Memorial for David Johnson of the San Quentin 6
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A Trial Date Is Set on August 26 for Alejandro Orellana, Join the Call for National Protests to Drop the Charges!
https://stopfbi.org/news/a-trial-date-is-set-on-august-26-for-alejandro-orellana-join-the-call-for-national-protests-to-drop-the-charges/
A trial date of August 26 was set for immigrant rights activist Alejandro Orellana at his July 3 court appearance in front of a room packed with supporters. Orellana was arrested by the FBI on June 12 for protesting against ICE in Los Angeles. He faces up to 5 years in prison for two bogus federal charges: conspiracy to commit civil disorder, and aiding and abetting civil disorder.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is calling for a national day of protests on the first day of Orellana's trial, August 26th, to demand that the charges be dropped. To everyone who believes in the right to free speech, to protest ICE, and to say no to deportations, we urge you to organize a local protest on that day at the nearest federal courthouse.
Orellana has spent much of his adult life fighting for justice for Chicanos, Latinos, and many others. He has opposed the killings of Chicanos and Latinos by the LAPD, such as 14-year-old Jesse Romero, stood against US wars, protested in defense of others targeted by political repression, and has been a longtime member of the activist group, Centro CSO, based out of East LA. His life is full of examples of courage, integrity, and a dedication to justice.
In contrast, the US Attorney who charged him, Bilal Essayli, believes in Trump's racist MAGA vision and does a lot to carry it out. He defended Trump's decision to defy the state of California and deploy the California National Guard to put down anti-ICE protests. Essayli has charged other protesters, including David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was held on a $50,000 bond.
Another Centro CSO immigrants rights activist, Verita Topete, was ambushed by the FBI on June 26. They served her a warrant and seized her phone. Orellana and his fellow organizers like Topete stand for the community that protested Trump last month. Essayli represents Trump’s attempts to crush that movement.
This case against Orellana is political repression, meant to stop the growth of the national immigrants rights movement. The basis for his arrest was the claim that he drove a truck carrying face shields for protesters, as police geared up to put down protests with rubber bullets. People of conscience are standing with Orellana. because nothing he did or is accused of doing is wrong. There is no crime in protesting Trump, deportations, and ICE. To protest is his - and our - First Amendment right. It’s up to us to make sure that Essayli and Trump fail to repress this movement and silence Orellana's supporters.
Just as he stood up for immigrants last month, we call on everyone to stand up for Orellana on August 26 and demand the charges be dropped. On the June 27 National Day of Action for Alejandro Orellana, at least 16 cities held protests or press conferences in front of their federal courthouses. We’ll make sure there are even more on August 26. In addition to planning local protests, we ask that organizations submit statements of support and to join in the call to drop the charges.
You can find protest organizing materials on our website, stopfbi.org. Please send information about your local protests and any statements of support to stopfbi@gmail.com. We will see you in the streets!
On August 26, Protest at Your Federal Courthouse for Alejandro Orellana!
Drop the Charges Now!
Protesting ICE Is Not a Crime!
Copyright © 2025 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
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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”
——
Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
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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.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
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) The 109-Year-Old Pact That Looms Over European Moves to Recognize a Palestinian State
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret treaty Britain and France signed more than a century ago. Many consider it to have seeded a legacy of strife in the Middle East.
By Mark Landler, Reporting from London, Aug. 3, 2025
Speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, evoked Britain’s role in the creation of Israel. Credit...Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
When Britain’s foreign secretary declared last week that his government would recognize the state of Palestine if Israel did not agree to a cease-fire with Hamas, he said the British were doing so with the “hand of history on our shoulders.”
His French counterpart also invoked history in explaining why France had taken the same step a week earlier. French leaders going back to Charles de Gaulle, he said, had called for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on “the recognition by each of the states involved of all the others.”
Neither man mentioned the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret treaty between Britain and France in 1916, under which the European colonial powers carved up the Levantine territories of the crumbling Ottoman Empire into spheres of British and French control. And why would they?
Sykes-Picot is cited by historians as an enduring example of Western imperial arrogance — a cynical exercise in drawing borders that cut across religious, ethnic and tribal communities in what are today Israel, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories. To many Arabs, who view it as a great betrayal, it seeded a legacy of strife and bloodshed in the Middle East.
The real-time crisis unfolding in Gaza — the starving children, the Israeli restrictions on aid, the Palestinians killed as they try to collect food — undoubtedly had a greater impact on Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France than the stains of the past. Yet their momentous decisions have cast a light on the shadowy roles of both countries in a region where they once vied for influence.
“The history is so relevant,” said Eugene L. Rogan, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford. “It shows there’s always a chance for historical actors who screwed up in the past to make up for their mistakes.”
Professor Rogan praised the moves toward recognition for reasons both past and present. On its current course, he said, Israel was opening the door to unthinkable treatment of the Palestinians: expulsion from Gaza or worse. Recognizing a Palestinian state does Israel a favor by opening the way to “a form of cohabitation that is sustainable,” he said.
Speaking at the United Nations, the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, cited another century-old document in arguing that recognition would redress a historical injustice: the Balfour Declaration, issued a year after the signing of Sykes-Picot, which endorsed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It had a proviso that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
After 21 months of relentless Israeli attacks in Gaza, with the specter of famine across the enclave, Mr. Lammy said that Britain had a responsibility to act on behalf of its long-oppressed population, the Palestinians.
“His argument is that it’s time to make good on the second half of that promise,” said Professor Rogan, whose books include “The Arabs: A History.” “At the time of the Balfour Declaration,” he added, “Britain had a worldwide empire, which in 1917, they could not imagine losing. David Lammy is operating in a post-colonial, post-E.U. Britain. But he’s using history as a legitimating factor.”
Mr. Lammy said that Britain could be proud that it “helped lay the foundations for a homeland for the Jewish people.” Yet the country’s motive in backing what later became Israel was less moral than strategic, Professor Rogan said. It was seeking a client community in Palestine that would prevent the territory from falling into enemy hands. London feared the territory could be used as a launchpad for attacks on the Suez Canal, which was then controlled by Britain.
Moreover, Britain backed away from its pro-Zionist stance as it found it hard to reconcile a Jewish state with preserving relations with the Arab world. In a later document, the White Paper of 1939, Britain proposed that the Jewish homeland would be created within a majority-Arab Palestinian state and that Jewish immigration to Palestine be limited to 75,000 for five years.
“Israel was not created because of the Balfour Declaration; it was created in spite of the Balfour Declaration,” said Michael B. Oren, an Israeli American historian who served as Israel’s ambassador to Washington and later as a deputy minister in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Oren argued that the decisions of Britain and France to recognize a state would not hasten an end to the conflict in Gaza but prolong it. By offering this concession to the Palestinians now, he said, the West had given Hamas even less incentive to agree to a cease-fire. He chalked it up to a bid for relevance by two post-colonial powers.
