arotrios

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/38264400

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) on Friday reflected on being arrested outside of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility earlier in the day, arguing he was being targeted after visiting the New Jersey detention center with three Democratic members of Congress.

Excerpt:

“Nothing happened for a long, long time, you know, for at least over an hour. And then, you know, after that, they finally told us to leave, and I told him I was leaving, they came outside the gate and arrested me,” Baraka said during his appearance on MSNBC’s “The Briefing” Friday night. “So it looked like it was targeted.”

He later added that ICE officials “obviously targeted me.”

“I wasn’t the only one out there. They came directly to me and tried to arrest me … no one else. Me,” the mayor told host and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki. “And so, I honestly believe, you know, I was targeted there.”

cross-posted from: https://50501.chat/post/206911

First, Trump issued an executive order to militarize domestic law enforcement. Now a new order has come out. Buried in Project Homecoming, the executive order just released by the White House, is the single most dangerous shift in American civil liberties in a generation.

The same man who empowered ICE with military-grade surveillance, armored vehicles, and counterterror tools is now pushing the legal justification to detain people indefinitely.

The administration is laying the legal groundwork to suspend habeas corpus, the constitutional right that protects people from being detained without trial. It’s the right to not be disappeared. It’s the foundation of due process. And they’re getting ready to tear it away.

How? They’re invoking the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which only allows habeas to be revoked “in cases of rebellion or invasion.” Stephen Miller and the Trump legal machine are now planning to label undocumented immigration as an “invasion,” which would let them bypass courts and jail people without charges, trials, or legal representation. The administration is trying to reclassify undocumented immigration as an invasion to unlock those powers. That’s the strategy.

Let that sink in. They’re preparing to create a class of people who can be detained indefinitely without ever seeing a judge.

Ask yourselves, If anyone can just be disappeared off the streets without charges, without court appearances, without access to a lawyer then do we still have a democracy?

This is just the beginning, it won’t stop at immigrants. So let’s be clear about what this will look like.

Indefinite detention. No due process. No hearings. No legal protections. We’ve seen this playbook before in history—and it always starts with creating a legal exception for a specific group. In this case, it’s undocumented immigrants. But legal exceptions do not stay contained. Once the precedent is set, it expands. Always.

Ask yourself: who defines what an “invasion” is? Who decides who qualifies as a threat? Protesters? Activists? Whistleblowers? Once the right to challenge detention is suspended for one group, the door opens to expand it. That is how authoritarianism consolidates power.

While they call this “restoring order,” here’s what they’re really doing:

They’re tearing $96.7 billion out of the economy. That’s how much undocumented immigrants contributed in taxes in 2022, Specifically:

• $59.4 billion in federal taxes

• $37.3 billion in state and local taxes

• $33.9 billion toward social insurance programs they are banned from accessing

Again, these are people paying into Social Security, Medicare, and public infrastructure they’re not even allowed to use.

The source? The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read it yourself. https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/

California alone would lose $8.47 billion in annual tax revenue if these mass deportations succeed. Texas would lose $4.87 billion. New York? $3.1 billion. Every state would feel the economic gut punch. And don’t forget: these are programs undocumented workers pay into but cannot use. They’re helping hold up a system that offers them nothing in return.

Now ask yourself: who is going to make up that lost revenue?

You. The poor. The working class. Not the rich, who continue to dodge taxes with impunity.

The federal government has already slashed funding to the states. Wealthy elites are sitting on tax loopholes and lower effective rates than working people. The answer is obvious: the working class will be left to cover the difference. Your rent, your healthcare, your school funding—all of it will take the hit.

What we are watching is economic sabotage wrapped in xenophobic theater. It is designed to scapegoat immigrants, distract from billionaire tax breaks, and destroy civil liberties in the process.

We have reached a dangerous tipping point. A government openly discussing the suspension of habeas corpus is a government no longer pretending to be democratic.

