House Progressives Demand Pentagon Answer for Alleged Abuse in US-Ecuador Operation

“The United States cannot continue to be complicit in abuses abroad. There must be accountability,” said Rep. Chuy García, who co-led a letter to the Pentagon.


US and Ecuadorian marines take part in a training exercise near Jaramijó, Ecuador on July 11, 2025.
(Photo by US Southern Command)

Jessica Corbett
May 13, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Backed by anti-war and human rights organizations, 20 “deeply concerned” progressives in the US House of Representatives sent a letter to the Pentagon on Wednesday demanding answers about “reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities during joint US-Ecuador military operations conducted in northern Ecuador.”

While bombing Iran and boats allegedly running illegal drugs through the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, President Donald Trump deployed US troops to Ecuador in March for a joint campaign combating “narco-terrorists” in the South American country.

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Led by Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús “Chuy” García (Ill.), and Sara Jacobs (Calif.), the lawmakers called for “an explanation of the administration’s legal justification for the involvement of US armed forces in these operations, which have not been authorized by Congress,” as well as their immediate suspension “until these incidents are fully investigated.”

The Democrats’ letter to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cites reporting that one target “appears to have been a civilian dairy and cattle farm with no known links to armed groups or drug trafficking,” where witnesses said “Ecuadorian military personnel interrogated and assaulted unarmed civilians, burned homes and infrastructure, and subjected detainees to torture.”

“Beyond these recent incidents, we are concerned that our military is deepening its ties with the government of Ecuador, even as it undergoes an alarming authoritarian and anti-democratic drift,” the Democrats wrote, pointing out that “President Daniel Noboa has overseen the violent repression of Indigenous-led protests, publicly threatened the Constitutional Court, and frozen the bank accounts of civil society organizations.”

Noboa’s allies “have also pursued questionable cases against his political opponents,” as “Ecuadorians have endured more than two years of a prolonged state of emergency, marked by the military’s domestic deployment to combat so-called ‘narco-terrorists,” the letter continues. “With investigative reporting now linking President Noboa’s family business to drug trafficking and the same illicit networks he claims to be fighting, an independent and transparent investigation into these allegations is warranted.”




The letter stresses that “if US forces provide new or continued security assistance to units that engaged in acts such as torture, extrajudicial killings, or enforced disappearances, and there is no credible investigation or prosecution underway, this would constitute a violation of the Leahy Laws, which prohibit assistance to foreign security forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations without effective steps to bring those responsible to justice.”

The Democrats—supported by Amnesty International USA, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Human Rights First, Latin American Working Group, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, StoptheDrugWar.org, Washington Office on Latin America, and Win Without War—demanded “a prompt and complete response” to their list of questions by May 22.

“The United States cannot continue to be complicit in abuses abroad. There must be accountability,” García said on social media.

As El País reported Wednesday, the letter was made public as Noboa began a two-day trip to Washington, DC, during which he is set to meeting with US Vice President JD Vance and Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Ramdin.

Antisemitism Watchdog Rips ‘Blood Libel’ Smear Against NYT for Reporting Israeli Rape of Gazans

“To weaponize the term ‘blood libel’ to dismiss Kristof’s thorough reporting is dangerous. It’s insulting to the term’s violent history and hinders our community’s ability to call out actual blood libels when they occur.”

Palestinians held at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in the Negev Desert are seen shackled and blindfolded in this undated photo.
(Photo by whistleblower via Quds News Network)

Brett Wilkins
May 13, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A Jewish-led organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism was among the groups and individuals who on Tuesday condemned attacks on The New York Times and one of its most prominent columnists, who published accounts by alleged Palestinian victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Nicholas Kristof’s column, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” combines interviews with 14 former Palestinian detainees and information from reports published by United Nations experts and human rights groups to highlight documented rape and other systemic sexual abuse of Palestinians jailed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, as well as sexual assaults and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli settler-colonists. The column features the controversial claim by one former prisoner that he was raped by a dog unleashed upon him by Israeli soldiers.



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The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded to the column in a social media post alleging that the Times “chose to publish one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press.”

“In an unfathomable inversion of reality, and through an endless stream of baseless lies, propagandist Nicholas Kristof turns the victim into the accused,” the ministry said.

Responding to the ministry’s post, the Nexus Project—a group “made up of individuals deeply committed to the fight against antisemitism”—said on Bluesky: “To weaponize the term ‘blood libel’ to dismiss Kristof’s thorough reporting is dangerous. It’s insulting to the term’s violent history and hinders our community’s ability to call out actual blood libels when they occur.”

“Kristof’s article is a challenging and important read,” the group added. “It takes courage and care to expose sexual violence.”

On Tuesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the Times of serving “a Hamas-driven narrative,” claiming the newspaper “deliberately timed its piece to undermine today’s horrific Civil Commission report documenting Hamas’ preplanned, systematic sexual atrocities on October 7, [2023] and against hostages thereafter—attempting to create false equivalence and belittle documented crimes.”

The Times refuted a claim by the ministry that the newspaper “said it was not interested” in reporting on Hamas sexual violence on and after the October 7 attack. In fact, the Times updated its earlier reporting on Hamas sex crimes after Israeli investigator called said critical details were “false.”

Critics of the column also cast aspersions upon the alleged Palestinian victims and rights groups that documented the sexual violence they suffered, linking them to Hamas. The Times and other US media have been accused of accepting Israeli claims at their word but treating Palestinian testimonies with skepticism or outright dismissal.



Numerous other pro-Israel accounts, including the American Jewish Committee and EndJewHatred, have either repeated the “blood libel” accusation against Kristof or amplified social media posts that did so.

Many—including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—denied or questioned the veracity of Kristof, his sources, and the Times.



This, despite numerous reports by United Nations experts, as well as Israeli and international human rights groups, of Israeli rape and sexual violence against Palestinian men, women, and children in both Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank—a pattern that goes back to the Nakba ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

Senior Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have defended soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner in an attack caught on camera at the notorious Sde Teiman prison. The IDF is investigating the deaths of dozens of Palestinians at Sde Teiman, including one man who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.

Right-wing Israeli politicians, pundits, and others publicly argued that IDF troops should have free rein to rape, torture, and murder Palestinians as revenge for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

An August 2025 investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured Palestinian boys kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza who said they suffered or witnessed sexual torture committed by their jailers.

Last year, Israel blocked a request from UN sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid attendant scrutiny of rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.

Other Israelis and their defenders expressed incredulity or proclaimed the impossibility of dogs being trained to rape people.

“My brain does not know how to process the fact that The New York Times—the paper I grew up worshiping and hoping to work for one day—published, on the front page, that Israelis are training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners,” tech entrepreneur and anti-progressive commentator Michelle Tandler said Monday on X.

However, in addition to repeated Palestinian claims of such abuse, female Holocaust survivors have said they were assaulted by dogs specially trained by Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie. Later, Ingrid Oderock, a Chilean raised in a Nazi colony in the South American country, became one of the most feared torturers during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Her specialty, as noted in the Academy Award-nominated animated short film Bestia, was training dogs to rape jailed female dissidents.

Israel has repeatedly attempted to neutralize criticism of its crimes during the Gaza onslaught—from the deadly famine that’s claimed at least hundreds of lives, to the apparently deliberate shooting of children, to attacks on aid workers and civilian “safe zones,” to the torture of Palestinian prisoners—by smearing those who expose them with accusations of blood libel.

Responding to the common Israeli smear, socialist author Owen Jones said on Bluesky: “Israel’s crimes are not a ‘blood libel.’ They are documented truth.”

‘Albanese Has Done Nothing More Than Speak!’ Judge Blocks Trump Sanctions on UN Palestine Expert

“The interim decision by the US judge gives me respite,” said United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese. “But the battle is not over.”

Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, speaks during an event in Madrid, Spain on June 23, 2025.
(Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
May 14, 2026

COMMON DREAMS

A federal judge in Washington, DC on Wednesday temporarily blocked Trump administration sanctions targeting United Nations Palestine expert Francesca Albanese, ruling that the punitive measures violated her First Amendment rights.

“Albanese has done nothing more than speak!” wrote US District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, in his 26-page decision granting a preliminary injunction against the sanctions, which US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last summer. Rubio said the sanctions, which barred the UN expert from entering the US and banking in the country, were justified because “Albanese has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.”




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But Leon wrote in his ruling that “it is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions—they are nothing more than her opinion.”

The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed in February by Albanese’s husband and her daughter, who is a US citizen. They argued the US sanctions against Albanese were “effectively debanking her and making it nearly impossible to meet the needs of her daily life.”

Albanese is an Italian national who currently lives with family in Tunisia. Leon wrote in his ruling that “while the speech at issue occurred outside the United States, defendants have responded by taking action against Albanese’s extensive connections to the United States—including Albanese’s property within the United States and her ability to maintain professional and personal connections within the United States—because of her speech.”

“Accordingly, Albanese (or plaintiffs standing in her shoes) may claim the protection of the First Amendment to challenge defendants’ actions,” the judge continued.

Albanese, who has vocally condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the countries and private corporations that have been complicit, welcomed Leon’s ruling, writing in a social media post that “the interim decision by the US judge gives me respite.”

“But the battle is not over,” she added. “ICC judges and Palestinian NGOs remain sanctioned with no recourse to justice. The stakes are incredibly high.”

Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the US-based Center for International Policy, called Leon’s ruling “the right decision” and said Albanese “was wrongly sanctioned for constitutionally protected speech.”