“These are former Middle Eastern powers that want to feel like Middle Eastern powers,” said Mr. Oren, who wrote “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East.” “There’s a pathetic quality to it.”
Others argue that if these moves had no impact, they would not have drawn the furious reactions they did from Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. The addition of Britain and France — plus Canada and Malta, which said last week that they, too, would back recognition at the United Nations General Assembly in September — means that more than three-quarters of the U.N.’s 193 member states will have recognized a Palestinian state.
France had a less direct stake in Palestine than Britain did after ceding its claims in the Sykes-Picot treaty. But its move toward Palestinian recognition represents another fateful turn in its relationship with Israel.
From 1945 to 1967, France was Israel’s biggest backer in the West. Part of that was rooted in its wrenching experience with decolonization. In 1954, France faced an anticolonial uprising in Algeria, where the nationalists were backed by Egypt’s nationalist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
France, viewing Israel as a bulwark against Nasser, drew close, supplying the country with Mirage fighter planes and nuclear technology that became the foundation of its undeclared nuclear weapons program. But in 1967, days before Israel launched a military strike against Egypt, de Gaulle, then France’s president, imposed an arms embargo on Israel and shifted his gaze to the Arab states.
Gérard Araud, who served as France’s ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006, said that rupture cast a long shadow. “I felt there was always a sense of ‘Don’t trust the French,’” he recalled.
By supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, the United States had in any case supplanted France as its No. 1 ally. France went on to become the first Western country to develop close ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which represents Palestinians internationally and is led by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
The decision to recognize a Palestinian state nevertheless carries significant political risk for Mr. Macron, Mr. Araud said. France has both the largest Jewish and the largest Muslim communities in Western Europe. It has been scarred by a string of Islamist terrorist attacks.
In recognizing Palestinian statehood, historians said, France and Britain would do well to recognize their diminished sway over a region they once ruled. Such recognition was sorely lacking for decades after the authors of Sykes-Picot divvied up the Middle East, with lasting consequences.
“Neither country understood that the age of colonialism was over,” Mr. Araud said. “They behaved as if they were still all powerful. It’s not the most glorious page of history for either country.”
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2) This City of Prisons Is Suing Over a Planned ICE Detention Center
Leavenworth, Kan., was forged by the corrections industry, but residents are divided over plans for a privately operated immigration detention site in town.
By Mitch Smith, Reporting from Leavenworth, Kan., Aug. 3, 2025
Leavenworth, Kan., has long been known for its corrections facilities, including an imposing federal penitentiary. David Robert Elliott for The New York Times
Like many people in Leavenworth, Kan., Jeff Fagan spent his career working in prisons.
The son of a corrections officer at Fort Leavenworth’s military prison, Mr. Fagan described going to work as a young man in Leavenworth’s silver-domed federal penitentiary. He later got a job at the state prison just outside city limits, where he said he spent nearly four decades as an officer.
So when Mr. Fagan heard about plans for a private company to run an immigration detention center in his city, it seemed like a natural fit. Leavenworth is a prison town, after all, and the company was offering a starting wage of more than $28 an hour.
“I’d like to see all the revenue that would come into our community, all the jobs,” Mr. Fagan said, adding that Leavenworth, which has 37,000 residents, is “not like a community that’s completely, totally afraid of the fact that you have prisons.”
But even in a place that has been in the corrections business for more than 150 years, plans for an immigration detention center have proved divisive, fusing national tensions into municipal debates.
City leaders filed two lawsuits against the detention center’s private operator, CoreCivic, after conversations about a local permit fell apart. A judge temporarily blocked the company from housing detainees. Lawyers and activists raised alarms about understaffing and violence when the facility last housed inmates.
All the while, supporters of the project have grown frustrated with what they see as an attempt to undermine President Trump and, in the process, deny Leavenworth hundreds of jobs.
As the Trump administration increases deportations and builds a network of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention sites, from “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida to an airport in Louisiana, Leavenworth residents have found themselves engulfed by the country’s immigration debate and questioning what the rift means for their city’s signature industry.
“What’s happening across our nation — the abuse, the neglect, the stories coming out of Florida — do we want that in our community?” asked Shannon Lehman, a stay-at-home mother in Leavenworth who is part of a group protesting the ICE plans.
CoreCivic’s beige cellblocks are tucked away at the bottom of a hill, beside the uniform white headstones of a military cemetery and within walking distance of a car dealership. The cells behind its razor-wired fence were empty, as they have been for more than three years, after the Biden administration ordered the Justice Department to no longer enter into contracts with private prison operators.
For about three decades, CoreCivic housed inmates, often federal detainees awaiting trial. But in the final years that the lockup was operating, records and interviews show, jobs went unfilled and violence grew common.
“It was just breathtaking the risks they were willing to take with our clients’ lives and with the staff’s lives,” said Melody Brannon, the chief federal public defender in Kansas, who said she averaged one or two trips to CoreCivic each week over more than 20 years.
A 2017 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general found patterns of understaffing and lax oversight. During the Covid-19 pandemic, conditions worsened. One inmate died after another attacked him with a food tray and then punched and kicked him, court records show. In its lawsuits against CoreCivic, the city of Leavenworth quoted a federal judge who described the place as a “hell hole.”
In an email, Ryan Gustin, a company spokesman, said CoreCivic was “proud of the operational track record we’ve built” but acknowledged “challenges as that contract neared expiration” at the end of 2021. The company declined to make officials available for interviews.
“As with any difficult situation, we sought to learn from it,” said Mr. Gustin, whose company operated more than 40 correctional and detention centers across the country as of late last year. “Staffing was the main contributor to the challenges, and the Covid-19 pandemic compounded the labor issues. We’re grateful for a more stable labor market now.”
This year, Mr. Gustin said more than 2,000 people had applied for jobs and that about 115 had been hired as of early July. A person working 40 hours a week at the starting wage for a CoreCivic detention officer would earn around $59,000 a year. The average household income in Leavenworth is about $71,000, and about 29 percent of workers are government employees, roughly twice the national rate.
Some of the most passionate arguments against CoreCivic’s plan have come from people who used to work there.
One of those critics, Diana Polanco, was a corrections officer at CoreCivic in 2021 when an inmate stabbed her and a colleague. Ms. Polanco, 29, said the lockup was chronically understaffed and unsafe when she worked there, and that “shanks” and other contraband were common. Ms. Polanco said she suffered broken ribs, nerve damage in her face and injuries to her mouth in the attack that led the inmate to be sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder and assault.
The other injured officer, Marcia Levering, said that she was permanently disabled from the attack, has facial paralysis and has struggled to provide for her children.
If CoreCivic could not operate safely before, Ms. Polanco asked, why should it now handle ICE detainees?
“There’s so many red flags,” she said.
‘Right in Our Bailiwick’
Holly Pittman, the mayor of Leavenworth, said that the city was not trying to make a point about President Trump or to shape federal immigration policy. The debate, she asserts, is simply a matter of local zoning rules and the city’s belief that CoreCivic needs a particular permit.