Habeas corpus is the line between freedom and fascism.

If we let this fall, there is no turning back.

This is the moment where people either pay attention or pay the price. Be ready.

Read the order. Learn what’s happening. Sound the alarm. Talk to your communities. And above all, do not get used to THIS.

Originally Posted By u/transcendent167 At 2025-05-10 10:37:42 AM | Source

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Excerpt:

No later than 60 days after the date of this proclamation, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall supplement existing enforcement and removal operations by deputizing and contracting with State and local law enforcement officers, former Federal officers, officers and personnel within other Federal agencies, and other individuals to increase the enforcement and removal operations force of the Department of Homeland Security by no less than 20,000 officers in order to conduct an intensive campaign to remove illegal aliens who have failed to depart voluntarily.

Location: CA, USA

I have some neighbors who regularly have a huge bash lasting all night long - it's happened every Cinco de Mayo for nearly a decade.

This year - nothing.

The whole town is quiet. This used to be one of the noisiest days of the year. Is anyone else noticing this in their community?

Excerpts:

An internationally acclaimed digital news outlet in El Salvador said Monday that the administration of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is preparing to arrest a number of its journalists following the publication of an interview with two former gang leaders who shed new light on a power-sharing agreement with the U.S.-backed leader and self-described "world's coolest dictator."

"A reliable source in El Salvador told El Faro that the Bukele-controlled Attorney General's Office is preparing at least seven arrest warrants for members of El Faro," the outlet reported. "The source reached out following the publication of an interview with two former leaders of the 18th Street Revolucionarios on Bukele's yearslong relationship to gangs."

"If carried out, the warrants are the first time in decades that prosecutors seek to press charges against individual journalists for their journalistic labors," El Faro added.

As El Faro reported:

At the heart of the threat of arrests is irony: El Faro was only able to interview the two Revolucionarios because they escaped El Salvador with the complicity of Bukele.

One, who goes by "Liro Man," recounts that he was taken to Guatemala, through a blind spot in the Salvadoran border, by Bukele gang negotiator Carlos Marroquín; the other, Carlos Cartagena, or "Charli," was arrested on a warrant in April 2022, early in the state of exception, but quickly released after the police received a call at the station and backed off.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Salvadorans were being rounded up without due process, on charges of belonging to gangs.

The video interview explains the dichotomy: For years, Salvadoran gang leaders cut covert deals with the entourage of Nayib Bukele. In their interview with El Faro, the two Revolucionarios say the FMLN party, to which the now-president belonged a decade ago, paid a quarter of a million dollars to the gangs during the 2014 campaign in exchange for vote coercion in gang-controlled communities, on behalf of Bukele for San Salvador mayor and Salvador Sánchez Cerén as president.

"This support, the sources say, was key to Bukele's ascent to power," El Faro noted. "You're going to tell your mom and your wife's family that they have to vote for Nayib. If you don't do it, we'll kill them," Liro Man says the gang members told their communities in that election. Of Bukele, he added, 'he knew he had to get to the gangs in order to get to where he is.'"

Part of the deal was a tacit "no body, no crime" policy under which gang leaders agreed to hide their victims' corpses as Bukele boasted of a historic reduction in homicides in a country once known as the world's murder capital.

Summary:

Hackers have targeted GlobalX Air, one of the main airlines the Trump administration is using as part of its deportation efforts, and stolen what they say are flight records and passenger manifests of all of its flights, including those for deportation, 404 Media has learned.

The data, which the hackers contacted 404 Media and other journalists about unprompted, could provide granular insight into who exactly has been deported on GlobalX flights, when, and to where, with GlobalX being the charter company that facilitated the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador.

“Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” a defacement message posted to GlobalX’s website reads. Anonymous, well-known for its use of the Guy Fawkes mask, is an umbrella some hackers operate under when performing what they see as hacktivism.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25551602 because I find your lack of faith disturbing...