“War criminals should be held accountable for their crimes,” Williams wrote on social media. “Making it a crime to say that is what is illegal. We must not sacrifice our rights or the rule of law for Israel.”

Europe keeps scrambling fighters to 'intercept' American jets

REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Nick Hilden

May 13, 2026

ALTERNET

Under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the U.S. has taken an increasingly hostile stance toward its membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And now, according to Stars and Stripes, one NATO nation has scrambled fighter jets to confront U.S. aircraft twice in the past week.

According to Austrian defense ministry spokesman Michael Bauer, the incidents on Sunday then Monday involved Austrian Eurofighters intercepting American PC-12s. Bauer described it as a “priority A” situation, which is typically reserved for urgent military matters, saying that the fighters were dispatched to verify whether the American aircraft matched relevant flight registration. He asserted that the matter would be addressed through diplomatic channels.

All of this comes amid growing tension not only between the U.S. and NATO in general, but between Washington and Austria specifically, as the country was one of several that denied the use of its airspace for U.S. missions relating to the war with Iran. Trump’s aggression toward NATO — which he calls a “paper tiger” — has strained relations between the U.S. and its European allies as the president has sought to leave the security organization. The conflict in the Middle East has further complicated the situation as NATO has balked at Trump’s repeated pleas for help with the war. Now the Austrian interception of American planes suggests a widening divide between the U.S. and its allies across the Atlantic.

While the PC-12 is a Swiss-made jet, as the U.S. military publication Stars and Stripes explained, “Air Force Special Operations Command’s fleet includes the U-28A, which is a modified variant of the PC-12. The planes are typically used for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.”

“It wasn’t clear why the Austrians felt compelled to scramble fighters to identify the aircraft,” noted Stars and Stripes. “Assuming that the U.S. planes were traveling with their transponders on and in radio contact, they should have been visible to air traffic control.”

U.S. European Command said in a statement Wednesday that the two American aircraft were following “standard protocol” when they passed over Austria en route to an exercise in Eastern Europe on Monday. The statement did not mention the incident on Sunday.

“This flight took place after an administrative error in the overflight clearance paperwork was corrected,” claimed EUCOM. “The United States continues to work closely with Austrian authorities on any questions regarding overflights and fully complies with Austrian laws and procedures.”When asked on X why Austria felt the need to scramble an air response to the Americans, Bauer said simply that “some things you just have to see.”

'Backwards at warp speed': How the South is systematically erasing Black power

A supporter reacts to early election results at Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris' election night rally during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, at Howard University, in Washington, U.S., November 5, 2024. REUTERS/Daniel Cole TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY/File Photo

Robert Reich

May 12, 2026

ALTERNET

Yesterday I spoke with Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, one of the nation’s young Black leaders who’s been a rising star in Tennessee politics, about the Supreme Court’s shameful April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Jones told me that, at Trump’s urging, Tennessee Republicans had prepared a redistricting map even before the Court announced its decision. Then, despite pleas from Black voters and voting rights advocates, the white Republican legislators moved their meeting to another room without allowing the public in to watch, passed the new map out of committee, and enacted it within 24 hours.

The new map has eliminated Tennessee’s one remaining Democratic district around Memphis, a city of about 610,000 people, about two-thirds of whom are Black — by cracking it into three majority-white district, one stretching hundreds of miles. The map has also divided Nashville, another city with a Black majority, into five white-majority districts.

Jones described Tennessee house speaker Cameron Sexton as the “grand wizard in chief,” explaining that “that’s what they want to do. They want to create a process that is unfair and unequal.”

Other Southern states have joined Tennessee’s rush to redistrict.

Louisiana’s governor has ordered that the state’s ongoing congressional election be set aside while state lawmakers redraw maps to eliminate a Democratic-majority – that is, a Black-majority – seat covering Baton Rouge.

At Trump’s request, Alabama Republicans have approved legislation directing the governor to schedule new primary elections this year under a GOP-friendly map that would end districts represented by Black lawmakers, if courts lift an injunction on its redistricting.

The Mississippi legislature will soon convene in a Confederate-era capitol building that it hasn’t used in 100 years, presumably to eliminate the Democratic majority in the one Mississippi district held by a Black representative.

South Carolina’s Republican majority in the statehouse voted Wednesday to extend its legislative calendar, allowing time to consider whether they should eliminate the state’s sole Democratic-majority, Black-majority district, held by long-serving representative James Clyburn.

Florida was already in a special redistricting session when the Supreme Court announced its decision, enacting a congressional map for its 28 districts that packs Black and brown voters into four districts on the south Florida coast and Orlando, eliminating every other Democratic majority.

“We’re going backwards at warp speed,” Jones told me. “In just over a week, we’ve gone from the 1965 Voting Rights Act back to the era of Jim Crow.”


I asked him what he and other Black political leaders in the South were planning to do.

“There’ll be a lot of litigation,” he said, “but we can’t be optimistic with this Supreme Court.”

“So, what’s the strategy?”

“We need the biggest voter turnout in history this fall. Every Black person, every Brown person, every Democrat, everyone who cares about the moral soul of this nation has to vote for equal voting rights. Take over Congress. Increase our power in state legislatures. This is the only way to respond.”


“I’m with you,” I said, “but I really wonder whether that’s possible.”

“How about a new Freedom Summer?” Jones responded, with a smile. “A multi-racial force of young people fanning out across the South, registering voters, getting them to the polls, just like they did in 1964.”

“I remember. I lost a dear friend in Mississippi Freedom Summer.”

“I have no direct memory, of course,” Jones said. “I was born in 1995, thirty-one years after Freedom Summer. But the South is almost back to where it was then. So, yes, it’s possible. It’s got to be possible.”


I told him I’d share his idea with you, and ask you for your responses.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

ABC Learns from Past Mistakes, Takes Stronger Stance Against Carr and Trump’s Censorship Campaign


Friday May, 08 2026
Free Press

WASHINGTON - In a filing made public on Friday, ABC accused Federal Communications Commission regulators of violating its free-speech rights and called out FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for attempting to punish the broadcaster for airing political content that displeased the Trump White House.

The FCC had reportedly ordered Houston station KTRK-TV, which ABC owns and operates, to file a formal request asking whether The View qualified for the Equal Time Rule exemption when it booked an interview with Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico. The request wasn’t warranted as the FCC had specifically granted The View this exemption in a 2002 order.

The Equal Time Rule, under Section 315 of the Communications Act, requires that broadcast stations provide equal access and airtime to all legally qualified political candidates if they permit any one candidate to use their facilities. The rule does not apply to bona fide newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries or on-the-spot news events (like political debates).

“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” reads ABC’s filing. “It is therefore imperative that the Commission act quickly to assure broadcasters that it will uphold its long-established standards protecting broadcasters’ good faith news judgment in including political candidates in bona fide news programming.”

ABC has not always defended its free-speech rights. In December 2024, the company paid $15 million to resolve a meritless Trump defamation lawsuit against the network and its anchor George Stephanopoulos. In September 2025, Disney decided to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night program after Chairman Carr threatened to take action following comments the comedian made during his opening monologue.

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González said:

“I’m pleased that ABC has finally learned that bullies don’t stop when companies cower in a corner. The FCC chairman has blatantly and repeatedly abused his power to silence speech that displeases Trump. This doesn’t just violate the First Amendment rights of broadcasters on the receiving end of Brendan Carr’s tactics; it also harms the broadcasters’ audiences. People deserve access to diverse viewpoints over the airwaves, and the ways in which ABC and other broadcasters have repeatedly capitulated to the administration has chilled free expression and access to information.

“Chairman Carr’s overreach is startling and unpopular across the political spectrum. After Donald and Melania Trump demanded that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel for making a joke they didn’t like, Carr announced that he would conduct an early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses — an abuse of power that Senator Ted Cruz and people of all political stripes condemned. I urge ABC and its parent company Disney to continue fighting for free speech. Doing anything less deprives audiences of the diversity of viewpoints that are critical to the health of a democracy.”


Free Press was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what's actually happening in their communities.

Nebraska Democrat Wins Senate Primary—But Signals She’ll Drop Out and Back Working-Class Independent Dan Osborn

“We believe Dan Osborn... represents the best opportunity to defeat Pete Ricketts and deliver real results for working families,” said the chair of the state Democratic Party.


Independent US Senate candidate Dan Osborn talks to a voter in Nebraska.
(Photo by Osborn for Senate)

Julia Conley
May 13, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The winner of the Democratic US Senate primary in Nebraska has no expectation that she’d be able to win the general election in November, and her official website alludes to a plan to drop out of the race—which could ultimately help the party in its goal of wresting control of the chamber from Republicans.

The campaign website of Cindy Burbank, a pharmacy technician who jumped into the Democratic primary race after hearing the Republicans were plotting to place a right-wing “plant” on the ballot, suggests Burbank did some maneuvering of her own to secure a favorable result—even if she has no intention of actually going to the US Senate and instead aims to help Independent candidate Dan Osborn win.

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) “knows he’s losing to Dan Osborn and this is his plan to cheat his way to victory. We can’t let that happen,” reads Burbank’s website. “Support me—and I’ll make sure Pete Ricketts’ stooge never gets anywhere near our November ballot!”

Osborn, a former organizer who came within seven points of beating Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) in 2024, has been endorsed by the state’s Democratic Party, which poured money into Burbank’s campaign before Tuesday’s primary.

In March, state Democratic Party Chair Jane Fleming Kleeb said William Forbes, an anti-abortion rights pastor who has voted for President Donald Trump in recent elections and attended a training run by a right-wing group, had joined the Democratic Party to “deceive Nebraska voters.”

“The Nebraska Democratic Party made a deliberate, principled decision not to field a candidate in the US Senate race,” said Kleeb. “We believe Dan Osborn—a veteran, a mechanic, a Nebraskan, and an independent voice—represents the best opportunity to defeat Pete Ricketts and deliver real results for working families.”

Forbes has denied being a “Ricketts plant,” as Kleeb has called him, and Burbank on Tuesday denied she had joined the race with the intention of dropping out to help Osborn win in a state where a Democrat has not won a Senate race since 2006. She told NBC News that “some people” she had worked with on previous political campaigns had spoken to her about running, but said they were not connected to Osborn’s campaign or to the state Democratic Party.

But she added that following her overwhelming win, with 89% of primary voters supporting her, that Osborn is “a great guy, and we have to keep in mind that he might be able to be on [the ballot].”

“For me to stay on the ballot and take votes away from Osborn, it’s not fair,” she told the outlet.

Burbank added that she “will drop out when and if the time comes that I cannot win in November. And I think anybody with any dignity should do that.”

David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, said Burbank’s resounding victory “suggests a well-educated [Democratic] electorate” and a well-organized push by Kleeb.




Osborn, who has emphasized that he would caucus independently if elected to the Senate, came closer than expected to beating Fischer in 2024, when Trump carried Nebraska by 20 points.

Polling has been limited so far, but Tavern Research found ahead of the primary election that 47% of likely voters were supporting Osborn while 42% backed Ricketts. The same survey found Ricketts 16 points ahead of Forbes, 9 points ahead of Burbank, and 7 points ahead of a generic Democrat. Earlier polls sponsored by Osborn’s campaign found Ricketts just one point ahead of the Independent.

Tavern Research said the polls pointed to “an Independent problem in Nebraska” for Ricketts, whose wealth and financial industry ties have earned him the nickname “Wall Street Pete.”

The state has long been a stronghold for Trump and the GOP, but Cook Political Report currently rates the state’s Senate race as “likely Republican,” downgrading it from “solidly Republican,” ahead of the November election.

Osborn, a US Navy veteran and mechanic, became president of his union while working at the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha and led a successful strike there in 2021, securing benefits for his fellow union workers. He has called his platform the Nebraska Fairness Plan and is vowing to “take on the corporations and their chosen political lapdogs to restore economic liberty and fairness for the working Americans who make this country run.”

He has called to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that allowed unlimited corporate spending in elections, refuses corporate political action committee donations, and has demanded an end to corporate practices like “shrinkflation” and surveillance pricing.

“We deserve a government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people,” reads Osborn’s platform. “But for decades, career politicians in both parties have been bought and paid for by the corporate cronies and lobbyists pouring money into our political process to bend the system to their will. When I’m in the Senate, I will champion the strongest anti-corruption platform Washington has ever seen.”

Judge puts Trump's immigration regime on ice with major rebuke: lawyer

Robert Davis
May 13, 2026 
RAW STORY


A member of the Special Response Team (SRT) holds his weapons at a protest against the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, during a rally against increased immigration enforcement across the city outside the Whipple Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 8, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans/File Photo

A judge appointed by President Donald Trump just put the president's immigration regime on ice with a major rebuke, according to one lawyer.

Recently, a federal appeals court in New York ruled that the Trump administration's policy of detaining suspected illegal immigrants without bond is illegal. The judge in the case, Joseph F. Bianco, who was appointed to the bench by Trump during his first administration, ruled that the administration's "government’s novel interpretation of the immigration statute defies their plain text" and ordered the administration to provide bond hearings for the detainees.

Shant Karnikian, a lawyer and host of the "Civil Action" podcast on the Legal AF Network, said in a new episode that the ruling is a "major loss" for the administration.


"When your own nominee writes the majority opinion rejecting your policy as the broadest mass deportation without bond mandate in American history, that's not just a legal setback. It's a major, major loss for the Trump administration," Karnikian said.

The Trump administration has faced mounting legal challenges over its immigration detention practices, including holding U.S. citizens and legal residents without due process, deporting individuals to third countries without notice, and circumventing habeas corpus protections.

Federal courts have repeatedly ruled against the administration, which has defied or slow-walked several judicial orders.

The case in New York stemmed from a Trump administration policy that reclassified long-term residents who entered without being screened as being eligible for deportation. In turn, they were detained without a bond hearing.

However, that plan relied on what Karnikian described as "legal fiction" that long-term residents are still "seeking admission" to the country. That ruling could be used to squash future detentions of a similar kind.

"It's a fiction," he said. "I mean, you can't do that. You can't have it like kind of retroactively treat them, look at their history, and go, 'Well, he was seeking admission at one point.'"

911 call reveals ICE pepper-sprayed 47 detainees in overcrowded holding facility

Jerod Macdonald-Evoy, 

Arizona Mirror
May 13, 2026 

FILE PHOTO: An ICE officer is seen at Otay Mesa immigration detention center in San Diego, California, U.S. May 18, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

In the early morning hours of late February, a 911 call was made from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Mesa because a man was having a seizure after immigration agents used pepper spray on a group of 47 detainees in an enclosed room.

“Um, yeah we had, uh, a officer safety issue here,” ICE Ofc. Gene Rivero told a dispatcher with the Mesa Fire and Medical Department, according to a 911 call obtained by the Arizona Mirror through a public records request. “Pepper spray was used and we have a couple subjects that need to be looked at and one subject specifically that appears to be seizing.”


The incident had occurred at the Arizona Removal and Operations Coordination Center housed at the Mesa-Gateway Airport. The facility, first exclusively reported on by the Mirror, is a 25,000-square-foot facility at the airport. It opened in 2010 to little fanfare and can house up to 157 detainees and 79 ICE employees.

It is one of many temporary hold facilities across the country, meant to house detainees for short periods of time before they are shipped to longer-term facilities or removed from the country.


But a Mirror analysis of data of ICE detention records that the Deportation Data Project obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that, in some cases, detainees have stayed for longer than the 12 hours ICE has said the facility is meant for.

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And AROCC has regularly held far more detainees than it is supposed to. The day that ICE agents pepper sprayed the inmates as they were housed in a small room — each room has a capacity of no more than two dozen, though nearly 50 were in the room this day — there were a reported 332 detainees being held.

The pepper spray incident happened a week after a congressional oversight visit, prior to which ICE had shuffled around detainees so that AROCC had some of the lowest numbers it had seen all year.


ICE said the officers used pepper spray to quell disruptive behavior in the overcrowded detention room.

“Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) spray was deployed on a group of detainees at the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center in Mesa, AZ, following repeated verbal commands to cease kicking the cell door, banging the windows, and exhibiting aggressive behavior toward officers,” ICE said in a statement to the Mirror. “At approximately 2:15 a.m., an ICE detainee was transported to East Valley Emergency Room (EVER) due to an asthma episode. The detainee was released from EVER at approximately 3:15 a.m.. There is no evidence to suggest that the asthma episode experienced was caused by exposure to OC spray with the detainee’s pre-existing medical condition.”

ICE did not respond to questions asking about the comments made by its own employee about the detainee “seizing,” if any employees of the agency also required treatment or what policies the agency has for the use of pepper spray in confined spaces.


From the 911 call, it’s clear that ICE agents were affected by the spray. As he spoke with the dispatcher, Rivero repeatedly paused to cough, and others can be heard coughing in the background. Rivero told the dispatcher that ICE agents were attempting to “air out” the facility to clear out the chemical agent.

Firefighters said they “found one individual outside with security that was struggling from the exposure to the pepper spray.”

“We also found many people sitting in the breeze way (sic) shackled at the feet. Security was bringing inmates out five at a time and placing them in the breeze way,” according to a fire department report obtained by the Mirror.


“At the beginning we only had the one patient. Eventually we ended up

evaluating a second patient who ended up refusing transport,” the report says.

A report of the incident obtained by the Mirror shows that firefighters said that there was only one patient, but approximately 30 others were “getting out of cells” and that they “may need a lot of ppl wash down” due to the pepper spray.


Both the Queen Creek Fire Department and Gilbert Fire Department helped respond to the call.





Last month, three Arizona Democratic members of Congress showed up at AROCC unannounced for a surprise oversight visit. They said afterward that the holding rooms had roughly double the number of people than the maximum capacity posted outside each room. One said that detainees were packed in the rooms “like sardines.”

One of those lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, told the Mirror in a written statement that the audio from the 911 call made her sick.

“This makes me sick to my stomach. You could hear detainees coughing and struggling to breathe,” Ansari said. “ICE is cruel — I’ve witnessed that cruelty firsthand. I’ve seen my constituent, Yari, coughing up blood while suffering from medical neglect. I’ve seen people packed into small concrete cells at Mesa Gateway, sick and crowded together like sardines.


“Time and time again, I’ve demanded answers from ICE and they’ve failed to show basic humanity or accountability. That’s why I’ll continue to vote NO on any additional funding for ICE.”

An airplane sits on the tarmac at Mesa Gateway Airport on the evening of April 9, 2026, outside of the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center, an ICE facility where detainees are temporarily housed before they are put on a plane to either be deported or moved to a different ICE facility. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)

Another one of those lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, said in a statement to the Mirror that she is “deeply concerned” with the increased use of force against ICE detainees.


“People who are simply asking for food, water, and medical care should not be met with force,” Grijalva said. “Equally concerning is the severe overcrowding at this facility, where the population on the day of the incident far exceeded the facility’s maximum capacity. When detention facilities become overcrowded and conditions deteriorate, the risk of escalation and harm increases significantly.”

The Tucson Democrat said she is also troubled by ICE’s response to questions about the incident and is calling for greater transparency on this incident as well as what protocols the agency has on use-of-force “particularly in confined spaces and against medically vulnerable individuals.”

“ICE’s immediate attempt to dismiss any possible connection between the medical emergency and the deployment of pepper spray is equally concerning and reflects a broader pattern of deflecting accountability and gaslighting the public,” she said. “I’m calling on ICE to provide full transparency regarding this incident, including whether proper protocols were followed and what steps are being taken to ensure the health and safety of individuals in custody.”

An internal report, obtained by the Washington Post and published as part of a larger database of use of force incidents at detention centers, gives a little more insight into the incident.

“On February 27, 2026, (Enforcement and Removal Operations) Phoenix reported the use of force on a group of 47 detainees while housed at the AROCC in Mesa, Arizona,” ICE wrote. “No injuries were reported, ERO leadership. (Mesa Fire and Medical Department), and the ICE (Office of Professional Responsibility) Intake Center were notified.”

Mesa Fire had already seen the overcrowding at the facility a few weeks prior and had given ICE a list of corrections.

In late January, the local agency responded to a medical call at AROCC, where it found such severe overcrowding that it gave ICE a list of corrections it needed to make.

ICE told Mesa Fire that the 238 people records show were detained that day was an aberration because of a measles outbreak at another Arizona facility. The agency promised the number of detainees would be back under the listed maximum capacity of 157 within a week.

But the next day, records show the daily population was 646 people. The day after that, it was 526. Within a couple of days, there were 777 people being housed at AROCC. On Feb. 4, the day ICE had said the overcrowding would be resolved, there were 513 people locked in the facility’s detention rooms.


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The use of force incident at AROCC is one of many this year.

In 2024, there were 23 reported use of force incidents for the entire year at detention centers in Arizona. In 2025, that number rose to 34. In just the first two months of 2026, there were 13 incidents, putting ICE on pace to use force on immigrant detainees 78 times.

From the start of January to the end of February in 2024, there were three use of force reports and in 2025, there were five. This year marks a 333% and 160% increase from the same timeframe in previous years.

The majority of use-of-force incidents are taking place at the Eloy Detention Center, and the reports offer little information on what happened.

So far in 2026, the Eloy Detention Center has reported 4 use of force incidents; the narrative supplied in the official database only lists the nationalities of those involved, the date of the incident and that there was a “use of force.”

In 2024, under the administration of President Joe Biden, reports included more information.

For example, a report on Jan. 6, 2024, provides a narrative about how “contract staff” issued verbal commands to a “Senegalese national detainee” to “stop punching and kicking his cell door.”

“The EDC staff deployed a short burst of OC spray into the detainee’s cell to gain compliance. The detainee was extracted and escorted to the shower area for decontamination,” the narrative says. It goes on to say that the detainee was evaluated and later released in “administrative segregation pending a disciplinary hearing.”

Reports since President Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025 have become less transparent. While reports in 2025 continued to include some information about the use of things like pepper spray and why use of force was used, reports on incidents in 2026 have virtually no details.

“ERO Phoenix reported the use of force on a Jamaican national detainee and a Syrian national detainee while housed at the EDC in Eloy, Arizona. No injuries were reported. ERO leadership was notified,” the narrative for one 2026 report states.

“ERO Phoenix reported the use of force on two Mexican national detainees and two Cuban national detainees while housed at the EDC in Eloy, Arizona. No injuries were reported. ERO leadership was notified,” another report says.

None of the 2026 narratives supply information about what force was used or what led up to the use of force.

ICE did not respond to the Mirror’s questions as to why the narrative section of the use of force reports has become less detailed this year.

But getting a glimpse behind the curtain on use of force by ICE has never been simple.

“It’s never been easy to get data on this,” Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Mirror.

Requests for use-of-force data often are withheld as sensitive law enforcement information, and incidents are generally learned about via detainee lawyers.

“It has never been particularly transparent,” Hawkins said.

A detainee boards a 747 that is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Air Operations at Mesa Gateway Airport on Sept. 23, 2025. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)

Reporting by the Washington Post has found that, during Trump’s second administration, use of force at ICE detention centers has surged. Their analysis found that detention staff have used force 37% more times than the previous year and a 54% increase from under Biden.

Meanwhile, populations at these centers, like AROCC, are continuing to grow and outpace the size of the facility.

The airport where AROCC is located has raised concerns that conditions there could be a violation of the lease agreement with the private company that sub-leases the space to the federal government.

At AROCC, ICE is detaining more people for longer periods than it ever has. The average length of stay in 2026 is about 36 hours, compared to the same time frame in 2025, when detainees were housed for just about 12 hours on average.

In 2025, the average daily population was approximately 21 people for the same timeframe. So far in 2026, there have been an average of 274 detainees each day. The Mirror found one individual in the data who stayed for 18 days, coinciding with a time when the population of the facility was near its peak of 777 people.

Conditions at the Eloy facility and the Florence Detention Center, where there have been multiple reports of abuse that has led to deaths, have garnered headlines.

Oversight of facilities like AROCC, Eloy and Florence exists in theory, but appears to be minimal, at best. Such oversight generally is done internally by the Office of the Inspector General or internal DHS units that have all been gutted by the Trump administration.

Just this month, the administration closed the office meant to provide oversight of detention center abuses.

“Accountability has always been very, very limited and in short supply,” Hawkins said, adding that finding people willing to come forward about issues inside can be considerably difficult, as well. “The witnesses may be deported before it can even be investigated.”

Additionally, facilities like the one in Eloy and the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex are run by private companies, meaning that there is a “less clear chain of command for discipline.”

Those facilities are run by CoreCivic who reported a 25% increase in total revenue for the first quarter of this year, largely attributing government contracts with DHS and ICE to their success.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

‘Morally Reprehensible’: For-Profit Immigrant Detention Centers Exploiting Prison Labor With $1 Per Day Wages

“The dichotomy between the contractors’ profits and the detainees’ pay is outrageous.”



The GEO Group logo is displayed outside of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.
(Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
May 13, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As President Donald Trump continues his mass detention and deportation agenda and expands the use of privately owned immigrant prisons, with more than 60,000 people detained across the country, the profits of private contractors like the GEO Group and CoreCivic are skyrocketing—and a new report by a government watchdog reveals one method the multibillion-dollar firms have of extracting profits from detainees.

Public Citizen researcher Douglas Pasternak wrote in a report released Wednesday that approximately 50% of immigrants who are detained for more than a few days end up in the government’s so-called Voluntary Work Program (VWP), earning just $1 per day—12.5 cents per hour—while they keep the detention centers running.



‘Communities Not Cages’: 200+ Actions Across US Protest ICE Warehouse Detention


At facilities like Adelanto Detention Center in Adelanto, California, run by the GEO Group, and CoreCivic’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, detainees work as many as 14 hours in a day for just $1—cooking, cleaning, performing maintenance work, and completing other labor essential to the facilities’ operations—and in many cases are forced to use their meager wages only at commissaries also run by the corporations.

“This entire $1-a-day pay scheme is economically unjustifiable, fundamentally unfair, and morally reprehensible,” said Pasternak in a statement.

The companies are notorious for price gouging, forcing the so-called “voluntary worker” to work full-time for 11 days to afford a tube of Sensodyne toothpaste—priced at $11.02 at Stewart Detention Center, compared to just $5.20 on Amazon.

“At these rates, it may take a detainee more than three days of work to purchase a can of tuna fish or more than two days of work to purchase a bar of soap,” said Public Citizen.

The business model has saved the contractors millions of dollars and allowed them to reap massive profits.

Former CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger made $7.2 million in compensation last year before retiring, and the company’s profits grew from $68.9 million in 2024 to $116.5 million last year. Both CoreCivic and the GEO Group reported well over $2 billion in revenue in 2025.

“The private contractors running immigrant detention centers are pocketing millions of dollars in profits as tens of thousands of detainees struggle to afford to purchase a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste.”

When it was sued over its use of the VWP in Washington State, the GEO Group testified that it would have had to pay 85 full-time employees at the state’s minimum wage—$17.13 per hour—if it hadn’t used the labor of detainees. Hiring workers would have cost the company over $3 million per year, but instead the GEO Group spent just over $22,000 paying imprisoned immigrants $1 per hour.

“The private contractors running immigrant detention centers are pocketing millions of dollars in profits as tens of thousands of detainees struggle to afford to purchase a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste,” said Pasternak. “The dichotomy between the contractors’ profits and the detainees’ pay is outrageous.”

In the case in Washington state, a court found that the GEO Group owed $17 million in back pay to thousands of detainees and owed nearly $6 million to the state for “unjust enrichment.” The company has appealed to the Supreme Court. There are at least six other federal court cases challenging private companies for paying immigrant detainees $1 per day.

The report also describes a nine-bedroom, 11-bathroom, 18,523-square-foot home owned by GEO Group co-founder George Zoley in Boca Raton, Florida—estimated to be worth more than $22.5 million.

“The disparity between Zoley’s wealth and the $1 per day pay to detained immigrants is striking,” reads the report. “The tens of thousands of immigrants detained by the US government deserve better than being paid $1 per day, and the federal contractors building an extensive network of detention camps across the country should not be making excessive profits at their expense.”