by Shane Burley | Oct 14, 2025 | Article, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Portland, Prisons and Policing
The crowds amassing on Portland’s South Waterfront on Sunday, Sept. 28, outside the city’s ICE processing facility, featured activists from nearly every community in the city, including volunteers handing out water and food from a mutual aid table and healthcare professionals nearby to offer onsite first-aid treatment. A cloud of tension sat over the metro region as residents waited to see exactly what President Trump’s latest pronouncement would mean.
Just one day earlier, Trump took to social media to loudly declare that he was “directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Perhaps most chillingly, Trump added that “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
While it has remained unclear if troops would ultimately touch down in Portland, 200 National Guard troops were authorized by Hegseth into federal Title 10 service on Sept. 28.
The notion that Portland is “War ravaged” came as news to people who actually live there.
The notion that Portland is “War ravaged” came as news to people who actually live there. As residents have repeatedly pointed out, Portland is far from the war zone Fox News, Trump, and the MAGA right claim it to be. The city is not facing destructive mass demonstrations; rather, there has been a small, ongoing, largely nonviolent demonstration happening outside of the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility south of downtown.
This was the 113th day of protests at this location. A permanent protest encampment was established here shortly after high-profile immigration raids and confrontations began dominating news coverage
by Mansa Musa, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis | Oct 13, 2025 | Economy and Inequality, ICE, police accountability, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Racial Justice, Trump, video
President Trump repeatedly promised that his mass deportation efforts would target “the worst of the worst” criminals, yet the government’s own data reveals that immigrants with no criminal record are the largest group in US immigration detention today. How can the Trump administration justify its deployment of federal agents, and even the military, to US cities based on the factually disprovable fictions that American cities are crime-ridden “war zones” overrun with criminal “illegal aliens”? To answer that, one must study the long-established precedent in the USA of overpolicing poor communities of color that are painted as inherently violent, chaotic, and crime-ridden. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with TRNN reporters Stephen Janis and Taya Graham about what the history of policing in America can teach us about Trump’s authoritarian deployment of law enforcement agencies today.
Credits:
Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. The Watts Riots, sometimes referred to as Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in Watts neighborhood and surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11th and 16th from 1965. The rise was motivated by anger at racist and abusive practices of Los Angeles Police, as well as his grievances over unemployment discrimination and residential segregation of property. The backdrop of it was that they arrested our individual that they claimed didn’t pass the drunk driving test. Out of that grew a conversation about police kicking a pregnant woman. At any rate,
by Kori Skillman | Oct 9, 2025 | Article, baltimore, ICE, immigration, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Racial Justice, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on Oct. 07, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Highlandtown sidewalks tell a much different story today than they did a year ago. Shops that once bustled with conversation sit emptier; families who once roamed the streets have now retreated. The day-to-day has become filled with fear under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, sending shockwaves through the largely Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
Both noncitizen, long-time U.S. residents L and E (whose full names Baltimore Beat is not using for their safety) are family members who are two sides of the same coin: L was already forced to leave the country; E feels imprisoned in his fear. Every glance from strangers, every passing security officer a reminder of the attention their brown skin draws.
Their parallel lives reflect a community sentiment, where daily rhythms are interrupted by immigration enforcement vans and streets become more desolate with every deportation.
Lucia Islas, a case manager at the Southeast CDC, works with a client at their office in East Baltimore on September 30. Credit: J. M. Giordano.
While L’s fight ended when she was forced to leave the country, E’s continues toward an unknown. L has walked her final moments in the United States, holding the hands of her two young children, and E could not walk beside her. In this moment in history, to get too close would be a risk to his own freedom. His life the last seven months has been characterized by living in the shadows. His heart is still heavy that he could not comfort his loved one in the way he wanted to.
L, 32, came to the
by Michael Nigro | Oct 7, 2025 | ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, video
For over four months, masked federal officers have been arresting and disappearing immigrants attending their mandatory asylum court dates. Photojournalists in New York City fought to maintain their First Amendment right to observe the chaotic, cruel, and often violent breach of due process occurring daily in NYC’s immigration courts.
