October, 14 2016, 12:45pm EDT
Law Enforcement Arrest 29 Water Protectors on Indigenous Peoples' Day, Continue to Target Journalists Covering DAPL
Attorneys with the Red Owl Legal Collective (ROLC) of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) call on North Dakota law enforcement to respect freedom of press and the First Amendment rights of Water Protectors resisting construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). This comes as officers from the Morton County Sheriff's Department unlawfully confiscated a reporter's video equipment, and then deployed riot police on Indigenous Peoples' Day, arresting 29 Water Protectors during a prayer gathering.
MORTON COUNTY, ND.
Attorneys with the Red Owl Legal Collective (ROLC) of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) call on North Dakota law enforcement to respect freedom of press and the First Amendment rights of Water Protectors resisting construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). This comes as officers from the Morton County Sheriff's Department unlawfully confiscated a reporter's video equipment, and then deployed riot police on Indigenous Peoples' Day, arresting 29 Water Protectors during a prayer gathering.
On October 8, Morton County police detained Myron Dewey, a reporter for Digital Smoke Signals, and seized a video-equipped drone owned by the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) he was using to capture footage of the ongoing DAPL construction. Mr. Dewey was not arrested at the time, but officers stated that he would be charged with harassment of DAPL workers. This follows the issuance of an arrest warrant by North Dakota authorities for journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and the arrest of a reporter with the independent news organization Unicorn Riot covering the DAPL.
"Law enforcement's confiscation of Mr. Dewey's video equipment and threat to charge him with harassment are intimidation tactics attempting to chill reporting on Standing Rock," said NLG attorney Robin Martinez working with the ROLC.
In a letter to the Morton County Sheriff's Department, the NLG and ROLC called upon them to return the seized video drone, issue a public apology to Mr. Dewey, make a strong public commitment to protect First Amendment rights of journalists, and refrain from further actions targeting members of the press.
On October 10--Indigenous Peoples' Day--hundreds assembled at the construction site where they performed religious ceremonies. They were suddenly surrounded by dozens of local and out-of-state police wielding rifles, riot gear, and a police dog. As the crowd attempted to disperse, 29 Water Protectors, including a journalist, were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing and rioting. Those participating in the prayer gathering had acted peacefully, did not endanger anyone's safety, or interfere with any legitimate police activity.
"The peaceful struggle against this fracked crude oil pipeline is a sacred duty we are bound to uphold as Oceti Sakowin people. We are holding the line against the DAPL and its sordid attempt to put our communities and water at risk of contamination," said Tom BK Goldtooth, IEN Executive Director and recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award. "With this duty in mind, it is deplorable that not only must we fear physical harm by the excessive use of force and inflated actions of law enforcement, we now face persecution for enacting our First Amendment rights to document the destruction of our sacred sites, record police arrests, and hold oil corporations accountable for their actions. We demand an apology for the clear disregard of those rights."
A confluence of hundreds of Tribal representatives and allies have descended on Standing Rock, joining in efforts to resist construction of the $3.8 billion, 1,100-mile pipeline. Approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the pipeline is planned to run under the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation and the Tribe's water supply. An oil spill would threaten Tribe's culture and way of life, and endanger the 28 million other people who rely on the Missouri River for their water needs.
For democracy to work, the people must be informed by a free press and empowered to assemble. "We continue to monitor police overreach and misconduct in response to water protection activities. We are committed to assisting people who are asserting their treaty rights to determine what kind of development occurs in their territory," said ROLC attorney Angela Bibens.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) works to promote human rights and the rights of ecosystems over property interests. It was founded in 1937 as the first national, racially-integrated bar association in the U.S.
(212) 679-5100LATEST NEWS
Pentagon Weighed Sending Boat Strike Survivors to Salvadoran Prison to Avoid Defending Bombings in Court
One former Navy lawyer said the Trump administration "might not want to get into the messy issues involving detention and habeas corpus lawsuits.”
