https://www.kcra.com/article/border-patrol-raid-home-depot-florin-road-sacramento/65440117?
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Monday, July 14, 2025
ICE-Secret Police Is Growing
ICE, budget
LeftLinks Weekly, July 11, 2025
The main features of our political landscape regarding policing are about to change dramatically in the coming year.
We are all familiar with our local and state police and sheriff's departments. While not as familiar, we are also aware of the FBI and U.S. Marshals.
But following the Oct. 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers, we have a new player on the field: ICE and its parent, the Dept of Homeland Security.
Its gathered components reached back over time to include a number of smaller agencies, all collectively termed 'La Migra' by the undocumented workers who felt their weight. Under Homeland Security, they became more concentrated. In its first few years, ICE was known for rounding up Mexican and Chicano street gangs connected to gangs in the prisons, about 90% of their work. Only 10 percent was aimed at immigrant workers. Today, the situation is exactly reversed: 90% of ICE raids focus on normal immigrant labor, while only 10% go after more hardened street and prison-connected gangs.
This, of course, is the opposition of the claim Trump has used to sell ICE to the public.
How will ICE expand its scope today? Some point to the large totals of deportations under Obama, earning him the title 'Deporter-in-Chief.' But this label and associated claims never matched the hype around them. How deportations were counted changed after the Bush administration: before, people caught crossing the southern border were simply bused back and were not counted as deportations. However, under Obama, these people were fingerprinted and added to the deportation tally, thus giving Obama his record numbers of deportations.
Today, the Trump-Miller team is demanding that ICE seize and deport at least 3000 people a day anywhere in the country to reach the millions in deportations promised by Trump's 2024 campaign. Detentions on that scale are far more difficult than they might seem.
Today, ICE has 22,000 employees and a budget of just over $9 billion. It has over 500 detention centers, jails, and prisons nationwide. Those detained are both undocumented immigrants apprehended by ICE, and those detained by other agencies, such as Border Patrol. About 34,000 people are held in immigration detention on any given day, from about 200,000 detained annually.
According to a study by the CATO Institute, the vast majority detained since 2024 have no criminal records or any other history of violent or anti-social offences—apart from crossing the border, which is a minor misdemeanor offence. They are simply immigrants looking for work or shelter from life-threatening abuse in their home countries. ICE deports many of these, releases some, and continues detaining others, without much rhyme or reason regarding access to court hearings or not.
From 2012 to early 2018, ICE also wrongfully arrested and detained 1,480 U.S. citizens, including many who spent months or years in immigration detention. A 2018 Los Angeles Times investigation found that ICE's reliance on incomplete and error-prone databases and lax investigations led to these erroneous detentions. From 2008 to 2018, ICE was sued for wrongful arrest by more than two dozen U.S. citizens, who had been detained for periods ranging from one day to over three years. Also, about 10 people have died in ICE custody since January 2025, usually from being in poor health when seized, but with no follow-up treatment once detained.
But the ICE we know today is on the cusp of a major transformation and expansion. Vice President JD Vance put a spotlight on the matter when he voted to break the tie on the 'Big Bill:' ICE Funding mattered the most "Everything else? The Congressional Budget Office score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy? is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions," he said.
Instead of its current $9 billion budget, ICE is now slotted for some $170 billion.
Yes, that's a 20-fold increase. It will make ICE the largest police force in U.S. history. As Leah Greenberg, co-chair of the progressive activist group, Indivisible, put it on Twitter/X: "They are just coming right out and saying they want an exponential increase in $$$ so they can build their own personal Gestapo."
What Greenburg means is the new expanded ICE will not be controlled by the regular U.S Armed Forces, nor state and local governments. It remains solely an instrument of a Trump cabinet appointee. The current head of ICE, Todd Lyons, appointed in March 2025, is still unconfirmed by the Senate. This makes ICE, in effect, into Trump's paramilitary.
