More Immigrants Detained by ICE Recount Harsh and Cruel Treatment; Mother Jones, January 18, 2026

Katie Herchenroeder, Mother Jones; More Immigrants Detained by ICE Recount Harsh and Cruel Treatment

"As the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues to bring fear and upheaval to Minneapolis, more immigrants are sharing their stories of detainment and harsh treatment when being apprehended at their homes, while driving, and at work. Tensions continue to rise as federal immigration agents target people who they claim are in the country without legal status, as well as protestors filling the streets to demand accountability for Homeland Security’s often violent tactics, including ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ killing of Renée Good in her car. 

This week, according to reporting from the Minnesota Star Tribune, federal agents detained three workers from a family-owned Mexican restaurant hours after the agents themselves dined at the establishment. The agents reportedly followed the workers after the workers closed up for the night and took them into custody. That was not the first time ICE agents have gone to a local business as customers before arresting someone who works there. 

During a Saturday press conference, a recently released man described a different form of callousness by ICE. Garrison Gibson, 38, said that agents showed up to his house multiple times, eventually smashing open the door with a battering ram. After armed agents took him from his home Gibson says, they reveled in his detainment. 

“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” he said, adding, “like one stood by me on the right side of me. One stood on the left side of me. And they went, like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones.”"

Personal Details of Thousands of Border Patrol and ICE Goons Allegedly Leaked in Huge Data Breach; The Daily Beast, January 13, 2026

Tom Latchem , The Daily Beast; Personal Details of Thousands of Border Patrol and ICE Goons Allegedly Leaked in Huge Data Breach

"Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been released by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good...

Prior to the Monday’s leak, which Skinner said he received on Monday, ICE List had been in possession of details of around 2,000 federal immigration staff, including names it has chosen not to make public. 

Roughly 800 of these, he said, are frontline agents or are permitted to deputise for them on the ground. The latest leak brings details of the total number of federal immigration staff in its possession to around 6,500...

He added: “We will make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, the best examples of which will be those who work in childcare within the agency, and nurses. There will be more exceptions, but we will have a discussion once the team flags a position as something we need to think twice about...

He said his project was important because DHS refuses to hold its own agents accountable for violations of the law."

The Idea That Once Held America Together Died in 2025; The New York Times, December 24, 2025

John Fabian Witt , The New York Times; The Idea That Once Held America Together Died in 2025

"In a year when the United States seemed more split than ever, Americans united in one way: We demanded results, and we wanted them now. From ICE raids designed as a theater of terror and GLP-1 shortcuts for weight loss to A.I.-generated term papers, rampaging DOGE bros and summary Alien Enemies Act deportations, America raged against the journey and clamored for the destination, no matter what the lawyers and the chatbot therapists said. Outcomes seemed to be all that mattered. Winners win. Losers follow rules and talk it over.

The pattern was most conspicuous in a Washington that swept aside norms, starting with President Trump’s Inauguration Day assembly of billionaires and followed by a Project 2025-led smashing of the traditional rituals of administration. Regular order in Congress gave way to a federal shutdown, ad hoc continuing resolutions and forced votes on bills like the Epstein Files Transparency Act. With impoundments, the White House upended the Constitution’s carefully choreographed system for enacting spending bills. “Detain first, think later” became the angry spirit of immigration enforcement, even as the “Department of War” (renamed without the required congressional process) launched “kinetic strikes” that summarily executed dozens of people accused of being drug couriers."

The protesters showing up every week to shut down ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: ‘We will end this’; The Guardian, December 26, 2025

Richard Luscombe , The Guardian; The protesters showing up every week to shut down ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: ‘We will end this’

"They come on buses, in cars and RVs. Some ride on motorcycles. Every Sunday afternoon, convoys of protesters from all over Florida, and others from out of state, descend on the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail in the Everglades to stand vigil for those held inside.

It is a ritual that began in August, a month after the opening of the remote detention camp celebrated by Donald Trump for its harsh conditions, and hailed by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, as a model for the president’s aggressive detention and deportation agenda.

The open air vigils continued, and grew in size, through the brutal heat and torrential rains of the south Florida summer. They endured through a federal judge’s order in August that “Alligator Alcatraz” should close, and a subsequent reversal by an appeals court; the protesters’ voices grew louder at alleged human rights abuses and violence inflicted on detainees.

Over the holiday season, thousands more people are expected to join the protests. The Guardian spoke to several people at the heart of the vigils:..

The pastor

As pastor of the Allendale United Methodist church in St Petersburg, Andy Oliver has never been afraid of diving into political issues. The treatment of detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz”, he said, compelled him to organize a bus to attend the vigils, and he was encouraged that other locals joined his parishioners to make their voices heard.

“We filled up the bus and had to rent a couple more vehicles. We had so many people wanting to be there,” he said.

Oliver sees parallels at the immigration jail with the religious stories he preaches.

“In the Christmas story, the person who came to announce Jesus’s arrival was his cousin John the Baptist, and he was pretty quickly thrown in jail for calling for liberation,” he said.

“Jesus came to bring liberation to people. We have people that are physically being detained even beyond the scope of what the law allows, families are being separated, harms are being done. Jesus was born as a refugee. He spent most of his ministry with people on the margins. I think that’s where Jesus would be, he’d be calling for these prisons to be emptied.”

Oliver said the diversity of the vigil crowd was notable, and that it was “powerful” to share the experience with people of different faiths."

Trump Is Getting Weaker, and the Resistance Is Getting Stronger; The New York Times, December 26, 2025

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, The New York Times; Trump Is Getting Weaker, and the Resistance Is Getting Stronger

"It has been a gruesome year for those who see Donald Trump’s kakistocracy clearly. He returned to office newly emboldened, surrounded by obsequious tech barons, seemingly in command of not just the country but also the zeitgeist. Since then, it’s been a parade of nightmares — armed men in balaclavas on the streets, migrants sent to a torture prison in El Salvador, corruption on a scale undreamed of by even the gaudiest third-world dictators and the shocking capitulation by many leaders in business, law, media and academia. Trying to wrap one’s mind around the scale of civic destruction wrought in just 11 months stretches the limits of the imagination, like conceptualizing light-years or black holes.

And yet, as 2025 limps toward its end, there are reasons to be hopeful...

While Trump “has been able to do extraordinary damage that will have generational effects, he has not successfully consolidated power,” said Leah Greenberg, a founder of the resistance group Indivisible. “That has been staved off, and it has been staved off not, frankly, due to the efforts of pretty much anyone in elite institutions or political leadership but due to the efforts of regular people declining to go along with fascism.”"

Immigration Crackdown Creates Fault Lines Among Baptists; The New York Times, December 21, 2025

Elizabeth Dias and Shannon Sims, The New York Times; Immigration Crackdown Creates Fault Lines Among Baptists

"When federal agents descended on Louisiana this month to pursue their aggressive deportation campaign, a group of Roman Catholic priests privately brought the Eucharist to the homes of immigrants too worried to step outside.

But Lewis Richerson, the pastor of Woodlawn Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, planned to take an opposite approach.

“I would not knowingly extend communion to an illegal immigrant who is visiting our church,” he said. “That person would be in sin by being in this country illegally, and Christians should obey the law of the land.”

Instead, the main way he would minister to them would be “to help them submit themselves to the authorities,” he said. “They should absolutely deport themselves.”

Mr. Richerson’s church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with about 12.7 million members. For years, the denomination has supported immigration reforms, especially given its extensive missionary work and theological commitments to helping “the least of these,” as Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew.

But while Catholic bishops this year have repeatedly rebuked the Trump administration over its deportation actions, Southern Baptists are contending with an increasingly loud contingent in their ranks that, like Mr. Richerson, supports the immigration crackdown. Even as many rank-and-file churches continue to support immigrant ministries, signs of fracture are emerging.

In April, leaders of 13 Southern Baptist ethnic groups came together to ask the denomination’s leaders “to stand firm for religious liberty and speak on behalf of the immigrant and refugee,” and to request that the Trump administration consider penalties other than deportation...

Many evangelical leaders have long emphasized care for the stranger and the dignity of the human person, ideals rooted in their commitment to the Bible. But the denomination has also taken a rightward turn in recent years, and some leaders privately worry that speaking out will cause backlash from the more conservative flank...

Southern Baptists are overwhelmingly white and Republican, and they tend to support Mr. Trump’s broader agenda."

’60 Minutes’ Pulls Planned Segment On Trump Administration’s Deportation Of Migrants To Harsh El Salvador Prison; Show Says Report Will Air In Future; Deadline, December 21, 2025

Ted Johnson, Deadline ; ’60 Minutes’ Pulls Planned Segment On Trump Administration’s Deportation Of Migrants To Harsh El Salvador Prison; Show Says Report Will Air In Future

[Kip Currier: Time will tell if tonight's 60 Minutes reporting on El Salvadoran CECOT prison was censored. The timing and wording of the announcement are suspicious, particularly given concerns about new CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. (See here and here and here.)]

