Today's Liberal News

Gabe Ortiz

‘Major blow to detention apparatus’: Private prison group loses lawsuit challenging California ban

In a major loss for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private prison profiteer GEO Group, a federal judge has largely upheld California law banning private prisons, including those that jail immigrants for the federal government. Concerned about profits over people, GEO Group sued following the legislation’s signature from Gov. Gavin Newsom last year. On Thursday, GEO Group lost.

Survey finds nearly 95% of DACA recipients plan to encourage friends and family to vote

The uncertainty facing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients didn’t come to an end following the Supreme Court’s decision this past June ruling that the Trump administration unlawfully ended the program. Not only have officials continued to defy this ruling for over 100 days now, but unlawfully appointed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec.

‘A horror show’: House members detail abuses against women at Georgia immigration prison

Top House Democrats who on Saturday inspected the immigration prison where women who were horrifically operated on without their consent have been detained called the Georgia facility “a horror show,” and said that officials forbade them from bringing in their own phones to record personal testimonies from detainees. Legislators shared everything they learned from the women immediately following the visit anyway.

ICE threatened detainees with solitary confinement for daring to ask for medical care, report says

A year-long investigation of eight Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities by a top House committee finds that the mass detention agency and its private prison contractors commonly demonstrated “an indifference to the mental and physical care of the migrants in their custody,” including downplaying suicide attempts among detainees and threatening others with solitary confinement, which is torture, for daring to ask for medical assistance.

Journalist reveals Trump official Katie Waldman tried to force her to retract factual border report

Further revelations from the whistleblower complaint alleging a top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official wanted to downplay white supremacy terror threats confirm there was also an active effort to lie about the number of known or suspected terrorists encountered at the southern border in order to back support for impeached president Donald Trump’s wall.

CBP claims it’ll renew medical care for detainees after DHS watchdog issues warning about lapse

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been so close to letting medical services for detained people lapse that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog issued an alert urging the agency leaders to act as soon as possible, saying that “[a]t a time when CBP is challenged with a COVID-19 pandemic that poses a serious public health and safety risk to both migrants in custody and CBP staff, it is critical that medical services continue uninterrupted.

Family of man shot five times in back files wrongful death lawsuit against sheriff’s department

More than two months after he was shot five times in the back by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the family of 18-year-old Andrés Guardado has filed a wrongful death suit against the county, the sheriff’s department, and deputies Miguel Vega and partner Chris Hernandez, alleging they “not only used unreasonable and excessive force in fatally shooting the young man but were possibly acting in connection and in agreement with member

Engineers say privately funded border fence is on the verge of collapse

The multimillion-dollar privately funded border fencing near Mission, Texas isn’t just a legal disaster for the likes of newly indicted white nationalist creep and former Trump official Steve Bannon, it’s an actual physical disaster. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune write that new engineering reports say that if necessary repairs aren’t made, extensive erosion will cause the fencing to fail the next time the Rio Grande floods.

Court rules against Trump policy blocking immigrant service members from expedited citizenship

The Trump administration’s despicable attempt to block immigrant U.S. military service members from an expedited path to citizenship was handed a well-deserved court defeat this week thanks to a class-action lawsuit launched by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and two affiliates on behalf of eight noncitizen U.S. military service members, including a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient.

Family jailed for nearly 11 months now fears ICE may tear them apart in just days

Claudia, a mother who has been detained with her 8-year-old son for nearly 11 months at a migrant family jail in Texas, told CBS News over the phone that she knows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has the ability to release her family together right now. Officials “have the option of letting us leave with our children,” she said.

USCIS has postponed furlough of more than half of its workforce until end of August, senator says

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is postponing its furlough of more than half of its workforce for nearly another month, Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patrick Leahy said on Friday. The agency had been set to furlough 13,000 of its 20,000 employees on Aug. 3 until revised estimates showed the agency actually had enough funds to continue work for several more weeks, his office said.

Trump’s immigration ban is hurting pandemic response just like advocates warned it would

The Trump administration thought that by exempting international doctors treating COVID-19 victims from its June order further restricting legal immigration, this blatantly xenophobic attack would look just a teeny bit less cruel, but it’s fucked that up too. ProPublica’s Dara Lind reports that, surprise, a number of doctors who should’ve been excluded from the ban found themselves stuck outside the U.S. and were approved only after the outlet pressed the administration.

Officials kicked out an asylum-seeker and her U.S.-citizen baby just days after she gave birth

Two advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security watchdog saying that U.S. border officials forcibly separated a pregnant Honduran asylum-seeker from her family after they asked for safety at the U.S. border, ultimately forcing her and her U.S. citizen newborn back into Mexico just two days after she gave birth in a U.S. hospital.

“The Office of Inspector General complaint calls for an urgent investigation of the U.S.

‘More inclusive and welcoming America’: Biden says he’ll reverse decimation of U.S. refugee program

The Trump administration, under the watch of White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller, has taken a sledgehammer to the U.S. refugee program, decimating annual admissions from 110,000 set by the Obama administration to a historic low of just 18,000. On World Refugee Day this past weekend, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden pledged to go even beyond the number set by the Obama administration.

Guards pepper-sprayed and restrained asylum-seekers by the neck for protesting their detention

Detained people at a privately operated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility say guards pepper-sprayed them and placed their knees on their necks after engaging in an act of civil disobedience in protest of their ongoing detention during the novel coronavirus pandemic, Mother Jones reports. The facility, LaSalle Corrections Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana, has had 65 confirmed COVID-19 cases and two guards have died after becoming sick.

Only 39 children last month were allowed to pursue asylum claims under Stephen Miller policy

Nearly all of the 1,001 children who arrived to the southern border by themselves last month were quickly deported by the Trump administration under a Stephen Miller-led public health order condemned by a U.N. agency, and implemented in complete defiance of U.S. asylum law. Of those 1,001 children, only 39 were allowed to remain in the U.S. to continue pursuing their asylum claims, according to government data obtained by CBS News. Just 39.

‘She fears risk of imminent death’: Detainee who sued for ICE release tests positive for COVID-19

This past March, Marisol Mendoza sued for release from Arizona’s Eloy Detention Center as the novel coronavirus pandemic was hitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, pleading that her medical condition made her particularly vulnerable to risk should she get sick. “Instead, in a 19 May ruling, a federal judge ordered ICE to improve her conditions and make them constitutional,” The Guardian reports.

Trump admin sued over Stephen Miller-led order blocking migrant kids from asylum

The Trump administration’s Stephen Miller-pushed public health order that has now resulted in the deportation of hundreds of migrant children back to possible danger is now facing its first court challenge, CNN reports. Advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have sued the administration over its attempt to deport a 16-year-old boy who fled Honduras after witnessing a gang murder, the report said.