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
Beloved tenured History professor and Socialist Horizon member Tom Alter was summarily fired on September 10th by Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse for expressing his views in a virtual conference unrelated to the university. This action cannot stand. Socialist Horizon calls on people everywhere to join us and demand that Professor Alter be reinstated to his tenured position.
President Damphousse fired Dr. Tom Alter based solely on a video published online by an extreme rightwing provocateur who infiltrated and secretly video-recorded segments of a virtual socialist conference with the intention of publishing information to slander and attack conference participants. In videos posted on their website, this person declares that they are a proud fascist, who tries to monetize exposure of the left as an “anti-communist cult leader”. This grifter publicly exhorts followers to embrace fascist ideology and take action, is an antisemite that states that Jewish people ‘chose to die in the Holocaust’, is a self-declared racist and xenophobe, a homophobe and a transphobe that spews hate speech throughout their platform that is solely designed to inflame and incite.
After the fascist’s ‘exposure video’ reached President Damphousse, he summarily fired Dr. Alter, a tenured professor, without questioning or investigating the content, without considering its authenticity or validity, without any form of due process, and violating existing state law and campus policy which requires a formal due process procedure.
Alter spoke against this cruel and unjust system and argued in favor of replacing it with socialism, and he advocated organizing politically to achieve this. Alter’s political views reflect those of nearly half of the total US population. Almost half now oppose capitalism and 40% favor socialism over capitalism. Alter’s views are far from subversive, they reflect the mainstream. It is a just cause that more and more people are joining, one people believe to be worth fighting for, and represents a change in thinking that is scaring the bigots, fascists, and capitalists.
It is in fact the fascist infiltrator who incites violence against oppressed people, and in this case, directly against Alter. It is Alter’s employer Texas State University that inflicted violence: stripping Alter of his job, refusing him any due process, casting him and his family into the uncertainty of unemployment and making them a target for the extreme right, while slamming the door shut on his free speech and academic freedom. Alter’s First Amendment right to speak, guaranteed by the Constitution, has been violated, as has his academic freedom– a protected right developed by his national faculty union, the American Association of University Professors.
We call on President Damphousse to stop this flagrant attack on constitutionally-protected free speech, to undo this wrongful termination, and to immediately reinstate Dr. Tom Alter to his teaching position.
The termination of Dr. Alter is a serious attack that upends his livelihood, his professional and academic career, and sets a very dangerous precedent. President Damphousse’s actions appear to be in accordance with the far-right politics of Texas politicians Greg Abbot and Ted Cruz, as well as being in-line with that of Donald Trump who has used the office of the presidency to wage war on his political opponents.
Damphousse’s actions align with Trump and the far right forces trying to impose and enforce an authoritarian regime that wants to silence critics, crush political dissent, and attack anyone they perceive to be oppositional to their project. Even more threatening, Damphousse’s actions strengthen the power and influence of fascists and enable the most violent and reactionary groups to also attack and take action against anyone they deem to be part of the left.
It is Trump who inflicts violence against millions through his authoritarian political attacks that target people of Color, women, transpeople, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, impoverished and unhoused people, and the working class as a whole . It is the far right and the fascists who are building movements to harm innocent and vulnerable people. It is this capitalist system that Alter spoke against that inflicts mass violence condemning billions to hunger, poverty and war while a handful accumulates ever growing obscene amounts of wealth that is stolen from the rest of us.
Alter is being attacked because he is telling a truth that many people in the United States believe today: that capitalism is ruining their lives and that socialism is a better system. If Dr. Tom Alter can be fired for expressing his personal beliefs and principles, then people everywhere are in danger. If he can be fired for expressing a point of view at a conference, away from his work and in his daily private life, then none of us are safe.
His case must draw support from people of all sectors of society: workers, teachers, nurses, students—anyone and everyone who upholds the value of free speech. As the great anti-slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said, “The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected”.
We call on everyone to join us in building the broadest possible solidarity campaign to win this decisive battle.
The attacks on Dr. Tom Alter and socialist politics will not intimidate Socialist Horizon. We will defend our comrade and we will continue fighting for the very cause he is being attacked for: justice, freedom, and equality. We will also continue building the organization that it will take to win it.
Dr. Tom Alter is not only a beloved faculty member at Texas State but also an advisor to several student organizations. He is the author of a celebrated history of socialism in the American South, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas (University of Illinois Press). He is also the father of two children. Socialist Horizon demands that Texas State University immediately restore Tom Alter’s position as Associate Professor of History.
Socialist Horizon also calls on all organizations and individuals that defend the basic democratic right to free speech and reject fascism and authoritarianism, and all socialists in particular, to join this fight. This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
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.
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) Chicagoans Resist I.C.E. Agents
Immigration agents are using aggressive tactics. Residents of the sanctuary city are trying to resist them.
By Julie Bosman, I’m the Chicago bureau chief., Oct. 16, 2025
Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
During a recent run near Lake Michigan, I watched a black S.U.V. make a U-turn and chase down three young men. Two armed immigration agents, their eyes peeking out from behind their balaclavas, jumped out and approached them. One asked what visas they held.
“H-1B,” they responded, looking bewildered. That’s the visa for foreign workers with special expertise.
Nothing that I could see would have attracted the attention of the agents, except for the fact that the men had brown skin. After questioning them, the agents let them go.
This scene is now unfolding across Chicago every day.
Federal immigration agents have been asking people about their legal status outside churches, homeless shelters, apartment buildings, parks and even a cemetery. Officers have questioned both U.S. citizens and legal residents, asking for passports and visas as proof of identity.
The presence of officers from Border Patrol and ICE has brought forth an intense backlash. Chicagoans are shouting at immigration agents, calling them fascists and Nazis, throwing objects at them and chasing their unmarked S.U.V.s or minivans, honking their horns to warn bystanders of ICE’s presence.
In response to what a Homeland Security official called “a surge in assaults,” the officers are using increasingly aggressive tactics. In recent days, they’ve hurled tear gas, pepper balls and smoke bombs at the public, protesters, journalists and even Chicago police officers, often without warning. Today’s newsletter is about the conflict on the streets of Chicago.
The intervention
The Trump administration began a crackdown on illegal immigration here five weeks ago, promising to help the city by arresting “criminal illegal aliens.” But the tactics are unusual.
Schools. Officers are lingering just off campus in some places. So principals have ordered “soft lockdowns,” keeping students in classrooms until the agents are gone. Last month, ICE tried to arrest a father after a day care drop-off; in the confrontation, he was shot and killed. Now some schools use neighborhood volunteers, at parents’ request, so white adults can walk Latino children home.
Restaurants. Kitchens are often staffed by undocumented immigrants, and ICE knows it. Workers are afraid to leave their homes, and many have cut their hours. One Mexican spot I like keeps its door locked — even when it’s open — as a shield against ICE, allowing customers in one at a time.
Public spaces. Many people, even those with legal status, are asking friends to do their grocery shopping for them. Streets are quieter. One man with legal residency got a $130 ticket for not having his papers, The Chicago Tribune reported.
Why here? It is not surprising to people here that the administration has focused on Chicago, which calls itself a sanctuary city. That means it doesn’t help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants. Half a million Chicagoans, nearly one-fifth of the population, were born outside the United States, and support for immigrants is generally strong in the area. Local police officers won’t ask suspects about their immigration status.
Trump and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, have an adversarial relationship, and Trump regularly criticizes Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson. The president wrote online that they “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” City and state leaders said they were receiving no communication from the Department of Homeland Security or the White House about the operations.
The fury over immigration enforcement has expanded in the last few days. After a car chase and crash involving agents, more than 100 people came out of their homes and shouted, “ICE go home.” At least one person threw eggs at the agents, hitting an agent directly in the head. (Trump ordered National Guard troops into Illinois over Pritzker’s objections, but a federal judge blocked their deployment last week.)
In response, federal officers released tear gas on the crowd, including 13 Chicago police officers who had been called to the scene. For weeks, Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have dispersed people filming and shouting at them by shooting pepper balls and tear gas.
This is very different from norms of modern policing: Officers typically release chemical agents only in extreme situations, and only after warnings. Agents have pointed guns at people who get in their way.