“Just like any restaurant or day care, when they want to open, they have to file these special-use permits,” said Ms. Pittman, a Democrat whose role is officially nonpartisan. “It’s not about immigration to me.”
But Leavenworth is a politically mixed place — Mr. Trump carried the city last year with about 52 percent of the vote — and many residents see the CoreCivic question through a national lens. Mr. Trump carried Leavenworth County and Kansas by larger margins.
“I think the city’s just playing politics,” said Jason Claire, a Leavenworth resident who owns a military surplus store that counts prison guards among its customers.
State Senator Jeff Klemp, a Republican who unseated Mayor Pittman’s husband by 31 votes in last year’s election and who supports CoreCivic’s plans, said he was “not sure if it’s really a permit, or is this the current administration’s stance on border policy that might be influencing that decision.”
Opponents of the detention center, many of whom oppose an array of Mr. Trump’s policies, also invoke national politics. Several dozen residents gathered recently to protest the detention center plan, holding signs with messages like “No Human Being Is Illegal” as they marched through downtown, pausing next to a shrunken-down Statue of Liberty and a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln on the lawn of City Hall.
Skie Pearson, a Leavenworth resident who helped plan the protest, said she worried that “we’re sliding into fascism” as Mr. Trump rolls out his agenda and increases funding for ICE.
“Is it happening here in our very small town? Yes,” Ms. Pearson said of the detention center debate. “But I hope this gives other small towns the idea that they can fight back.”
CoreCivic opened its Leavenworth center in the 1990s before the city began requiring the special-use permits. Even after the rules changed, CoreCivic was grandfathered in. The court battle centers on whether that grandfather clause expired after CoreCivic stopped housing inmates. CoreCivic argues that it never fully abandoned the site and needs no permit.
The last time CoreCivic operated in the city, officials said, police officers sometimes had trouble getting inside to take reports. Inmates also flushed objects down their toilets, taking a toll on municipal plumbing.
CoreCivic said it had offered the city a one-time fee of $1 million, and an additional $400,000 in “impact fees” every year spread between the city’s government and police department. Federal records show that ICE entered into contract with CoreCivic for the Leavenworth site this year. CoreCivic said in court filings that it “anticipates approximately $50 million in annual revenue” from its agreement with ICE.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions. Those opposing the project include residents of Leavenworth and other cities, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth.
As the debate over the detention center stretches on, it is raising questions about what role an industry that shaped Leavenworth should play in its future.
“This is right in our bailiwick,” said State Representative Pat Proctor, a Republican from Leavenworth. “It’s both national security — deporting dangerous illegal criminals — and it’s corrections, it’s detention, which is something that our town does very, very well.”
But others are uneasy about their connection to prisons, or at least unwilling to be defined by them. They point out that Leavenworth was the first city to be incorporated in Kansas, that downtown is seeing signs of investment and that Fort Leavenworth is home to the Army’s Command and General Staff College.
After the earlier staffing problems at CoreCivic, there is also the question of whether enough people in Leavenworth even want a corrections job. A billboard on the highway into town advertises openings at the state prison, and a digital sign near the federal prison urges drivers to visit a jobs website.
At the recent protest, one person held a poster that said Leavenworth was “more than a prison town.”
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3) From Triumph in Iran to Starvation in Gaza: Netanyahu Squanders His Moment to Halt the War
Six weeks after Benjamin Netanyahu scored a victory over Iran, the Israeli leader is now pushing for an “all or nothing” deal with Hamas. But he has not made the compromises needed to make it happen.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 4, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-netanyahu.html
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks in Jerusalem in July. Gil Cohen-Magen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, led the country to a military victory over Iran in June, both his allies and rivals portrayed it as his finest achievement. Flush with newfound confidence and authority, Mr. Netanyahu seemed finally to have gained the political capital he needed to override opposition from his far-right government allies to reach a truce in Gaza.
Six weeks later, the prime minister has squandered that moment. The talks between Hamas and Israel are, once again, stuck. Israel is now pushing for a deal to end the war in one go, instead of in phases. But like Hamas, Mr. Netanyahu has refused to make the compromises needed for such a deal to work — and the credit that he accrued in June has evaporated, both domestically and overseas.
International condemnation of the growing starvation in Gaza, which aid agencies and many foreign government have largely blamed on Israel’s 11-week blockade on the territory this year, is at its peak. Partly to protest Israel’s responsibility for that situation, several longstanding allies of Israel have pledged to recognize a Palestinian state in the near future.
Domestic opposition to the Gaza war is at an all-time high, and calls are growing for the remaining hostages held by Hamas to be returned through a diplomatic deal. Israel’s ability to sustain the war, amid growing fatigue among its military reservists, is increasingly under question. After a rise in death by suicide by reserve soldiers, the military has set up a committee to investigate how to better support those leaving service.
“Israel is in the tightest spot it has been in at any point in the war,” said Michael Koplow, an analyst at Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group.
“It is dealing with a societal crisis over the continued war and plight of the hostages, a military crisis over the lack of clear aims and reservist fatigue, a diplomatic crisis over its close European allies lining up to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood, and an existential crisis over its eroding standing in the U.S.,” Mr. Koplow said.
The protraction of the Gaza conflict also reflects President Trump’s failure to capitalize on the leverage he accrued during the war with Iran. By joining Mr. Netanyahu’s attacks, Mr. Trump gave Israel a symbolic victory. At the time, analysts expected him to demand that Mr. Netanyahu repay the favor by drawing the Gaza war to a close.
“He had all the leverage in the world to say to Netanyahu: ‘Now we need to end this,’” said Daniel B. Shapiro, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group, and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.
“Instead, Netanyahu seemed to persuade Trump to give him more time,” said Mr. Shapiro. “Now, things are just dragging and dragging.”
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4) Many Jewish Voters Back Mamdani. And Many Agree With Him on Gaza.
Zohran Mamdani won over Jewish voters in New York City who were energized by his economic agenda and unbothered by — or sympathetic to — his views on Israel and Gaza.
By Liam Stack, Aug. 4, 2025
Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, appearing at a Passover rally earlier this year, enjoyed a broad primary win that suggests at least some backing from many different constituencies, including Jewish voters. Andres Kudacki for The New York Times
Ben Sadoff knocked on roughly 1,000 doors as a canvasser for Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary campaign in New York City, and the voters he met brought up the same issues again and again: the cost of rent, the cost of child care and the sense that things in the city were going in the wrong direction.
One thing they did not frequently mention was Israel, he said. And when voters — including Jewish ones — did bring it up, their comments often focused on their anguish over Israel’s war in Gaza, where starvation is spreading and about 60,000 people have been killed, according to Gazan officials.
“I think this campaign has really shown us something we have known for a while,” said Mr. Sadoff, who is Jewish and works as a bike mechanic in Manhattan. “There are a million Jewish New Yorkers who have wide-ranging opinions on all kinds of issues.”
