NOVEMBER 29th DAY OF ACTION
All out for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People!
Since the ceasefire announcement, Israel has massacred hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, attacked the West Bank, and continued its abuse, torture and killing of Palestinian prisoners. A two-way arms embargo is our movement’s unchanged demand, the only guarantee of ending Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and systematic theft of our land.
We will continue confronting Zionism and holding those in power to account for as long as it takes. The struggle continues this November 29 — we’ll see you on the streets!
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
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Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) How Noncitizens, Anxious Under Trump, Are Altering Their Lives
Months into the Trump deportation campaign, one-third of noncitizens, including about 60 percent of undocumented immigrants, say they are avoiding aspects of daily life.
By Miriam Jordan and Ruth Igielnik, Nov. 19, 2025
Miriam Jordan, a national immigration correspondent, reported in Los Angeles, and Ruth Igielnik, who conducts surveys for The Times, is based in Washington, D.C.
“With the way things are now, we feel afraid and insecure.”—Ana Luna. Brandon Tauszik for The New York Times
In Ana Luna’s home, an image of an American flag adorns the kitchen wall. On her iPhone, the wallpaper is a picture of her eldest daughter, in her dress blue U.S. Marine uniform.
And tucked in folders are years of tax returns, a paper trail of working lives that helped Ms. Luna, 47, and her husband rent their three-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles where they have lived for almost two decades.
“We’re upstanding people who love this country,” Ms. Luna said.
She is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. So is her husband.
For a family of modest means, life in Southern California has been defined by simple pleasures, like going to the park, the mall or services at the church that they made their spiritual home.
Now those joys have been colored by a fear that has swept through immigrant communities of the United States since the Trump administration launched its mass deportation campaign in January.
About one-third of noncitizen immigrants now say they are avoiding aspects of everyday life, according to a new national survey of immigrants from The New York Times and KFF, a nonprofit that conducts polling and research about health policy. Among undocumented immigrants, that share rises to 59 percent.
“With the way things are now, we feel afraid and insecure,” said Ms. Luna, who said she and her husband were speaking to The Times on the record becausethey were proud of their family’s contributions to the United States.
Large shares of undocumented immigrants like Ms. Luna describe changes to their daily life. Most say they or someone in their family now regularly avoid travel, nearly half have avoided seeking medical care, and 40 percent say they or someone in their family has avoided going to work.
About 52 million people living in the United States are immigrants. A little over half are naturalized citizens. The rest, noncitizens, are a mix of people who are in the country legally and who are not.
The new survey provides a window into the sentiments of noncitizen immigrants, both those with a temporary legal status — such as foreign students and workers — and those who are undocumented, because they entered the United States illegally or lack an active visa or other permission to reside in the country. At a moment when the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics in Chicago and elsewhere have stirred resistance among not only immigrants but growing numbers of U.S.-born citizens, the results help illuminate life as an immigrant right now in the United States.
The results come at a time when many Americans support tougher policies on illegal immigration: A Times/Siena poll in late September found that 54 percent of registered voters supported deporting immigrants who were living in the country illegally.
More than half of noncitizen immigrants now say they are worried that they or a family member will be detained or deported, an increase since 2023. Among undocumented immigrants, 75 percent say they fear detention or deportation.
Even immigrants in the country lawfully, whether permanent residents, students or workers on visas, are taking precautions they did not before. Many are carrying their green cards, required under the law but not usually enforced, nervous that an accent or a darker complexion could make them targets.
“Agents look at our face, assume we are illegal and treat us like criminals,” said Sandra Perez, 40, a legal permanent resident who lives in a New York City suburb, who never leaves home without her green card.
Half of noncitizen immigrants report carrying a passport, residency card or work authorization with them, twice as many who said that in April, a sign that intensified enforcement, from Los Angeles to Chicago, New York and beyond, has rattled even those who have temporary legal status.
In interviews, many said that their sense of belonging has been replaced with vigilance and dread.
John, 31, who is from India, came to the United States to study and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. Two years ago, he received a green card after marrying an American citizen.
He teaches at a public school in Philadelphia, and that makes him uneasy.
The Trump administration lifted a directive that had banned immigration agents from conducting operations at “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
“I definitely hear stories and talk of immigration agents waiting outside of schools,” he said.
“I used to leave my green card at home in a safe place,” he said. “Now I have it in my wallet, just in case.”
John is among those interviewed for this article who spoke on condition that their last name be withheld for fear of jeopardizing their immigration status, even though he is residing in the United States lawfully.
He and his wife are expecting a child, and his green card is still temporary, or “conditional,” pending approval of a permanent one.
Like most immigrants, John believes the immigration system has treated him fairly. Nearly 70 percent of noncitizen immigrants, including half of undocumented immigrants, expressed that sentiment, according to the survey.
However, he said, “I feel I have to pay close attention to every aspect of life.”
“I have stopped posting anything on social media,” he said. “I am wary of what posts I like.”
The Trump administration has also increased vetting of citizenship applicants, to ascertain whether they hold anti-American sentiments. Immigration officers can also conduct interviews with neighbors of applicants.
Nearly one in three noncitizen immigrants, including half of those without legal status, say they personally know someone who has been detained or deported, roughly double the share who said the same in April of this year.
What keeps some undocumented immigrants especially on edge, they said in interviews, is the reality that the enforcement doesn’t differentiate between those who are dangerous criminals and those who have been in the country for decades working, paying taxes and often raising U.S. citizen children.
They also expressed frustration that there has been no progress toward comprehensive immigration reform, which Congress last passed in 1986.
Not all immigrants share the same fears.
Lemay Oliva, 42, crossed the southern border in California in May 2015 and, as a Cuban, benefited from the now-defunct “wet foot, dry foot” policy that offered a fast track to legal residency for any Cuban who touched U.S. soil — a path not offered to other migrants.
The policy, in effect from 1995 to 2017, was designed to advance the U.S. goals of welcoming those fleeing the Communist nation and deterring dangerous sea crossings by migrants trying to reach the United States.
Mr. Oliva, who described himself as right wing, runs a bar service for private parties in Orlando, Fla.
The current immigration crackdown did not bother him. “I’m fine with it,” he said.
“These people broke the law," he said of migrants who crossed the border. “You need to enforce the law. It doesn’t matter if you broke it 20 years ago.”
Mr. Oliva’s views reflect those of a small but not insubstantial share of noncitizen immigrants. One-third of the group said the level of immigration enforcement in the country right now was necessary.
Their comfort with the current enforcement climate mirrors that of white immigrants who report feeling less threatened by the crackdown.
Immigrants from European countries — undocumented as well as those with legal status — are less likely to experience the fear that many other immigrants describe, according to the survey. One-third of Europeans say they have felt afraid, compared with 57 percent of immigrants from Latin America and 44 percent from Asia.
Tatyana Puzynia, 34, moved to Washington State from Belarus in 2019, with her husband, a tech worker on an H-1B visa by a tech company.
They now live in the Seattle area, where they are raising their two sons, ages 6 and 4.
On the weekends, they enjoy the region’s many trails, museums and playgrounds.
“There are so many possibilities,” she said on the day the family had made a bid on a five-bedroom house. “The quality of life as middle class is so much better” than in Belarus.
Ms. Puzynia said that her family and people in their immediate circle have not been adversely affected by hard-line immigration policies.
She noted that she liked the politics of her Democratic-led state, whose governor has been an outspoken critic of President Trump’s deportation agenda. In her home country, the same man, Alexander Lukashenko, has been president since she was a young child, she said. Here, she said, “it’s great that the president can change every four years. Next time will come another president, and there will be changes.”
Ms. Luna, the undocumented immigrant in Los Angeles, paused when asked whether she would make the journey to the United States again. She never imagined that she and her husband, and by extension her family, would ever feel as unsafe as they do now, she said.
They have five children. Four of them — ages 18, 12, 11 and 7 — were born in the United States. The fifth, a son who is 26, was brought from Mexico as a child and is a so-called Dreamer, shielded from deportation by the Obama-era program known as DACA. They have created an emergency plan, in the event that Ms. Luna or her husband, Gabriel Lorenzo, gets detained.
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” said Mr. Lorenzo, who has worked for the same construction company for more than a decade. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
For years, Ms. Luna drove her eldest daughter 45 minutes each way to attend a high school military academy, because she was determined to join the Marines.
Ms. Luna then rushed home to get her other girls ready for school. After dropping them off, she drove another 35 minutes to her janitorial job.
Busy as those days were, they feel like a blissful, bygone time in her life.
On several occasions, agents have shown up in the parking lot of the strip mall where she works, including this month, when a shopkeeper who knows her called to advise her to delay her arrival.
“We have been the work force in construction, restaurants, janitorial,” she said. “Now we have to run, hide or stay inside,” she said. “And it’s especially heartbreaking for our children.”
On a recent day, at 2:08 p.m., her phone buzzed with a text from her youngest child’s school informing parents about reports of immigration enforcement nearby. She prayed as she drove to get her.
Next month, her eldest daughter will graduate as a U.S. Marine at Camp Pendleton after completing boot camp.
Ms. Luna is resolved to attend the ceremony, no matter how risky the drive.
“I wouldn’t want to miss her graduation,” she said.
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2) Iowa City Made Its Buses Free. Traffic Cleared, and So Did the Air.
Ridership jumped, people cut back on driving and, over the summer, the city extended the program another year.
By Cara Buckley, Photographs and Video by Annick Sjobakken, Published Nov. 18, 2025, Updated Nov. 19, 2025
Reporting from a bus in Iowa City
Since the fare-free program began, people in Iowa City have driven 1.8 million fewer miles and emissions have fallen by 24,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, the same as taking 5,200 vehicles off the roads.
There was a psychiatrist, a librarian, a substitute teacher and a graduate student in biomedical engineering. There was an Amazon warehouse worker who’d just finished his night shift, and a man who’d lost his driver’s license because of an incident in Florida that he didn’t want to talk about.
They were all riding Iowa City’s buses one sunny November morning, and they were all amped about the same thing: That everyone got to ride for free.
Iowa City eliminated bus fares in August 2023 with a goal of lowering emissions from cars and encouraging people to take public transit. The two-year pilot program proved so popular that the City Council voted this summer to extend it another year, paying for it with a 1 percent increase in utility taxes and by doubling most public parking rates to $2 from $1.
Ridership has surpassed prepandemic levels by 18 percent. Bus drivers say they’re navigating less congested streets. People drove 1.8 million fewer miles on city streets, according to government calculations, and emissions dropped by 24,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. That’s the equivalent of taking 5,200 vehicles off the roads.
“You don’t have to figure out your bus pass. And before, it was $31 a month, which adds up,” said Vincent Hiser, 71, as he rode the No. 1 bus one recent Monday from his job at Bread Garden Market to the mobile home he shares with his 3-year-old Cavapoo, Ruby, and 13-year-old cat, Roy Rogers.
Free city buses are relatively rare in the United States. The idea has been getting a new look recently, after Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral race with a promise to make buses free. However, critics have described the plan as pie in the sky, and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York recently voiced doubts.
But in Iowa City, a college town and home to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, objections to free buses, and even parking fee increases, have been muted. One exception was in the summer of 2024, when fees on parking meters downtown were increased to $3 from $1.50. After nearby businesses complained, the city reduced the cost to $2.25. That increase felt reasonable, said Betsy Potter, executive director of the Iowa City Downtown District; the rates hadn’t been raised in 11 years.
Ms. Potter said downtown businesses supported free buses because they helped bring people downtown and decreased workers’ transit costs. “It is a walkable downtown, but it is not a walkable city,” she said. “It has been a big success.”
Darian Nagle-Gamm, the city’s transportation director, said that the unknowns in federal and state funding, along with proposed property-tax changes, meant that the city would most likely have to review the program every year. But there was eagerness for fare-free buses to stay, she said. “The transit system is one of the greatest tools communities have to combat climate change and reduce emissions,” she said. “You can make a pretty immediate impact.”
Ms. Nagle-Gamm said the idea for the program began with a chat she and the city manager had in 2018 about a book titled “Free Public Transit: And Why We Don’t Pay to Ride in Elevators.” The city wanted to improve its transit system and increase its use while reducing household expenses. Also, as part of a climate action plan, Iowa City wanted to replace 55 percent of vehicle trips with sustainable alternatives like walking, biking and taking transit by 2050. Fare-free buses, officials decided, could help meet those goals.
In 2021, the city starting running more buses, streamlining routes and seriously considering waiving the $1 fares. In 2023, the City Council voted to pay for a two-year fare-free pilot with Covid-19 relief funds.
When the day came, the city threw a launch party. Artists decorated bus shelters with decals of butterflies, bees, wind turbines and flowers. Jazz bands were hired to play on downtown sidewalks. A booth was set up where people could write thank-you cards to bus drivers.
“You can make buses free, but it’s also important to make them convenient and appealing,” said Sarah Gardner, the city’s climate action coordinator. “We have 70-some years of marketing telling everyone that personal vehicles are great, and the ticket to freedom. Bus ridership doesn’t have that same kind of P.R. arm around it.”
Ridership eventually grew to 118 percent of prepandemic levels, compared to the average nationally transit ridership-recovery levels of 85 percent.
William Porter, a night-shift worker and regular rider, said people’s moods seemed to lift since the fares went away. But he would like the adjoining city of Coralville, which charges $1 for adult riders, to do away with fares, too. “I think they should make it for both cities, since people commute back and forth,” Mr. Porter said.