On Wednesday, Pritzker complained that ICE was causing “mayhem” and warned that other cities would face the same fate. In the Oval Office yesterday, Trump named San Francisco. He said, “We’re just at the start. We’re going to go into other cities.”
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2) How FEMA Is Pushing Communities to Fend for Themselves
President Trump has said he wants to eventually shift the burden of disaster relief and recovery onto states. It’s already happening.
By Scott Dance, Oct. 16, 2025
Roger King, a resident of Canton, N.C., earlier this month. Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina a year ago and the town is still operating out of trailers and awaiting some federal funds. Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times
Life is inching back to normal in the town of Cave City seven months after a tornado slammed into its corner of northeastern Arkansas. The only grocery store is about to reopen. Crews are starting to dig the foundation for a rebuilt funeral home.
But the town — like so many others facing daunting recoveries from recent disaster — has had to go it alone, Mayor Jonas Anderson said.
The Trump administration denied Cave City’s requests for Federal Emergency Management Agency money to help it recover. Mr. Anderson was forced to forge ahead anyway, racking up a bill of about $300,000 he said could end up eating 15 percent of the small town’s annual budget.
Some of the nearly 2,000 residents have gotten federal help. FEMA agreed to cover repairs to the more than 50 homes damaged or destroyed when 165 mile per hour winds struck in March. The state pledged relief money, too. But Mr. Anderson said Cave City is carrying more of the burden of recovery than expected.
“We’re making a really good recovery not because of some big FEMA reimbursement we got, but in spite of not getting it,” Mr. Anderson said. “People here are super resilient.”
This could be the future for more communities across the country, based on Mr. Trump’s vision for emergency management in the United States: one that would transfer responsibility for disaster recovery from the federal government to the states in all but the largest catastrophes. For many places, it is already the reality.
FEMA has been delaying disaster declarations and aid payments to communities, adding new hurdles to access some grant funds and cutting off the flow of money intended to boost resilience and prevent future disasters from causing so much damage.
Emergency managers and elected officials across the country are adjusting to a system in which they can no longer count on the sort of disaster aid they typically expect from FEMA, which was established in 1979 to coordinate and professionalize disaster response. They are figuring out how to prepare for future disasters without key FEMA grants, raising private funds to replace federal aid and turning to state governments to beef up their preparations. In some places, volunteer disaster recovery squads have sprung up.
In an emailed statement, the FEMA spokesman Daniel Llargues said that the agency has held back some disaster relief funding, saving it for the future. For example, a monthly report on the agency’s spending this summer showed it withheld $11 billion for projects tied to a coronavirus pandemic disaster declaration that states had expected to receive by Sept. 30. Agency officials said those payments are not canceled, but rather deferred into the new fiscal year to ensure the solvency of the government fund used to pay for disaster aid.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, FEMA remains committed to supporting disaster survivors,” Mr. Llargues wrote. He said the agency is managing disaster funding “in a way that prioritizes immediate needs and long-term recovery efforts.”
Still, the consequence of such delays could be that communities find themselves less prepared when disaster does strike, critics said.
“They’re making good on their promise to shift the burden onto states without giving the states any runway to prepare for that,” said Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who tracks disaster recovery spending across the country.
Slower-than-expected hurricane and wildfire seasons have meant few recent tests of the evolving emergency response system, allowing FEMA to stretch its disaster relief fund further than it might otherwise. The fund had been forecast to run out of money by now but as of the end of September, it was projected to contain more than $2 billion, down from a routine $22.5 billion infusion from Congress in March.
Since January, Mr. Trump has approved 32 federal disaster declarations, which make available a variety of federal aid programs to communities and individuals. That’s far fewer than the average of more than 60 declarations per year from fiscal years 2015 through 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service. Mr. Trump has rejected nearly a dozen state requests for FEMA aid so far this year, on par with the numbers of rejections during his first administration as well as President Joe Biden’s term, according to FEMA data.
A steady backlog of pending disaster aid requests has persisted this year, sitting at a dozen as of Tuesday. Under previous administrations, there have rarely been more than a handful of outstanding requests at any given time.
Normally, Congress would appropriate tens of billions of dollars to refill the disaster aid fund at this time of year. Amid a government shutdown stretching into its third week, there has been little discussion of disaster funding on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of members is supporting a House bill that would make FEMA a Cabinet-level agency, removing it from the Homeland Security Department while streamlining its payment process and speeding up agency investments in disaster resilience around the country.
Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, said a strong FEMA is important for coordinating among states that may have differing capabilities when it comes to handling a crisis.
“These disasters tend to be multistate,” Mr. Pallone said. “If you have to do everything yourself, it’s not going to work because you don't have the expertise.”
Proponents of a trimmed-down FEMA, on the other hand, argue that too much federal aid can prevent communities from investing in their own preparedness. State and local governments are more closely attuned to communities’ needs, and should be equipped to handle the most common and predictable types of disasters, said Dominik Lett, a budget policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a right-leaning research organization.
But in places still recovering from historic disasters, slow and unpredictable support from FEMA demonstrates the limits of those ideas. In western North Carolina a year after Hurricane Helene — and four years after an earlier bout of devastating flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred — the town of Canton is still operating out of trailers and waiting for federal money it expected for a new town hall and police station, Mayor Zeb Smathers said.
“We should not have to count on recovery like it’s raffle money,” Mr. Smathers said. “It should be streamlined, efficient, dependable. It’s not.”
Camille Rivera, president of La Brega Y Fuerza, a nonprofit group focused on connecting the diaspora of Puerto Ricans spread across the United States, said that if FEMA shifts more responsibility to states and territories, poor communities will suffer. That is already evident in Puerto Rico, where blackouts are common and damage remains from storms going back to Hurricane Maria in 2017. Many residents are turning to crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe instead of waiting for FEMA, Ms. Rivera said.
“We have people who still have tarps on their roofs who haven’t been able to rebuild,” she said. “A lot of communities aren’t even relying on the federal government anymore.”
At the same time, the Trump administration has either paused or canceled grant programs designed to help communities improve their resilience to disasters.
Erik Thorsen, chief executive of Columbia Memorial Hospital on the Oregon coast, said that as construction continues on a $300 million expansion that could withstand a powerful earthquake and tsunami, he is scrambling to replace a $14 million FEMA grant that is no longer coming.
A lawsuit filed by 20 states is seeking to reinstate the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program, saying that since it was established in 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first term, its roughly $4.5 billion in investments have prevented $150 billion in disaster damage.
In Cave City, where plans for a new park and community center are on hold because the town has to devote its tax revenue to tornado recovery, Mr. Anderson said he understands why President Trump would want states to handle more disasters. They know their residents’ needs best, after all.
But when that shift happens seemingly overnight, it creates uncertainty that makes it harder for local officials to make decisions, and can leave livelihoods hanging in the balance, Mr. Anderson said.
“It’s definitely going to have to be an adjustment,” he said. “Nobody has the resources that the federal government can have.”
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3) Trump Administration Authorizes Covert C.I.A. Action in Venezuela
The development comes as the U.S. military is drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including possible strikes inside the country.
By Julian E. Barnes and Tyler Pager, Reporting from Washington, Published Oct. 15, 2025, Updated Oct. 16, 2025
“The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean. … The scale of the military buildup in the region is substantial: There are currently 10,000 U.S. troops there, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean. … The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power. … In 1954, the agency orchestrated a coup that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, ushering in decades of instability. The C.I.A.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 ended in disaster, and the agency repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro. That same year, however, the C.I.A. supplied weapons to dissidents who assassinated Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic. The agency also had its hands in a 1964 coup in Brazil, the death of Che Guevara and other machinations in Bolivia, a 1973 coup in Chile, and the contra fight against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.”
A street market in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, has said little about what his agency is doing in the country. Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader.
The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.
Mr. Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that he had authorized the covert action and said the United States was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory.
“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president told reporters hours after The New York Times reported the secret authorization.
Any strikes on Venezuelan territory would be a significant escalation. After several of the boat strikes, the administration made the point that the operations had taken place in international waters.
The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.
The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation. It is not known whether the C.I.A. is planning any specific operations in Venezuela.
But the development comes as the U.S. military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela.
The scale of the military buildup in the region is substantial: There are currently 10,000 U.S. troops there, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean.
The new authorities, known in intelligence jargon as a presidential finding, were described by multiple U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the highly classified document.
In a statement, Venezuela rejected Mr. Trump’s “bellicose” language, and accused him of seeking “to legitimize regime change with the ultimate goal of appropriating Venezuela’s petroleum resources.”
Venezuela said it planned to raise the matter at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, calling Mr. Trump’s actions “a grave violation of the U.N. charter.”
Mr. Trump ordered an end to diplomatic talks with the Maduro government this month as he grew frustrated with the Venezuelan leader’s failure to accede to U.S. demands to give up power voluntarily and the continued insistence by officials that they had no part in drug trafficking.
The C.I.A. has long had authority to work with governments in Latin America on security matters and intelligence sharing. That has allowed the agency to work with Mexican officials to target drug cartels. But those authorizations do not allow the agency to carry out direct lethal operations.
The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power.
Mr. Ratcliffe has said little about what his agency is doing in Venezuela. But he has promised that the C.I.A. under his leadership would become more aggressive. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Ratcliffe said he would make the C.I.A. less averse to risk and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
The C.I.A. declined to comment.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he had made the authorization because Venezuela had “emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”
The president appeared to be referring to claims by his administration that members of the Tren de Aragua prison gang had been sent into the United States to commit crimes. In March, Mr. Trump proclaimed that the gang, which was founded in a Venezuelan prison, was a terrorist organization that was “conducting irregular warfare” against the United States under the orders of the Maduro government.
An intelligence community assessment in February contradicted that claim, detailing why spy agencies did not think the gang was under the Maduro government’s control, though the F.B.I. partly dissented. A top Trump administration official pressed for the assessment to be redone. The initial assessment was reaffirmed by the National Intelligence Council. Afterward, the council’s acting director, Michael Collins, was fired from his post.
The United States has offered $50 million for information leading to Mr. Maduro’s arrest and conviction on U.S. drug trafficking charges.
Mr. Rubio, who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, has called Mr. Maduro illegitimate, and the Trump administration describes him as a “narcoterrorist.”
Mr. Maduro blocked the government that was democratically elected last year from taking power. But the Trump administration’s accusations that he has profited from the narcotics trade and that his country is a major producer of drugs for the United States have been debated.
The administration has asserted in legal filings that Mr. Maduro controls Tren de Aragua. But an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies contradicts that conclusion.
While the Trump administration has publicly offered relatively thin legal justifications for its campaign, Mr. Trump told Congress that he decided the United States was in an armed conflict with drug cartels it views as terrorist organizations. In the congressional notice late last month, the Trump administration said the cartels smuggling drugs were “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
White House findings authorizing covert action are closely guarded secrets. They are often reauthorized from administration to administration, and their precise language is rarely made public. They also constitute one of the rawest uses of executive authority.
Select members of Congress are briefed on the authorizations, but lawmakers cannot make them public, and conducting oversight of possible covert actions is difficult.
While U.S. military operations, like the strikes against boats purportedly carrying drugs from Venezuelan territory, are generally made public, C.I.A. covert actions are typically kept secret. Some, however, like the C.I.A. operation in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, are quickly made public.
The agency has been stepping up its work on counternarcotics for years. Gina Haspel, Mr. Trump’s second C.I.A. director during his first administration, devoted more resources to drug hunting in Mexico and Latin America. Under William J. Burns, the Biden administration’s director, the C.I.A. began flying drones over Mexico, hunting for fentanyl labs, operations that Mr. Ratcliffe expanded.
The covert finding is in some ways a natural evolution of those antidrug efforts. But the C.I.A.’s history of covert action in Latin America and the Caribbean is mixed at best.
In 1954, the agency orchestrated a coup that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, ushering in decades of instability. The C.I.A.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 ended in disaster, and the agency repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro. That same year, however, the C.I.A. supplied weapons to dissidents who assassinated Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic.
The agency also had its hands in a 1964 coup in Brazil, the death of Che Guevara and other machinations in Bolivia, a 1973 coup in Chile, and the contra fight against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.
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4) Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People
The proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted.
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz, Reporting from Washington, Published Oct. 15, 2025, Updated Oct. 16, 2025
Some of the dozens of white South Africans who accepted an invitation from the Trump administration to come to the United States as refugees arrived at an air hangar in Dulles, Va., in May. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.
The proposals, some of which already have gone into effect, would transform a decades-old program aimed at helping the world’s most desperate people into one that conforms to Mr. Trump’s vision of immigration — which is to help mostly white people who say they are being persecuted while keeping the vast majority of other people out.
The plans were presented to the White House in April and July by officials in the State and Homeland Security Departments after President Trump directed federal agencies to study whether refugee resettlement was in the interest of the United States. Mr. Trump had suspended refugee admissions on his first day in office and solicited the proposals about how and whether the administration should continue the program.
Trump administration officials have not ruled out any of the ideas, according to people familiar with the planning, although there is no set timetable for approving or rejecting the ideas. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential plans.
The proposed changes would put new emphasis on whether applicants would be able to assimilate into the United States, directing them to take classes on “American history and values” and “respect for cultural norms.”
The proposals also advise Mr. Trump to prioritize Europeans who have been “targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties.”
That appeared to be a reference to the European far-right political party Alternative for Germany, whose leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, revived Nazi slogans and denigrated foreigners. Vice President JD Vance has criticized Germany for trying to suppress the views of the group, which is known as the AfD.
A senior official said the Trump administration was monitoring the situation in Europe to determine whether anyone would be eligible for refugee status. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan had not been finalized.
Mr. Trump enacted some of the proposals in the documents even before the plans were submitted to him, including slashing refugee admissions and offering priority status to Afrikaners, the white minority that once ran South Africa’s brutal apartheid system.
Mr. Trump has claimed that Afrikaners face racial persecution in their home country, a claim vigorously disputed by government officials there. Police statistics do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in South Africa.
Taken together, the proposals provide a window into Mr. Trump’s intentions for a program that has come to symbolize America’s role as a sanctuary.
Mr. Trump and many American voters have rejected that role after years of record illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. Although the refugee program, with its meticulous screening processes and yearslong waits, is considered the “right way” of seeking protection in the United States, Mr. Trump has made clear he wants to crack down on immigration in general — both legal and illegal.
According to the rationale laid out in the documents submitted to Mr. Trump, America’s acceptance of refugees has made the country too diverse.
“The sharp increase in diversity has reduced the level of social trust essential for the functioning of a democratic polity,” according to one of the documents. The administration should only welcome “refugees who can be fully and appropriately assimilate, and are aligned with the president’s objectives.”
To that end, the documents say, Mr. Trump should cancel the applications of hundreds of thousands of people who are already in the pipeline to come to the United States as refugees, many of whom have gone through extensive security checks and referrals.
And Mr. Trump’s federal agencies proposed imposing limits on the number of refugees who can resettle in communities that already have a high population of immigrants, on the basis that the United States should avoid “the concentration of non-native citizens” in order to promote assimilation.
Thomas Pigott, a spokesman for the State Department, would not comment on specific details of the documents, but he said: “It should come as no surprise that the State Department is implementing the priorities of the duly elected president of the United States.” He added: “This administration unapologetically prioritizes the interests of the American people.”
The administration has made some exceptions to its refugee ban. According to the documents, federal agencies have worked to resettle a limited number of Afghans who assisted U.S. soldiers during the war.
Critics say the plans exposes the president’s vision for what America should look like.
“It reflects a preexisting notion among some in the Trump administration as to who are the true Americans,” said Barbara L. Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. “And they think it’s white people and they think it’s Christians.”
Other changes include more intensive security vetting for refugees, including expanded DNA tests for children to ensure they are related to the adults they are traveling with.
Mr. Trump also is planning to slash the number of refugees allowed into the United States to 7,500 in the upcoming year, a drastic decrease from the limit of 125,000 set by the Biden administration last year.
