SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
aclu
Federal Judge Rejects Trump's Rationale for Hiding Memo on 'Cold-Blooded Murder' at Sea
“No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so,” said one legal expert.
Sep 30, 2026
A key memo from the Office of Legal Counsel at President Donald Trump's Department of Justice has underpinned the administration's yearlong campaign of bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and the White House has been adamant that the document should be kept secret.
But on Wednesday, Judge Paul Engelmayer in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected the administration's rationale for keeping the memo hidden, saying that the Department of Defense and US Southern Command have adopted its contents as its "working law" while conducting 70 strikes on boats and killing at least 234 people who officials claimed, without evidence, were "narco-terrorists."
After the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a Freedom of Information Act request calling for the release of the 40-page memo, the administration argued it needed to remain secret to protect confidential deliberations and attorney-client communications.
Engelmayer noted that administration officials have repeatedly cited the memo in public statements to explain why it was bombing dozens of boats that it claimed were operated by drug cartels—which experts and family members of some of the victims have called into question.
“The agency defendants cannot claim surprise from this consequence of the executive branch’s repeated public statements embracing the OLC memo—and it only—as setting out the legal parameters for the boat strikes,” Engelmayer wrote.
Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, called the order "a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law."
“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians," said Stein.
The judge ordered the administration to turn the memo over to him so he can determine whether it should be released to the public. He also ordered officials to provide information about who has seen the memo and how they have used it, and called on the administration to provide details on whether the memo could be protected from public view as a "closely held presidential advice document."
Engelmayer gave the administration until October 14 to comply with the order.
The boat strikes have been carried out as part of Trump's stated push to defeat drug cartels in Latin America. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has pointed out that there is little evidence the administration is ensuring it is targeting drug boats, as the presence of drugs on a boat has not been identified as "targeting criteria" for the operation in congressional briefings. Some victims have been identified as fishermen and other people who had little, if any, involvement with drug trafficking.
Beyond that, legal experts say that even if the 234 victims were drug traffickers, the boat bombings constitute extrajudicial killings and violations of international law—something Trump himself appeared to brag about last week when he said at the United Nations General Assembly that "we don’t waste our time" addressing alleged drug crimes in the court system.
“No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so,” said Baher Azmy, legal director for CCR. “If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial murders in legalese to provide Trump cover, the public needs to see that analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Federal Appellate Court Halts Tennessee's Planned Execution of Christa Pike
"So much of Ms. Pike's experience reflects widespread and systemic failures that surface in death penalty cases," said an Amnesty International USA researcher, urging an end to capital punishment "in Tennessee and beyond."
Sep 30, 2026
A federal appellate court on Wednesday morning temporarily blocked Tennessee from executing Christa Pike, as witnesses had already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the state's first execution of a woman in centuries.
A panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled 2-1 to halt the state-sanctioned killing, after Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the US Supreme Court declined to do so. The 50-year-old, found guilty of murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995, when Pike was 18, could still be executed on Wednesday if the nation's top court allows it.
Republican state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office said: "We will continue to advocate for the lawfully imposed sentence as the courts work through this technical issue. It is common in capital cases for the defense to raise last-minute objections following decades of litigation in numerous courts. We are asking the Supreme Court of the United States to lift the stay."
Judges Jane Stranch and Karen Moore, both appointees of Democratic presidents, concluded early Wednesday that "a short stay of execution" is in order due to arguments related to the sexual abuse Pike suffered as a child—which clinical psychologist Dr. Bethany Brand described as "truly extreme," writing in 2023 that "the level of trauma she was subjected to as a preschooler through her 18th year, when she was arrested, is almost impossible to grasp because it is so severe."
As the 6th Circuit's order details, Pike points out "that the state recently reversed its litigation position that she is a liar who fabricated sexual abuse. Pike contends that the state's concession of her history of child sexual abuse and rape 'erodes the foundation' of her state court proceedings. Pike ties this erosion to defects in the federal court proceedings because... the district court was required to give strong deference to the state court's findings of facts."
"Pike also cites scholarly authority supporting her argument that the state's representations about her history of sexual abuse tainted the state court proceedings and the subsequent federal ones by introducing damaging stereotypes of survivors of sexual assault," the filing says.
Pike was "subjected to drugs and alcohol while she was still in her mother's womb" and "first sexually abused by her grandmother's boyfriend, who would orally rape her before she was in kindergarten," the Nashville Banner's Steven Hale recently reported, citing Brand's findings. "After living through periods of physical and emotional torment by extended family members and one of her mother's husbands, Pike was later raped by a known predatory neighbor."
"She was hospitalized at the age of 12 after overdosing on pills during a suicide attempt," then sexually assaulted by one of her mother's boyfriends, who had "moved into the family's home and brought with him violence and depravity," Hale continued, noting that the perpetrators who abused Pike often faced limited consequences. "When she was 17 in January 1994, Pike was sexually assaulted again, by a man who saw her walking to the store in Carrboro, North Carolina."
Hale was among the journalists at the prison in Nashville on Wednesday morning. He said on social media that "I'm told the state has until midnight to carry out the execution. Still unclear what happens next, but prison officials are bringing those of us witnessing the execution inside now to be ready."
The journalist added just after noon Central Time that "prison officials have brought us back outside now while we continue to wait for news from the Supreme Court."
Following the 6th Circuit's decision, the ACLU—whose Capital Punishment Project works to repeal the death penalty in the United States—took to social media, urging the public to "tell Gov. Lee to respect the court's decision and call off her execution NOW."
"Gov. Lee's 615-741-2001 mailbox is full—contacting him through this form is the quickest way to reach his office," the legal group explained, sharing a link to the relevant page on the state government's website.
Lee had said Monday that "after deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike's request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the state of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene."
Attorneys for Pike—Stephen Ferrell, Kelly Gleason, and Randy Spivey—responded that they were "deeply saddened and heartbroken by Gov. Lee's decision to deny clemency," emphasizing that "throughout her childhood, Christa was failed by people and institutions that should have shown her care and meaningful intervention."
"The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists," the lawyers said. "Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women."
"With this decision, the state of Tennessee is ignoring what both science and our legal system have decided: An 18-year-old brain is not an adult brain, and 18 is too young to face execution. This decision also leaves unanswered vital questions about Tennessee’s execution protocol," they added. "We will continue to support Christa through every remaining avenue and advocate for a system that is transparent for the people of Tennessee."
Among the organizations that have pressured Lee to block the execution is Amnesty International USA, whose deputy director of research, Justin Mazzola, recently said that "so much of Ms. Pike's experience reflects widespread and systemic failures that surface in death penalty cases."
"She endured profound abuse and trauma as a child and had serious mental disabilities that were never adequately addressed nor treated," he highlighted. "Due to inadequate legal representation, these issues were not fully presented to the jury. Knowing all that, it is unthinkable that Gov. Lee would even consider moving forward with this execution."
Mazzola—whose group opposes capital punishment under all circumstances—also stressed that "this issue is about more than one person. Amnesty International members are speaking out because the use of the death penalty remains a human rights failure. As its use continues to decline globally, the United States remains an outlier. It is well past time to abolish the death penalty once and for all, in Tennessee and beyond."
The US National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or by texting "HOPE" to 64673. Both offer 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rights Groups Detail Sweeping 'Suppression of Pro-Palestine Speech' on US Campuses
"The Trump administration’s targeting of students and faculty who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza is dangerously reminiscent of McCarthy-era censorship and a blatant violation of academic freedom."
Sep 23, 2026
While the traumatic experiences of foreign-born scholars such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk have drawn international headlines, a report released Wednesday by a pair of leading rights groups highlights how their arrests by immigration agents were part of a wider assault "on free speech and association on college campuses, particularly against students, faculty, and staff protesting Israel's war on Gaza and the US government’s political, economic, and military support of the war."
Titled "Student Speech Under Attack: Suppression of Pro-Palestine Speech and Dissent on Campus," the new report from the ACLU and Amnesty International USA catalogs university and law enforcement responses to protests and encampments, schools' actions to restrict speech, the Trump administration's crackdowns on institutions and foreign scholars, and how all of that has had a chilling effect.
The report also features case studies on six schools—City College of New York, Columbia University, Tulane University, University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin, and University of California, Los Angeles—and various targeted scholars, including Khalil and Öztürk as well as Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri, Leqaa Kordia, and Mohsen Mahdawi.
Like Khalil, Mahdawi was a Columbia student and lawful permanent resident of the United States. At his citizenship interview last year, masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested and detained him for his advocacy in support of Palestinian rights. The Trump administration's attempt to deport Mahdawi, who was raised in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is ongoing.
"At the time of his arrest and detention, he was an undergraduate student at Columbia University majoring in philosophy and planning to start a master's degree program at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. Mahdawi said he dedicated himself 'to understanding how to achieve a lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis, particularly through the study of conflict resolution,'" the report notes.
"As a student at Columbia, Mahdawi was an outspoken critic of Israel's military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia's campus until March 2024, after which he took a step back and was not involved in organizing," the document details. "Mahdawi attended protests opposing military escalations in the region and gave speeches at several of these protests advocating for Palestinian human rights and a permanent ceasefire. Mahdawi appeared in numerous televised interviews and print news articles regarding the military campaign in Gaza and related protests."
While Mahdawi was targeted by the Trump administration, not Columbia, the publication points out that he "had contacted university administrators asking for help in finding safe housing, stating that he feared abduction by ICE agents," and, according to him, the school "did nothing in response to his request."
The report also notes Columbia's decadeslong reputation as "the activist Ivy," and how "student activism in support of Palestinian rights began in October 2023... sparking a multiyear, nationwide movement of campus anti-war demonstrations calling for academic institutions to divest from what organizers and Amnesty International characterize as Israeli apartheid."
The ACLU and Amnesty laid out how Columbia suspended student groups that held peaceful demonstrations, refused to divest from Israel, threatened to expel students who joined an encampment, and had New York Police Department officers forcibly remove protesters who occupied a campus building and dubbed it "Hind's Hall" for a Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces.
Columbia University student demonstrators unfurl a banner that reads "Hind's Hall" as they barricade themselves inside a campus building on April 30, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
Early last year, as Khalil was arrested outside his home and President Donald Trump threatened to pull $400 million in university funding, Columbia promised to the administration that it would add three dozen "special patrol officers" with arrest powers, and later announced that its University Judicial Board punished over 70 students.
However, as the report stresses, it's not just Columbia. After Israel began what many experts have called a genocidal assault on Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas-led attack, "students across more than 100 universities organized, calling for educational institutions to end their financial ties to corporations linked to the war," and their protests and encampments were often met with "university leaders' swift and punitive responses."
"Universities and colleges faced pressure from wealthy donors, trustees, and figures outside of university or college leadership, including members of Congress, to suppress pro-Palestinian protests and dismantle encampments," the publication acknowledges. "By restricting or banning protests outright, involving campus police and external law enforcement in the surveillance, intimidation, and repression of participants, and pursuing students with legal and administrative consequences, university and college administrators escalated tensions."
