Benjamin Wilson

Naming the policeman Officer X, Welles addressed him directly. "Wash your hands, Officer X. Wash them well. Scrub and scour, you won't blot out the blood of a blinded war veteran," Welles said. "Go on, suckle your anonymous moment while it lasts. You're going to be uncovered. We will blast out your name! We'll give the world your given name, Officer X. Yes, and your so-called Christian name. It's going to rise out of the filthy deep like the dead thing it is."

When Tom Homan, Trump and other Republicans defend the masking of ICE agents, I can't help but think of Orson Welles announcing on his radio show his intention of identifying the South Carolina police officer who violently attacked and blinded the uniformed Black veteran Isaac Woodard in 1946.

DOGE’s Final Failure Is it easier to destroy than to build?

Great rundown on DOGE:

"It is already known that DOGE came nowhere close to its goal of slashing $2 trillion in government spending by executive action: government spending actually increased in 2025 ... ."

open.substack.com/pub/wakeupto...

Exclusive: Senior DHS officials double down on arresting and detaining refugees in new memo Hours after DOJ filed the new memo in court in Minnesota, a magistrate judge denied Law Dork's request for greater public access in the case — including remote electronic docket access.

I am awaiting the start of the U.H.A. v. Bondi preliminary injunction hearing. Credentialed media have remote access, but Law Dork's request for a public-access line was denied by the magistrate judge yesterday.

Background:

Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

"Guardrails" AKA the Constitution and the law

“I’ve never protested before - but I just watched 4th & 5th grade kids run away from our own government.” 😕🇺🇸💔

(From @crindivisible.bsky.social )

How a Planned Disney World Vacation Turned Into Four Months in Immigration Detention A 9-year-old shares her story of being held at the nation’s only operating detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas.

I met Maria Antonia inside Dilley in mid-Jan where she had been detained for four months. She told me she was on her way to Disney World when immigration agents intercepted and interrogated her in the airport and sent her and her mom to detention www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

Federal judge orders release of two men in ICE shooting charged with assaulting immigration agents Defense attorneys cited photos in challenging the government’s account of when the agent fired a shot that wounded the fleeing suspect.

A federal judge ordered the release of two Venezuelan men accused of assaulting a federal immigration officer last month outside a north Minneapolis duplex.

But they never made it outside the St. Paul courthouse. ICE detained them again, without explanation, after the hearing.

Remember the incident where DHS claimed officers shot a guy because he attacked them with a snow shovel?

Yeah. It didn't happen. They shot him through the door of his own home. And then arrested him. And then lied about it. Again.

And they almost shot some kids in the process.

Trump nominated a legit white nationalist to a top post at the State Department. I asked him some basic questions about his belief in the “erasure of white culture”. Watch this embarrassing, fumbling answer. Like he has never before been asked to explain his views.

Every photo from Minneapolis looks like this. Cops decked out with guns and full tac gear facing off against people in bathrobes, parkas, and sweatpants armed only with whistles and cell phones.

Yet every verified MAGA chode on X dutifully calls it a riot or violent insurrection.

I wish we had a representative even a 1/10th as good as she is.

Typically, the humiliation of a no-bill is that prosecutors could not persuade a *majority* of grand jurors to indict on a relatively low burden of proof.

Every single grand juror knew this case was a disgrace, per this reporting. 🔽

The Epstein class: the stock market is more important than holding accountable child sex traffickers and rapists.

The government needed 12 grand jurors to vote to indict, out of a grand jury that numbered somewhere between 16 and 23. They got ZERO.

As an expert in math, I'm here to tell you that zero is a very small number, in fact the smallest non-negative integer.

More Immigrants Are Challenging Their ICE Detention Than Ever Before Immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have filed more than 18,000 challenges in federal court. This total is more than were filed under the last three administrations combined — including Tru...

NEW: Immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have filed more than 18,000 challenges in federal court.

The cases, known as habeas petitions, total more than were filed under the last three administrations combined, including Trump’s first term.

ICE violates yet another court order

ORDER:
“Defendants shall ensure that no person detained by ICE at 26 Federal Plaza … is held or detained in any hold room … or other space” & set out specific requirements

An ICE official claims the order applies to the 10th —but not 9th —floor of the building

Frightening. Remember "homegrowns are next." -DJT

ICE to begin detaining immigrants inside Social Circle warehouse in April Homeland Security plans to build warehouse detention facilities in other cities being met with opposition.

ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.

If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...

Enterprise, other businesses come under fire for connections to ICE After ICE agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, activists have targeted not just the agency, but also companies doing business with it. That includes the St. Louis-based car rental company Enterpr...

www.stlmag.com/news/enterpr...

I don't really follow her argument. Libertarians may have been arguing for reducing the size and power of government, but did they argue for the rights of immigrants or immigration reform or restrictions on ICE's authority? Perhaps so, but I'm not seeing those dots connected in the article.

OMG. Must read.

Ossoff: "You're seeing what I'm seeing, right? The president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman."

Once again, a federal judge orders ice to stop unlawful warrantless arrests Another judge has ordered DHS to follow federal law, even as the Trump administration argues it has broad authority to conduct warrantless immigration arrests.

Another judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to follow federal law.

Minnesota ICE Enforcement: Alleged Constitutional Violations The ACLU and partners sued over alleged racial profiling and unlawful arrests in Minnesota. Read sworn declarations and case details.

Proud to play a role in helping get this together for @justsecurity.org. It provides you with details from the sworn declarations filed in support of the ACLU's lawsuit in Minnesota, Hussen v. Noem. The details of abuses by federal agents across the 29 declarations we looked at are chilling.

Lawfare Live: Trials of the Trump Administration, Feb. 6

ICYMI: Watch @nkorpett.bsky.social, @ericcolumbus.bsky.social, @rparloff.bsky.social, and @mollyroberts.bsky.social discuss a congressional hearing into ICE’s use of force in Minneapolis and Chicago, oral argument over DHS’s mandatory detention policy, and more.

People are not "interfering with federal agents," Eric. Federal agents are interfering with people.

Second week in a row ICE protests at St. Louis schools. ❤️

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

No accident that this administration is trying to do what Birth of a Nation did to shape people’s understanding of history, through every means at its disposal.