undocumented former Trump workers, some of whom said they were pressed to work extra hours without pay, or urged by Trump supervisors to obtain false documents. The Trump Organization fired at least 18 undocumented workers in January, after an internal audit found their papers — some submitted years earlier — were fraudulent.”

Nicholas Kulish and Mike McIntire, Why an Heiress Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out. New York Times Magazine, Aug 14, 2019.  “Newly unearthed documents reveal how an environmental-minded socialite became an ardent nativist whose money helped sow the seeds of the Trump anti-immigration agenda” re: Cordelia Scaife May, an heiress to the Mellon banking and industrial fortune with half a billion dollars at her disposal, helped create the modern anti-immigrant movement on social Darwinian grounds.

Laurel Leff, Trump Is Using the Same Immigration Policy That Once Kept Out Jews Fleeing Nazi Germany. MarketWatch, Aug 21, 2019.  “The same “public charge” clause slashed immigration from Europe in the 1930s”.

David Scharfenberg, How Donald Trump Just Might Save the Republican Party — and the Country. Boston Globe, Sep 6, 2019.  identifies evangelicals Marco Rubio, who gestures towards a genuine economic nationalism over against neo-conservative and neo-liberal trade policies that decimated American manufacturing, and Josh Hawley, who is an evangelical culture warrior. Note the presence of Yoram Hazony and Amy Wax at the National Conservatism Conference, who argue for “cultural compatibility” in immigration.

Farron Cousins, Republican Official Indicted For Human Smuggling And Selling Babies. Ring of Fire, Oct 10, 2019.  re: Paul Petersen. See also Matthew Chapman, GOP Official Indicted for Human Smuggling and Sale of Children in Bizarre International Fraud Scheme. Raw Story, Oct 9, 2019.  “Maricopa County assessor Paul Petersen has been indicted on 11 counts, including human smuggling and sale of a child, as part of a far-reaching international adoption fraud scheme.”

Saagar Enjeti, Corbynism is a Dire Warning for the American Left. Rising | The Hill, Dec 13, 2019.  social-cultural conservatism is an important factor in voting; immigration is a cultural issue and not just an economic one 

Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Thousands of Migrant Children Were Sexually Abused in U.S. Custody, HHS Docs Say. CBS News, Feb 27, 2019.

Robert W. Merry, Democrats Ignore the Immigration Elephant in the Room. The American Conservative, Jan 17, 2020.  “The most important issue of Trump's ascent has drawn silence from the Democratic Party, now the party of the elites.”

Francis Fukuyama, Why Red and Blue America Can’t Hear Each Other Anymore. Washington Post, Jan 24, 2020.  reviews Ezra Klein, but places more weight on immigration as distinct from racial and cultural anxiety

James Jeffrey, For The First Time, No Big Texas Welcome For Refugees. The American Conservative, Feb 10, 2020.  “Trump allows states to opt out of resettlement and Governor Greg Abbott says yes. But is that right?”

John Washington, We Need to Reverse the Damage Trump Has Done in Latin America. Biden's Plans Don't Cut It. The Intercept, Apr 18, 2020.  

Jean Guerrero, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. William Morrow | Amazon page, Aug 11, 2020.  explores the anti-immigrant hostility from Miller, but also Trump’s base who wants to see vicious policies enacted against non-white immigrants, legal or illegal. See Morning Joe, Stephen Miller A 'Case Study In Radicalization,' Says Writer. Morning Joe | MSNBC, Aug 10, 2020.  Alex Woodward, 'I'm Confident He Won't Make the Same Mistakes as This President': Former Senior Trump Official Miles Taylor Endorses Joe Biden in Damning Video. UK Independent, Aug 17, 2020.  “Former DHS chief of staff accuses president of pitching 'deliberate' child separation policy and 'cutting off' assistance to California wildfire victims.” Suzanne Gamboa, ‘White Supremacy’ Was Behind Child Separations - and Trump Officials Went Along, Critics Say. NBC News, Aug 22, 2020.

Stuart Anderson, USCIS Staff Furloughs Will Grind Legal Immigration To A Halt. Forbes, Aug 17, 2020.  “The Trump administration is about to achieve what many see as its long-held objective of bringing the U.S. legal immigration system to a halt. While the administration would not be allowed to stop processing immigration applications without incurring legal action, critics say that through policy choices and mismanagement of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) it may accomplish the same goal.”

Associated Press, About 8,800 Unaccompanied Children Are Expelled at US Border. WANE, Sep 12, 2020.

Michael D. Shear, Katie Benner, and Michael S. Schmidt, ‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ No Matter How Young, Justice Dept. Officials Said. New York Times, Oct 21, 2020.  “Top department officials were “a driving force” behind President Trump’s child separation policy, a draft investigation report said.”

Julian Borger, US ICE Officers ‘Used Torture to Make Africans Sign Own Deportation Orders’. The Guardian, Oct 22, 2020.  “Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive” “According to multiple accounts, detainees were threatened, choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and threatened with more violence to make them sign. Several were put in handcuffs by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, and their fingerprints were taken forcibly in place of a signature on documents called stipulated orders of removal, by which the asylum seekers waive their rights to further immigration hearings and accept deportation.”

David Brooks, How the Democrats Won the War of Ideas. New York Times, Oct 24, 2020.  "The era of big government is here." See response by Jared Peterson, David Brooks Gets It Wrong. American Thinker, Oct 24, 2020.  who faults immigration for admitting people who are much more open to expansive government.

Dara Lind, Trump Got What He Wanted at the Border. Would Biden Undo It?. ProPublica, Oct 28, 2020.  “Democrats agree that Trump’s caused asylum-seekers unacceptable misery. But the goal of deterring people from migrating to the U.S. — which has motivated Trump’s complex web of border policies — has seduced some Democrats, too.”

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Rural Organizer: Media Gets Everything Wrong In Trump Voter Caricature. Rising | The Hill, Oct 29, 2020.  very important, on-the-ground field work for addressing the political issue of undocumented immigrants, and how corporate control of government stands behind it. “Director of People's Action, George Goehl, discusses why deep canvassing is important and the impact his organization has had so far utilizing the practice.”

Matt Beat, Debunking a PragerU Video About U.S. Immigration. Mr. Beat, Dec 20, 2020.  response to Michelle Malkin’s video

Alicia Menendez, 'The Best Defense Is The Truth;' Private Prison Company Sues Activist For Libel & Loses. MSNBC, Dec 20, 2020.  family separation is in fact happening. A court decided in favor of activist Morgan Simon and against private prison company Core Civic.

Daniella Silva, Migrant Women File Class-Action Lawsuit for Alleged Medical Abuse at ICE Detention Center. NBC News, Dec 22, 2020.  “About 40 women filed sworn testimony in the case, "revealing a relentless pattern of unnecessary and non-consensual medical procedures, including unwanted gynecological surgeries and other non-consensual medical interventions," according to a statement.”

Andrea Mitchell, DOJ Official Blames Trump Administration For Separation Policy At Border. Andrea Mitchell | MSNBC, Jan 14, 2021.

Lawrence O’Donnell, History Shows This Land Was Not Made For You And Me. The Last Word | MSNBC, Mar 24, 2021.  concisely points out that borders claimed in war are always problematic; the Southern border, especially California, used to be Mexico; implications; how politicians portray the ongoing challenge as a “crisis” at one time or another.

Krystal Ball, Media Ignores War on Drugs In Border Panic. Rising | The Hill, Mar 30, 2021.  a very helpful short segment on US interference in Latin America, especially Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras (where two-thirds of all the children coming across the border are from), “Plan Colombia,” the rise of drug cartels and the “war on drugs” in the US. Refers to John Washington, We Need to Reverse the Damage Trump Has Done in Latin America. Biden's Plans Don't Cut It. The Intercept, Apr 18, 2020. .

Cody Johnston et al., The Real Border Crisis. Some More News, Apr 7, 2021.  Operation Gatekeeper uses military deterrence in certain easily accessed portions of the border, forcing migrants to inhospitable areas. Douglas Massey, 2016, argues that emigration would occur under an open border policy.

Wisecrack, The Death of Law | Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Wisecrack, Apr 29, 2021.  Michael Burns explores spaces of legal exception where police are sovereign over people because of statelessness, and extrajudicial killings of people. The internment camp and the concentration camp are the quasi-legal and quasi-illegal space.

Ali Noorani, How Fighting Corruption in Central America Can Help Reduce Illegal Immigration. The Dispatch, Jun 24, 2021.  “Most migrants do not want to leave their home countries, but they do want to raise their families in safety.” There is truth to what he says, yet he overlooks the role of the US in destabilizing governments in Central America for the sake of short term profits by US companies. Notice: “What’s driving this migration, and how can the U.S. effectively respond? It’s a complicated question that begins with a long-term commitment to rooting out corruption… For decades, illicit criminal networks have committed violence and created widespread insecurity in the NTC….”  Yes, but what about prior US interference and disruption of democratic governance?

Vice News, The Law That Broke US Immigration. Vice News, Aug 9, 2021.  Vice explains the 1996 IIRIRA law. IIRIRA required undocumented immigrants to leave the US for 10 years in order to return and become naturalized.

Chris Hayes, Takes Apart The Racist Right-Wing Immigration Theory. MSNBC, Sep 24, 2021.  Hayes spotlights David Duke and Tucker Carlson, saying “racism is a form of stupidity.” In light of Haitian asylum-seekers on the Texas border, which is lawful under U.S. and international law, promulgating fears of immigrants and “replacement theory” are vicious. No one is being “replaced,” because a country is not a nightclub. And immigrants do not necessarily vote Democratic.

Meagan Flynn, Afghans Arrived Near a Small Virginia Town, Exposing Two Different Versions of America. Washington Post, Sep 25, 2021. a good spotlight on how immigration is not reducible to economics or fears of crime.

John B. Washington, Trump's Big Border Wall Is Now a Pile of Rusting Steel.  The Atlantic, Dec 20, 2021.

Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uyghur, Huge Fines Levied Against Dr. Oz’s Family Business For Illegal Hiting of Immigrants. The Young Turks, Jun 13, 2022.  Why Oz’s business was fined $95 million for hiring undocumented workers although Oz claims he wants to get tough on immigration: corporate hiring of undocumented people is the major culprit behind the lack of comprehensive immigration reform. Uyghur is also a Turkish-American immigrant like Oz and shares vital perspective.

Noah Pinion, Why Aren’t We Taking Every Chinese Refugee We Can? Noahpinion | Substack, Apr 18, 2023.

Saagar Enjeti and Ryan Grim, Saagar And Ryan Debate Border Crisis As Title 42 Ends. Breaking Points, May 11, 2023. Ryan Grim gives very important facts about US military and economic involvement in Latin America that contributes to the immigration crisis.

Kyle Kulinski, DeSantis Harsh Immigration Law Backfires. The Kyle Kulinski Show, May 18, 2023. Farms, construction sites, stores, gardening sites are abandoned.

Amy Goodman, Florida's "Terrifying" Anti-Immigrant Crackdown Sets Stage for Gov. Ron DeSantis's Presidential Run. Democracy Now, May 23, 2023.

Saagar Enjeti and Ryan Grim, Florida Construction Sites Empty: Is It Worth It? Breaking Points, May 23, 2023. If strawberries and orange juice cost more, then the Fed Chair says that inflation has gotten too high, raises rates, and tries to push labor costs down. Why not protect domestic labor, then use big government power to subsidize some prices of key goods?

Amy Goodman, The Intercept Reveals Border Patrol Is Caging Migrants Outdoors in Deadly Arizona Heat.  Democracy Now, Jul 24, 2023.  “As a record-breaking heat wave continues in Arizona, reporters with The Intercept  say they have observed U.S. Border Patrol holding about 50 migrants inside a chain-link pen in the Sonoran Desert, at the Ajo Border Patrol Station. This comes as the group Humane Borders reports the bodies of at least 13 people were found over the past month in the Sonoran Desert where many migrants cross. "You really can't overstate how deadly this ecosystem is," says reporter Ryan Devereaux, who describes the well-funded border agencies' lack of support for border crossers. Roland Gutierrez, Democratic state senator running against Ted Cruz for Senate, says, "We need to revamp the whole system."”

Roy Casagranda, Why Did Someone Think This Was a Good Destination (Part 1: The Grand Wealth Redistribution Scheme). Dr. Roy Casagrande, Sep 10, 2023. “This” is the settler-colonialism effort in North America. Casagranda’s two hour lecture is very engaging, explaining why we have a far more transactional society than other societies. At the 1:35:00 minute mark, Casagranda talks about Reagan’s shift on immigration law. Before Reagan, Mexican migrant labor crossed the border relatively freely as farm labor. But Reagan’s racism declared them “illegal immigrants.” In 1992(?), Texas changed its constitution to declare these people “illegal.” And employers didn’t have to pay full wages because of this new status. So they exploited undocumented people. And broke up labor unions by pitting undocumented migrant labor against poor American citizen labor. Casagranda also points out why having a long-term investment in other people’s good wages benefits everyone all around.