"During the disbandment of encampments, law enforcement forcefully pushed and arrested demonstrators, leading to concussions, cuts dislocations, and other severe injuries," the report continues. "In many instances, demonstrators posed no threat, did not resist arrest, and were sometimes attempting to deescalate or document the protest."
Police crack down on a pro-Palestinian protest at Indiana University in Bloomington on April 25, 2024. (Photo by Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Justin Mazzola, Amnesty's deputy director of research, said in a statement that "universities and colleges should prepare students for open discourse in a pluralistic society. Instead, campus leadership has suppressed free speech and peaceful protest while enabling the Trump administration to advance its anti-rights agenda and seek ideological control over higher education."
Mazzola also called out the Trump administration—which, as the report lays out, has issued related executive orders, conducted campus visits, abused Title VI investigations, conditioned funding on acquiescence, revoked student visas, targeted scholars for deportation for protected speech, and attempted to evade court reviews of deportations.
"The Trump administration's targeting of students and faculty who oppose Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza is dangerously reminiscent of McCarthy-era censorship and a blatant violation of academic freedom," he asserted. "The Trump administration must stop stifling political expression on campus and end its relentless push for ideological conformity in higher education. Students' rights must be respected, protected, and fulfilled."
The report features recommendations for schools, campus and local law enforcement, the Trump administration, and Congress. It also details rights on campus, reminding students and educators that they "have the right to peacefully protest, and the government has a duty to respect, protect, and facilitate that right—not suppress it."
University of Texas at Austin graduate students, faculty, and demonstrators protest Israel's war on the Gaza Strip after walking out of commencement on May 11, 2024. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
As for US colleges and universities, they "must take all possible measures to ensure that their campuses are spaces where students may exercise their rights to freedom of speech and expression without fear of unwarranted punishment or retaliation regardless of viewpoint," said Jennifer Turner, principal researcher in the ACLU's Human Rights Program.
"Schools should resist the pressures placed on them to silence and punish students or faculty who engage in protest or advocacy for Palestinian rights," Turner added. "Instead, they should stand up to the federal government's intimidation tactics and defend the university's core mission of fostering free-flowing inquiry and debate."
The groups' report was released after Khalil and other Palestine defenders sued Columbia in federal court last week over what Khalil called "gross and systemic discrimination against Palestinian students." He vowed that "next, I will turn to the hateful individuals at Columbia who were also responsible for what we endured."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Report Details How Trump Mass Deportation Agenda Is Fueling US Affordability Crisis
"When ICE continuously raids a community, everyone pays for it—in lost jobs, higher prices, and damaged businesses," said an advocate at the ACLU.
Sep 16, 2026
The Trump administration has billed its "mass deportation" agenda as a necessity to bring about an age of prosperity for US-born workers. But a new report suggests it's actually doing the opposite—exacerbating an already severe affordability crisis by suppressing wages, killing jobs, and raising costs.
On Wednesday, the ACLU and AFL-CIO published an analysis examining how the administration's unprecedented deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to communities around the country has not only created a climate of fear, but also caused labor shortages, reduced economic activity, and given employers new tools to suppress employees' wages.
"When ICE continuously raids a community, everyone pays for it—in lost jobs, higher prices, and damaged businesses," said Naureen Shah, director of government affairs at the ACLU's equality division.
Previous national data has already shown that, contrary to the Trump administration's argument that rounding up immigrant laborers simply creates room for those born in the US, areas that have experienced increases in ICE activity have also seen employment reductions for US-born workers.
"In our interdependent labor market, harm to one group of workers spills over to all those who labor alongside them or within the same supply chain, regardless of immigration status. Roughly 1 in 5 workers in our country is an immigrant, spanning all sectors of the economy," the report explains.
"Targeting this large and vital segment of the workforce sharply reduces the supply of labor, threatening the ability of employers to generate revenue and cover business expenses, including the wages of any remaining workers," it continues.
Reducing the labor supply consequently reduces production. The report argues that this is why industries with large numbers of immigrant laborers have seen skyrocketing costs for their products nationwide.
Data from previous deportation surges during the Obama administration shows that immigration enforcement has reduced construction labor, resulting in nearly 2,000 fewer completed homes on average and an 18% increase in home prices.
In June 2026, data showed that while core inflation was just 2.6% over the previous year, prices had shot up much more dramatically in immigrant-heavy sectors: The cost of lettuce was up 32.1%, landscaping was up 10.8%, home health care climbed 10.7%, whole milk increased 9%, and canned fruit jumped 7.9%.
The report also argues that ICE surges, which have often involved racial profiling and indiscriminate targeting, use of excessive force, and arrests of US citizens, have created terror in communities that suppresses economic activity.
A May working paper from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, which examined nearly 5,400 raids around the country during 2025, showed that areas targeted by ICE raids experienced a 2.7% decline in foot traffic and a 6.2% decline in spending per business per week, which the author extrapolated would amount to 8.1 billion fewer visits and as much as $14 billion in forgone spending annually across the nation.
US-born employees in sectors with large numbers of immigrant workers were hit especially hard. Data from "Operation Metro Surge" in Minnesota earlier this year demonstrates this in miniature.
Research released in June by the Upjohn Institute estimated that the surge of immigration agents cost the state’s leisure-and-hospitality sector 4,600 jobs, 3.8 million work hours, and $71 million in wages between January and March.