There were early concerns that fare-free travel would heap extra burdens on bus drivers, drawing homeless people or anything-goes behavior. Yet several drivers said that not having to ask passengers for payment or transfers has led to less friction with riders.
It also speeds up travel, they said, because no one was delaying things by rummaging for money. According to the city, on-time arrivals have increased by 13 percent. “There’s less dealing with the fare box and finagling over fares, but it’s definitely been busier,” said Justin Jones, who’s been driving city buses for Iowa City for 15 years, one recent morning just before starting his route.
Then he climbed into the No. 10 bus, which travels between downtown and the west side of the city, crossing the Iowa River, and set off.
A few minutes later, Abbas Mahadi, 20, climbed aboard, holding the hand of his 6-year-old cousin, whom he was chaperoning to elementary school. Free transit, he said, was essential for his family. “If you didn’t have free buses, it would be too much for us,” Mr. Mahadi said.
As the bus rumbled along, more people hopped on, including a doctoral student who had become a regular because parking at the university was too expensive. Another student, Abby Kloha, a 21-year-old who is majoring in translation and Spanish at the University of Iowa, said that instead of stressing out behind the wheel, she was able to spend her bus ride studying Japanese vocabulary. “It kind of feels like a time saver,” she said.
Bus No. 10 pulled to a stop in front of an elementary school, and Mr. Mahadi led his young cousin down the steps and across the street. Mr. Jones idled the bus a few moments more, waiting until Mr. Mahadi hopped back on board. Then Mr. Jones shifted into gear and carried on his way.
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3) Smoking Weed Could Lead to Less Drinking, New Study Suggests
In a makeshift bar on a college campus, researchers studied how smoking cannabis affected alcohol consumption.
By Dani Blum, Nov. 19, 2025
Pete Gamlen
Countless college students have conducted the experiment: What happens when you mix alcohol and cannabis?
But few have done so in a lab, under the watchful eye of scientists, carefully calibrating their breathing as they take hits of research-grade marijuana.
In a new study, investigators corralled around 150 adults into a makeshift bar on campus at Brown University in order to test how much people wanted to drink after they smoked cannabis. It is one of the first rigorous trials to examine how marijuana affects drinking.
“This is basically a very carefully, precisely designed study of cross-fading,” said Dr. James MacKillop, the director of the Michael G. DeGroote Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at McMaster University and an author on the study. (Cross-fading means getting simultaneously drunk and high.)
The researchers found that people drank considerably less after they smoked cannabis.
The new paper, published Wednesday, arrives at a time when going “California sober” — using marijuana and other drugs, but not alcohol — has become trendy. Researchers attribute its popularity to the growing legalization and availability of cannabis in an array of forms, including prepackaged edibles and beverages, as well as a rising awareness about the health harms of alcohol.
“We too often study drugs in isolation,” said Ryan Vandrey, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who studies cannabis and was not involved with the new research. But in reality, he said, people commonly combine alcohol and cannabis.
“We don’t have a good understanding of that,” he said. “And I think we need it.”
The researchers recruited 157 people who regularly use both cannabis and alcohol. The experiment took place over three rounds, separated days apart. During one session, participants smoked joints with a higher concentration of THC, a psychoactive compound in cannabis. In another session, they smoked cannabis with less THC, and in a third, they smoked a placebo joint.
Cannabis intake was controlled; the participants followed a standardized “paced puffing procedure,” listening to an audio tape instructing them when to inhale and exhale.
After they smoked, they went to a lab that was designed to look like a bar, decorated with string lights and signs for Guinness and Jack Daniel’s. The bar was stocked with the participants’ drinks of choice. The researchers watched through a two-way mirror as the participants weighed whether they wanted a drink.
On the day they smoked the higher-THC cannabis, participants drank around a third less than they did on the day they smoked the placebo joint. After they smoked the lower-THC cannabis, they consumed around twenty percent less alcohol than when they used the placebo.
Despite the study’s findings, it’s far too early to say for sure that cannabis can curb drinking, said Jane Metrik, a professor of behavioral and social sciences at the Brown University School of Public Health and the lead author on the paper.
And because the study was so controlled, the results might not neatly translate into everyday life. Popular marijuana products typically contain far more THC than even the higher dose used in the trial, said Johannes Thrul, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved with the trial. (As with many studies, the scientists sourced cannabis from a national supply specifically used for research.)
As more potent cannabis hits the market, researchers are eager for more data on how the drug might interact with alcohol. There are still many unknowns about the combined health effects of both alcohol and marijuana: how the substances work in concert in the body; how different cannabis compounds mix with alcohol; and if smoking, eating or drinking marijuana changes how it intersects with alcohol.
“At the end of the day, it will have to be these really tightly controlled laboratory studies and then the real-world evidence coming together to paint the picture,” Dr. Thrul said. “Because none of these studies can answer these questions by themselves.”
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4) U.S. Lends $1 Billion to Three Mile Island Nuclear Project
The Pennsylvania site, shorthand for the dangers of nuclear power after a 1979 meltdown, is set for revival under a deal to power Microsoft data centers.
By Qasim Nauman, Nov. 19, 2025
Constellation’s nuclear power plant, called the Crane Clean Energy Center, on Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pa. earlier this year. Credit...Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press
The Trump administration is giving a $1 billion loan to help restart a nuclear plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, boosting a project that aims to provide power to Microsoft’s vast network of data centers.
The funding, announced by the Energy Department on Tuesday, would help restart Three Mile Island Unit 1, which shut down in 2019. The other unit at the site near Harrisburg, Pa., shut down in 1979 after its reactor had a partial meltdown and released a small amount of radioactive material into the air. It was the most serious nuclear power accident in the country’s history.
The plant became synonymous with the dangers of nuclear power and fueled public opposition to new nuclear projects for decades, even as safer reactors were developed.
Last year, Unit 1 became the face of a potential revival of the nuclear power industry when Microsoft and Constellation, Unit 1’s owner, announced a deal to restart the plant.
Nuclear energy is one of the options large technology companies like Microsoft are considering to help power the vast networks of data centers needed to provide all kinds of computing services, from social media to artificial intelligence. Google and Amazon have also signed deals with nuclear operators and developers.
Attitudes toward nuclear power have softened in the United States, and it has political support among both Republicans and Democrats. The industry’s supporters have said that the U.S. regulatory system drives up the cost of construction. China has leapfrogged the United States in nuclear power, and while it has similar safety standards, its approval system is more predictable.
The Trump administration has said it wants to reduce regulations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which certifies that a reactor is safe before it is built. President Trump signed an executive order in May directing the agency to take no more than 18 months to approve applications for new reactors.
