by Jill Fordyce | Sep 20, 2026 | Civil Rights, immigration, Opinion
In fall 2025, I began volunteering with the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, in its Witness for Justice program. It’s an initiative that trains people to observe immigration court proceedings to restore visibility and accountability to a system that operates largely out of public view — and to ensure that no one faces immigration court alone and unseen.
Eventually, I found my way to the “detained children’s docket,” something I still can’t quite believe exists in the United States. I observed children appearing on camera for their immigration hearings from detention centers and shelters — children who do not speak English, who do not have lawyers, who are in the country alone. These children consistently state that they are afraid of returning to their home countries, yet they are not provided with counsel. They are accountable for finding a lawyer and filing claims for asylum on their own.
On one of my first children’s dockets, half of the cases resulted in the judge ordering the children — age 5 to 17 — removed from the U.S. without giving them an opportunity to have their asylum claim heard. Instead, this particular judge repeatedly ruled that the children were not entitled to present evidence, and that they did not qualify for relief as a matter of law. In one case, a 16-year-old girl had been sexually assaulted by a gang member in Honduras and feared that if she returned, she would be assaulted, kidnapped and enslaved by the gang. The court stated that those fears are “not a basis for protection in the U.S.” and ordered her removal.
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ICE prepares to
by Anthony L. Fisher | Sep 19, 2026 | Civil Rights, culture, Opinion
It was the social media post that launched a MAGA civil war over what is the appropriate way to demonize immigrants.
Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, shared a photo last Sunday depicting ecstatic University of Texas students cheering the school’s football team — some of them possibly of South Asian descent — with the text, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” French probably didn’t realize it, given most Republicans’ adoration for the unabashedly racist President Donald Trump, but he kicked a hornet’s nest on the right, sparking a pitched fight over “heritage Americans” and the MAGA struggle to package its xenophobia in more polite terms like “Western civilization.”
A number of influential conservatives and elected Republicans condemned French’s post for presuming a bunch of seemingly non-Caucasian Longhorns fans were “foreigners” rather than Americans, possibly the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Ben Shapiro posted to X, “Wait, why are we supposed to be upset that some kids of Indian ethnicity were cheering the UT football team on Saturday? WTF?” (It should be noted that the ethnicities of the scores of students in the picture have not been confirmed.)
Ultimately, this intra-GOP battle over “civilized” xenophobia versus crude, uncouth racism is a pointless morality play.
There were also condemnations from Texas’ Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who posted to X, “You can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity.” The National Review’s editorial board slammed French’s “repulsive online attack,” but he also added, “Too much immigration — even when the
by Ariana Figueroa | Sep 18, 2026 | 2026 election, 2026 Elections, 2026 midterms, Civil Rights, DHS, elections, FBI, ICE, Kash Patel, Markwayne Mullin, midterms, NAACP, News, Trump Administration, Unions, Voter Intimidation, Voting Rights, Voting Rights Act
A coalition of civil rights groups and union organizations Friday sued the Trump administration to prevent the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling locations during November’s midterm elections. The suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is the second this month, following comments from top Trump officials citing a federal policy to…
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by Julianne McShane | Sep 17, 2026 | Civil Rights, News, White House
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis last winter and its repeated defiance of court orders “created a grave threat to the rule of law,” a conservative federal judge in Minnesota told The New York Times in a rare interview.
Judge Patrick Schiltz, an appointee of George W. Bush who clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, made headlines in January when he issued a fiery order demanding that Todd Lyons, the then-director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appear in court to explain why he should not be held in contempt after the government defied dozens of court orders.
In a 90-minute interview with The Times seven months later, Schiltz said that while he believed “most, if not all” of the government’s actions were due to “incompetence, not due to conscious defiance of orders,” the impacts could not be underestimated.
If a country does not have “the rule of law,” Schiltz told the newspaper, “you have either anarchy or you have authoritarianism. You have Russia or you have China or you have North Korea.”
“The rule of law to democracy is like oxygen to a human body,” he added. “It is something that you absolutely need to survive, and yet it’s something that people just take for granted.”
In a statement provided to both The New York Times and MS NOW, Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, said it’s “remarkable that sitting federal judges are giving on-the-record interviews attacking this Administration’s policies rather than ruling from the bench.”
“Judges who have made public comments on pending or related matters should consider whether recusal is warranted going forward,” Pels added.
The Trump
by Ja'han Jones | Sep 15, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion, White House
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tenure is being consumed by scandal on his way out the door, and a new report from the Department of Homeland Security epitomizes the cruelty and incompetence his GOP administration will be remembered for.
A report from the DHS inspector general’s office released last week outlines disturbing violations of the agency’s standards at the Florida immigration facility that Republicans — aided by sickening propaganda reminiscent of the Jim Crow era — marketed as “Alligator Alcatraz.” The detention center was one of several that Trump and his allies sought to brand as a harsh destination for immigrants.
This report comes shortly after the release of a grand jury report that found the DeSantis administration used a charity founded by the governor’s wife to misuse public money for political purposes, adding to the stench of scandal the governor will carry with him when his term ends in January.
Damning new federal investigation of the much-hyped Alligator Alcatraz detention facilty found operators “confined 79 detainees in small metal enclosures — each offering about 18 square feet of floor space — for periods ranging from several minutes to nearly 2 hours. Use of these… pic.twitter.com/cyPsxHECJZ— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) September 14, 2026
According to the DHS report, detainees were held in “highly unconventional” small metal enclosures — cages, basically — that facility staff called “calming areas.” Human rights groups previously flagged these enclosures, which were part of an inquiry launched in March by Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Per the report:
Between July 17, 2025, and January 18, 2026, [the facility] confined 79 detainees in small metal enclosures — each offering
by Mansa Musa | Sep 15, 2026 | Civil Rights, Politics and Movements: US, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Rattling the Bars, video
After running a historic campaign to unseat a criminal court judge for the first time in Nashville, Courtney Teasley created the legal education company emeffen to inform working-class communities about their civil rights. From combating police abuse to supporting vulnerable populations targeted by the criminal justice system, Teasley is a business and legal powerhouse redirecting people toward civic engagement and political-economic acumen. In this heartfelt interview, Mansa Musa and Courtney Teasley discuss grounded community organizing and political education that subverts the carceral system’s goal of turning citizens into captives.
Related links:
Follow Courtney Teasley on Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, website.
Credits:
Production/Post-production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Today we are joined by Courtney Teasley, who consider herself and identify herself as a legal disruptor and justice strategist. We’ll be discussing her perspective on how she is intervening in the criminal injustice system and her work challenging the prison industrial complex as it exists today. Thank you, Courtney. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.
Courtney Teasley :
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited. I’ve heard a lot about this podcast, and so thank you so much for this opportunity to talk to your audience.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. Let’s start by introduce yourself to our audience and tell our audience how you came into this space, but more importantly, what is a legal disruptor and a justice strategist? What’s your identity as how you identify those things? So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Courtney Teasley :
Yes. So my name is Courtney Teasley. I am
