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Veterans Reclaim Armistice Day for Peace
Armistice Day, November 11, is a day for solemn reflection, prayer, and the ringing of bells—a day to recommit ourselves to ending the wars at home and abroad.
Nov 11, 2026
Armistice Day, a national holiday on November 11, is now celebrated as Veterans Day. Understanding why requires us to recall World War I and its aftermath.
World War I was an international conflict, 1914-18, that embroiled most of the nations of Europe, along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war pitted the “Central Powers”—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the “Allies”—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, and—from 1917—the United States. The war was unprecedented in its slaughter, carnage, and destruction. Over 15 million people were killed, both soldiers and civilians, and over 25 million were wounded.
The fighting between Germany and the “Allies” ended in November 1918 when an armistice was declared at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.” This was a moment of hope for world peace. There was also a sense of great tragedy. Many people prayed that Armistice Day would serve as an eternal warning never to repeat the past. Then came the even greater carnage of World War II (1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953).
“Veterans want an end to endless wars.”
In 1954, national veterans’ organizations American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) successfully pushed the Congress to change Armistice Day to Veterans Day, a day to honor those who fight in war, thus turning the holiday’s original meaning on its head. It is notable that that the American Legion and the VFW have a well-established records of cheerleading for US wars.
The national organization Veterans For Peace (VFP), in contrast, is dedicated to “exposing the true causes and costs of war,” and to “restraining our government from intervening, overtly or covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations” (from VFP Statement of Purpose).
For over a decade, the 41-year-old veterans’ organization has been working to Reclaim Armistice Day as a day dedicated to ending war once and for all. Veterans For Peace chapters lead Armistice Day activities all around the country, many incorporating the ringing of bells at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.”
Veterans For Peace Is Calling for an End to the War on Iran
“The US-Israeli war on Iran is illegal, immoral, and dangerous for the whole world. It must end immediately,” said Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans For Peace. “Veterans want an end to endless wars,” McPhearson continued. “Here in the US, we want ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the military out of our communities. We want peace at home and abroad.”
No More US Bombs for Genocide in Gaza
Veterans For Peace is calling for an end to US arms shipments to Israel. The Trump administration plans to deliver powerful 2,000-pound bombs to Israel as part of an upcoming arms deal, weapons that prompted such concerns about the possibility of mass casualties in Gaza that the Biden administration paused their delivery two years ago.
“When US bombs stop dropping on Palestinian children, the genocide will end” said VFP vice president Joshua Shurley.
Will the US or Israel Use Nuclear Weapons Against Iran?!
Two nuclear-armed states, the US and Israel, are waging war against a non-nuclear-armed state, claiming without evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. Now there is talk about whether the US or Israel may actually use nuclear weapons against Iran. The possibility of nuclear war is being normalized. What is wrong with this picture?
Veterans For Peace has developed a “toolkit” of useful Armistice Day resources and provides resources for military personnel and families who are looking for legal alternatives to participating in illegal wars or war crimes.
Armistice Day, November 11, is a day for solemn reflection, prayer, and the ringing of bells—a day to recommit ourselves to ending the wars at home and abroad. Let’s reclaim Armistice Day!
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Public Safety for Whom? The Mandate to End ICE’s Terror
Congress has the mandate to abolish ICE and must avoid squandering public trust by trampling on the will of the people.
Nov 10, 2026
The blue tsunami of Tuesday’s midterm elections signals the advent of the end of President Donald Trump’s despotic choke hold on our democracy and an unequivocal repudiation of his regime, characterized by economic deprivation we naively call an unaffordability crisis, a war unauthorized by Congress, and xenophobic violence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Of the top concerns midterm voters trafficked to the polls, democracy and immigration rounded out the top three, according to CNN exit polls, not just the question of personal and collective economics. Accented by the cratering support from Latino voters garnered two years ago, the political massacre the Republicans sustained signals a mandate for the new Congress to end ICE terror on our streets.
Since the activation of Trump’s long-promised deportation machine, federal bullets have ripped through the flesh of at least 24 human beings, ending the lives of at least three US citizens and three noncitizens. Unconscionably, over 52 people have died in our nation’s immigration detention centers. At the expense of the true promise of public safety, ICE, now coordinating with approximately 2,000 local and state law enforcement agencies due to section 287(g), snakes its way through our streets, airports, school parking lots, and grocery stores under a now grossly unpopular presidential mandate to squelch “migrant crime”—a criminological category equally as hyperbolic and racist as Black-on-Black crime. Despite the dramatic claims and overblown press conferences, by all metrics, immigrants—documented or otherwise—actually participate in criminal activity at lower rates than US-born citizens. Facts notwithstanding, the anti-crime saviorism increasingly targets noncitizens without criminal convictions.
According to the United States Department of Homeland Security, in a year of staggering numbers of immigrant detainments, August alone accounted for more than 50,000 ICE arrests—the highest single monthly total on record. On average, 2,000 people a day are currently sucked into this black hole of menacing uncertainty and predictably substandard accommodations for months and months. Last month, agency leadership deputized their agents to increase immigration arrests to 3,000 daily arrests nationwide.
Only 23 years old, ICE is a creature of post-9/11 panic and collective grief. We managed, though imperfectly, for two centuries without it and can again.
The normalization of the mass detainment and deportation of our undocumented neighbors exists alongside this republic’s heritage of racialized policing and punishment, namely the overpolicing and hyper-incarceration of Black lives and the egregious overfunding of local police departments, jails, and state prisons. Mass deportations are to the immigration system what mass incarcerations are to the criminal legal system. The detention center, prison, and jail, and police, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection may as well be one. In fact, in many cities throughout the United States, they are one. We must end this expansion of Blue power and Blue privilege. As white privilege is not about individual white people, Blue privilege refers to the systems, logics, and patterns that insulate a culture of law enforcement violence and unaccountability, not individual law enforcement officers. It’s an unearned, advantaged way of being. Blue privilege dupes those of us without it into believing the police state is normal, necessary, and unchangeable.
Our criminal legal system draws oxygen from the disproportionate over-surveillance and custodial control over Black, brown, and poor bodies—documented and undocumented alike. In fact, immigration detention centers and public and private prisons rhyme politically and economically in our nation, warring to reckon with a seemingly inconvenient truth of its decreasing demographic whiteness. Fueled by police and ICE zealotry, both systems reflect two branches of a single meta-system of retributive whiteness. The popular notion of crimmigration—the violent intersection of our white supremacist criminal legal system and the immigration system—disabuses us of the fiction of national innocence about the structural violence by which we “thingify” and demonize a plethora of distinct non-white communities unwelcomed into the narrow definitions of Americanness. As I say in Outing Blue Privilege, we are living through a war on the image of God as law-and-order enthusiasm empties homes of parents and breadwinners, the media amplifies the criminalization of certain races and the racialization of certain crimes, and the predominance of police firepower indiscriminately walls Black flesh into poverty-racked neighborhoods drained of opportunities.
The unprecedented surge in arrests extends the specter of Blue power—law enforcement resources, personnel, sovereignty—all too familiar to descendants of chattel slaves and those who share our many shades of melanin. The Southern police forces originally emerged as slave patrols designed to surveil and contain Black bodies, preventing them from running off to freedom or congregating for unsanctioned purposes. In 1838, the first professionalized US police department started in Boston to control poor Irish immigrants. According to the same logics, the Midwest constabulary formed to intimidate Indigenous Americans into a unique form of segregation. Odiously, the originating anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-poor ethos of our policing systems keeps these histories alive in ICE—the wealthiest law enforcement agency in US history.
Dangling the carrots of financial incentives in front of law enforcement institutions, our government invents reasons to dispatch Blue power to enforce social closures for immigrant communities, not unlike the ones we manufactured against Black people during the five-decade-long war on drugs. Despite the visually documented death of Renée Nicole Good and the climbing number of deaths and abuses at detention centers, nearly no ICE officer has been held accountable—a desert of meaningful oversight. The cardinal rule of any law-and-order regime: ICE merely investigates itself. James Baldwin excoriated, “This arrogant autonomy, which is guaranteed the police… by the most powerful forces in American life… creates a situation which is as close to anarchy as it already, visibly, is close to martial law.” That’s one of the public hazards of Blue privilege.
Under the detainment theatrics of our federal government, a father unsuspectingly disappears during a routine outing to purchase diapers in New Jersey, while a 19-year-old Babson College student unwarrantedly loses her freedom in Boston’s Logan Airport en route to celebrate one of America’s uniquely treasured traditions, Thanksgiving. Even if no other person is shot on our streets or dies in a cell, our spirits cry out for balm for the psychic wounds borne by those who have been, or have watched others be, tear-gassed, spat on, pushed to their hands and knees, flattened on the hood of a car, shoved to the bottom of stairwells, or starved, neglected, and brutalized in the care of the government. This is what public safety looks like under Blue privilege. It amounts to a tool that reserves safety for some publics, while doling out terror in the name of “justice” to other publics.
Desensitization threatens a far graver danger: the shriveling of our souls. Our very humanity is at stake if we cannot dare to build new practices that foster safety and flourishing for all. This mass panic, inordinate anxiety, immobilizing fear, looming outrage, and bewildering despondency teeming across the nation cannot signify anything we'd expect as public safety. Perhaps public safety is not enough after all. Only 23 years old, ICE is a creature of post-9/11 panic and collective grief. We managed, though imperfectly, for two centuries without it and can again. Viewed unfavorably by more voters than favorably in every poll this year, ICE was most certainly on the ballot. Congress has the mandate to end the terror and must avoid squandering public trust by trampling on the will of the people. The survival of our humanity requires ending ICE itself.
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US Citizen Shot by ICE in California Sues Trump Administration for $25 Million
Carlos Jimenez claims the FBI drove him from the hospital to the scene for an interrogation, "while the bullet and fragments remained lodged in his body," even as he "kept bleeding and vomiting in the agents' van."
