Donté L. Stallworth The Florida migrant gulag is what happens when the depravities of colonialist foreign policy are turned inward. The post With Alligator Alcatraz, Empire’s Tyranny Has Come Home appeared first on The Nation.
Sasha Abramsky Stephen Miller’s dystopian immigrant-hunting system is picking up pace, and asylum seekers like Mohamed Naser are increasingly vulnerable. The post We’ve Officially Entered Kafka’s America appeared first on The Nation.
President Trump is considering an in-person meeting soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as the war between the nations shows no sign of widing down. White House peace envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin at the Kremlin earlier Wednesday, just two days ahead of a deadline set by Trump that…
Five soldiers were shot Wednesday at Fort Stewart in Georgia, leading to a lockdown at the Army base before the shooter was arrested, officials said. The conditions of the soldiers and the circumstances of the shooting weren’t immediately clear, nor was the identity of the shooter. The Army said it’s investigating. The injured were treated and then moved to Winn Army Community Hospital, base officials said in a Facebook post, adding there’s no threat to the community. Law enforcement was sent to the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team complex shortly before 11 AM Wednesday. The shooter was arrested at 11:35 AM, officials said. The lockdown lasted about an hour, and three schools just outside the base took steps similar to a lockdown as well, “out of an abundance of caution,” the Liberty County School System said. The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team’s complex was still locked down. The Army’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team was created in 2016 when the service added more than 200 vehicles to an infantry unit of roughly 4,200 soldiers. Also known as the “Spartan Brigade,” the Army has called the unit its “most modern land fighting force.” Located about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Savannah, Fort Stewart is the largest Army post east of the Mississippi River. It’s home to thousands of soldiers assigned to the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and family members. The fort’s three elementary schools are also on lockdown, Community Superintendent Brian Perry told WTOC-TV. The schools have nearly 1,400 students, according to the Department of Defense.
Elon Musk protégé and former Department of Government Efficiency staffer Edward Coristine—better known by his nickname “Big Balls”—was assaulted during an attempted carjacking early Sunday morning. The incident, which occurred in a quiet residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., has reignited outrage from President Donald Trump and renewed his longstanding threat to take federal control of the capital. “If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday. President Donald Trump and former DOGE head Elon Musk He included a photo of what appeared to be Coristine, shirtless and smeared in blood. “The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14,” he added. Trump didn’t name Coristine directly, but Musk confirmed the link almost immediately, apparently setting aside his recent public feud with the president. “It is time to federalize D.C.,” Musk wrote on X, calling Coristine a “DOGE team member.” The Metropolitan Police Department announced on Tuesday that a 15-year-old girl and boy from Maryland had been arrested and charged with unarmed carjacking. Authorities are still searching for others involved. Two people familiar with the case told The Washington Post that the teens are being held in the city’s youth detention center. The attack comes after several high-profile crimes that have drawn national attention to D.C.’s justice system. In June, 21-year-old congressional intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym was killed in crossfire near the convention center. He was working for GOP Rep. Ron Estes of Kansas. No one has been charged with his killing. While city data shows that violent crime is trending downward and homicide rates remain close to last year’s levels, these headline-making incidents have become central to Trump’s argument that D.C. is a failed liberal experiment. “We could run D.C.,” Trump told reporters last month. “The crime would be down to a minimal, it’d be much less.” On Tuesday, he intensified that message. “Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago,” Trump wrote about the Coristine incident. “Then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro His post came hours after U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro visited the White House to discuss the city’s crime rate, though it’s unclear whether she briefed Trump on the Coristine case specifically. A spokesperson for Pirro told The Post that the case is not being handled by her office. Under D.C. law, the city’s attorney general prosecutes most juvenile cases. The U.S. attorney can only charge 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for certain violent felonies, like armed robbery or murder. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb declined to comment on the details but called the attack “disturbing.” “No one who lives in, works in, or visits D.C. should experience this; it is horrific and disturbing,” Schwalb said. “When MPD brings us cases with sufficient evidence of juveniles who have broken the law and hurt people, we will prosecute them and ensure they face consequences for their actions.” Coristine, once a top DOGE operative, now works at the Social Security Administration. Earlier this year, he also took on advisory roles at the State Department and Homeland Security Department—sparking concern about Musk’s influence and Coristine’s access to sensitive information. While at DOGE, Coristine helped oversee the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Trump has long criticized D.C. as lawless and broken—once calling it a “dirty, crime-ridden death trap”—and floated the idea of a federal takeover. During the 2020 uprisings, his administration considered taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department. That effort failed, though the federal government deployed National Guard troops and military helicopters across the city. D.C. has its own mayor and city council, but Congress ultimately controls its laws and budget. The president also has jurisdiction over much of the city’s public safety infrastructure. Since gaining limited home rule in 1973, D.C. has operated under constant federal oversight, and Trump has been leveraging that power in his second term, creating a federal D.C. crime task force. Mayor Muriel Bowser has tried to balance political pressures, echoing some of Trump’s rhetoric while defending D.C.’s overall progress. She ordered the removal of Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House earlier this year and frequently cites declining crime numbers. In January, federal officials announced that violent crime reached a 30-year low. But the attack on Coristine may finally provide Trump the opportunity he’s been waiting for—allowing him to follow through on his long-promised plan to bring D.C. fully under federal control.
