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us immigration and customs enforcement
'Each of These Is a Murder': Trump Admin Conducts 3rd Deadly Boat Strike in 5 Days
"Drug suspects should be arrested and prosecuted, not summarily executed," a human rights expert said.
May 09, 2026
The Trump administration continued its illegal bombing of small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific on Friday, killing two and leaving one survivor in its third such strike in five days.
US Southern Command announced the attack on social media, claiming that "intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations."
"Under [President Donald] Trump's illegal orders, the US military conducted its third boat strike in five days against supposed drug smugglers, killing at least two. Each of these is a murder. Drug suspects should be arrested and prosecuted, not summarily executed," former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote on social media Saturday in response to the news.
Friday's strike marks the 57th by the Trump administration and raises the death toll from the boat-strike campaign, which experts say is illegal even if every boat targeted is ferrying drugs, to 192.
"Really absurdly, there’s been no impact on flows of drugs toward the United States."
"What do you call a US citizen who smuggles drugs, SOUTHCOM? A 'narco-terrorist'?" social media user Andrew Marinelli said in response to the Southern Command announcement. "If a US citizen [allegedly] drove drugs into Canada and they blew him away with a drone strike, would you accept it?"
The administration has also not provided evidence for its claims that the boats belong to drug traffickers, and relatives of the victims say at least some of those killed were simply on the water to fish.
Friday's strike was notable in that it left behind a survivor and that US Southern Command said it had activated the US Coast Guard to conduct a search and rescue operation.
The announcement may reflect a response to backlash after news broke last year that, in the administration's first such strike, commanders had ordered a vessel bombed twice when it became clear there were survivors, in keeping with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth's directive to "kill everybody."
Despite scrutiny, the campaign has continued and even escalated in the past few weeks. There have been three such bombings since the beginning of May, according to The Intercept: One on May 4 in the Caribbean that killed two, one on May 5 in the Pacific that killed three, and the Pacific strike on May 8 that killed two. The reported survivor remains missing.
While the Trump administration claims the strikes have dramatically reduced the flow of illegal drugs into the US, evidence reveals this is not the case, according to an Intercept analysis published May 4.
For example, Trump claimed that drugs entering the US by sea had decreased by 97%, but the administration's own data contradicts this claim, retired Rear Adm. William Baumgartner told The Intercept.
Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at human rights group Washington Office on Latin America, said, "Really absurdly, there’s been no impact on flows of drugs toward the United States,” noting that Customs and Border Protection seized 6,000 pounds more cocaine at all US borders in the seven months following the strikes than in the seven months before.
As Sanho Tree, who directs the Institute for Policy Studies' Drug Policy Project, put it, "It wouldn’t be the first time this administration just made up something out of whole cloth."
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Alabama, South Carolina Join GOP Push to Dilute Black, Democratic Districts
"Across the South, states are rushing to suppress Black voting power now that they mistakenly believe they can get away with it," one advocate said.
May 09, 2026
In the latest fallout from the Supreme Court's further weakening of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais on April 29, Alabama and South Carolina on Friday both took steps to further gerrymandering plans that would reduce representation for Black and Democratic voters in their states.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation on Friday that would ignore the results of May 19 primaries and hold a new election if federal courts agree to rescind the creation of a second near-Black majority congressional district in the state.
At the same time, the South Carolina legislature held a meeting to consider creating new maps that could grant the Republican Party the chance to win all of the state's seven seats in the US House of Representatives by redrawing the state's only majority-Black district.
“I was out there in 1965 marching for the right to vote, and now we are back here in 2026 doing the same thing,” Betty White Boynton, who joined a protest outside the Alabama Statehouse on Friday, told The Associated Press.
“What happened here today is that we were set back as a people to the days of Reconstruction.”
The moves, with risk eroding the gains of the civil rights movement, also come in the midst of a redistricting battle set off when President Donald Trump called on GOP-led states to redraw their maps to help his party retain control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections
In Alabama, the Supreme Court case Allen v. Milligan led to the creation of a second district with close to a Black majority and the election of Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures. The new map would leave Black voters with a chance to elect a representative in just 1 of the state's 7 districts, despite the fact that they make up 30% of the population.
“Despite remaining under a court order that bars Alabama from redrawing its congressional map and that voters have already cast ballots in the state’s congressional primary elections, Alabama Republicans are desperately and shamelessly moving to pave the way for reversion to a map that robs Black voters of equal access to representation in the US House," John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement.
