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US Empire’s Tactics Come Home; Trump Sends Military To Repress Protests

US President Donald Trump deployed the military to repress demonstrations in Los Angeles, California, as protesters flooded the streets to denounce the abuse of immigrants by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump sent at least 700 Marines and 2,000 members of the National Guard. This is the first time in 60 years that a US president has deployed troops to a state without the approval of its governor. The office of California’s Governor Gavin Newsom condemned Trump’s move as an “illegal militarization of Los Angeles”, and filed a lawsuit seeking to block the president and Department of Defense from taking control of a California National Guard unit.

Oppression Breeds Resistance, Organization Sustains It

As community defenders, organizers, and residents resisted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles this past weekend, the state has responded by calling in the FBI and Border Patrol SWAT units, utilizing Blackhawk helicopters to deliver munitions and military-grade equipment, and mobilizing the National Guard and Marines to quell the justified uprising. As our comrades in SoCal BAP have clearly stated, this is domestic warfare. The connection could not be clearer between the specific kidnappings orchestrated by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Los Angeles on one hand, and the broad militarization of our cities and neighborhoods on the other.

DHS Chief Calls For Military Arrests In Los Angeles Protests

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared to take a step toward circumventing federal laws that bar the military from taking part in domestic law enforcement in a letter she sent to the Department of Defense Sunday as the National Guard was deployed to Los Angeles amid mass protests over immigration raids. In a letter obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle, Noem wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the Pentagon should direct military forces “to either detain, just as they would at any federal facility guarded by military, lawbreakers under Title 18 until they can be arrested and processed by federal law enforcement, or arrest them.” The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from taking part in domestic law enforcement without the authorization of Congress.

DHS Agents Descend On Columbia’s Campus Again With Two Warrants

Less than a week after immigration authorities detained Columbia student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, Department of Homeland Security agents were back on the university’s campus to serve two search warrants. “I am writing heartbroken to inform you that we had federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in two University residences tonight. No one was arrested or detained,” Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong wrote in an email to the university community late Thursday. “No items were removed, and no further action was taken. Federal agents from the DHS served Columbia University with two judicial search warrants signed by a federal magistrate judge authorizing DHS to enter non-public areas of the University and conduct searches of two student rooms.”

Take Action: The Arrest Of Mahmoud Khalil Is A Warning

The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent graduate of Columbia University, may seem like an isolated case—just another student detained under the increasingly draconian surveillance of the US security state. Some may wonder why anyone should care about the fate of a single foreign graduate student at an Ivy League university. But Khalil’s story is not an anomaly; rather, it is a warning. His detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in what appears to be an attempt to silence pro-Palestinian activism, is part of a much broader global trend: the rise of authoritarianism in its neofascist form and the increasing weaponization of state power against dissenters.

DHS Detains Lead Negotiator Of Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment

New York City—On Saturday night, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents entered a student residential building at Columbia University in uptown New York and detained Mahmoud Khalil, one of the lead negotiators on behalf of pro-Palestine protesters at 2024’s Gaza solidarity encampment. In a sweeping attack on the First Amendment, the Trump administration said this week it would begin revoking visas of “Hamas sympathizers,” specifically citing Columbia University students. The detention followed a two-day targeted online campaign against Khalil by pro-Israel groups and individuals, including Columbia’s high-profile pro-Israel professor, Shai Davidai.

NLG Students Organize Against ICE Recruitment At Law Schools

In response to the ongoing cruel and unconstitutional raids on immigrants and their communities by the Trump administration, NLG law student chapters are organizing to stop recruitment efforts at their law schools by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). In late January, New York University (NYU) NLG initiated a campaign to demand that NYU uninvite and permanently bar ICE and DHS from all NYU-affiliated events, including the Public Interest Legal Career Fair (PILC). As they wrote in a letter outlining their demands, “Working with and welcoming ICE recruiters into our community is abhorrent in general, but even more so now, in the wave of violently anti-immigrant executive orders, escalated ICE raids, and the stripping of due process rights for noncitizens through the Laken Riley Act.”

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.

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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.

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