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For Immediate Release
September, 15 2021, 06:48pm EDT
Contact:
Sarah McMillan, WildEarth Guardians, Missoula, MT: (406) 549-3895, smcmillan@wildearthguardians.
John Horning, WildEarth Guardians, (505) 795-5083, jhorning@wildearthguardians.
As Montana Puts Yellowstone Wolves in the Crosshairs, Wolves in Western U.S. One Step Closer to Endangered Species Protection
Draconian new wolf-killing regulations in Montana and Idaho force U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to review status of gray wolves.
WASHINGTON
Today, as the wolf hunting season begins in Montana--and Idaho continues its year-round slaughter of up to 90% of the states' roughly 1,500 wolves--the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced positive initial findings on two petitions filed seeking Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for gray wolves in the western U.S.
According to a press release from the agency, USFWS determined that "the petitions present substantial, credible information indicating that a listing action may be warranted and will initiate a comprehensive status review of the gray wolf in the western U.S." A copy of the two petitions are here and here.
"We are encouraged that the relentless pressure of the conservation community and the public has resulted in a response from USFWS on petitions to relist wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains and beyond," said John Horning, Executive Director of WildEarth Guardians. "It's tragic--and perhaps not coincidental--that this finding comes on the same day that the state of Montana has unleashed hunters to kill hundreds of wolves throughout the state, including on the edge of Yellowstone National Park."
"We now need USFWS to not just issue this statement of intention, but to take swift action in moving forward with the relisting process in order to prevent wolves from being pushed back to the brink of extinction," explained Horning.
Last month, Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission finalized rules to expand hunting season, eliminate a cap on the number of wolves that can be killed in hunting and trapping zones bordering Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park and allow individuals to kill up to 10 wolves per season. In July, Idaho's Fish and Game Commission implemented new hunting regulations - in line with state legislation - to allow a new year-round wolf hunting season, which would enable 90% of the states' population to be slaughtered through various cruel methods such as traps, snares and even with snowmobiles.
"On the day that Montana opened rifle hunting season on wolves, the USFWS has finally taken their head out of the sand and recognized the tremendous threats to wolves across the West," said Sarah McMillan, Montana-based Conservation Director at WildEarth Guardians. "Unfortunately, it's unconscionable that the USFWS thinks a commitment to make a decision in 12 months--when the agency is on full notice that up to 1,800 wolves will be killed in Montana and Idaho in the next few months alone--is an adequate response to what is clearly an emergency situation."
WildEarth Guardians issued a separate press release earlier today regarding the start of the general wolf hunting season in Montana, which is available here: https://wildearthguardians.org/press-releases/montana-puts-yellowstone-wolves-in-the-crosshairs/
WildEarth Guardians protects and restores the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West. Driven by passion, we've tackled some of the West's most difficult and pressing conservation challenges over the past three decades. We've celebrated small victories (banning leghold trapping in the state of Colorado), monumental triumphs (ending logging on more than 21 million acres in the Southwest), and everything in-between.
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'Deadly Shadow Prison': Inmates, ACLU Sue Trump Admin for Denying Due Process at 'Alligator Alcatraz'
"What's happening here is not just a policy failure, it's a moral one," said the executive director for the ACLU of Florida. "This is how rights are erased."
Jul 17, 2025
Detainees at "Alligator Alcatraz" are suing the Trump administration for subjecting them to inhumane conditions at the prison without due process.
The class action suit, brought Wednesday with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other immigrant rights groups, challenges the government's refusal to let detainees speak with lawyers and file legal documents needed to petition for their release.
Inmates in the Everglades detention facility have detailed horrific conditions, including crushing heat, incessant mosquito presence, tainted food, cramped conditions, and a lack of access to water and basic sanitation.
After visiting the detention center over the weekend, some Democratic lawmakers described it as an "internment camp," where as many as 32 inmates apiece were crammed into small cages beneath a single tent.
The majority of the roughly 1,000 people detained there, according to the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, have not been convicted of criminal offenses, while over a third have not even been charged.
"This facility opens another dark chapter in our nation's history. Its very existence is predicated on our country's basest impulses and shows the danger of unchecked governmental authority when combined with unbridled hate. It represents an attack on common decency, and in this case, its treatment of detained people is also unlawful," said Eunice Cho, senior counsel with the ACLU's National Prison Project and the lead attorney in the case.