For most people, President Donald Trump’s decision to walk on the roof of the White House on Tuesday was bewildering, but his supporters at Fox News couldn’t stop praising it. Trump’s walk on the roof raised more concerns about his fraying mental state. While out there, he made odd hand gestures and told reporters he was looking for “more ways to spend my money.” The walk occurred days after Trump announced plans to add a gaudy-looking ballroom to the White House, apparently part of a plan to match the gaudy gold trim he has slapped up throughout the historic building. But on Fox News, the bizarre walk was a triumph. Sean Hannity, Trump’s most prominent fan on the network, said on Tuesday night that the walk was “amazing.” He went on to use the oddball moment to attack former President Joe Biden, remarking, “He probably answered more questions there than Joe Biden did in four years that weren’t scripted.” YouTube Video Fox and Hannity have promoted a false conspiracy that Biden answered scripted questions during his news conferences. Elsewhere on the right-wing network, host Jesse Watters said the walk was evidence that Trump is a “political giant.” Watters gushed over the spectacle of Trump “walking on the roof of the White House, gazing down at the Democrats, who look very small.” YouTube Video During a segment on “The Ingraham Angle,” Fox radio host Jimmy Failla said the walk was “historic” and “classic Trump.” YouTube Video Fox News’ role in the world of conservatism is to attack the left and to advance the conservative cause. These days, that tends to manifest as pro-Trump propaganda that normalizes his very abnormal behavior. And that dynamic was on full display as the network argued that the strange departure from the norm is actually a sign of strength by the unpopular president. Their audience may buy the spin, but most people are unlikely to be so gullible.
A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | Ghislaine Maxwell gets big upgrade after cooperating with Trump team
Desperate for warm bodies to help carry out President Donald Trump’s evil deportation agenda, the Department of Homeland Security this week has announced it is lowering the standards for applicants to serve as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said on Wednesday that there are no longer age limits to serve as an ICE agent, as the agency seeks to staff up after being injected with billions in funding from Republicans’ unpopular “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” “We are ENDING the age cap for ICE law enforcement. Qualified candidates can now apply with no age limit,” Noem wrote in a post on X. A day earlier, Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin declared that no undergraduate degrees are necessary to work at ICE. All uneducated racists are welcome! “Serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!” the official DHS account wrote in a post on X, using blatantly white supremacist rhetoric to say that the administration is deporting mostly Latino immigrants in order to preserve American—i.e. white—culture. It was one of a number of vile DHS posts seeking ICE applicants, including multiple that use the iconic World War II Uncle Sam poster. Yes, this is an actual DHS post. “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out,” reads one post that includes the Uncle Sam image. ICE is desperate to beef up its staff to meet the arbitrary 3,000-per-day arrest quota set by bigoted hobgoblin Stephen Miller. Indeed, ICE arrests have actually dropped by 20% in July—which is likely the reason DHS is so desperate to hire more ICE agents. Not only does the agency not have enough staff to arrest that many people, but it’s causing ICE agents with modicums of a soul to quit or consider quitting, saying they are being forced to stop going after actual criminals to instead arrest day laborers and farm workers who are the engine of the American economy. “Even those that are gung ho about the mission aren’t happy with how they are asking to execute it—the quotas and the shift to the low-hanging fruit to make the numbers,” one ICE agent told the New Republic in July. Indeed, TRAC reported 71% of people in ICE custody have no criminal convictions. Those that do have convictions are for minor offenses, such as traffic violations. In order to entice people to sign up as an ICE goon, the agency has been offering as much as $50,000 in bonuses and student loan forgiveness to get retired agents to rejoin Trump’s deportation force. Apparently there are some student loans Trump and his goons think are worth forgiving. But apparently even that’s not doing the job to get enough warm bodies, as it’s now lowering age and education standards. But relaxing standards for ICE agent hires is dangerous. History shows that doing this could increase misconduct in the agency—which is already abducting citizens off streets and holding them in detention facilities without charges. Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen in California, was abducted off the street by ICE agents and detained. She was later charged with assaulting an ICE officer, even though video footage shows she was grabbed off the street by masked agents and forced into a vehicle in a situation that she said felt like a kidnapping. Charges were later dropped. “Any time you have massive political pressure to beef up overnight, it never turns out well,” T.J. Bonner, former president of the Border Patrol agents union, told the Associated Press. “Too many corners have to be cut. Then when things go wrong, the fingers get pointed.”
From vomiting blood to losing a pregnancy, immigrants being held in detention centers across the United States are reporting traumatic conditions. A monthslong investigation led by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia found “510 credible reports of human rights abuses.” According to the report, a young girl held in custody with her undocumented mother was hospitalized multiple times. And at one point, the girl, who is a U.S. citizen, was allegedly vomiting blood. “Just give the girl a cracker,” the Customs and Border Patrol agent reportedly said to the mother begging for care. A prison guard transfers Venezuelan immigrants from the United States to El Salvador’s notoriously violent CECOT prison. In another case, men being held in a Miami facility were shot at with “what appeared to be pellets or rubber bullets” when they flooded a toilet to protest being denied food, water, and medical attention. Claims like these fill the pages of Ossoff’s report, including pregnant women being forced to sleep on the floor because of overcrowding. “She was left in a room, alone, to miscarry without water or medical assistance for over 24 hours,” the report said of one woman. Daily Kos contacted ICE officials for comment regarding Ossoff’s report. While they acknowledged our request, we did not receive a response to the claims. President Donald Trump has pushed for mass deportations and immigrant raids since the start of his second term, and while his administration has partnered with detention center giants such as Geo Group and CoreCivic in an attempt to quickly build more detention facilities, the efforts can only go so far. And with Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” bolstering a shiny new budget for ICE, $45 billion was also allocated toward building even more facilities. Similarly, immigrants deported to prisons abroad are sharing their own abusive situations, including hundreds of Venezuelan men who were deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison. But despite the reports, the Trump administration maintains that the only people being deported are dangerous criminals—and therefore are deserving of these abuses.
Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan told reporters Wednesday that the decision to remove the age limit to work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a “good thing.” “I’m 63 and I love to put a badge and gun on and go out there and do these things,” Homan said before backtracking. “But just because—if someone comes in and they’re, you know, 55, maybe they can’t carry a badge or gun. They can certainly do administrative duties and help ICE. They can do targeting and do intelligence. You don’t put them on the street with a badge and gun.” YouTube Video The Trump administration’s decision to do away with age limits for wannabe gestapo agents follows a desperate media blitz to recruit ICE agents led by world-famous bigot Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigration push who serves as the White House deputy chief of staff for policy. Noted cosplayer and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said the move isn’t a frantic attempt to boost recruitment and claimed that “as of today we have over 80,000 applicants.” At the same time, The Washington Post reports that in the middle of hurricane season, DHS has reassigned dozens of Federal Emergency Management Agency employees to help ICE fill positions. Related | Are you an old, uneducated racist? Join the ICE gestapo today! Arrests by ICE agents dropped precipitously in July following righteous backlash caused by masked ICE agents terrorizing American cities with massive raids. A YouGov poll released in July found that Trump’s job approval rating among Latinos had plummeted to 35%, with 38% of respondents saying their opinion of Trump had “worsened a lot.” So welcome aboard, grandpa!