[Excerpt]

"CBS News’ 60 Minutes pulled a planned segment on the Trump administration’s deportation of mugrants [sic] to a harsh El Salvador prison. 

“The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” the network announced on Sunday evening, just hours before the planned broadcast.

A CBS News said of the segment, “We determined it needed additional reporting.” 

CBS News announced the segment on the 60 Minutes schedule last week. Per the network, the segment’s logline was: “Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists. This move sparked an ongoing legal battle, and nine months later the U.S. government still has not released the names of all those deported and placed in CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons.”

Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort; The New York Times, December 12, 2025

Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times; Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort

"The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders.

Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people.

It’s unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration."

Kilmar Abrego Garcia released after judge rules Trump admin lacked valid removal order; Fox News, December 11, 2025

Louis Casiano , Fox News; Kilmar Abrego Garcia released after judge rules Trump admin lacked valid removal order

"Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran illegal immigrant that became the face of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, has been released from detention.

Garcia's lawyer confirmed his release with Fox News. 

His release came after a federal judge on Thursday ordered he be freed."

WATCH: Rep. Magaziner confronts Noem with deported U.S. military veteran on Zoom in hearing; PBS, December 11, 2025

PBS ; WATCH: Rep. Magaziner confronts Noem with deported U.S. military veteran on Zoom in hearing

"Democrats questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about several deportations on Thursday, including identifying members of the House hearing audience they said had been deported or had family members who had been improperly treated by the immigration system.

Watch the video clip in the video above.

Noem said she would review the cases of several called out by Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island. One, a combat veteran, appeared on a screen via a video call. Magaziner said the Purple Heart recipient had been deported earlier this year."

Federal judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from ICE custody; Fox News, December 11, 2025

 Breanne Deppisch , Alex Nitzberg , Fox News; Federal judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from ICE custody

"A federal judge in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Thursday ordered Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from ICE custody, capping — for now – an extraordinary, 10-month legal fight that has spanned two continents, multiple federal courts, and prompted dozens of hearings in the aftermath of his removal.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered Abrego Garcia released from the ICE Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Pa., ruling that the Trump administration had not obtained the final notice of removal order needed to remove him to a third country."

This Prison Rehabilitated Inmates. Until ICE Paid to Fill It With Immigrants.; The New York Times, December 7, 2025

Allison McCann

Visuals by Cheney Orr

, The New York Times; This Prison Rehabilitated Inmates. Until ICE Paid to Fill It With Immigrants. Over two decades, a minimum-security prison aimed at helping inmates prepare to leave prison was a point of civic pride. Now, state officials have converted it to ICE detention.

[Kip Currier: What a troubling story to see how a Nebraska prison focused on helping inmates to reenter society has been converted to a "black box" detention facility given another derogatory nickname -- Cornhusker Clink -- that, like South Florida's Alligator Alcatraz, degrades the dignity of vulnerable persons.

Yesterday (12/6/25) I attended a Justice and Peace Mass at an Episcopal Church in Western Pennsylvania to pray for and acknowledge the plight of detainees, refugees, and immigrants. We also prayed for "continued blessings on all peacemakers, on leaders who value peace, and on everyone who promotes nonviolent solutions to conflict."

Two sections of the prayers from the Mass are particularly relevant to this story about the converted Nebraska ice facility:

We pray for all immigrants, refugees, and pilgrims from around the world, that they may be welcomed in our midst and be treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. 

God of outcasts and wanderers

Hear our prayer...

We pray for all prisoners and captives; that a spirit of forgiveness may replace vengeance and retribution; and that we, with all the destitute, lonely, and oppressed, may be restored to the fullness of God's grace.

God of absolution and mercy,

Hear our prayer

We also prayed for all those who oversee the persons held within these detention facilities.]

[Excerpt]

"For more than two decades, the prison, known as the Work Ethic Camp, was Nebraska’s only state prison geared solely toward rehabilitation. The facility held nonviolent felony offenders who were nearing the end of their sentences and prepared them, with counseling, schooling and job training, to return to the outside world.

That changed this fall, after state officials announced that the Work Ethic Camp would be replaced with a 300-bed, high security Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center to support President Trump’s national crackdown on illegal immigration.

And so a place that had been devoted to second chances now had a very different mission, and a new name to go with it: “The Cornhusker Clink.”

Detainees at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ facing ‘harrowing human right violations’, new report alleges; The Guardian, December 4, 2025

Richard Luscombe, The Guardian; Detainees at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ facing ‘harrowing human right violations’, new report alleges

"Detainees at the notorious Florida immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” were shackled inside a 2ft high metal cage and left outside without water for up to a day at a time, a shocking report published on Thursday by Amnesty International alleges.

The human rights group said migrants held at the state-run Everglades facility, and at Miami’s Krome immigration processing center operated by a private company on behalf of the Trump administration, continue to be exposed to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” rising in some cases to torture.

The cage, known to detainees as “the box”, is used by guards for the arbitrary punishment of trivial or non-existent offenses, according to the report compiled from interviews with detainees and advocacy groups, and a site visit to Krome made by Amnesty workers in September."

Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State: Human Rights Violations at “Alligator Alcatraz” and Krome in Florida; Amnesty International, December 4, 2025

Amnesty International; Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State: Human Rights Violations at “Alligator Alcatraz” and Krome in Florida

"This report presents Amnesty International’s findings from a research trip to southern Florida in September 2025 to document:

• Human rights impacts of federal and state migration and asylum policies on mass detention and deportation
• Access to due process and
• Detention conditions since President Trump took office on January 20, 2025.

In particular, it focuses on detention conditions at the Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome) and the Everglades Detention Facility, also known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Krome is an ICE detention facility located in Miami-Dade County on the edge of the Everglades. In 2025, the facility has faced heightened scrutiny after reports of severe overcrowding and several deaths. Amnesty International documented delays in intake procedures, overcrowding in temporary processing areas, inadequate and inaccessible medical care, alarming disciplinary practices including the use of prolonged solitary confinement, and challenges in access to legal representation and due process at Krome.

“Alligator Alcatraz” opened in July 2025 with the capacity to detain around 3,000 people. Amnesty International’s research concludes that people arbitrarily detained in “Alligator Alcatraz” are being held in inhuman and unsanitary conditions, including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposure to insects without protective measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water, and lack of privacy.

Amnesty International considers that detention conditions at both facilities amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The use of prolonged solitary confinement at Krome and the use of the ‘box’ at “Alligator Alcatraz” amount to torture or other ill-treatment.

Amnesty International calls on the Government of the United States to:

• End its cruel mass immigration detention and deportation machine
• Stop the criminalization of migration
• Bar the use of state-owned facilities for immigration custody detention
• Ensure thorough investigations into all deaths, abuses, and allegations of torture in custody, and
• Comply with international human rights law and standards."

‘Your Country Will Ultimately Get This Right’: Rachel Maddow on How the U.S. Will Move On From the Trump Era; Time, December 1, 2025

Philip Elliott, Time ; ‘Your Country Will Ultimately Get This Right’: Rachel Maddow on How the U.S. Will Move On From the Trump Era

"TIME spoke by phone last week with Maddow from her home in Western Massachusetts about her latest project, the MSNBC reboot, and how history can inform—but not save—the Resistance...

Doing the right thing doesn't always pay off in the short run, but your country will ultimately get this right. The good guys will be rewarded and the bad guys will be punished or forgotten. Having faith in those kinds of moral outcomes is really a nice guiding light to have in dark times like these...

How has your thinking about your specific role in the media environment changed since Trump 1.0? Has it changed? 

I was waving a lot of warning flags in Trump 1.0 about what could be going on and how we should see the risk of the kind of government Trump was trying to impose. 

Now, we're there. There's no use in warning anymore. We've got masked, totally unaccountable secret police grabbing women out of daycares and building prison camps everywhere. In less than a year, the President has stuffed multiple billions of dollars into his own pockets, into those of his family. He has literally torn down the White House. We're no longer at the point where we need to be warned about what's coming. We're now at a point where what we need is understanding what's going on, knowing what our options are in terms of how to preserve our democracy, to make sure that we're not going to be the generation that lost the republic."

Chicago’s faith leaders on front lines of resistance against ICE crackdown; The Guardian, November 28, 2025

Siri Chilukuri, The Guardian ; Chicago’s faith leaders on front lines of resistance against ICE crackdown

"For weeks, Chicago has been at the center of the Trump administration’s brutal immigration crackdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Homeland Security officials have arrested 800 people as of 1 October, while also using violent tactics such as body-slamming and deploying teargas in residential areas.