Economist Exequiel Hernandez, quoted in the ACLU/AFL-CIO report, said these findings highlight the danger of creating an "economy of fear."
"If fewer people are showing up to work, they’re making less income, they’re spending less," he explained. "If they’re spending less, businesses have to cut back in hiring and selling, and it’s really quite damaging."
The report cites projections from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) last year on what this could mean if the Trump administration meets its target of deporting 1 million people per year.
Using data from previous immigration enforcement studies, the EPI estimated that nearly 6 million fewer people could be employed by the end of President Donald Trump's second term if the administration follows through on its deportation promises. That includes 3.3 million immigrants, but also 2.6 million US-born workers, many of whom are working in immigrant-heavy sectors.
The report argues that a pathway to citizenship rather than deportation would not only be a more humane solution, but also deliver economic benefits that ripple through the economy, including for US-born residents.
It cites projections that allowing undocumented immigrants to become citizens would increase US gross domestic product (GDP) by nearly $2 trillion over a decade and generate hundreds of billions in new tax revenue.
This is because legalization would allow workers to move into jobs that better match their skills rather than being confined to low-paying jobs that tend to accept them. It would also remove immigration enforcement as a threat that employers could use to suppress wages, both for immigrant and US-born workers.
"Working people are paying the price for an immigration system that is destabilizing entire industries and communities and making it easier to exploit workers,” said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. “As this report demonstrates, a broad pathway to citizenship for all would raise wages, create more and better jobs, and strengthen our economy in ways that help all of us."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Condemned for 200+ Extrajudicial Killings After Yearlong Murder Spree at Sea
"This is a make-believe armed conflict, but these are very real killings," said one legal expert.
Sep 02, 2026
Wednesday marked one year since President Donald Trump began bombing boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean—a grim anniversary that sparked a fresh wave of condemnation from rights advocates across the United States and beyond.
"For a year now, the Trump administration has engaged in a terrifying, lawless killing campaign at sea and has yet to provide the public with anything beyond the most threadbare justifications," said Jeff Stein, staff attorney with ACLU's National Security Project, in a statement late Tuesday.
The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights are suing over the administration's refusal to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for a legal opinion authored by the US Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) attempting to justify the strikes.
"These strikes have devastated countless families, terrified communities, and, by the administration's own admission, failed to achieve their purported goal of stopping drugs from entering into the United States," Stein said. "We urge leaders in both Congress and the executive branch to put an immediate end to these strikes before anyone else is killed."
Despite mounting outrage over the bombings, which have killed at least 227 people and, as Amnesty International USA's national director for government relations, Amanda Klasing, highlighted Monday, "are illegal under both international and US law," the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to pass any war powers resolutions intended to stop the campaign.
"The Trump administration has summarily killed more than 200 people over the course of the past year, bragging about these killings online and facing no accountability," Ida Sawyer, crisis, conflict, and arms director at Human Rights Watch, said Wednesday. "The victims and their loved ones deserve a full accounting of these operations, and justice for the grave harm they have suffered."
After a two-month pause in the bombings, the administration revived them last week, launching a pair of attacks that killed at least six people, according to social media posts and aerial footage from US Southern Command. The strikes followed SOUTHCOM's early August announcement of an expanded operation across Latin America called Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere.
As MS NOW noted Wednesday:
In September and October 2025, when the strikes began, US Southern Command, known as SOUTHCOM, linked three of the strikes to the Tren de Aragua and Ejército de Liberación Nacional criminal organizations. Most later strikes were described as targeting "a vessel operated by designated terrorist organizations."
But the military's most recent two announcements of strikes simply stated that "confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking."
Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser who now advises the US Program at the International Crisis Group, told the outlet that "they are engaging in conduct that is widely regarded to be flagrantly illegal, criminal even, and have not offered anything approaching plausible legal rationale."
The OLC memo may be the administration's "permission slip," Finucane said, but it hasn't actually substantiated claims that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with cartels that traffic drugs.
"This war framing on the part of the administration is really bogus," he added. "This is a make-believe armed conflict, but these are very real killings."
I don’t think there’s really even a colorable argument that this isn’t mass murder.theintercept.com/2026/09/02/m...
[image or embed]
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) September 2, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Several Democrats in Congress, from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) to Senate Minority Whip and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (Ill.), renewed their criticism of the boat bombings on Wednesday.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said that "the most recent strike was four days ago. A year of killing, and this administration has never once come to Congress to justify any of it. This cannot become the way our country goes to war."
"The American people are already paying for one war they didn't want in the first place," he continued, nodding to the illegal six-month assault on Iran. "I fought in Iraq. I know what these wars cost, and I know who pays them. I will use every tool I have as a United States senator to stop this and to defend the Constitution."
House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) noted that "it remains unclear whether these operations have made any real difference in stopping illegal drugs from reaching the United States."
"This is especially true for fentanyl," he noted, which Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "have repeatedly claimed is the reason for these extrajudicial killings even though we know that it is cocaine—not fentanyl—that is typically shipped via small boats from South America."
Smith also called out the Department of Defense for failing "to publicly provide the costs of these operations, both in terms of dollars and readiness," and declared that "never before in my over 20 years on this committee have I seen such a staggering lack of transparency on behalf of an administration and DOD to meaningfully inform Congress of the use of lethal military force."
However, with Republicans holding narrow majorities in Congress and mostly still refusing to truly challenge the administration on the boat strikes—and various other violent actions around the world—some campaigners are also stepping up pressure on other governments.