Brian Tyler Cohen, Ron DeSantis Gets Brutal Legal News Over Martha’s Vineyard Stunt.  Brian Tyler Cohen, Sep 20, 2022.  See also Ben Meiselas, Ron DeSantis Now Under Criminal Investigation For Migrant Stunt.  Meidas Touch, Sep 20, 2022.  Update:  WCVB Channel 5 Boston, Migrants Flown to Mass. Sue Florida Governor Over 'Fraudulent, Discriminatory Scheme'.  WCVB Channel 5 Boston, Sep 20, 2022.  To see pictures of the brochures used to trick the Venezuelan migrants, and the speech by Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, see Amy Goodman, Reverse Freedom Rides: Flying Migrants North, Florida Gov. Steals Page from Segregationists.  Democracy Now, Sep 20, 2022.  Connects the migrant busing to Northern cities to the Reverse Freedom Rides where Black people were unceremoniously bussed, sometimes by trickery, to Northern cities by Southern segregationist leaders.

Emma Vigeland, AOC Dismantles GOP Immigration Lies. The Majority Report, Sep 25, 2023. AOC discusses Venezuela and the US sanctions on its oil industry as a primary driver of refugees into the US.

Some More News, The GOP's Martha's Vineyard Stunt Backfired And Then They Just Lied About It.  Some More News, Sep 28, 2022.  

00:00 - Introduction

07:09 - Ron DeSantis' Cruel Kidnapping Stunt...

21:25 - ...And How It Really Backfired

29:25 - What This Stunt Says About The GOP

41:49 - The GOP Lied About How This Went For Them

The GOP claims that Biden is doing nothing about migrants and helping border states like Texas.  But Biden in June already started helping migrants move to sanctuary cities like Los Angeles.  See Julia Ainsley, Amid Border Surge, Biden Admin Plans to Send Migrants to Cities Deeper Inside U.S., Starting with L.A., Say Internal Documents.  NBC News, Jun 8, 2022.  “DHS officials have jokingly referred to the model as the “Abbott plan,” an official said, referring to Texas Gov. Abbott’s decision to bus migrants from Texas to D.C.”

Andrew R. Arthur, What Did DHS Do with the 169 Border Aliens on Terror Watchlist Nabbed in FY 2023? Center for Immigration Studies, Dec 18, 2023. Possibly nothing—the continuing implications of the October 2004 “Ridge Memo”

Jeff Mordock, Biden Admin Lines Up $950M Private Sector Investment to Combat Migration from Central America. The Washington Times, Feb 6, 2023. See archived copy.

“A senior official said the investments are paying off, noting that between August 2021 and January 2023, they’ve seen a 71% drop in encounters between migrants from Northern Central America and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said promoting economic development in the region is a good idea, but the results of these investments will do little to address the influx of migrants in the short term.”

Marcela Valdes, Why Can’t We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works.  New York Times Magazine, Oct 1, 2023.  “Our broken immigration system is still the best option for many migrants — and U.S. employers.”

Skye Jethani, Racism and Immigration.  Holy Post, Nov 6, 2023.  A great overview of US history.

Seth Meyers, Trump and MAGA Allies Sabotage Border Deal, Sparking GOP Backlash, Infighting: A Closer Look. Late Night with Seth Meyers, Feb 1, 2024. A humorous survey of a tragic issue: how Republicans use immigration as a political tool, shown by how GOP Senators crafted an immigration bill but Trump now demands that they not pass it.

60 Minutes, Chinese Migrants Are Fastest Growing Group Crossing into U.S. from Mexico. 60 Minutes, Feb 4, 2024.

Congressional Budget Office, Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy. Congressional Budget Office, July 2024. A very comprehensive projection.

Budgetary effects: “The increase in immigration boosts federal revenues as well as mandatory spending and interest on the debt in CBO’s baseline projections, lowering deficits, on net, by $0.9 trillion over the 2024–2034 period (see Table 1).2 Some of the effects on the budget result from the increase in the number of people paying taxes and collecting federal benefits…

CBO estimates that the immigration surge will add $1.2 trillion in federal revenues over the 2024–2034 period. The annual increase in revenues grows over time and reaches $167 billion (or 2.2 percent of total revenues) in 2034 in the agency’s projections. Individual income taxes and payroll taxes paid by immigrants who are part of the surge are responsible for most of the effects on revenues. In addition, the surge is projected to boost economic activity and, in turn, tax revenues.

The immigration surge adds $0.3 trillion to outlays for federal mandatory programs and net spending for interest on the debt over the 2024–2034 period in CBO’s projections. Annual outlays for certain mandatory programs increase over time as more immigrants in the surge population and their children who are born in the United States receive benefits. In 2034, those benefits add $23 billion (or 0.4 percent) to total mandatory spending…”

Lulu Garcia Navarro, The Interview: James Lankford Tried to Solve Immigration for the GOP. New York Times Podcasts, Aug 10, 2024.

House Judiciary Committee, Report: Biden-Harris Administration Has Released into the United States At Least 99 Potential Terrorists since January 2021. U.S. House of Representatives, Aug 5, 2024.

Bethany Blankley, Retired Border Chief Ordered to Not Report Crossers with Ties to Terrorism. Highland County Press, Sep 20, 2024.

Noah Smith, How Will You Save Small Midwestern Towns Without Mass Immigration? Noahpinion | Substack, Sep 22, 2024.

“The stories of other small towns that have received a bunch of immigrants in recent years all sound the same. At first the newcomers are met with suspicion and apprehension, and schools struggle to deal with a sudden huge influx of ESL kids. But as time goes on, the small-town residents experience the optimism of the return of local growth, and most of them warm to the newcomers. The town gains a local ethnic flavor, and in general most people are either happy about the change, or at least accepting of it.

In fact, we have systematic evidence showing that this is the standard pattern. J. Celeste Lay, a political scientist at Tulane, wrote an excellent short book called A Midwestern Mosaic in which she examined the differences between two Iowa towns that got a big influx of (mostly Latino) immigrants, and other surrounding similar towns that didn’t get an influx.”

Occupy Democrats, McConnell Drops Surprise Bombshell On Trump & Tucker Carlson. Occupy Democrats, Sep 27, 2024. A helpful collection of video clips of House Republicans and Senators on Fox News saying that Trump was responsible for killing the bipartisan immigration bill. For anyone who blames Democrats.

Robert Reich, The High Cost of Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan. Robert Reich, Oct 23, 2024.

Morning Joe, Steve Rattner: Trump’s Mass Deportation and Trade War Plans Will Tank the Economy. Morning Joe | MSNBC, Oct 24, 2024.

Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly Cornaggi, and Ryan D. Israelsen, Unauthorized Immigration and Local Government Finances. SSRN, Oct 24, 2024. “This paper examines how unauthorized immigration affects the fiscal health of local governments in the United States. Using detailed data on unauthorized immigrants’ countries of origin and arrival dates from the Syracuse TRAC database, we isolate immigration flows driven by social, economic, and political conditions in source countries. We predict local immigration patterns using a shift-share instrument based on pre-existing foreign-born population distributions. We find that the economic effects of unauthorized immigration depend crucially on local labor market conditions. In areas with structurally tight labor markets—characterized by low unemployment and low labor force participation—unauthorized immigration correlates with lower municipal bond yields. However, areas with typical labor market conditions experience higher yields. Areas with “sanctuary” status also experience higher yields when exposed to unauthorized immigration. These yield effects reflect underlying economic mechanisms: unauthorized immigration predicts loosening of labor markets in areas where they were previously tight, whereas in sanctuary areas, unemployment rates increase by more than twice as much. We find unauthorized immigration explains higher expenditures on local public amenities, including welfare assistance, construction, education, and law enforcement, but these expenditures are not offset by higher tax revenues. Overall, our results provide novel insights into the local economic effects of unauthorized immigration.”

Christine Amanpour, The Costs of Mass Deportation? Expert Breaks Down Trump’s Immigration Plan. Amanpour and Company, Oct 28, 2024. “Over the weekend, Donald Trump delivered one of the most extreme closing arguments in modern presidential history, calling illegal migrants "vicious and bloodthirsty criminals." Trump said, if elected, he'd "launch the largest deportation program in American history" on day one. But how much would it cost to enact such a plan? The American Immigration Council has been crunching the numbers. Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss its recent report.”

American Immigration Council, Debunking the Myth of Immigrants and Crime. American Immigration Council, Oct 2024.

Julianne McShane, “The Brown Round-Up”: The Racist Chain Letter Terrorizing an Oregon County. Mother Jones, Dec 22, 2024. “Recipients—including a mayor—were told to surveil “brown folks” at churches, schools, and stores.” See also Amanda Marcotte, "This is Trump’s America now!": MAGA Diehards Jumpstart a New Year of Political Violence. Salon, Dec 30, 2024. “There are already calls for vigilantes to round up "brown folks" to imprison in camps.”

Krystal Ball and Emily Jashinsky, Trump Backs Elon in the MAGA H1B War. Breaking Points, Dec 30, 2024. Krystal and Emily recount the many times Trump said on the campaign trail that he would favor H1Bs, but right-wing media arguably betrayed the right-wing base. Krystal points out that employers have enormous power over foreign workers with the H1B visa, because if they are fired, they will be deported. Therefore, they are a very vulnerable group of people who are close to modern day slaves because of their lack of legal labor protections.

Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell, and Jonathan V. Last, MAGA in Chaos Before 2025 Even Begins. Bulwark Podcast, Dec 31, 2024. They comment on Laura Loomer’s critique of Elon and Vivek when she was on Steve Bannon’s podcast. At 15:40, J.V. Last agrees with Loomer.

“There's a difference in Silicon Valley between the founder class and the working class.  Elon and Vivek are founder class (Vivek isn't really; Vivek didn’t do anything to make his money; he did the scam about Alzheimer’s).  The worker class, though, are just drones.  They rely on a worker class of network engineers and coders and developers.  And those people are always kept in the back of the house and they're disposable.  What this is really about is the founder class wanting access to cheap labor.  That's all it is.  So you get to pay H1B visa type workers something like $0.70 on the dollar and they can't leave.  Once they're with you they're basically indentured servants.  And so it is no surprise that the Elon Musks of the world want more of these people.  They want to lower their labor costs and not have to worry about guys who are going to go and pick up a better job someplace else because they’re tethered there because of their visa status.  And that’s bad. 

What I want most in the world is:  I want Elon Musk to have to hire for SpaceX and Tesla and Twitter entirely from the audience of the Madison Square Garden MAGA event.  I mean look:  There's 30,000 people there.  Surely he can find some really top notch devs and engineering talent there who are just true American patriots.  Is he saying that these mouth breathing cletus types are idiots?  Is that what he’s saying? 

[Tim Miller:  Yes!  He saying, “They’re retarded.”  He agreed with autism capital who tweeted that MAGA Americans are too retarded to do these jobs.  Elon said, “Spot on.”  That's what Elon thinks.  I think he would argue that he isn't looking for cheap labor, it's just that he can't find the Americans that he needs to do the job.] 

Here's the thing:  This is a big country.  There's 330 million people in this country.  The H1B numbers I think are [85,000] in the low 6 figures or high 5 figures a year.  You can find them.  And if you can't, do you know what businesses are supposed to do?  They're supposed to pay taxes.  The government can use the taxes to create a skilled labor force.  Skilled labor forces don't just appear; they're not sui generis; you have to spend money on infrastructure; you have to spend money on education; you have to have a social support network to go into disadvantaged communities and find bright people and build pathways to have them elevated and realize their potential.  But of course these guys don't want to do any of that.  They want no part of paying for the infrastructure of a government that actually runs a society that creates human capital.  They just want the human capital so that they can make money.  And for them, the H1B visa program is a way of short circuiting all obligations to the society in which they luxuriate and operate and make so much money.  F*** that.  Pay your taxes.

This is also the Obama critique.  Remember:  “You didn't build that”?  Which is right.  You have a business selling widgets.  Well, your business depends on the fact that there's a police force to enforce the rule of law and a government which isn't going to govern by fiat.  Your business depends on the entire society functioning and that's why you pay taxes.  And instead these guys wanna pay fewer taxes or no taxes at all.  And they want their labor to just magically appear and even better if that magically appearing labor will be cut rate and can't leave.”