Mr. Mamdani’s commanding victory in the Democratic primary for mayor alarmed many Jews who are concerned by his outspoken criticism of Israel. But he won the votes of many other Jewish New Yorkers, some of whom said in interviews that they were unbothered by that criticism and inspired by his intense focus on affordability. Often these voters said that Mr. Mamdani’s views on Israel, and his vocal opposition to its treatment of Palestinians, echoed their own.
Mr. Mamdani has criticized Israel in ways that were once unthinkable for an elected official in New York, home to America’s largest Jewish population. He has decried Israel as an apartheid state. He has said it should ensure equal rights for followers of all religions instead of favoring Jews in its political and legal system. He has supported the movement that seeks to economically isolate it, known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
And he has endorsed the view of Israel’s leading human rights organizations and of genocide scholars — including some in Israel — that it is committing genocide in Gaza, an allegation that the Israeli government has denied.
Mr. Mamdani’s positions on Israel have alienated him from Zionist Jewish groups, many of which have accused him of being antisemitic, a charge that he denies. His views also became a line of attack for some of his primary rivals, including former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is running in the general election as an independent.
Steve Israel, a former Democratic member of Congress who represented parts of Long Island and Queens, said that Mr. Mamdani’s primary victory was “‘Twilight Zone’ stuff” for some Jewish New Yorkers.
“Mamdani’s positions on Israel up to now are way out of the mainstream of the Jewish community, and the irony here is that his progressive policies on economic issues would have at least a plurality of support by Jewish voters,” he said. “But the toxicity of his positions on Israel have just become impossible for those same voters to forgive.”
Yet none of Mr. Mamdani’s stances kept him from winning a decisive primary victory over Mr. Cuomo, his closest competitor.
It is difficult to determine how many Jewish voters supported Mr. Mamdani because even in New York, the Jewish population is too small to be measured with precision by most polls. Neighborhoods with large numbers of Orthodox Jewish residents voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Cuomo. He also won other heavily Jewish areas like Riverdale in the Bronx, though outside of Orthodox neighborhoods, the Jewish population is generally not concentrated enough to allow analysis using precinct-level vote data.
But Mr. Mamdani enjoyed a broad victory that suggests at least some backing from many different constituencies, and pre-election polls, which generally undercounted support for him, showed him earning double-digit support among Jewish voters.
Data from the ranked-choice voting process also shows that Mr. Mamdani was selected as an alternate choice by two-thirds of voters whose top choice was Brad Lander, the city comptroller and the highest-ranking Jewish official in city government, who made his identity a key part of his campaign and who cross-endorsed Mr. Mamdani during the primary.
Jeffrey Lerner, Mr. Mamdani’s communications director and one of his many Jewish advisers, said in a statement that it was “no surprise that thousands of Jewish New Yorkers proudly cast their ballots for Zohran in the June primary, despite relentless fearmongering from Republicans and the billionaire class.”
Mr. Mamdani’s spotlight on affordability was on display on a recent Saturday, when two dozen Jewish families gathered to learn about mass transit at a “Tot Shabbat” event in Prospect Park. The event was organized by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, an activist group that supports the Mamdani campaign.
“I am proud to vote for him as a Jew,” said Emily Hoffman, 37, as children read books, sang songs and played near a big cardboard bus that evoked Mr. Mamdani’s campaign promise to make city buses fast and free.
“It’s unfair that it feels like Zohran is starting with a kind of assumption of antisemitism against him, both because of his racial and ethnic identity and because of his politics on Palestine,” she said. Mr. Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor.
Ms. Hoffman said she was deeply disturbed by the images she had seen of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which reminded her of pictures she saw as a child when she first learned about the Holocaust.
And she called Mr. Mamdani’s belief that Israel should provide equal rights to citizens of all religions “the common-sense position,” adding, “if you’re against that, you are not on the side of justice.”
In recent comments at the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., Mr. Cuomo attributed Mr. Mamdani’s victory to both a surge of support from younger voters and a shift in the way younger people think about Israel and antisemitism.
Mr. Cuomo, who has made unflinching support of Israel part of his political brand, joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team after the International Criminal Court accused him of war crimes and issued an arrest warrant for him last year.
In his remarks, Mr. Cuomo asserted that more than half of Jewish primary voters had cast their ballots for Mr. Mamdani, though he did not back up that claim. He appealed to the synagogue’s well-heeled and mostly older congregants for their help.
“With those young people, the under-30 people, they are pro-Palestinian and they don’t consider it being anti-Israel,” Mr. Cuomo said, according to a recording posted online by The Forward, a Jewish news organization.
“Being anti-Israel to them means anti-Bibi’s policies, anti-Israel government policies,” he added, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by a common nickname. “And they are, and they were, highly motivated, and they came out to vote.”
Though Mr. Mamdani did drive up turnout among younger voters, his supporters come from a range of age groups, many of whom share his belief that you can criticize Israel while still supporting Jewish New Yorkers.
Lisa Cowan, 57, a philanthropy executive in Prospect Heights who is Jewish, ranked Mr. Mamdani second on her ballot, after Mr. Lander.
She praised Mr. Mamdani’s focus on affordability and the “positive spirit” he had brought to the campaign. His comments on Israel did not bother her, she said, because he struck her as “a nuanced thinker” and “someone who loved New York and loved New Yorkers.”
Mr. Mamdani has said that fighting antisemitism would be a priority for him as mayor, and has promised to increase funding to fight hate crimes in New York by 800 percent.
He has also shared his own experiences with anti-Muslim prejudice, including the deluge of threats he has received in recent months that led him to hire extra security.
Ms. Cowan said she thought Mr. Mamdani’s experience with Islamophobia helped him understand what it felt like for Jewish New Yorkers to face religious bigotry. For her, that was more important to keep in mind than what she saw as disputes over word choice and personal style.
“The politics of Israel and Gaza and Palestine are so complicated, and it’s so hard to know what the right thing is, and it’s so hard to say the right things,” she said. “Even Jews who are so mad at him will also be like, ‘Well, I can’t stand the Israeli government. Everything that is happening in Gaza is terrible.’”
Besides, “zero percent of his job is going to be about Israel,” she added. “Frankly, I don’t agree with anyone about Israel, so that can’t be the criteria for who we elect as mayor, because I don’t even agree with myself most days.”
The mayoral race in New York comes at a troubling time for American Jews, and the fear among some members of the community is deeply felt.
Israel’s war in Gaza, which has gone on for nearly two years, has left the enclave in ruins. As opposition has mounted, some extremists have cited the war while committing antisemitic violence, most recently in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colo. That context has made some Jewish voters deeply uneasy about the prospect of a mayor who is highly critical of Israel.
Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform synagogue in Park Slope, a neighborhood Mr. Mamdani won in June, said she had seen both enthusiasm for and wariness of him in her community.
“I see a lot of Jews who are really excited by him,” she said, “and I see a lot of Jews who are really alarmed by the precarity and vulnerability of Jewish life in the United States right now.”
Other Jewish leaders have reacted with a far greater sense of alarm. After Mr. Mamdani’s victory, Rabbi Marc Schneier, the president and founder of the Hampton Synagogue, where Mr. Cuomo gave his remarks, compared him to an early 20th-century politician in Austria whose politics some saw as a model for the Nazi Party.
“Mamdani’s election is the greatest existential threat to a metropolitan Jewish population since the election of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna,” he said in an email. “Jewish leaders must come together as a united force to prevent a mass Jewish exodus from New York City.”
Responding to the opposition he has faced, Mr. Mamdani has made a concerted effort to reach out to Jewish community leaders across the city since his victory, including well-known rabbis and elected officials like Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, who endorsed him immediately after his primary win.
He has also moderated his position on the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” which he declined to condemn in June, though he said he had not personally used it. Pro-Palestinian activists view the phrase as a cry for freedom, but many Jews see it as an endorsement of antisemitic violence. Last month, Mr. Mamdani said he would “discourage” people from using it.
Mr. Mamdani “has been listening and understanding the concerns of Jews, and has been moving his perspective, which I think is a good sign,” Rabbi Timoner said.
Some Jewish leaders have responded more coolly to his efforts, and it is unclear how they will influence Jewish voters who opposed him in the primary.
But Mr. Mamdani’s Jewish supporters said they resented the implication that they should back a candidate for local office based on how strongly that candidate supported the Israeli government.
They said they had seen signs of that assumption everywhere, from news articles that asked how Mr. Mamdani could have won in a city with a large Jewish population, to efforts by Mr. Cuomo to appeal to Jewish voters by highlighting Mr. Mamdani’s criticisms of Israel.
“It begs the question of what their real priorities are,” said Ruby Edlin, 28, who canvassed for Mr. Mamdani in Park Slope during the primary. “Is this actually about protecting Jews, or is it about trying to adhere to some obsolete litmus test about support for Israel that actually doesn’t apply to New York anymore?”
Some Jewish Mamdani supporters said they viewed the assumption as rooted in antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty.
“This community gets flattened, as if it is a monolith that supports a foreign government, which is simply not the case,” said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which endorsed Mr. Mamdani early in the primary. “Zohran is one of the few candidates who sees the full diversity and complexity of the Jewish community.”
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
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5) Rwanda agrees to accept 250 migrants as part of Trump’s deportation plan.
By Eve Sampson, Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, August 5, 2025
Rwanda has agreed to accept 250 deportees from the United States, a Rwandan government spokeswoman said on Tuesday, making the African nation the latest country to work with the Trump administration as it seeks to expel tens of thousands of migrants held in government custody.
“Rwanda has agreed with the United States to accept up to 250 migrants, in part because nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement,” Yolande Makolo, the government spokeswoman, said.
In July, the United States Supreme Court approved the deportation of eight men to South Sudan. The African kingdom of Eswatini also accepted five deportees from the United States and announced plans to repatriate them to their home countries.
The deportees sent to Rwanda will be resettled, provided with job training, health care and places to stay in order to “jump start their lives in Rwanda,” Ms. Makolo said.
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6) Inside Trump’s New Tactic to Separate Immigrant Families
The practice appears to be a more targeted version of the mass separation of migrant children from their parents from President Trump’s first term, which caused a global outcry.
By Hamed Aleaziz, Aug. 5, 2025
Hamed Aleaziz covers immigration. He reported from Washington.
Evgeny and Evgeniia, who fled their native Russia to seek political asylum, have been separated from their 8-year-old son, Maksim, since May. The New York Times
Evgeny and Evgeniia faced an excruciating choice.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told the couple they could leave the United States with their child and return to their native Russia, which they had fled seeking political asylum. Or they could remain in immigration detention in the United States — but their 8-year-old son, Maksim, would be taken away and sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children.
In the end, they chose the agony of limbo in the United States over a return to a place where they saw no prospect for freedom or any future for their family.
“Interior separation is approved,” ICE officials concluded in writing after the couple insisted they could not return to Russia. The last time Evgeny and Evgeniia saw Maksim was on May 15, in a room at Kennedy International Airport in New York City, as ICE agents led them back to detention in New Jersey.
“A few days, right?” Maksim begged his parents that day. “A few days?”
The couple, who asked to be identified only by their first names out of fear for their family back in Russia, said they tried to keep their son calm. Maksim pleaded with his father, who told the boy what he wanted to hear. “I said, ‘Yes, yes, it will be just a few days,’” Evgeny said, recounting the moment in an interview.
Their case is an example of a little-known tactic the Trump administration is using to pressure undocumented immigrants to leave the United States. Officials have begun separating children from their families in small numbers across the country, in what appears to be a more targeted version of one of the most explosive policies of President Trump’s first term.
The New York Times has uncovered at least nine cases in which parents have been separated from their children after they refused to comply with deportation orders, according to internal government documents, case files and interviews.
The practice is not as widespread as the “zero tolerance” policy of Mr. Trump’s first term, when thousands of children were systematically taken from their parents as they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and sent to shelters and foster homes.
But the new cases suggest that the administration has decided to use family separation as a tool, at least in some instances, to persuade families to leave and to create a powerful deterrent for those who might come to the United States illegally.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, insisted that “ICE does not separate families” and placed the onus on the families themselves, saying that the parents have the option of staying with their children by leaving the country together.
“The parents had the right and the ability to depart the country as a family and willfully choose to not comply,” she said.
She denied that there was any new policy on family separations.
Previous administrations separated undocumented families for reasons including national security concerns, public safety and child endangerment. But Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, said that previous administrations, to her knowledge, did not use the threat of family separation as leverage to get people to leave the country.
“I’m not aware of ICE previously using family separation as a consequence for failure to comply” with deportation orders, Ms. Trickler-McNulty said.
Instead, she said, past administrations typically would have released such families into the United States with ankle monitors to track them as they awaited court dates, a practice that has contributed to enormous backlogs in the immigration system.
The notion of choice touches on a key difference between the separations from the first Trump administration and now.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, immigration agents would separate families at the southern border as they crossed into the United States. Adults were criminally charged with illegally entering the country and imprisoned, while their children — some of them babies, just months old — were taken away.
The family separation policy was enormously divisive. Wrenching images of children being pried from the arms of their parents stirred global outrage, but administration officials argued privately that was the whole point — the policy was meant to deter people from making a dangerous and illegal journey.
Mr. Trump ultimately relented to pressure and ended the policy in 2018. The Biden administration later agreed to a settlement that blocked family separations at the border, with some exceptions, including if children were in danger.
Now, with illegal crossings notably low, the Trump administration is focusing on immigrants who are in the United States and have been ordered to leave.
For the most part, immigrants under deportation orders are sent home on ICE flights. But in certain cases — including those involving citizens of Russia — the United States will send people on commercial flights instead.
If they do not agree to board, ICE agents present them with a choice.
‘Lawful Orders’
The Trump administration insists that it is simply enforcing the law. Mr. Trump has made aggressive enforcement a key part of his deportation campaign and says the American people elected him in part to get tough on immigration.