Dec 10, 2025
Pentagon officials asked about sending survivors of US boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador in a bid to keep them out of American courts—where the Trump administration's high seas extrajudicial killing spree would be subject to legal scrutiny.
New details published Tuesday by the New York Times revealed that attorneys at the US Department of Defense inquired about whether two survivors of an October 16 strike on a boat allegedly smuggling drugs in the southern Caribbean could be sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), where the Trump administration has shipped ihundreds of mostly Venezuelan victims of its mass deportation campaign.
The prison—the centerpiece of right-wing Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s war on crime—has been plagued by allegations of torture and other abuse.
One Trump administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Times that State Department lawyers were "stunned" by the query. The two boat strike survivors were ultimately returned to Colombia and Ecuador, their home countries.
Other unnamed officials told the newspaper that repatriations—either to survivors' home countries or to third nations—would become the administration's default plan for dealing with anyone who lived through the US attacks.
The goal, the officials said, was to avoid trying boat strike survivors in US courts, where the discovery process would compel the Trump administration—which has offered no concrete evidence to support its claims that the targeted vessels were carrying drugs—to provide legal justification for attacks that experts say are illegal.
The Pentagon's inquiry followed a September 2 "double-tap" strike on a vessel carrying 11 passengers. Two men survived the initial bombing but were killed in a second strike. Since then, at least 76 other people have been killed in 23 boat strikes reported by the Trump administration.
In addition to the two men who initially survived the September 2 strike and the two repatriated survivors of the October 16 attack, one other person who lived through a boat bombing was left adrift at sea and is presumed dead.
Some observers have noted similarities between the Trump administration's goal of keeping boat strike survivors out of US courtrooms and War on Terror policies and practices—first implemented during the George W. Bush administration—such as extraordinary rendition, the use of Central Intelligence Agency "black sites," and imprisonment of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba—designed to circumvent the law.
While the Trump administration previously sent migrants captured during its crackdown to Guantánamo, sending boat strike survivors to the lockup allow their lawyers to sue for habeas corpus, a right granted by the US Supreme Court in its 2008 Boumediene v. Bush decision.
The Trump administration has revived the term "unlawful enemy combatant"—which was used by the Bush administration to classify people caught up in the War on Terror in a way that skirts the law—to apply to boat strike survivors. The Pentagon has also called such survivors "distressed mariners," a term that normally applies to civilians stranded at sea.
“If we’re in a war, they should be using the term ‘shipwrecked survivors,’” Mark Nevitt, a former Navy lawyer who is now a law professor at Emory University, told the Times. “My theory is they might not want to get into the messy issues involving detention and habeas corpus lawsuits.”
Relatives of men killed in the strikes, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, say that at least some of the victims were fishermen who were not linked to the illicit drug trade. One expert said last month that even in cases of vessels that were involved in drug trafficking, the bombings were "the equivalent of straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
Even if the men targeted in the boat strikes were running drugs, "the appropriate response is to interdict the boats and arrest the occupants for prosecution," former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said Wednesday.
"The rules governing law enforcement prohibit lethal force except as a last resort to stop an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury," he added, "which the boats do not present."
Keep ReadingShow Less
New DHS Database Suggests That Less Than 5% of Those Arrested by ICE Are the ‘Worst of the Worst’
The database contains just 9,738 total people, a tiny fraction of the more than 220,000 ICE data says the agency arrested between January 21 and October 15.
Dec 10, 2025
In response to criticism of its aggressive and often lawless "mass deportation" campaign—which has entailed sweeping raids by masked agents, the use of squalid detention centers rife with torture, overt racial profiling, and the near-total abrogation of due process—the Trump administration has often fallen back on a familiar refrain: that the immigrants it targets are "the worst of the worst" dangerous criminals.
Immigration data published throughout the second Trump administration has already undermined this claim. Last month, David J. Bier of the Cato Institute published new data showing that between October 1 and November 15, only 5% of those booked into ICE detention had violent criminal convictions, while 73% had no convictions at all. It mirrored previous data published by Cato in June, which showed that 65% arrested had no criminal convictions of any kind, while 93% had no violent convictions.