Nov 09, 2026
Carlos Jimenez, a US citizen and father of three who still has bullet fragments lodged near his lung after being shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in California last year, is suing the Trump administration, San Bernardino County, and various agents for over $25 million in damages.
Jimenez, who is from Ontario, east of Los Angeles, filed his complaint against the United States, the county, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officer Eusebio Ortiz, two US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent, and 20 unnamed defendants on Friday.
While Jimenez was driving to work on the morning of October 30, 2025, he approached agents conducting an immigration operation to let them know they were near a bus stop for schoolchildren. Ortiz ultimately shot him, but it was Jimenez, not the officer, who then faced charges that have since been dropped.
As with some other people ICE or CBP agents have shot—sometimes fatally—the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees both agencies, has claimed Jimenez "attempted to run officers over" federal agents "by reversing directly at them without stopping," but his lawyers have disputed that account.
After the shooting, at a local hospital, FBI agents "interfered with his medical care," according to a complaint. They allegedly prevented Jimenez from talking to healthcare providers, removed him from the hospital bed, and "handcuffed him with a leather waist restraint."
As the FBI drove Jimenez back to the scene for an interrogation, "while the bullet and fragments remained lodged in his body," he "kept bleeding and vomiting in the agents' van," and they told him not to "ruin their vehicle," the filing claims. He was taken to West Valley Detention Center, where he was also denied adequate medical care.
A few weeks later, a grand jury indicted Jimenez, whom federal prosecutors charged with assaulting a federal officer using a deadly or dangerous weapon, but "the criminal case later became the subject of a dispute over evidence," Newsweek reported Monday.
As the outlet detailed:
On May 5, US District Judge Kenly Kiya Kato ordered the government to turn over communications and operational records sought by the defense; this included responsive communications on government-issued and personal phones. The order also required a declaration under penalty of perjury from Ortiz if no responsive messages from him existed.
Jimenez entered into a diversion agreement shortly afterward. After he completed its conditions, Kato dismissed the indictment with prejudice on November 2, meaning the charge cannot be refiled. The dismissal order did not make a finding that federal officers used excessive force or otherwise acted unlawfully.
The Guardian highlighted that in addition to calling the criminal charges against Jimenez "fabricated," the complaint "alleges that the FBI falsely claimed that two neighbors witnessed the incident and told an agent that Jimenez's vehicle had enough room to pull forward without reversing. When Jimenez’s legal team interviewed those witnesses, both denied making those statements and said they were unaware there had been a shooting until they saw news reports."
While the FBI declined to comment and DHS referred questions to the US Department of Justice, Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the DOJ in Los Angeles, said in an email to the newspaper that Jimenez "could have exercised his right to take the case to trial, but he instead requested that our office agree to resolve the case through a diversion agreement."
Jimenez is among at least 32 people fired upon by federal immigration agents as part of Republican President Donald Trump's mass detention and deportation campaign. Others include Renee Good and Alex Pretti, US citizens killed early this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Silverio Villegas González, a Mexican man fatally shot last year near Chicago, Illinois.
At the beginning of October, Good's family filed a pair of lawsuits against the federal government and immigration officials over her death and an alleged conspiracy to interfere with civil rights in Minnesota's Twin Cities. A week later, Villegas González's relatives filed a legal claim against the administration over his "execution-style killing." Pretti's family hasn't yet sued, but his parents demanded justice at a press conference late last month.
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The People Voted to End the War on Immigrants—Now Democrats Must Act
Latino voters stood by their immigrant families and neighbors on Tuesday, and Democrats need to remember that. Remember the families who remain separated. The imprisoned and the dead. And those who stood with immigrants at the risk of their own lives.
Nov 06, 2026
Yes, Election Day was a day of hope and victory. From coast to coast—and especially among Latino communities in key states like Texas—voters overwhelmingly rejected Immigration and Customs Enforcement violence, President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, and billionaire-backed scapegoating. People saw through the lie that immigrants drive up the cost of living and chose a future focused on real economic relief. The future is suddenly looking brighter.
For an immigrant like me who came to this country and still has no ability to vote, there’s so much hope coming from Houston, where Latino voters turned out in record numbers and dedicated their vote to Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the immigrant father who was killed by ICE. There’s hope coming from young first- and second-generation Latinos like my nephews and nieces who dedicated their votes to their immigrant family members and friends.
This message from voters is very clear for the newly elected candidates celebrating this week—everyone who won on the promise to fight back against Trumpism. Tuesday’s vote was a clear rejection of the war on immigrants. Let it also mark an end to Democratic cowardice, and the end of putting corporate interests over people.
Democrats, you had the Latino vote before and lost it. Now you have it back—don't mess this up.
It's time to act on the mandate that voters just delivered—especially the millions of Latino voters, horrified by the last two years, who just swung hard away from Trump.
Democrats, you had the Latino vote before and lost it. Now you have it back—don't mess this up. History in California, Arizona, and Texas shows that while Latino voters will reject mass deportation campaigns, failing to deliver on promises made to our communities causes that support to slip. You cannot take us for granted. You need a positive, pro-working-class, pro-immigrant agenda, and you need to compete for our votes. You can start by showing true political courage by protecting our families and neighbors.