Mr. Trump is required by law to consult Congress on imposing a refugee limit, but White House officials say the government shutdown has delayed that.
Administration officials are not done submitting proposals to the White House. According to a draft of a third report, obtained by The New York Times, the latest proposal calls for U.S. embassies to make referrals for who should be considered for refugee status, rather than the United Nations, which has long been the practice. The change would allow for greater American control of who gets funneled into the refugee pipeline.
At the United Nations General Assembly summit last month, Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, defended the Trump administration’s approach during a panel on refugee policies.
“Saying that the process is susceptible to abuse is not being xenophobic, it is not being a mean or bad person,” Mr. Landau said.
The administration has argued that allowing thousands of refugees from all over the world to enter the nation would overwhelm American communities that have already called for additional resources to assist the record number of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.
Migrants at the border, however, seek protection through a program separate from that of refugees, who often wait years overseas before they are vetted to travel to the United States. The refugee program has historically received bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats.
Mr. Trump and the architect of his immigration restrictions, Stephen Miller, have for years sought to limit the number of refugees entering the United States, particularly from Africa or Muslim-majority nations. During his first term, Mr. Trump demanded to know at a White House meeting why he would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than Europe.
His administration now appears prepared to turn those sentiments into policy.
In the report, administration officials also proposed banning refugees from resettling in U.S. communities that have requested federal aid to assist migrants in recent years.
But many local leaders and refugee advocates argue that not only can refugees adjust to life in America effectively, they also benefit local economies.
Marian Abernathy, a lay leader at the Judea Reform Congregation synagogue in Durham, N.C., has helped refugees who had settled in her community since 2016, including a dozen families in the last four years from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Venezuela and Syria.
The refugees have worked as nursing aides, engineers, Uber drivers, medical technicians and lunch coordinators at local schools, she said.
“They come to dinner at our houses,” she said. “We go to dinner at their houses. We go to events together, hang out at the museum. I don’t feel like they’re not integrated.”
“I’ve rarely seen a group of people,” she said, “who work harder and who want fewer handouts.”
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5) Renting a San Francisco Apartment in the A.I. Boom? Good Luck.
The artificial intelligence gold rush has pushed San Francisco’s residential rents up by the most in the nation, as A.I. companies lease apartments and offer rent stipends to employees.
By Natallie Rocha, Reporting from San Francisco, Oct. 16, 2025
Roy Lee, Cluely’s chief executive, at his home in Cluely’s office in San Francisco. His start-up has leased apartments for its employees. Amy Osborne for The New York Times
After Roy Lee’s artificial intelligence start-up, Cluely, landed $5.3 million in venture capital funding this spring, he orchestrated a San Francisco real estate coup.
In May, Cluely leased eight apartments for its employees at a new luxury complex — where rents start at $3,000 a month and reach $12,000 a month for penthouse units — just a one-minute walk from its office in the city’s South of Market neighborhood. The apartments were a mix of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units in the 16-story building, which offers a fitness center, a rooftop bar, and concierge and housecleaning services.
“Going to the office should feel like you’re walking to your living room, so we really, really want people close,” said Mr. Lee, 22, who chose not to move into the apartments and lives in Cluely’s office, which is housed in a loftlike single-family home. “I feel like I’m more trying to build a frat house, and you don’t commute to a frat house.”
Driven by a boom in A.I. companies like Cluely, San Francisco’s residential rents have soared the most in the nation over the past year. Apartment prices in the city rose an average of 6 percent in that time, more than double the 2.5 percent increase in New York City, according to the real estate tracker CoStar. That now puts the average rent for a San Francisco apartment at $3,315 a month, right behind New York City’s $3,360, which is the nation’s highest.
The A.I. frenzy’s effect on rents has put pressure on San Francisco’s already strained housing supply, leading to heated competition among techies and non-techies to pounce on listings. Applicants are showing up to apartment tours with envelopes of cash in hand and waiting in long lines to see properties. And the rejections for would-be renters are coming fast.
That has raised questions about the affordability of San Francisco, which has long been one of the most expensive U.S. cities. Daniel Lurie, the mayor, has made addressing affordable housing a cornerstone of his policies, while also embracing the growth of local A.I. companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
“Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Will Goodman, a principal at Strada Investment Group, which developed the luxury complex that Cluely leased from. Within two months of the development’s opening in May, he said, half of the 501 units had been rented.
Ted Egan, the chief economist for the City and County of San Francisco, said the city’s market rents today are still below prepandemic levels when adjusted for inflation. But many service workers who left rent-controlled apartments during the pandemic would now find it difficult to return, he acknowledged.
“Tech is setting the bar for housing prices,” Mr. Egan said.
Caroline Roche, 25, a demand planner at Backroads, a travel company, recently experienced the rental scarcity firsthand. She has moved twice in San Francisco since arriving in 2022 for her first job after college. But as she prepared for a third move this summer, Ms. Roche was stunned by how much harder it was to find apartments in her desired neighborhoods.
When she and her partner showed up to a property tour in the North of the Panhandle neighborhood, they found 20 other couples waiting. In some cases, she said, she has received same-day denials for her rental applications.
“It was frustrating to just feel like you’re kind of doing things right in life — you have your job, you’re paying off your credit card — and you still aren’t in the demographic that can afford necessarily what you want,” she said.
Ms. Roche and her partner treated the apartment hunt as a second job and did 25 tours in a week, she said, before getting “super lucky” by finding a one-bedroom apartment in their $3,200 monthly budget near Golden Gate Park. She does not plan on moving for at least two years, she said.
Landlords used to receive only a few rental applications within a month of listing an apartment, but now are getting one to three on the same day an apartment lists, said Ryan Shane, president of the Housing Guild Management Company, which manages mostly Victorian and Edwardian-style apartment buildings.
“It’s much, much easier than it has been in a very long time,” he said.
Neighborhoods near A.I. companies — such as Mission Bay, where OpenAI has its headquarters — are particularly popular. Rents in Mission Bay jumped 13 percent over the past year, according to CoStar. Many techies at A.I. start-ups work long hours and want to live close to their offices, said Strada’s Mr. Goodman.
Flo Crivello, 33, the chief executive of Lindy, a start-up that makes A.I. software, said he offers his approximately 40 employees a $1,000-a-month rent stipend if they live within a 10-minute walk of the company’s office.
Two employees accepted the offer a few years ago when Lindy was in an office near the Hayes Valley and Duboce Triangle neighborhoods, he said. But he has not had any takers since moving Lindy to an office in the SoMa area and is considering expanding the radius.
“People are so much happier and healthier when they live close to work,” Mr. Crivello said. “This makes them stick around for longer, perform better and work longer hours.”
In August, Taylor Cordoba, 23, who is working on an A.I. medical technology start-up, waited in line at an apartment showing in North Beach as about 15 other people milled around.
Ahead of her in line, someone showed rental paperwork to the landlord and offered to pay the deposit on site, with about $7,000 in an envelope, she said. At another showing in Pacific Heights, a person in line showed the landlord a job offer letter, offered to pay the deposit and begged to sign immediately, she said.
It was “stressful,” said Ms. Cordoba, who visited more than a dozen apartments over two months. She finally found a three-bedroom apartment for $6,000 a month with two roommates in the Cow Hollow neighborhood.
Ia Balbuena, 27, resorted to posting signs on telephone poles around neighborhoods that she wanted to live in during a summer search for a studio apartment. “If you or someone you know are moving out of their studio or 1br send me a text!” she wrote, with an illustration of herself and her two cats, Miso and Frida.
The signs did not work. But after about eight tours, said Ms. Balbuena, who works as an office manager at a venture capital firm, she got “really lucky” and found a studio near Haight Ashbury for $2,500 a month.
The whole process was “crazy,” she said. “But in this climate, it feels completely normal.”
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6) Where Does the Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire Stand?
Unresolved issues — mainly over the exchange of the remains of hostages and prisoners — threaten to destabilize the fragile agreement.
By Liam Stack, Reporting from Tel Aviv, Oct. 16, 2025
Palestinians returning to Gaza City on Saturday. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has held for almost a week now. But the deal rests on shaky ground, with a number of unresolved issues.