For a Twitter debate among MAGA adherents revealing the importance of schools as public investment and Musk’s billionaire proclivities to not pay taxes, see Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok, Trump Derails his Entire Term before New Year. Meidas Touch, Jan 1, 2025 at the 5:08 mark because the relevant tweets have been deleted. One person said, “Open a school. We have brains.” Musk replied, “If you need a school, you’ve lost already.” A third person said, “Incredible. At this rate, you’re going to make me side with the leftists…” See also Kyle Kulinski, Elon Fires American Workers For Cheaper H1B Immigrants. The Kyle Kulinski Show | Secular Talk, Jan 1, 2025. Musk replaced around 2,800 Tesla workers who were U.S. citizens with immigrant workers with H1B visas, doing exactly the thing the H1B visa was not supposed to do. See also Kyle Kulinski, MAGA Realizes Left-Wingers Were Right All Along! The Kyle Kulinski Show, Secular Talk, Jan 1, 2025.

Will Gordh and Adrienne Larkin, The Truth About Immigration. Talking Politics with Mom, Jan 3, 2025. An outstanding video, almost 2 hours, giving a historical perspective and contemporary analysis of the border and immigration generally. Republicans have scapegoated vulnerable groups for decades, instead of blaming the billionaires and employer class, who prefer to pay undocumented labor under the table rather than U.S. citizens because of payroll taxes and employer health care costs (see one comment from bethsousa9598). At 32 minutes, they discuss California’s Prop 187 “Save Our State” which also blamed illegal immigrants for the cost of living, criminality, etc. Every country voted for this initially, including 52% of Black people, 27% of Latinos, 52% of Asian people, 52% of 1st generation citizens, and 60% of 3rd generation citizens, but the later resistance and education turned CA firmly Democratic. At 38.00, they discuss immigration trends: In the 1960s and 70s, immigration increased because the wars of revolution destabilized many countries, pushing people to the U.S. for safety. In the 1980s, Reagan’s interference in Latin America drove immigration to the U.S. But the public blamed Reagan instead of the immigrants. Obama wanted a comprehensive immigration policy. To strike that deal with the Republicans, he firmed up border policy, targeting criminals especially, and trusted Republicans to be good faith actors. Immigration plummeted, and 1.5 million immigrants left the U.S. But the composition of the immigrants was changing because they were families from Central America, seeking asylum. Trump accused Mexican immigrants of crime, creating a problem out of thin air. The problem was the U.S. lacked a pathway to citizenship, and Trump inherited a great border. Instead, Trump didn’t focus on criminals and terrorized families and children. Trump took the people least likely to commit crimes. Convicted criminals flood into the U.S. He let 58,000 convicted criminals into the U.S. Only the COVID pandemic slowed immigration in 2020. Border agents then caught more convicted criminals at the border in 2020 than before, which means many more were not caught. Biden then assigned Harris to Central America and got $5 billion in commitments to invest in infrastructure. Immigration from Mexico and Central America then declined, but increased from the rest of the world: China, Russia, etc. At 57:22, they discuss solutions to immigration and the border. Big corporations who want cheap labor always want immigration, then during economic downturns, they can scapegoat the foreign labor. From 2024 - 2034, undocumented workers will pay $250,000,000 into Social Security, and not benefit. The 800 billionaires will pay $167,000,000. All immigrants will pay $2 trillion.

Kyle Kulinski, ‘He’s Evil!’: Steve Bannon Goes Nuclear On ‘Racist’ Elon Musk. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Jan 13, 2025.

Patrick Boyle, How Would Mass Deportations Affect the US Economy? Patrick Boyle, Jan 14, 2025. Boyle says in all likelihood, mass deportations will cause inflation, especially in prices of food and housing construction. He covers the partisan rhetoric vs. actual realities about immigration.

More Perfect Union, “Deport Them All” — Who’s to Blame for Springfield’s Immigrant Crisis? More Perfect Union, Feb 6, 2025. De-industrialization of Springfield led to a population drop, city revenue drop, city services declined. Ohio and the federal government pursued tax cuts for the rich. No other city saw more of its middle class fall into poverty than Springfield from 2000 - 2014. White Protestant pastors are interviewed, defending immigration. Companies required workers to work for 12 hour days. Many Haitians had no days off. In 2021, Haitian immigration accelerated because Haiti’s president was assassinated and unrest surged, influenced by a history of US interference in Haiti. Vance and Trump started lying about the Haitians: eating pets; magic food cards paid for by the government; etc. A classic case of “divide and conquer.”

Alex Loftus, Trump Ends Deportation Protection for 500,000 Haitians. BBC, Feb 21, 2025. Spotlights political and safety conditions in Haiti.

GBH News, “Bringing Hell” to Boston: Haitians React to Border Czar’s Threat. GBH News, Feb 24, 2025. “Temporary Protected Status - or TPS - allows about a half-million Haitian-born people to live and work in the United States legally. The Trump administration announced plans to end TPS for Haitians in August. Dr. Geralde Gabeau of the Immigrant Family Services Institute in Boston, MA and Jean Bradley Derenoncourt, a city councilor from Brockton, MA joined GBH News’ Paris Alston to discuss the impact of ending TPS and Border Czar Tom Homan’s claim that he’s “bringing hell” to Boston.”

Russell Contreras, Immigrants in Detention in Trump's Early Days Hit New Record. Axios, Feb 28, 2025. 22,797 out of 43,759 — or 52.1% — held in ICE detention at the various locations across the country have no criminal record, TRAC found. Cites TRAC, ICE Detention Increases to Highest Levels Since 2019. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Feb 28, 2025.

Peter Zeihan, Trump Takes on Illegal Immigration. Zeihan on Geopolitics, Feb 28, 2025. Migrants who are legally under the asylum laws have a strong incentive to not commit crimes, because of the threat of deportation if they do. Also, because Trump wants showy media coverage of deportations, he is diverting excessive resources from law enforcement away from money laundering, sex trafficking, child porn dealers, etc. They are going after groups of undocumented people who are not likely to commit crimes: people who attend churches and use food banks and stand in the Home Depot parking lots and people who go to their court hearings. This will build crime possibilities in places like Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Houston, New Orleans, Birmingham, Atlanta, Mobile, Richmond, Charlotte, and major cities where industry is concentrated and where Latino migrants are likely to locate. There is now no point for migrants to cooperate with the system. We are going back to the system we had before the 2000s where migrants really were an underclass.

Lawrence O’Donnell, Canada's Trudeau Humiliates 'Cowardly' Trump Who Backs Down on Tariffs. Again. The Last Word | MSNBC, Mar 5, 2025. At the 16:09 mark, Lawrence gives an update on Trump’s anti-immigrant mass deportation plan. The four Democratic governors testified before Congress about their local cooperation with federal ICE agents.

NBC Washington DC, ‘Just Following Hispanic People': Citizen Detained by ICE Questions Vote for Trump. NBC News, Mar 6, 2025.

A naturalized Hispanic man says he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who were looking for another person on a deportation order, and now the man is questioning his vote for President Donald Trump. Jensy Machado said he is a U.S. citizen and provided News4 documentation of his legal status.

Machado said he was driving to work Wednesday with two other men when he was stopped by ICE agents on Lomond Drive in Manassas, a short distance from his home. He said he was confused by what was happening, why agents surrounded the pickup truck. 

He said the agents said the name of a man they were seeking for a deportation order, someone who had given Machado’s home address. Machado told them that wasn’t his name — he didn’t know anyone by that name — and offered to show them his real ID compliant Virginia driver’s license.

“They didn’t ask me for any ID,” Machado said. “I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving. After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me. And then he went to me and said how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case. And I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, ‘Do you believe him?’”

Machado said he was uncuffed and immediately released after showing his driver’s license.

The two men with him were taken into custody. He does not know why.

Nora Gamez Torres and Jacqueline Charles, Trump Travel Ban: ‘No Exceptions’ for Cubans, Venezuelans. Other Islands May Join Haiti on the List. Miami Herald, Mar 14, 2025.

Jonathan V. Last, The Faces of Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Crusade. The Bulwark, Mar 18, 2025. The government deported a 10-year-old American citizen with brain cancer.

“Do you know what a “lynching postcard” is?1 In post-Civil War America people would take photos of the lynchings of African Americans and print them up as postcards. That’s right. Pictures of smiling white people next to a dead black person they had just murdered. Americans would trade these postcards and collect them. They’d even use them as actual postcards and send them through through the mail.2Hey Uncle Jedidiah! We’re having a great time in Alabama. Wish you were here. This practice persisted through the 1940s. Don’t look away from this, because it’s the truth: There are Americans—lots of them—who get off on dominating the people they hate. The Hemingway line is terrifyingly true: “There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.”

Sylvia Foster-Frau, For Four Venezuelan Friends, Alien Enemies Act Cuts Short an American Dream. Washington Post, Mar 18, 2025. “The men had just begun new lives in Dallas when officers arrived at their home and arrested them. Their relatives deny that the four have any connection to the Tren de Aragua gang.” See Devin J. Stone, Trump Defies Court Order; Illegally Deports and Imprisons Venezuelans. Legal Eagle, Mar 20, 2025. See also Katherine Yon Ebright, The Alien Enemies Act, Explained. Brennan Center for Justice, Oct 9, 2024. This detention and deportation power poses an alarming risk of abuse and rights violations in both wartime and peacetime. The Fifth Amendment protects U.S. citizens and immigrants against discrimination and rights violations perpetrated by the federal government. The courts typically strike down policies that discriminate based on a suspect classification, such as race or ancestry, and policies that infringe on fundamental rights.

Jasmine Mooney, I’m the Canadian Who Was Detained by ICE for Two Weeks. It Felt Like I Had Been Kidnapped. The Guardian, Mar 19, 2025. The lack of due process. The other detainees. The harsh treatment. The U.S. prison-industrial complex.

Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch Declaration on Prison Conditions in El Salvador for the J.G.G. v. Trump Case. Human Rights Watch, Mar 20, 2025.

Ryan Grim and Sarah Hay, Venezuelan Professional Goaltender Deported to El Salvador Prison, Stunning Family Back Home. Drop Site News, Mar 20, 2025. DHS, in a statement, stands by the rendition to a prison known for torture and barbaric conditions.

“The Trump administration deported a Venezuelan professional soccer player, a youth soccer coach with no criminal record, to an El Salvadoran prison known for torture and abusive conditions, according an affidavit filed with the court and confirmed by a family member’s post on Facebook in Venezuela. The family only discovered that their loved one, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had been renditioned to El Salvador when they saw him in viral videos posted by the Trump administration, in which it celebrated what it said was the mass deportation of violent members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.”

Peter Charalambous, Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin, and Soo Rin Kim, ‘Nazis Got Better Treatment,’ Judge Says of Trump Administration’s Alien Enemies Act Deportations. ABC News, Mar 24, 2025.

Saagar Enjeti and Ryan Grim, Glenn Greenwald Schools Saagar on Deportation. Breaking Points, Mar 24, 2025. Glennwald emphasizes due process. Tom Homan cannot answer logical and legal questions. Not only that, deportation means returning someone to their country of origin, and Trump’s deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador is absolutely lawless and cruel. “People who trade liberty for security will get neither.” Glennwald defends civil liberties for all persons, not just civilians.

David Pakman, Trump Voter Begs for Donations Before Wife Gets Deported. David Pakman Show, Mar 24, 2025. Both husband and wife voted for Trump. She had a pathway to citizenship based on marriage to her citizen husband, and is in the process of getting permanent citizenship. He is crowdfunding $3000 to hire legal help. David Pakman appropriately says they have nothing to gain economically from Trump’s policies.

Chris Hayes, ‘Incredible’: Trump Admin Reportedly Deports Man Over Autism Awareness Tattoo. MSNBC, Mar 27, 2025.

Ben Finley, An ‘Administrative Error’ Sent a Maryland Man to an El Salvador Prison, ICE Says. Associated Press, Apr 1, 2025.

The Trump “administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland man with protected legal status to a notorious El Salvador prison last month, but is arguing against returning him to the United States because of his alleged gang ties and the U.S. government’s lack of power over the Central American nation. Lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, 29, maintain he is not affiliated with MS-13 or any other street gang and argue the U.S. government “has never produced an iota of evidence” that he does. Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore on March 12 after working a shift as a sheet metal apprentice in Baltimore and picking up his 5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, his lawyers’ complaint stated. Abrego Garcia was then sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which activists say is rife with abuses and where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside. Abrego Garcia’s wife later saw him in photos and video from the prison, identifying her husband through his distinctive tattoos and two scars on his head.”

Kyle Cheney, Trump Administration Admits ‘Error’ in Deporting Maryland Resident to El Salvador. Politico, Apr 1, 2025.

