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For Immediate Release
December, 30 2011, 02:05pm EDT
Contact:
Phone: (773) 878-3815,Email:,info@vcnv.org
Global Day of Llistening: December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012
WASHINGTON
Begining at 7:30 am Afghanistan time (10 pm Eastern, 7 pm Pacific), and continuing for 6+ hours, you can join us in this important discussion. By listening to those who suffer the brunt of US foriegn policy we can better understand the human costs.
Check the Global Day of Listening home page for details.
View the News & stay tuned for information about the Global Days of Listening. Write to GlobalDaysOfListening@gmail.com to request a time to talk.
It is that time again--another opportunity for you to participate in a Global Day of Listening!
Every month people around the world listen together to the ordinary people living in war-torn countries. It a way of letting them know that someone is listening; that someone is listening to whatever it is they want to share.
We began meeting these 'ordinary people' through the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, and then met others.
Be a part of the conversation!
Voices for Creative Nonviolence has deep, long-standing roots in active nonviolent resistance to U.S. war-making. Begun in the summer of 2005, Voices draws upon the experiences of those who challenged the brutal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and U.N. against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2003.
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Trump's DHS Using Secretive Subpoenas to Demand Critics’ Personal Data: Report
"These types of abusive subpoenas are designed to intimidate and sow fear of government retaliation," said a lawyer for the ACLU.
Feb 03, 2026
The Department of Homeland Security is using a little-known legal power to surveil and intimidate critics of the Trump administration, according to a harrowing report published Tuesday by the Washington Post.
Experts told the Post that DHS annually issues thousands of "administrative subpoenas," which allow federal agencies to request massive amounts of personal information from third parties—like technology companies and banks—without an order from a judge or a grand jury, and completely unbeknownst to the people whose privacy is being invaded.
As the Post found, even sending a politely critical email to a government official can be enough to have someone's entire life brought under the microscope.
That is what Jon, a 67-year-old retiree living in Philadelphia, who has been a US citizen for nearly three decades, found out after he sent a short email urging a DHS prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, to reconsider an attempt to deport an Afghan asylum seeker who faced the threat of being killed by the Taliban if he was forced to return to his home country.
In the email, Jon warned Dernbach not to "play Russian roulette" with the man's life and implored him to “apply principles of common sense and decency.”
Just five hours after he sent the email, Jon received a message from Google stating that DHS had used a "subpoena" to request information about his account. Google gave him seven days to respond to the subpoena, but did not provide him with a copy of the document; instead, it told him to request one from DHS.
From there, he was sent on “a maddening, hourslong circuit of answering machines, dead numbers, and uninterested attendants,” which yielded no answers.
Within weeks of sending the email, a pair of DHS agents visited Jon's home and asked him to explain it. They told Jon that his email had not clearly broken any law, but that the DHS prosecutor may have felt threatened by his use of the phrase "Russian Roulette" and his mention of the Taliban.
Days later, after weeks of hitting a wall, Google finally sent Jon a copy of the subpoena only after the company was contacted by a Post reporter. It was then that Jon learned the breadth of what DHS had requested:
Among their demands, which they wanted dating back to Sept. 1: the day, time, and duration of all his online sessions; every associated IP and physical address; a list of each service he used; any alternate usernames and email addresses; the date he opened his account; his credit card, driver’s license, and Social Security numbers.
Google also informed him that it had not yet responded to the subpoena, though the company did not explain why.
But this is unusual. Google and other companies, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, told the Post that they nearly always comply with administrative subpoenas unless they are barred from doing so.
With the ACLU's help, Jon filed a motion in court on Monday to challenge the subpoena issued to Google.
"In a democracy, contacting your government about things you feel strongly about is a fundamental right," Jon said. "I exercised that right to urge my government to take this man's life seriously. For that, I am being investigated, intimidated, and targeted. I hope that by standing up for my rights and sharing my story, others will know what to do when these abusive subpoenas and investigations come knocking on their door."
As the Trump administration uses DHS and other agencies to compile secret watchlists and databases of protesters for surveillance, targets people for deportation based solely on political speech, and asserts its authority to raid residences without a judicial warrant, administrative subpoenas appear to be another weapon in its arsenal against free speech and civil rights.
According to “transparency reports” reviewed by the Post, Google and Meta both received a record number of administrative subpoenas during the first six months of the second Trump administration. In several instances, they have been used to target protesters or other dissidents for First Amendment-protected activity:
In March, Homeland Security issued two administrative subpoenas to Columbia University for information on a student it sought to deport after she took part in pro-Palestinian protests. In July, the agency demanded broad employment records from Harvard University with what the school’s attorneys described as “unprecedented administrative subpoenas.” In September, Homeland Security used one to try to identify Instagram users who posted about [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids in Los Angeles. Last month, the agency used another to demand detailed personal information about some 7,000 workers in a Minnesota health system whose staff had protested Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s intrusion into one of its hospitals.
“These types of abusive subpoenas are designed to intimidate and sow fear of government retaliation," said Stephen A. Loney, a senior supervising attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "If you can’t criticize a government official without the worry of having your private records gathered and agents knocking on your door, then your First Amendment rights start to feel less guaranteed. They want to bully companies into handing over our data and to chill users’ speech. This is unacceptable in a democratic society.”
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After a US Border Patrol Agent shot two Venezuelan immigrants in Portland, Oregon in January, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that the two victims were "vicious Tren de Aragua gang members" who "weaponized their vehicle" against federal agents, who had no choice but to open fire in self-defense.
However, court records obtained by the Guardian reveal that a Department of Justice prosecutor subsequently told a judge the government was "not suggesting" that one of the victims, Luis Niño-Moncada, was a gang member.
The Guardian also obtained an FBI affidavit contradicting DHS claims about the second victim, Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras, being "involved" in a shooting in Portland last year, when in reality she was a "reported victim of sexual assault and robbery."
Attorneys representing Niño-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras, who both survived the shooting and were subsequently hospitalized, told the Guardian that neither of them have any prior criminal convictions.
Legal experts who spoke with the Guardian about the shooting said it appeared that DHS was waging a "smear campaign" against the victims.
Sergio Perez, a civil rights lawyer and former US prosecutor, noted in an interview that prosecutors filed criminal charges against Niño-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras just two days after they were shot, even before it had obtained crucial video evidence of the incident.
"This government needs to go back to the practice of slow and thorough investigations," he told the Guardian, "rather than what we consistently see in immigration enforcement activities—which is a rush to smear individuals."
Carley Palmer, a former federal prosecutor, told the Guardian that the court records obtained by the paper don't show DOJ presenting any of the usual evidence that prosecutors use to establish defendants' alleged gang membership.
"What’s interesting about the filings is that you don’t see evidence of gang association," said Palmer. "It just feels like a dirtying up of the defendant."
DHS in recent months has made a number of claims about people who have been shot or killed by federal immigration officers that have not held up to scrutiny.
Most recently, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that slain Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was a "domestic terrorist" intent on inflicting "maximum damage" on federal agents, when video clearly showed that Pretti was swarmed by multiple federal agents and was disarmed before two agents opened fire and killed him.
Noem also openly lied about the circumstances and actions that resulted in the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent weeks earlier.
In November, federal prosecutors abruptly dropped charges against Marimar Martinez, a woman who was shot multiple times by a US Border Patrol agent in October in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood.
In the indictment filed against Martinez, prosecutors said that the Border Patrol agent who shot her had been acting in self-defense, and that he had only opened fire after Martinez’s car collided with his vehicle.
However, uncovered text messages showed the Border Patrol agent apparently bragging about shooting Martinez, as he boasted that he “fired five rounds and she had seven holes” in a message sent to fellow agents.
An attorney representing Martinez also claimed that he had seen body camera footage that directly undermined DHS claims about how the shooting unfolded.
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Haitian refugees living in the United States with temporary protected status were given a reprieve Monday night when a federal judge blocked an order by the Trump administration to strip them of their TPS—an effort that many feared would lead to an immediate intensification of efforts to target such communities with the same heavy-handed tactics seen by federal agents in Minnesota, Maine, and elsewhere.
US District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington granted a request to pause the TPS termination for Haitians while a lawsuit challenging the order issued by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in November proceeds.
The termination of TPS for Haitian nationals was set for Tuesday, but Reyes's 83-page order stated that it "shall be null, void, and of no legal effect."
Rose-Thamar Joseph, the operations director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio—which has a large Haitian community that has been the target of racist and xenophobic attacks from President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their allies—said the judge's ruling means "we can breathe for a little bit."
The residents of Springfield and surrounding areas have been anxious that their community would be the next target for Trump's aggressive deportation tactics. The legal challenge to the termination of TPS for Haitians alleges that the secretary acted with "animus," as evidenced by repeated public remarks from Noem and other administration officials.
Reyes, in her ruling, determined that the suit stands a good chance of winning on the merits, writing: “The mismatch between what the secretary said in the termination and what the evidence shows confirms that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was not the product of reasoned decision-making, but of a preordained outcome justified by pretextual reasons."
Jerome Bazard, a member of the First Haitian Evangelical Church of Springfield, told NPR that life in Haiti remains too dangerous for many in his community to return.
"They can't go to Haiti because it's not safe," Bazard said. "Without the TPS, they can't work. And if they can't work, they can't eat, they can't pay bills. You're killing the people."
The sense of relief was felt beyond Ohio, as people from Haiti living with TPS status live in communities across the US.
Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition and a native of Haiti, said the ruling is a welcome development for the approximately 330,000-350,000 people living in the country with TPS, which allows them to work and pay taxes. In her ruling, Reyes noted that Haitians with TPS generate $5.2 billion annually in tax revenue.
"For Haitian TPS holders and their families, this decision provides immediate relief from the fear of family separation, job loss, and forced return to life-threatening conditions in Haiti," said Petit, "where political instability, gang violence, and humanitarian collapse remain acute. No one should be deported into crisis, and today’s ruling affirms that the law cannot be twisted to justify cruelty.”
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the roughly 350,000 Haitian TPS holders whose status was set to expire tomorrow,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass). “By providing a safe haven to those who cannot return home safely, TPS embodies the American promise as a land of freedom and refuge. Haitian TPS holders are deeply rooted in our Massachusetts communities—from Mattapan to Brockton. They are our friends, our family members, our neighbors, our colleagues. I will keep fighting to protect the Haitian community.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that even though Monday's ruling is sure to be appealed by the Trump administration, it arrives as a "huge" win.
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