"The Trump administration has had complete impunity for this campaign of unlawful killings for a year, and has stated openly that it has no intention of stopping," said Sawyer. "Other countries should refrain from any cooperation on these strikes, and Congress should urgently work to rein in the deadly actions of an administration bent on violating international law."
Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU's Human Rights Program, said that "the international community must do everything in its power to hold the Trump administration responsible for these extrajudicial killings that are blatant violations of international law."
"No other country should provide any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful US government killings," Dakwar added, calling for an "independent international investigation into this lawless campaign."
Keep ReadingShow Less
After Judge Unblocks Trump Voting Order, Groups Target His 'Blatantly Unconstitutional' USPS Rule
"This is chaos by design, and voters are the ones who will pay for it," warned the ACLU's Voting Rights Project director.
Aug 26, 2026
The battle over President Donald Trump's attack on voting by mail continued on Wednesday, as a federal judge in Massachusetts lifted her injunction on the Republican's March executive order and the coalition behind that case took action against a related US Postal Service rule.
Despite repeatedly voting by mail himself, Trump ordered various federal actions to restrict participation in elections, including the creation of the rule that the USPS finalized last week amid various ongoing legal fights. Among them is the case in Boston, under US District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama.
Talwani on Tuesday found that the Trump administration violated her injunction by finalizing the Postal Service rule, but she declined to take any action. Then, on Wednesday, she lifted her injunction—which, as MS NOW noted, "was the only remaining roadblock to implementing the executive order."
The judge cited the US Supreme Court's Monday ruling in a separate case brought by Democratic state attorneys general. Rather than weighing the constitutionality of Trump's order, the six right-wing justices ruled that AGs had filed their lawsuit prematurely and lifted another lower court's injunction.
Refusing to back down, the Democratic AGs on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the newly finalized USPS rule—following in the footsteps of other Democratic Party leaders and a "pro-voter" coalition that filed separate challenges to the policy on Tuesday.
The coalition that had compelled Talwani to issue her injunction also took aim at the USPS rule on Wednesday, submitting to her court a supplemental complaint as well as a request for a new injunction blocking the policy for the November midterms.
Voting rights organizations today supplemented the complaint in their lawsuit challenging President Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting to add claims against the US Postal Service’s (USPS) newly-finalized mail ballot rule Full statement: https://bit.ly/4cd8nDq
[image or embed]
— League of Women Voters of the US (@lwv.org) August 26, 2026 at 4:50 PM
"The court has already found that the executive order unconstitutionally usurps the authority of the states and Congress to regulate elections, and the newly finalized rule eliminates any doubt about the harms stemming from these unlawful acts," the groups and their attorneys said in a joint statement.
"Implementing the newly finalized rule less than 70 days before the general election would dramatically impair plaintiffs' core voter engagement work and pose a grave risk of disenfranchisement," they added. "We are asking the court for emergency relief to prevent this harm and to affirm the public’s confidence in the systems voters rely on to conduct our elections."
The plaintiffs are the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, League of Women Voters, LWV of Massachusetts, OCA - Asian Pacific American Advocates, and US Vote Foundation. They are represented by the state and national ACLU, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and Legal Defense Fund.
"USPS's decision to rush this blatantly unconstitutional rule into effect just weeks before an election is the latest step in a rollout that has sown confusion at every turn and now threatens to disenfranchise voters who did everything right. This is chaos by design, and voters are the ones who will pay for it," declared Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project.
"No administration should be able to manufacture confusion around how we vote and undermine confidence in our elections in the process," she added. "Rather than serving voters, this rule threatens access to the ballot and treats voters as collateral damage. We will continue to use every legal tool available to block this illegal power grab and ensure voters can cast mail ballots with the confidence that their votes will be counted."
Keep ReadingShow Less
ACLU Says New Flock Camera Guardrails Nothing But a 'Thinly Veiled PR Attempt'
“Transforming an exceptionally dangerous mass surveillance system into one that is fully protective of civil rights and civil liberties is a difficult, if not impossible task.”
Aug 13, 2026
The ACLU on Thursday largely dismissed new privacy measures announced by surveillance tech company Flock Safety, arguing the changes do little to address mounting concerns about the company’s sprawling automated license plate reader network and abuses of its technology by law enforcement agencies and other malicious actors.
Flock on Thursday unveiled new guardrails for its law enforcement customers, including a reduction in default license plate data retention from 30 days to seven, mandatory auditing tools designed to flag suspicious searches, and requirements that officers associate searches with case numbers.
The ACLU said the changes "seem to be a thinly veiled PR attempt to counter communities’ genuine privacy concerns with its mass surveillance system with largely hollow security promises, rather than an earnest effort to address them."
ACLU senior policy counsel Chad Marlow asserted that “transforming an exceptionally dangerous mass surveillance system into one that is fully protective of civil rights and civil liberties is a difficult, if not impossible task."
"That is even more the case with a company like Flock, whose nearly $1 billion in venture capitalist funding has locked it into an operational model that seeks to trade our privacy for massive profits," he continued. “Given that Flock’s latest announcement still appears more focused on addressing a PR problem than the significant privacy and other harms its products create, we will continue to analyze the company’s proposals fairly and honestly."
Flock Safety's new guardrails come amid growing nationwide backlash against automated license plate readers (ALPRs). As more and more instances of alleged police abuse emerge—including use of Flock cameras to stalk exes, track abortion patients, target undocumented immigrants, and spy on protesters—an increasing number of law enforcement agencies are canceling or not renewing contracts with the company.