“After the error began generating news coverage, Vice President JD Vance responded to a demand for explanation from Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau, a former Obama administration official, who described Abrego Garcia as “an innocent father from Maryland.” Vance mocked Favreau, saying he must not have read the court documents because Abrego Garcia was a “convicted MS-13 gang member.” The court documents, however, do not describe Abrego Garcia as a convicted gang member. Rather, a judge in 2019 denied him release from detention over a government informant’s claim that Abrego Garcia was a member of that gang. That decision was upheld by the Board of Immigration Appeals. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the deportation on Tuesday, saying DHS and ICE officials had obtained intelligence supporting that Abrego Garcia was allegedly gang-affiliated and involved in human trafficking. She also downplayed the error that led to his deportation.”

Luke Broadwater, Some Conservative Voices Raise Alarm Over Trump’s Immigration Tactics. New York Times, Apr 1, 2025. The cracks in support show how seriously some conservatives are taking the administration’s aggressive and at times slapdash tactics.

Mehdi Hasan, Mehdi Debunks JD Vance’s Immigration Lies. Zeteo, Apr 2, 2025. On Vance’s absolutely cynical scapegoating of immigrants when he knows the real facts otherwise.

Michael Popok, Trump Plan Hits Brick Wall After Federal Judge Steps In. Meidas Touch, Apr 2, 2025. Federal judge Edward Chen declared that Trump and Noem are so infected by hatred and misinformation that their repeal of Temporary Protective Status for 600,000 Venezuelans nullifies the repeal. On the one hand, Trump claims that Venezuela has become so corrupted that it is run by a narco-gang, Tren de Aragua. On the other hand, Trump claims that Venezuela is safe and stable now, so migrants have no standing. Judge Chen also provides quotes of animus and hatred from Trump and Noem that they are violating the Administrative Procedures Act and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Chen cites very important facts about the Venezuelan nationals: “Although the Secretary’s actions appear predicated on negative stereotypes casting class-wide aspersions on their character (insinuating they were released from Venezuelan prisons and mental health facilities and imposed huge financial burdens on local communities), the undisputed record establishes that Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries, in fact, have higher education attainment than most U.S. citizens (40 - 54% have bachelor degrees), have high labor force participation rates (80 - 96%), earn nearly all their personal income (96%), and annually contribute billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and pay hundreds of millions, if not billions, in social security taxes. They also have lower rates of criminality than the general U.S. population.” Read summary by Sabrina Rodriguez and Maria Saccheti, Judge Blocks Trump from Ending Deportation Protection for Venezuelans. Washington Post, Mar 21, 2025. Read United States District Court Northern District of California, National TPS Alliance v. Kristi Noem, March 31, 2025.

Peter Zeihan, Half A Million Immigrants Get the Boot. Zeihan on Geopolitics, Apr 3, 2025. Zeihan observes that when foreign nationals are stripped of legal protections, they have to resort to the cash economy, which makes them more vulnerable to crime.

Ashton, Why We Hate Welfare Freeloaders (But Shouldn't). Type Ashton, Apr 6, 2025. Ashton begins by citing a fascinating psychological experiment about people who choose a social system where they can punish freeloaders over a social system where they cannot. Most people choose the punishment system. She then cautions us against scapegoating immigrants or food stamp beneficiaries because of facts: immigrants contribute to the economy; food stamp beneficiaries are overwhelmingly children, elderly, disabled, and even employed at low-wage work. Why not require employers to pay a living wage and give better health benefits?

Cecilia Vega, U.S. Sent 238 Migrants to Salvadoran Mega-Prison; Documents Indicate Most Have No Apparent Criminal Records. CBS News, Apr 6, 2025.

“The government has released very little information about the men. But through internal government documents, we have obtained a list of their identities and found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges… The Trump administration has yet to release the identities of the Venezuelan men it sent to El Salvador last month. We obtained internal government documents listing their names and any known criminal information. We cross referenced that with domestic and international court filings, news reports and arrest records whenever we could find them. At least 22% of the men on the list have criminal records here in the United States or abroad. The vast majority are for non-violent offenses like theft, shoplifting and trespassing. About a dozen are accused of murder, rape, assault and kidnapping.  For 3% of those deported, it is unclear whether a criminal record exists.  But we could not find criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans - 179 men- now sitting in prison.”

Meredith Kile, After ICE Agents Realized They Arrested the Wrong Teen in N.Y.C., They Were Told to 'Take Him Anyway': Report. People, Apr 15, 2025. Merwil Gutiérrez, 19, was deported to El Salvador despite his family’s claims that he has no criminal record or gang affiliation.

Ryan Cooper, The Anti-Immigration Majority Is a Mirage. American Prospect, Apr 18, 2025.

“Americans gradually bought the Republican sales pitch on immigration. Then they saw what it looks like in practice.” “More recent polls show the priority of immigration plummeting, and majority disapproval for Trump on the issue. In the most recent YouGov/Economist poll, he is now 11 points underwater, down 16 points since he was inaugurated. Among Latinos, he is now 46 points underwater.”

Stephen Colbert, Trump vs. The Courts | El Presidente Targets “Homegrowns” | Iowa Seniors Turn On Sen. Grassley.  The Late Show, April 16, 2025. A lighter comedic take. At the 6:07 minute mark, Stephen spotlights Senator Chuck Grassley’s town hall, where elderly people demand answers:  

“If I get an order to pay a ticket for $1200 and I say NO, does that stand up?  Cause he just got an order from the Supreme Court and he just said NO!”  “He just said screw it!”  

“Bring him back, bring him back!”

“I’m pissed!”

Krystal Ball, Will Trump Invoke Insurrection Act On 4/20?  Breaking Points, April 17, 2025.  At the beginning, Krystal plays a video clip of the same town hall meeting that Senator Chuck Grassley held.  It’s from a different angle and you can see who is speaking:  they are elderly White people. 

Now This Impact, Auschwitz Survivor Says to ICE, “History Is Not On Your Side”. Now This Impact, Apr 20(?), 2025. A brief video of a 90 year old Jewish man, a survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, in a California town hall meeting, rebuking ICE Director Tom Homan and his local sheriff.

Melissa Gira Grant, The Trump Team Knows Its Case Against Abrego Garcia Is Thin. The New Republic, Apr 22, 2025. That’s precisely why the accusations are getting wilder.

Ed Kilgore, Polls Show Trump’s Approval Rating on Immigration Going South. New York Magazine, Apr 23, 2025.

Malcolm Ferguson, Trump Makes Alarming Confession on Wrongly Deported Immigrant. The New Republic, Apr 25, 2025. “Donald Trump is openly admitting his defiance of the Supreme Court on Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”

Matt Ford, Trump’s War on Immigrants Has Become an Attack on Us All. The New Republic, Apr 25, 2025. “What began as Trump’s mass deportation scheme has spiraled into a campaign of intimidation against citizens lawfully using their rights.”

Greg Sargent, Trump Is Failing in One Big Way: Americans Are Rejecting His Fascism. The New Republic, Apr 25, 2025. “Immigration was his best issue. But striking new data shows he’s sinking on it. Maybe Americans care about the rule of law after all.” “A new Washington Post-ABC News poll, released Friday, is only the most recent of many surveys to find Trump slipping underwater on immigration, which has been his best issue. The poll finds that a majority of Americans, 53 percent, disapprove of his handling of the issue, while only 46 percent approve. But the Post poll is also notable for another crushing finding for Trump: He is badly underwater on immigration among independents. Importantly, this is true both on attitudes toward Trump’s handling of immigration generally and on the specifics. Here are the poll’s key findings in this regard: Fifty-six percent of independents disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, while only 42 percent approve. Sixty-two percent of independents oppose deporting international students who have criticized U.S. policy in the Mideast, while only 36 percent percent support it. Fifty-two percent of independents oppose sending undocumented immigrants who are suspected members of a criminal group to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing, while only 46 percent support it. Only 21 percent of independents want wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to remain imprisoned in El Salvador, while 39 percent say he should be returned to the United States. Here, many are undecided, but that abysmal 21 percent figure suggests Trump’s propaganda depicting him as a gang member who doesn’t deserve due process is a bust.” See also Greg Sargent, Trump’s Fury at Bad Polls Boils Over as Allies Rush to Calm Him Down. The New Republic, Apr 29, 2025. As Trump’s anger over his terrible polling numbers grows, a journalist explains why it’s so unnerving that Trump’s advisers are now actively deluding him about his disastrous reign.

Charisma Madarong and Lorena O’Neill, Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children with Cancer. Rolling Stone, Apr 26, 2025. “Two families — among them three U.S. citizens aged two, four, and seven — were abruptly deported under "troubling circumstances," says the ACLU of Louisiana.” See also archived copy.

Katya Schwenk, Trump Taps Refugee Fund To Welcome White South Africans Within Days. The Lever, May 6, 2025. Amid a near-total asylum ban, government sources say Trump officials are planning to use funds for at-risk refugees to facilitate imminent Afrikaner resettlement.

Noah Hurowitz, “They Actually Had a List”: ICE Arrests Workers Involved in Landmark Labor Rights Case. The Intercept, May 5, 2025. “We are concerned at the appearance of targeting publicly pro-union worker leaders,” said a union official about a raid in western New York.”

“On Friday morning at around 9:30 a.m., federal agents in unmarked cars and bearing no agency insignia pulled over a bus in Albion, New York, about 35 miles west of Rochester, and took 14 people of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms into custody. All of the detainees, who hailed from Mexico and Guatemala, were year-round employees of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, a family-owned business in nearby Kent, New York, which has been locked in a multiyear battle to prevent workers from unionizing. The company is one of five agricultural businesses that, together with a state growers’ association, have tried for years to overturn or chip away at New York’s 2019 farm labor law. The law enshrined protections for the right of farmworkers — whether seasonal or year-round — to seek union representation.”

Brink Lindsey, The Postliberal Delusion that Trump will Restore Gods Allegedly Destroyed by the Open Society. The UnPopulist, May 11, 2025. “A prominent critic of liberalism has no solutions so he puts his faith in Trump to resurrect the fallen gods of traditional orders.”

Eduardo Cuevas, Trump Sent 50 Venezuelans to Prison in El Salvador. They Were in the US Legally. USA Today, May 20, 2025. To date, the best on CECOT. Trump administration says they're gang members in the US illegally. Available information finds they entered legally, had no criminal charges.

Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky, Trump Ignores Judge, Traffics Migrants to Sudan. Breaking Points, May 21, 2025. Trump sent Burmese immigrant to South Sudan.

Mica Rosenberg, Perla Trevizo, Melissa Sanchez, Gabriel Sandoval, Ronna Risquez, Adrian Gonzalez, Trump Administration Knew Most Venezuelans Deported from Texas to a Salvadoran Prison Had No U.S. Convictions. Texas Tribune and Propublica, May 30, 2025.

“The Trump administration knew that the vast majority of the 238 Venezuelan immigrants it sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in mid-March had not been convicted of crimes in the United States before it labeled them as terrorists and deported them, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data that has not been previously reported.

President Donald Trump and his aides have branded the Venezuelans as “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters” and “the worst of the worst.” When multiple news organizations disputed those assertions with reporting that showed many of the deportees did not have criminal records, the administration doubled down. It said that its assessment of the deportees was based on a thorough vetting process that included looking at crimes committed both inside and outside the United States. But the government’s own data, which was obtained by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of journalists from Venezuela, showed that officials knew that only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations.

The data indicates that the government knew that only six of the immigrants were convicted of violent crimes: four for assault, one for kidnapping and one for a weapons offense. And it shows that officials were aware that more than half, or 130, of the deportees were not labeled as having any criminal convictions or pending charges; they were labeled as only having violated immigration laws.

As for foreign offenses, our own review of court and police records from around the United States and in Latin American countries where the deportees had lived found evidence of arrests or convictions for 20 of the 238 men. Of those, 11 involved violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault or murder, including one man who the Chilean government had asked the U.S. to extradite to face kidnapping and drug charges there. Another four had been accused of illegal gun possession.

We conducted a case-by-case review of all the Venezuelan deportees. It’s possible there are crimes and other information in the deportees’ backgrounds that did not show up in our reporting or the internal government data, which includes only minimal details for nine of the men. There’s no single publicly available database for all crimes committed in the U.S., much less abroad. But everything we did find in public records contradicted the Trump administration’s assertions as well.

ProPublica and the Tribune, along with Venezuelan media outlets Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) and Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates), also obtained lists of alleged gang members that are kept by Venezuelan law enforcement officials and the international law enforcement agency Interpol. Those lists include some 1,400 names. None of the names of the 238 Venezuelan deportees matched those on the lists.

