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deportations
'Bureaucratic Temper Tantrum': Trump White House Pilloried Over Reported Effort to Deport Iran War Critic Trita Parsi
"Irony is if the Trump admin had listened to Parsi, they'd be in much better shape now," said a fellow anti-war writer.
Jun 11, 2026
The Trump administration is once again being accused of using immigration enforcement to silence speech after it reportedly launched an investigation into one of the most prominent critics of the president's war in Iran, Trita Parsi, as part of an effort to deport him.
Parsi, an Iranian-Swedish citizen who holds a green card in the US, is the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and co-founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Since February, when the US and Israel launched a war against Iran that has killed more than 1,700 civilians, wracked the global economy, and spiraled out across the Middle East, Parsi has been a highly cited anti-war voice in the media.
But according to an exclusive report from The Free Press published on Thursday, which quotes senior Trump administration officials, the State Department views Parsi, who has lived in the US for 25 years, not as "another Washington pundit eager to share his point of view," but as someone seeking to nefariously spread "Iranian influence."
“The secretary has been very clear,” an unnamed Trump administration official said, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Anyone who seeks to undermine the US, we’re taking a hard look at.” That includes “people who support adversaries of ours and whose work furthers their agenda and undermines our security.”
Since attacking Iran, the Trump administration has brought the hammer down on other Iranians living legally in the US due to their alleged sympathies with their nation of origin.
In April, the State Department arrested two women alleged to be the niece and grandniece of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who was extrajudicially assassinated in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump in 2020. Rubio accused the two women of promoting "regime propaganda," revoking their green cards, though documents later revealed that the women had no connection to the slain general.
The administration also canceled the visa belonging to the daughter of Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was assassinated in March.
The administration has similarly wielded its powers against foreign-born critics of Israel, including Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was snatched off the street by immigration agents and detained for weeks over an opinion piece she co-wrote calling on her school to divest from Israel. The White House's deportation effort against her was thrown out by an immigration judge in February.
Documents unsealed in January showed that five pro-Palestine student activists singled out by the State Department, including Öztürk and Khalil, were targeted for deportation for no other reason than their speech and were not accused of any wrongdoing.
Relying on a previously rarely used provision in the McCarthy era Immigration and Nationality Act, the administration has defended its right to strip legal residents of their status on the grounds of speech alone that was adverse to a "compelling United States foreign policy interest.”
In the case of Khalil, Rubio acknowledged in a memo that his speech was “otherwise lawful,” but claimed that allowing him to remain in the country would undermine the Trump administration's foreign policy goals of supporting Israel and "combating antisemitism."
A similar justification appears to be undergirding the administration's attacks on Parsi. According to The Free Press, the administration has highlighted his and his organization's public warnings against escalation against Iran, his role as an informal adviser to negotiations for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, opposition to US sanctions against the country, and correspondence with Iranian officials as evidence that he is working to further Tehran's influence.
While Parsi has not yet publicly confirmed that an investigation is underway, The Free Press reported that the Quincy Institute has prepared for legal action if the government attempts to have him detained or deported.
The outlet cited a memo from Quincy CEO Lora Lumpe, who noted that Parsi had recently come into the crosshairs of the notorious pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer, who accused him of being “a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime" and threatened that his “days in our country are numbered.”
The State Department has previously appeared to make decisions directly in response to Loomer's online outbursts. Loomer was the first to erroneously claim that the two women detained in April were relatives of Soleimani. She also took credit for the department revoking the visa of the British commentator and Israel critic Sami Hamdi, who was abducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the middle of a speaking tour.
The State Department has also appeared to follow her lead after she called for it to block children injured during Israel's genocide in Gaza from entering the US on medical humanitarian visas to receive desperately needed surgeries and rehabilitative care.
News of the State Department's pursuit of an investigation against Parsi was described as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to use the threat of deportation to bully critics into silence.
"Trita Parsi is a courageous and outspoken critic of the US-Israeli war on Iran, alongside whom we’re proud to have worked in opposition to war and injustice for many years," said the civil liberties organization Defending Rights & Dissent. "The Trump administration’s investigation of Parsi is an outrageous attack on free speech. Government officials are explicit that they are exploring deporting Parsi specifically for his advocacy—a blatant affront to the First Amendment."
Branko Marcetic, another prominent war opponent who writes for Jacobin magazine, called the attack on Parsi "contemptible."
