Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You’ve got no rights.’ He secretly recorded his brutal arrest; The Guardian, July 25, 2025

 Clare Considine, The Guardian; Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You’ve got no rights.’ He secretly recorded his brutal arrest

[Kip Currier: It's profoundly disquieting to read how the officers conducted themselves in this incident. The lack of professional conduct we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears is appalling and stomach-churning.

One can't help but wonder about all the other stops and arrests like this that occur every day and which we know nothing about. Without well-maintained democratic systems of checks and balances, rigorous training and oversight, transparency, accountability, ethical guardrails, and personal integrity and honor, we know from this example and many others that unbridled lawlessness like this is occurring and will likely continue to be present unless remedial measures are implemented.

The larger and more concerning issue is that this type of conduct is ostensibly modeled, normalized, and rewarded in the Trump 2.0 organizational culture.

Sadly, in the absence of administration officials speaking out against these kinds of law enforcement excesses, it's reasonable to conclude that these types of incidents are acceptable to, if not suborned, by the leaders in charge. The dehumanization, fear, and cruelty are the point, in order to advance policy aims.]

[Excerpt]

"On the morning of 2 May, teenager Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol.

In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest.

A highway patrol officer asked everyone in the van to identify themselves, then called for backup. Officers with US border patrol arrived on the scene.

Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men*, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: “You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use “funny” and quipping: “You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.”"

We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty; The New York Times, July 14, 2025

Linda Greenhouse, The New York Times ; We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty

"Something beyond the raw politics of immigration lies behind the venomous cruelty on display, and I think it is this: To everyone involved, from the policymakers in Washington to the masked agents on the street, undocumented individuals are “the other,” people who not only lack legal rights as a formal matter but who stand outside the web of connection that defines human society. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, refers to undocumented immigrants as “the gotaways,” the ones we didn’t catch.

In a lecture at Loyola University Chicago in April, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso observed that the current immigration crisis “is driven by the deeper crisis of public and social life.” He continued: “On a fundamental level, these are signs that we are losing the story of who we are as a country. This is a crisis of narrative. Are we no longer a country of immigrants? Are we no longer a country that values the dignity of the human person, individual liberties, and with a healthy regard for checks and balances?”

An adaptation of Bishop Seitz’s powerful lecture was published bythe Catholic magazine Commonweal, which is where I read it. (Another bishop, Alberto Rojas of San Bernardino, Calif., 60 miles east of Los Angeles, took the rare step of telling the 1.6 million worshipers in the diocese by letter last week that they were excused from attending Mass if they were afraid of immigration enforcement if they came to church.) The Catholic Church has distinguished itself by the moral clarity of its critique of the president’s deportation obsession...

I’ve been wondering when the moment will come when ICE will go far enough to persuade more people outside Los Angeles that it must be reined in. Maybe it will look something like the military invasion of the city’s MacArthur Park the other day, when soldiers and federal agents on horseback and in armored vehicles swept in for no obvious purpose other than to sow terror. “It’s the way a city looks before a coup,” Mayor Karen Bass, who rushed to the park, said later.

Can New Yorkers envision such a scene in Central Park? Is anywhere safe now for someone who can’t show the right papers?

People of a certain age might remember the songwriter Jimmy Webb’s weirdly compelling “MacArthur Park,” with its refrain that begins, “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark.” Growing up in the east, I had never heard of MacArthur Park when the song hit the charts in 1968, and I wasn’t sure it was a real place. All these years later, something real is melting for sure. It is the glue that holds civil society together."

‘I’m an American, Bro!’: Latinos Report Raids in Which U.S. Citizenship Is Questioned; The New York Times, June 15, 2025

Jennifer Medina , The New York Times; ‘I’m an American, Bro!’: Latinos Report Raids in Which U.S. Citizenship Is Questioned

"Viral videos on social media of the Montebello incident and other instances of agents questioning Latino residents in Los Angeles have heightened anxiety that the federal immigration crackdown has entered a new phase. The fear is that agents, including those who are themselves Hispanic, are now racially profiling Hispanic residents and questioning citizenship on the street. Mr. Ramirez recently started carrying his passport with him because he feared being stopped, Mr. Gavidia said."

Video: U.S. Senator Alex Padilla shoved, handcuffed at DHS Kristi Noem's news conference; Fox KTVU, June 12, 2025

 Fox KTVU; Video: U.S. Senator Alex Padilla shoved, handcuffed at DHS Kristi Noem's news conference

"U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) was physically shoved out of the room Thursday during a news conference with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles, where he was also briefly put into handcuffs by the FBI. 

The confrontation was caught on video by dozens of journalists and later took the internet by storm at the sight of a U.S. senator being taken down to the ground by federal agents after asking a question, even if he interrupted Noem as she was speaking.

Padilla, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, was then let go and led to a private room with Noem for 10 minutes, who was in Los Angeles to address the ongoing demonstrations protesting President Donald Trump's immigration policies.

"I will say this, if this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country," Padilla said to reporters at a hastily called news conference of his own."