As for the administration’s allegations that Tren de Aragua has attempted an invasion, an analysis by U.S. intelligence officials concluded that the gang was not acting at the direction of the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro and that reports suggesting otherwise were “not credible.” Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, fired the report’s authors after it became public. Her office, according to news reports, said Gabbard was trying to “end the weaponization and politicization” of the intelligence community.”

Meg Anderson, Private Prisons and Local Jails Are Ramping Up as ICE Detention Exceeds Capacity. NPR, Jun 4, 2024.

Devlin Barrett, Alan Feuer, and Glenn Thrush, Trump Administration Live Updates: Abrego Garcia Lands in U.S. After Mistaken Deportation to El Salvador. New York Times, Jun 6, 2025.

David J. Bier, Deportations to Add Almost $1 Trillion in Costs to the “Big Beautiful Bill”. CATO Institute, Jun 6, 2025. A stunning report, very data-driven, with excellent graphs. Not just the cost of immigration, but the cost of mass deportation.

John Yang, National Guard Troops Arrive in Los Angeles on Trump's Orders to Calm Protests. PBS News, Jun 8, 2025. Democratic Rep. Nanette Barragán, who represents Paramount, California, says the public and the protests were calm before the National Guard arrived, disproving Trump’s claims that he and the Guard brought order.

Matthias Gafni, ‘Wildly Underprepared’: National Guard Troops Seen Sleeping on Floors in Exclusive Photos. San Francisco Chronicle, Jun 9, 2025. Archived copy.

Matthias Gafni, We Published Real Photos of Troops Sleeping on a Floor in L.A. Right-Wing Critics Called Them Fake. San Francisco Chronicle, Jun 10, 2025. Archived copy.

Noah Smith, A Bunch of Thoughts and Evidence on Immigration. Noahpinion | Substack, Jun 10, 2025. Evidence-based approach to the need for a stable, pro-immigration policy. But the “replacement theory” has become canon on the political right.

Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon, Bragg Soldiers Who Cheered Trump's Political Attacks While in Uniform Were Checked for Allegiance, Appearance. Military.com, Jun 11, 2025.

Rebecca Kheel, Hegseth Suggests LA-Style Troop Deployments Could Happen Anywhere in US 'if Necessary'. Military.com, Jun 11, 2025.

David J. Bier and Alex Nowrasteh, Trump’s Lawless, Baseless Immigration Ban. CATO Institute, Jun 12, 2025.

Jacqueline Sweet, ICE Agent Fled From Angry Residents Outside New York School — and Got in a Car Crash. The Intercept, Jun 13, 2025. “Masked and unidentified ICE agents lurking near schools and homeless shelters spark fear and confusion in majority-Latino enclaves outside New York.”

Jon Stewart, Israel’s "Urgent" Iran Strike, Minnesota Murders & MAGA’s Blame Game. The Daily Show, Jun 16, 2025. See the compilation of video clips from Netanyahu in 2012, 2015, and 2018 claiming that Iran was weeks away from a nuclear warhead. See the compilation of GOP leaders calling for the “liberation of Los Angeles” and CA from “socialists” and immigrants.

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, Statement on Immigration. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Office of Public Affairs, Jun 16, 2025.

David Doel, Masked Agents Snatch NYC Mayoral Candidate In Chilling Video. The Rational National, Jun 17, 2025. “New York City mayoral candidate and comptroller Brad Lander [who is a U.S. citizen, to be clear] was snatched up by ICE agents at an immigration court as he asked for a judicial warrant that was not provided.”

Felipe De La Hoz, The Worst Part of Trump’s Big Bill Is Getting Almost No Attention. The New Republic, Jun 17, 2025. The Republican budget bill is stuffed with terrible policies, but Democrats have been largely silent on perhaps its most destructive component: ICE funding for Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller.

Alejandro Serrano, Migrant Deported to El Salvador After DPS Labeled Him a Member of Tren de Aragua Without Evidence, Lawyer Says. Texas Tribune, Jun 18, 2025. “Lawyers for Pedro Luis Salazar-Cuervo deny he is a gang member and say the DPS accusation hinges on a photo they found of him standing next to a man with tattoos.”

Jennie Taer, Trump Admin’s 3,000 ICE Arrests Per Day Quota Is Taking Focus Off Criminals and ‘Killing Morale’: Insiders. New York Post, Jun 17, 2025.

Kyle Kulinski and Krystal Ball, Pastor Ben Issues Dire Warning Of MAGA Terrorísm. Secular Talk, Jun 27, 2025. Pastor Benjamin Dixon, also a journalist, used Grok on X/Twitter to study posts as data.

Andy Olsen, ICE Goes After Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution. Christianity Today, Jun 28, 2025. On Tuesday, Iranian asylum-seekers were detained in Los Angeles, adding to the count of church members taken despite lawful status.

Tim Reid, Sebastian Rocandio, Pilar Olivares, and Leah Douglas, Immigration Raids Leave Crops Unharvested, California Farms at Risk. Reuters, Jun 30, 2025.

Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, Boston Restaurant Manager Taken on His Way to Church: “They Picked Me Up”. WGBH, Jun 30, 2025. Cecilia Lizotte, chef and owner of Suya Joint, joined Boston Public Radio to discuss the ICE detainment of her brother Paul, the manager at the restaurant.

Katie Phang, Trump’s DOJ Targets Millions With New Scheme. Katie Phang, Jul 1, 2025.

Heather Cox Richardson, The Truth About Migrant Labor and America’s Economy. Heather Cox Richardson, Jul 2, 2025. Republican leaders did not want to fix the immigration system because they wanted to scapegoat migrant workers and immigrants to mislead their base.

Rebecca Beitsch, Mass Deportation Effort Sweeps Up U.S. Citizen Children With Deported Parents. The Hill, Jun 2, 2025. The Trump Admin claims that the parents gave their consent.  But their consent was coerced, as ICE did not follow lawful procedure.  “There’s a specific set of protocols that ICE is supposed to follow any time they are preparing to remove someone who has a minor child, whether that child is a citizen or not, and that includes providing access to legal counsel, which was not done in any of these cases.”

Marianne LeVine, Lauren Kaori Gurley, and Aaron Schaffer, ICE Is Arresting Migrants in Worksite Raids. Employers Are Largely Escaping Charges. Washington Post, Jun 30, 2025. Shows that Trump is not actually prosecuting cases against corporations and employers for hiring undocumented immigrants.

“Trump has focused workplace raids on small businesses as part of his administration’s push to ramp up arrests of unauthorized migrants.

The raids immigration officers are conducting have largely targeted small businesses such as car washes. Some are carried out in a span of minutes. Two business owners said officers did not show a warrant, even when asked for one, raising questions about whether immigration agents are violating constitutional rights in their effort to drive up migrant arrests.

“The difference about these raids of the last six weeks is that this is not principally an action against employers,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “This is principally an action in pursuit of mass deportations. When they could not produce the number of arrests that they had been hoping for, they suddenly said, ‘Let’s raid employers.’ It was not, ‘Let’s penalize employers.’”

DHS did not respond to questions about how many workplace raids have led to charges against employers. In April, ICE announced it had arrested more than 1,000 workers who were in the country illegally during Trump’s first 100 days and proposed more than $1 million in fines “against businesses that exploit and hire illegal workers.””

Jemar Tisby, Trump’s Personal Army. Footnotes by Jemar Tisby | Substack, Jul 6, 2025. “With $170 billion behind it, ICE can now be deployed not just against immigrants but against anyone who threatens the regime’s ideological, economic, or political grip.

“ICE is a paramilitary force with ultimate allegiance to the president. They take an oath to the Constitution. But under this regime, they don’t answer to it. Nor to the people.

It responds directly to executive authority.

For instance, the Posse Comitatus Act largely preventing the president from deploying the U.S. military as a domestic police force would not apply to ICE.

ICE is the president’s personal goon squad.

A private police force with the power to conduct raids, surveillance, arrests, and disappearances—all without military oversight or effective congressional restraint.

Anyone could be a target for harassment, imprisonment, or disappearing.

ICE is the president’s personal army to carry out his authoritarian will.

Picture it.

Raids on residences in the middle of the night. Surveillance that monitors everyone everywhere for breaches of loyalty. Guns trained on and discharged toward protestors and resisters of all sorts.

With the appropriation of obscene levels of funding, the scenario escalates quickly.

Step 1: ICE conducts another public abduction.

Step 2: People fed up at the trauma of seeing their neighbors ripped off the street for no reason get loud and agitated.

Step 3: An immature, untrained, and trigger-eager ICE agent opens fire.

Step 4: An uprising ensues.

Step 5: The president imposes martial law.

Suddenly, the 2026 midterm elections—our so-called plan to rein in this regime—are suspended.

For “safety” reasons. For “national security.””

Ben Meiselas, All Hell Breaks Loose as Trump Targets His Own!! Meidas Touch, Jul 7, 2025. Canadian citizen in the process of naturalizing to the US, Cynthia Olivera, age 45, in the US since she was 10 years old.

Jonah Valdez, A Pattern of Violence: Documenting ICE Agents’ Brutal Use of Force in LA Immigration Raids. The Intercept, Jul 7, 2025.

“The Intercept analyzed more than a dozen immigration operations since June 6 involving federal agents from a hodgepodge of agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Marshals Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. By reviewing footage and interviewing people who the authorities detained and those who witnessed raids, The Intercept identified several violent patterns.”

Heather Cox Richardson, Everyone Needs to Recognize What's Happening Right Now in America. Heather Cox Richardson, Jul 8, 2025. On the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in Florida: Legally, it means we are imprisoning people without due process and maybe without formal charges.

Nick Turse, Trump Administration Expels Eight Men to War-Torn “Third Country” South Sudan. The Intercept, Jul 7, 2025. “The Supreme Court is helping the Trump administration expand its deportation regime — and restrict immigrants’ rights to object for fear of torture.” See also Nick Turse, ICE Said They Were Being Flown to Louisiana. Their Flight Landed in Africa. The Intercept, Jul 8, 2025. An Intercept investigation shows that immigration officials deceived the men now expelled to South Sudan.

Annette Gutierrez, Wimauma Pastor Deported Guatemala, Leaving Church and Family Reeling. ABC News, Jul 8, 2025. “After living in the U.S. for more than two decades and leading a congregation of nearly 50, 42-year-old Maurilio Ambrocio was deported last week.” See also Jasmine Garsd, In Florida, An Immigrant Pastor’s Detention Sends a Community Reeling. NPR, May 20, 2025.

Schuyler Mitchell, Georgia Police Arrest Farmworkers — Then Get Warrants from DHS. The Intercept, Jul 9, 2025. “Georgia authorities said their goal was to serve warrants for crimes against children. Instead, they swept people up and got immigration detainers after the fact.”

Sam Biddle, Trump’s Big Beautiful Gift to Anduril. The Intercept, Jul 9, 2025. “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act requires all new border surveillance towers to be certified "autonomous." Only Anduril's fit the bill.”

Greg Sargent, Whistleblower Emails Expose Fresh Trump Abuses in Abrego Garcia Case. The New Republic, Jul 10, 2025. “Newly released communications show the lengths the Trump administration went to in order to label Kilmar Abrego Garcia an MS-13 leader.”

Lydia Saad, Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated. Gallup, Jul 11, 2025. 30% of Americans want immigration decreased, down from 55% a year ago. Record-high 79% consider immigration good for the country. Support down for border wall, mass deportation. See discussion by J.V. Last and Sarah Longwell, Buyers Remorse? Voters Are Turning on Trump’s Immigration Agenda! | Secret Pod Preview. The Bulwark, Jul 11, 2025. JVL and Longwell discuss the finer points of these polling stats. See also Jonathan Capehart, How Is This Even Legal?: Experts React to Shocking New ICE Memo. MSNBC, Jul 13, 2025.

Regan Morris, Minors Among Suspected Illegal Immigrants Detained After Clash at California Farm. BBC, Jul 12, 2025. Although it is legal for minors to do farmwork.

Armando Garcia and Riley Hoffman, California Farmworker Dies After 30-Foot Fall During ICE Raid: Report. CBS News, Jul 13, 2025. “Federal agents clashed with protesters during an immigration raid on Thursday.”

Deutsche Welle, Here’s How America’s Immigration Policies Have a Racist Past. Deutsche Welle, Jul 13, 2025. An excellent 26 minute video.

Nolan Rappaport, What Powers Do Immigration Officers Have? Is Trump’s ICE Going Too Far? The Hill, Jul 14, 2025. An exploration of the statutory law basis, arguing that Trump’s ICE is lawful.