Bisognano continued: "What is happening in Alabama is not happening in a vacuum. Across the South, states are rushing to suppress Black voting power now that they mistakenly believe they can get away with it. The Alabama legislature’s fevered rush to diminish Black voting power in their state is clear proof that protections once afforded under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act remain vital still today. Alabamians across the state are rising up in protest to this immoral power grab—their voices must not be silenced.”
After the Republican-majority Alabama legislature passed the bill on Friday, state Sen. Rodger Smitherman (D-18) said, “What happened here today is that we were set back as a people to the days of Reconstruction,” according to AP.
However, it is unclear how successful the Republican effort will be in Alabama, given that the Supreme Court explicitly said in Louisiana v. Callais that its decision did not apply to Alabama, as Figures pointed out at a town hall Friday evening. Also on Friday, a three-judge panel refused to lift an injunction on changing the state's maps, meaning the decision will rest with the Supreme Court on Monday, May 11.
"I feel pretty confident that the lines will stay the same in the immediate future, but it has not changed the efforts of Republicans here in the state of Alabama and across the country," Figures said, as Alabama Reflector reported.
In South Carolina on Friday, legislators held a meeting that would be the first step toward redrawing their districts to eliminate the one currently represented by Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn. While lawmakers agreed that the Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais would allow for the redistricting, some questioned the wisdom and morality of the act.
“I agree if the law allows us to do it, then we can do It,” state Rep. Justin Bamberg (D-90) said. “But I can slap somebody’s mama and it’s not the right thing to do.”
Bisognano also linked the South Carolina plan to Louisiana v. Callais:
Following the Supreme Court’s shameful decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, South Carolina Republicans are now racing to be second to push through an immoral gerrymander that would demolish the lone congressional district that gives South Carolina’s Black voters a meaningful opportunity for representation in the US House.
This gerrymander is a deliberate attempt by South Carolina Republicans to tear apart a long-standing Black-opportunity district and diminish their vote by spreading Black voters into six districts that stretch over a hundred miles in every direction. On this gerrymander, all South Carolinians would lose. South Carolinians deserve maps that respect communities of interest and protect the fundamental right to vote.
Rep. Clyburn, meanwhile, stood up for his district and criticized state Republicans for prioritizing loyalty to Trump over loyalty to voters.
"Republicans are trying to break apart South Carolina’s 6th District. Not because voters demanded it, but because Donald Trump requested it," Clyburn wrote on social media Thursday.
He continued: "This fight is bigger than one district. It’s about whether our democracy belongs to the people, or to politicians who change the rules when they don’t like the results. We cannot let them succeed."
The Alabama and South Carolina developments capped a dramatic week for national redistricting battles. On Thursday, the Tennessee House voted to break up the state's only Black congressional district. The Senate followed suit, and Gov. Bill Lee promptly signed the new map into law.
On Friday, the Virginia state Supreme Court dealt a blow to Democratic efforts to counteract the new Republican maps, striking down a voter-approved redistricting in Virginia that would favor Democrats.
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'Corrupt and Unprecedented': Immigration Board Fast-Tracked Khalil Deportation Decision
They put me through a sham immigration process while guaranteeing the outcome in advance," Mahmoud Khalil said.
May 09, 2026
An immigration court decision that could hasten the deportation of Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil was marked by irregularities, including unusual speed and the recusals of several judges, The New York Times reported Friday.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which is housed in the Department of Justice (DOJ) but is legally enjoined to make independent decisions, ruled on April 9 that Khalil could be deported from the US. However, documents obtained by the Times show that the case was fast-tracked in a manner that experts say is unusual.
"This is the due process the administration is offering me, corrupt and unprecedented," Khalil posted on social media Friday in response to the Times' reporting.
Khalil, a student leader of Columbia University protests against the Gaza genocide, was an early target of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech when he was abducted by Department of Homeland Security agents while returning to his New York home in March 2025. Despite being a permanent resident married to a US citizen, Khalil was detained in Louisiana for over three months, where he missed the birth of his son.
“In all my decades as an immigration lawyer, I have never seen such a baseless and politically motivated decision."
Despite the BIA's ruling, Khalil cannot be deported while his separate habeas corpus case proceeds through federal courts. However, the Times' reporting raises questions about how fairly he is being treated by the Trump administration and how quickly he could face removal if the federal case falls through.
"This story proves that the Trump administration's treatment of my case has always been corrupt and retaliatory. They put me through a sham immigration process while guaranteeing the outcome in advance," Khalil wrote.
