Monsters 'R Us
Most of Planet Earth now knows cruelty is the point of Trump 2. But if anyone implausibly needs more evidence, meet Rev. Edward Nalwamba, a 79-year-old, pro-democracy Ugandan priest who spent over a year in ICE detention. When he went in, he was fit; at his long-delayed release last week, fellow detainees had to carry him to a car because officials wouldn't let him take his wheelchair that far. To ICE, he charged, "You are an animal...They forget they are dealing with human beings."
In the last 18 months, the Trump regime has deported nearly a million people, and killed at least 60, including two U.S citizens in cold blood and broad daylight. The family of one, Renee Good, has filed two federal civil lawsuits over her Jan. 7 murder, alleging wrongful death, "negligent infliction of emotional distress," conspiracy to conceal evidence, and coordinated campaigns of "aggression and abduction" against ethnic communities and "intimidation and violence" against their allies. And of course it has detained, terrorized, traumatized or shattered the lives of untold thousands, the vast majority with no criminal history.
One was the good Rev. Nalwamba, who arrived in the U.S. in 2002 for a religious conference. Having publicly condemned human rights abuses by the Ugandan government, and subsequently heard from colleagues that government agents were pursuing him, he decided to stay in Colorado and apply for asylum. In 2010, after his application was denied, he began living peaceably in Lakewood under a 15-year ICE supervision order, reporting to immigration officials as required, working as a health aide for people with developmental disabilities, and serving as a pastor at nearby Resurrection Anglican Fellowship until he retired two years ago.
In September 2025 he was arrested by ICE; they charged he was under a removal order dating back to 2010, and that he'd failed to "cooperate with efforts to obtain travel documents" before a deadline, aka to help with his own deportation in a timely manner. He was taken to the GEO Group's private ICE detention facility in Aurora, where for over a year DHS repeatedly vowed to deport him and then didn't. On Oct. 20, after his lawyers filed a second habeas corpus petition, Judge Cyrus Chung ruled feds had exceeded a “presumptively reasonable” six months of holding time with "no concrete plan” to return him to Uganda, and ordered his release.
When he was detained, Nalwamba was a fit 77-year-old who regularly walked, exercised and played ping pong. Inside, his health quickly deteriorated. He caught pneumonia which persisted for weeks, lost over 30 pounds and the ability to walk, developed a stubborn cough, chest pain, scratchy throat, headache and fatigue that were never treated - and besides, "You don’t want to go to the hospital - they shackle you like a bull.” "He walked in. He can't walk now," noted Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper. "They want the misery of one person to be known by others. It's a low-rent form of terrorism to make people so scared they'll self-deport."
Along with the barbaric cruelty, observers also blasted the "staggering hypocrisy" of a regime that simultaneously charged Biden et al "targeted" Christians yet in their voter intimidation efforts sent ICE into churches, interrogated church staff, and detained and abused a church elder. Last week, because they hadn't alienated Christians enough by picking a fight with the Pope, they also turned a supposed prayer gathering of Catholic bishops into a sleazy photo op, prompting two angry Archbishops to apologize, charge they'd been "manipulated," and clarify this was "in no way an endorsement of the president, his policies, or his party."
In the final, petty degradation meted out to Rev. Nalwamba, detention officials told his attorneys they would ensure his safe passage on release with a wheelchair and escort, and then reneged on it all. The wheelchair couldn't go out to the gate, they insisted, nor could vehicles approach it. Hickenlooper: "There is no excuse for this cruelty. None.” In the end - no surprise here - it was two young mensches also being released who hooked their arms together - one lawyer: "It was heartbreaking and it was infuriating" - carried the reverend to his waiting car, and went on their way: "They didn't even give me a chance to say thank you.".
After his release, a buoyant Nalwamba said he’s “in another world." He talked to his children, he's well fed, he’s staying with a family who lent him an electric scooter to get around. The next day, he visited a health clinic to get a chest X-ray, blood work, TB testing. He looks forward to physical therapy and reconnecting with his church community: "I am a happy man." Except for the monsters, still here. DHS said they were "forced" by "an activist judge" to release "an illegal alien" who "chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation's laws." Most vitally, "He remains in the country illegally," under a removal order, without legal status.
So much, or not yet for Obama's Michigan citing of "a decency we should expect from our public officials." Attorneys plan to reopen Nalwamba's asylum case; conditions in Uganda have seriously deteriorated with widespread crime, unrest and targeting of political opponents and a U.S. "Do not travel" advisory in effect. At the same time, says attorney Joy Athanasiou, she has never seen "this inhumanity and cruelty" over 20 years of working with detained clients. Before, there were under 1,000 habeas corpus petitions a year; now there are about 90,000, a demand "100 times greater than what we can provide.”
Nalwamba says his thoughts remain with those innocents still inside a callous, corrosive environment worse than any maximum security prison. He loves the America he has lived in for almost 26 years, he says, and has always thought African and other countries should aspire to be like the U.S. But no more, he adds, not without drastic change. Those other countries, he argues, treat their livestock better than he was treated. "It's as if they've gotten used to treating people that way, like they're taking care of goats or cows,” he said. “I have never imagined human beings treated like I saw in this place."