"Abuse of Flock technology, at any level, is unacceptable," Flock Safety said in its statement Thursday. "We have strengthened safeguards over the past nine years, from basic audit logs to proactive monitoring. Sixteen weeks ago, we introduced audit assistance, which detects abnormal activity and flags it for administrator review. In recent weeks, those reviews have been associated with arrests of several law enforcement officers who allegedly abused the system."
"We will now require all law enforcement customers to adopt this feature by the end of this year," the company continued. "In addition, we will institute proactive lockout. When a user’s activity meets defined criteria for abnormal behavior, Flock will automatically suspend access pending administrator review. The goal is to intervene before misuse becomes recurring or widespread."
"In July 2025, we introduced an optional case code requirement for searches," Flock noted. "Results from participating agencies have been promising, so we will now require case codes for all law enforcement searches by the end of the year. Agencies may bypass the requirement in emergencies, but every exigent search will be flagged for administrator review."
"We are not perfect," the firm added, "so we will keep listening, improving, and building a better standard for public safety technology together."
However, the ACLU analyzed Flock's announced changes and found that "the devil will be in the details":
For example, an exception to the data retention policy is something called evidence mode, which is “when a search is tied to a case number, that data is preserved instead of aging out after seven days.”... “If ‘evidence mode’ only retains hit result data that police determine may be evidence in an active investigation of a specific case, then the change may be a positive one. But if evidence mode triggers the retention of any ALPR data that is searched, then the new mode could indefinitely retain all the ALPR data Flock collects and shares nationally.”
Another “change” the company is implementing is that local police will be able to decide what types of offenses other Flock customers can search their data for... Flock has attempted this before, and the security measure failed because police were easily able to circumvent the system’s requirement that they input the purpose of their search.
Finally, Flock announced that in response to the reports of police abuse, they will now require reasons for a search, and that they plan to universally roll out its audit assistance tool to detect police misuse. Flock’s announcement fails to note how easily users have circumvented “search reason” security measures in the past or how its new policy improves the quality of the feature.
"Change may still come as Flock faces this ever-growing threat to its corporate viability," the ACLU said, "but we certainly won’t be holding our breath."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Senate Panel Advances Kids Online Safety Package Despite Civil Liberties Concerns
Critics like Fight for the Future fear that "these bills would allow Trump's FTC to wipe abortion, sex ed, and LGBTQ resources off the internet while instating nationwide age verification requirements."
Aug 05, 2026
The US Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday advanced a package of bills intended to protect children online, despite free speech and privacy concerns long raised by civil liberties groups about such proposals, particularly those that require or urge websites to implement age verification systems.
The panel moved forward the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)—versions of which have been considered in Congress for years—as well as the Children's Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act; the Children's Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology (CHATBOT) Act; and the Youth AI Privacy Act
Some advocacy groups welcomed the development, with Fairplay executive director Josh Golin saying that "the Senate version of KOSA is the most protective, popular, and bipartisan of all children's online safety legislation under consideration. It would be the most important new law to protect kids online in nearly 30 years."
"We are also pleased to see the committee advance both the Youth AI Privacy Act and the CHATBOT Act," Golin continued. "The danger AI chatbots pose to children and teens is a growing crisis. These bills would add deeply needed protections to help mitigate chatbot harms, including strong default settings for long-term memory use, a ban on advertising to minors through a chatbot, a ban on using the data of minors to train AI models, and prohibitions on features that cause compulsive use."
The committee did not advance the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act, which would require pornography websites to verify users' ages so they can block minors, because low attendance led to a failure to meet quorum.
Ahead of the bill markup, the Center for Democracy & Technology wrote to committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to raise alarm about KOSA, the CHATBOT Act, and the SCREEN Act, while acknowledging that the Youth AI Privacy Act "would create important safeguards for the use of minors' data by generative AI services."
The group also stressed that "enacting comprehensive consumer privacy legislation that meaningfully realigns consumer expectations and incentives for online business models is the best path forward to protecting children and everyone online and to addressing root causes of harms related to minors’ activities on social media, generative AI models, and other internet-enabled services."
CDT supports tackling the data practices that put young people at risk. But proposals that encourage age verification or restrict access to lawful content risk undermining privacy and constitutional rights. Read our letter:
[image or embed]
— Center for Democracy & Technology (@cdt.org) August 5, 2026 at 12:09 PM
The Senate action came after a bipartisan vote by the House of Representatives in June to pass the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, which "took portions from 14 digital safety bills—including the SCREEN Act," as The Hill reported Wednesday. "The House's version of KOSA eliminated a 'duty of care' provision that is a redline for the Senate's co-authors, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who called the package 'dead on arrival' in the Senate last month."
"The provision would have legally required platforms to 'exercise reasonable care' to prevent harms to minors. Harms include eating disorders, suicide, substance use disorders, and sexual exploitation," the outlet detailed. "The KIDS Act faces long odds in the Senate as a result, making Cruz's decision to take up some of the bills individually instead not surprising."
Earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that "the Senate should reject KOSA's privacy risks," emphasizing that the duty of care obligations included in the upper chamber's version "only work if online services know which users are minors. That means more platforms will be pressured to implement age verification or age estimation systems."
Ahead of the House vote earlier this year, the ACLU's Jenna Leventoff and Christopher Anders similarly noted that "KOSA, although purporting not to require age verification, would nevertheless strongly incentivize it."
The ACLU experts warned that age verification will "severely jeopardize user privacy by turning droves of information over to platforms" and "threatens the First Amendment rights of adults," who may not be able "to verify their ages (because they lack valid identification, face technological difficulties, or lack digital skills), or can but "might still be reluctant to access information online over a fear that a data breach could lead to the disclosure of sensitive information contained within their browsing history."
After the Senate votes on Wednesday, Leventoff reiterated: "Bills that incentivize or require age verification promise safety, but all they deliver is a future where everyone has to undergo invasive identity verification measures that will almost certainly put their sensitive data at risk. We shouldn't need to fork over our IDs, biometrics, or personal information to access the internet, but that's exactly what will happen if these bills become law."
"When the data used to verify a users' age is combined with other commercially available data," she warned, "it can enable adversarial nations to track and attack troops, allow stalkers to locate their victims, and allow scammers to target those who will be most susceptible to their schemes."
Together, these bills would allow Trump’s FTC to wipe abortion, sex ed, & LGBTQ resources off the Internet while instating nationwide age verification requirements. This could mean scanning your face or sending in your government ID just to post on Bluesky! ❌Take action: fftf.link/bib
[image or embed]
— Fight for the Future (@fightforthefuture.org) August 4, 2026 at 12:09 PM
Fight for the Future also called out the Senate panel on Wednesday, with campaign director Sarah Philips saying that "Congress is once again doing political theater instead of actually meaningfully regulating the business model of Big Tech companies."
"The Senate Commerce Committee is rushing out bad internet bills so they can go out and campaign on them even knowing they are doomed to failure, either because they will be rejected by the House or overturned by the courts for being unconstitutional," Philips said. "Young people have been calling and emailing Congress on this issue for years, and have been rallying around the world against proposals to fence them off from the internet for a reason. They can see through these efforts. They know more censorship and surveillance, more data collection for companies, and all of us having to turn over ID in order to interact online is not safety."
"We've had hearing after hearing on this issue for the last few years instead of actually moving against the tide of tech corporate power that is making our future unlivable and exploiting our data for profit," Philips added. "We want to protect kids, but we want those proposals to actually do the work, instead of just making an easy headline for congressional leadership. Anyone in Congress still pushing censorship and surveillance bills under the facade of kids safety has failed us, especially members that claim to support trans kids and every community currently being attacked by the Trump administration."
Keep ReadingShow Less
ICE Killings Are Part of a Pattern of Hundreds of Civil Rights Violations by Agency Under Trump, Says ACLU Report
One of the report authors said it showed how under the Trump administration, federal agents have “used force in a way we’ve never seen from these agencies, in their history.”
Jul 16, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is facing intense scrutiny once again after agents killed at least two people during arrests in less than two weeks.
But the author of a report out Thursday from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tells Common Dreams that this rash of violence is just "the tip of the iceberg" in a much broader campaign by immigration agents that has been indiscriminate, violent, and lawless.
Naureen Shah, one of the authors of the ACLU report, said that these killings were part of a "much, much bigger pattern, where ICE agents and the agents who are working with them have threatened to use force and used force in a way we've never seen from these agencies, in their history."
Our new report is the first in-depth civil rights review of immigration enforcement actions throughout 2025 in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, and New Mexico.Read more about how we’re exposing the deportation machine’s depravity.
[image or embed]
— ACLU (@aclu.org) July 16, 2026 at 10:01 AM
The report examined more than 1,200 immigration enforcement actions by the Trump administration in 2025 across eight states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, and New Mexico—in what the organization called "the first in-depth civil rights review of immigration enforcement actions throughout 2025."
In more than a third of the cases, it found examples of misconduct, including excessive force, intimidation, and racial profiling.
The report detailed how agents have used extreme force as a "default" tool. On 418 occasions, agents pushed, shoved, tackled, or pinned people to the ground.
In many cases, the report said force was used to "coerce immediate compliance rather than to respond to a threat." Often, it found, that force was excessive and potentially deadly.
In one exemplary case, Border Patrol agents reportedly grabbed Ricardo Aguayo Rodriguez, a 54-year-old construction worker who is the father of two deaf teenagers, as he was riding his bicycle home from the grocery store in Illinois.
According to the report: "Agents grabbed him in a stranger’s driveway, pepper-sprayed him, locked an arm around his neck, and struck his head. Video captures him gasping, 'Por favor, amigo.' While he was hospitalized with head wounds, masked agents barred his US citizen sister from seeing him at the hospital."
Threats of force and the brandishing of weapons were also commonplace, appearing in at least 128 cases.
In Hawthorne, California, masked agents surrounded the truck of US citizen Cary Lopez Alvarado, who was nine months pregnant. After she called 911, an agent asked her, "Do you want to get killed?" before shoving her into the side of her truck, pressing her stomach against it.
Children were detained, targeted, or subjected to misconduct in 214 cases, the report found. At least 32 of them were US citizens.
A father in Colorado was detained after a court visit, with agents using their vehicles to box his car in at a traffic stop.
"One agent pointed a gun at them as he approached the vehicle, and another smashed the driver’s side window while his US citizen partner screamed there was a baby in the car. Glass cut her as she shielded their 1-month-old infant,' the report said.
The report also identified racial profiling as an "operating practice," with agents routinely stopping people without prior information to question them about their legal status. At least 437 cases were identified that likely involved racial profiling.
Often these cases involved agents targeting certain workplaces and occupations where many immigrants worked and stopping people based on appearance, spoken language, and location.
In Arizona, agents followed a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in an unmarked van for several minutes before jumping out to tackle and arrest him for “suspicious activity." They then took him to an immigration facility where he was deprived of food and water.
When they attempted to prove his citizenship by showing a tribal ID, driver's license, and state identification, agents said his documentation "seemed fake" and claimed he was an "illegal." He was detained for nearly a day before being released.