"Irony is if the Trump admin had listened to Parsi, they'd be in much better shape now," he added. "Instead, they put their political futures in the hands of people Trump himself called warmonger idiots, and now they're left throwing this bureaucratic temper tantrum."
Drop Site News, which has often interviewed Parsi as an expert, also noted the significance of the fact that the "exclusive" report was being published by The Free Press, a hawkish right-wing publication that "has repeatedly published articles that amplify official pressure on critics of Israel, US wars, and aggressive foreign policy, contributing to a chilling effect intended to deter others from speaking out."
Some of Parsi's ideological opponents have also warned against the government's efforts to punish his speech, like Kaveh Shahrooz, a prominent Iranian-Canadian advocate for regime change in Iran.
"You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who, over the past decade, has been more aggressively outspoken against Trita Parsi and NIAC than I have," Shahrooz said. "But I’m deeply uncomfortable with what’s being reported."
"Unless the [US government] can demonstrate that Parsi violated US law... deporting him would amount to targeting someone for their speech and political beliefs," he continued. "An abuse of government power directed at someone you despise today can very easily be directed at you, or at someone you support, tomorrow."
Update (6/13/2026): Following the publication of this piece, the US State Department issued a statement that it "has no plans to revoke the green card of Mr. Parsi at this time."
Parsi has responded to the reports with a post to his Substack, in which he said, "I don’t believe there was any investigation against me," but that "some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure," via The Free Press' report "could help move things forward." Parsi's full response can be read here.
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Trump Reveals Biden Lurks in White House, Raising Grocery Prices
Officials concluded he had to be hiding somewhere in the East Wing, hence the desperate effort to root him out with bulldozers.
Dec 20, 2025
At the end of his address to the nation on the economy, while fact-checkers were taking a break to avoid carpal-tunnel syndrome, President Donald Trump revealed the real cause of the nation’s economic problems: Joe Biden never actually left the White House, and as the enemy within, has stealthily made the decisions that have caused prices to rise during Trump’s first year back in office.
“Biden is a master of disguises,” Trump explained. “Some days he pretended to be Steve Miller, countermanding my orders to deport only the worst of the worse and directing Kristi Noem to deport every farmworker she could find in order to raise the prices of groceries. Then he was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, urging the Fed to lower interest rates in order to overheat the economy."
“Then he was Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, an old fossil fuel guy, undermining renewable energy in order to cause electricity shortages to raise energy prices."
“One day he even snuck into the oval office while I was taking a much needed nap. He removed the sharpie from my hand and used it to increase tariffs on everything Americans buy from overseas, raising prices since Americans pay the tariffs on imports. He even raised coffee and banana tariffs.”
In a giant security failure, the Secret Service had failed to check whether Biden was actually on the departing helicopter when he supposedly left the White House last January. And FBI head Kash Patel admitted he still could not locate former and now-de-facto-acting President Biden. But officials concluded he had to be hiding somewhere in the East Wing, hence the desperate effort to root him out with bulldozers.
“We had to destroy the White House in order to save it,” observed President Trump during a waking moment. “Just wait until next year. Prices on everything are going to come down, and they’ll go down fast, starting on day 366.”
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'Monday Afternoon Massacre': Trump Fires 8 Immigration Judges in NYC
"The goal is to transform an imperfect system which aimed for fairness into a rubber stamp mill, leaving only the 'deportation judges' they want," said one policy expert.
Dec 02, 2025
As the Trump administration intensifies a push to hire what officials call "deportation judges," eight judges were fired Monday from the New York City immigration court that's become the epicenter for anti-immigrant enforcement in the city.
The National Association of Immigration Judges, the union that represents judges who handle immigration cases, confirmed to the New York Times that the eight officials had been dismissed in what one recently fired judge described as a "Monday afternoon massacre."
"The court has been basically eviscerated,” said former Judge Olivia Cassin, who presided over another immigration court in New York City until being fired in November, told the Times.
The judges who were dismissed Monday had worked at the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, where the city's US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices are also located.
The building has been the scene of harrowing ICE arrests in recent months, with an agent throwing an asylum-seeker to the ground in September as she pleaded with him not to detain her husband, and masked officers arresting NYC Comptroller Brad Lander in June when he tried to offer assistance to an immigrant.
The immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza employs 34 judges. Nearly 100 immigration judges have now been fired across the US this year.