Nate Raymond and Ted Hesson, ICE May Deport Migrants to Countries They Aren’t From With Just Six Hours’ Notice. USA Today | Reuters, Jul 16, 2025. Immigration officials may deport migrants to countries other than their own with as little as six hours' notice, Trump administration memo says.

Shawn Hubler, Trump’s National Guard Troops Are Questioning Their Mission in L.A. New York Times, Jul 16, 2025. “Thousands of National Guard members have served in the L.A. region since last month. Six soldiers spoke in interviews about low morale over the deployment.”

Daniel Patrick Sheehan and Elizabeth Deornellas, Allentown Grandfather’s Family Was Told He Died in ICE Custody. Then They Learned He’s Alive — in a Hospital in Guatemala, They Say. The Morning Call, Jul 18, 2025. He is not from Guatemala.

Tim Padgett, 'They Chained Me to the Ground': Detainees at Alligator Alcatraz Allege Harsh Punishment by Guards. WLRN Public Media, Jul 22, 2025.

Clare Considine, Immigration Agents Told a Teenage US Citizen: “You’ve Got No Rights.” He Secretly Recorded His Brutal Arrest. The Guardian, Jul 25, 2025. “Video from Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, puts fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used to reach the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement targets… Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use “funny” and quipping: “You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.””

NBC Bay Area News, South Bay Company Outraged Over Employee Being Detained by ICE. NBC Bay Area, Jul 25, 2025. ICE arrested a woman from Colombia working in the US legally as an installer with Pivot Interiors. Her work permit was valid to 2029, and she was on the federal government website e-verify as cleared of any criminal charges. Meanwhile, ICE detentions in CA for people with no criminal convictions or charges have grown by 2000%, from 80 in June 2024 to 1,606 in June 2025.

Todd Zwillich, How ICE Is Turning Human Misery Into a $170 Billion Business. What a Day, Jul 25, 2025. A 26 minute video. Info on the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed in July 2025, which gives money to private prison companies (like Core Civic, Geo Group) and irresponsible medical groups.

“It set aside more than $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement, including $45 billion to build and expand detention centers and $29 billion to help hire new immigration agents. The most notorious symbol of the administration's immigration crackdown is the pop up detention center in the Florida Everglades the administration calls ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ But more facilities are popping up all over the country, as are allegations of horrific conditions. Katie Blankenship is an attorney and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South, which provides legal services and civil rights representation throughout the region. She’s currently representing clients in ICE detention centers, and joins us to talk about what she's hearing from them.”

Joshua Zeitz, ICE Risks Overplaying Its Hand. We’ve Seen It Happen Before. Politico, Jul 26, 2025.

“As unprecedented as all this might seem, we’ve been here before — and there is a warning in it for the president. In the 1850s, the federal government enforced a brutal dragnet aimed at hunting down and returning “fugitive slaves” — formerly enslaved persons who had escaped captivity and fled north. Authorized by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a combination of federal officials and private slave catchers compelled Northern white citizens to cooperate with the arrest of formerly enslaved people, or else risk arrest themselves. The law introduced the brutality of slavery into free Northern communities. The use of armed soldiers in civilian settings, the arrest of free Black people — similar to today’s indiscriminate arrests, which have ensnared immigrants with legallyprotectedstatus — and the erosion of political liberties long enjoyed by free citizens all presaged the current environment.

The political response proved explosive. Seemingly overnight, white people who previously cared little for the plight of Black Americans, free or enslaved, became committed antislavery voters. Some of them were arrested for supporting formerly enslaved fugitives, contributing the backlash against the FSA among white citizens. Communities rallied to the defense of accused runaways, often helping them escape the federal snare. Northern states found themselves in a tense standoff with the government in Washington, D.C. And most ominously, a vocal but committed core came to believe that the only means to confront state violence and coercion was to meet that threat with violence in turn.”

Leigh McGowan, Trump's $200 Billion Secret Force Exposed by Journalist. PoliticsGirl, Jul 29, 2025. Award winning historian and journalist, Garrett Graff, discusses why creating such a polarized, partisan, and violent law enforcement group at such speed is such a detriment to American society. The mistakes made in hiring and management wind up promoting incompetence, corruption, and even other interests. Early ICE agent misconduct is already very worrisome. Consider who would want to become an ICE agent?

Harry Litman, This Bombshell Lawsuit Could Blow ICE'S Cruelty Wide Open. Talking Feds with Harry Litman, Jul 31, 2025. “Harry's here to explain a new lawsuit filed by 12 Democratic members of the House of Representatives over their access to ICE facilities as part of their legal oversight responsibilities.”

Irene I. Vega, Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality. Princeton University Press | Amazon page, 2025. People choose bureaucratic obedience over personal morality — the case of Mexican-American ICE agents apprehending Mexican subjects.

“I show that indifference is a major part of that moral economy. Michael Herzfeld defines indifference as “the rejection of common humanity . . . [and] the denial of identity, of selfhood” and argues that Western bureaucracies thrive on indifference, even as national myths celebrate hospitality.  Nowhere is the paradox between espoused inclusion and indifference more visible than in the United States, a country that presents itself as a nation of immigrants and celebrates e pluribus unum, despite its settler-colonialist history and record of racialized exclusion.

I examine the production of indifference on the front line of US immigration control, both as a bureaucratic strategy that agents use to look away from the most conflicting aspects of their work, and as a major product of their efforts to cultivate a moral sense of self. In doing so, I reveal how agents normalize socially and legally constructed categories, even when they are faced with evidence that contradicts the validity of these categories. My analysis thus extends our knowledge of how the moral judgments, emotional reactions, and simplified heuristics of immigration agents working within and outside the United States function as mechanisms of compliance and stability in what Cecilia Menjívar aptly called “bureaucracies of displacement.”

Thinking about indifference helps us unlock the bureaucratic dimension of immigration control. Not only are detention, deportation, and border control “spectacles” that enact illegality and trade in cruelty, but they are also less visible forms of “slow violence” that are carried out routinely under the guise of legal rationality. Bordering on Indifference thus traces the development of what Hannah Arendt famously called the “banality of evil”—it shows how immigration bureaucracies produce apathy and distance, perpetuating exclusion through culture, law, and process, no matter what their workforce looks like. At no point do the agents featured in this book appear as unthinking cogs in a machine, however. We see that agents like Marcos Payan and his colleagues are invested in being indifferent to the moral ambiguities and racialized character of immigration control because protecting the status quo pays—they get to keep their job—and because if undocumented migration is not seen as categorically bad, they run the risk of not being seen as good.”

Samantha Schmidt, Helena Carpio, María Luisa Paúl, Silvia Foster-Frau, Teo Armus, and Aaron Steckelberg, ‘Welcome to Hell’: Inside the Megaprison Where the U.S. Deported Migrants. Washington Post, Jul 31, 2025. Very helpful graphics and diagrams.

“The Washington Post interviewed 16 of the more than 250 men who were deported by the United States to CECOT, held there for four months and then released this month to Venezuela as part of an international prisoner swap.

The Venezuelans, rounded up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, told The Post they were subjected to repeated beatings that left them bruised, bleeding or injured. They said prison staff restricted medical care for detainees suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure or kidney failure…

Torture, arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances and sexual assault, if proved to be systematic or generalized and known to the government, can all constitute crimes against humanity. An international panel is preparing a report on El Salvador and investigating whether any of those crimes were committed. At least one member of the panel thinks a criminal investigation is warranted.”

Miriam Jordan and Tim Arango, Judges Keep Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Arrests, in Setback for Trump Agenda. New York Times, Aug 2, 2025. “An appellate panel upheld a finding that federal agents appeared to rely exclusively on race and other factors, such as speaking Spanish, in making arrests.”

“Civil-rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Counsel filed suit on July 2 accusing the Trump administration of unconstitutional sweeps since early June. Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested.

American citizens and immigrants who are legally in the United States have been caught in the dragnet, which fueled protests in Los Angeles and across the country. President Trump had said that other Democratic-led cities would also be targeted, suggesting that the aggressive enforcement tactics deployed in Los Angeles might be replicated elsewhere.

In their 61-page ruling, the appellate judges, all of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents, said it was likely that the arrests were made without “reasonable suspicion.” 

The judges added that because the arrests were “part of a pattern of officially sanctioned behavior,” they were “likely to recur” without court intervention.”

Jessica Washington, Guess Who’s Eligible for Student Loan Forgiveness: New ICE Agents. The Intercept, Aug 2, 2025. “Thanks to the Supreme Court and the Trump administration, student loan forgiveness is out of reach for many — unless you work for ICE.”

Michelle Harven, If You Can Keep It: ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and Due Process. WAMU | NPR, Aug 4, 2025. “Alligator Alcatraz” suggests it’s a prison, but it’s not. It’s a detention center to illegally effectuate people’s removal from the U.S. People held at Alligator Alcatraz have no legal path out because there was no legal path in. ICE says they're held on state charges, so Federal immigration judges can't hear cases for bond or anything else. But the state hasn't charged them, so state judges can't hear the case because there is no case. Many being held have NO criminal record. Some have lived/worked in the US for 20+ years. One was picked up for "fishing while looking Hispanic," others for "driving while looking Hispanic." Attorneys visiting the facility to meet clients are turned away at armed checkpoints, even though every prison or jail in the U.S. allows for attorneys to meet with clients in the facility. They can visit clients by Zoom, but the background is blurry, so there's no attorney client privilege... Many are moved from state to state, often a day or two before a Federal hearing can happen, for no reason but to delay or deny that process. Over 100 have already been deported without due process! In the meantime, DeSantis is gloating and praising the fascism. And now NPR is on life support.

Daniel Montañez, “The Judges Were Fired… And Everyone Did What Was Right in Their Own Eyes”. The Center for Public Theology and Migration, Aug 5, 2025.

“The pressure of the executive branch to influence how the judicial branch should rule undermines the separation of powers and violates the checks and balances upon which our nation is built. When one branch of government impinges itself upon the role or function of another, constitutional rights and protections begin to crumble and democracy is on the road to failure. According to Pappas, “the very institutions that glue our society together are melting in front of our eyes. Our institutions are under attack.” Thus, the query of the David’s psalm seems relevant for today, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Ps. 11:3 (KJV)”

Ken Harbaugh and Kris Goldsmith, Trump Shocking Hires Embedded in Government Unmasked. Meidas Touch, Aug 8, 2025.

“In part two of this conversation, Ken Harbaugh talks with Kris Goldsmith, America’s leading neo-Nazi hunter, about how extremists are increasingly finding acceptance—and even employment—in the US government. They explore the alarming implications of ICE recruiting the "worst of the worst" into an organization whose actions have drawn comparisons to authoritarian regimes.”

Nick Turse, ICE Agent Caught on Camera Disguised as a Construction Worker. The Intercept, Aug 11, 2025. “The Intercept confirmed that a federal agent caught on camera wearing a hard hat and safety vest works for ICE.” It undermines law enforcement.

Vivian Ho, Can Trump Revoke Citizenship, and How Often Does It Happen Worldwide? Washington Post, Aug 16, 2025. For lying in the naturalization process, committing an act of treason or terrorism. “Americans have some protections when it comes to retaining their nationality. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot take away citizenship without a person’s consent — but left open an exception for cases involving fraud during the naturalization process.” See Jaclyn Diaz and Juliana Kim, DOJ Announces Plans to Prioritize Cases to Revoke Citizenship. NPR, Jun 30, 2025. Trump revoked the citizenship of Elliott Duke, who was convicted of, and confessed to, distributing child sexual abuse material and failing to disclose this crime during the naturalization process. Denaturalization cases were high during the McCarthy era. Immigration lawyers Benach, Pitney, Reilly say that, given honesty in the naturalization process, naturalized citizens are safe. “But the USDOJ will still have to go to federal court to prove its case.  While the Trump administration is threatening aggressive action, the numbers of naturalized citizens, the challenges of proving illegal procurement or fraud are significant and these factors mean that the vast majority of naturalized citizens have nothing to worry about.”

Pablo Manriquez, Ossoff Report Details ICE Abuse of Pregnant Women and Children. Migrant Insider, Aug 18, 2025. A Senate investigation documents 510 human rights violations, including miscarriages, child neglect, and sexual assaults in ICE custody.

Kimmy Yan, Japanese American Groups Blast Use of Fort Bliss, Former Internment Camp Site, as ICE Detention Center. NBC News, Aug 20, 2025. “The use of national security rhetoric to justify mass incarceration today echoes the same logic that led to their forced removal and incarceration,” one advocate said.

Patricia Mazzei and David C. Adams, Judge Orders That ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Center Be Shut Down for Now. New York Times, Aug 21, 2025. “Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami found that the state and federal governments had violated a federal law that requires an environmental review before any major federal construction project. Judge Williams partly granted a preliminary injunction sought by environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe, whose members live in the area. The detention center is surrounded by protected lands that form part of the sensitive Everglades ecological system.”

Ted Hesson, Tim Reid, and Nicole Jeanine Johnson, Inside ICE, Trump's Migrant Crackdown Is Taking a Toll on Officers. Reuters, Aug 27, 2025. “Two current and nine former ICE officials told Reuters the agency is grappling with burnout and frustration among personnel as agents struggle to keep pace with the administration’s aggressive enforcement agenda.”

Katie Phang, Former Labor Sec Warns of Trump’s Hidden Economic Damage. The Katie Phang Show, Aug 28, 2025. Julie Su, interim Secretary of Labor under Biden, weighs in on the firing of the Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the comparison in jobs and unemployment numbers under Biden vs. Trump. Black unemployment under Trump just hit 7%.

Malcolm Ferguson, Immigration Agents Round Up Firefighters Battling Wildfire. The New Republic, Aug 28, 2025.

“Border Patrol agents arrested two firefighters battling the Bear Gulch fire, the biggest active wildfire in Washington state, according toThe Seattle Times. On Wednesday morning, two different crews of firefighters were cutting wood while waiting for their superior to arrive when Customs and Border Patrol agents showed up in “Police” vests. The federal agents made the entire crew line up and show ID, eventually detaining the two firefighters without giving them a chance to say goodbye to their fellow crew members and loved ones.”

Konstantin Toropin, Pentagon Authorizes Up to 600 Military Judges to Serve as Temporary Immigration Judges. Associated Press, Sep 2, 2025.

“At the same time, more than 100 immigration judges have been fired or left voluntarily after taking deferred resignations offered by the Trump administration, their union says. In the most recent round of terminations, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers said in July that at least 17 immigration judges had been fired “without cause” in courts across the country.

That has left about 600 immigration judges, union figures show, meaning the Pentagon move would double their ranks.

The head of the American Immigration Lawyers Association decried bringing in temporary judges who lack expertise in immigration law, saying “it makes as much as sense as having a cardiologist do a hip replacement.”

“Expecting fair decisions from judges unfamiliar with the law is absurd. This reckless move guts due process and further undermines the integrity of our immigration court system,” said Ben Johnson, the organization’s executive director.”

John Yoon and Francesca Regalado, Appeals Court Blocks Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans. New York Times, Sep 3, 2025. “The case appears set to return to the Supreme Court in a decisive battle over President Trump’s use of the 18th-century law to deport migrants.”

Patricia Mazzei, Appeals Court Says ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Center Can Stay Open. New York Times, Sep 4, 2025. “An appeals panel paused a federal judge’s ruling that no additional detainees could be sent to the center, and that much of it had to be dismantled within 60 days.”

Noah Smith, Indians and Koreans Not Welcome. Noahpinion | Substack, Sep 21, 2025. On the flipflops about the H-1B visa and the ICE raid on the Hyundai plant.

Max, Trump’s Real Economic Plan Exposed Hiding in Plain Sight. UNFTR | Meidas Touch, Sep 26, 2025. A 42 minute video. Max argues that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and other conservative think tanks are trying to construct a White Christian Nationalist Economy. He looks at Russ Vought, Stephen Miller, and Stephen Mairan in particular. The main idea is to consolidate corporate power and use the Fed to support the biggest corporations, while driving out non-White people and forcing working class White people to take their jobs. Pro-natalist and anti-abortion policies are part of the policy effort to have more White babies.

Kristin Kobes du Mez, On Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. Du Mez Connections | Substack, Sep 26, 2025. And on the meaning of words. After commenting on “squishy words” that can be deployed against anyone for anything, du Mez observes Stephen Miller’s tweet after Governor Gavin Newsom went on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. Miller tweeted, “This language incites violence and terrorism.”

Margaret Stock, Restoring Sanity and Humanity to the Immigration System Requires Putting Enforcement Under Article I Congressional Courts. The UnPopulist, Sep 27, 2025. “Leaving it to the executive-controlled Justice Department has led to politicization, instability, and the erosion of due process.”

Antonio María Delgado, He Was Wrongfully Imprisoned for 43 years. Moments After Being Released, ICE Took Him. Miami Herald, Oct 12, 2025.

“On the morning of Oct. 3, 2025, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam walked out of Huntingdon State Correctional Institution, the Pennsylvania prison that had confined him for more than four decades. The 64-year-old had spent nearly his entire adult life behind bars for a murder he did not commit. His conviction had been vacated weeks earlier after a court found that prosecutors had concealed evidence that would have dismantled the state’s case. The Centre County district attorney formally withdrew all charges a day before his expected release. But Vedam never made it home. As he stood on the threshold of freedom, officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were waiting. Acting on a decades-old deportation order, they detained him and transferred him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in central Pennsylvania.”

Nicole Foy, We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. ProPublica, Oct 16, 2025.

Scott Pelley, Aaron Weisz, Aliza Chasan, and Ian Flickinger, Fired Justice Department Lawyer Says He Refused to Lie in the Abrego Garcia Case. The New Republic, Oct 19, 2025. See also Malcolm Ferguson, Former DOJ Lawyer Says He Was Ordered to Lie About Ábrego García. The New Republic, Oct 20, 2025.

“On Sunday, Justice Department whistleblower Erez Reuveni told 60 Minutes what the public has suspected for months now: The Trump administration told him to lie to a judge about Kilmar Ábrego García being a gang member after it mistakenly deported him.”

Jesse Weber, ‘ICE Agent’ Busted for DUI with His Kids in His Truck: Cops. Sidebar with Jesse Weber | Law & Crime Network, Oct 21, 2025. A 30 minute video with commentary. “An apparent ICE agent was busted for allegedly driving drunk with his kids in the car. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber goes through body camera footage of Scott Thomas Deiseroth's tense roadside encounter with deputies in the Florida Keys, including his attempts to use his law enforcement status for special treatment and struggles through sobriety tests.” See short video: The Independent, ICE Agent Erupts After Black Officer Stops Him for DUI. The Independent, Oct 20, 2025. A 3 minute video showing the encounter: “A Miami man who identified himself as an ICE agent questioned the nationality of a Black police officer who pulled him over for driving recklessly with his children in the car. Scott Thomas Deiseroth, 42, was stopped near the Florida Keys after he was reported for reckless driving. After being pulled over, officers noticed a smell of alcohol and Deiseroth gave confused information about his location. During the interaction with officers, he asked one, “are you Haitian?” The Monroe County Sheriff's Office has charged him with DUI and two counts of child endangerment, as his two children, aged 7 and 9, were found in his vehicle. Belligerent 'ICE agent' asks black police officer if he's Haitian during DUI traffic stop.”

Charles P. Pierce, ICE Is Hiring Literally Anybody, and It’s Terrifying. Esquire, Oct 23, 2025. “Many recruits have criminal backgrounds or can’t pass open-book exams on officer conduct, yet they’re allowed to tear children from their beds at night.”

Will Gordh and Adrienne Larkin, Why the Hell Did Farmers Vote for Trump? Talking Politics with Mom, Oct 31, 2025.

“American farmers voted for Trump by huge margins... even though he campaigned on a tariff policy that was certain to start a trade war and hurt their exports of stuff like soy beans to China. He also promised to deport "illegal immigrants" (undocumented workers) who make up a large percentage of the farm sector's labor force. But they voted for him anyway - why? There is a narrative out there that they were lied to... but our guest, Sarah Taber (a farmer herself) exposes the real reasons farmers voted for Trump, and reveals that the American farmer is much different than the image we all have in our head... they are much wealthier on average than most people think. Mom and I discuss with Sarah the reality of farming in America - the H-2A visa program (which has been exploited by some contractors to the point that their practices qualify as slavery) and we discuss the possibility of a looming bailout... Should American farmers be bailed out or suffer the consequences of making a bad bet?”

Isabella Dias, Then They Came for the Dreamers. Mother Jones, Nov 11, 2025. “Immigrants brought here as children were told they wouldn’t be deported. Now, they’re being targeted anyway.”

Tara Rincon, Federal Jury Awards $112M to Immigrants Detained by Suffolk for ICE. News 12 Long Island, Nov 11, 2025. “A federal jury found the county and the Sheriff's Office violated the Constitutional rights of 674 people.”

Greg Sargent, Trump’s Shocking Brawl With Laura Ingraham on Fox Exposes His Weakness. The New Republic, Nov 12, 2025. “The president undermined MAGA doctrine on immigration—even as Abigail Spanberger has now demonstrated how Democrats can win on the issue.”

Robert Tait, Venezuelans Sent by Trump to El Salvador Endured Systematic Torture, Report Finds. The Guardian, Nov 12, 2025. “Human rights groups accuse Trump officials of complicity and draw comparison with scandal at Abu Ghraib prison.”

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Special Pastoral Message. Office of Public Affairs, Nov 12, 2025.

“Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants. We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures. Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.

We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks.

The Church’s teaching rests on the foundational concern for the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). As pastors, we look to Sacred Scripture and the example of the Lord Himself, where we find the wisdom of God’s compassion. The priority of the Lord, as the Prophets remind us, is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zechariah 7:10). In the Lord Jesus, we see the One who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9), we see the Good Samaritan who lifts us from the dust (Luke 10:30–37), and we see the One who is found in the least of these (Matthew 25). The Church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants is a response to the Lord’s command to love as He has loved us (John 13:34).”

Melissa Sanchez, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella, and Mariam Elba, “I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime. ProPublica, Nov 13, 2025. Summarized by Heather Cox Richardson, November 13, 2025. Letters from an American | Substack, Nov 13, 2025.

Hafiz Rashid, ICE Agent Arrested in Sex-Trafficking Sting Told Cops: “I’m ICE, Boys”. The New Republic, Nov 19, 2025. “An employee for Immigration and Customs Enforcement was one of 16 men arrested in a sex-trafficking sting.”

Liv Caputo, The O1 Visa Is For ‘Extraordinary’ Talent: Among Its Users? Influencers and OnlyFans Models. Florida Phoenix, Nov 19, 2025. “OnlyFans models and YouTubers are among those talented enough for one of the U.S.’s most exclusive visas.” This is how Plantation Capitalism uses women for their “labor.”

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Afghan National Guard Assassin Was Child Mercenary for CIA. Breaking Points, Dec 1, 2025. The Afghan man who shot two DC National Guards, one of whom succumbed to his wounds, worked for the CIA from 15 years old in Afghanistan in the Kandahar Strike Force. Trump blamed Biden for admitting this man, but Trump’s administration approved his immigration paperwork. His story is very, very revealing of US involvement in Afghanistan, and also lack of support and accountability while in the US.

Philip Cohen, What If Both Sides in the Birth Rate Debate Are Wrong? Dec 8, 2025. “The right wants to steer women away from work and toward motherhood. The left wants to provide them with more state support so it’s easier to have children. We should refuse this choice.”

“Finally, what happens when liberal pronatalism doesn’t successfully raise birth rates enough to resolve fears of a demographic crisis? Having accepted the premise that birth rates need to be raised, I’m concerned that liberals will find themselves politically boxed in—and end up endorsing hard-way approaches.

Instead, we should deny the entire framing of the natalism debate. In the U.S., simple projections show that if we maintain reasonable levels of immigration—a million immigrants or so per year, as we had in the recent past—the U.S. population will peak in the 2040s and then start to decline at a manageable pace. That buys us time to address our real problems: climate change, the threat to democracy, and the rise of nationalism. In the process, we can continue to look for ways to make life better for today’s mothers and their families, rather than making social sacrifices now for children who won’t join the workforce for decades.”

Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz, Pope Leo Strikes Back Against Trump Inside USA. Court of History | Legal AF, Dec 12, 2025. A 33 minute video. Pope Leo criticized President Trump’s immigration policy as inhumane.

Greg Sargent, Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State. The New Republic, Dec 15, 2025. “He is descended from Russian Jews—you know, the kind of people who were once denounced as alien and unassimilable. Today, his project is to unleash government persecution of those he deems alien and unassimilable. How far will Miller’s sadistic designs go?” Includes a link to a previously unpublished biographical book authored by Miller’s grandmother, Ruth Glosser, about her experience of immigration.

Al Jazeera, Why Tech Billionaires Are Quietly Bankrolling Europe’s Far-Right | Pinch Point. Al Jazeera, Dec 16, 2025. “Great Replacement Theory” in Europe. A 21 minute video. Billionaires are not trying to save “European democracy.” They are fundamentally opposed to liberal democracy itself because of their corporate authoritarianism. They are using the far-right to topple the EU.