Amid the raids and arrests, which have created a pervasive sense of fear, faith leaders have stepped up, putting themselves on the front lines of resistance.

“Faith leaders bring a very powerful prophetic and moral compass into the space,” said the Rev Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, executive director of Live Free Illinois, a group that mobilizes Black churches around social justice issues in Chicago. “While many others may be able to argue the economic impact, or argue the law, faith leaders are typically the ones who are arguing and standing on the side of humanity and for people.”

‘I’ve Been Doing This Work for 25 Years and I’ve Never Seen Such Fear’; The New York Times, November 30, 2025

David French, The New York Times; ‘I’ve Been Doing This Work for 25 Years and I’ve Never Seen Such Fear’

[Kip Currier: Amidst appalling stories of brutality by masked ICE agents against migrants, detainees, immigrants, and even allied clergy members, examples of people helping and loving their neighbors, as described in David French's 11/30/25 New York Times piece, are heartening and inspiring.

Yesterday's 11/30/25 liturgical reading Romans 13:11-14 sees the apostle Paul's letter exhorting followers of Christ to "lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light". It's a particularly timely and pertinent reminder in conjunction with French's statement about present-day darkness and light:

The story of America is far from perfect, but if there is one constant in our history it’s that American darkness is always answered by American light.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/opinion/chicago-ice-new-life-centers.html 

What can each of us do to promote American light -- to put on the armor of light -- over the works of darkness?

To show compassion and generosity over hate and cruelty?

To see ourselves and those we love in the eyes of a stranger or migrant?]

 

[Excerpt]

"In the book of Leviticus, God says to his people, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

Providing care for immigrants is one of scripture’s clearest commands. It is one of the great tragedies of our time that millions of Christians are cheering and applauding the administration’s brutal crackdown on immigrants.

But not all Christians. There are believers, Catholic and Protestant alike, who are rallying to treat migrants with dignity, compassion and respect. New Life gets government funding for parts of its work, but DeMateo told me that when it began to support immigrant families during Operation Midway Blitz, it did so entirely on its own...

The story of America is far from perfect, but if there is one constant in our history it’s that American darkness is always answered by American light.

The masked agents of ICE make headlines with their aggression. But it’s important to answer those headlines with a different story, of volunteers who fulfill God’s command to love their neighbor — with their time, their money and their friendship."

Kristi Noem directed Venezuelans to be sent to El Salvador after federal judge ordered deportation planes turned around: DOJ; ABC News, November 25, 2025

Laura Romero and Luke Barr , ABC News; Kristi Noem directed Venezuelans to be sent to El Salvador after federal judge ordered deportation planes turned around: DOJ

"Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem directed that hundreds of Venezuelan men who were removed from the U.S. in March be transferred to El Salvador, despite a federal judge ordering deportation planes turned around, according to a new court filing from Trump administration lawyers. 

In the filing late Tuesday, the Department of Justice said that DOJ and DHS officials conveyed their legal advice to Noem after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg gave first an oral directive and then a written order that sought to block the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. 

"After receiving that legal advice, Secretary Noem directed that the AEA detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court's order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador," DOJ said on Tuesday."

Pope Leo calls out 'extremely disrespectful' treatment of migrants in the U.S.; NPR, November 18, 2025

Jason DeRose, NPR; Pope Leo calls out 'extremely disrespectful' treatment of migrants in the U.S.

"Pope Leo XIV said he is troubled by the violent and at times "extremely disrespectful" ways migrants have been treated in the United States. 

The Pope made his remarks while answering questions from journalists at Castel Gandolfo, the papal vacation residence outside Rome. 

"We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have. If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts. There's a system of justice," the Pope said. 

"No one has said that the United States should have open borders," the Pope continued. "I think every country has the right to determine who enters, how, and when.""

Judge Criticizes Immigration Agents in Chicago: ‘Use of Force Shocks the Conscience’; The New York Times, November 6, 2025

 Julie Bosman, The New York Times; Judge Criticizes Immigration Agents in Chicago: ‘Use of Force Shocks the Conscience’

"A federal judge castigated the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday for its aggressive use of force during an illegal immigration crackdown in Chicago in recent weeks, banning the use of tear gas and other crowd-control weapons “unless necessary to stop the immediate threat of physical harm.”

Judge Sara L. Ellis, of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, said that government officials, including the senior Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, had repeatedly lied about their own tactics and the actions of protesters."