A documentary by Michael Nigro.
Transcript
Brad Lander (NYC Comptroller): These buildings have ceased to be courthouses. They are not places where judges are having hearings that are a meaningful part of the rule of law. These buildings are essentially abduction traps.
[TEXT] On May 29, 2025, journalists gained access to film in the hallways of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building and the Ted Weiss Federal Building in lower Manhattan.
Both buildings contain multiple immigration courts open to the public
Dan Goldman (US Representative D-NY): They are now literally arresting people who are coming to court, who are following the law, who are doing things the right way. These are the exact opposite of convicted criminals and worst of the worst that Donald Trump said he was going to deport. These are people doing it the right way.
[TEXT] Hundreds have been detained, deported, and disappeared to other cities or other countries.
Dan Goldman (US Representative D-NY): This is gestapo-like behavior, where plainclothes officers wearing masks are terrorizing immigrants who are doing the right thing by going to court, following up on their immigration proceedings, and trying to come into this country lawfully, which is through asylum.
Speaker 1: You have the right to remain silent.
[Repeats in Spanish].
Speaker 2: [Speaking Spanish] No, please… My dad…
Speaker 3: [Shouting] Where’s my son? Where’s my son?
Speaker 4: You guys ask people to
by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg | Oct 7, 2025 | Article, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story was originally published on Truthout on Oct. 06, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Today, federal lawmakers sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanding information on any plans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has to use Graphite, a spyware program that can access — without the owner’s knowledge or consent — a phone’s location data, photos, and encrypted applications, including WhatsApp and Signal.
Last year, the Biden administration paused the contract with Paragon Solutions, which operates Graphite, while it conducted a review to ensure it complied with an executive order issued in 2023 which limits the government’s use of spyware. In August, the Trump administration lifted the stop work order, news that was first reported by All-Source Intelligence.
The letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was signed by Democratic Reps. Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), Shontel Brown (Ohio), and Yassamin Ansari (Arizona).
The lawmakers asked Noem to provide information on the government’s use of surveillance technology by October 14, including “a comprehensive list of data surveillance targets and ICE’s strategy for deploying spyware or mass data surveillance within the United States.”
The lawmakers warned that allowing ICE to use to spyware “threatens Americans’ freedom of movement and freedom of speech.”
“Given the Trump Administration’s disregard for constitutional rights and civil liberties in pursuit of rapid mass deportation, we are seriously concerned that ICE will abuse Graphite software to target immigrants, people of color, and individuals who express opposition to ICE’s repeated attacks on the rule of law,” they wrote.
Paragon was founded in 2019 by former Israeli military intelligence officers who worked in the Israeli military’s Unit 8200. Last year, the Florida-based private equity firm,
by Brad Reed | Oct 2, 2025 | Article, ICE, immigration, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 02, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Just hours after President Donald Trump said US soldiers should use Americans cities as “training grounds,” federal law enforcement officials on Tuesday night descended upon an apartment complex in Chicago where witnesses say they broke down residents’ doors, smashed furniture and belongings, and dragged dozens of them, including children, placed in U-Haul vans.
Local resident Rodrick Johnson, who lives in the building raided by Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agents, told the Chicago Sun-Times that federal officials broke down his door, put him in zip ties, and kept him detained outside the building for three hours before letting him go.
“I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” he explained to the paper. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”
Pertissue Fisher, who also lives in the building, backed up Johnson’s account and said that agents forcibly removed all residents from their homes regardless of their legal status.
“They just treated us like we were nothing,” she told local news station ABC 7 Chicago. “They, like, piling us all up in the back on the other side, and it wasn’t no room to move nowhere.”
Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the raided building, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she saw children, some of whom weren’t even wearing clothes, dragged out of the building by ICE agents and then placed into U-Haul vans.
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” she said. “Even if you’re not a mother, seeing