Among those dismissed on Monday was Judge Amiena A. Khan, who served as the assistant chief immigration judge and supervised other jurists.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that from 2019-24, Khan ruled on 620 asylum cases and granted asylum to 544 applicants. Cassin decided on 669 asylum cases from 2020-25 and granted asylum to 582 people. Immigration judges across the country denied asylum to refugees more frequently than Khan and Cassin over those same periods, according to TRAC.
After Monday's dismissals were announced, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posited that "the Trump administration is systematically firing immigration judges across the country for no reason other their above-average grant rates."
Last week, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on social media a call for legal professionals to join the Justice Department as "a deportation judge to defend your community."
"End the invasion," urged DHS.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the Trump administration appears to want "to poison the applicant pool."
"The job of an immigration judge isn’t to 'end the invasion,'" said Bier. "It is to evaluate whether someone is eligible for relief from deportation under civil immigration law."
Immigration attorney Allen Orr said Tuesday that if an administration's goal is to "improve vetting, you don't fire eight immigration judges in NYC—the epicenter of the national backlog."
Such mass firings are done, he said, "to stall the system, punish immigrants, and create crises. Dismantling is deliberate, not security."
On Monday, former Chicago immigration Judge Carla Espinoza described to Al Jazeera how she was abruptly fired from her courtroom position in July.
The judges who have been fired this year include "attorneys who previously represented immigrants or provided pro bono help to immigrants before they became a judge," she said.
In this episode of #UNMUTE, former US immigration judge Carla Espinoza discusses the wave of firings of judges under the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/HhT1jhxhzt
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 1, 2025
"For the first time," said Espinoza, "we're seeing a clear indication that there's an expectation that we do things a certain way, that we rule on motions in cases before us a certain way, that we rush through cases, which is something we've never heard before."
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Trump Deportation Campaign Forcing Immigrants to Avoid Healthcare and Change Daily Routines
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” said one man. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
Nov 19, 2025
For people who have immigrated to the United States—regardless of whether they have legal status—life under the second Trump administration has provoked daily anxiety and fear—forcing many to make choices about whether it's safe to go to church services that once provided a sense of community, seek medical care, and send their children to school.
As federal immigration agents continued raiding communities in Charlotte, North Carolina—the latest target of the administration's mass deportation campaign—as well as other cities across the US, the New York Times/KFF poll released Tuesday gave a comprehensive look at how President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies have impacted both undocumented immigrants and people who have green cards and other legal documentation.
Nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants reported negative health impacts due to worries about being deported, separated from their families, or otherwise harmed due to their immigration status.
Health impacts they reported include problems sleeping or eating, worsening health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and worsening anxiety or stress.
Immigrants with legal documentation also reported these impacts in large numbers, with 47% saying they have experienced health issues stemming from worries about Trump's policies. Nearly a third of naturalized citizens said the same.
A 34-year-old Colombian woman in New York said her family is "scared of going out."
“We’re getting depressed," she said. "We’re scared that they’ll separate us, they’ll mistreat us.”
While experiencing increased negative health impacts, immigrants have become more likely to avoid getting medical care—as viral videos have shown US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents making arrests at medical offices.
Under the Biden administration, ICE and other federal agents were barred from conducting immigration enforcement at sensitive locations like schools and hospitals, but Trump rescinded those limits.
Between 2023-25, the share of adult immigrants who reported skipping or delaying healthcare increased from 22% to 29%. One in five said it was due to immigration-related worries.
Nearly a third of parents also said they had delayed or avoided medical appointments for their children; the share rose to 43% for undocumented immigrant parents.
About half of all adult immigrants and nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants said they were "somewhat" or "very" concerned about healthcare providers sharing information with immigration enforcement officials.
Two years ago, about 26% of immigrants reported fears that they or a family member could be deported or detained, and that number has jumped to 41%.
One-third of noncitizen immigrants said they have begun avoiding aspects of everyday life, and nearly 60% of undocumented immigrants said the same.
"We have been the workforce in construction, restaurants, janitorial,” Ana Luna, an immigrant who has lived in Los Angeles with her family for nearly two decades, told the Times. “Now we have to run, hide, or stay inside. And it’s especially heartbreaking for our children.”
Luna told the Times that her youngest child's school had recently informed her that immigration enforcement was nearby.
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” her husband, Gabriel Lorenzo, told the Times. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
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No Kings Rallies Count, But We Need Bigger and More Sustained Civil Resistance
Just as President Trump is racing to consolidate his power, millions more Americans must move quickly to stop him.