“To be clear, refusing a judge’s deportation order is a crime,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “If law enforcement pulled an American citizen over with kids in the back seat and they chose to not comply with lawful orders, the parents would be arrested, and the children would be placed in safe custody.”
Still, deporting families has always been a struggle for presidential administrations, Republican and Democratic alike. Children, for the most part, cannot by law remain in federal custody for more than three weeks. That means officials are under pressure to deport families quickly, or the United States would have to spend money and resources to track them.
At that point, the deportation challenge only grows. ICE agents would have the difficult task of arresting people with established ties to communities, who had been working or going to school and building lives in the United States.
During the Biden administration, officials considered various ideas, including arresting one parent or fining families who refused to comply with deportation orders, although they never put those policies in place, a former U.S. official said.
Evgeniia, speaking through an interpreter from ICE detention, said her family traveled to the Mexican border in hopes of getting an appointment under a Biden-era program that allowed people to enter the United States at a port of entry after registering with a government app. Mr. Trump canceled that program on Jan. 20, so she and her husband decided that driving to a port of entry and asking for asylum was the only way to reach safety.
They were immediately put into detention.
The American Civil Liberties Union is investigating the legality of the separations, said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the group.
“That the Trump administration has found a new form of family separation is hardly surprising given they have yet to acknowledge the horrific harm caused by the original policy and are now blatantly breaching provisions of the settlement designed to provide relief to those abused families, many of whom to this day still remain separated,” he said.
The court settlement banning separations specifically referred to the practice at the southern border. Now, however, the separations are not happening at the border — they are happening inside the country, so there may be legal wiggle room.
In at least one of the cases, ICE officials wrote that the separation fell outside the scope of the settlement, saying there were no “implication/requirements” when it comes to the court case.
Ms. McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said immigrants were taking advantage of the system and in some cases creating a public disturbance.
“We have seen recently illegal alien families have started to use a tactic where they refuse to board a commercial flight, often lashing out and posing a threat to the safety of their own children,” she said. As a result, Ms. McLaughlin added, the authorities “must ensure the children are safe and not in harm’s way until the family can soon be removed from the country.”
Regarding the case of Evgeny and Evgeniia specifically, Ms. McLaughlin said the couple “were acting so disruptive and aggressive they endangered the child’s well-being.”
The couple denied those allegations, and there was no mention of such a disturbance in the internal case file describing the separation, which was obtained by The Times. The file says that “since there is no other option to enforce the removal order in a safe manner as a family unit, interior separation is approved.”
A separate document, a referral of Maksim’s case to the agency that oversees custody of unaccompanied migrant children, said, “Subject was separated from his family on 5/15/2025 due to his parent’s refusal to board an aircraft for removal from the United States in violation of US law.”
Evgeny said he was trying to save his son from a longer separation in Russia because of what he believed to be a sure prison sentence there.
“I was explaining to them, to the officers, that our lives are in danger and our livelihood would be in danger,” he said. “And at some point, I kind of lost my bearings and started to cry.”
“I was explaining that I could not be deported, because I will face grave danger in Russia,” he said.
‘I’m Not Giving My Son Away’
The couple had crossed the border with another Russian family, Pavel Snegir and his 11-year-old son, Aleksandr. They, too, were hoping for political asylum in the United States after Mr. Snegir’s wife was locked up in Russia for her political views, he said.
But after several weeks in border custody together, Mr. Snegir and his son were transferred to ICE custody in May and taken to an airport in San Diego. There, he was told he could take Aleksandr to New York City for a court hearing.
But once they got to the airport, Mr. Snegir refused to board the plane, having become convinced that he would be deported to Russia once he got to New York. Later that day, after the flight had left, an ICE official told him he would be separated from his son because he refused to be deported.
“I’m not giving my son away,” Mr. Snegir said, moving to shield Aleksandr.
The ICE official, Mr. Snegir recalled, told him that he would be taken to the ground, handcuffed and taken away if he did not relent.
“I did not move. I did not agree to do what she was asking, and everything she promised happened,” he said of the ICE official.
Aleksandr, who had witnessed his mother being arrested in Russia, appeared to be in shock, Mr. Snegir recalled: “He was asking why.”
After several weeks of separation, Mr. Snegir was visited by an ICE official who offered him another option: Go with your son, or we will deport you by yourself and you might not see him again.
This time, Mr. Snegir agreed to go back to Russia with his son.
But in a twist, the next day it emerged that Mr. Snegir had passed a protection screening for his claim of fearing torture in Russia. That means he can still be deported — just not to Russia.
For now, ICE is trying to deport him to a third country, but none have agreed to take him yet, according to internal agency documents. Until then, the two are being held separately, the father in ICE detention and the son in a shelter for unaccompanied children.
As it turns out, Evgeny and Evgeniia also passed their protection screening, which means the United States has determined that they, too, cannot be deported to Russia.
But as they wait for the next step, they remain in ICE detention. And Maksim is now in a foster home.
“It’s terrible, that’s what I can say,” Evgeniia said. “I wouldn’t wish it even to an enemy. It’s a constant grief and longing.”
She is allowed to speak on the telephone to her son, but she has no real answers to the first question he asks her: “Mama, when are you going to take me out of here?”
“I try to explain to him that we’re trying to do that,” Evgeniia said. “We’re talking to the officers. We’re trying to convince them. It was very hard for him to hear this information. He is crying all the time.”
Before the family came to the United States, the longest she and her husband had been separated from their little boy was one week. Now it has been months.
When he first arrived at his foster home, Maksim fastidiously counted the days he was apart from his parents. But recently, he told his mother he had stopped counting.
“What’s the point of counting days? We will not be united,” his mother recalled him saying recently.
Trump officials say the goal is not to keep the children separated from their parents indefinitely. ICE will try to reunify children with their parents in their country of origin, or in a third country, an agency official said.
But for some parents, the danger is too great.
An Indian couple who were separated from their three children after they refused to board a commercial flight decided, in the end, to go back to India without the children, according to internal ICE records and their lawyer.
The couple asked not to be identified, but their case records showed that the first attempt to deport the family as a group had failed. The family unit, or FAMU, “refused to board the removal flight (commercial).”
The record went on to state that the family’s failure to comply with deportation orders was “a clear violation of law and hindrance to execute the removal order.”
“This is an interior enforcement separation,” it continued.
After several weeks, the couple were deported to India. In response to a request for comment, an ICE official said the agency was working to send the children back, too.
For the families who are still in the United States — like Evgeny, Evgeniia, Mr. Snegir and their children — the path ahead is uncertain.
But inside her ICE detention facility, Evgeniia tries to think of a hopeful future.
“I’m imagining how I will hug him when we meet again,” she said of Maksim. “I even saved a couple of candies, because that’s what I was planning to give to him when I see him again. That’s what I imagine.”