For starters, ICE will quickly double in size, adding 10,000 new agents and another 9000 new border guards. The number of holding facilities for detainees will expand proportionally.
How is this pending expansion affecting the morale of ICE agents? For some, morale is now quite high, with many new resources in the pipeline. But for others, surprisingly, morale is low. They do not like entering neighborhoods or workplaces where they are not welcome, detaining people without any criminal background or threat. They are seeking the first viable option to resign from the force. We should keep this in mind when checking out ICE agents.
In the years ahead, we can expect vastly increased ICE activities on the streets and workplaces where immigrants might gather. We should note that our local police are usually not required to help them enforce immigration laws. Regardless of any claims to the contrary, every person on U.S. soil has the same rights of equal protection and due process under the law. We should do our best to see that everyone knows their right and is respected in exercising them.
Carl’s LeftLin
Who Are ICE - Political Police officers >
In Long Beach, California, off-duty Border Patrol agent Isaiah Hodgson was arrested and charged with resisting officers, injuring an officer, and other weapons-related crimes. He was apparently armed and drunk as a skunk at a bar—where he followed a woman into the bathroom.
After he was asked to leave—but didn’t—police were called. Hodgson refused to identify himself—sounds familiar for these federal agents. He then fought the officers, injuring at least one, before they had to use a stun gun on Hodgson.
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Why is this great news? Well, it serves as a clear reminder that federal agents can be arrested when they break the law. If they assault people—or kidnap them—or commit any crimes at all, they can and should end up in handcuffs.
“No one is above the law, regardless of their position or badge,” LA County DA Nathan Hochman said. He’s right, but it shouldn’t take this level of carnage for them to end up behind bars. I hope we start to see more state and local law enforcement standing up for the people.
Friday, July 11, 2025
Sunday, July 06, 2025
Soldiers Organizing to Defend Democracy
Soldiers Organize for Democracy.
On the Fourth of July, members of the military are calling on Congress to protect service members who disobey the president’s immoral or unlawful orders.
Brittany Ramos DeBarros speaks outside the Supreme Court Getty Images Brittany Ramos DeBarros speaks outside the Supreme Court during a June 13 protest ahead of Trump’s Army parade, Getty Images
Kim, an aircraft mechanic, joined the military in 2019, at age 18. She and her mother had struggled to survive, even living in their car at times. She didn’t think she could afford college, so she didn’t apply. Like so many young Americans in that situation, she enlisted “to get a stable paycheck, a roof over my head, food in my stomach at the end of the day.” Deployed only once, Kim spent most of her time on base, but she enjoyed the routine: waking up early for 15-hour workdays, staying up late to earn an associate’s degree, making lifelong friends and “amazing mentors.” But in 2024, she began to worry about what a new administration might ask the military to do.
As Kim read Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s far-right authoritarian government, she became increasingly troubled about the prospect of unlawful orders, fearing especially that the president would use the military against American civilians. Though she’d been planning on staying 20 years in the Air Force, she decided to get out; now, she’s no longer active duty, but because she didn’t serve a full eight years, she could be redeployed. Kim is not her real name; she spoke anonymously to TNR anonymously so as not to jeopardize her future; a dishonorable discharge could harm her employment prospects and imperil her hard-earned military benefits. “I’ve done quite well for myself,” she told me.
She was right to worry about how Trump might misuse the armed forces. Last month, the Marines were deployed against peaceful protesters in Los Angeles. “And now we have military in our streets,” Kim said, “and that’s not where you’re supposed to see them.” She still fears she could be asked to be party to it.
She’s speaking out as part of a campaign launched by About Face, a veterans’ group which today—July Fourth—is launching a “Right to Refuse” campaign arguing that service members deserve the right to refuse unlawful or immoral orders, in the hope that Congress will pass a law offering stronger protections to service members who do so. Founded by Iraq War veterans concerned about the immorality of that conflict, About Face has in recent years heard from service members with objections to sending weapons to Israel, dismantling DEI within the military, and especially, recently, the prospect of being pawns in Trump’s authoritarian fantasy, whether in the crackdown in Los Angeles or the military parade in Washington, D.C.