The primary source of tension at the moment is a dispute over the exchange of the remains of hostages taken from Israel two years ago for the bodies of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
At the core of the problem is the deep enmity and fundamental mistrust between the two sides, neither of which believes the other is sincere about holding up its end of the agreement.
Here is where things stand:
The Return of Hostage Remains
By Thursday, Hamas had returned 10 bodies to Israel, most of them of former hostages. The cease-fire agreement stipulated that the group was supposed to immediately return all the remaining bodies in Gaza, believed to be roughly two dozen.
The agreement included an acknowledgment that the destruction in Gaza would make it difficult to find all the bodies quickly, and laid out a process for extending the deadline and providing assistance to recover remains.
That process centers on the establishment of a joint task force, to include the United States and other mediators, that would pool information and help find the remaining bodies, according to three Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
Hamas’s military wing said on Wednesday night that it had handed over all of the remains of Israeli hostages that it had been able to recover without additional special equipment. Hamas has said it is doing all it can to locate and return the bodies but the process is hampered by the destruction in Gaza.
On Thursday, Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, accused Hamas of violating the agreement in comments during a diplomatic visit to Italy.
He said that 19 dead hostages were still being held by Hamas and that “we know for certain that they could easily release a significant number of hostages in accordance with the agreement.” He added that Israel had shared its concerns with the Americans and expected the cease-fire mediators to help resolve the problem immediately.
Israel has said it is considering restrictions on aid in retaliation, according to two diplomats who were briefed by Israeli officials and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics.
But three Israeli officials said earlier this week that they did not believe Hamas was slow-walking the process or acting in bad faith.
Late on Thursday, Hamas said it was committed to the agreement and reiterated in a statement that extracting the remaining bodies requires equipment to remove the rubble. It noted that the necessary tools are “unavailable due to the occupation’s ban on their entry” and that therefore “any delay in the return of the bodies falls entirely on the Netanyahu government.”
The Handover of Palestinian Bodies
Israel was supposed to return 15 Palestinian bodies to Gaza in exchange for every hostage body that it received. But by Thursday, it had returned 120 bodies to Gaza in exchange for the 10 bodies handed over by Hamas, fewer than required by the deal.
On Thursday night, David Mercer, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the exchange mechanism in the agreement applied only to the handover of bodies of Israeli hostages.
Of the 10 bodies handed over by Hamas, one was a Palestinian, and another was a Nepalese citizen, and Mr. Mercer said Israel was not required to release Palestinian bodies in exchange for those.
“Israel is keeping to the deal,” he said.
The bodies have been given to officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, who said they received no information about who they were or how Israel had them.
The bodies were labeled only with numbers assigned by Israel but no names, Gaza hospital officials said.
Increasing Aid to Gaza
The cease-fire deal calls for a significant expansion of aid in Gaza, including the entrance of at least 600 aid trucks per day.
The United Nations has said that more aid is entering Gaza now than before the cease-fire, which took effect on Friday. But it also said that Israel had not yet given aid groups the green light to ramp up deliveries enough to address the humanitarian crisis.
Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. secretary general, said on Wednesday that U.N. teams had been largely unable to get any aid into Gaza for two days earlier this week.
On Monday, the main crossings into Gaza, Kerem Shalom and Kissufim, were closed because the Israeli military was giving priority to the prisoner and hostage exchange. Aid was also unable to enter on Tuesday because aid workers could not collect cargo on the Gaza side of the crossing.
Mr. Dujarric said he did not know whether the goal of 600 trucks had been reached on any day this week.
Border Crossings
Israel had agreed to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which has been mostly closed since the war began. But it has not done so yet.
On Thursday, Mr. Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, said the crossing would most likely reopen on Sunday. It will be monitored by a team from the E.U. mission, the European Union said.
But aid will not enter through Rafah. On Thursday, the Israeli military said the cease-fire deal did not call for aid to enter through that crossing, and that it would be open only for people who wished to travel between Gaza and Egypt.
The Next Phase of Negotiations
The cease-fire deal that went into effect last week addressed only a handful of the points laid out by President Trump in his peace plan. In addition to the cease-fire and exchange of hostages and prisoners, Israeli forces pulled back from parts of Gaza.
But the deal left some of the most complicated issues to be negotiated at a later stage, including whether Hamas will give up its weapons, who will govern Gaza in the future and how will they govern it.
Those issues will be discussed during Phase 2 talks, but it is not clear when those will begin. An Israeli official said this week that a second round of talks would not start until the first phase was completed.
Natan Odenheimer, Aaron Boxerman and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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7) Russia Jails Street Band for Performing Antiwar Songs
The group, called Stoptime, had been performing anti-Kremlin songs for months and gaining in popularity before the authorities moved against the open dissent.
By Ivan Nechepurenko, Reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia, Oct. 17, 2025
Diana Loginova, left, arriving for a court hearing in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday. Credit...Anton Vaganov/Reuters
A Russian court has sentenced three members of a popular street band to jail after they performed antiwar and anti-Kremlin songs in St. Petersburg, as Moscow continues to crack down on open displays of dissent against its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On Thursday, a district court sentenced Diana Loginova, the lead singer of Stoptime who goes by the stage name of Naoko, and Vladislav Leontyev, the band’s drummer, to 13 days of administrative detention. Aleksandr Orlov, the guitarist, was sentenced to 12 days. They were found guilty of organizing a concert that obstructed pedestrian access to a subway station.
The band members were detained on Wednesday and denied the charges, pointing out that no one had complained that they made it difficult to enter the station.
Court records showed that another case was opened against Ms. Loginova, 18, for allegedly discrediting the Russian Army. If she is found guilty, she could be fined.
The number of subscribers to the band’s Telegram channel has surged this week, to 37,000 on Friday from 11,000 on Monday. In its last post on the social media app, Stoptime said it would not comment on the situation and confirmed all future performances were suspended.
To many in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, the band’s arrest may have seemed inevitable. The Russian authorities have effectively outlawed open opposition to the government and threatened perpetrators with arrest.
Yet for months, Stoptime had played songs widely associated with the anti-Kremlin and antiwar opposition.
On Monday, at the band’s last concert before the members were arrested, a crowd of about 100 people watched them perform and loudly sang along on a busy pedestrian street in the city center. Many were dedicated fans and members of the band’s channel on Telegram, where they would announce their shows a few hours beforehand.
“They are doing a dangerous thing,” said Innokentiy Molchanov, 17, who has been a regular concertgoer. “But they are important because at least someone should say the truth.”
The band displayed a QR code and a phone number linked to its bank account for donations taped to the synthesizer. A young man walked around with a pink hat collecting cash donations. Many of the spectators, most of them young, knew one another and saw themselves as part of a community of fans.
“I have been coming to almost every concert,” said Nataliya, 19, who works at a kindergarten and declined to give her last name, fearing government repercussions.
“People who gather here cannot express their thoughts openly, and you feel warmth and support, something that you cannot feel anywhere else,” she added.
Stoptime’s repertoire included songs by popular antiwar musicians who have gone into exile after publicly opposing the Kremlin. One by Noize MC, a Russian rapper, for example, alluded to corruption by President Vladimir V. Putin and ridiculed justifications used by state propaganda in support of the invasion of Ukraine. In May, the song was banned by a Russian court as extremist.
The band also performed a song by Pornofilmy, a Russian punk band, that included the refrain “Uncle Volodya, tighten up our screws,” a veiled reference to Mr. Putin. Volodya is a diminutive form of the name Vladimir.
Songs by Monetochka and Zemfira, two of Russia’s most popular singers who went into exile after being designated “foreign agents” by the Russian government for opposing the war in Ukraine, were on the set list, too.
For weeks, Stoptime’s concerts went largely unnoticed. The group was one of many street bands that performed every night in major squares and intersections along St. Petersburg’s Nevskiy Prospekt, the city’s main thoroughfare.
But as people began posting footage of the performances online, the band attracted the attention of Russia’s pro-war nationalists. At the end of August, police officers detained the band members for violating the law that prohibits playing loud songs at night. They were released hours later.
