Andrea Pitzer

remember what side of the public opinion these MOCs are choosing, too www.gelliottmorris.com/p/what-ameri...

Tracking every known federal prosecution in Chicago tied to Trump’s immigration blitz

Federal prosecutors in Chicago have accused 32 known defendants of non-immigration crimes tied to Midway Blitz. Fifteen of those defendants have already been cleared. Another member of that group was found not guilty at trial.

ICE Moved Detainees to Previously Undisclosed Floor of 26 Federal Plaza A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reduce overcrowding and squalid conditions at a Manhattan holding room. Months later, he finds ICE merely shifted floors.

ICE officials under a judge’s order to clean up squalid conditions on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza detained migrants on a secret floor where they decided that ruling didn’t apply, attorneys for the Trump administration said Monday.

www.thecity.nyc/2026/02/09/2...

Eight tall stacks of books side by side on a dark wooden floor

I’ve spent the last year judging a writing thing, and here are all the candidates. It’s taken a lot of time, and we’re not quite done, but I’m grateful to have been pulled away from current events on a regular basis and forced to dive into these books.

Immigration judge terminates removal proceedings against child development scholar Rümeysa Öztürk - ACLU of Massachusetts Judge determines DHS lacks legal grounds to deport Ms. Öztürk, who was arrested and detained by ICE for co-authoring an op-ed

“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. govt," said Rümeysa Öztürk.

"When we openly talk about the many injustices around us ..., true justice will prevail.”

Cook County prosecutors drop charges against 19 arrested during clergy-led protest at Broadview ICE facility

Prosecutors have dropped charges against nearly two dozen people arrested during a clergy-led protest outside the Broadview ICE facility last fall.

Brb, working on the formula to determine at what point a skeet that breaks containment earns predominantly bad-faith readings.

Inside ICE’s Only Contract with a Blue State - Bolts As part of a 287(g) contract between state officials and ICE, Massachusetts continues to release prisoners into deportation—even as state lawmakers look to ban other forms of ICE collaboration.

NEW: Of all the states that voted for Harris over Trump in 2024, there's only one where a Dem governor is overseeing an ICE's 287(g) program:

Massachusetts.

Other blue states have quit, or even outright banned it. My colleague on what's happening: boltsmag.org/massachusett...

ICE is likely paying a premium to get the deal through quickly. E.g., in Hamburg, PA, the warehouse was purchased in 2024 for $57.5 million and sold to ICE for $87 million.

The real profit will come with the private prison companies and contractors hired to refurbish and staff these facilities.

I'm getting some responses to this along the lines of "other countries do this too," so I'll add that my point was that those who asked the question had frankly thought better of the US and were wondering if perhaps the stories they'd seen about homelessness here were merely propaganda.

I've been to some countries where people live under military rule or autocracy. And without fail, one of the questions I get when they ask about life in the U.S. is whether it's true that Americans just let homeless people die on the street.

'What's wrong with the world?' Man in wheelchair found dead outside in freezing temps The 61-year-old man had been released from a hospital the day before.

During freezing temperatures in Port Arthur, Texas, a 61-year-old homeless man was found dead in his wheelchair outside a convenience store.

He was wearing a hospital gown and no shoes. Authorities say he had been released from a hospital the previous day.

This is a diseased society.

These people pictured Triumph of the Will and pageantry for the ages if they supported the ethnic cleansing machine. But what they're getting is public shunning and being forced to pretend they like Kid Rock.

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. 🧵

Just spitballing here, but maybe we should celebrate all this beautiful stuff and have a better country?

One of these days, people will look back on these sports betting ads like we do on the ads for patent medicines featuring cocaine.

Floating, the most independent of independent films. The trailer was great.

Just learned that Rhea Seehorn of Pluribus was in the movie my brother-in-law borrowed my apartment to film two decades ago.

As @andreapitzer.bsky.social has said, the correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards

Trump’s concentration camps don’t need “reforms”—they need to be shut down

Google Workers Demand End to Cloud Services for Immigration Agencies

more of this. don't be the machine. be the cogs. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/b...

Whistle Up 2: Rise of the Whistle Goblins | dansinker.com

Today the crew of weirdo printers that I call the whistle goblins passed A HALF MILLION whistles printed and shipped. I wrote about how we got there and how you can start printing whistles yourself. dansinker.com/posts/2026-0...

This is the way.

YouTube video by Erroll Garner - Topic How High the Moon (Remastered 2020)

Sorry, can't talk now. I'm listening to Erroll Garner play "How High the Moon."

My in-laws used to live in Anderson, SC, where this festival was going to take place. It was filled with Confederate flags two decades before Trump even announced his presidential run. If you can't make a MAGA-fest happen there, the movement has truly fallen on hard times.

“You don't have to know how to live / It keeps happening either way” from Aubade by Heather Christle

But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.

There must be eventual consequences, even if it takes us a decade www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/u...

NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff

Yeah this doesn’t look good at all

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The Publishers Marketplace announcement of my book, which reads “Rahawa Haile's IN OPEN COUNTRY, a personal and political hybrid memoir of the author's transformative Appalachian Trail thru-hike, exploring the history of freedom of movement in the United States, and reckoning with America's foundational myth of conquered wilderness, the violence of national borders, and the legacy of diasporic placelessness, moving to Bryn Clark at Little, Brown, at auction, by Julia Kardon at HG Literary (NA).”

Some great news. My hybrid memoir IN OPEN COUNTRY will now be published by Little, Brown. It’s about freedom of movement and stillness in the US, and the ways capitalism & settler colonialism have shaped (and continue to shape) the answer to who has either across time. I also do a lot of walking.

Resurrect the Washington Star!

Love that is complicit Podcast links! And how America abets abuse of the immigrants it relies on.

The Friday roundup is here. With links to the latest podcast episode! And I wrote about the ways that people keep themselves from seeing or responding to the suffering of others. What if Senator Katie Britt *was* haunted by Liam Conejo Ramos's detention, yet still won't do anything to protect him?