According to the Times:
The case was considered high priority even before the board officially received it. A note from an internal case-tracking file from June said that, even though Mr. Khalil had been released several days earlier, the case was to be handled as if he were still in detention, which would speed it along.
"Please process as quickly as possible,” said another note, from October. Another document shows that the court’s chair—its highest ranking member—oversaw the case from early on.
The decision was made nine days after all the paperwork was submitted, a timeline that Biden BIA appointee Homero López called "unprecedented," as the board often takes years to decide similar cases.
“It’s an insane turnaround, particularly for such a high-profile case on a novel legal issue,” López, who was fired under President Donald Trump, told the Times.
At the same time, people familiar with the situation told the Times that at least three judges had recused themselves from the case, one before it was decided and the others once it became clear it would be published, meaning it would be considered precedent setting.
Former board judge Andrea Sáenz, also fired by Trump, told the Times that judges often recuse themselves because they have somehow been involved with the case before it is appealed.
“How many people touched this case when the immigration judge was handling it the first time?” Sáenz asked.
Former DOJ official David McConnell, who has experience with the immigration appeals process, said that both the quick processing and the recusals were "very unusual." However, he added this did not mean the board necessarily did anything wrong.
However, the BIA's decision was heavily criticized by Khalil's legal team in April, as it upholds Secretary of State Marco Rubio's determination that Khalil could be deported because his activism posed a threat to US foreign policy, which a federal judge in New Jersey said was "likely" unconstitutional and could not be the basis for his detention or deportation. It also justified removal on the grounds that Khalil omitted certain details on green card paperwork, but the government only added those charges after Rubio's foreign policy gambit was challenged.
“In all my decades as an immigration lawyer, I have never seen such a baseless and politically motivated decision. The BIA's decision has absolutely no support in the record, violates a federal court order, and we’ll be fighting it until the end,” Khalil's lead lawyer Marc Van Der Hout said in a statement when the decision was first issued. “Federal courts have already agreed that Mahmoud was targeted for his speech, and there is likely much more evidence of the government’s unlawful retaliation that has yet to come to light. This is a clear continuation of the administration’s retaliation against Mahmoud for exercising his First Amendment rights.”
Responding to the new reporting on Friday, Van Der Hout told the Times that the case's handling suggests it “has been controlled from Day 1 by higher-ups in the administration.”
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Extra! Extra! All the News the Media Won't Print
Maybe you can help explain the following examples of editors and reporters going AWOL and suggest how they could overcome their jaded inaction.
May 09, 2026
Editors of newspapers like to say that they cover the newsworthy events “without fear or favor.” Sure. But how can they cover events without the requisite curiosity, without deeply feeling for the public’s right to know, and without breaking through their “comfort zone”?
Maybe you can help explain the following examples of editors and reporters going AWOL and suggest how they could overcome their jaded inaction.
1. You’ll recall the criminal enterprise, led by felon Elon Musk, in 2025 called “The Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE. Trickster Trump allowed Musk to rampage through one government agency after another. In fact, DOGE ushered in a regime that set records in government waste yet received insufficient media attention. By shuttering, dismantling, or closing programs and whole agencies serving people’s needs—health, safety, and economic support and protections—the Musk-Trump DOGE left crumbling agencies doing little or nothing with hamstrung staff.
There is sprawling corruption and waste inside the government, causing devastating and real waste by not preventing sicknesses and injuries, and forcing consumers deeper into personal debt for necessities such as healthcare, housing, food, and transportation.
With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed.
Since DOGE began to wind down last summer, after Musk exited as a hyper-wealthy fugitive from justice, there have been no thorough investigations by Congress nor by the inspectors general, most of whom President Donald Trump illegally fired very early on in his dictatorial regime.
Not a day goes by without Trump unilaterally wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on his White House ballroom, on further larding runaway Pentagon spending. Wasteful and unnecessary military attacks, and the firing of government auditors, watchdogs, irreplaceable experienced managers, and first responders to disasters all contribute to freezing vital government services.
2. Why has the media not covered the legislative drive in New York’s state legislature to end the 45-year-long rebate of a tiny sales tax on stock transactions? Minimally estimated at $15 billion a year collected and electronically rebated back to the brokers, the bill S01237-A allocates the revenues to mass transit, education, healthcare, and the environment (visit greedvsneed.org for more information on the campaign to pass this legislation). Two years ago, the sponsoring lawmakers led a demonstration before the New York Stock Exchange building. No coverage. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani needs this money for his people-serving programs, yet he has been totally silent about ending the rebate. No reporters are asking him why?
Over the last eight years, I have spoken to seven reporters and two business editors, who say that it is a good story, recently made better by Mamdani not speaking out about this proposal. The journalists said they would get back to me. None have. That’s not indifference from the top; that’s silent censorship! Only the Amsterdam News wrote a long feature on this topic. The rest of the New York City media balked. Shame on The New York Times and the New York City daily newspapers.
3. The vast death undercount in Gaza (over 600,000, not the reported 75,200) is explained away by both the mainstream and independent media. Reporters say they have no reliable estimate of the enormous death toll. Nonsense. Dig in and investigate! Various disaster casualty specialists have estimated deaths at hundreds of thousands resulting directly from Israeli military genocidal violence and indirectly from the related absence of food, water, healthcare, medicine, fuel, and electricity, blocked by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. One expert on bombing casualties, professor emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, calculated that the TNT volume of Israel’s bombs, missiles, and artillery was the equivalent of six or more Hiroshima atomic bombs and more devastating because of today’s precision targeting of this tiny enclave of crowded, defenseless civilians.
What other ethnic group would have its death toll underestimated by nearly 90%? (See my March 28, 2025 column “The Vast Gaza Death Undercount—Undermines Civic, Diplomatic, and Political Pressures” and my February 21, 2025 column “Stop Repeating the Vast Undercount of Gazan Deaths. It Is Ten Times Greater.” Also see “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount” in the August-September 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen.) A more accurate estimate matters morally and intensifies the political, diplomatic, and civic pressure to stop the killing and to compel the Israeli regime to fully allow sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza to help the starved, sick, and dying in this ravaged land. (See Dr. Feroze Sidhwa’s report, “The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”). The calculating media plays dumb.
4. The Democrats on Capitol Hill have been very willing to oust their colleagues accused of sexual harassment or assault. Pushed out were Congressman John Conyers in 2017, Senator Al Franken in 2018, and Congressman Eric Swalwell in 2026.
Yet when it comes to the far greater order of magnitude of offenses by the craven, sadistic, sexual abuser of women (over 60 women have dared to provide credible experiences of Trump’s abuses, and one woman has won a tort lawsuit against him). Since 2016, the congressional Democrats have largely looked away.
In early 2020, I delivered personally to over 100 Democratic members of Congress, most of them women, a lengthy letter detailing the case for congressional hearings on Trump’s felonious aggressions (See the OPEN LETTER TO THE WOMEN IN CONGRESS, February 24, 2020). I met staff who agreed that some action was necessary, but said it was up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi or that hearings would have little impact on Teflon Trump and be ineffective. Suffice it to say that only two members of Congress formally acknowledged receipt of the letter without comment. The rest ignored the letter, as did several women’s groups known for focusing on sexual harassment and assault against women. No media coverage. No interest at all in this contradiction by reporters. Read the letter; your observations are welcome.
5. With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed. Fast-rising tides could occur were the retired presidents, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even G.W. Bush, to come out of their luxurious lairs and mobilize pressure to impeach Trump. The serious entry into this struggle to save the Republic and the Constitution for which it stands would electrify the mainstream media and the frustrated citizenry. Such an effort could quickly and easily attract the requisite funds needed to mobilize such an effort to every congressional district. Feeling the heat, Democrats in Congress would commence publicizing “shadow hearings” and further splinter the once iron-clad sycophancy for Trump by the GOP, who are terrified by their prospects in November.
Trump himself daily provides more vivid evidence of impeachable offenses. (See, H.Res. 1155). He can’t help himself, believing he can continue to get away with everything he does, no matter how extreme.
We know why there is reluctance by the ex-presidents. They would be assailed by Trump and the Trumpsters. They would be accused of having committed many of the same or similar crimes when they were in the White House. True for G.W. Bush in Iraq and Joe Biden in Gaza, for starters. However, this is an occasion for declared regrets and redemption as they pursue the removal from office of Donald Trump, a dangerously unstable, megalomaniacal tyrant who is perilously wrecking, endangering, and weakening our country. MOREOVER, WITH TRUMP, THE WORSE IS YET TO COME, MUCH WORSE AND SOON.
Do the former presidents want to stay on the sidelines and have their inaction on their conscience for historians to record? The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said wisely: “Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events.”
Why don’t the reporters ask the former presidents the obvious questions? How about some editorials? Or op-eds?
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