But this fall, as their popularity grew, so did their problems. Conservative commentators began to criticize their performances and openly called for their arrests.
“They’re jumping around — they like the little tune, and the rhymes are easy to memorize,” Marina Akhmedova, a pro-Kremlin journalist and activist, wrote on Monday in a post on Telegram. “That’s all there is to it. They think they’re cool — protesting against the big man in the center of St. Petersburg.”
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8) Military Plans to Fire Artillery Over California Freeway on Saturday
Rounds were fired on Friday across Interstate 5 as part of a test for Saturday’s event in Southern California. The governor said the state would shut a section of the freeway.
By Laurel Rosenhall, John Ismay and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Oct. 18, 2025
The Marines plan to fire 155-millimeter artillery shells over a major freeway in Southern California on Saturday as part of a demonstration at Camp Pendleton. Credit...Gregory Bull/Associated Press
The Marines plan to fire 155-millimeter artillery shells over a major freeway in Southern California on Saturday as part of a demonstration at Camp Pendleton to celebrate the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary.
The plans to fire over the freeway triggered outrage by Gov. Gavin Newsom late Friday night after his office had been informed days earlier that the celebration would not involve firing munitions across Interstate 5, a heavily traveled corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego.
Early Saturday, Mr. Newsom said the state would shut a 17-mile section of the freeway from noon to 3 p.m. Pacific time because of potential hazards posed by the military’s plans.
“This is a profoundly absurd show of force that could put Californians directly in harm’s way,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement to The New York Times.
He criticized President Trump and said the lack of coordination among state, federal and local officials was creating a dangerous situation. The artillery demonstration, to be attended by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and military officials, will take place on the same day that anti-Trump activists plan to hold “No Kings” protests across the country, including in Southern California.
“Using our military to intimidate people you disagree with isn’t strength — it’s reckless, it’s disrespectful, and it’s beneath the office the president holds,” Mr. Newsom said.
But a spokesman for Mr. Vance said the Marine Corps had assessed that the exercise posed no threat.
“Gavin Newsom wants people to think this exercise is dangerous,” William Martin, Mr. Vance’s communications director, said in a statement. “The Marine Corps says it’s an established and safe practice. Newsom wants people to think this is an absurd show of force. The Marine Corps says it’s part of routine training at Camp Pendleton.”
“If Gavin Newsom wants to oppose the training exercises that ensure our Armed Forces are the deadliest and most lethal fighting force in the world, then he can go right ahead,” Mr. Martin added.
Mr. Newsom said he’s all for celebrating military heroes but wanted more communication about the plans. State officials said they had received few details from the federal government about the activities involved in Saturday’s celebration, other than a request to post a message alerting motorists of live fire on the electronic signs that line the freeway. After they asked for more details late Friday, federal officials told the state early Saturday that live fire activities are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today.
The freeway closure became the latest flashpoint between Mr. Newsom and the Trump administration, which have been jousting intensely since the president took control of some 4,000 California National Guard troops in June, over the governor’s objections, to respond to protests over immigration enforcement.
The state’s decision to close the freeway defied the guidance of federal officials, who had said the freeway would remain open during the demonstration. But Mr. Newsom said state highway officials determined the live fire exercise created an extreme safety risk and a distraction to drivers because of unexpected and loud explosions.
The section that is closing is between Harbor Drive and Basilone Road, and traffic delays are expected throughout the region. About 80,000 people a day travel on the stretch of interstate between San Diego and Orange Counties, according to the governor’s office.
The vice president, himself a former enlisted Marine who served in Iraq, and other dignitaries were expected to observe what the Marine Corps called an “amphibious capabilities demonstration” at the base, which may involve active duty Marines coming ashore from the sea at an oceanfront training area.
That strip of shoreline, called Red Beach, is along Interstate 5 just south of the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear power plant and is closed to the public. It was visited frequently by former President Richard M. Nixon in the 1970s because of the security and seclusion it offered.
To prepare for Saturday’s event, artillery rounds from M777 howitzers were fired from Red Beach east over Interstate 5 on Friday evening as a test run, said Capt. Gregory Dreibelbis, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based at Camp Pendleton. Vehicular traffic along the interstate was not closed off while the artillery guns were firing, he said in a statement.
“M777 artillery pieces have historically been fired during routine training from land-based artillery firing points west of I-5 into impact areas east of the interstate within existing safety protocols and without the need to close the route,” Capt. Dreibelbis said. He called the test firings an “established and safe practice” as a rehearsal for Saturday’s event.
The shells fired by M777 howitzers, which are about six inches in diameter and two feet long, typically weigh about 90 pounds and can be fired at targets more than 15 miles away.
Marine officials did not disclose whether the shells fired Friday were high-explosive rounds, or inert practice projectiles often used for military training.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued what it calls notices to airmen during the vice president’s visit, closing some of the airspace near Camp Pendleton while he is expected to be there. Amtrak, which runs the Pacific Surfliner train near the stretch of interstate in question, has canceled rail service in the area from noon to 3 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday.
The celebration caused confusion this week, when Mr. Newsom first raised concerns that it would involve shooting missiles over the freeway. On Wednesday, his office said that state officials had begun making preliminary plans to close the freeway during the military celebration, but that they were awaiting more details from the federal government.
Late Wednesday night, the Marine Corps issued a statement saying that all events would “occur on approved training ranges and comport with established safety protocols” and that no public freeways would be closed.
On Thursday, Mr. Newsom was asked about the situation while speaking to reporters in Los Angeles.
“We were under the understanding they were going to close I-5,” he said, adding that military officials then later “seemed to back off on that.”
But the governor was visibly frustrated that the state wasn’t getting the details he felt were necessary to manage the traffic and potential public safety issues posed by the event.
“So, to be determined, what they are proposing to do,” he said.
In June, the Army staged a parade in Washington to celebrate the service’s 250th birthday, and the Navy hosted the president and other officials aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of Virginia earlier this month to celebrate the service’s same 250-year milestone.
Mr. Trump turned that Navy event into a political rally.
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9) Demonstrators Begin Gathering Across the Country for Protests Against Trump
Protesters are expected to rally in more than 2,600 cities and towns to oppose presidential actions they see as authoritarian.
By Corina Knoll, Oct. 18, 2025
An anti-Trump demonstration in New York in June. Protests were expected in more than 2,600 cities across the nation on Saturday. Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Some of the first protests scheduled in more than 2,600 cities and towns across the nation began on Saturday morning, part of a daylong mass demonstration that was expected to draw millions of people.
A similar event in June had considerable turnouts at rallies in all 50 states, but organizers expect to see a much larger number of participants on Saturday, fueled by President Trump’s actions in recent months, including his role in the government shutdown, his attacks on higher education and his pressuring the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies.
“I think that this is going to be a stronger push than the last one,” said Hunter Dunn, a spokesman for the coalition behind the event, which organizers have called No Kings Day.
“I’m seeing more of an emphasis on the understanding that this is not just a sprint,” he added, where there is a mass mobilization and then everyone goes home and Mr. Trump’s agenda is defeated. “We are seeing a difference in the understanding of the general public, that this is a marathon.”
The organizers, which include national and local groups and prominent progressive groups like Indivisible, 50501 and MoveOn, say that previous demonstrations helped get the word out, and that they have received public support from an array of celebrities, including the actor Robert De Niro.
“We’re rising up again this time, nonviolently raising our voices to declare: No kings,” Mr. De Niro said in a video.
The phrase is a reference to King George III, who exerted his power over the American colonies that sought freedom. Mr. Trump is overseeing a similar authoritarian government, according to the coalition behind No Kings. The core principle of the protests is nonviolence, and organizers are said to be trained in de-escalation.
Saturday’s events are taking place as Mr. Trump has made a dizzying array of policy changes in quick succession, and organizers foresee a new round of protesters, spurred by outrage over the immigration raids, the deployment of armed federal troops, the government layoffs and the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill.
The forcefulness of Mr. Trump’s second term may have galvanized protesters, said Jeremy Pressman, a political science professor who co-directs the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut.