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7) Israel, Facing Sharp Criticism Over Starvation in Gaza, Tries to Shift the Focus
The Israeli government said it had allowed some private businesses to resume importing goods into Gaza, which has been gripped by severe hunger.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 5, 2025
Seeking food at a charity kitchen in Gaza on Monday. More than one in three people in the enclave are not eating for days in a row, according to the U.N. World Food Program. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
Israel sought to push back against its growing isolation over starvation in Gaza on Tuesday by allowing some private businesses to restart importing goods into the enclave, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weighed the next steps in the nearly two-year war against Hamas.
Israel has faced growing international condemnation over the conditions in Gaza, where more than one in three people are not eating for days in a row, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program. Many aid agencies and countries, including some of Israel’s traditional allies, blame Israeli policies for the hunger crisis.
In recent weeks, Israeli officials have sought to show that they are making efforts to allow aid into Gaza, pausing fighting in some areas and designating secure routes for convoys.
On Tuesday, COGAT, the Israeli military agency that regulates the flow of aid, said that it was allowing some private businessmen to deliver goods into Gaza. Israel broadly barred businesses from doing that last year, saying that the trade was propping up Hamas.
At home, Mr. Netanyahu is playing to a different audience. The prime minister’s political survival depends on a coalition stacked with right-wing hard-liners and religious nationalists, some of whom have agitated for Israel to conquer all of Gaza.
But nearly two years after Hamas’s devastating Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in Gaza, the government has not achieved its stated aims: Destroy Hamas, free all of the hostages seized in the assault, and prevent any future threat to Israel from Gaza.
On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said he would convene his cabinet this week to direct the military on “how to achieve these three objectives, without any exceptions.”
The prime minister’s office also told some Israeli reporters that Mr. Netanyahu may expand military operations across all of Gaza. If that were to happen, the Israeli military would be forced to attack areas of the territory where it believes hostages are being held, potentially endangering the captives’ lives.
Three officials briefed on the government’s thinking cautioned that no decision has been made to expand the Israeli military campaign. By keeping his intentions ambiguous, Mr. Netanyahu may be trying to keep his far-right coalition partners happy without committing to any particular course of action, they added.
Israel is trying to refocus attention overseas on the plight of Israeli and foreign hostages held by Hamas. Israel believes that there are about 20 living hostages still in Gaza, as well as the bodies of 30 others, and called for a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the situation.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied militant group, published videos and photographs of two emaciated captives last week. The haunting images led to a new round of international condemnation of Hamas and calls for the unconditional release of all the hostages.
But as Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar meets diplomats at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza shows little sign of abating. Scores of Palestinians have died from malnutrition-related causes, according to the Gaza ministry of health.
More than 60,000 people in Gaza have been killed in the campaign, including thousands of children, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Most of the enclave’s two million residents have been displaced, often forced into swelling tent camps amid the rubble.
Starvation has gripped Gaza, which the United Nations says is on the brink of famine. Civil order has almost totally collapsed, leading to assaults on aid convoys as crowds of desperate Palestinians attempt to obtain food.
“I’ve worked in some of the harshest places you can imagine,” Antoine Renard, the local director for the World Food Program, said in an interview. “I have never, ever seen this in my whole career.”
The Israeli blockade of Gaza this year, which stopped practically all supplies of food, fuel and medicine, lasted roughly 80 days. Even after Israel eased restrictions, the amount of aid passing into Gaza has remained far lower than at most other points during the war, according to Israeli military data.
Israeli officials have blamed the United Nations for failing to adequately distribute food already inside Gaza. U.N. officials say that Israel frequently delays or denies requests to move convoys, and they also cite the challenge of operating in a lawless war zone.
Despite some optimism that Israel and Hamas were moving toward a truce last month, indirect negotiations between them, via Arab mediators, remain deadlocked.
In recent days, U.S. and Israeli officials have pushed an “all or nothing” deal. But it seems unlikely that such a strategy would work as both Israel and Hamas appear unwilling to compromise.
In Israel, public pressure has focused on the conditions of the hostages still in Gaza. This weekend, Hamas published videos showing Evyatar David, one of the captives, skeletally thin. Mr. David, 24, was abducted from a rave in southern Israel where hundreds were killed and others taken hostage during the 2023 attack.
“They are on the absolute brink of death. In their current, unimaginable condition, they may have only days left to live,” Ilay David, Mr. David’s brother, said at a rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting
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8) On Gaza, Germany’s Government Faces Pressure From All Sides
Germany, after the Holocaust, has a special bond with Israel. But a hunger crisis in Gaza is creating a demand for Berlin to take bolder action.
Germany has a unique relationship with Israel for obvious reasons. After the Holocaust, a reborn Germany has given Israel unbending support, almost alone among European nations. It is a stalwart Israeli ally, comparable even to the United States.
But the tragedy of Gaza, multiplied by reports of malnutrition and even starvation, has put Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a conservative, in an uncomfortable position. Pressures are mounting on his government to take tough action against Israel and to use Germany’s influence to push for an end to the war and to Palestinian suffering.
German public opinion has tilted steeply against Israel over the last year. Mr. Merz’s prime coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, are calling for halting or limiting weapons deliveries to Israel. Two of his most important European colleagues, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, are moving to recognize Palestine as a state, even before an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement defines that state.
Like President Trump, Mr. Merz has ruled out such a step, arguing that a Palestinian state must emerge from negotiations between the two parties. But Germany wants the process to start.
Mr. Merz also has pressure from his own party. Its political sibling, the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union, has been loud in demanding that Germany continue forthright support of Israel and its government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in its battle against Hamas.
So Mr. Merz is weighing more modest measures, and has tried to work behind the scenes with both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump. While publicly supportive of Israel, Mr. Merz has had several tough, even angry telephone conversations with Mr. Netanyahu, a senior German official said, urging him to come to an agreement for a cease-fire in Gaza and to allow much more food and medical aid into the enclave by road.
Mr. Merz also joined Mr. Macron and Mr. Starmer in a call to Mr. Trump last Monday, urging him to put more pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to allow much more aid into Gaza, the official said, speaking anonymously, given the sensitivity of the subject.
Mr. Merz is considering backing the European Commission’s call for a partial suspension of the E.U.-Israel association agreement, which among other things allows for cooperation in technology and culture. It would be an important shift for Germany, even if a largely symbolic gesture, and something Mr. Merz’s Social Democratic coalition partners have demanded. The Commission has proposed the partial suspension of Israel’s access to Horizon Europe, the European Union program that funds research. But its proposal is very narrow and would not affect most projects. Europe itself is divided on the issue, so German support for a suspension may not be sufficient to enact even this move.
Germany has provided aid for airdrops into Gaza from Jordan, and Mr. Merz last week sent his foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, to Israel and the West Bank to talk to Mr. Netanyahu and leading politicians.
“I came here with the goal of preventing a rift from opening between the European Union and Israel,” Mr. Wadephul said on Thursday in Jerusalem. “This danger exists and both sides must work together to prevent it.”