The Rev. Edward Nalwamba Photo by Resurrection Anglican Fellowship
'Shameful': Trump DOJ Ditches Civil Rights and School Desegregation Cases
A pair of papers published Thursday by the legal group Democracy Forward detail how, under President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice has dumped dozens of cases focused on school desegregation and the civil rights of people of color, all while weaponizing the DOJ to serve "the most dangerous criminal in US history" and his allies.
The cases were previously taken up by the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, currently led by Harmeet Dhillon, whose confirmation was controversial—like those of Trump's first attorney general for this term, Pam Bondi, whom he fired in April and replaced with his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche.
The new analyses of the cases—"Walking Away: DOJ's Abandonment of Civil Rights Cases for People of Color" and "Filling in The Gaps: Tracking The 50+ School Desegregation Cases DOJ Says It Is Ending"—were developed by Democracy Forward's oversight and accountability project Red Line for Civil Rights.
"People and communities rely on DOJ to pursue vital cases to address threats to civil rights under our nation's laws. The Red Line for Civil Rights reports don't just highlight the cases that have been abandoned, but also make clear the harm that DOJ's abandonment of its mission retreat has caused," said Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman.
The project found at least 36 abandoned cases and probes addressing discrimination against Black, Latino, and Native American people, from Voting Rights Act lawsuits and redlining settlements with banks to firefighter and police hiring issues.
There was United States v. Cobb County, Georgia, in which the DOJ alleged that credit checks and a written exam illegally screened out Black firefighter applicants, and United States v. Patriot Bank, a 2024 consent order over redlining of Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee.
In United States v. SouthEast Bank, the department argued that a student loan refinancing product discriminated against Alaska Native, American Indian, and Black applicants, and in United States v. City of Minneapolis, the DOJ concluded that police discriminated against Black and Native American in Minnesotans.
"The shameful withdrawal of DOJ resources from these cases and investigations highlights how this administration is abandoning communities across the country," said Megan Marks, a former leader in the department who is now the project's deputy director and managing editor. "Walking away from them doesn't mean the discrimination has been addressed. It just means DOJ is no longer watching."
In its second analysis, the project identified 56 school districts in 12 states where the department has moved to ditch or end a desegregation case, or did not oppose ending one—from Athens City, Alabama and Chesterfield County, South Carolina to South Bend, Indiana and Waterbury, Connecticut.
Tanisha Milton teaches a lesson on busing and the desegregation of Boston, Massachusetts public schools during an 8th grade civics class at TechBoston Academy on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
"The Supreme Court held in its landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education, that segregating public school students by race violates the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection," the report notes. "Since Brown, DOJ has monitored and enforced desegregation orders, reviewing evidence and often working collaboratively with school districts and, in some cases, private plaintiffs to support progress."
"This work was central to the Civil Rights Division's history. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorized DOJ to file its own school desegregation lawsuits against public schools or institutions of higher education and to join cases that families had already brought," the paper explains. "These school desegregation cases are how the promise of Brown reaches individual classrooms. Behind each of these cases are children, families, and a community that fought, sometimes at great personal risk, for the right to an equal education."
Shaheena Simons previously oversaw the Justice Department's desegregation docket but is now a senior adviser at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. In response to the report, she said that the "DOJ's haste to end these cases without deliberation or transparency is a betrayal of Black students who continue to face segregation and inequality in our schools."
"This retreat is part of a much bigger picture," Simons emphasized. "Not only has the Civil Rights Division abandoned its work to protect the rights of our most marginalized students, but it is also weaponizing civil rights statutes against them."
Democratic leaders in the US House of Representatives also spoke out about the project's findings. Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott (Va.) accused the "politicized" department of "turning its back on workers and students by abandoning entire categories of discrimination cases and ending the fight against school desegregation altogether."
Democrats on his panel "are committed to the protection of civil rights and to guaranteeing that all Americans are protected from discrimination in accordance with the civil rights laws that so many Americans fought to secure," pledged Scott, as his party prepares for next month's midterm elections, in which Republicans could lose control of one or both chambers of Congress.
Harmeet Dhillon shakes hands with Republican US President-elect Donald Trump in a photo she posted on social media on October 31, 2024. (Photo: Harmeet Dhillon/X)
Fellow Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin (Md.), a constitutional scholar and ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, said that "Democracy Forward's reports expose the Justice Department's shocking betrayal of its central duty to protect Americans against race discrimination."
"While DOJ devotes its resources to persecuting Trump's political enemies, it has dropped protection of voting rights and is allowing discrimination to proliferate by abandoning school desegregation and job discrimination cases," he said, as the Trump administration pursues everyone from former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey to New York Attorney General Letitia James and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
"We need a Department of Justice that stands by the rule of law and the rights of all Americans," Raskin asserted. "But this administration carries out presidential vendettas, covers up child sex trafficking, promotes corruption, and pardons and coddles violent felons in the president's private militia."
