by Ja'han Jones | Jul 22, 2026 | Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion
The Republican-led efforts to dilute Black voter power ahead of this year’s midterm elections were schemes worthy of thorough investigation. And Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., is urging his party to do so, should they retake the House or the Senate.
That’s the crux of Warnock’s call for Democrats to investigate GOP officials who played a role in forcing through gerrymandered maps ahead of November — maps that some have framed as the most vicious assault on Black voting rights since the fall of Reconstruction.
According to ABC News:
Calling for officials who he says have engaged in gerrymandering to decimate minority voices is a position Warnock hasn’t called for until now, and he said in a phone interview with ABC News that the Callais decision was an “inflection point” for him to do so.
“A Democratic majority in either chamber must immediately investigate these officials, including through Congressional hearings, document requests, depositions, testimony, and, if necessary, subpoenas,” Warnock’s plan states. “We must analyze their statements, actions, and contributions to determine if there is any evidence that they broke any laws in their race to gerrymander and silence Black voices.”
President Donald Trump’s push to pressure conservative states to gerrymander their districts — and his administration’s race-based rationale for doing so in Texas — has been well-documented.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon absurdly claimed last year that Texas Republicans’ new map was designed to address “racial spoils” that Democrats have purportedly reaped from redistricting. And in a sign of how legally dubious this gambit was, the Texas mapmaker later tried to distance himself from the administration’s push when he testified during a racial discrimination case regarding the
by John Pfaff | Jul 21, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion
Last week, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Colombian national, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. While ICE has refused to name the officer who killed Guerrero, The Associated Press has identified him as David Brouillette. And in a telling departure from its usual practices, ICE did not even try to argue that Guerrero “weaponized his vehicle” (although Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin did try to use this line at first).
The Department of Homeland Security’s official explanation is only that Guerrero tried to flee and that Brouillette shot him out of a “fear for public safety,” not his own personal safety. Guerrero is at least the 11th person shot and killed by federal immigration officials since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. The violence at car stops has become so bad that ICE, rarely one to back down from a fight, last week ordered its agents to suspend almost all car stops, although Trump personally reversed that order the next day.
But as more details have been revealed, the core issue of the outrageous lack of vetting and proper training for ICE agents has come into greater focus.
One major cost of ICE’s attempted hiring surge has been an apparent breakdown in vetting.
Shortly after the shooting, one of Brouillette’s ex-wives, Ashley Brouillette, came forward to talk about his history of mental illness and domestic violence, after he called her following the shooting to ask her to vouch for his character. The story that emerged is terrifying. Ashley told reporters that he had abused her (Brouillette did not respond to efforts by
by Amy Fried | Jul 18, 2026 | Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion
Nothing has absorbed Maine politics like the candidacy of Graham Platner. Almost from the moment he announced his run for the U.S. Senate in mid-August 2025, he drew big crowds and lots of attention. His strongest backers stuck with him through controversy after controversy until Jenny Racicot publicly accused him of sexual assault. Platner denied the allegation, but his support collapsed.
Yet even after Platner officially withdrew as the nominee on July 10 and the Maine Democratic Party began the process of replacing him, it seemed like Mainers were going to keep talking about him for a while. Many of his committed voters were deeply disappointed about what they learned; others were very angry that the news had been revealed. Some suggested they might write in Platner’s name or not vote at all in the fall.
Then came an awful event that starkly shifted Mainers’ attention, and moved the focus of the Maine Senate race from Platner to Sen. Susan Collins.
The killing of 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday was a real shock in the state. Maine often has the lowest rate of violent crime nationally and homicides are rare, with only 21 in 2025.
Maine, like Minnesota, is a highly participatory state, and both places responded similarly to ICE incursions this past winter.