Getting ICE out of our communities is no longer just an immigration issue—it is a safety issue for us.
That courage starts with stopping ICE. Get those violent criminals out of our communities and make sure they can never terrorize us or anyone else again. Stop ICE and Border Patrol and all the other corrupted parts of the Department of Homeland Security. Bring to justice everyone in this government responsible for so many crimes and terrors against immigrants.
Inspect detention centers and enforce real congressional oversight. Shut off the pipeline that feeds from streets and sidewalks of immigrant communities into for-profit torture prisons where neglect and abuse have led to a rising toll of sickness, injury, and death.
At the local level, you can stand up for immigrants by fiercely defending sanctuary laws, cities, and states. Keep federal agents and anti-immigrant operatives out of our homes, schools, and churches. Stop ICE’s local enablers by ending 287(g) programs that turn local police into immigration enforcers. We cannot let local law enforcement take federal dollars to racially profile and target brown communities. Put an end to the abuse now.
Latino voters stood by their immigrant families and neighbors on Tuesday, and Democrats need to remember that. Remember the families who remain separated. The imprisoned and the dead. And those who stood with immigrants at the risk of their own lives.
Remember the deaths of Renee Good, Alex Pretti. Carlos Roberto Montoya, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. The unconstitutional and unlawful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The detention of 5-year-old Liam Cornejo Ramos. The brave people of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
I'm grateful for everyone who voted on Tuesday for decency, humanity, and the Constitution. I'm also grateful for the courageous people, immigrants and allies, who took to the streets in the last two years, like ambulance crews rushing to the scene of an emergency or firefighters to an out-of-control blaze.
Election Day gave us many victories, but organizing gives us power—so let’s turn this mandate into action, hit the streets, hold our leaders accountable, and build the safe, just future our families deserve.
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Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Your Undocumented Neighbors Won't Be Voting, But You Can
Our neighbors with the most to gain or lose from the election results, for whom Tuesday’s election is about a lot more than paying a few cents less per gallon at the gas pump, are also people who cannot vote. They desperately need you to cast a vote for them.
Nov 03, 2026
One of the joys, or perils, of a weekly Tuesday newsletter is coming out every year on Election Day, right when the world is on hold for those 13 or so hours the polls are open. If you live, as I do, in a corner of Pennsylvania without a hotly contested congressional race, and with Gov. Josh Shapiro up by double digits, the day might seem less consequential. That’s wrong. Not only is control of the state legislature on the line, but we’re fighting for a bigger principle: the right to vote again in a free and fair election in two years. Vote as if your life depends upon it, because in a sense, it does.
In Maryland, a man named Julian Curo Churata arrived more than a decade ago from Peru to work as a carpenter and build a new life with his wife, Veronica Ramirez, their two children from previous marriages, and eventually their own daughter, now age 6.
In June, as President Donald Trump’s campaign of mass deportation was surging across America, agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Curo Churata in a targeted operation, and the undocumented immigrant was flown to detention in Louisiana. He managed to call his daughter every day—pretending he was out of town on a job—until September 29, when ICE said he suffered cardiac arrest, was rushed to a nearby hospital, and pronounced dead. He was just 47.
The most despicable campaign promise in American history proved to be the only one Trump kept.
Ramirez went public with her grief, her unanswered questions about her husband’s death, and the lack of information she was receiving from ICE, in a story on the front page of The Washington Post.
“He wasn’t a criminal,” Ramirez said at the time. “All he wanted to do in this country was work. He paid his taxes, he wanted a better future for his children and for me—for his family. He didn’t deserve this at all. I want justice.”
What Ramirez got instead from ICE was a notice to appear for an immigration court hearing that could lead to her deportation to El Salvador—dated just three days after the newspaper article. Now she fears for the future of her already traumatized daughter, who may lose a second parent. “She’s afraid—afraid of being alone,” Ramirez said.
This case of seeming retaliation by an uncaring and increasingly tyrannical US government where the ultimate victim is a defenseless 6-year-old girl is the kind of article that makes your blood boil. But it’s also just one of a series of stories of heartlessness and violent thuggery toward the undocumented on our soil that have polluted my social media feed in recent days.
I saw a video of an ICE agent pointing a gun in the face of an innocent bystander in North Hollywood, California during the arrest of an immigrant; read about the Afghani refugees that ICE plans to fly back to their native country even after their relatives risked everything to aid US troops; and noted the Cuban-American lawyer who voted for Trump in 2024, tried and failed to stop his cousin’s deportation during the ensuing ICE crackdown, and then cried that, “This isn’t what I voted for.”
No, this is exactly what you voted for. I was inside Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum on the night of July 16, 2024—watching in horror as white Trump delegates in their red MAGA garb or Texas cowboy hats waved placards that read, “MASS DEPORTATION NOW.” The most despicable campaign promise in American history proved to be the only one Trump kept.
And you still don’t think that elections have consequences?
