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Detention

American Rendition: Journey To A Louisiana Cell

With a line of cars waiting behind them at the train station, the two women hugged tightly as they said goodbye at the end of a spring break that hadn’t turned out to be the relaxing vacation they’d imagined. Their girls trip had transformed into endless conversations about security precautions as one of the friends, 30-year-old Turkish national Rümeysa Öztürk, grew increasingly worried she would become a target of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. Öztürk, a former Fulbright scholar in a doctoral program at Tufts University, was stunned to find out in early March that she had been targeted by a pro-Israel group that highlighted an op-ed she co-wrote last year criticizing the school’s response to the war in Gaza.

Law Firm Demands Release Of 238 Venezuelans Detained In El Salvador

The prominent Grupo Ortega law firm filed a habeas corpus petition on Tuesday before El Salvador’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ). The legal action seeks the immediate release of 238 Venezuelan migrants currently detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). In an official statement, the firm argued that these detentions may violate fundamental rights, including personal liberty, due process, and protection against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. They emphasized that these rights are protected under both El Salvador’s Constitution and international treaties ratified by the country.

As US Authorities Crack Down On Immigrants, ICE Seeks To Expand

As Trump’s mass deportation efforts continue to terrorize immigrant communities across the US, Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE)’s vast network of primarily for-profit detention centers have exceeded their capacity. Earlier in February, ICE was forced to release some migrants from their facilities after reaching 109% capacity. Due to limited detention capacity, Trump’s administration has utilized a strategy dubbed “catch and release”, which Trump himself had criticized Biden for employing. Through “catch and release”, migrants that are considered “nonviolent” by immigration authorities are released after agreeing to return for their hearings in immigration court.

Japanese-Americans Confront ICE Detention

Seattle, Washington - With the increase of the U.S. Trump/Musk pogroms against immigrants, Japanese and Japanese-Americans have increased their solidarity against roundups, detentions and deportations of migrant workers. In Seattle, 400 people marched in the International District/Chinatown protesting U.S. immigrant detention on February 19, the Day of Remembrance. It’s the day in 1942, a few months after the U.S. entered World War II against Japan, when U.S. executive order 9066 was signed. President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment or imprisonment of Japanese-Americans who had emigrated to the United States and were living on the West Coast.

Migrants Rescued From Guantánamo Arrive In Venezuela

Venezuelan Minister for Internal Affairs, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello received 177 Venezuelans rescued from the US military base in Guantánamo Bay that illegally occupies Cuban territory. Cabello explained that the operation was the result of a request by the Venezuelan government negotiated with the US government. The New York Times (NYT) reported that one migrant was sent back to the US. The 177 migrants arrived in Venezuela near midnight on Thursday, February 20, on a Conviasa Airbus 340-200 passenger jet at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetia, La Guaira state.

How Does Trump Propose To Redefine Immigrants So They’re Beyond The Reach Of The Law?

On January 20, as Donald Trump took office for the second time, it seemed that the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which had recently marked the 23rd anniversary of its opening, might become as marginalized and generally forgotten as it was in his first term in office, when he largely sealed it shut for four years. Last Wednesday, however, and seemingly out of the blue, Trump suddenly announced that he had just issued a new executive order, “Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to Full Capacity”, to expand an existing migrant detention facility at the naval base.

Biden Gave Trump The Blueprint To Lock Up 30,000 Migrants

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “expand” a migrant detention center located within the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. Prior to the release of the executive order, the administration announced that 30,000 migrants would be detained at Guantánamo. “We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our capacity immediately,” Trump said. But according to Department of Homeland Security and Navy documents from 2021 and 2022 reviewed by Drop Site News, the Trump administration may not be able to detain that high of a number of migrants at the facility — at least not immediately.

Shifting Policies Led To One Of The Deadliest Incidents For Immigrants

Stefan Arango, a 31-year-old Venezuelan husband and father, felt immediately nauseated by the smells of sweat, urine and feces when Mexican guards ordered him into the cinder block cell in the border city of Ciudad Juárez. The tile floor was strewn with trash, and several men inside lay on flimsy mats that were incongruously covered in rainbow-colored vinyl. The windows were so small that they didn’t allow in much light or air. And, perhaps mercifully, they were so high that the men couldn’t see they were just a short stroll from El Paso, Texas, the destination they had risked everything to reach.

ICE Under Fire For Solitary Confinement Of Immigrants

The 61-year-old man who was recently found dead of suspected suicide at a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prison in Washington state served the second-longest stretch in solitary confinement of any person in ICE custody since 2018, according to a new analysis by human rights experts. Charles Leo Daniel, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, was found dead while in solitary confinement on March 7 after being incarcerated at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) near Tacoma for about four years. Between April 2020 and September 2023, Daniel was held in solitary confinement for a total of 1,244 days divided between two stints.

Is Former De Facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry Now A De Facto Prisoner?

Ariel Henry, 74, once the king on Haiti’s chessboard, has now become a pawn of the U.S. in its increasingly desperate bid to send a proxy intervention force into the rebelling Caribbean nation. This is the picture Haïti Liberté has received from a well-placed source with intimate access into and knowledge of the U.S. government. Washington is now scrambling for way to send a “quick reaction force” into Haiti, and Ariel Henry remains one of their most important bargaining chips, the source says. After his chartered jet landed in Puerto Rico on Mar. 5, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interrogated Henry for three days, according to our source.

Former Ambassador Craig Murray Detained Under UK Terror Laws

On the morning of October 16, counter-terror police in Glasgow Airport detained journalist, whistleblower, human rights campaigner, and former British diplomat Craig Murray upon his return from Iceland. After grilling him intensively about his political beliefs, officers seized Murray’s phone and laptop. Murray, a proud Scottish nationalist, flew back to Glasgow after several days in Reykjavik, where he attended a popular Palestine solidarity event, and also met with high-ranking representatives of the Assange Campaign, which raises awareness about the plight of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Hundreds Set To Launch Hunger Strike Inside Stewart Detention Center

Last weekend, hundreds of people detained at the Stewart Detention Center announced plans for a hunger strike in response to inedible food and inhumane conditions inside the notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in rural southwest Georgia. Though detainees have continued to eat while they negotiate with the facility’s staff, as many as 800 people are set to refuse food starting this week if their demands are not met. On the morning of Saturday, Aug. 26, roughly 300 people held inside the Stewart Detention Center were brought out of their holding cells for their morning meal.

DHS’s Secret Reports On Ice Detention

Previously confidential records from within the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) confirm years of inadequate medical care, extensive use of solitary confinement, mistreatment of transgender individuals, shortcomings in rape and sexual assault prevention and response, inaccessible services, and other problems disclosed by people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is making dozens of these reports public after a nearly five-year Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legal battle ended with a judge ordering the department to release the records.

ICE Detainees’ Hunger Strike Is Part Of A Long Fight For Freedom

At two Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in California’s Central Valley, a cycle of resistance and retaliation has been intensifying over the past three years. Detainees at the facilities, which are operated by for-profit prison company GEO Group, have organized against abysmal conditions, prompting detention center authorities to respond with increasing levels of punitive action. A motion was filed with the Eastern District Court of California on May 18 as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit against GEO pertaining to the facilities. The filing marked a major escalation in a multipronged campaign being waged by current and former detainees, and outside advocates, to hold ICE and GEO accountable for their mistreatment.

Protests Erupt Across Florida As Senate Bill 1718 Goes Into Effect

Across Florida, protests are taking place to mark the beginning of an immigrant labor stoppage that is scheduled to last until at least July 3rd. Large crowds are being reported in Orlando, Tampa, and various areas in South Florida and as far away as Chicago and California. As SB 1718 goes into effect, the anger and economic concerns felt by many across the state forced Republican legislators to backpedal earlier this week. (See more about the new law in our last report.) Despite spin from elected state officials claiming the law “has no teeth,” thousands of undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families have already fled the state, leaving job sites and agricultural fields nearly empty.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.