David Crary, Giovanni Dell’Orto, Luis Andres Henao, and Tiffany Stanley, US Faith Leaders Supporting Targeted Immigrants Brace for a Tough Year Ahead. Associated Press, Dec 30, 2025.

Jonah Valdez, Right-Wing YouTuber Behind Viral Minnesota Fraud Video Has Long Anti-Immigrant History. The Intercept, Dec 31, 2025. “Before alleging fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley built a following with anti-immigrant clips.” See also Melissa Gira Grant, The Tim Walz Saga Shows Why Debunking Conspiracy Theories Doesn’t Work. The New Republic, Jan 6, 2026; “The Minnesota governor abandoned his reelection campaign due to the thinnest of right-wing stories about fraudulent childcare centers.”

Tim Sullivan and Giovanni Dell’Orto, ICE Officer Kills a Minneapolis Driver In a Deadly Start to Trump’s Latest Immigration Operation. Associated Press, Jan 7, 2026.

MPR News Staff, Frey, Walz Dispute That ICE Killed Woman in Self-Defense. Minnesota Public Radio News, Jan 7, 2026.

Who’s Profiting from ICE? A Google Maps data set.

Morgan Guyton, ICE Is the Purest Expression of Evangelical Christian Theology. The Way of the Fool | Substack, Jan 11, 2026.

Isabel Del Mastro, Luisa Clausen, and Rene Kladzyk, ICE Inspections Plummeted as Detentions Soared in 2025. POGO Investigates, Jan 12, 2026. “The number of ICE detention facility inspections dropped by 36.25% in 2025, even as detention rates — and deaths in ICE custody — surged across the nation.

Steven Monacelli, ICE Prosecutor Who Runs Racist X Account Returns to Dallas Immigration Court. Texas Observer, Jan 13, 2026.

“James Rodden, identified by the Observer last year as the operator of an account that routinely posted hateful statements, appeared to be back at work Tuesday.” “The account has over 17,000 followers and has routinely posted hateful statements, including that “America is a White nation,” that “‘Migrants’ are all criminals,” and that “All blacks are foreign to my people,” in addition to posts with apparent praise of Adolf Hitler.

After the Observer’s initial story was published, Rodden was apparently pulled from federal immigration court schedules. Three members of Congress sent letters to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security demanding an investigation into Rodden. ICE responded in a letter last March to Congressman Marc Veasey, who represents part of Dallas, stating that the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) “understands the seriousness of the allegations and will ensure the allegations are addressed appropriately, fairly, and expeditiously” and that typically “OPR administrative investigations are completed within 120 days.” ICE has not provided any further information since.

Upon receiving a tip from a source that works inside the Dallas Immigration Court, the Observer arrived at the courtroom of Judge Deitrich H. Sims Tuesday afternoon ahead of the day’s merits hearings for federal immigration cases. When the Observer opened the door to the courtroom, Rodden was sitting at the prosecutors’ desk. A court clerk said the Observer was not allowed to sit in on the hearings. The Observer also obtained a photo of Rodden exiting the courtroom Tuesday wearing his staff badge.”

Crust News, ICE List. The ICE List is an open journalistic project, created by Crust News, aimed at collecting and sharing information that can hold ICE members legally accountable.

Van Jones, America Isn’t Divided by ICE — It’s Divided by Reality. Van Jones | Substack, Jan 17, 2026. Largely a media consumption problem, and differing definitions of “law enforcement.”

Kyle Kulinsky, I’ve Never Seen a Polling Collapse Like This. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Jan 20, 2026. Even a large % of Republican voters disapprove of ICE. But what is sad and concerning is the immovable 25-33% who support Trump.

Saagar Enjeti and Ryan Grim, Glenn Greenwald Goes Off: Matt Walsh, ICE Face Scanning Protestors. Breaking Points, Jan 26, 2026. Both parties want to use domestic surveillance of the other side, but hate having it directed it at people in their side/base.

Shashank Singh, ICE Agents Detain Migrants on Church Grounds at Two California Parishes. Visa Verge, Jan 26, 2026. ICE began arrests at California churches in June 2025 after the government ended sanctuary protections. Over 330 migrants faced detention statewide, generating fear and reducing church attendance. Religious leaders strongly oppose these enforcement actions. Immigrant advocates push for legal aid and policy changes to protect vulnerable communities.

Matt Stoller, Why America Spends Billions Policing Immigrants — And Pennies Policing Corporations. The Lever, Jan 27, 2026. “From Minneapolis to Davos, the state shows who it polices — and who it protects.”

Krystal Ball and Emily Jacinsky, "F*CK THIS!" Even ICE Agents Disgusted w/ICE Thuggery in MN. Breaking Points, Jan 28, 2026. Ken Klippenstein discusses his reporting. There are leadership and organizational decisions within ICE and DHS that contribute to the shooting of U.S. citizens.

Austin Campbell, He Witnessed an Earlier Shooting. Feds Arrested Him at the Scene of Alex Pretti’s Killing. The Intercept, Jan 31, 2026.

“A man who contradicted the government narrative about a prior shooting found himself pinned to the ground and detained after Pretti’s death. Less than 40 minutes after federal immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti on Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis, Clayton Kelly was thrown face-first onto the sidewalk, tasting snow and street grime as a federal agent’s knee drove into his back.”

Marimar Martinez, ‘My Own Government Attempted to Execute Me’: Victims of ICE and Border Patrol Aggression Testify. MS Now, Feb 3, 2026. “Marimar Martinez, a witness who was shot [FIVE TIMES] by Customs and Border Patrol agents and Aliya Rahman, a witness who was dragged from her car in Minneapolis testify on Capitol Hill to describe the horrors that they have had to face at the hands of Trump's immigration enforcement officers.” For longer, full recording, see PBS News Hour, Watch: Marimar Martinez Describes Being Shot 5 Times by CBP Agent. PBS News Hour, Feb 3, 2026.  See also Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, BodyCam Footage Exposes CBP Lies In Shooting of US Citizen. Breaking Points, Feb 12, 2026.

Nick Turse, Federal Agents Left Behind “Death Cards” After Capturing Immigrants. The Intercept, Feb 3, 2026. “ICE agents dropped customized ace of spades playing cards, recalling a practice by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War.”

David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar, Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023. Cato Institute, Feb 3, 2026.

“For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government. Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt. Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level. These results, which do not account for any of immigration’s indirect, tax-revenue-boosting effects on economic growth, represent the lower bound of the positive fiscal effects. Even by this conservative analysis, immigrants may have already prevented a fiscal crisis.”

Kyle Kulinski, Everything They Told You About Immigration Is Wrong. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Feb 5, 2026. Kyle points out studies: Immigrants contribute more in taxes than they receive in social services; immigrants commit fewer crimes than US residents and citizens; Biden deported 4 million people while Trump in his first term deported only 1.9 million.

Kyle Kulinski, Trump DOJ Revolts and Resigns En Masse. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Feb 5, 2026. An immigration lawyer attests that ICE/CBP officers do not return cash, work permits, social security cards, etc. from the people they arrest and detain. Kyle also notes that the ICE agent who shot Marimar Martinez five times tried to destroy the evidence.

Jack Queen, Toddler Was Returned to ICE Custody and Denied Medication After Hospitalization, Lawsuit Says. Reuters, Feb 7, 2026.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Krystal And Saagar Debate ICE Detention Facilities. Breaking Points, Feb 12, 2026. Saagar’s retributive mindset is a good example of the immigration-skeptical position.

Kyle Kulinski, ICE Caught S*X Trafficking As DHS Plots Permanent Occupation of US Cities | The Kyle Kulinski Show, Feb 12, 2026.

Nate Raymond, Kristina Cooke and Brad Heath, Courts Have Ruled 4,400 Times That ICE Jailed People Illegally. It Hasn’t Stopped. Reuters, Feb 14, 2026.

Drew Harwell, He Made a Fake ICE Deportation Tip Line. Then a Kindergarten Teacher Called. Washington Post, Feb 20, 2026. “A Nashville comedian’s deportation hotline, set up as a joke, has gone viral among viewers who say it shows the “banality of evil personified.””

Nick Turse, Kristi Noem Repeatedly Claimed ICE Deported a Cannibal. It Was “Completely Made Up.” The Intercept, Feb 23, 2026. “Law enforcement sources told The Intercept that Noem’s tale about a cannibal was a fabrication.”

Executive Watch, Trump’s Deportation State Abuses the Rights of Not Just Immigrants But Citizens, Too: An Executive Watch Roundup. The UnPopulist, Mar 13, 2026. “Our mid-March selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law.”

Kyle Cheney, Judge Orders Trump Administration to Bring Back DACA Recipient Deported to Mexico. Politico, Mar 24, 2026. “A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring back a woman abruptly deported to Mexico last month despite her active protections under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez arrived in the United States in 1998 as an undocumented 15-year-old. She was granted DACA protection in 2013 and lives in Sacramento with a 22-year-old U.S. citizen daughter.”

Nate Raymond, US Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Detaining Thousands of Refugees. Reuters, Mar 23, 2026. “U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston acted at the request of six refugees ​and two advocacy groups who argued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's policy was an unlawful ​departure from decades of practice.”

Miriam Jordan, ICE Agents Detain Newlywed Spouse of Soldier Training to Deploy. New York Times, Apr 5, 2026. “The 22-year-old wife of an Army staff sergeant came to the U.S. as a toddler. She was taken from a military base where the couple planned to live.”

Ryan Devereaux, A Redditor Criticized ICE. Trump Is Trying to Unmask Them by Dragging the Company to a Secret Grand Jury. The Intercept, Apr 10, 2026. “An ICE summons to get the user’s identity failed. Advocates worry the move to a grand jury signals an escalation of the war on dissent.”

Ivan Taylor, Trump Administration Funding Cut Threatens Future of Catholic Charities Program for Migrant Children in Miami. CBS News, Apr 16, 2026. Ewan Palmer, Trump Yanks Millions From Catholic Charities Amid Pope Feud. Daily Beast, Apr 16, 2026.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Florida College Student Arrested For Netanyahu Joke. Breaking Points, Apr 21, 2026. The first part of the discussion is about immigration policy. Saagar argues that immigrants should be asked to renounce grievances in their countries of origin that would make them adopt neo-conservative foreign policy positions of military interference in those countries.

L.H. Thurau, The Stories of ICE’s Brutal Treatment of Children Are Piling Up. The Effects Are Devastating. Slate, Apr 27, 2026.

Liliana Segura, Who Decided to Indict Kilmar Abrego Garcia Over a Years-Old Traffic Stop? The Intercept, Apr 28, 2026. A DOJ prosecutor insists he charged Abrego based strictly on evidence of human smuggling. A federal judge seems skeptical.

Luke Goldstein, Trump’s Private Repo Men Are Hunting Immigrants. The Lever, May 6, 2026. “The Trump administration is deploying multimillion-dollar immigration fines and outsourcing enforcement to private debt collectors with long records of abuse.”

Matt Sledge and Sam Biddle, ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Copes Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence. The Intercept, May 21, 2026. “Colorado law enforcement officials warned their counterparts across the country that social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security recruiting for ICE contained so many white supremacist themes that they could endanger the public, according to internal records obtained by The Intercept. The Colorado Information Analysis Center cautioned in a March bulletin that “violent extremists” might perceive “White Supremacy Ideology in ICE Recruitment Materials, Leading to a Potentially Increased Threat Environment.”

Zach Montague and Madeleine Ngo, Judge Says Government Must Restart Asylum and Immigration Processing. New York Times, Jun 5, 2026.

“A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday struck down a slate of immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration, writing that the measures had “placed the lives of countless individuals on hold — solely by virtue of their countries of birth.”

In a searing 135-page opinion, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. wrote that actions to lock eligible asylum seekers out of the immigration system and deny others temporary work permits had made it functionally impossible for a broad swath of people to remain in the country. He said the measures were improperly fueled by “anti-immigration sentiments” and contrary to immigration laws.”

These are the images used in artistic physical displays. They are survey questions and conversation starters that are topically and thematically organized. They demonstrate how Jesus is relevant to each topic or theme. You can also just view the images on your device. If you would like, see all our Conversation Stations; below are the ones that relate to the topic of Immigration and Race.

Whose Justice? (and instructions and Christian Restorative Justice Study Guide)

Whose Justice? for Harvard Law School

What Can We Do About Evil? (and instructions and conversation tree) and smaller version and brochure version

Que Podemos Hacer Sobre La Maldad? for the Asociacion Dominicana de Estudiantes Evangelico, 2014

Does the Good Outweigh the Bad? (and instructions)

Race What's the Problem? (and instructions) and brochure version