There are millions of people—who live on our blocks, and pray in our houses of worship, and work the backbreaking jobs in our communities that no one else seems willing to do—who face the greatest consequences from the results of Tuesday’s midterm election. People like Veronica Ramirez and her 6-year-old girl.
Our neighbors with the most to gain or lose from the election results, for whom Tuesday’s election is about a lot more than paying a few cents less per gallon at the gas pump, are also people who cannot vote.
They desperately need you to cast a vote for them.
Hubert Humphrey, the former Democratic vice president known for his outspoken defenses of civil rights in the postwar era, said most famously that “the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, and those who are in the shadows of life...”
In today’s United States, no one is forced to retreat into those shadows more deeply than the 14-million-or-so undocumented immigrants and the American dreams of their children, many of whom are US citizens who might have to watch masked government goons rip their parents away.
Unfortunately, it’s a nightmare that won’t end on Wednesday morning no matter who wins, since Trump and his xenophobic henchmen like Stephen Miller will still be in the White House and—barring the unexpected—will be there until January 20, 2029.
But your vote will still make a huge difference. One party will hold public hearings, subpoena top officials, expose evil, and refuse to provide any new dollars to co-opt our local police to arrest our neighbors, hire more masked thugs, or open the squalid equivalent of concentration camps. The other party will continue, and look to expand, a mass-deportation crusade that has become a dark moral stain on our nation.
It’s fine to vote your pocketbook, but Tuesday’s ballot is about so much more. This is a moral imperative.
I know when I vote Tuesday, I’ll be thinking about Wendy Martínez, a woman I met this summer in Pottsville. With her four kids, Martínez rarely left their cramped apartment with the windows covered in blankets after ICE took away her husband, Carlos Moreno. There are thousands like her—women whose family breadwinner was arrested by ICE in a deliberate strategy to drive their families out of the United States.
Martínez won’t be voting Tuesday, but you can.
I think about the family members like Maryland’s Ramirez or Ly Wang, the stepdaughter of a Philadelphia Amerasian immigrant from Vietnam named Tuan Van Bui. whose loved ones died this year in the ICE-detention gulag archipelago, with little or no explanation
Ramirez won’t be voting Tuesday, but you can.
Tuesday’s election caps a year that started with the brutal murders by immigration officers in Minneapolis of two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who objected to what the government is doing in our name.
Good and Pretti won’t be casting ballots on Tuesday, but you can. If you care about justice, you must.
Many are. Tuesday morning, I woke up to see a photo online of the ever-growing memorial to Pretti on the Minneapolis street corner where the protester was gunned down nine months ago. A number of Minnesotans have traveled straight from their early-voting site to the memorial, and attached their “I Voted” stickers.
Immigration, of course, isn’t the only important issue on the ballot. It’s not even the only moral one. You can play a role in ending the erosion of gains for Black and brown Americans in the classroom and the voting booth; turning the tide back toward the LGBTQ community, including our transgender neighbors; and electing more opponents of US militarism from Iran to the Caribbean.
But the fiercest battle for the soul of America is being waged in the streets of our immigrant communities. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) used to ask his rally goers, “Are you willing to fight for that person who you don’t even know as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?”
This Tuesday, the existential question is, are you willing to vote for the immigrant who can’t—even more than you’re willing to vote for yourself?
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Mamdani Demands ICE End 'Illegal' Use of New York City Parking Lots to Stage Raids
"If your agents continue any unauthorized use of these lots, New York City will take legal action to prevent this unlawful commandeering of city property."
Nov 02, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday threatened the Trump administration with legal action over federal immigration agents' use of city parking lots to stage raids, which the Democratic elected official said amounted to "unlawful commandeering" of public property.
"This use of city property in furtherance of federal immigration enforcement is unauthorized and is therefore illegal, endangers city residents, and sows fear among those who seek to access city property," Mamdani wrote in a letter addressed to US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) acting director, David Venturella.
Mamdani's letter notes that ICE agents have "reportedly parked their vehicles and conducted meetings in several city-owned, unstaffed parking lots"—including ones near a park and a city-run preschool.
"ICE has not secured any authorization from the city to use these lots for immigration enforcement. To be clear: the city does not authorize ICE using its property in this manner," Mamdani wrote. "Parking lots connected to city parks are reserved for the safe use and enjoyment of New Yorkers and visitors who wish to use our parks. Use of these lots for other purposes, including ICE’s reported use of these lots, amounts to unauthorized activity on City property. Accordingly, you must immediately issue guidance to your agents prohibiting them from using any City lots to stage or conduct enforcement operations."
Mamdani's letter comes weeks after a plainclothes ICE agent shot a Dominican immigrant in the Bronx while his 5-year-old son was in the car, infuriating community members and intensifying pressure on the mayor to do everything in his power to remove the rogue agency from New York City.
"We know that ICE is rotten to its core," Mamdani said after the shooting. The mayor has called on President Donald Trump to end all ICE operations in New York City and has demanded abolition of the agency, saying it is "making a mockery of what law and order is supposed to be."
In mid-October, Mamdani and more than 100 other elected New York officials called on private parking lot owners to bar ICE agents from using their property.
"In solidarity with immigrant New Yorkers and in our shared commitment to the city we love, we ask that you do not rent, lend, or otherwise make your property available to ICE as a staging area for its enforcement operations," reads the October 16 letter. "Make it known to ICE that it is not authorized to use your garages and lots."
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Trump's Treatment of Immigrants Betrays US History—Vote to Stand Up for Your Neighbors
The 2026 midterms are about more than congressional majorities; they are an opportunity for Americans to hold their representatives accountable and decide whether fear should remain an instrument of government.
Nov 02, 2026
The grandfather of the current president of the United States, Friedrich Trump, arrived penniless from Germany at the age of 16 in 1885. He worked as a barber in New York before heading west, eventually opening a restaurant in a mining town. Like so many immigrant stories, his is unremarkable in one sense, and quintessentially American in another. It reminds us that history often looks different when viewed from a distance.
Today, however, history is being written in real time. And the images now emerging from the United States tell a troubling story.
Across many American cities, armed and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting highly visible raids. Videos show people being detained in the streets, families disrupted, and communities thrown into fear. Other footage captures American citizens confronting federal agents in their own neighborhoods amid tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets. These scenes dominated evening news broadcasts not only in the United States, but in Europe and elsewhere. Footage related to the fatal shootings in Minneapolis spread globally. Now, California’s Central Valley faces raids and accusations of voter intimidation ahead of Tuesday’s elections. They project an image of a nation in distress, one in which fear appears to be overtaking everything.
The nation’s greatness has always rested on the idea that people from every corner of the world came here to live under the same laws, to contribute, to succeed, and—eventually—to become citizens.
Some of these encounters raise serious constitutional questions. When force is used during immigration enforcement actions, concerns arise about the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, and the First Amendment rights of citizens who protest in public spaces. These are not abstract legal matters. They go to the heart of what it means to live under a constitutional democracy.
Why are so many people willing to stand in the streets to protect their neighbors? Because those neighbors are deeply woven into the fabric of American life. Undocumented immigrants often perform jobs that others are unwilling to take: picking apples, tending livestock, washing dishes, cleaning hospitals, and caring for the elderly. They work hard, pay taxes, and spend money in local economies. Economist Paul Krugman has noted that immigrants played a critical role in stabilizing the US economy after the pandemic, continuing essential work when much of the country shut down. Have we already forgotten that?
Most Americans either descended from immigrants who once lacked legal status or know family stories that began that way. This country has always been a mosaic of people who arrived with little, worked relentlessly, and eventually earned not only stability but admiration. They learned to love this land. Many still feel a surge of pride when they hear the national anthem or see the Stars and Stripes.
That is why what is happening now should concern all of us. Fear is spreading through immigrant neighborhoods—fear of going to work, going shopping, seeing a doctor, even answering the door. Parents worry about what will happen to their children. Communities are learning to live with the anxiety that a knock at dawn could change everything.
History teaches us that when societies normalize fear directed at a particular group, the consequences are rarely confined to that group alone. The United States has long defined itself by its rejection of such thinking. Dystopian novels were not written as instruction manuals, but as warnings to recognize the early signs of authoritarian drift and stop it.
As America celebrates the ongoing 250th anniversary year, it should be recommitting itself to the ideals articulated in 1776: liberty, dignity, and equal protection under the law. The nation’s greatness has always rested on the idea that people from every corner of the world came here to live under the same laws, to contribute, to succeed, and—eventually—to become citizens.
Thus, America must find the courage to honor its own history. That means recognizing the contributions of immigrants, including undocumented ones; rejecting policies that force people into hiding like thousands of Anne Franks; and pursuing reforms that help them obtain citizenship and integrate them into civic life. In doing so, the nation would not only honor its founding principles, but also the generations of immigrants—like Friedrich Trump—who believed in America enough to come here with nothing and help build it.
The 2026 midterms are about more than congressional majorities. They are an opportunity for Americans to hold their representatives accountable and decide whether fear should remain an instrument of government. They offer Americans an opportunity to remember those who made America their home but now live in constant fear.
After all, a president may wear many hats—or, in Trump’s case, many MAGA baseball caps—but no president should forget that his own family has an immigrant past. And that includes immigrant brides. How America treats immigrants ultimately reflects what kind of country it chooses to be. It is hubris to treat immigrants badly.
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I Swore an Oath to Serve and Protect—the President and ICE Betrayed Theirs
The Trump administration's priorities are all wrong: We want our veterans to have healthcare, our local hospitals to stay open, and our first responders to help in emergencies, not more reckless and poorly trained federal agents on our streets.
Oct 31, 2026
Since President Donald Trump took the oath of office for a second time, he got to work helping billionaires get richer, while families across southern Minnesota are stretched thin. They’ve struggled to feed their families, fill their gas tank, and pay for their healthcare. Instead of taking action to lower costs, Trump and federal officials invaded our communities and used our tax dollars to fund mass deportations.
As a United States Army and Military Police Corps veteran, I know what it means to uphold an oath to serve and protect. What I can’t understand is betraying that oath, which is what our president and too many leaders have done. That’s why I was especially angered learning how much we stand to lose because of these federal deportation policies, according to a new cost calculator. Across southern Minnesota. $374 million of our taxes, or $1,520 per taxpayer, could continue funding the mass deportations. Knowing that our tax dollars are fueling this, while we are getting by with less, makes me sick.
I dedicated my career to our country, serving 32 years in the criminal justice system as a deputy sheriff, a jail administrator, consultant trainer, and policy writer for the National Institute of Corrections. As a former administrator, I know the cost of public safety, the value of every taxpayer dollar, and right from wrong.
When the Trump administration chooses to spend $374 million on ICE operations, that decision takes money away from programs that can improve the lives of folks in southern Minnesota.
The actions from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection officers during “Operation Metro Surge” and the subsequent Department of Homeland Security proceedings should sicken every law enforcement and correctional officer who takes pride in upholding the law. Not since the insurrection on January 6, 2021 have I been so angry and disillusioned with our government. Our country watched as public servants who swore an oath condemned the attacks of January 6. But after a corrupt president pressured them, too many of our leaders changed their tune, blurred the lines between right and wrong, and seemingly forgot their oath entirely. Watching “Operation Metro Surge” resurfaced feelings of disappointment, disgust, and betrayal of trust I hadn’t felt since January 6.
Officers depriving anyone of their civil rights, including due process, is wrong.
Officers brandishing firearms without articulable cause is wrong.
Officers detaining people without the ability to communicate with legal counsel within a reasonable amount of time is wrong.
And forcing working Minnesotans to pay for this chaos is wrong.
When the Trump administration chooses to spend $374 million on ICE operations, that decision takes money away from programs that can improve the lives of folks in southern Minnesota. That’s 6,900 veterans who won't get their medical care paid for. That’s 1,260 teachers in our public schools and 2,053 firefighters in our communities.
These numbers, while disturbing, are consistent when it comes to how Donald Trump harms working families. The president’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” slashed the budget for lifesaving programs like Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to provide massive tax cuts for billionaires and large corporations. While CEOs pick out their newest vacation home, more people have to forgo doctor’s visits to cover their electricity bill or car payment.
These priorities are all wrong. We want our veterans to have healthcare, our local hospitals to stay open, and our first responders to help in emergencies, not more reckless and poorly trained federal agents on our streets.
As taxpayers, we have a responsibility to speak up when lawmakers have betrayed our trust. I encourage everyone to speak to their friends and family about how Trump will always be in the business of helping the ultra wealthy while making us pay for it.
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'They Are Terrorizing Us': Video Shows ICE Agents Slashing Tires of Lawful Observers
"We hope that sharing our story will bring attention to their reckless and unconstitutional attacks on our communities.”
Oct 29, 2026
A video taken from the car of two legal observers in the Portland, Oregon area shows an unmarked vehicle with emergency lights flashing, following close behind their car on a street in the suburb of Hillsboro.
About 15 seconds into the video, both cars stop and two masked people get out of the unmarked vehicle and approach the other car, with one carrying a sharp object that they use to puncture the back tire. They approach a second time a few seconds later, slashing the tire again.
Both of the masked people are wearing vests emblazoned with the name of their government agency: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The people who filmed the attack, identified as AP and MP in an administrative complaint filed with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Thursday, had been observing and filming the agents in a Safeway parking lot in Hillsboro, and had used whistles and honked their car horn to alert people about ICE's presence, before the officers started following them.
Filming ICE agents and other federal officers who have been deployed to carry out President Donald Trump's mass deportation operation is legal under the First Amendment, as top DHS officials were forced to admit under oath last February.
At the time, people across the nation were reeling from the killings by DHS agents of two legal observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.
Numerous videos were posted on social media of federal agents threatening people and demanding that they stop exercising their constitutional right to film immigration enforcement operations, with one officer in Maine telling a woman her name would end up in a "nice little database" if she didn't stop recording him and that she'd be considered a "domestic terrorist."
In the administrative filing, the legal observers in Hillsboro emphasized that "what happened to us is not unique, and that is what is so terrifying."
“We observe and record public ICE activity in order to shine a light on their abusive behavior and to create a record of what our government is up to," they said. "Because of that, they are terrorizing us and anyone else who dares to exercise their First Amendment right to hold our government accountable. We hope that sharing our story will bring attention to their reckless and unconstitutional attacks on our communities.”
In the administrative complaint, filed by the ACLU and the ACLU of Oregon, the legal observers and their attorneys demanded that the DHS investigate the October 7 incident and discipline the agents who slashed the tire.
"In addition, we request that your offices undertake a comprehensive investigation of the pervasive pattern of ICE agents unlawfully retaliating against individuals who observe, gather information about, and record ICE agents performing their duties in public," reads the complaint. "We urge you to make recommendations for institutional changes to ICE training, oversight, and accountability consistent with your findings in order to prevent further abuses by ICE personnel. More specifically, we strongly urge ICE to adopt policies and implement training and instruction consistent with the First Amendment right to observe, gather information about, and record law enforcement officers performing their duties in public."
The ACLU has represented several observers who have been surveilled, intimidated, and harassed by federal agents for filming enforcement operations. In Memphis, Tennessee, the group has represented observers who have recorded the operations of the Memphis Safe Task Force, which is made up of more than 30 federal, state, and local agents who have spent more than a year "carrying out mass traffic and street stops and breaking into homes."
"Task Force agents are systematically retaliating against those who record them, including threatening to arrest them, stopping and questioning them without reasonable suspicion of any crime, sitting outside their homes, and even using excessive force against and arresting them," according to the ACLU.
The Hillsboro incident took place as DHS was threatening to target so-called "sanctuary" cities like Portland, where local police are restricted from participating in immigration enforcement operations.
“Masked federal officers have no business coming to Oregon to injure or intimidate people,” said Kelly Simon, legal director of the ACLU of Oregon. “Oregonians have the right to support their neighbors and communities by filming and documenting government abuses, and Oregonians should not have to fear retaliation when they exercise their right to record law enforcement.”
Scarlet Kim, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said that "the right to record publicly visible law enforcement activity is fundamental to our democracy."
"Like many people across the country, our clients have been observing and recording ICE activity in their community," she said. "These videos have proven critical to exposing ICE’s abuses. If we cannot see and document what our own government is doing on our streets, we cannot hold it accountable for running roughshod over our rights.”
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Beware Donald Trump's October Surprise
Trump is desperate to avoid accountability, and that makes the most dangerous president in American history more dangerous than at any previous point in his presidency.
Oct 29, 2026
For months, President Donald Trump has watched his grip on power collapse. It’s the consequence of self-inflicted wounds.
- Trump’s intransigence over releasing the Epstein files created fissures in his MAGA base.
- The Iran War worsened that fracture.
- Lifting crippling sanctions on Russia and abandoning Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s naked aggression drove the wedge between Trump and his most fervent supporters even deeper.
- The price of oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel soared, thanks to the war that Trump alone thinks America has won.
- Inflation and the national debt are moving in the wrong direction, while Trump’s illegal tariffs made everything more costly for Americans.
- The incompetence of the people he appointed to the most important cabinet positions, including Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., created havoc and killed innocent Americans.
- He destroyed alliances that have endured since World War II and compromised America’s international stature.
- His approval rating has plummeted to historic lows as independents deserted him.
- And ordinary citizens are finally fed up with the naked corruption of his pay-to-play administration. Trump, his family, and friends have made billions on the presidency while most Americans have struggled to survive.
Trump promised an “October surprise” that presumably would blind voters to his malfeasance and grift. What was it? A hollow promise of $5,000 to every adult citizen if Republicans maintained control of Congress after the midterms? Overtly siding with Putin in the Russia-Ukraine war? A last-minute award of $8 billion to farmers suffering under his idiotic economic policies?
I think it’s something far worse.
Avoiding Accountability
Trump is desperate to avoid accountability, and that makes the most dangerous president in American history more dangerous than at any previous point in his presidency. A Democratic majority in either chamber of Congress will begin investigations that will reveal the depth and breadth of his abuse of power to enrich himself and his cronies. Trump’s priority now is to prevent voters from electing Democrats. Period.
Trump can’t rely solely on the voter suppression techniques that Republican-controlled states have adopted over the past several years. Restrictive voter ID laws and an unprecedented gerrymandering effort aren’t likely to yield the GOP results that he needs. And his flurry of executive orders seeking to nationalize elections met hostile federal court decisions—even from his own appointees.
Attorney General Todd Blanche will continue to do Trump’s bidding. But in the end, the Constitution empowers the states to control the administration of elections.
So what will a desperate Trump do?
No one knows. But state and local election officials have been training poll workers to deal with previously unthinkable possibilities:
- Could Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show up at polling places? In September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said: “ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places. We’re there to enforce specific threats.” But he added that reports of specific undocumented immigrants at a location could be a reason for ICE to deploy. That’s a pretty big qualifier.
- Will other federal officials show up at polling sites?
- Will federal officials seize ballots, as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia?
- Will Trump seize voting machines as some of his advisers have urged in the past?
- Will Trump invoke the Insurrection Act and summon the military under sycophant Pete Hegseth? (He hasn’t ruled it out.)
A Citizen’s Remedy
Trump is relying on a combination of legal challenges and voter intimidation to complete his term without accountability. Courts may continue to provide some check on his most egregious actions, but Trump moves with such dizzying speed that the courts often cannot keep up with him. Trump is relying on that too.
Chief Justice John Roberts’ lamented that Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing and replacing it with a ballroom that was already more than half finished “was likely unlawful” because Congress never appropriated the funds to do so. But without reaching the merits of the case, five other justices gave him a pass anyway.
The best chance for beating Trump is to heed his rallying call: “Pretend I’m on the ballot.”
Vote accordingly.
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