Brittany Ramos DeBarros, organizing director of About Face, is an Afghanistan veteran who once faced court-martial for speaking out against that war while still in uniform. She acknowledges that Congress isn’t going to pass this law quickly enough to deal with the current constitutional crises—if at all—but she sees it as a rallying point for military communities. Families and service members need support in trying to navigate this moment, she says, and many are finding each other and organizing. From her own experience, she knows that the military can make you feel crazy if you disagree with it.
“So I think it’s profound,” she said, “that people are organically breaking out of that enough to start talking to each other about, ‘I’m really concerned about this. What are you thinking you’re gonna do?’” DeBarros says many are wondering what is in their own best interests—but also what is the most moral choice: Is it better to resign publicly or “better to have more people within the military when that moment comes who are willing to stand up and do something and do the right thing? Which is a complicated question for people to sit with.” On the one hand, service members risk losing their benefits and going to prison if they refuse orders; but if they don’t refuse unlawful orders, she said, many will “live with the moral injury and consequences of carrying out something that they knew was wrong.”
Laura Dickinson, a law professor at George Washington University with extensive knowledge of the military, national security, and the law of armed conflict, said “the deployment of the federalized National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles is quite unprecedented and has broken norms in our constitutional tradition. In our tradition, the United States federal government has been very cautious about using the federal military domestically for law enforcement purposes. It’s norm busting and very concerning to people in the military.” Deploying the military against Americans could fracture that trust terribly, Dickinson suggested: “We are seeing concerns about this from within the military now.”
Dickinson points out that the deployment of the Marines and federalized National Guard in Los Angeles—they’re still there—isn’t “manifestly unlawful”; the state of California has been litigating it. DeBarros also noted that “there’s not a clear consensus amongst lawyers around what right now constitutes technically legal orders and what constitutes illegal orders.” But even if a service member faces an obviously unconstitutional order, it’s not clear what she should do. Defying the U.S. military is one of the most intimidating prospects someone can face. Disobedient soldiers can be court-martialed and face prison. Yet if they do carry out unlawful orders, the fact that they were “just following orders” is no defense in a criminal trial. All this puts military personnel in an untenable situation.
Another fear is that Trump might invoke the Insurrection Act—which allows the president to deploy the military if there is unrest “against the authority of the United States”—simply to quash protests. The Marines aren’t trained in policing, DeBarros points out: “Especially people in the military understand that there’s probably no less equipped branch of the federal government to do de-escalation work than the Marines,” who are trained for warfare, where the rules of engagement are very different. Trump fantasized during his first term about shooting protesters in the leg—a prime example, Dickinson notes, of what police are not allowed to do.
“I may not have joined the military out of the most patriotic of reasons,” said Kim, the Air Force member, “but I still raised my right hand and swore an oath to the Constitution to defend it from all enemies foreign and domestic. But the American people are not the Constitution’s domestic enemies.”
Liza Featherstone is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation (2018).
Thursday, July 03, 2025
4th of July Tribute
On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted and the nation committed to enshrining the ideals of liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness into our country’s story. While we have never fully achieved this vision for all, we work every day on its pursuit and the struggle for justice. |
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| So this is our commitment to you: |
Today, as threats to our freedom build, we will continue efforts to protect people and our democracy every day.
-Thomas Paine December 23, 1776. posted by Duane Campbell |
Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Catholic Bishops Oppose Trump on Immigration
Catholic Bishops Rally Opposition to Trump’s Immigration Agenda
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/us/catholic-bishops-trump-immigration.html?
Monday, June 30, 2025
They Will Not Kill Us Without a Fight
Republican Tax Bill Kills.
https://ourmoralmoment.substack.com/p/they-will-not-kill-us-without-a-fight?
Video of arrests today,
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