Oct 21, 2025
In the early 1770s, American colonists, upset at heavy-handed British rule, waged a fierce resistance campaign that made it immensely difficult for the British to govern. Boycotts of British goods and refusals to pay taxes were just a few of the ways they made life unbearable before tensions erupted into the Revolutionary War.
The successful civil rights movement of the 1960s was sparked by small groups of students, including John Lewis, who conducted lunch counter sit-ins, street marches, business boycotts, and other forms of nonviolent resistance to protest and eventually end segregation in the South.
And so it has gone in America: Campaigns for women’s voting rights and nuclear nonproliferation trace their beginnings to deliberate, tactical civil resistance.
Now, as America approaches its 250th anniversary, groups of people—in geographies from Boston to Baton Rouge—are beginning to launch a nationwide civil resistance movement. And just like the Vietnam War, it is against our own government.
The president cannot consolidate power without airplanes to handle his deportation flights, banks that finance his detention centers, and a media that spreads his misinformation and squelches truth.
President Donald Trump and his loyalists are moving at jet speed to install an authoritarian government that is stamping out free speech, voting rights, civil rights, and other core foundations of our democracy.
They are also dismembering federal agencies that backstop science, healthcare, environmental protection, and a well-functioning economy. The protracted government shutdown, which has federal workers being furloughed and fired, is deepening the damage.
It is time to rise up again. We should not stand idle as our political institutions unravel. The ship is sinking rapidly, and it may not be salvageable a year from now. Even if the midterm elections bring more political resistance, much of the damage will have been done.
So it is up to us, average Americans to resist. But resistance needs strategy, training, and unwavering commitment to exercise that power. Every day. Every hour.
And in small but encouraging ways, it is happening again. One Million Rising, a national civil resistance movement launched in July by the nonprofit group Indivisible, is growing in numbers and impact. More than 300,000 trained volunteers are organizing protests, sit-ins, and other types of nonviolent interference aimed at businesses, the media, and other entities supporting the president’s policies.
The strategy is less about broad-based street demonstrations, such as Saturday’s No Kings! protests, and more about sharply focused, continuous collective action to undermine key pillars of support that the administration is relying on. By chipping away at vital institutions that uphold their power, the president’s castle of sand will erode and eventually tumble. The president cannot consolidate power without airplanes to handle his deportation flights, banks that finance his detention centers, and a media that spreads his misinformation and squelches truth.
We’re seeing positive progress, with the biggest focus being on Trump-friendly businesses.
Companies that are caving to the president’s pressure while getting favorable policy treatment are facing louder protests and boycotts.
When Disney and its ABC affiliate suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show in September over his remarks about Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting, consumers quickly responded. Disney’s streaming apps lost more than 1 million paid subscribers in a matter of days. The show was quickly restored—a major victory for free speech.
And there is Avelo Airlines, a budget commercial airline that flies out of dozens of US cities, including Bradley and New Haven airports in Connecticut. It is facing growing resistance over its contract to handle deportation flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In New Haven, the teacher’s union, city government, and consumers have all come out publicly against the airline, calling for boycotts and an end to sponsorship deals. Similar protests are underway at Bradley and other airports in Baltimore, Atlanta, and across California.
Protesters are also targeting local governments deemed as being overly cooperative with the administration’s aggressive immigrant crackdown. Just this month, after loud protests inside and outside of City Hall, the Holyoke City Council narrowly rejected a resolution declaring that Holyoke is not a sanctuary city and would fully comply with all federal laws. Supporters said the resolution would protect Holyoke’s federal funding.
Councilor Patti Devine, who cast the decisive vote, said she planned to support the resolution but changed her mind after Latino, youth, and trans residents spoke in opposition.
These wins are surely important, but bigger, broader resistance efforts are urgently needed.
The movement needs more people. A lot more people. And it needs them every day. While it is encouraging that an estimated 7 million protesters participated in the No Kings! rallies on Saturday, most are not engaging in the more challenging and time-consuming resistance campaigns that the moment calls for.
So how many people do we need? One academic who has studied civil resistance movements globally, Erica Chenoweth, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, has developed what she calls the 3.5% rule. Chenoweth’s research of hundreds of campaigns over the last century shows that it takes around 3.5% of a population actively participating in civil resistance to ensure serious changes.
That means about 12 million people in America. No matter how you cut it, we’re not even close.
And we need to build these numbers quickly.
Just as President Trump is racing to consolidate his power, millions more Americans must move quickly to stop him.