After his report back to Berlin, the government issued a carefully balanced statement noting that there was “initial, slight progress in providing humanitarian aid” to Gaza, but it was “far from sufficient to alleviate the emergency situation.” Israel is obligated to provide such aid “with the support of the United Nations,” the statement said, while also noting, “The German government is concerned about reports that large quantities of aid are being withheld by Hamas and criminal organizations.”
Mr. Merz and Mr. Wadephul both expressed their horror over the weekend at the Hamas videos of emaciated Israeli hostages, demanding that they all be released as part of any cease-fire. Several of the hostages have German passports.
Last week, some 200 German cultural figures published an open letter entitled: “Don’t let Gaza die, Mr. Merz.” The letter, echoing the Social Democrats, called for a halt to all German arms exports to Israel, support for the suspension of the E.U.-Israel association agreement and an immediate cease-fire and unhindered access for aid.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany has made great strides toward a tougher foreign and defense policy, becoming “more relaxed” about increasing its military power and exercising European leadership, said Claudia Major, a security analyst with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “But Israel is not a topic where the usual standards of debate apply,” she said. “On issues of defending Israel and antisemitism, we tend to overreact.”
After the Holocaust and the birth of a post-Nazi, democratic Germany, the promise was “never again,” Ms. Major noted. After the Hamas invasion of Israel, she said, the slogan in Germany was, “Never again is now.”
For Germans at the time, Ms. Major said, “everything was clear, and we know where our place is.”
The long war and the destruction and privation in Gaza have created obvious fissures in society and in politics. But given German history, on Israel, “we walk on egg shells,” Ms. Major said, adding, “Whatever you do in Germany on this topic, you will be criticized.”
The discussion is not over, with more meetings of the government scheduled on the issue. Derya Türk-Nachbaur, a Social Democrat legislator, said Germany should coordinate further on the European level, especially with France and Britain, to increase pressure on Israel and allow the partial suspension of the association agreement.
Given the shift against Israel in German public opinion, “Merz faces pressure on multiple fronts for more decisive action,” domestically, inside his own coalition and in Europe, said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin.
A poll in May, by the Bertelsmann Foundation, found that while 60 percent of Israelis have a positive or very positive opinion of Germany, only 36 percent of people in Germany view Israel positively, and 38 percent view it negatively.
This represented a notable change from the last survey in 2021, when 46 percent of Germans had a positive opinion of Israel. The poll also showed that a declining number of Germans — only a third — said that Germany has responsibility toward Israel, and only a quarter that they felt a “special responsibility.”
There are other steps Mr. Merz might take, said Mr. Benner. He could impose sanctions on hard-right ministers in the Israeli government, as the Dutch have done or temporarily halt any weapons shipments to Israel, arguing that Israel has enough to defend itself for the moment. He could also bring more injured Gazan children to German hospitals.
Mr. Merz has argued that Israelis listen to its bedrock supporters, like the United States and Germany, while discounting the criticism of countries like Sweden, Ireland and Spain, which had earlier recognized a Palestinian state.
“He says that they do listen to us,” Mr. Benner said. “But he needs to have something to show for it, to show that it bears fruit.”
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9) 80 Years Ago, Nuclear Annihilation Came to Japan
What the world’s only atomic bombings, carried out by Americans, did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In Photos, By Hannah Beech, Reporting from Hiroshima, Japan, Aug. 5, 2025
The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. United States Army
The photos are in black and white, but for once that is not a total misrepresentation of reality. When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, two Japanese cities were instantaneously leached of color and life. In the aftermath of the world’s only nuclear attacks, what mostly remained were shades of a terrible gray.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki charred. They disintegrated. People and sparrows and rats and cicadas and faithful pet dogs — all that was alive a nanosecond before the mushroom clouds erupted in blue sky — exploded and then evaporated. They were the fortunate ones.
In Hiroshima, about 140,000 people perished by the end of the year. In Nagasaki, about 70,000 succumbed. Tens of thousands of the victims were children.
There are no photos of the immediate aftermath of the bombing, at least not on a human scale. For the survivors, though, the images of those moments never faded. Human forms staggered with strips of flesh hanging from their bodies. Eyeballs dangled from sockets. Everywhere, people screamed for water to cool their burning throats. In Hiroshima, they threw themselves into the river, which writhed with their torment until death freed them.
Those who survived that first day found little relief. Flies laid eggs in burns, then the maggots hatched, a perverse sign that life was continuing. Family members used chopsticks to remove the infestations, but most victims died. The biggest danger was the radiation, which could not be seen in any hue. People who seemed fine days after the bombing suddenly collapsed and died.
Survival often meant burns that formed excruciating keloids or internal organs that were eventually invaded by cancer. For many of those who made it through, decades of stigma followed. To be a hibakusha, as the survivors of the atomic bombing are known, was to live as a poster child of nuclear horror. Marriage prospects withered. Survivors worried about passing on disease to the next generation.
No one yet understood the full scope of what destroying and irradiating two cities meant, for the people or for the land. What did it mean to live poisoned by radiation? Or to eat from a plant growing in the toxic soil? Who would take care of the children who had lost their parents? Who would rebuild these lost cities?
To look at photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the bombings, especially ones from the sky, is an exercise in subtraction — and abstraction. Almost nothing is there.
More than the absence or the faint outline of humanity, what is seared in the collective consciousness is the terror that a mushroom cloud can bring. Without context, the fluffy white clouds of an atomic bomb, billowing like floating sheep, might look harmless. But we now know that they signify annihilation, not from nature but from humankind.
The bombing of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6 was described by the Americans as a necessary evil to end Japan’s wartime aggression and bring to a close World War II, the world’s bloodiest-ever conflict. The detonation also announced to the Soviet Union that American science had prevailed in the nuclear race. But it’s harder, some say, to make the case for the second bombing of Nagasaki three days later. A city with one of the largest Christian populations in Japan, Nagasaki had long drawn foreigners to its port. Now, the city, like Hiroshima, is known to the world primarily for having been chosen by the Americans for a nuclear attack.
Eighty years ago, Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned from the bomb. They burned from the fires that were sparked by the bomb. And they burned from the mass cremations that kept the fires going until all the bones were purified.
On Aug. 15, Japan surrendered. The Japanese empire’s bloody march through Asia was over. But the impact on civilians lingered, both in the countries the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces had invaded and at home, where a nuclear Armageddon had come twice.
What remained of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not simply vast graveyards of rubble but the strength of the survivors, who began to rebuild their lives and then their cities.
Fumiyo Kono, 56, wrote a best-selling manga series about the war, which prompted a hit movie, television show and stage musical. While she was born well after, even thinking about that day when Hiroshima was bombed, she said, made her physically sick. On trips to a museum memorializing the victims, she could not bear it. She did not know what to do.
“Maybe one day, the answer will come from your heart,” she said, of how to process the devastation of her hometown.
All she could do was draw: a mushroom cloud, a family and a story that unspools from there.
Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.
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