January, 14 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Trump Approves Sacred Land Swap for Foreign-Owned Mining Corporation--Silences Indigenous Voices
Today, the lame-duck Trump administration approved a controversial public land swap for foreign mining corporation Rio Tinto Ltd., paving the way for the corporation to move forward with its plan to develop a destructive copper mine under scared Native America lands that will create a nearly two-mile-wide crater as the mine caves in on itself.
WASHINGTON
Today, the lame-duck Trump administration approved a controversial public land swap for foreign mining corporation Rio Tinto Ltd., paving the way for the corporation to move forward with its plan to develop a destructive copper mine under scared Native America lands that will create a nearly two-mile-wide crater as the mine caves in on itself.
"This rushed land swap and approval of the destructive foreign-owned Resolution Copper Mine on sacred land by the U.S. Forest Service is emblematic of the culture of corruption across the Trump administration. Between the foreign corporation's former lobbyist that spun through the revolving door into the administration and top-level cabinet officials tipping the scale in Rio Tinto's favor, it's unfortunately not surprising that indigenous and local communities' objections were completely ignored," said Western Values Project director Jayson O'Neill.
The U.S. Forest Service and EPA published a final environmental impact statement for the mine that greenlit the land swamp a mere five days before the Biden administration is set to take office. Although both the Forest Service and Rio Tinto deny that the project was fast-tracked to be approved before the next administration, federal records uncovered by the New York Times show that study wasn't expected to be completed until mid-2021.
Local Arizona Indigenous communities have been outspoken about their frustrations and objections to the devastating industrial development that would destroy cultural and sacred land, forcing them to file suit after being completely ignored. The former San Carlos Apache tribal chairman told the HuffPost, "We're looking at a disaster for our children and grandchildren that are yet to be born." The Trump administration has never shied away from giving away sacred lands and disregarding input from locally impacted communities in order to uplift special interests.
It's unclear why Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had at least three meetings with Rio Tinto and visited the site in 2020. In addition, several former lobbyists that lobbied on behalf of Rio Tinto were hired by the Trump administration for key Interior Department positions. Read Western Values Project full research here.
Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation - a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.
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Former ICE Lawyer Says Agency is Teaching Recruits to 'Violate the Constitution'
"Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order," said Ryan Schwank, who blew the whistle last month on a "secretive" ICE memo directing agents to enter homes without judicial warrants.
Feb 24, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is "lying to Congress and the American people" and directing new recruits to "violate the Constitution," according to a whistleblower who testified on Capitol Hill Monday.
Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer who worked at the federal government’s law enforcement training academy, stepped down from his post last week after submitting a whistleblower complaint about an agency policy directing agents to enter homes and arrest people without a judge's warrant.
"I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution," Schwank said at a joint forum on ICE's constitutional violations hosted by Senate and House Democrats. "I followed that oath for four-and-a-half years, working side by side with ICE officers. And I followed it when I resigned on February 13, 2026, a little over a week ago, so I could speak to you today."
He had joined ICE in 2021 as a senior lawyer for the agency, tasked with advising agents on immigration laws and the Constitution. In September 2025, amid President Donald Trump's "surge" in recruitment to carry out his "mass deportation" crusade, Schwank became an instructor for new recruits at the ICE Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
"On my first day," Schwank said, "I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank said he was “instructed to read and return a memo" that claimed ICE agents had this power in the presence of his supervisor. “Before I was shown this memo, my supervisor warned me that two previous ICE instructors had been dismissed because they questioned senior ICE management over the legality of the memo.”
That memo, which was sent to US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials in May, was revealed to the Senate last month through a whistleblower disclosure by Schwank and another official whose identity has not yet been made public.
“The acting ICE director authorized the very conduct that DHS—in 2025 legal training materials—has called ‘the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’—that is, ‘physical entry of the home’ without consent or a proper warrant,” Schwank said.
His testimony confirms previous reporting from the Associated Press, which found that these orders were distributed in a highly unusual way: DHS officials like Schwank were shown the memo before being required to return it to their supervisors and relay the information verbally to new recruits without showing them the directive.
Under this new directive, the whistleblower report said “newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on” an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.