A good first step is to sign up for One Million Rising and listen to its three online training sessions. They can also join local community groups that are already working on civil resistance campaigns in their communities. Or they can start a new community group.
It’s time.
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Outrage Over How ICE Tricked Newlyweds Speaks to 'Broader Pattern' Under Trump Agenda
"The number of people being grabbed at immigration check-ins or green-card hearings is despicable," said one writer. "They’re following the process... Yet they’re being disappeared."
Oct 01, 2025
Congresswoman Judy Chu was among many expressing anger on Tuesday evening over the Trump administration's detention of Barbara Gomes Marques, a film director who was detained by immigration agents last month after attending a "properly scheduled" meeting regarding her green card and is now facing the "very real possibility" of deportation.
Marques' experience, said Chu (D-Calif.), "reflects a broader pattern under [President Donald] Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel."
Chu spoke out on the case after Marques' husband, Tucker May, brought attention to their experience on social media.
The couple, who was married just last year, went to the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles in September to meet with immigration officers regarding Marques' green card. She arrived in the US on a tourist visa seven years ago and has worked as a film director. She has no criminal record. As the libertarian CATO Institute reported in June, 65% of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first months of Trump's second term have no criminal convictions, despite the administration's repeated claims that its mass deportation and detention operation is aimed at cracking down on violent criminals.
May and Marques were accompanied by their lawyer at the meeting, which they believed was a step toward Marques becoming a US citizen and were told was "successful." But after the meeting, an agent told the couple Marques needed to accompany them down a hallway to make a copy of her passport due to a broken copier in the office.
"Once separated from her legal counsel, she was arrested," wrote May on a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for the couple's legal fees.
"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself."
ICE agents told the couple they were detaining Marques due to a missed court date in 2019; Marques and May have said they did not receive a letter about the court date and were not informed about it until she was detained.
May told reporters that ICE agents "put her in hand shackles and in leg shackles, and around the waist as well, like she's some hardened criminal. She had tears streaming down her face, and she told me one of the ICE agents pulled out his cellphone, laughing, and took a selfie."
May wrote that "the officer used the excuse of a broken copier to trick her into walking away from her lawyer," making it possible for his wife to be taken the Adelanto ICE Processing Center nearly 100 miles away. From there, Marques was sent to a facility in Arizona, and then to a "staging facility" in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Friends of the couple reported on their GoFundMe page Tuesday that a court had "officially acknowledged a motion to reopen Barbara’s case," stopping ICE from deporting her while a judge reviews the case. But the couple's lawyer, Marcelo Gondim, told CBS News he believes Louisiana has been planned as Marques' last stop before being deported.
"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself," said Gondim, who filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the government from deporting Marques. "Knowing that she's married to a US citizen, she has a legal way to become a permanent resident in a matter of months, if they just gave her a chance to find her paperwork."
Chu said she was "demanding that ICE follow the law" and emphasized that "unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique."
As Common Dreams reported last week, an Ecuadorian woman, Monica Moreta-Galarza, was thrown to the ground by an immigration agent at a courthouse in New York City as she pleaded with him not to arrest her husband, who had attended a court hearing as part of the family's legal application for asylum. The agent who attacked Moreta-Galarza was briefly suspended, but returned to work days later.
In July, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) filed a class action lawsuit accusing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) of "ongoing collusion" in which the agencies have directed government attorneys to request the dismissal of immigrants' legal cases at court hearings they were ordered to attend. Once their cases have been dismissed, immigrants have been arrested and detained by ICE agents waiting at courthouses.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia University student organizer and green-card holder, was also arrested by masked federal agents earlier this year after arriving at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had been directed to go to complete his US citizenship application.
"People scheduled for hearings at immigration courts across the country continue to feel as though as they are walking into a trap set by the Trump administration," said the NIJC last week. "We must fight to save due process and keep telling these stories."
Marques' friends and family called on the public to send "an absolute storm of calls and emails" to lawmakers in Louisiana, demanding that her deportation be halted.
"The number of people being grabbed at immigration check-ins or green-card hearings is despicable," said one writer this week. "They’re following the process. They’re doing everything the right way. Yet they’re being disappeared. Barbara Marques: Say her name. Demand accountability. Help bring her home."
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Don’t Despair: Trump Keeps Losing Bigly
The courts, backed by impacted people, are proving to be a significant check on Trump’s thirst for absolute power.