According to the complaint, multiple attorneys have arrived at the detention center to meet with their clients, only to be turned away by armed police and members of the Florida National Guard. The attorneys were later told no in-person meetings would be allowed. They have additionally been given no information about how to communicate with their clients over the phone or virtually.
"The U.S. Constitution does not allow the government to simply lock people away without any ability to communicate with counsel or to petition the court for release from custody. The government may not trample on these most fundamental protections for people held in its custody," Cho said.
The plaintiffs argue this violates the First and Fifth Amendment rights of those being detained, as well as the First Amendment rights of the attorneys.
"What's happening here is not just a policy failure, it's a moral one," said Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. "The state has hastily erected a costly and deadly shadow prison in the middle of the Everglades during hurricane season to warehouse human beings—stripping them of due process and dignity, cutting them off from their families and legal counsel, intentionally putting their lives in danger, and leaving them to suffer in silence. This is how rights are erased."
The Trump administration is seeking to replicate "Alligator Alcatraz" all around the country. As The New Republic reports, the budget megabill signed by the president earlier this month contains $3.5 billion for "eligible states" to use for the "temporary detention of aliens."
In a Fox News interview earlier this month, Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's "mass deportation" crusade, called on Republican governors to use this fund to build their own immigrant detention camps.
"We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: Pick up the phone, call [the Department of Homeland Security], work with us to build facilities in your state," Miller said.
"No amount of armed guards or government spin can shield this facility from legal scrutiny," Jackson said Wednesday. "We will use every tool at our disposal to end this cruel experiment and defend the rights of every person trapped inside of this unconstitutional abomination."
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Doing Trump's Bidding, Senate GOP Votes to Gut Public Media, Foreign Aid in Dead of Night
"At 2 am, Republicans just passed a bill to defund public broadcasting and lifesaving aid because Trump told them to—they wouldn't even protect rural radio or emergency alerts."
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In the early hours of Thursday morning, Senate Republicans passed legislation that would claw back $9 billion in previously approved congressional funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid programs targeted by President Donald Trump's White House.
The final vote count was 51 to 48, with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joining Democrats in opposing the package, which now heads back to the GOP-controlled House for final passage. The legislation would cement some of the Trump administration's lawless, unilateral attacks on programs approved by Congress with bipartisan support.
"At 2 am, Republicans just passed a bill to defund public broadcasting and lifesaving aid because Trump told them to—they wouldn't even protect rural radio or emergency alerts," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, warning that the GOP's partisan clawback of funding imperils all future spending negotiations.
"Congress should decide what we spend and what we cut—not Trump and not Russ Vought," Murray added, referring to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
In a floor speech ahead of the Thursday morning vote, Murray said Vought refused to be specific about which programs would be cut if the rescissions bill passes.
"It's one of the great outrages of this package," said Murray. "At our hearing with him, he refused to go into detail. He stonewalled us. We asked and we asked. The chair, the Republican chair, even asked him about this. But OMB would not tell us. The question is: What will you cut? The answer has been: Pass it, we'll see."
"The thing that's particularly dangerous about it is that this is probably a test case. If they pull it off with these topics, they'll move on to more and more and more topics."
The White House rescissions request was broadly outlined in a May memo authored by Vought, an architect of the far-right Project 2025 agenda.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund PBS and NPR, is expected to face over $1 billion in cuts, while the rest of the rescissions package targets foreign assistance.
"With this vote, Senate Republicans are telling us everything we need to know about their priorities," said Alex Jacquez, the Groundwork Collaborative's chief of policy and advocacy. "After passing a tax law that gives a massive giveaway to billionaires and raises costs on working families, Senate Republicans are now codifying DOGE's deeply unpopular and reckless cuts to vital programs. Once again, Republicans are failing to deliver on the one thing they promised: lower prices. Instead, they're waging a campaign that will make life more expensive and difficult for working families while lining the pockets of the wealthy."
During the marathon amendment process, Republicans rejected Democratic proposals to shield public safety alerts and prevent cuts to international disaster relief programs.
Vought has signaled that the White House will likely submit more rescissions requests if the $9 billion in cuts make it through Congress.
Kate Riley, the president and CEO of America's Public Television Stations, said in a statement following the Senate vote that the rescissions bill would "eliminate federal funding to the local public television stations throughout this country that provide essential lifesaving public safety services, proven educational services, and community connections to their communities every day for free."
