Unbetitelt

Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark:

LORENZO SALGADO ARAUJO CAME TO THE UNITED STATES thirty-five years ago—a few years too late to benefit from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, popularly known as the “Reagan amnesty.” He worked in construction. By the 2000s, he was a small business owner who provided jobs and work for other men. They would drive to the North Houston suburbs and build houses. His dream was to build his own home for his family one day—a dream he achieved. On Tuesday morning, Lorenzo was picking up workers as usual shortly after 6 a.m. when he was confronted by ICE and killed. He was 52 years old. The shooting in Houston’s historically Mexican-American East End community near Magnolia Park took place just five minutes from the site of Houston’s FIFA Fan Festival.

Lorenzo’s son Ronaldo Salgado, a teacher, wrote on Facebook Tuesday night that his father had been in the process of obtaining his work permit through the legal process. Speaking at a press conference Wednesday morning, Ronaldo thanked his former students for being in attendance and Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) for spending time in the hospital with him overnight.

He said Lorenzo had been a hardworking man of routine, one who never cared for his name to be known outside his family, only for his children—three sons, all born in the United States—to be educated and to become good people.

“I love our dad, he worked hard,” Ronaldo told me in an interview after the press conference. “He always told us that we needed to do well in school so we don’t end up like him in the sun.”

On Tuesday, Lorenzo’s day began at 5 a.m., the same way it did every day: “with a hearty meal prepared by my mom,” Ronaldo said. But after taking his coffee and loading his work boots in the car to pick up his crew for work on houses in North Houston, Lorenzo was beset by ICE agents in unmarked cars. Some sort of confrontation ensued. He was shot. He died of his injuries at a hospital. As Ronaldo wrote this morning, “Today is the first day without him for all of us, and it is heartbreaking to know that my mom did not make lunch for my dad before going to work—the first time in their 30+ year marriage.”

In the emotional press conference, Ronaldo described his desperate scramble to find out information about what happened to his father. When he first heard about an interaction with ICE, the reports were conflicting. He hoped his father had simply been detained, so his first plan had been to find his father’s white work van and deliver it to his crew so that they might be able to finish work and get paid. As time went on, Ronaldo remained in the dark. He did not learn about his father’s final moments from a hospital or law enforcement. Instead, confirmation of his death came in the cruel form of videos on social media. “I recognized him immediately: not from his appearance, but from his voice crying in the street as he was bleeding out,” Ronaldo said through tears.

[...]

“Me estan matando”

ICE HAS PORTRAYED LORENZO in its statements to the media as an “illegal alien” who acted violently in the confrontation. “From information we are receiving, he rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer, resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense,” an ICE spokesperson said. If this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve all heard it before. As Lorenzo’s family, activists, and Democratic officeholders have all pointed out, ICE’s response after this shooting has been the same as its response to each ICE-related killing during Trump 2.0: to claim its personnel acted responsibly, and not to wait for an investigation before casting blame on the dead. The New York Times found that Trump administration claims about shootings frequently unravel under legal scrutiny.

One witness told the Washington Post that he heard a man—Lorenzo—gurgling and shouting “Me estan matando”—they’re killing me, a haunting echo of “I can’t breathe,” the final words of Eric Garner and George Floyd, two others killed by law enforcement. Roman Palomares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the oldest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country, accused ICE of a coverup.

“In the absence of facts from ICE we are left to conclude a man was unlawfully killed on the streets of Houston,” he said. “It’s unacceptable and un-American to use lethal force against a human being and lock away the evidence and expect his family, the people of Houston, the American people to say ‘We believe you.’ We don’t believe you. ICE has not earned that trust from the American people.”

“This is a tragedy,” Rep. Garcia said at the press conference. “A family led by a man here thirty-five years with absolutely no criminal history. Remember Renée Good? Has ICE learned nothing from that experience?” “Someone losing their life is a big goddamn deal,” Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) said at the press conference. Menefee emphasized that Houstonians are deeply familiar with immigrants, regardless of status. “We are a city of undocumented immigrants, they are our neighbors.”

[...] The shooting is the first big test for a Department of Homeland Security that has tried in recent months to avoid the kind of imagery we saw earlier this year of Renée Good and Alex Pretti being killed in the streets of Minneapolis and Border Patrol officer Greg Bovino ghoulishly swooping after publicity. The department has sought to refashion itself as a more professional organization that makes less noise while still executing the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Just this Monday, in fact, Politico Playbook asked whether the mass deportation drive was softening or whether ICE had simply gotten better at avoiding negative attention. They reported that Markwayne Mullin, the new homeland security secretary, championed a “quieter and smarter” approach, and that the nation shouldn’t “expect another Minneapolis anytime soon.” Reduced media attention, though, does not mean a less extreme approach to deportations. On Monday, White House Border Czar Tom Homan admitted what activists, lawmakers, and analysts have been observing for a while: that half of those targeted by ICE do not have criminal records.

ICE terrorists shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in a not too dissimilar manner to Alex Pretti and Renee Good while picking up a crew for a construction project. #AbolishICE

See Also:

The Guardian: ‘He did not deserve to die’: family of man fatally shot by ICE agent speaks out

If you’re like me, you don’t want to think about anything Trump is doing that you don’t have to think about. The horrific domestic police called ICE, for example, appears to have quieted down. So we can erase it from our minds, right?

Wrong. ICE has not quieted down. It’s even worse. It’s just become less visible. 

ICE has quietly doubled its immigrant arrest quota. It’s now arresting 2,000 people per day. 

But you’re not hearing about it because the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, has decided to quietly spread ICE agents around the country instead of targeting one Democratic-controlled city at a time. 

Rather than fueling media spectacles, lawsuits, and community backlash, ICE is now going about its ruthless business in more hushed tones. 

But every day, more of our neighbors — and more people who are in the United States legally — are being swept up at immigration check-ins, traffic stops, workplaces, and public spaces. Raids have intensified in Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Dallas, McAllen, Brownsville, New York City, Newark, Passaic, Plainfield, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Nashville, Charlotte, Chicago, and even in Minneapolis.

Local media continue to report what’s happening, but the national media seem to have lost interest. Among raids reported by local media are:

The mass arrest of more than 30 workers at the Scholar Crafts plant in Birmingham, Alabama.

Raids at two laundromats in Madison, Wisconsin.

Courthouse immigration arrests in South Florida. 

A Mexican father arrested while driving to a soccer game in Salt Lake City.

Arrests of dairy farm workers in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

Arrests of several workers across Montana. 

Dozens of arrests in Kansas City during its hosting of World Cup games. 

The arrest of a 56-year-old Catholic nun on her way to Mass in McAllen, Texas.

The arrest of at least three people during immigration check-ins at New York City courthouses last week in violation of federal court orders explicitly barring such arrests.And so on. 

Refugee communities are bracing for additional ICE raids in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision revoking Temporary Protected Status of asylum seekers from Haiti and Syria, which could affect at least 356,000 people. (Haitian asylum seekers in Springfield, Ohio, are expecting “the mother of all ICE raids” after Stephen Miller voiced enthusiastic support for “finally removing all those Haitian illegal immigrants.”) 

Community groups in Texas expect increased crackdowns after the conviction of eight activists on domestic terrorism charges following an incident last year in which a police officer was shot during an anti-ICE protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center. A ninth defendant in that case, Ines Soto, was sentenced last week to 50 years in prison for “providing material support to terrorists” because he had transported political pamphlets in his car.

Fifteen Minnesota protesters also pled not guilty last week to conspiracy charges stemming from protests in January. Activist and healthcare worker Isaac Sant, one of the accused, said the trial was “a naked attempt to silence our voices, to squash dissent and to have a chilling effect on organizing here in the Twin Cities,” which, he noted, “is not going to work.”

Meanwhile, ICE’s budget has tripled. The House narrowly voted in June to direct roughly $70 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for ICE and Border Patrol — more than three times its last annual budget. The money comes with few stipulations on how and when it should be spent. It includes: 

$38 billion for ICE to hire, pay, train, and equip its officers and agents. That includes $7 billion for Homeland Security Investigations and $31 billion for immigration enforcement work like hiring more attorneys, supporting local law enforcement who coordinate with ICE, and technology like body cameras;

$22 billion for Border Patrol to pay, train, recruit, and equip agents and personnel. That includes $13 billion specifically for immigration enforcement work;

$5 billion for border security technology and screening, including artificial intelligence.

ICE is now using facial recognition technology and has already scanned thousands of immigrants’ and protesters’ faces. This kind of street-level surveillance raises profound legal questions about what are in effect warrantless searches. 

The Department of Homeland Security appears to be creating a vast database of people who merely object to its actions. 

How else to explain how federal agents tracked down Rochester resident David Streever last month when he was visiting New York City with his daughter? They gave Streever a warning notice alleging that he had potentially violated the law when he wrote a three-paragraph email to Todd Lyons, former head of ICE, criticizing ICE’s mass deportation program and comparing Lyons to a Nazi. 

Similarly, during New York State’s primaries in June, ICE agents arrived at a polling site in Syracuse to question Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker. Gonyea, an American citizen, says the agents were concerned about an Instagram post she supposedly made in January identifying Jonathan Rossas the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good during the federal incursion in Minneapolis this winter.

Well, I’m criticizing ICE for these violations of the First Amendment rights of Americans. Come arrest me for my public criticism!

The Trump regime continues to open new detention centers, including a 528-bed holding facility for migrant families and unaccompanied children next to an airport hub in Alexandria, Louisiana, to speed up deportations. ICE is calling the facility a “staging area,” not a detention center, and says people would only be there a few days at most. But immigration advocates worry that children could be held at the new facility for weeks or months.

ICE is bigger and worse than ever, although the major media have stopped reporting on it. Not only is ICE’s reign of terror intimidating many undocumented immigrants and their families — preventing them from seeking the healthcare they need or attending school or going to court — but ICE is also sweeping into its maw many American citizens who are protesting Trump’s police state. 

Hence, my request to you: 

1. Please continue to protect the vulnerable in your communities. Make sure they have Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center informing them of their rights. 

2. Report ICE sightings to your local Rapid Response Network (RRN) to ensure the community is alerted and those affected receive legal support. You can also submit and track anonymously and locally using the ICE Activity Tracker. (When making a report, be sure to note the specific location — intersections or addresses — the number of agents, the types of vehicles, and whether anyone is being detained. Document the activity if it can be done safely from a distance.) 

3. Report all ICE activities in your area to your local newspaper, radio, and other local media. Take videos of what ICE is doing — again, doing it safely and from a distance. Share with your local media and ask them to pass it on to their affiliated national broadcast networks. 

4. Alert your members of Congress. (Again, to connect directly with the office of you representative or senators, call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 (or the House direct switchboard at (202) 225-3121). An operator will answer and route your call after you state the name of the lawmaker you wish to reach. Before calling, you can look up your specific representatives using your ZIP code on the House Finder Service or search for your elected officials on Congress.gov.)

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

The MAGA plot to subvert the 2026 midterm elections is coming into focus. Election denial bigwig Steve Bannon has outlined a scheme in which President Donald Trump — aided by right-wing journalist John Solomon at the White House and Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence — would declassify and release documents purporting to show significant foreign interference in past U.S. elections. The president would then use that theory as the “predicate” to declare a “national emergency” and try to seize control of the elections apparatus to curtail voting rights in November. The foundational lie of this scheme — and of election denial writ large — is that Trump is such a popular figure that only massive election fraud could explain the defeat of his movement at the polls. And the right’s propaganda apparatus is essential in buttressing that lie by ignoring or explaining away all evidence to the contrary. Outlets like Fox News don’t just celebrate the president as an heroic, visionary figure — they tell viewers that the polls are wrong and “The MAGA Momentum Is Unstoppable.” Here's how this scheme has worked in the past, and a glimpse into how Trump and his propagandists are kicking into gear again this cycle.

Poll trutherism is the foundation of election denial

Trump is an historically unpopular president. Polls over the decade since he entered the political spotlight have consistently found that he is broadly disliked, and his job approval is currently tracking near its all-time lows, according to poll aggregations from The New York Times, Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin, and the conservative RealClearPolitics. The most recent results from pro-Trump Fox News are in line with those averages, showing 39% of respondents approve of the job Trump is doing while 60% disapprove, with his performance underwater by large margins on issues from the economy to immigration.    The president has responded to these dire numbers not by trying to appeal to a broader swath of the country but by declaring that he is actually popular and that news outlets have fabricated these results to damage his political standing. “Fake polls — I got one today,” the president told reporters in February. “I saw one today that I'm at 40%. I'm not at 40%. I'm at much higher than that. I'd love to run against anybody. The real polls say ‘you'd kill everybody, it wouldn't even be close.’”

In late June, he likewise argued that other, unnamed surveys show his “REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN,” with his job approval at “at 65%, and more!” As with so many of Trump’s actions, this is simultaneously laughable and menacing. It is ridiculous on its face that the president of the United States is so unwilling to accept that the majority of the public don’t like him that he’s instead concocted a vast conspiracy theory implicating the bulk of the nation’s pollsters and media outlets while apparently inventing “REAL POLL NUMBERS” that show he is beloved.  But Trump inevitably carries that absurd argument to its logical conclusion: When election results correspond with the public polls and Trump loses, he decries those elections as “rigged.” He famously attributed both his popular vote defeat in 2016 and his popular and electoral vote losses in 2020 to election fraud, and baselessly warned in the leadup to the 2024 election that only rigging could explain it if he lost again (this time he won both the popular and electoral votes despite his low favorability).

[...]

MAGA media are hiding Trump’s unpopularity from their audience

The right-wing propaganda machine plays a key role in this farce.  Republicans spent decades tearing down the press and urging their supporters to get their information only from ideological allies. That opened up the party base to Trumpian lies, like his claims about news outlets producing fake polls. 

MAGA media could try to keep their audiences grounded in reality, leveling with them about Trump’s unpopularity and pushing the party to change course. But in the lead-up to both the 2020 and 2024 elections, they portrayed Trump as the odds-on favorite and suggested a defeat could only result from fraud. And since Trump returned to office, the right-wing commentariat has largely toed the president’s line and hidden worrying signs about his faltering support. 

The strategy is particularly obvious — and noxious — on Fox. The network’s hosts and commentators are aware that Trump is deeply unpopular, as it employs pollsters whose own surveys show it. But they are concealing that knowledge from viewers — a group that often includes the Fox-obsessed president himself — rather than leveling with them. Fox hosts hide the network’s brutal polls while touting Trump as “the ultimate dealmaker” ushering in a “golden age” that makes the United States “the envy of the world” — and that “America, just like McDonald’s, we’re loving it.” Its pundits swoon over how his “support among his base, among Republicans, is as strong as any president we've seen in modern history” and assure viewers that “the polling that you're seeing come in on Trump is incorrect.” 

They point to outdated polls that suggest Trump’s actions are popular over their own survey data when it says otherwise.  After the crowd at Madison Square Garden loudly jeered the president when he appeared on the Jumbotron at Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the hometown New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Fox & Friends claimed his reception was actually “mixed.”  And when dismal turnout marred Trump’s efforts to make the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence all about himself, they pretended otherwise.

Yunior Rivas at Democracy Docket:

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice sent letters to top election officials in all 50 states and D.C. Tuesday warning they could face criminal prosecution over possible noncitizen voting, escalating the administration’s pressure campaign against state election officials after courts repeatedly rejected its effort to seize unredacted voter rolls. A DOJ spokesperson confirmed the scope of the letters, saying, “The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections.”

The letters, sent by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, demand that states explain within five days how they plan to comply with federal voter eligibility laws.  Copies reviewed by Democracy Docket were sent to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) and Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D). Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said his office also received a letter and forcefully rejected DOJ’s suggestion that Arizona election officials are failing to properly maintain the state’s voter rolls. “It is insulting to insinuate that the good people at our county recorders’ offices across the state are not doing their jobs correctly,” Fontes said. “Arizona election officials have always worked to ensure that only eligible citizens are registered to vote, and we will continue following Arizona law — not directions that come from political rhetoric or intimidation.”

[...] And the move is especially alarming because DOJ’s attached memo also takes direct aim at one of federal law’s key anti-purge protections: the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day quiet period, which generally bars systematic voter purges close to a federal election. DOJ’s memo claims that the 90-day cutoff “does not apply to the removal of non-citizens who were never eligible to register in the first place,” while acknowledging contrary authority from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. That position could open the door to late-stage citizenship-based purge efforts, exactly when eligible voters have the least time to discover and fix wrongful removals.

Preacher on an English nudist beach / England, 1974