Sep 05, 2025
US President Donald Trump is on a losing streak this week. Just look at the latest judicial decisions challenging his policies, from mass deportations to tariffs to his troop deployments to US cities.
The courts are proving to be a significant check on Trump’s thirst for absolute power.
These cases illustrate the point:
Immigration
Over Labor Day weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement attempted to begin deporting up to 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children. In the dead of night, the first children were loaded onto planes in south Texas. “These are unaccompanied children who do not have a parent or a guardian with them,” Efrén Olivares, an attorney representing the minors, said on the Democracy Now! news hour.
At 1:00 am on Sunday morning, Olivares and his colleagues filed an emergency complaint with the federal court in Washington, DC. Judge Sparkle Sooknanam was woken after 2:00 am, and by 4:00 am she issued a temporary restraining order blocking the deportations until the children had the immigration hearings to which they have a legal right.
Meanwhile in Texas, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the nation’s most conservative, ruled that Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport people was illegal.
Tariffs
The Appeals Court in Washington DC ruled that Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs were illegal and unconstitutional, noting that only Congress has the power to impose tariffs. The ruling was “a sweeping decision that unequivocally rebukes President Trump’s idea that he can impose tariffs on American consumers on his own,” Neal Katyal, the attorney who argued the case, said on Democracy Now!
Domestic Deployment of the Military
Trump says, “We’re going in,” threatening to invade Chicago using, among other forces, the Texas National Guard.
But in California, a federal judge, invoking the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that bars the use of military in domestic law enforcement, ruled in favor of Gov. Gavin Newsom, finding Trump’s deployment of the California National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles, along with several hundred US Marines, was illegal. Judge Charles Breyer, the brother of retired US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, issued an injunction barring the Trump administration from “deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops [from] engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants.”
These are just a few of the recent court cases that have rebuked Trump as he attempts to subvert the US Constitution.
We recently got a personal glimpse into what judicial wins over Trump look like. In the high mountain air of Telluride, Colorado, we had a chance to spend time with E. Jean Carroll, the renowned advice columnist and journalist. She was at the Telluride Film Festival for the premier of the new documentary, Ask E. Jean.
Carroll had a long and storied career as the advice columnist for Elle Magazine, and has published several books. In recent years she became known as one of the most prominent women to accuse Donald Trump of sexual abuse, saying he raped her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s, in Manhattan.
The courts are playing a central role in opposing the lawless Trump administration, but the core of the resistance are people.
Carroll sued Trump in civil court, and a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing her. Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote, “Trump did in fact ‘rape’ Ms. Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood.” She was awarded a $5 million settlement from Trump. After the verdict, he called her a liar. She then sued for defamation, and won an additional jury award of $83.3 million.
Carroll cut an elegant figure, walking along Telluride’s main avenue with the sweeping Continental Divide as a backdrop. Her film premiered to rave reviews, and, should there remain a film distributor in this country not cowed by threats of lawsuits from Trump, it should be available for viewing by a wide audience. The film highlights the story of one courageous woman refusing to be defined as a victim of Donald Trump, providing inspiration, no doubt, to the hundreds of survivors of Trump’s old friend, the now-dead sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. Many of them spoke this week outside the US Capitol, demanding the full release of the Epstein files. The Trump administration, which controls the files, is resisting.
Behind each lawsuit are impacted people, whether immigrant children pulled from their beds in the middle of the night and thrown on planes, or people standing up in the streets of LA confronting illegally deployed troops, whether sexual abuse survivors banding together, or federal workers fired en masse.
The courts are playing a central role in opposing the lawless Trump administration, but the core of the resistance are people–people at every level organized in opposition, defending democracy.
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Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Trump on Unlawful Deportation Scheme
The ACLU hailed the ruling for "reining in the administration's view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts."
Sep 03, 2025
A federal appeals court late Tuesday ruled against a Trump administration scheme that cited an 18th-century wartime statute to justify its clandestine deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned under harsh conditions without accountability and limited legal recourse.
The 3-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals—among the most conservative of the US appellate courts and more likely to side with Trump—said lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security did not present a satisfying case arguing that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows for the arrest and deportation of "enemies" by presidential authority during wartime or an active invasion, could be used to target alleged low-level gang members, in this case those of Tren de Aragua or TdA, which has roots in Venezuela.
Trump and his team had argued the gang members were being directed by the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro, but have presented no evidence to support such claims. And while the group is known for some levels of violence and illegal drug trafficking, civil rights groups—led by ACLU—challenged the deportation of alleged members as a clear violation of domestic immigration law and principles of due process.