"This elimination of federal funding will decimate public media and put local stations at risk of going dark, cutting off service to communities that rely on them—many of which have no other access to locally controlled media," Riley warned.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) accused Republicans of weaponizing the rescissions process to attack "some of their favorite enemies, like National Public Radio, Elmo, or food for starving people overseas."
"The thing that's particularly dangerous about it is that this is probably a test case," Whitehouse added. "If they pull it off with these topics, they'll move on to more and more and more topics, bringing their Musk-type chainsaw to projects which Congress has approved on a bipartisan basis, put into law, and funded."
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Class Action Suit Aims to End 'Unlawful' ICE Arrests at Immigration Courthouses
"We are witnessing an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. immigration court system by the Trump administration."
Jul 16, 2025
A dozen immigrants and their legal advocates on Wednesday launched a class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's campaign of courthouse arrests "designed to strip noncitizens of their rights" and expedite deportations.
"We are witnessing an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. immigration court system by the Trump administration," said Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), one of the groups behind the new suit. "People who attend their hearings to seek permission to remain in this country and comply with U.S. immigration law are being rounded up and abruptly ripped from their families, homes, and livelihoods."
"Meanwhile, the administration is issuing directives telling immigration judges to violate those same immigration laws and strip people of fundamental due process rights," Zwick added. "We must continue fighting to overcome the administration's escalating attacks on the U.S. Constitution and rule of law."
The suit—filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by NIJC, Democracy Forward, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCRSF), and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Legal Education and Services (RAICES)—aims to end the "unlawful" arrests and strike down related guidance from the administration.
"For years, both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) had policies limiting civil immigration-related arrests in immigration courts," explains the complaint, filed on behalf of 12 people identified by their initials as well as the groups American Gateways and Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative (ARC).
"These policies were rooted in the commonsense recognition that such arrests hamper the fair administration of the immigration process and create a palpable fear that disincentivizes people from appearing for their hearings," the complaint explains. "But in the first few days of the Trump administration, defendants repealed those policies, exposing individuals who properly appear for their hearings, including to seek asylum and other relief, to the imminent threat of arrest and indefinite detention."
Defendants include DHS, DOJ, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and leaders in the administration who have been working to deliver on President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations.
@skyeperryman.bsky.social of @democracyforward.org said the Trump administration is ‘weaponizing’ immigration courts and chilling participation in the legal process.”apnews.com/article/immi...
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— Melissa Schwartz (@mschwartz3.bsky.social) July 16, 2025 at 6:01 PM
"The egregious and unprecedented coordination amongst government agencies that we are witnessing not only inflicts irreparable harm upon infants and adults alike for seeking refuge in the U.S., but also establishes a chilling precedent in which law and order are abandoned in favor of stoking widespread panic and fear—leaving the entire American public at risk, regardless of immigration status," warned Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer at RAICES.
Jordan Wells, senior staff Attorney at LCCRSF, declared that "these directives forsake any notion of immigration courts as a neutral forum, weaponizing them into a trap for immigrants who show up in reliance on the American promise of a fair process before a judge, only to be met instead with handcuffs and shunted into a fast-track deportation process controlled by ICE agents."
Priyanka Gandhi-Abriano, interim CEO for Immigrant ARC, said that "our friends, neighbors, and families are told to 'do it the right way'—to follow the legal process. They're doing just that—showing up to court, complying with the law. Despite this, they're being arrested and detained."
"This isn't justice," Gandhi-Abriano stressed. "It's a deliberate attempt to intimidate and disappear people before they can be heard. We're defending the integrity of the legal system, protecting every person's right to due process, and holding the Trump administration accountable for their deeply harmful practices aimed at the most vulnerable communities."
The filing follows a Friday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons—all defendants in the new case—in which two dozen U.S. Senate Democrats wrote that "we are extremely concerned by reports of a recent initiative to arrest and detain noncitizens at their immigration court hearings, and in many cases, dismiss their immigration cases without advance notice and while hiding the government's intent to arrest them."
"This manipulation of existing laws to enact this administration's mass deportation agenda is creating chaos in our immigration system while doing nothing to make our communities safer," asserted the lawmakers, led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). They also demanded answers to a list of related questions by July 25.
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