The Three Mile Island restart project would “help ensure America has the energy it needs to grow its domestic manufacturing base and win the AI race,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement on Tuesday. Constellation said the loan has “made it possible for us to vastly expedite this restart without compromising quality or safety.”
Under the deal to revive the plant, Microsoft would buy as much power as it can from the plant for 20 years in an effort to add carbon-free electricity to the grids that power its operations.
Neither Constellation nor the Energy Department provided details of the loan or its terms. But Constellation said the loan would help it secure cheaper financing. The revived plant, named the Crane Clean Energy Center, is expected to come online in 2027, pending approvals from regulators, the company said in September. With 500 full-time employees, the site is 80 percent staffed, it said.
Once online, the 835-megawatt reactor will produce enough electricity to power roughly 800,000 homes, according to the Energy Department.
In addition to the technical challenges of restarting a mothballed nuclear plant, there are lingering safety concerns. In August 2024, about a dozen people opposed to the plant’s reopening protested outside its gates.
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5) Trump Accuses Democrats of Sedition, ‘Punishable by Death,’ Over Message to the Military
President Trump was reacting to a video that reminded members of the military that they are not supposed to obey illegal orders.
By Shawn McCreesh, Reporting from Washington, Published Nov. 20, 2025, Updated Nov. 21, 2025
President Trump has flexed his power over the military during his second term and his attempts to politicize the armed forces have become more overt. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Trump accused a group of Democratic lawmakers of sedition in an outburst on social media Thursday morning and said their behavior was “punishable by death.”
Their crime? Recording a video that reminded members of the military that they are not supposed to obey illegal orders.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Mr. Trump wrote in one post. He shared a different post, written by another person, that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”
The video that enraged the president had been put out online two days ago by six Democratic lawmakers, all of whom had served in either the military or intelligence community themselves.
One was Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, who served in the Navy and is a former astronaut. “Our laws are clear,” he said in the video. “You can refuse illegal orders.”
Another participant was Representative Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, who also served in the Navy. “You must refuse illegal orders,” he said in the video.
The Democratic lawmakers’ message did not focus on a specific order or scenario, but Trump administration officials have said the lawmakers were encouraging the military to rebel against its commander in chief. As a standard part of their training, members of the military are told that they should refuse to carry out illegal orders. At a briefing for reporters, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said “no” when asked if the president wants to execute members of Congress.
She added: “If this were Republican members of Congress who were encouraging members of the military and members of our United States government to defy orders from the president and from the chain of command, this entire room would be up in arms. But instead it is the other way around, and I think that’s quite telling.”
The video was organized by Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former C.I.A. analyst who served in Iraq.
Mr. Trump has flexed his power over the military during his second term and his attempts to politicize the armed forces have become more overt. He gave a nakedly political address to military leaders and has sent troops into cities around the country. All of which surely contributed to why the Democrats made their video.
And Ms. Slotkin told The New York Times earlier this week that she’d been hearing from active-duty troops concerned about the legality of strikes that targeted people accused of drug-smuggling by the Trump administration.
Mr. Trump’s series of posts about the video on Thursday accused Ms. Slotkin and her fellow Democrats of traitorous conduct. One of his posts carried his signature sign-off which usually indicates he was the actual author of the post as opposed to an aide. It read: “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT.”
Mr. Trump’s posts appeared at a moment when he is beset by challenges on many sides. His administration is aflame over the Jeffrey Epstein saga; he is contending with a revolt from some of the most loyal members of his party and portions of his political base; and his poll numbers have dipped considerably.
His posts instantly triggered an uproar in Washington.
The six Democrats who produced the video put out a joint statement which read, in part: “What’s most telling is that the president considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law. Our service members should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders. It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty.”
Asked about the president’s post that the Democratic lawmakers had committed a crime punishable by death, the Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune, said: “I don’t agree with that.”
Mr. Thune also criticized the Democrats who made the video. “Obviously everybody has a First Amendment right,” he said. “What they did was ill advised,” he added, “unnecessary” and “provocative.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat in the Senate, condemned the president’s threats from the floor of the Senate and called on members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to do the same.
“Let’s be crystal clear, the president of the United States is calling for the execution of elected officials,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is an outright threat, and it’s deadly serious.”
He added: “Every time Donald Trump posts things like this, he makes political violence more likely. None of us should tolerate this kind of behavior.”
Mr. Trump’s posts about imprisonment and death by hanging were difficult to square with his recent calls to lower the temperature of political rhetoric in this country. After the conservative activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk was murdered in September, Mr. Trump asked in an Oval Office address for “all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died — the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law and the patriotic devotion and love of God.”
Mr. Trump said then that it was “long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree.”
That spirit of free speech and the rule of law was hard to detect in president’s posts and messages he decided to repost Tuesday. He shared one that said, “Indict all of them.”
“Traitors,” said another.
The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro — whose home was firebombed on Passover this year — criticized the president on social media.
“He is actively encouraging political violence once again, ratcheting up the real risk of danger to our elected leaders and deepening the divides in our country,” Mr. Shapiro wrote. “The sycophants and enablers the President surrounds himself with are quick to condemn language like this when it suits their political purposes — but in moments like this, they remain silent.”
The Democrats’ video had already been the object of much indignation among conservatives before the president weighed in. The White House policy czar Stephen Miller had shared the video the day it was published, writing: “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection.”
Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.
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6) ‘The System Is Meant to Break You’: What ICE Is Doing to People Here Legally
By Sarah Wildman, Nov. 21, 2025
Ms. Wildman is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.
Luis Manuel Diaz for The New York Times
In August, Jemmy Jimenez Rosa and her husband, Marcel, took their three young daughters on a vacation to Cancún, Mexico. On their return to Boston Logan airport, a Customs and Border Protection officer took Ms. Rosa aside and led her to a back room where she was told she should say goodbye to her girls. “I keep thinking this is a nightmare. Is this a nightmare? Like, is this really happening?” Ms. Rosa recalled.
Ms. Rosa was placed in a detention cell at Logan. Officers gave her virtually no information and dismissed her husband’s requests that he be allowed to bring her diabetes and anxiety medication. Ms. Rosa was born in Peru and has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since she was 9 years old; she is now 43. Just weeks before the trip to Cancún, she had renewed her green card without incident. Her husband and her daughters are American citizens.
Over the past several months, alongside a team from Opinion Video, I’ve spoken to a half-dozen people and their families who have been taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Each was re-entering, or was already in the country legally. No one was smuggled across the border.
None of the people we spoke to had a recent criminal record. (Three had minor nonviolent brushes with the law, all in the distant past; one received a pardon.) All were treated like suspected violent criminals, forced into tiny cells, dressed in prison uniforms, manacled for transfer. Those we spoke to were held for anywhere from 10 days to over 70 days. The experience shattered their equilibrium.
