Why the US is deporting so many people
ICE is grabbing whoever they can because they have quotas to meet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDbtrdfYqBc
Tag: due process
A Portland Family Says Their Dad Was Wrongly Arrested by ICE. Now He’s Lost in Immigration Detention.
“For the past two weeks, Juan Barbosa Gomez has been in federal immigration detention, but he doesn’t show up on ICE’s online detainee locator. His family says he has valid work permit and no criminal record.
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For the past two weeks, Barbosa, a 60-year-old grandfather from Mexico, has been incarcerated in the federal immigration detention system, and his family says there’s been a terrible mistake. They say he has a valid work visa and no criminal record. He’s lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, working as a welder.
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Barbosa’s family has been unable to secure his release or even find out any information on his case. He’s been transferred to three different detention facilities in under two weeks and doesn’t show up on ICE’s online detainee locator. The transfers made it difficult for his family to keep track of him or keep his commissary fund filled, and more importantly, it has short-circuited their attempts to find an immigration attorney to look at his case.
Barbosa isn’t the only such alleged wrongful ICE arrest in Portland. The local TV news outlet KOIN 6 reported that another Portland-area grandfather, Victor Cruz, was arrested by ICE officers on October 14 despite having Temporary Protected Status, a valid work permit, and no criminal record.
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To handle the surge of tens of thousands of detainees, the administration is relying on a secretive network of federal, state, and local lockups. To encourage detainees to self-deport, the administration holds them in miserable conditions and shuttles them between facilities, making it hard for them to mount a legal defense. This raises massive constitutional issues: People are being imprisoned for weeks without transparency, without adequate access to legal counsel or means to challenge their detention, and without basic information on the case against them.
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“His grandson is six years old, and he’s trying to figure out how to navigate through this difficult time, with his grandmother in distress and his whole family right now really going through a hard time,” Smith-Mason says. “It’s a really, really hard time trying to deal with that and keep normalcy for him as well, especially because grandpa has been a constant in his life since the day he came home from the hospital.””
https://reason.com/2025/10/30/a-portland-family-says-their-dad-was-wrongly-arrested-by-ice-now-hes-lost-in-immigration-detention/
According to Trump, He Has Already Saved 350,000 Lives by Murdering Suspected Drug Smugglers
“Trump conflates cocaine, which is produced mainly in Colombia and is often transported by sea, with fentanyl, which is produced in Mexico and overwhelmingly enters the United States in small packages by land over the southern border. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fentanyl accounts for nearly 70 percent of drug-related deaths in the United States.
The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics says two milligrams of fentanyl is a potentially lethal dose. Trump therefore seems to be assuming that each of the boats destroyed on his orders was carrying 50 grams of fentanyl. That is pretty large for a fentanyl shipment: Between 2018 and 2023, according to a recent study, most fentanyl powder seizures weighed less than 40 grams. Even so, 50 grams (less than two ounces) is not large enough that you would see “fentanyl all over the ocean” after blowing up a boat carrying it, which underlines the point that Trump’s fentanyl is imaginary.
Even if we join Trump in pretending that cocaine is fentanyl, his claim relies on two other fallacious assumptions. If those 50 grams of fanciful fentanyl had not been intercepted, he implicitly posits, they would have been delivered to 25,000 different American consumers, each of whom would have consumed his share in a single sitting, with fatal results. Trump also imagines, contrary to more than a century of experience with drug interdiction, that traffickers do not compensate for intercepted shipments by sending more. When drugs are seized or destroyed, he seems to think, the total supply available to Americans is reduced by that amount. If that were true, it would be hard to understand why Trump says drug interdiction is “totally ineffective.”
Leaving aside these inconvenient details, Trump’s account of what he is accomplishing by ordering the deaths of suspected smugglers, like Bondi’s estimate of lives saved by less lethal anti-drug efforts that Trump now concedes were “totally ineffective,” is impossible on its face. Last year, the CDC estimates, illegal drug use resulted in about 82,000 U.S. “overdose deaths.” By Trump’s account, he has somehow prevented more than four times as many drug-related fatalities by destroying a tiny portion of the total supply.
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Trump is trying to justify murder as self-defense, obscuring the immorality and lawlessness of his bloodthirsty anti-drug tactics. Trump’s unprecedented policy of killing suspected drug smugglers instead of arresting them—which has already become the new normal—simultaneously corrupts the mission of the armed forces, erasing the traditional distinction between civilians and combatants, and undermines long-standing principles of criminal justice, imposing the death penalty without statutory authorization or any semblance of due process. But he hopes his extravagant claims about hypothetical deaths prevented by intercepting imaginary fentanyl will distract the public from the actual deaths he is ordering.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/30/according-to-trump-he-has-already-saved-350000-lives-by-murdering-suspected-drug-smugglers/
ICE’s Mass Arrests Ensnare U.S. Citizens and Show No Signs of Stopping
“Venegas isn’t the only U.S. citizen to run afoul of the increased emphasis on immigration enforcement. Just days ago, according to 16-year-old Arnoldo Bazan, ICE officers in an unmarked car and without uniform insignia beat and choked him in Houston. He was finally released but his father was deported.
Two weeks ago, ProPublica reported it had found more than 170 cases of “agents holding citizens against their will, whether during immigration raids or protests.” In some cases, U.S. citizens were initially accused of assaulting or impeding officers, but charges were rarely brought, suggesting there was little substance to the accusations. “Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.”
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The problem with emphasizing mass arrests without warrants of supposedly foreign-looking people over targeted actions is that the government doesn’t just drive up the numbers; it scoops up many people who have every right to be where they are and do what they’re doing without being molested by agents of the state.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/31/ices-mass-arrests-ensnare-u-s-citizens-and-show-no-signs-of-stopping/
Stop Acting Like This is Normal | The Ezra Klein Show
Trump is using the power of the federal government to arrest and harass people in his way or who even criticize him.
Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself.
Trump is using powers not given to him by the Constitution, and the Supreme Court is not stopping him in many cases.
Trump is using the military to patrol and intimidate U.S. cities.
Trump is using ICE to assault, arrest, and deport people without due process.
Trump fires statisticians because the actual stats make him look bad.
Trump fires analysts because he doesn’t like the accurate information they bring him.
All over the government and military, Trump has fired watch dogs whose job it is to report corruption and abuses of power.
Trump uses the government’s power to limit what major media outlets can say.
Trump gets legitimate prosecutions dropped because he wants the accused as a political ally.
Trump uses the pardon power based on whether the guilty are his political allies, rather than whether they are unjustly being punished.
Trump fires prosecutors for legitimately prosecuting his political allies.
Trump’s advisors and business leaders suck-up to Trump like he is a monarch or a dictator, showering him in bullshit praise that would be a sarcastic insult to anyone else.
The Trump family makes money from dictatorships who want things from the United States.
By these actions, Trump is greatly damaging U.S. democracy. If you don’t recognize this, you either have not been paying attention, or you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. U.S. democracy is under attack, and most people don’t even know it’s happening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3-0SpkF-V0
Not So Fast, ICE
“People who enter the country illegally may still “have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment,” a new federal court ruling says.
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The judge suggests that “prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” since “most noncitizens living in the interior have been here longer than two years, rendering them ineligible for expedited removal, and many are seeking asylum or another form of immigration relief, entitling them to further process before they can be removed.””
https://reason.com/2025/09/02/not-so-fast-ice/
Shattering Norms: Federal Immigration Agents Aren’t Afraid to Smash Your Car Window
“An investigation by ProPublica has revealed nearly 50 instances of officers shattering windows while conducting immigration-related arrests in the last six months. Although not comprehensive and hard to verify without government statistics, only eight occurrences were found in the decade preceding Trump’s return to office. The uptick in window destruction coincides with growing uneasiness around how federal agents conduct themselves—and how aggressive behavior may even be rewarded within the Trump administration.
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American citizens have also been implicated during these forceful arrests. In a since-deleted Facebook Live video, agents pulled over Jennifer Gribben, a U.S. citizen, and her boyfriend Martin Rivera (ProPublica did not note his citizenship status), and told them they were looking for a fugitive named Garcia. Officers then smashed the car’s window to arrest them. Gribben said in a Facebook post that she was hit in the head by officers and that Rivera suffered a broken arm. She was later charged with resisting arrest and third-degree assault, to which she pleaded not guilty.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/01/shattering-norms-federal-immigration-agents-arent-afraid-to-smash-your-car-window/
Immigration Raids Are Ensnaring Innocent, Legal Bystanders
“In one recent raid in Montebello, Border Patrol agents—masked and driving an unmarked SUV—descended on a parking lot and detained a local man.
“One agent soon twisted Jason Brian Gavidia’s arm and pressed him against a black metal fence outside the lot where he runs an auto body shop,” according to The New York Times. “Another officer then asked him an unusual question…’What hospital were you born at?’…He did not know the hospital’s name. ‘I was born here,’ he shouted at the agent, adding, ‘I’m an American, bro!'” I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t instantly tell you the name of the hospital where I was born.
The agents ultimately released him, but confiscated his driver’s license. There’s a lot wrong with this picture. In a constitutional republic, armed officers should not be wearing face masks as if they are members of some third-world paramilitary organization. There’s no reason for that unless they are behaving in a manner that skirts the boundaries of the law.
Civilian policing is the norm in free countries for obvious reasons. If you’re walking down the street and a gang of masked, armed men jumps out of an unmarked vehicle and abducts you, how do you know they’re legitimate officers and not bandits or kidnappers?”
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“A number of Trump-voting business owners and farmers who have had ICE agents whisk away part of their work force have made similar points. Same with people who have had family members deported—sometimes after they were “disappeared” in broad daylight, with no notification to loved ones. They didn’t expect their workers and loved ones to get nabbed. Frankly, they are among the least sympathetic opponents of the raids. They voted for these policies—and only seem upset now that it’s affecting them and not just other people.
The end result of these sweeps: All Americans—and especially those with darker skin—need to always carry our papers. The Fourth Amendment is clear: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” Then again, the administration isn’t keen on the due-process concept either, which simply requires the government to prove its case before it sends you to a gulag in El Salvador.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/27/immigration-raids-are-ensnaring-innocent-legal-bystanders/
The Rationale for Deporting Mahmoud Khalil Is Alarmingly Vague and Broad
“Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of President Donald Trump’s crusade against international students he describes as “terrorist sympathizers,” was released from custody on Friday after more than three months of detention. But the Trump administration is still trying to deport Khalil, a legal permanent resident, based on his participation in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
The official rationale for expelling Khalil is that he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. That justification is alarmingly broad and vague, raising due process and free speech concerns that interact with each other.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/25/the-rationale-for-deporting-mahmoud-khalil-is-alarmingly-vague-and-broad/
An Iran-Israel Cease-Fire, Toxic Homes in LA, Florida Builds ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ | The Headlines
Conservative Supreme Court allows Trump to deport immigrants to third countries without due process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA-UzsY0JC4