The report makes clear that no place or person was off limits for immigration agents. More than half the observed cases occurred in public spaces like streets, bus stops, stores, and gas stations. Hundreds of other cases involved individuals being targeted at their places of work.
Under the Trump administration, agents have routinely operated at “sensitive” sites previously deemed off limits, like schools, places of worship, shelters, and courthouses in a reversal of previous policies.
And while the administration has portrayed its mass deportation campaign as part of a fight against illegal immigration, more than 200 incidents involved US citizens or people with other forms of legal immigration status being detained, targeted, or subjected to alleged misconduct.
The report identified 150 incidents affecting at least 782 protesters, legal observers, journalists, elected officials or staff members, and clergy, many of whom faced retaliation, verbal abuse, and intimidation while attempting to document the actions of agents, a protected right under the First Amendment.
“Street arrests have always been part of what ICE did, but never at the scale that we have now,” Shah told Common Dreams. “We never had a situation in this country’s modern history where civil arrests were taking place habitually in grocery store parking lots, at bus stops, at gas stations because the public safety imperative just wasn’t there.”
“They’re often in plain clothes, sometimes they’re masked, they’re heavily militarized, it’s scary looking, and it sends fear in all these communities,” she said. “If you’ve got these agents out there constantly trolling for people they believe are immigrants, you know, that means all of us are exposed to those agents.”
The report examined just a fraction of the more than 400,000 immigration arrests that took place in 2025. The vast majority of those arrested have not been convicted of crimes, and most of those who have were convicted of nonviolent offenses.
ICE agents have shot and killed two men in vehicle stops over the past ten days—neither of whom was the intended target of the operation—while two other men died during an ICE operation or in the agency’s custody.
As scrutiny of the agency intensified this week, the Department of Homeland Security briefly announced it was suspending vehicle stops, only for President Donald Trump to order the policy to continue.
Through recent spending bills, the Republican-controlled US Congress has more than tripled ICE's budget, providing roughly $240 billion for immigration enforcement over the next four years.
According to the report, ICE has used these funds to hire at least 12,000 agents and send them out into the field with limited training and vetting, while diverting another 25,000 personnel from other agencies.
The ACLU describes this as part of an effort to create a "national deportation policing force" of more than 50,000 agents.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has pushed for a quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day and has emphasized to ICE personnel that when carrying out deportations, "there is no list" of people to be targeted and "everyone is fair game."
Administration officials have hinted that with ICE's newfound wealth of resources, the public can expect even more aggressive tactics in the months to come.
"You ain’t seen shit yet," said Trump's border czar Tom Homan at a border security expo in May. "This year will be a good year. Mass deportations are coming."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'A Human Rights Disaster': Groups Demand Closure of Trump's Largest Immigrant Detention Center
"The US government should shut it down, conduct independent investigations into all abuses and deaths in custody, and put an end to mass deportations and mandatory immigration detention."
Jul 15, 2026
The ACLU and Human Rights Watch on Wednesday released a joint report documenting abusive treatment of immigrants at the largest immigration detention facility in the US.
The groups' report focuses on Camp East Montana, located on Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, which can hold up to 5,000 detainees.
In total, the groups interviewed 71 detainees at the facility, along with four family members of detainees, and five legal service providers.
According to the report, people detained at Camp East Montana have suffered from "conditions of confinement that amounted to enforced disappearance, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment, excessive use of force including one extrajudicial killing, life-threatening medical neglect, barriers to legal representation, and coercive third-country removals."
Detainees said that the camp's unsanitary conditions—which the report says include "overcrowded housing areas, bathrooms covered in feces and urine, and living quarters flooded with dirty water and dust"—have led them to develop infections and other health complications for which they have been regularly refused treatment.
One woman who spoke with investigators said that she is now at risk of permanent blindness after guards and nurses denied her request for emergency medical care, the report notes.
A Honduran immigrant identified as "Ismael M," who was detained at the camp for over five months, told investigators that conditions there were so terrible that he often had suicidal thoughts.
"I’ve gone a month without seeing the sun," said Ismael. "I am forced to live in filth... I have been taken from my family, from my home, and I know that no matter how long they keep me here, they will end up deporting me. I'm so afraid I will get killed once I am sent back. That is why I left."
Detainees also described regular beatings by guards at the facility.
A Cuban detainee identified as "Ricardo H" told investigators that he was beaten by guards simply for demanding to be fed.
"I didn’t get breakfast that day," Ricardo explained. "Our lunch is usually distributed at noon. By 1:30 pm the guards had not handed our meals out. Our meals were ready, the guards placed the food cart in front of us and were refusing to serve it. I protested verbally, I told them I was hungry and that I was human. I needed food. They ignored me so I kicked the metal door out of desperation."
This led to several officers opening his cell and beating him, he said.
"A lieutenant grabbed me by the shirt and slammed me to the ground," he said. "Six officers restrained me with my face down. I still have severe pain in my ear and in my right collarbone. They also stomped on my neck."
A Venezuelan detainee identified as "Armando G" said that he was beaten by guards after he went on hunger strike to protest food that he said was "not nourishing and was making us sick."
"I was tackled to the ground by seven guards," said Armando. "One of them was choking me, another pulled my hair and slammed my head on the ground. They were dragging me on the ground like a rag doll."
Angélica César, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, said the groups' report shows the camp is "a human rights disaster."
"The US government should shut it down," said César, "conduct independent investigations into all abuses and deaths in custody, and put an end to mass deportations and mandatory immigration detention."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy