What Public Officials Are ICE Goons Arresting Today?
A little violence never hurt anybody, right?
While most of the attention this week was caught up with Donald Trump’s fascist attacks on freedom of speech, Donald Trump’s fascist mass deportation agenda continued unabated, with a new campaign of immigration sweeps in Chicago, arrests of public officials demanding to see an ICE detention facility in New York, and more. It’s exhausting, by design. Let’s get up to date on the latest evil fuckery from the evil fuckers.
Chicago: ICE Slams Congressional Candidate To Pavement, Wingnuts Overjoyed
Even though Trump has so far backed off his threat to invade Chicago with National Guard and active-duty military troops, his immigration thugs nonetheless launched an aggressive effort to arrest people suspected of being in the US without papers. The goon squads have been at it for about two weeks now, and they’re calling it “Operation Midway Blitz,” because why not explicitly adopt terms that directly call the Nazis to mind?
Chicagoans have been out protesting the actions, including that awesome Illinois state senator who told masked agents in unmarked cars to get the hell off her street. Friday morning, however, ICE agents violently attacked protesters outside a detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, and were captured on video slamming Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, 26, to the pavement as she and about 100 other protesters tried to keep unmarked black vans from entering or leaving the lockup. Here’s a brief video of the assault from Abughazaleh’s YouTube:
That was actually the second time Abughazaleh was tossed to the ground Friday morning; she was also among protesters who were sitting on the street blocking the front gate of the ICE jail at around 4 a.m.; they were all dragged off and dumped onto the pavement then, too. ICE agents also tear gassed and fired pepper balls at the protesters.
Dominic was there, and will have a specific report for you tomorrow.
DHS issued its usual propaganda blast calling the protesters “rioters” and accusing Illinois officials including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker of having “villainized and demonized ICE law enforcement.”
“These desperate politicians want 15 minutes of fame, and they’re willing to do it off the backs of law enforcement,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said on Fox News just hours after the clash. “It’s pretty despicable, but we will continue do what we’re doing, whether it be in Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis or New York.”
Not surprisingly, the usual rightwing creeps on Twitter celebrated the assault and called for Abughazaleh’s arrest, so she turned their nastiness right around into a fundraising appeal on Bluesky.
If you want to make Laura Loomer’s day worse too, you could send some Ameros Abughazaleh’s way right here.
New York: State And Local Officials Arrested At Manhattan ICE Goon HQ
At least a dozen state and local officials in the great state of New York were among the 71 people arrested Thursday during a protest at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, the federal building where ICE has been grabbing people as they leave their scheduled immigration hearings. Among those arrested was NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, who was also arrested in June while escorting an immigrant from a hearing room. The officials were hauled off after they requested to see the detention cells, where conditions for arrested immigrants are so bad that a federal judge on Wednesday ordered DHS to limit the number of people held, provide adequate food and clean conditions, and to ensure detainees’ access to attorneys.
It was quite a haul of electeds, and good for all of them for showing up do do peaceful civil disobedience. In addition to Lander, ICE arrested two New York state senators and nine state Assembly members inside the building, as well as several other city officials and more than 40 ordinary citizens outside.
ICE has previously refused to allow members of Congress access to the detention section of the federal building, claiming that their legal authority to inspect detention facilities on demand, without an appointment, didn’t apply because it’s an ICE field office with temporary holding areas, not an actual detention center.
As usual, DHS Propaganda Minister Tricia McLaughlin mocked the officials who wanted to see whether ICE was following the judge’s order, and Lander in particular, saying, “Another day, another activist politician pulling a stunt in an attempt to get their 15 minutes of fame while endangering DHS personnel and detainees.” Her repeated use of the Andy Warhol line suggests that she may in fact be an evil AI chatbot.
Deportation Orders For Some, Release For Others, Always Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Totalitarianism
On Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana ordered the deportation of former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who was one of the first of many people targeted for revenge for peacefully protesting the war in Gaza. Khalil is in the US legally, with a green card and a spouse who’s a US citizen, but in March he was arrested and told his “student visa” had been revoked, despite the green card thing. Then Marco Rubio insisted that even though Khalil hadn’t broken any laws, he still had to be deported for thinking wrong ideas.
Eventually, Khalil was released in June, but now he’s facing deportation to either Algeria or Syria, because the government alleges there were omissions on his application for permanent residence. He and his attorneys have 30 days to appeal the order.
The deportation order by immigration judge Jamee E. Comans — who works for the Justice Department because that’s how fucked our immigration system just is — comes despite a standing order against Khalil’s deportation by federal Judge Michael E. Farbiarz in Khalil’s habeas corpus case. Khalil’s attorneys have filed a motion with Farbianz requesting he intercede to stop the deportation and to allow them to
refile their initial complaint with arguments that would encompass Judge Comans’s latest action, which they characterized as part of a pattern of retaliation by the Trump administration.
Basically, this has become a fight between Comans, the immigration judge who agrees with Rubio that Khalil is a danger to America because of wrongthink, and Farbiarz, the federal district judge who has ruled that the Constitution still matters. Comans accused Farbiarz in court filings of “interfering with the legal process and the authority of the immigration court.” Hooray, jurisdictional pissing contest! This week, Comans ruled that the alleged omissions on Khalil’s residency application — he didn’t disclose he’d worked with a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees or that he belonged to a pro-divestment student group at Columbia — were so serious that they warranted his immediate deportation regardless of the constitutional issues Farbiarz is considering, so fuck you, haha.
This is far from over yet.
We’ll close with the one good-news immigration story this week, the release of Ayman Soliman, an imam from Egypt who formerly served as a chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Soliman had been jailed by ICE for more than two months after his asylum status was revoked, and faced possible deportation. But now, his asylum status has been restored, making him eligible once more to apply for a green card and eventual citizenship. The government has dropped its attempt to deport him, which was based on a flimsy claim that an NGO he belonged to back in Egypt was affiliated with terrorists.
Soliman was granted asylum in 2018 after he fled Egypt for the US in 2014 after being jailed and tortured for his work as a journalist covering Arab Spring protests there.
Speaking to supporters Friday evening after his release, Soliman recounted that his fellow detainees had celebrated his release, and could we all keep them in mind too?
“I can’t find words to describe this moment. This is beyond a dream,” he said, as supporters including religious leaders and children held up signs reading “Finally Home,” “Home Is Here,” and “Immigrants Welcome here.” “I will always be indebted to every one of you.”
Soliman’s attorneys said that his release was due in part to the outpouring of public support for him, which pressured ICE to release him when it couldn’t find anything solid to back the termination of his asylum. He had been scheduled for a trial in immigration court in Cleveland next week.
Among those who had advocated for Soliman’s release was US Rep. Greg Landsman, who said in a press release he and his team were “very glad that Ayman has been released and is on his way home and back to our Cincinnati community,” and celebrated the opportunity Soliman now has to resume his chaplaincy.
And there’s a good place to close, with the reminder that when people organize to push back against Trump’s deportation madness, it can work. It’s exhausting, but we gotta keep resisting, friends.
[WaPo (gift link) / ABC News / NYT / NBC News / Cincinati Enqirer / AP]
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Germany 1936.
I feel so helpless.
"Dominic was there, and will have a specific report for you tomorrow.”
Looking forward to it. Be careful out there, Dominic!