Immigration and Border Patrol officers have long held extremely broad discretionary powers to welcome or reject noncitizens arriving in the United States. And this is far from the first wave of xenophobia to hit America. But something different is happening now in the breadth and ferocity of efforts to change the makeup of this country.
The videos circulating on social media are brutal and terrifying — the often violent arrests, people pulled screaming from their cars, out of day care centers, away from their children and their spouses. What should give Americans equal pause is the inhumanity happening beyond the cameras, away from the view of judges and lawyers and the media. Due process is not a constitutional right afforded only to citizens; legal restrictions on unlawful detention apply to all people on U.S. soil.
The stories we were told call into question both the constitutionality and the morality of how the Trump administration is directing immigration policy. That immorality, once unleashed, may ultimately be aimed at others in this country, regardless of immigration status. If a woman returning from vacation with her young children can be suddenly removed from her family and her life, how can we believe that any of us will remain safe?
There was a disquieting sameness to the horror that was described to us. Those we interviewed despaired at how the detention centers were kept purposefully, horrendously cold, forcing some of them to huddle up against strangers. They spoke of lights left on 24 hours a day and of interstate transfers that came without notice. They described food that was inadequately distributed and made them unwell. Of being forced to urinate and defecate in front of fellow detainees and guards. Of being humiliated and mocked by officers. All referred to a destabilizing lack of information, the dreadful understanding that they could be held for weeks or months without anyone informing them why they were being held at all.
We heard how they begged for recourse — asked to speak with the outside world, for bond hearings, to protest their detention. They referenced, with anxiety and sorrow, others they encountered, some presumably still languishing in those cells, without counsel or relief.
Our team reviewed documentation and spoke to lawyers and family members. Some details of each account could not be independently verified, but the narratives are consistent with what they told others at the time and what they previously told the media.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, the Trump team promised the largest mass deportation in American history, a pledge to expel one million people a year, starting with violent criminals. None of the people we spoke to fit that description. All believed they had followed the rules. They renewed their green cards and showed up for regular immigration, work or visa interviews.
Then the rules seemed to change. Lawyers told us that immigration officials have always used a certain degree of their own judgment to determine if a noncitizen is a flight risk or a risk to the community. Even under President Barack Obama, whose administration ramped up deportations, law enforcement was asked to prioritize removal for people who were a significant threat and to de-emphasize those who had been living in the country lawfully.
Now people showing up for an interview with ICE about an asylum claim or a green card application, or to finalize a visa — individuals who might have once been asked to return for a court date or, in more extreme cases, given an ankle monitor — risk being taken into custody. Green card holders are discovering that decades-old interactions with law enforcement over minor marijuana charges and traffic violations are being brought forward as reasons for detention and possible expulsion. The administration is not only deterring newcomers from entering the United States; it is also effectively encouraging noncitizens who are already here to leave. This shift is seeding fear among America’s 52 million immigrants and temporary visitors, a majority of whom are here lawfully. This is a group that includes green card holders as well people holding work, student and tourist visas.
“If you want to produce the deportation numbers that the administration is after, you cannot get to those numbers if you focus solely on deporting people who have serious criminal records,” the New York University immigration professor Adam Cox told me. “There just aren’t enough people.”
Last year Mr. Cox co-wrote an article for the Just Security blog laying out paths the incoming administration might take to reach its deportation goals. They included vastly broadening the category of criminality to encompass many more people than might have been considered a community risk in the past. Being in America without a visa or entering without documentation is not a criminal offense, he wrote — it’s a civil one. But “pushing the idea that any immigrant who has violated immigration law has committed a crime” allows the administration to broadly claim that it has deported criminal elements.
Mr. Cox’s predictions appear to have borne out. Just shy of 60,000 people were held in immigration detention at the end of September, roughly a third more than the same month in 2024. The Department of Homeland Security maintains that 70 percent of immigration arrests have targeted criminals. The Migration Policy Institute and other monitoring groups have found quite the opposite: As of September, these groups found, some 71.5 percent of people held in detention had no criminal record. Of the rest, many have a record of a minor infraction, such as driving with a broken taillight.
Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian citizen, arrived at a California immigration office in early March to finalize her work visa and start a job at a U.S.-based wellness company. She has spent much of her adult life going back and forth across the border — she crossed dozens of times between 2019 and 2025 alone — though not always seamlessly: She was denied entry to work in the United States more than once, and once had a visa revoked. (These are not crimes.)
In March, when she arrived on American soil, she was told she needed to return to Canada to address a discrepancy with her visa paperwork. As she searched online for flights to Vancouver, she was approached by border agents, stripped of her bag and cellphone, and placed in a crowded holding cell. The only place to rest was on the cement floor. Ms. Mooney was able to place a phone call after 48 hours. She reached a friend, who alerted the media; later she talked to a lawyer.
Then she was transferred, in shackles, to a San Diego detention center, where she was given a prison uniform. Days later she was moved once again, also shackled, to a detention center in Arizona. There, she said, women were told to urinate into paper cups for a nurse to perform a pregnancy test. Ms. Mooney had spent her first week refusing the food, fearing it would make her ill; when she finally ate, she was sickened. She said one guard told her she might not find a path out anytime soon. “The system is meant to break you,” Ms. Mooney said.
Ms. Mooney believes the incredulous media attention around her case and her resources — she is white and a native English speaker, a former actor with friends in Los Angeles — helped speed up her case. It still took 12 terrifying days for her to be released, after which she received a five-year ban on returning to America. (In a statement to Times Opinion, the Department of Homeland Security said U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrested Ms. Mooney three times in 2024. Ms. Mooney and her lawyer said she had been previously denied entry and faced challenges to her work visa, but she was never arrested. Times Opinion reviewed documentation that supports this.)
The American immigration detention system has never been known for its humanity. Terrible conditions in detention reported during the Obama administration and the previous Trump administration — of freezing temperatures and of keeping immigrants far too long in cells meant to hold detainees no longer than 12 hours — have not improved. Now the system has been flooded with people, stalling cases, dividing families and gumming up the works of the courts. The number is set to rise: President Trump’s signature domestic policy law set aside $45 billion through September 2029 to expand the country’s detention capabilities.
The office of Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, released a report in August decrying conditions in U.S. immigration detention centers. The report identified more than 500 cases of abuse and neglect, including inhumane treatment of children and pregnant women, between January and August. Mr. Ossoff’s office published a second report in October, noting cases of medical neglect and a dire lack of potable water and acceptable food.
Ms. Mooney’s lawyer, Leonard Saunders, told us that in the past, a person with her type of case — a discrepancy over work visa paperwork — would receive something called deferred inspection. This meant the person in question would be released and required to return to an immigration office with new materials supporting the visa. “They would never detain you,” he said.
Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia University Law School and the director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, said, “The utter disregard for whether people pose any danger to the community or any flight risk is new.”
