by Jonathan Ng | Mar 16, 2026 | Augusto Pinochet, Authoritarianism, cartels, Central America, chile, Cold War, disappearances, Dissent, Donald Trump, El Salvador, history, Honduras, Human Rights, ICE, immigration jails, Latin America, mexico, NAFTA, Nayib Bukele, News Analysis, Repression, Ronald Reagan
Josué Aguilar Valle, a Honduran national, recalls the “terrible” conditions at the migrant jails where U.S. immigration authorities imprisoned him last year. In La Salle County, Texas, Aguilar shared a frigid cell with 50 men, sleeping on the concrete floor. “I thought I was going to experience hypothermia,” he explained. Aguilar’s wife struggled to locate him…
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by Olivia Rosane | Mar 16, 2026 | Article, First Amendment, free speech, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Mar. 15, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to “antifa,” which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups.
A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent.
“A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them kind of intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities then will think twice over protesting,” Suzanne Adely, interim president of the National Lawyers Guild, told The Associated Press.
The administration promised it would be the first such case of many.
“The US lost today with this verdict.”
“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities—not under President Trump,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Friday. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”
The trial revolved around a nighttime protest at which participants planned to set off fireworks in solidarity with the around 1,000 migrants detained inside the Prarieland ICE facility. Some participants brought guns,
by Sam Judy | Mar 15, 2026 | Detention Centers, DHS, Donald Trump, ICE, Interview, Palestine, Rashida Tlaib, Texas
On Friday, March 6, U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib, the first and only Palestinian in Congress, visited Leqaa Kordia at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Kordia, who is the last remaining Columbia protester in detention, has seen a recent groundswell of support following a seizure she suffered in detention due to malnutrition. Arrested on March 13, 2025 by the Department of…
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by Olivia Rosane | Mar 15, 2026 | antifa, Donald Trump, free speech, ICE, News, terrorism, Texas
The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to “antifa,” which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups. A federal jury in Fort Worth…
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by Daniel Hunter | Mar 15, 2026 | Alex Pretti, ICE, Keith Porter Jr., Minneapolis, Op-Ed, Protests, Renee Nicole Good
Fascism depends on our compliance. Authoritarians know they cannot sustain rule by individually repressing each person in the country. They use threats and violence to inflict fear — a primary weapon to force compliance. If fear is their strategy for compliance, then we need a strategy for sustaining dissent. Amid Trump’s unjustified and illegal war on Iran, many of us need space to…
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