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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.
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— 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."
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'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."
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'Get the Flock Out': Nationwide Backlash Grows Against AI-Powered Surveillance Tech
Since 2021, 82 Flock contracts have been canceled across 28 US states—39 of them during the first five months of this year alone.
Jul 03, 2026
Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety's cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.
State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company's automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.
“We have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,” Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company's Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.
“There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things," Cox added.
Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people's travel across states—even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.
The ACLU—which recently launched a "Get the Flock Out" campaign to "fight creepy ALPR cameras"—says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.
Automatic license plate readers track our every move and funnel our personal information into enormous databases that police can access to spy on us without a warrant.Surveillance company Flock Safety is the largest provider of these cameras — it's time we get all of them out of our communities.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) June 28, 2026 at 11:15 AM
"Flock's ALPR cameras aren't like your normal traffic cameras," the ACLU explained. "This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search—with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find."
The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.
“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan," ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.
There is growing action—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country.
According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.
Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.
Susie O'Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California's nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company's national network without city officials' knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.
O'Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.
"I have goose hbumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis," she said. "And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing... It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all—just no way."
Less than a week after Good's killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city's Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.
“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.
Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin—which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock—told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue."
"There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant," he added.
At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.
Krishnamoorthi and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety "for failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal."
Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.
In May, US Reps. Jesús "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.
It's not just Flock. Axon, Vigilant Solutions—a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions—Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.
"It doesn't matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood," the ACLU said, "they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it."
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Rights Groups Argue Trump Orders Have 'Murdered Over 210 Civilians With No Sound Legal or Moral Basis'
“By claiming that these attacks are legal while refusing to provide any evidence or rationale, President Trump shows once again his disdain for basic transparency, human rights, and the rule of law."
Jun 25, 2026
Civil rights groups squared off against the Trump administration in a New York federal court on Wednesday, with the former seeking to compel the release of a secret Department of Justice memo being used to justify illegal bombings of alleged narco-trafficking boats and the latter claiming executive privilege in a bid to avert the document's disclosure.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and then reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force against them. Last July, the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a classified opinion providing the legal rationale for the strikes, which international law experts around the world contend are illegal acts of murder and possibly war crimes or even crimes against humanity.
The ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) argued in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that the Trump administration cannot conceal its legal justification for boat strikes from the American people while repeatedly referring to it.
“People across the country, politicians across the aisle, and the families of victims have been demanding answers as to how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of civilians,” ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. “The Trump administration has murdered over 210 civilians with no sound legal or moral basis. At a minimum, the administration must disclose to the American people why it thinks this killing spree is lawful.”
The DOJ, which is seeking a summary judgment, claimed that the memo contains classified and highly sensitive information that, if disclosed, would compromise intelligence operations and sources. DOJ attorneys argued that executive privilege shields the memo from disclosure.
“Wouldn’t that be true of any OLC memo?f” US District Judge Paul Engelmayer countered, according to Courthouse News Service. “Is it the government’s position that any presidential communications privilege cannot be waived?"
Stein asserted that the boat strikes are being carried out "on the basis of secret law" that "has no place in a democratic society" and dismissed the government's claim as “contrary to the foundational presidential communications privileges" in Freedom of Information Act cases.
CCR legal director Baher Azmy accused the Trump administration of "displacing the fundamental mandates of international law with the phony wartime rhetoric of a basic autocrat."
“If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial homicides in legalese in order to provide cover, the public needs to see this analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name," he added.
CCR said that the OLC memo "supposedly validates the ongoing strikes as lawful acts in an alleged 'armed conflict' with unspecified 'drug cartels.'"
"Reportedly, the memo also purports to immunize personnel who authorized or took part in these unlawful strikes from future criminal prosecution for what would otherwise simply be homicides," the group added.
As CCR said Wednesday:
Contrary to the government’s public assertions, the US is not, and could not be, in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels. Under international law, an armed conflict between a state and a nonstate actor exists only if the nonstate actor is an “organized armed group” that is structured and disciplined like regular armed forces and is engaged in “protracted armed violence” against the state. There is no plausible argument that any drug cartel satisfies this test vis-à-vis the United States.
Even if the OLC does release the memo, it doesn't mean that its arguments are actually legal under international law. OLC lawyers have notoriously written opinions that affirm the purported legality of their administration's policies, from John Yoo positing during former President George W. Bush's War on Terror that detainee abuse only crossed the threshold of torture when the pain inflicted upon the victim was equal to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," to the Obama-era OLC determining that the president could order the extrajudicial assassination of US citizens under certain circumstances.
Since last September, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has publicly disclosed 66 strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that it has claimed—without providing evidence—were involved in "narco-trafficking operations." The bombings have killed 215 people and left around a dozen survivors, according to a strike tracker published by The Intercept. In the first of the attacks, a special operations commander ordered a second strike that killed two survivors, reportedly on orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to "kill everybody."
Relatives of people killed in previous US boat bombings, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, have said that numerous victims were fishers who were not involved in the illicit drug trade. In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.
NYCLU staff attorney Ify Chikezie said Wednesday that "the public deserves to know how the Trump administration is rubber-stamping the killing of civilians."
“By claiming that these attacks are legal while refusing to provide any evidence or rationale, President Trump shows once again his disdain for basic transparency, human rights, and the rule of law," Chikezie added. "The court must step in and order the administration to release these documents immediately.”
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Florida Man's Wrongful Arrest Suit Highlights Dangers of AI Facial Recognition in Policing
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," said Robert Dillon.
Jun 10, 2026
A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Middle District of Florida by a Fort Myers resident wrongfully arrested nearly two years ago highlights the risks of police agencies relying on facial recognition tools.
"This case is about what happens when police let an error-prone artificial intelligence (AI) system stand in for an investigation," explains the complaint, filed by attorneys with the state and national ACLU as well as the firm Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney. "A facial recognition algorithm flagged Robert Dillon as the man who tried to lure or entice a child under 12 years old at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald's. It was wrong."
The 52-year-old "lives more than 300 miles from" and "had never set foot in Jacksonville Beach," the complaint continues. "But rather than test the machine's answer against the evidence that would have cleared him, the officers built a case to confirm it. Mr. Dillon was arrested and prosecuted for one of the most stigmatizing crimes a person can face."
Dillon—one of at least 15 people wrongfully arrested in the United States due to police reliance on incorrect facial recognition results—is suing the city of Jacksonville Beach as well as law enforcement officers from the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (JSO), and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Reporting on the case Wednesday, Wired noted that while the Pinellas agency did not respond to a request for comment, a JSO spokesperson simply said that "due to pending litigation, we would be unable to comment further on the incident."
The actual suspect allegedly approached a girl at the McDonald's shortly before midnight on November 2, 2023. The following month, Dillon was flagged as a possible match by the Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System (FACES)—which "has been operated by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office since 2001, making it one of the oldest police face-recognition systems in the country," according to Wired. "At its peak in 2021, its tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver's license photos were accessible to more than 260 agencies."
After denying any involvement in the case in December, Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife the next August, "held overnight in jail, forced to borrow money and pledge the title to his truck to post bond, subjected to months of criminal prosecution, and publicly branded with a mugshot that remains accessible online, long after the charges were dropped," the complaint states. "Community members still approach him in public to ask about the case. He no longer feels comfortable being friendly to children."
"He had no connection to the McDonald's, to the child who was targeted, or to anyone involved in the crime. He became a suspect for one reason: a facial recognition algorithm included him in a list of possible matches to a suspect captured on grainy surveillance footage at the restaurant," the document emphasizes. "The investigating officer treated that algorithmic output as a near-certain identification, omitted critical exculpatory evidence from his arrest warrant application, and failed to pursue routine investigative steps that would have immediately excluded Mr. Dillon as a suspect."
"The arrest warrant that deprived Mr. Dillon of his liberty was the product of a cascade of investigative failures by the lead investigator, Jacksonville Beach Police Department officer (now corporal) Scott O'Connell," according to the filing. Among them was the officer's "complete failure to consider that the suspect was alleged to have been a 'regular' customer."
The complaint also notes that "O'Connell is an officer with a documented history of volatility and poor judgment, having previously been terminated from the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office for threatening to 'blow up' the agency, later reinstated, then arrested for domestic battery before resigning under the weight of those charges. Jacksonville Beach PD hired him anyway, assigned him as lead investigator on a sensitive child-luring case, and later promoted him to corporal after his investigation resulted in the wrongful arrest and prosecution of an innocent man."
Dillon said in a Wednesday statement that "the night I spent in jail after they arrested me for a crime I did not commit still haunts me to this day. I will never get over how terrified and worried I was, wondering if I'd ever go home to my wife and daughter again."
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," Dillon added. "Florida police must implement safeguards and ensure this never happens to anyone else, because until they do, nobody is safe."
Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, stressed that "no one should lose their freedom or be scared to leave their house because an algorithm got it wrong."
"These Florida police departments owe it to Mr. Dillon to make amends and to take serious steps to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else," he argued. "Police across the country are on notice: Unreliable face recognition technology is hurting people, and we will keep fighting to hold them accountable for these abuses."
The ACLU has previously sounded the alarm over other cases, including those of Robert Williams, a Black man wrongfully arrested in 2020 after software owned by Michigan State Police misidentified him as a shoplifting suspect, and Randal Reid, who spent nearly a week in jail in 2022 after he was falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana authorities.
The legal group on Wednesday also pointed to the reported role of FACES in the 2025 wrongful arrest of New Smyrna Beach resident Beau Burgess, as well as another case involving the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office: Jalil Richardson told Action News Jax earlier this month that after being misidentified as a vehicle thief, he "sat in there for over 50 days, in the most worst jail ever."
"There was no proper investigation done... to even reach out to me or to see if I was even in Florida," said Richardson, whose charges were dropped after he provided time sheets showing that he was at work in North Carolina when the vehicle was stolen.
In his case, JSO provided a lengthy statement, saying in part that "facial recognition software is just one tool in a large toolbox for investigators," and "calling the arrest the result 'police AI misidentification' is a catchy headline but does not provide accurate context," including that "the victim chose Mr. Richardson out of a photographic lineup to include other potential suspects."
Nicholas Warren, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said Wednesday that "one wrongful arrest is one too many."
"Florida's growing reliance on facial recognition technology threatens us all," he warned. "We must stop this dangerous pattern before it traps more innocent people. No one should have their freedom taken away because the police rely on faulty technology."
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ICE Sued Over 'Civil Rights Catastrophe' at West Texas Concentration Camp
“The conditions here in this ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel," said one Cameroonian plaintiff in the suit. "No human being should ever have to go through this."
May 30, 2026
A group of legal advocacy groups on Friday sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies and officials over "inhumane" conditions at the country's largest concentration camp for immigrants detained during the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign.
The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, Human Rights Watch, and the law firm Farella Braun + Martel LLP filed suit against ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and associated officials, in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four people seeking to represent a class action for all others held at Camp East Montana, a 60-acre facility located in the Chihuahuan Desert on the grounds of Fort Bliss, an Army base and the site of one of the concentration camps where Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals were imprisoned during World War II. Approximately 2,500 immigrants are being detained there.
Citing “a Civil Rights catastrophe,” a group of legal and civil rights organizations in Texas sued the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday over conditions at Camp East Montana in El Paso, the country’s largest immigration detention facility.More: substack.com/@shero/note/...
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— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule.bsky.social) May 30, 2026 at 10:03 AM
The lawsuit documents accounts of what the ACLU called "horrific rights violations" at the facility, including:
- Severe medical neglect and disease outbreaks, including a months-long measles outbreak that infected at least 14 people;
- Violent uses of force by officers against detained immigrants and coercive threats of deportation;
- Excessive and arbitrary use of solitary confinement to punish people for requesting basic needs like medical care or hygiene;
- Inadequate and rancid food that have caused detained people to lose extreme amounts of weight;
- Exposure to dust storms through openings in tent walls that subjects people to respiratory disease; and
- Dangerous and unsanitary living conditions in the tent camp, among other rights violations.
“These conditions are longstanding, pervasive, and well-documented, and defendants’ continued inaction in the face of known risks shows their deliberate indifference—not mere negligence—to detainees’ constitutional rights,” the lawsuit states.
At least three detainees have died at Camp East Montana, including Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban who, according to witnesses, died after being handcuffed and placed in a chokehold by guards. The El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Lunas Campos' death a homicide by asphyxia.
Detained immigrants have reported beatings and sexual abuse, medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of access to attorneys at the facility.
“The conditions here in this ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel. No human being should ever have to go through this," case plaintiff Gerald Akari Angye said in a statement Friday.
I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America," he continued. "I have been beaten here and even today, I still have a brace on my hands and wrist. I am in pain and I am scared to be here."
"No one deserves such cruel treatment," Akari Angye added. "We are all humans and deserve to be treated like it.”
Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, called Camp East Montana "nothing short of a civil rights catastrophe."
“Since the day it opened, the facility has repeatedly made headlines for horrific rights violations and even the deaths of three detained people, yet ICE has still evaded accountability for its conduct," Virgien added. "We’re suing to ensure that no other human being has to endure the inhumane treatment that the Trump administration has inflicted on our clients.”
Another case plaintiff, named in the suit as Navdeep, said, "It feels like we are just political pawns taken from our jobs and families and forced into a temporary tent that is not designed for human life."
“We could die here, and it feels like no one here would care," they continued. "With everything happening behind closed doors, I worry the people running this place might cover up the truth about a death or the other injustices that happen here."
"It’s important for people to know the truth of what is happening here," Navdeep added. "Being part of this lawsuit is important to me because many people are vulnerable or they become weak because of the conditions here. Even though we come from many different places, we are all human. I want to be a voice for everyone here.”
After receiving "numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment" of detainees, 35 Democratic Texas state lawmakers earlier this year demand a probe into alleged abuses at Camp East Montana.
Democratic members of US Congress have also sounded the alarm over conditions at Camp East Montana. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) has also called out profiteering by the private contractors running the camp.
Amentum Services Inc. took over operations from Acquisition Logistics LLC earlier this year. The latter was never registered to operate in Texas and the former "has a history of health, safety, and other violations of federal law," according to the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen.
The Trump administration is currently moving forward with a plan to convert industrial warehouses into more ICE concentration camps. The agency has already purchased or contracted for at least 11 warehouses in eight states as part of the $38 billion plan.
While some critics take exception to the concentration camp description, the ICE facilities fit the dictionary definition of the term. The US has a long history of operating concentration camps, with imprisoned peoples ranging from Indigenous tribes during the Trail of Tears and Long Walk to escaped and freed slaves—officially called "contraband" in the Civil War—to Filipinos, Okinawans, and Vietnamese during three different 20th century wars, to Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals during World War II.
“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem," talk show host and author Thom Hartmann wrote earlier this year for Common Dreams. "And that’s exactly what ICE is building now. History isn’t whispering its warning: It’s shouting.”
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Tony Carruthers Receives 1-Year Stay After 'Outright Barbaric' Botched Execution in Tennessee
"Tennessee has effectively made the case against the death penalty," said one opponent of capital punishment.
May 21, 2026
A Tennessee man set to be executed on Thursday got a temporary reprieve—but not due to any intervention by the US Supreme Court.
As reported by The Associated Press, the execution of Tony Carruthers was called off after medical officials struggled to locate a vein during the scheduled lethal injection procedure.
After the failed execution, Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered a one-year stay for Carruthers, who has been on death row for three decades after being convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1996.
Maria DeLiberato, an attorney representing Carruthers, told the AP that she saw her client "wincing and groaning" during the botched procedure, which she described as "horrible" to watch.
DeLiberato, who is also senior counsel at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, later issued a statement describing the execution attempt as "outright barbaric," and reiterated demands for state investigators to examine potentially exculpatory forensic evidence before proceeding with any future attempt.
"We are incredibly relieved Gov. Lee issued a reprieve," DeLiberato said. "We will also continue to push the governor to use this moment to allow the forensic testing that should have happened long ago. Tennessee cannot continue torturing a man while refusing to answer serious questions about his innocence."
The ACLU on Wednesday had called for the US Supreme Court to block Carruthers' execution until all potentially exculpatory evidence had been fully examined.
Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, legal director of the ACLU of Tennessee, said the state had a duty to ensure that it had convicted the right man, and he pointed to troubling aspects of the case that should give courts pause before signing off on his execution.
“Mr. Carruthers was forced to represent himself at trial, and now faces death based on flimsy circumstantial evidence, and unreliable witnesses,” Cameron-Vaughn said. “Forensic evidence the state refuses to test could change everything."
Laura Porter, executive director for US Campaign to End the Death Penalty, argued that the botched execution shouldn't just give Carruthers a one-year reprieve, but should push the US to end capital punishment all together.
"Tennessee has effectively made the case against the death penalty," said Porter. "They forced Tony Carruthers to represent himself at his own capital trial, failed to test DNA and fingerprint evidence and now they have failed to execute him. It is time to end the death penalty."
Stacy Rector, executive director for Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, described the failed execution as "horrifying but not surprising," adding that her organization "has sounded the alarm for years about the serious problems with lethal injection and urged our state toward greater transparency so these problems can be addressed."
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ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Stop Tennessee From 'Executing a Potentially Innocent Man'
"The court must stand firmly on the side of truth, fairness, and the basic principle that we should not take a life while serious questions of innocence remain unanswered."
May 20, 2026
The ACLU on Wednesday urged the US Supreme Court to intervene and block the state of Tennessee from executing a man who could be exonerated by DNA evidence.
In its plea to the court, the ACLU said that Tennessee is "sitting on unidentified DNA and fingerprint evidence" that could prove the innocence of Tony Carruthers, who has been on death row for three decades after being convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1996.
The ACLU has repeatedly asked for Carruthers' execution, which is scheduled for Thursday, to be postponed so that investigators can take between two and three weeks to examine potentially exculpatory forensic evidence.
Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, legal director of the ACLU of Tennessee, said the state had a duty to ensure that it had convicted the right man, and he pointed to troubling aspects of the case that should give courts pause before signing off on his execution.
“Mr. Carruthers was forced to represent himself at trial, and now faces death based on flimsy circumstantial evidence and unreliable witnesses," Cameron-Vaughn said. "Forensic evidence the state refuses to test could change everything. The Supreme Court must act now to stop Tennessee from taking an irreversible step while so many critical questions remain unanswered.”
Maria DeLiberato, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, argued that the Supreme Court is "the final safeguard between Tennessee and this irreversible injustice" that would come from executing someone for a crime they may not have committed.
"We are only hours away from the state of Tennessee executing a potentially innocent man while they are sitting on evidence that could prove who really committed this crime," DeLiberato said. "The court must stand firmly on the side of truth, fairness, and the basic principle that we should not take a life while serious questions of innocence remain unanswered and while readily available forensic testing could answer those very questions."
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday said he would not intervene to stop Carruthers' execution, even after local faith leaders and past exonerees delivered a petition signed by more than 130,000 Americans asking him to reconsider.
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As Tennessee Voters Sue Over Gerrymandering, Supreme Court Clears Way for New Alabama Map
"Boy, it's a complete mystery why the public thinks the court is making partisan political decisions," quipped one law professor following the ruling on Alabama's redistricting.
May 11, 2026
The US Supreme Court's right-wing majority Monday opened the door for Alabama to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district before this year's midterm elections in a decision that came as Tennessee voters sued to stop their state's racially rigged redistricting.
The nation's high court issued a 6-3 order with no explanation allowing Alabama officials to revert to a congressional map which, despite the state population being roughly 26% African American, has just one majority-Black district out of seven. The order came just a week before Alabama's primary election and less than three years after the same court ordered the state to create a second majority-Black district.
In that case, Allen v. Milligan, two right-wing members—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh—joined their liberal colleagues who sided with Black voters in defense of the Voting Rights Act.
SCOTUS, which ordered Alabama to create a second Black opportunity district just 3 years ago, has lifted that order a week before the primary. The Purcell principle says courts shouldn't permit chaos too close to an election—it's now an open question whether there will even be a primary on schedule.
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— Joyce White Vance (@joycewhitevance.bsky.social) May 11, 2026 at 3:32 PM
Monday's ruling follows last month's Louisiana v. Callais decision, in which the justices ruled 6-3, also along ideological lines, that Louisiana's congressional map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."
The decision ironically voided the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
Dissenting in Monday's decision, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the high court previously found that "Alabama violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters."
"That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais," she added.
Earlier on Monday, the ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three Black voters, the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute, and the Equity Alliance seeking to block the state's racially rigged congressional map approved last week by the state Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee despite tremendous opposition from African American Tennesseans and their allies.
The lawsuit argues that the new map violates the Constitution by intentionally discriminating against Black voters in Memphis and retaliates against them for exercising their First Amendment right to political expression and association.
As the ACLU of Tennessee explained:
Tennessee has had a Memphis-based congressional district for the better part of a century. The challenged map dismantles that district, which is the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. It divides Black voters in Memphis and Shelby County across three majority-white districts that stretch from Memphis hundreds of miles into central Tennessee, diluting Black Memphians’ votes and stripping those communities of any meaningful voice in Congress...
A white-controlled supermajority of the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the new map targeting Black Memphians over mere days in a special legislative session that had been called after the candidate-qualifying deadline had already run.
"Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do, which is to choose their representative,” ACLU of Tennessee executive director Miriar Nemeth said in a statement. “The Legislature’s response was an effort to ensure that those votes never carry the same weight again. The law has a name for this, and it’s not redistricting, it is textbook First Amendment retaliation. And it is, at its heart, racism.”
The Tennessee branch of the NAACP, state Democratic Party, Democratic candidates, and voters have also sued to challenge the redistricting.
The current partisan redistricting war began when President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, who fear losing control of Congress after November's midterms, pushed Texas to enact a mid-decade redistricting. California retaliated with its own voter-approved redraw, and numerous red and blue states have followed suit or announced plans to at least consider doing so.
On Monday, Virginia's Democratic attorney general and party legislative leaders asked the US Supreme Court to block a state high court ruling against a voter-approved redistricting that favors Democrats.
Last week, Roberts dismissed the increasingly prevalent public perception that Supreme Court justices are "political actors."
Chief Justice Roberts bemoans the public's view of the Justices as political actors ...and then offers no explanation at all as the Court sprints to vacate a finding of INTENTIONAL discrimination, interfering with an impending election to let Alabama Rs sneak in a touch more partisan gerrymander.
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— Justin Levitt (@justinlevitt.bsky.social) May 11, 2026 at 3:21 PM
Following Monday's ruling, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt said sardonically on Bluesky, "Boy, it's a complete mystery why the public thinks the court is making partisan political decisions."
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Groups Issue World Cup Travel Advisory Over ‘Deeply Troubling Human Rights Landscape’ in US
The coalition cited the Trump administration’s "racist immigration policies, mass detention and deportation, and attacks on freedom of expression and peaceful protest."