In September, the Board of Immigration Appeals, the last stop within D.H.S. for a noncitizen to challenge an immigration judge’s deportation decision, significantly limited who is eligible for bond. Under past administrations, noncitizens who were apprehended often had a means of avoiding or being released from detention, such as bond hearings or a hearing before a judge. But bond is rarely on offer now. Previously there was a path — often expensive, often difficult, but still a path — to relief and release. Now such releases are the exception.
Further, the termination of over 100 immigration judges since January has contributed to a national backlog of cases. In early November, NPR reported that dozens of those fired judges were reputed to be more sympathetic to immigrants.
Of the people we interviewed, two had no criminal histories, just a challenge to their visa statuses. Two others had over-20-year-old charges associated with possession of marijuana, both in states where marijuana is now legal. One person had a charge for personal use of a controlled substance over a decade ago. While possessing marijuana is not legal on the federal level, such one-off misdemeanor charges were once not a priority for removal. Now it seems they are.
One day after Ms. Rosa was taken into custody, her rapidly assembled legal team filed a habeas corpus petition, a legal filing protesting what they continue to call her illegal detention. Filing a federal habeas claim is complicated. It is also virtually impossible to do for tens of thousands of new detainees.
In the chaotic first several days of her detention at Logan airport, Ms. Rosa was not given the chance to shower. She was taken twice to Massachusetts General Hospital for panic attacks, the second time in shackles. Her blood pressure spiked. Like others I spoke to, she was not given a clear reason for being held. Her family came to believe it was because of a 23-year-old misdemeanor charge for possession of marijuana, for which she paid a fine at the time. (Last year Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts issued a blanket pardon for past charges of marijuana possession; Ms. Rosa and her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, told us her case had been sealed in 2013 and received a full and unconditional pardon in 2024.)
But the reason for her detention was a guess. “Never once did we receive any written notice for why she was officially detained,” Mr. Pomerleau said. Border Patrol “wouldn’t answer phone calls. They wouldn’t respond to emails, written letters. It got to the point where I sent three associate attorneys to the airport after nearly four days of her detention, demanding to see her.” But, he said, “they wouldn’t even acknowledge that she was there.” (In a statement to Times Opinion, D.H.S. said that Ms. Rosa “was detained by C.B.P. at Boston Logan International Airport after her records revealed a conviction for possession of a controlled substance in 2003,” adding, “While in custody, Rosa had access to water, bathroom facilities, medicine and food.”)
After five days, Ms. Rosa was taken to a Massachusetts ICE facility to shower, and then was transferred to a rat-infested women’s jail in Maine. There, she encountered women who had been imprisoned for months. After five more terrible days, she was driven back to the first ICE facility. Then she was released — but she did not walk out to her lawyer, nor her husband. She was left outside in the rain, with no phone and no money, disheveled and frantic. She walked to a nearby mall and begged a kindly passer-by to use a phone to call her family.
Mr. Pomerleau is setting up a nonprofit aimed at scaling up the ability of like-minded lawyers to assist in habeas claims and efforts to help immigrants not only to fight to be released from detention but also to seek redress. He is quite sure the deprivation of due process will not stop with immigrants if we allow ourselves to look away.
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7) Jury Acquits Ohio Police Officer in Fatal Shooting of Pregnant Woman
Officer Connor Grubb was charged with murder and other offenses after he fired through the windshield of a moving car, killing Ta’Kiyah Young, 21, in August 2023.
By Michael Levenson, Nov. 21, 2025
Nadine Young, a grandmother of Ta’Kiya Young, shows her shirt to reporters after arraignment proceedings of Officer Connor Grubb in Columbus, Ohio, last year. Credit...David Dermer/Associated Press
An Ohio jury acquitted a police officer of murder and other charges on Friday, just over two years after he killed a pregnant woman by shooting through the windshield of her moving car in a supermarket parking lot.
Relatives of the woman, Ta’Kiya Young, 21, doubled over and sobbed as a judge read aloud the words “not guilty” on all six charges that the officer, Connor Grubb, faced. “It’s not right!” one woman cried. “He gets to walk away free.”
Officer Grubb hugged his lawyer and left the courtroom.
The trial hinged on whether Officer Grubb was justified in using deadly force when he shot Ms. Young once in the chest as she drove toward him and appeared to hit him outside a Kroger supermarket in Blendon Township, Ohio, on Aug. 24, 2023. Ms. Young, who was about six months pregnant, had been accused of stealing liquor from the supermarket. She was pronounced dead at a hospital, according to her family’s lawyers. Her fetus did not survive.
Officer Grubb, a former Marine who had been a full-time officer for about four years, was initially charged with four counts each of murder and felonious assault and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. A judge this week dismissed two of the murder counts and two of the assault counts that were related to Ms. Young’s fetus, saying there was no evidence that Officer Grubb knew she was pregnant when he shot her.
At the trial in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas in Columbus, Ohio, this month, expert witnesses analyzed in minute detail security-camera and body-camera footage of the shooting as prosecutors and the defense disputed whether Officer Grubb was in imminent danger when he fired at Ms. Young.
Prosecutors told the jury that Officer Grubb’s use of deadly force was “utterly unnecessary to defend himself” from Ms. Young’s car, and that video footage of the shooting showed that she was turning the wheel away from him as she drove forward.
“He was easily able to step aside to avoid harm, and avoiding harm had nothing to do with his decision to discharge his firearm,” Richard F. Glennon, a prosecutor, told the jury. “He wasn’t defending his life, or anyone else’s. He was simply stopping her.”
Officer Grubb’s lawyer, Kaitlyn Stephens, told the jury that Officer Grubb was justified in using deadly force because “a 3,500-pound car can cause serious physical harm or death” and can be “weaponized into a deadly weapon in a matter of split seconds.”
Officer Grubb “was doing his job when he was run down and hit by a 3,500-pound deadly weapon,” Ms. Stephens said.
Officer Grubb did not take the stand. But a special agent from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Kyle Douglass, read aloud from the witness stand a written statement that Officer Grubb had provided to investigators, justifying his decision to shoot Ms. Young.
“At the time I fired my weapon, I was in fear for my life, as the suspect had just struck me with her vehicle,” Officer Grubb’s statement said. “My feet were no longer on the ground and the top half of my body was on the hood of her car. Immediately before I fired, the suspect had ignored repeated commands to get out of the car and, instead of complying, accelerated her vehicle directly at me and struck me.”
Officer Grubb and another officer had walked up to Ms. Young’s car after a Kroger worker accused her of shoplifting, according to body-camera footage that the police released last year. The other officer told Ms. Young to get out of the car and said that she was being accused of stealing, but she remained behind the wheel and told the officer that she had not stolen anything, the video shows.