“No court has ever found that any law enforcement has this type of authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant under such circumstances,” said David Kligerman, the senior vice president and special counsel for Whistleblower Aid, the group that sent the disclosure to Congress.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order—nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” Schwank said on Monday. “I was being shown this memo in secret by a supervisor who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job. ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy.”
Schwank also said that top ICE and DHS officials were deceiving Congress and the public when they claimed that the new officers and agents brought on as part of the agency's hiring spree were receiving the same basic training as in the past, even as agency syllabi showed that their training hours had been slashed by about 40%.
Testifying before Congress earlier this month, ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, said that while hours have been cut, “The meat of the training was never removed."
"This is a lie,” Schwank said. “ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk. No reasonable person would believe a training program suddenly cut nearly in half could meet the minimum legal requirements.”
The Trump administration has said the reduction of ICE training by more than 240 hours was mostly the result of eliminating Spanish-language classes.
However, according to dozens of pages of internal documents released by Senate Democrats, which were reviewed by the New York Times, the agency's February syllabus had also eliminated classes about the proper use of force, handling the property of detainees, filling out paperwork alleging someone is in the United States without authorization, taking a "victim-centered approach," and "integrity awareness training."
The number of exams agents must take has also been drastically reduced, from 25 in 2021 down to just nine. Some of the exams no longer required are ones on "Judgment Pistol Shooting” and “Determine Removability,” which the Times said was "a reference to how agents decide if people they encounter have legal status in the United States."
Schwank’s testimony comes after immigration agents shot and killed three United States citizens in recent weeks, causing heightened scrutiny of ICE and other DHS agencies. Since Trump's second inauguration on January 20, at least 32 people have been shot by agents, resulting in nine deaths.
In areas where ICE has been surged, such as Minnesota—which was swarmed by around 3,000 agents late last year—numerous instances have been documented of what appear to be uses of unnecessary force, racial profiling, and violations of constitutional rights.
“I am here because I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” Schwank said. “Deficient training can and will get people killed... It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement.”
Schwank's testimony came as a partial shutdown of DHS entered its second week, after Democrats refused to fund the agency without significant reforms to ICE, including requirements that they obtain judicial warrants and carry out their duties without masks.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chaired Monday's panel, said he hopes Schwank's testimony will encourage other whistleblowers to come forward.
“We know about the Trump administration’s decimation of training for immigration officers and its secret policy to shred your Constitutional rights because of the brave Americans who are speaking out today,” Blumenthal said. “They are coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to do something to make sure they don’t happen again.”
“To anyone else who is repulsed by what you’re seeing or what authorities are asking you to do, please know that you can make a real difference by coming forward," he added. "You’ll meet a moral imperative. Our door is open, we are here for you when you are ready, and we will do everything within our power to protect your rights.”
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Canada Vows Aid for Cuba as Trump Oil Embargo Fuels Humanitarian Disaster
Mexico earlier this month also stepped up aid shipments to Cuba during the Trump administration's oil embargo.
Feb 24, 2026
The Canadian government on Monday announced plans to send aid to Cuba, which is currently being squeezed economically by a US oil embargo.
As reported by the Associated Press, Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand revealed that the government is "preparing a plan to assist," adding that "we are not prepared at this point to provide any details" of what it will entail.
A Canadian aid package to Cuba would be the latest rebuff to US foreign policy. The two long-time allies have been at odds since President Donald Trump took office last year and slapped hefty tariffs on Canadian products, while also vowing to make the country into the "51st state" of the US.
Canada wouldn't be the first US ally to step up help for Cuba, as Mexico earlier this month sent two ships loaded with more than 2,000 tons of goods and food to the island nation.
The shipments to Cuba were aimed at easing the humanitarian crisis intensified by the Trump administration's oil embargo, which began shortly after the administration invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro in January.
Trump has vowed to slap tariffs on any country that sends oil to Cuba, although the US Supreme Court's ruling last week slapping down his powers to unilaterally enact tariffs through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act has potentially neutered that threat.
Earlier this month, a group of United Nations human rights experts called the Trump blockade of Cuba "a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order," and "an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion with extraterritorial effects."
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, traveled to Cuba recently and spoke to local residents who described the devastating impact of the oil blockade.
"With no gasoline, buses don’t run, so we can’t get to work," Marta Jiménez, a hairdresser from Holguín, told Benjamin. "We have electricity only three to six hours a day. There’s no gas for cooking, so we’re burning wood and charcoal in our apartments. It’s like going back 100 years."
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Massachusetts Town Passes Resolution Urging State to Hold 'Lawless' ICE Agents Accountable
"I hope Amherst’s resolution kicks off a wave of similar resolutions in cities and towns across the state," said the measure's lead sponsor.
Feb 24, 2026
The town council of Amherst, Massachusetts passed a resolution on Monday urging state and local officials to hold federal immigration agents accountable for violating the Commonwealth's laws, a move that advocates hailed as a model for lawmakers across the United States.
The resolution—which says agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have "repeatedly committed acts of violence against Massachusetts residents"—passed with unanimous support from the nine councilors who participated in the vote.
"ICE’s illegal operations have impacted residents of Amherst and surrounding communities directly, and we know that when any of our neighbors have their rights stripped away, none of us can take those rights for granted," Councilor Jill Brevik, the resolution's lead sponsor, said in a statement following the vote. "Silence and complying in advance created the environment that has enabled ICE agents to commit crimes and human rights abuses."
"As a result, it is critically important for our local and state-level leaders to speak loudly and take clear action to fight back and change course," Brevik added. "The work doesn’t end here, and I look forward to staying engaged. And I hope Amherst’s resolution kicks off a wave of similar resolutions in cities and towns across the state."
The resolution calls on Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, to "immediately cease all cooperation agreements with ICE," pointing to specific actions by federal immigration agents that "may be crimes under Massachusetts law, including but not limited to assault and battery, kidnapping, violation of constitutional rights, and assault and battery for the purpose of intimidation, and conspiracy, which may involve senior federal officials" including President Donald Trump.
Among the incidents highlighted by the resolution is ICE's 2025 abduction of Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was targeted for deportation for writing an op-ed criticizing the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza. Last month, an immigration judge terminated removal proceedings against Öztürk.
The resolution also condemns ICE and CBP agents for "illegally kidnapping an 18-year old with no warrant and detaining him for a week with no access to showers or sufficient food in Worcester County; illegally kidnapping and assaulting a lawful permanent resident in Essex County, stealing his belongings, and threatening his legal status; assaulting a resident of Middlesex County, smashing his car’s windows and dragging him from it; detaining a first-year college student at Boston Logan Airport and forcing her out of the country in defiance of a court order; and repeatedly using unlawfully excessive force in encounters with Massachusetts resident."
“When our constitutional rights, our civil liberties, and our very lives come under attack by Trump’s lawless agents, we need every public official to stand with the people to fight back,” Jeff Conant, an Amherst resident who helped organize support for the newly approved measure, said Monday. “This commonsense resolution by our town council should serve as a model for every town and city in the Commonwealth and across the nation.”
The resolution demands that state and local officials "take affirmative steps to protect" Massachusetts residents, including by:
- Making a public statement confirming the principles that federal officials and agents are subject to state criminal jurisdiction;
- Taking affirmative steps to collect evidence of criminal acts committed by federal agents, including through the creation and dissemination of an accessible online tool for citizens to submit evidence; and
- Issuing guidelines to local law enforcement to preserve evidence, especially in cases of federal noncooperation with investigations, and beginning investigations where evidence indicates that a crime has been committed, regardless of the power or prestige of the federal officeholder who is suspected of committing said crime.
John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney and president of Free Speech For People—an advocacy group that helped draft the resolution—said that "state and local prosecutors in Massachusetts and across the country have a sworn duty to enforce state criminal laws against federal agents who commit crimes in their states."
"There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal ICE agents. While the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution allows federal agents to carry out their lawful duties across the country, they do not have immunity to commit murder, to kidnap, to commit assault and battery, and to engage in illegal detentions," he continued. "Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and district attorneys across Massachusetts must enforce state criminal laws against ICE agents for their unlawful actions in this state."
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