Critics of Trump also said it was laughable to treat a criminal gang like TdA as equivalent to an invading army. They warned that Trump's overreach was only part of his broader authoritarian push to claim wider and more dangerous power to target, intimidate, and harm immigrant communities.
"TdA was not the kind of organized force or engaged in the kind of actions necessary to constitute an invasion or predatory incursion," wrote Judge Leslie Southwick in the panel's 2-1 majority decision.
The court granted the preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs, barring further deportations from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi—where alleged TdA members are currently being held—until the case, almost certainly destined for the US Supreme Court, is finally decided.
Lee Gelernt, who argued the case for the ACLU, said the Trump administration's "use of a wartime statute during peacetime to regulate immigration was rightly shut down by the court."
The ruling, Gelernt added, was "a critically important decision reining in the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts."
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'Malicious Abuse of Power': Trump Slammed for New Arrest of Ábrego García and Deportation Threat
"This vindictive behavior is not just about Mr. Ábrego García; this is once again the administration showing that it can weaponize the law to punish people standing up for their rights and make our immigrant neighbors afraid," said one advocate.
Aug 25, 2025
A crowd of community members who had gathered outside an immigration office in Baltimore on Monday chanted, "Shame!" as a lawyer for US resident Kilmar Ábrego García announced that he had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents once again—days after he was finally released from prison after a monthslong ordeal.
Attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told the crowd that assembled to show support for Ábrego García that ICE had ordered the Maryand father and sheet metal worker to report to its offices for an interview on "false" pretenses and said his legal team is filing a habeas corpus petition to challenge the administration's plan to deport Ábrego García to Uganda.
Ábrego García's lawyers are arguing in the Federal District Court of Maryland that ICE re-arrested him without allowing him to express "fears of persecution and torture in that country."
The team is asking the court to ensure that Ábrego García "is not put on any flight to any country whatsoever, whether it's Uganda, South Sudan, what have you, unless and until he has had a full and fair trial in an immigration court as well as his full appeal rights," said Sandoval-Moshenberg.
It’s not clear what charges Abrego Garcia is facing, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg says, or where he will be detained.
Sandoval-Moshenberg says another federal lawsuit is being filed to challenge the planned deportation to Uganda, of any other third-country. pic.twitter.com/9YYKd0hOfG
— Mikenzie Frost (@MikenzieFrost) August 25, 2025
As Common Dreams reported, when Ábrego García was released from a jail Friday in Tennessee—where he'd been held on human smuggling charges since being returned to the US in June following his mistaken deportation to El Salvador—the administration informed his legal team that it may deport him once again to Uganda.
That threat was made when Ábrego García declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica as part of a plea deal in which he would be required to plead guilty to human smuggling.
Another lawyer for Ábrego García, Sean Hecker, said Monday that "the government's campaign of retribution continues because Mr. Abrego refuses to be coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never have been brought."
Ábrego García's ordeal has been at the center of outrage over the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda and President Donald Trump's $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, under which hundreds of migrants have been deported to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Ábrego García was initially sent to CECOT in March, and US Department of Justice officials acknowledged that his deportation had been the result of an administrative error. He was accused of being a member of the gang MS-13 based on a statement from an anonymous police informant, and a judge ruled in 2019 that he could not be deported to his home country of El Salvador due to concerns over torture and persecution there.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday said Ábrego García was being processed for his new deportation order, but did not say where the administration plans to send him. She repeated the Trump administration's unproven claims about the Maryland resident, calling him "an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator" and said he would not "terrorize American citizens any longer."
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who visited Ábrego García when he was imprisoned in El Salvador and demanded his release, condemned Noem for continuing to "spread lies about his case."
"Instead of spewing unproven allegations on social media, [officials] need to put up or shut up in court," said Van Hollen.
"The federal courts and public outcry forced the administration to bring Ábrego García back to Maryland, but Trump's cronies continue to lie about the facts in his case and they are engaged in a malicious abuse of power as they threaten to deport him to Uganda—to block his chance to defend himself against the new charges they brought," Van Hollen said. "As I told Kilmar and his wife Jennifer, we will stay in this fight for justice and due process because if his rights are denied, the rights of everyone else are put at risk."
Sarah Mehta, deputy director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU, said Ábrego García's arrest on Monday put "the Trump administration's obsessive and petty cruelty... on full display" and condemned the "latest move to deport Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland father they admitted to wrongfully deporting to a torture prison, to a country with which he has no relationship."