Justice Department data published last month, meanwhile, showed that of the at least 614 people snatched up in the Operation Midway Blitz crackdown in Chicago, just 16 had criminal records of any kind.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security published its own "Worst of the Worst" database seeking to reverse the narrative, but it seems to have done the opposite.
"DHS has launched WOW.DHS.GOV for Americans to see the criminal illegal aliens that we are arresting, what crimes they committed, and what communities we removed them from," read a post from the agency on social media.
The post leads to a website containing the names, photos, and nationalities of those arrested by ICE. It also lists alleged past criminal convictions. In many cases, the only documentation of the allegations, if any is provided at all, is a DHS press release rather than official court records.
"Under Secretary [Kristi] Noem's leadership, the hardworking men and women of DHS and ICE are fulfilling President Trump's promise and carrying out mass deportations—starting with the worst of the worst—including the illegal aliens you see here," a header on the website reads.
Among those listed are people who DHS says have been convicted of heinous crimes, ranging from attempted murder to child abduction to domestic battery.
But the database contains just 9,738 total people, a tiny fraction of the more than 220,000 ICE data says the agency arrested between January 21 and October 15.
"So DHS is implicitly admitting that less than 5% of the people it arrests are people they believe are 'the worst of the worst,'" said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
Moreover, even some of those listed among the "Worst of the Worst" have only nonviolent offenses to their name, like drug possession, shoplifting, or disorderly conduct.
Reichlin-Melnick also noted that while immigration law does not require a criminal conviction for a person to be removed, "it matters because the administration talks as if these cases are the majority."
"There are definitely bad people on there who deserve deportation, but plenty of others on the list have nothing worse than a misdemeanor," he said. “If the administration were to actually focus its resources on people who were serious public safety threats or fugitives, there would be less of an outcry. But data shows that the big focus has been on boosting numbers by going after people no previous administration, Republican or Democrat, prioritized.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Escalates in Venezuela With 'Illegal' US Seizure of Oil Tanker
“Millions of civilians will be at risk if the economy deteriorates and tensions rise," warned one anti-war group.
Dec 10, 2025
The US military on Wednesday seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela in the latest act of aggression against a nation that President Donald Trump has been openly threatening for several weeks.
Bloomberg, which described the move as a "serious escalation" in tensions between the US and Venezuela, reported that the seizure of the tanker by US forces "may make it much harder for Venezuela to export its oil, as other shippers are now likely to be more reluctant to load its cargoes."
The seizure was described to Bloomberg by a Trump administration official as a "judicial enforcement action on a stateless vessel" that had been docked in Venezuela.
Shortly after the seizure occurred, Trump boasted about it during a meeting with business leaders at the White House, declaring that the tanker was the "largest one ever seized."
Trump: "It's been an interesting day from the standpoint of news. As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. Largest one ever seized actually. And other things are happening." pic.twitter.com/wyOYMKCJTT
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 10, 2025
Just Foreign Policy, a progressive think tank and advocacy group, condemned the seizure of the tanker, describing it as an "illegal US move to take control of Venezuela's natural resources and strangle the economy, which is already struggling under indiscriminate US sanctions," and warning that "millions of civilians will be at risk if the economy deteriorates and tensions rise."
The seizure of the oil tanker is just one of many aggressive maneuvers that the Trump administration has been making around Venezuela.
Starting in September, the administration began a series of murders of people aboard boats in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela and in the Pacific Ocean.
The Trump administration has claimed those targeted for extrajudicial killing are drug smugglers and accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of leading an international drug trafficking organization called the Cartel de los Soles, despite many experts saying that they have seen no evidence that such an organization formally exists.
Trump late last month further escalated tensions with Venezuela when he declared that airspace over the nation was “closed in its entirety,” even though he lacks any legal authority to enforce such a decree. Trump has also hinted that strikes against purported drug traffickers on Venezuelan soil would occur in the near future.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular