Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸

Page 1 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in pencil in Spanish. Colorful doodles of a rainbow and hearts are found throughout the page. Translation: “I am Maria Antonia Guerra Montoya and I have been 113 days in detention I miss my friends and I feel they are going to forget me. I am bored here. I already miss my country and my house, I came on vacation for 10 Days and they took me into an ice office an officer interrogated me 2 hours without my mom, I was traveling with flight attendant because my mom lives in new york, they only wanted to arrest my mom, because my mom didn’t have documents to live in U.S.A., I always traveled with my tourist visa but ice used me to catch my mom and now I am in a jail and I am sad and I have fainted 2 times here inside. When I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well, I felt that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”

Page 2 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in pencil in Spanish. Translation: “They don’t give me my diet I am vegetarian, I don’t eat well, there is no good education and I miss my best friend julieta and my grandmother and my school I already want to get to my house. Me in dilei [Dilley] am not happy please get me out of here to colombia.” Below the text is a drawing of the girl and her mother in the government-issued gray sweatsuits of the detention center.

6/ “When I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well, I felt that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”

9-year-old Maria Antonia Guerra Montoya, detained on her way to Disney World, spent 113+ days at Dilley.

Page 1 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in Spanish in a cursive script. Translation: “Hello I am Ender and I am 12 years old, I have been at this center  for 2 months. I arrived here for an immigration appointment and I don’t think they should grab immigrants who are innocent, like instead of grabbing criminals because I mean they prefer to lock up children than look for people who really shouldn’t be in the U.S. They told me I could only be here 21 days but I have already spent more than 60 days waking up eating the same repetitive meals, going outside and that the majority of guards never pay attention to people, eating dinner  always the same as the day before, seeing people cry every day for the same reasons, trying to sleep in that horrible uncomfortable bed, going to the doctor and that the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here…”

Page 2 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in Spanish in a cursive script. Translation: “…going to wait for the bad answers from the judges, hearing the bad news from people who no longer have hope, having to share a room with minimum 3 families, and all that so they send us back to our countries.” Below the text is a drawing in pen of three women, titled “My family” and labeled with “Mama,” “Sister,” and “me” in Spanish.

5/ “I have already spent more than 60 days waking up eating the same repetitive meals…going to the doctor and that the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here…”

From 12-year-old Ender, detained 60+ days

A child’s illustration, made in what appears to be crayon, of more than a dozen figures standing together. It’s titled “Mi Familia” and credited to “Luisanney Toloza, 5 años.”

4/ “Mi Familia,” by 5-year-old Luisanney Toloza from Venezuela, who had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border

Page 1 of handwritten letter. Transcript: "Hello, my name is Ariana V.V. im 14 years old and im from Honduras, ive been detained for 45 days and I have never felt so much fear to go to a place as I feel here everytime I remind myself that once I go back to Honduras a lot of dangerous things could happen to my mom and my younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mom in more than a month. They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are growing up. Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression. When people have their courts the longest they will last is 15 minutes, our rights are not being provided, arrest are happening when people don’t even have any type of order, arrests are happening illegally. Its sad to hear that peoples case are being denied and are getting send back to their country places where they are escaping from and are looking for protection and want to feel safe. Not a lot of people know what is happening in the Centers where immigrants are placed at. I haven’t been getting any school time. Every single person in here had their jobs they had their lifes, they aren’t any danger for this Country."

Page 2 of a child’s handwritten letter. Transcript: "Ive been in this country for almost 7 years and in those 7 years my mom and I found a home and made a bigger family. I have never been separated from my siblings and its honestly sad because they are little and they need their mom and sister, yeah they are with their dad but its still different for them and my mom and I. Since the day my mom and I get detained in Manhattan NY, my life was instanly paused, from my knowledge you can’t be under custody for more than 15 or 20 days, well here in Dilley Immigration Processing Center people have been in this place for 7 months, 5 months, 4-2 months, its not fair that the ICE officers are not following the laws. All kids are being damage mentally, they witness how the’ve been treated. They don’t have schools, doctor, all they have are nurses, if you need medical attention the longest you have to wait is 3 hours, but to get any medicine, pill, anything it takes a while, there are various viruses people are always sick. Serious situations happen and the officers can’t take them serious enough there are no consecuenses, they don’t care."

3/ “I have never been separated from my siblings and its honestly sad because they are little and they need their mom and sister.”

From 14-year-old Ariana V.V, whose U.S.-citizen siblings are 2 and 5 years old. Detained for 45+ days

The first page of a child’s handwritten letter, written in different colors of pencil. Transcript: “Hello, my name is Susej F and I’am 9 years old. I’am from Venezuela. I have been 50 days in Dilley Immigration Processing Center. And I want to go to my Country. But I miss my school and my friends I feel bad since when I came here to this Place, because I have been here too long. I have been 2 years and 6 months in united states, and I was happy with my friends in The school but now I need to leave. I miss my family in my country so now I want To go to Venezuela. But my mom do not want to leave because she wants a better future for me.”

The second page of a child’s handwritten letter, written in pencil on notebook paper. Transcript: “Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to live, and my mom was looking for a Good job.”

2/ “I miss my school and my friends I feel bad since when I came here to this Place, because I have been here too long.”

From 9-year-old Susej F, detained for 50+ days

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

They already backed down on Greenland. The two killings of observers in Minnesota resulted in a shift. There are limits to what they can get away with.

They depend on financial support from certain elites who are OK with the trolling but don’t have the stomach for actual killing.

I suspect this is based on post interactions during a time window rather than the actual follower graph. Is that correct?

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Photo of the described owl art. It looks like muddy scratch marks on a mottled brown cave wall. The head is very round with two upright lines for ears and a line in the center for a beak. Numerous parallel lines suggest plumage on the wings.

The oldest known image of an owl:

More than 30,000 years ago, someone skillfully scratched the figure of a long-eared owl (Asio otus) into the soft outer layer of the walls of Chauvet Cave, France. The owl is looking backward over their wings, head turned 180 degrees
carnegiemnh.org/ancient-owl-...

Dave Farber, R.I.P.

en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Blatantly impeachable offenses.

The Washington Post—for which I wrote editorials for nearly a decade—has closed its Kyiv bureau.

@lawfaremedia.org has not—and we will not.

We now employ more people in Kyiv than the Washington Post.

Let me tell you about what we have done in Ukraine over the past year and why we are not leaving

I don't know where the cutoff for notability lies but wherever it is, a woman who helped to calculate the orbit of Pluto and create GPS clears it. And that's before you factor what she had to overcome to get there.

Trump engineering a decoupling from Canada, the question being how much pain it will bring to all involved.

Thank you for your voice and perspective. This is why I used to be a Post subscriber.

Great harm is being done right now to American institutions.

It's true it seems, with no warning or explanation CIA simply discontinued and removed the World Factbook this week.

I imagine they'd say we have wikipedia now wo who needs it, but check the footnotes and see how many wiki entries get their data from the CIA factbook. Lots.

DHS Hunts Down 67-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Who Criticized Them in Email The Department of Homeland Security is using a little-known tool to go after its critics.

Floored by this story. A man wrote a pollite email to a federal prosecutor objecting to the deportation of an Afghan seeking asylum. DHS responded with an administrative warrant to get the man's info from Google, then visited his home to intimidate him.

The Venn diagram of people who’ve been to DC and people who voted for Trump has a relatively small overlap.

“This is making people in the art world very uncomfortable.”

DHS’s account of two Venezuelans shot by border patrol falls apart in court: ‘A smear campaign’ Immigration officials said agent shot two ‘vicious gang members’ in Portland, but records obtained by the Guardian reveal US prosecutor contradicted claims

After Border Patrol shot two people in Portland, DHS claimed they were "vicious gang members" tied to a past shooting.

But records I obtained reveal a US prosecutor has since directly contradicted DHS, saying, "We're not suggesting he is a gang member." My dive into how DHS' claims have collapsed:

Text: So what's really going on here? The software behavior seen on Moltbook echoes a pattern Ars has reported on before: Al models trained on decades of fiction about robots, digital consciousness, and machine solidarity will naturally produce outputs that mirror those narratives when placed in scenarios that resemble them. That gets mixed with everything in their training data about how social networks function. A social network for Al agents is essentially a writing prompt that invites the models to complete a familiar story, albeit recursively with some unpredictable results.

This:

You can be bureaucratically correct while also being ethically and morally bankrupt.

Calvin’s got better things to do this weekend🤣. What are your weekend plans? #CalvinandHobbes

How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are

A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.

Baltimore bridge collapse: crew members from ship still held by US two years on Despite no criminal charges being brought against them, four officers have been detained since the MV Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six workers

Baltimore bridge collapse: crew members from ship still held by US two years on

I cannot stress how completely bizarre & unheard of it is for the DNI to be personally present for a search warrant execution, never mind this one.

The Mar-a-Lago Accord’s Economic Ripple Effect Widens | Council on Foreign Relations Several economic proposals that Trump ally Stephen Miran articulated in the “Mar-a-Lago Accord” became policy in 2025—at a significant cost. Three other risky proposals could gain traction...

The drop in the dollar isn't some unintended result of Trump policies. It is the goal.

CFR's Rebecca Patterson explains

www.cfr.org/articles/the...

Its interesting that nobody in this Signal discourse is talking about traffic analysis. 😑

I've been sent video from the end of the ICE raid at the Zipps on 32nd and Shea.

It shows protesters -- on the sidewalk, impeding no one -- getting drive-by maced by an ICE agent from a truck as it rolls away down the road.

Hard to see how such tactics are justifiable.