Of course, it wasn’t just Guerrero’s death that was the story, but also who shot him — an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer — and the circumstances of his killing. For one, unlike other shootings by ICE officers, the Department of Homeland Security did not even claim that Guerrero posed any sort of imminent threat or that
by Ebony Davis | Jul 18, 2026 | Civil Rights, News
An employee of one of the nation’s largest private prison companies was arrested after police said he shot and wounded a woman during a confrontation outside an immigration detention center in suburban Denver, where protesters gathered Thursday evening, according to a press release from the Aurora Police Department.
Brandon Booth, 42, an employee of GEO Group, was taken into custody after investigators determined he fired a single shot that struck a woman in the lower body near the Aurora ICE Processing Center. GEO Group operates the detention facility under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We are aware that an off-duty Aurora ICE Processing Center employee was involved in a shooting incident. This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement,” a GEO Group spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.
Officers responded shortly before 7:30 p.m. local time to reports of a shooting, authorities said. They found two women at the scene, one of whom had been shot. The second woman was not injured.
The injured woman was taken to a hospital, where she was treated for injuries that police said were not believed to be life-threatening.
According to investigators, the two women had been participating in a protest near the detention center earlier that evening. Booth and other GEO Group employees were waiting in their vehicles along Nome Street because the demonstration prevented them from entering the facility for their work shifts.
The women confronted the employees verbally and photographed their vehicles before walking away, according to police.
Investigators alleged that Booth then retrieved a personally owned handgun from his vehicle and fired one shot in
by Sydney Carruth | Jul 17, 2026 | Civil Rights, News
A week after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a July 7 traffic stop in Houston, Salgado Araujo’s family and Harris County officials are raising concerns about the federal investigation after the Trump administration announced its decision to search for drugs in the van Salgado was driving.
Although the Department of Homeland Security did not initially cite a suspicion of drugs as a reason for the encounter that ultimately took the life of the 52-year-old father of three, the FBI applied on July 14 for a warrant to search his van for “controlled substances” in Houston federal court. The original focus of the FBI’s investigation was the “potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
The affidavit, signed by a federal judge on Tuesday, stated that FBI agents observed several plastic bags containing a “white crystal-like substance” on the dashboard and passenger floorboard of the van and asserted that the agents had probable cause to investigate for “possession with intent to distribute controlled substances.”
The substance was a homemade electrolyte powder the family used to stay hydrated while working outside on hot Texas days, according to Ruby Powers, a Houston-based immigration attorney who represents Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, Lorenzo’s younger brother, who was detained by ICE after witnessing agents shoot his brother at close range. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a homebuilder, was driving himself, his brother, Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego to a construction site in Houston when he was pursued by ICE agents.
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Sen. Gallego says ICE needs ‘some level of accountability’ after shootings: ‘Thuggish behavior’
July 14, 2026 / 08:17
“After consulting with my client
by Julio Ricardo Varela | Jul 16, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion
The president couldn’t be decent even for 24 hours. Less than a day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Tuesday that it would pause most vehicle stops, Donald Trump posted on social media early Wednesday morning that “we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”
“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch,” he wrote on Truth Social. Shortly after, Trump reversed the pause on traffic stops.
ICE operates this way because we as a country have allowed it to happen.
In truth, suspending the stops wouldn’t have brought back Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Guerrero, the two Latino fathers killed by ICE agents during separate stops in a span of a week. They are two more victims of an administration that has terrorized immigrant communities relentlessly. The real issue isn’t whether the traffic stops are now ending or continuing — it’s that ICE agents are never held accountable for killing people.
As I have written in the past, ICE operates this way because we as a country have allowed it to happen. ICE is now the country’s largest-funded enforcement agency. Just last month Congress passed $70 billion more in funding. Nothing will change until ICE is abolished.
“They’re just trying to cover for the fact that what they are doing shouldn’t be allowable in the first place,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said of ICE’s announcement Tuesday, before Trump’s post about traffic stops. “And the fact that they’re pausing it is to distract from the fact that in many of these instances they shouldn’t be allowed to