Apr 23, 2026
A coalition of more than 120 US-based civil society groups on Thursday issued a travel advisory ahead of the upcoming FIFA Men's World Cup over what the ACLU called the "deteriorating human rights situation" in the United States amid the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, suppression of free speech, and more.
Citing the "absence of meaningful action and concrete guarantees from FIFA"—world soccer's governing body—"host cities, or the US government," the coalition published a warning urging "fans, players, journalists, and other visitors traveling to and within the United States" for the tournament to "have an emergency contingency plan."
The US, Canada, and Mexico are jointly hosting the tournament, which is set to kick off with group stage matches in Mexico City and Guadalajara on June 11 and Los Angeles and Toronto the following day.
"World Cup games will be played in 11 different cities across the United States, which, like many localities, have already been the target of the Trump administration’s violent and abusive immigration crackdown," the coalition wrote.
BREAKING: We're joining over 120 organizations issuing a travel advisory to warn anyone visiting the U.S. for the 2026 FIFA World Cup of possible civil and human rights violations.FIFA must pressure the Trump administration to protect the people traveling to and working at the games.
— ACLU (@aclu.org) April 23, 2026 at 7:12 AM
"While the Trump administration’s rising authoritarianism and increasing violence pose serious risks to all," the advisory continues, "those from immigrant communities, racial and ethnic minority groups, and LGBTQ+ individuals have been and continue to be disproportionately targeted and affected by the administration’s policies and, as such, are most vulnerable to serious harm."
According to the groups, those harms potentially include:
- Arbitrary denial of entry and risk of arrest, detention, and/or deportation of non-US nationals—even those with prior authorization from the US government;
- Expanded restrictions and limitations on travel and entry into the United States, given the Trump administration's ban or severe restriction on entry of people from 19 Global South nations;
- Invasive social media screening and searches of electronic devices as part of admission to the United States;
- Violent and unconstitutional immigration enforcement, including racial profiling and other discrimination by law enforcement;
- Suppression of speech and protest and increased surveillance; and
- Serious risk of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and in some cases, death, while in immigration detention facilities or custody.
The coalition—which includes groups like the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Committee to Protect Journalists, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Human Rights First, Legal Defense Fund, Mijente Support Committee, NAACP, National Lawyers Guild, and Southern Poverty Law Center—is urging prospective World Cup attendees to take steps to protect themselves. These include knowing their rights, securing their electronic devices, and informing trusted people about travel plans.
Visitors are also advised to download Human Rights First's ReadyNow! mobile app "to notify trusted contacts in case of possible detention."
Journalists covering the tournament are urged to "consult resources from the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders for information on how to keep themselves safe while entering the US and while reporting inside the country."
Daniel Noroña, Americas advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Thursday that “fans, journalists, and others traveling to the United States for the 2026 FIFA World Cup risk encountering a deeply troubling human rights landscape, shaped by the Trump administration’s racist immigration policies, mass detention and deportation, and attacks on freedom of expression and peaceful protest."
ACLU human rights program director Jamil Dakwar said that “FIFA has been paying lip service to human rights while cozying up with the Trump administration, putting millions of people at risk of being harmed and their basic rights violated."
“The Trump administration’s abusive actions continue to threaten our communities, tourists, and fans alike—and it’s past time that FIFA use its leverage to push for meaningful policy changes and binding assurances that will make people feel safe to travel and enjoy the games," Dakwar added.
FIFA faced worldwide ridicule for awarding President Donald Trump its first-ever Peace Prize last December amid his administration's illegal high-seas boat-bombing spree, and just ahead of his bombing of Nigeria, kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, launch of the US-Israeli war of choice against Iran, and threats to attack several other countries.
Despite US bombing that's killed thousands of its people—including hundreds of children—and FIFA's refusal to relocate its matches outside the United States, Iran, which easily qualified, is planning to take part in the tournament.
On Thursday, Iran's embassy in Italy decried what it called a "morally bankrupt" effort by US Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli to ban it from the tournament and replace its bracket slot with Italy, which is reeling from missing its third consecutive World Cup final.
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