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.”"

What the Venezuelans Deported to El Salvador Experienced; Time, March 21, 2025

Philip Holsinger, Time ; What the Venezuelans Deported to El Salvador Experienced

"Around 2 a.m., the convoy of 22 buses, flanked by armored vehicles and police, moved out of the airport. Soldiers and police lined the 25-mile route to the prison, with thick patrols at every bridge and intersection. For the few Salvadorans, it was a familiar landscape. But for a Venezuelan plucked from America, it must have appeared dystopian—police and soldiers for miles and miles in woodland darkness.

The Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT, sits in an old farm field at the foot of an ancient volcano, brightly lit against the night sky. I’ve spent considerable time there and know the place intimately. As we entered the intake yard, the head of prisons was giving orders to an assembly of hundreds of guards. He told them the Venezuelans had tried to overthrow their plane, so the guards must be extremely vigilant. He told them plainly: Show them they are not in control.

The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster.

The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear. 

Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.

After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair.

They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts."