Beyond the Border: Prosecuting ICE watchers, surveillance with school security cameras and another in-custody death
Here's what happened this week in immigration news.
Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Lauren J. Mapp
Welcome to another edition of Beyond the Border, which summarizes immigration news from across the country in a weekly roundup. Did I miss something? Message me via kate@daylightsandiego.org or on Instagram.
Retaliation against ICE watchers
The Trump administration has prosecuted at least 655 people with charges of forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating or interfering with a federal officer conducting official duties since last summer, Reuters reported, as it tries to punish people who follow and document Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. CNN reported that many of those charges have fallen apart under scrutiny.
A judge dismissed charges against a Los Angeles protester whom a federal official said assaulted him with a cloth hat, The Guardian reported. The man had spent six months in jail awaiting trial.
The Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of subpoenas to tech companies requesting information about social media accounts that track or critique ICE, the New York Times reported.
Ken Klippenstein reported that the Department of Homeland Security is now allowing agents to do “masked engagement” on social media, meaning they might use fake accounts to friend, like and follow their targets.
More community members are signing up to patrol for ICE — even people who never considered themselves to be activists, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Government surveillance
The 74 and The Guardian reported that the Trump administration is accessing school security cameras to conduct immigration enforcement in some states.
The Border Chronicle and Arizona Mirror investigated the level of surveillance along the Arizona border.
Detention deaths
A seventh person died in immigration custody this year, this time in Indiana, WFYI reported. Lorth Sim was originally from Cambodia and held at Miami Correctional Facility.
Members of Congress are pushing for answers about the death of a Bulgarian man in ICE custody in Michigan in December, Detroit Free Press reported.
Scripps News obtained photographs and 911 call information in the case of Geraldo Lunas Campos, whose death at Camp East Montana in Texas was ruled a homicide.
Conditions in custody
The Guardian reported that a federal judge in California ordered ICE to provide blankets, medical care and access to attorneys at the California City detention facility.
The New York Times reported that people held in ICE custody at facilities run by CoreCivic, a private prison company, are not getting adequate medical care.
NBC News spoke with a Russian family detained by ICE in Dilley, Texas, about conditions there, including worms in food, shouting guards and hours-long waits for medication. The father, Nikita, told NBC, “Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this.”
Borderless Magazine reported that the help provided by different consulates in Chicago to their citizens in U.S. immigration custody varies by country.
ABC News reported that a child who was asking for her father to be released from ICE custody while she battled cancer has died.
The New Yorker profiled a refugee in Minnesota whom ICE arrested and detained in Texas even though she had legal status to be in the U.S.
A Palestinian woman who protested the war in Gaza at Columbia University has been detained for nearly a year and recently suffered a seizure in ICE custody, the New York Times reported. She told the outlet that officials chained her to her hospital bed.
Sahan Journal reported that a Chilean man held in ICE custody offered to pay his own way back to his country so that he could get out of detention — and the U.S. — more quickly, but ICE won't let him, and the agency keeps canceling his deportation flights.
Updates on killings in Minnesota
In the hours after the killing of Alex Pretti, immigration officials in Minnesota aimed guns at a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who was there observing, took information from his phone without a warrant and scanned his face, The Intercept reported.
ProPublica published a video on Instagram looking at who is responsible for investigating shootings by federal immigration officials.
One of the women whom Alex Pretti was trying to help was an EMT, and immigration officials did not allow her to administer CPR, The Intercept reported.
Other news to watch
The American Civil Liberties Union in Idaho is using a law originally intended to help go after the Ku Klux Klan to sue over federal immigration officials’ behavior at a racetrack, Mother Jones reported.
WIRED reported that petitions to release people from immigration custody, known as habeas corpus petitions, have overwhelmed the federal court in Minnesota because of Trump administration policies that hold more people in detention.
The 19th News reported that TikTokers in Springfield, Ohio, spread false information about immigrant rights advocates and humanitarian workers trafficking Haitian children.
A Los Angeles teacher was fired after opening a school gate for his students to participate in a walk out protest over immigration enforcement, LAist reported.
Religious News Service reported that on Ash Wednesday, nearly 400 prominent Christian leaders released a scathing statement about the Trump administration's immigration enforcement tactics.
The Independent posted a video on Instagram of immigration officials luring a man out of his home to arrest him using two women who claimed they were having car trouble.
KARE 11 interviewed a Mexican woman battling lymphoma who has been in the U.S. since the 90s and is planning to leave over fears caused by ICE activity. She said her partner recently died of cancer because she was afraid to leave their home.
ICE arrested a Ugandan pastor and hospital worker in Vermont whose asylum case is on appeal, Mother Jones reported.
Chron reported that a high school soccer team dedicated its season to its captain, who has been in immigration custody with his father for about two months.
Tricia McLaughlin, the spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration, is leaving her job, the Washington Post reported.
The New Yorker profiled a family in New York whose father was detained by ICE.
A man fleeing ICE officials in Georgia crashed into another car and killed a teacher, USA Today reported.
KYMA reported that on Valentine's Day, activists protested Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino's return to El Centro, California.
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