Officer Grubb then walked directly in front of the car, commanded her to get out and drew his gun as she turned the wheel, the video shows. As Ms. Young drove forward, and appeared to hit Officer Grubb with the front bumper of her car, he fired into the windshield, killing Ms. Young, whose car rolled slowly forward and crashed into the Kroger, the video shows.
Mr. Glennon said he would not dispute that Ms. Young had shoplifted. But Officer Grubb did not need to step in front of her car and draw his gun to investigate that crime, an expert witness hired by the prosecution told the jury.
“Absolutely no one should have been killed for taking the actions that Ta’Kiya took that day,” Mr. Glennon said.
The killing of Ms. Young, who was Black, touched off protests and calls by the Columbus branch of the N.A.A.C.P. for Officer Grubb, who is white, to be fired. He has remained on the force, but was placed on unpaid leave, the town’s police chief, John C. Belford, said in an email this month.
Nadine Young, Ms. Young’s grandmother, said last year that she was raising Ms. Young’s two young sons while mourning the death of her granddaughter. She said Ms. Young was expecting a baby girl when she was killed and had filled her garage with pink baby clothes.
Ms. Young was “the life of everything,” the grandmother said. “She was the smile. She was the life of the party, you know. And she did all she could for her babies.”
In August, Ms. Young’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Officer Grubb and Kroger that described the shooting as “outrageous and indefensible.” The lawsuit is still pending.
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8) Trump’s All-but-Forgotten Border Wall Reaches an Angry Laredo, Texas
Once the symbol of the president’s immigration policies, the wall has been eclipsed by his deportation efforts, but with $46.5 billion from Congress, construction is ramping up on the Rio Grande.
By Pooja Salhotra, Photographs and Video by Ruth Fremson, Reporting from Laredo, Texas, Nov. 21, 2025
Roque Haynes aimed his appeal directly at the mayor of Laredo last Friday as the border city in South Texas confronted an adversary that its citizens have been battling for nearly a decade: President Trump’s border wall.
“At this dark hour for Laredo, we need a man of courage, a man of conviction,” Mr. Haynes, a 56-year-old environmentalist, implored Mayor Victor D. Treviño at the Laredo City Council meeting, which had been called to address the border barrier that was once the symbol of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. “We need from you the strength of a Winston Churchill to defeat this looming threat, not the appeasement and weakness of a Neville Chamberlain.”
Laredo may not be Munich on the Rio Grande, but for Mayor Treviño, who is also a family physician, Churchillian resolve seemed to be in short supply.
His city faces a determined administration in Washington, allied with a conservative state government and supplied by an accommodating Congress that this summer approved tens of billions of dollars to build a wall that had stalled during Mr. Trump’s first term.
For as long as the federal government has talked about a border wall, people in Laredo have opposed it. They’ve called it an “ugly monstrosity” that would trample over residents’ property and damage ties to Mexico, a critical trading partner with a shared history.
But the wall is coming “regardless of whether it works or not,” the mayor said in an interview. He added, “we might as well collaborate, or negotiate.”
In Mr. Trump’s first term, the border wall came to symbolize the president’s desire to address illegal immigration. But in the face of a stingy Congress and a barrage of lawsuits from landowners and environmental groups, his administration built about 453 miles of border wall, far short of the nearly 2,000 miles once promised. Then, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. largely halted construction.
During Mr. Trump’s second term, unauthorized border crossings have plunged, and federal immigration policies have shifted to interior enforcement and mass deportations. To the public, the wall has almost been forgotten.
Mr. Trump has not forgotten.
In July, Congress approved $46.5 billion for the border wall as part of the president’s signature domestic budget and spending law, a staggering increase from the $5 billion that Mr. Trump requested in 2018. Ten construction contracts, totaling $4.5 billion, were awarded in September for sections of the barrier outside of Laredo. In October, Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, waived federal procurement laws across the entire U.S.-Mexico border in order to assign construction contracts more swiftly.
Laredo, a major inland trading port that has long prided itself on its neighborliness with Mexico, received notice this month that the wall was coming, Dr. Treviño said. The Homeland Security Department intends to award contracts between now and next March, he added.
A Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said approximately 108 miles of border wall were planned along the Rio Grande within Webb County, where Laredo is, and Zapata County, just south of it. Those plans align with a federal map on the agency’s website, which shows the barrier snaking along Laredo’s riverside neighborhoods, splitting municipal parks, and potentially cutting through a golf course and a water treatment plant.
The agency has also issued waivers that exempt federal contractors from at least 30 federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the Trump administration was simply “undoing the pro-illegal immigration policies” of its predecessor, which “allowed countless dangerous, unvetted illegals into the country.”
Illegal border crossings have always been low in the Laredo area compared with other parts of the border, but since Mr. Trump returned to office, the numbers have dropped sharply, 875 encounters in October, compared to 2,372 in October 2024.
Zapata and Webb Counties, like the entire Rio Grande Valley, is heavily Hispanic and has historically leaned Democratic. But the region moved dramatically toward Mr. Trump in 2024. He won Zapata County in 2020, then both Zapata and Webb in 2024.
Still, the wall has always been contentious. During Mr. Trump’s first term, residents filed lawsuits, organized protests and even plastered the words “Defund the wall” in bright yellow paint on a downtown street. Those words were removed last month, after Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas threatened to withhold road funding if they remained.
Tricia Cortez, executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, an environmental nonprofit, called the wall fight “a David versus Goliath battle.”
“The people aren’t afraid,” she said, “and we hope that the city leaders can also embrace that same courage.”
Caught between Laredo residents and the federal government, the City Council last week approved a new community advisory committee to weigh in on the wall’s designs. It also authorized the hiring of an external lawyer to help negotiate with the administration.
During the at times contentious meeting, dozens of community members urged elected officials to keep fighting.
“Don’t let them bully you,” said Ricardo de Anda, a Laredo lawyer whose property abuts the Rio Grande.
But reality is setting in.
“We know, basically, that the government will take over no matter what,” said Julio Ortiz, 48, a Laredo resident.
City leaders say they are not sure what standing firm will get them with an administration that has been more than willing to play hard ball. During the government shutdown, thousands of Laredo children and older residents lost food assistance as Mr. Trump moved to punish Democrats for demanding an extension of expanded health insurance subsidies as the price for funding the government. Democrats relented.
Mayor Treviño worried that if Laredo refuses to cooperate, the Department of Justice will acquire the city’s land through eminent domain.
“I don’t want the public to think we are giving away our property, saying yes to everything they say,” Dr. Treviño told angry residents, some of whom threatened to campaign against him in the mayoral election next year. “We are trying to dialogue with them so we can get the best advantage we can get.”