"This vindictive behavior is not just about Mr. Ábrego García; this is once again the administration showing that it can weaponize the law to punish people standing up for their rights and make our immigrant neighbors afraid of being rapidly exiled, including to places where they may be persecuted," said Mehta.
The Times reported Monday that Ábrego García "expressed willingness to leave the United States to accept refugee status in Costa Rica" after initially rejecting the plea deal.
An order handed down by the chief federal judge in Maryland in May requires the government to give Ábrego García a two-day reprieve before being expelled from the country following the filing of the habeas corpus petition.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, suggested the administration has continued targeting Ábrego García simply because he and his legal team brought nationwide attention to the fact that officials had wrongly deported him and other migrants.
"The entire weight of the federal government has been brought against this man for one reason, and one reason alone," said Reichlin-Melnick. "He tried to get them to fix a mistake they admit they made."
Ábrego García acknowledged other families that have been impacted and separated by Trump's mass deportation policy before entering the ICE facility on Monday.
"To all of the families who have also suffered separations or who live under the constant threat of being separated," he said, "I want to tell you that even though this injustice is hurting us hard, we must not lose hope."
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'You Cut Our Healthcare!' GOP Lawmaker Drowned in Boos at Combative Town Hall
"We're not headed toward authoritarian fascist government, we are already there," declared one angry constituent.
Aug 12, 2025
A California Republican faced a group of angry voters during a town hall in the city of Chico on Monday as constituents pelted him with pointed questions about the recently passed GOP budget package, as well as U.S. President Donald Trump's trade and immigration policies.
As The Sacramento Bee reported, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) was met with boos right from the start of the meeting when he told the estimated crowd of 650 people that "I think we have a lot to be grateful for" during the first seven months of Trump's second term in office.
After he opened up the floor for questions, LaMalfa heard from several constituents who were furious at the policies being pushed by Trump and his administration.
"If you aren't here to announce your resignation, why aren't you here to apologize to the farmers... because of your support for the Trump tariffs?" asked one constituent, as seen in a video posted on social media.
LaMalfa then elicited more boos when he blew off the constituent's question and asked, "Do you want to actually talk about something productive?"
Holy sh*t!
Watch GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa get absolutely rocked in his town hall today.
Not only was he booed out of the building, but he also got very condescending with the audience.
This is an R+22 district!#CA01 pic.twitter.com/9Seb9cFcFC
— TrumpsTaxes (@trumpstaxes.com on bsky) (@TrumpsTaxes) August 11, 2025
LaMalfa also received a hostile reaction when he tried to tout the GOP's big budget law that cuts an estimated $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.
At one point, the congressman began a sentence by saying, "The work done on the big bill was..." before he was immediately drowned out with boos.
During this part of the town hall, attendees could be heard shouting things such as" "You cut our healthcare!"; "Healthcare is a human right!"; and "We need a hospital!" When LaMalfa claimed that the cuts to Medicaid would improve services to the people who depend on it, he was met with shouts of, "Liar!"
GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa held a town hall — and was drowned out by an uproar of boos from constituents.
When he tried to bring up Medicaid a constituent shouted: "YOU CUT OUR HEALTH CARE" pic.twitter.com/9mIq1WJxgY
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) August 11, 2025
Another attendee accosted LaMalfa over his support for Trump's mass deportation operation that has led to severe disruptions at farms and construction sites across the country as immigrant workers stay away for fear of being caught up in federal workplace raids.
"My parents were Holocaust survivors," the man began. "I have known what an authoritarian fascist government looks like since I was seven years old... People being kidnapped without arrest warrants, without trial, without recourse by the president of the United States' [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] armies is clear evidence of how a fascist, authoritarian government works. We're not headed toward authoritarian fascist government, we are already there."
The constituent then asked LaMalfa if his name 20 years from now will "be mentioned in the same sentence as Goebbels, Mengele, and Trump?"
During an Aug. 11 town hall in Chico, a constituent compared U.S. immigration enforcement to fascist regimes and questioned whether Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s name would be linked with authoritarian figures.
CHICO TOWN HALL: https://t.co/wSlg4Msun5
READ MORE: https://t.co/myrIz3EoeI pic.twitter.com/yQccjQQckC
— KRCR News Channel 7 (@KRCR7) August 11, 2025
"I predict no," LaMalfa replied, which elicited groans from the crowd.
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