Discussions between Laredo and the Department of Homeland Security have focused on what the wall might look like, city officials said. Instead of the 30-foot-tall steel bollards, Laredo leaders want something more visually appealing. Renderings of the latest proposal from federal officials, presented to the public at the City Council meeting, show a concrete barrier along the river. The city may try to negotiate easements in certain parts of the city, which would let the federal government use the land without taking it over completely, Dr. Treviño said.
Representative Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, said he would ask the Trump administration to forgo the wall in certain areas.
“Whether they would do that or not, we don’t know,” Mr. Cuellar said.
One of those areas could be the 40-acre Las Palmas Nature Trail, along the Rio Grande. With $2 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, residents of the adjacent Azteca neighborhood have been uprooting invasive plant species that absorb huge amounts of precious water, ahead of sowing pollinator plants and having new trails paved.
“You have one federally funded initiative to restore Las Palmas and make it accessible for the people, and then you have another federally funded initiative to seal it off from the people,” said Mr. Haynes, the project’s manager.
To be sure, the wall has its supporters.
“The people spoke loud and clear in the 2024 elections that they wanted border security, and that included a wall,” Jose Salazar, chairman of the Webb County Republicans, said.
But Dennis Nixon, the chief executive of the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo, who said he voted for Mr. Trump in the last three presidential elections, called the wall “complete baloney” and the amount of money directed to it “obscene,” especially now with the border so quiet. Those funds, he said, should go toward protecting the Rio Grande, ranked one of the most endangered rivers in the country.
Adding to environmentalists’ worries is the prospect of buoys in the river. Customs and Border Protection intends to install “waterborne barriers” in the Rio Grande, which could resemble the orange buoys that Mr. Abbott put in the river at Eagle Pass, Texas.
Adriana E. Martinez, a native of Eagle Pass who now studies rivers, said the buoys caused sediment erosion and changed the flow of the Rio Grande, potentially violating international treaties with Mexico, which shares the river with the United States.
Near San Ygnacio, about 35 miles south of Laredo, Elsa Hull worried about the fate of her three-acre property, where she raised two daughters, laid down trails, promoted native plants and created a pond where she goes to meditate. The wall, as proposed, would cut through her property.
“I have tried so hard to maintain a wildlife sanctuary,” said Ms. Hull, 57, who was a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the wall during the first Trump administration, “and I can’t imagine what’s going to happen if that wall comes through.”
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9) Family of Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Decades Gets $80 Million Settlement
Darryl Boyd, who died this spring of pancreatic cancer, was convicted as a teenager for a 1976 Buffalo murder he did not commit.
By Hurubie Meko, Nov. 21, 2025
Darryl Boyd, left, and his co-defendant John Walker Jr. worked for years to draw attention to their cases. Credit...WGRZ
The federal jurors never met the Buffalo man whom they awarded a record $80 million for spending more than 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
The man, Darryl Boyd, died in February from pancreatic cancer as he waited for the civil trial that capped a nearly 50-year fight to clear his name and hold Erie County responsible for imprisoning him. So instead of hearing Mr. Boyd tell his story in person, the jurors saw him on a screen as he gave a recorded deposition.
He spoke about his murder trial in 1977, where the Erie County district attorney’s office withheld evidence and used false testimony against him.
Mr. Boyd told of how he returned to his cell in shock after he was convicted of murder at age 17. He cried as he talked to his mother, he said on the recording. Decades of dehumanizing violence followed. He was slashed by someone who wanted his commissary purchases, saw a friend fatally stabbed over a piece of chicken, heard and smelled someone get burned alive in a cell.
When he was exonerated, it was like “fresh air,” Mr. Boyd said. “Then, emotions came later.”
On Wednesday, after a two-and-a-half-week trial, the jurors took less than an hour to posthumously grant Mr. Boyd’s estate an amount that outstripped the $60 million award that two Chicago men each received in March. Mr. Boyd’s estate includes his mother, son and granddaughter.
Jeffrey S. Gutman, a professor at George Washington University Law School, said the sum was “by far, the largest jury award in a wrongful conviction compensation case.”
The City of Buffalo previously settled with Mr. Boyd for slightly over $4 million.
Mr. Gutman, who tracks such payouts for the National Registry of Exonerations, said that such verdicts were rare and that many similar cases settled outside of court or were dismissed.
Awards can be reduced on appeal, and on Thursday, the Erie County attorney, Jeremy Toth, said in a statement that the county would appeal to a higher court.
A spokesman for the county executive, Mark C. Poloncarz, said that Mr. Poloncarz believed the $80 million award to be “egregious.” “While we extend our sympathies to the family, that amount is insupportable.” the spokesman, Peter Anderson, said.
Mr. Boyd’s case has worked its way through New York courts for decades. He was one of five boys accused in the 1976 robbery and killing of a 62-year-old man, William Crawford, inside his home. At the time, Mr. Boyd and the other boys, all Black, became known to their supporters as the Buffalo Five.
One was coerced by investigators into testifying against the others in return for not being prosecuted. One boy was acquitted at trial, but the other three were sent to prison, including Mr. Boyd. He was tried before an all-white jury and convicted of second-degree murder and first-degree robbery.
In 2021, Mr. Boyd’s conviction was vacated. He was about 62 — and had completed 20 years in prison and spent eight more on and off for parole violations.
A judge found that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence to his defense, including pictures from the crime scene that directly contradicted the prosecution’s theory of the case and witness testimony that pointed toward another perpetrator. Investigators also “coerced vulnerable witnesses to provide false statements,” according to the lawsuit.
The year after his exoneration, Mr. Boyd filed a federal lawsuit against Buffalo, Erie County and several detectives. If not for their misdeeds, Mr. Boyd “would not have been prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned,” said his lawyers, Joel Rudin and Ross E. Firsenbaum, who were part of a team of about a dozen.
One of his co-defendants, John Walker Jr., was awarded $28 million in April. Mr. Walker testified at Mr. Boyd’s civil trial this month.
In 1976, the Buffalo Police Department’s homicide squad questioned several people, eventually coercing a 17-year-old boy to turn in his friends to save himself.
The prosecutor with the Erie County district attorney’s office who handled the case testified in this month’s trial, denying that he had hidden evidence.
“You think just to get these convictions, I was going to hide proof?” the former prosecutor, Timothy Drury, said. “No, I’m not going to do that.”
But when Mr. Rudin went through the items of evidence, Mr. Drury could not actually recall whether he had turned them over.
In prison, Mr. Boyd and Mr. Walker began requesting documents from their cases. And as Mr. Boyd was transferred from one prison to another, he completed an associate degree and a paralegal certification, according to his deposition.
After they left prison, the two men spent years trying to draw attention to their wrongful convictions, Mr. Boyd said in his deposition. The pair picketed court buildings, held rallies and sought out reporters.
“We were just diligently trying to get our story there and seeking anyone to get our story told truthfully,” Mr. Boyd said.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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