“The intensity of the action is going to feed into the intensity of the counteraction or counterprotest,” he said.
The last No Kings Day, in June, was one of the largest single days of protest in U.S. history, Mr. Pressman said, adding that an analysis showed that protest events now occur across a wider range of counties — including those where a majority voted Republican — than during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Republican leaders have denounced the demonstration, blamed it for prolonging the government shutdown and called it the “hate America rally.” They have also said, without evidence, that protesters are being paid to show up.
“It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people,” Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said last week on Fox News. “They’re all coming out.”
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said on Fox Business: “You know, ‘no kings’ means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government.”
The previous event was held on the day of a military parade in Washington for the Army’s 250th anniversary. It was also Mr. Trump’s 79th birthday.
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10) Israeli Military Fires On Vehicle, Saying It Crossed Cease-Fire Lines
Gaza’s rescue service said at least nine people were killed in the strike in northern Gaza on Friday, a week after Israeli forces withdrew to agreed-upon lines.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Oct. 18, 2025
Palestinians walking past destroyed buildings in Gaza City on Thursday, October 16, 2025. Credit...Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
The Israeli military said it fired on a vehicle in northern Gaza on Friday after it crossed a demarcation line where Israel’s forces have withdrawn to since last week’s cease-fire came into effect.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense emergency service, said at least nine people had been killed. The agency, part of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, said rescue workers had reached the scene on Saturday after coordinating their movements with the United Nations.
The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas stipulated that Israeli forces withdraw to an agreed-upon “Yellow Line” within Gaza. The Israeli military still controls about 53 percent of the enclave’s territory, and its troops are deployed across large parts of it.
The military said in a statement that Israeli troops first fired warning shots at what it described as a “suspicious vehicle,” before opening fire “to remove the threat.”
Mr. Basal said the vehicle’s passengers were displaced people who had been traveling in a small bus that had crossed the Israeli withdrawal line. It was unclear whether they had intended to cross that line.
The Israeli military often publishes warnings about areas in Gaza that civilians should not approach, saying that the military is deployed there. But many Gazans — either lacking internet, puzzling over unclear maps, or simply lost in the devastated enclave — have at times been unsure whether they have entered a restricted area.
On Friday, the office of the Israeli defense minister Israel Katz said he had ordered that the withdrawal lines be physically demarcated on the ground. The markings, the office said in a statement, would “warn Hamas terrorists and Gaza residents that any violation and attempt to cross the line will be met with fire.”
The cease-fire agreement, which the United States helped to broker, has yet to decisively end the conflict. And though the fighting in Gaza has largely stopped, Israeli troops have occasionally attacked what they say are imminent threats.
As part of the truce, Hamas has freed 20 living Israeli hostages and turned over the bodies of 10 others. Israel has freed almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and sent the bodies of more than 100 Palestinians to Gaza.
On Saturday, the Israeli government said Hamas had handed over the body of Eliyahu Margalit overnight. Mr. Margalit, 75, was killed during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which ignited the war in Gaza, and Palestinian militants brought his body back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israeli officials have criticized Hamas for not handing over the remaining 18 bodies still in Gaza. Hamas said on Wednesday that it had delivered all of the remains in its possession, and that finding the others would take more time and effort because of the devastation in Gaza.
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11) Here’s What Trump Could Unleash by Invoking the Insurrection Act
By Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, Oct. 18, 2025
Mr. Bauer and Mr. Goldsmith are the authors of a newsletter about presidential and executive power.
Ioulex for The New York Times
The Insurrection Act is a dangerous law that gives the president broad powers to authorize far-reaching uses of the military in the domestic sphere. It is based on highly permissive standards for action and provides neither a role for Congress nor a basis for serious judicial review.
During the Biden administration, we — and many others — failed to persuade Congress to reform this alarming law. Now, in the second Trump administration, the president is threatening to invoke it for sweeping domestic military deployments in big cities across the country.
We have no illusions that a Congress entirely under President Trump’s thumb will act on this matter now. But if we see instances of reckless or accidental uses of force by American soldiers against American citizens, the public would quickly rediscover the dangers of militarizing the homeland and the politics on these issues would quickly change, too.
That is why Congress should take up Insurrection Act reform.
President Trump’s efforts to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland have taken place under a statute that allows the federalization of National Guard troops and an executive order that specifies their use for protecting federal facilities and functions. These authorities together stay within the constraints of the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that bars the use of federal military for law enforcement — arrests, seizures, nondefensive uses of force and the like — unless “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.”
The Insurrection Act — a collection of laws enacted across the nation’s first century — is different: It offers the president much more robust authorities and gives him several advantages over the current mode of military deployment.
First, it authorizes use of the regular armed forces in addition to the Guard. This gives the president access to a much larger military force without the need to deal with complications that arise when federalizing and organizing state-level National Guard troops.
Second, the act has extremely broad and vaguely worded triggers for its use and thus affords a president the widest conceivable discretion. One provision says the president can use the armed forces “as he considers necessary” to enforce federal law against “obstructions,” “combinations” or “assemblages” that make laws “impracticable to enforce.” Another authorizes the president to order the armed forces to “take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress” any domestic violence or “unlawful combination” if the violence or combination “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” The act has several other predicates.
Third, the Insurrection Act, once invoked, avoids the Posse Comitatus bar, since it constitutes an express congressional authorization that allows the use of the military for law-enforcement purposes. If the president invoked the Insurrection Act, he could use the military far beyond protecting federal law-enforcement operations related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He could instead use the military as a substitute for ICE in immigration enforcement as long as one of the permissive legal triggers was satisfied.
Fourth, the president would not be limited to using the military for immigration law enforcement. He could use regular forces for any domestic law enforcement function, including to suppress violence in cities — again, as long as one of the lax rules for invoking the law was satisfied.
Fifth, the president will receive very significant deference from courts in his determination that an Insurrection Act predicate is satisfied. The leading case in the Supreme Court suggests that the president has “exclusive” authority to determine the “exigency” that triggers the act. And the act itself contains language — “whenever the President considers” and “as he considers necessary” — that will further encourage judicial deference. Courts will not play dead in reviewing Insurrection Act deployments, but they have very limited tools.
The president recently signaled that he may invoke the Insurrection Act. Vice President JD Vance confirmed that Mr. Trump is “looking at all of his options” because “crime has gotten out of control in our cities.”
But city crime prevention is far from the act’s only potential use. The president in March issued an executive order that contemplated a legally contested federal takeover of federal elections to redress supposed “fraud, errors or suspicion.” Notwithstanding criminal laws that prohibit members or officers of the military from deploying troops to polling places, it is easy to imagine Mr. Trump issuing such orders in next year’s congressional elections on the claim of a president’s complete authority and control over the military to deal under the Insurrection Act with a “combination or conspiracy” that opposes or obstructs the execution of federal election laws.
If the president invokes the act, litigation will almost surely follow. States and localities could sue. But such suits will be very hard to win, given the sweep of the authority.
Most proposals to reform the Insurrection Act have three core elements. Congress should tighten the statutory triggers — for example, by requiring that “domestic violence” overwhelm the safety and security capacities of state and local authorities before the act can be invoked. It should impose consultation and reporting requirements. And, most important, it should establish a time limit on troop deployments of no more than 30 days without new congressional approval.
A handful of bills to reform the act (including one this year) have been introduced, but they never reached a vote. Reform remains critical. U.S. military officials have long been reluctant to use the armed forces for policing at home. There was broad bipartisan support during the Biden years to reform other emergency powers. Congress as recently as 2021 demonstrated its continued commitment to the Posse Comitatus Act by clarifying that it applies to every major component of the federal armed forces.
Conservatives once cared a lot about the dangers of the military in the domestic realm and about protecting state and local authorities from federal military interference. Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, a Republican and the chairman of the National Governors Association, recently articulated traditional conservative concerns in response to the deployment of out-of-state National Guard troops in Illinois. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration,” he said, referring to Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and adding that the deployment violated “states’ rights.”
The Insurrection Act was written for a different century and a different conception of the presidency and presidential self-restraint. It will be a tragedy if Congress does not enact reforms until after the law’s dangers have become undeniably clear.
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12) ‘Everything Is Gone’: Gazans Return Home to Find Devastation and Little Hope
Residents who have gone back to the battered north of the territory after the cease-fire say it is a wasteland that will take years to rebuild.
By Liam Stack, Abu Bakr Bashir and Bilal Shbair, Visuals by Saher Alghorra, Reporting from Tel Aviv and Gaza City, Oct. 19, 2025
Sabah Abu Ghanem and her family made the long trek back to Gaza City after Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire this month, leaving a crowded tent encampment in the south of the territory with the goal of finally going home.
When they arrived, they found that their neighborhood had been destroyed, like most of Gaza City. But the cement skeleton of their home was still standing, so they decided to live in one of its damaged rooms.
“At least, this piece of land is ours,” said Ms. Abu Ghanem, 26. “This rubble I can call mine.”
Since the cease-fire took effect, thousands of Palestinians have returned to Gaza City or other areas in the devastated north of the territory. In many cases, they went back to places that they had fled just weeks earlier, and found their homes and neighborhoods obliterated. Rebuilding their lives in Gaza City feels at best like a faraway goal and at worst, like an impossible one.
For some, the destruction was too much to face. Majdi Nassar, 32, came back to look for his home in Jabaliya, near Gaza City, but returned to Deir al-Balah, in the south, within less than 24 hours. He said he would stay away until clean drinking water had been restored. That could be a long time.
“I could not find any trace of the building where I had an apartment, not even the rubble,” he said. “Everything is gone.”
Gaza was densely populated before the two-year war that was ignited by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza City was the political, economic and cultural heart of the territory. Vast swaths of it are now in ruins.
The city has been hollowed out by the flight of its residents to southern Gaza after the Israeli military launched a ground offensive there last month. Government buildings, universities and many hospitals have been destroyed.
Food supplies are limited. The electrical grid has been down for two years, since Israel cut off supplies in the first days of the war. Clean water is hard to find.
This past week, the United Nations said “real progress” was being made to increase aid deliveries, but the World Food Program said it would take time to reverse conditions that led a U.N.-backed panel of food experts to report that areas in and around Gaza City were suffering from famine in August.
Israel has said there is no famine, and blamed food shortages on Hamas, looters or aid groups that it says are incompetent.
The future is deeply uncertain. The cease-fire has stopped the fighting, but it is not clear if it will end the war. The next round of peace negotiations has not been scheduled, and there is no established timeline for reconstruction.
The Israeli military has pulled back to a new deployment line in Gaza, but it still controls half of the enclave’s territory. On Friday, it said it had opened fire on a vehicle it said had crossed that new boundary. The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said at least nine people, including children, were killed.
For some residents, like Ms. Abu Ghanem, the conditions are so grim that they say they want to leave Gaza.
One of the first things she did when she returned to Gaza City was to walk through the shattered remains of her neighborhood to see if she could recognize anyone or anything.
“There was no one at all around,” she said. “There were no services, no water or electricity, and, of course, no markets to buy food.”
Ms. Abu Ghanem was once a celebrity of a sort in Gaza. She was a surfer in a place where few people, and even fewer women, practice the sport, and she appeared in foreign newspapers and documentary films, like “Gaza Surf Club.”
Social pressure led her to stop surfing, and she got married and had three children. She still swam, though, and used to dream of starting a club to teach girls how to swim and surf.
Now, she said, her dream is to leave Gaza for the sake of her children.
Before the war, they talked about school or what they wanted to be when they grew up. Now, they trade tips on how to start a fire to cook or where to buy water from the trucks that have set up shop around town, she said.
“I want them to enjoy a much better life than mine,” she said. “Gaza is not a place for life or dreams.”
But others who returned to Gaza City said they were committed to staying.
Fatima Abu Steita, 27, returned with her husband, Abdallah Abu Nada, 47, to look for their home in the Zeitoun neighborhood. But they never found it because it was “completely erased,” she said.
“Everything around that neighborhood is flat ground,” she added. “Rebuilding life here feels like trying to plant a tree in stone.”
She now lives with relatives in the Shati neighborhood, “10 souls under one cracked roof.”
Ms. Abu Seita said she knew families who “came back, took one look at their street, and left.” But for her, returning to Gaza City felt empowering, no matter what state it was in.
“It’s a return to nothing, yes,” she said. “But it’s also saying: ‘We are still here.’”
Yet for those who have chosen to stay despite the destruction, Gaza City also feels increasingly dangerous.
The territory has been lawless and largely ungoverned for two years.
Since the cease-fire began, Hamas has begun reasserting its authority. In some places, that has meant masked fighters directing traffic. In others, it has meant Hamas gunmen killing rivals in street battles and summary executions.
Even before they returned to Gaza City, Ms. Abu Ghanem said she did not let her children leave home at night because “everyone outside has a gun, a knife, or even a screwdriver.”
Now, some returnees worry they could get swept up in internecine violence.
“There is no law or police — people take the law into their own hands,” she said. “An eye for an eye is the law now.”
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13) New Flare-Up of Violence Strains Gaza Cease-Fire
Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza after it accused Palestinian militants of attacking its forces across cease-fire lines.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Oct. 19, 2025
Israel accused Palestinian militants on Sunday of attacking its forces across cease-fire lines in Gaza and said it had launched airstrikes in retaliation.
The new flare-up of violence reflected the fragility of the truce, which came into effect more than a week ago and has raised hopes that the two-year war might be drawing to a close. It was the latest in a series of violent episodes in Gaza since the cease-fire took hold.
The Israeli military said in a statement that militants had fired an anti-tank missile and gunfire toward its troops in the area of Rafah in southern Gaza. It called the actions “a blatant violation” of the cease-fire agreement.
In response, the military said, Israeli forces were striking in the area “to eliminate the threat” and dismantle tunnel shafts and other military structures. There were no immediate reports of casualties on either side.
Although the military’s statement did not mention Hamas by name, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel blamed the group for the latest violence. He said he had consulted with his defense minister and security chiefs and had instructed them to act forcefully against militant targets in Gaza.
Hamas’s military wing said in a statement that it was “unaware of any events or clashes taking place in the Rafah area.” The military wing added that it has had no contact with its fighters there since an earlier, temporary cease-fire collapsed in March and therefore has “no connection to any events taking place in those areas.”
Hamas’s military wing reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining the cease-fire in a statement.
A Hamas official, Izzat al-Rishq, in a separate statement on Sunday accused Israel of continuing to violate the truce and of fabricating “flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes.”
On Friday, the Israeli military fired on a vehicle in northern Gaza, killing at least nine people, including four children, according to a Gaza rescue service that is part of the territory’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
In relation to that episode, the Israeli military said that the vehicle had crossed over a demarcation line where Israel’s forces have withdrawn to under the terms of the cease-fire. The military added that its forces had fired on the vehicle, which it described as “suspicious,” after the vehicle ignored warning shots.
The Israeli military has repeatedly warned civilians not to cross the new lines or approach its troops in the Israeli-held areas but many Gazans — either lacking internet, puzzling over unclear maps, or simply lost in the devastated enclave — have at times been unsure about whether they have entered a restricted area.
After Sunday’s violence, members of Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-line government immediately called for a full resumption of Israel’s offensive against Hamas, the militant group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel that set off the war.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist minister of national security, called for a resumption of fighting “at full strength.” Any notions that Hamas would abide by the cease-fire agreement, he added, “are predictably proving dangerous to our security.”
Mr. Ben-Gvir was among the far-right ministers opposed to the cease-fire in the first place, believing that Israel should have continued fighting until Hamas was fully defeated. The cease-fire was, however, approved by a majority of the government.
Israel still controls about half the territory in Gaza and has accused Hamas fighters of operating out of tunnels beneath areas still under Israeli control.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Abu Bakr Bashir from London.
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14) A Squalid Building, a Tip to the Feds, and Then ‘Straight-Up Chaos’
An immigration raid on an apartment building in Chicago followed years of problems with crime, and neglect by landlords. It swept up dozens of U.S. citizens who were detained in the middle of the night.
By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Julie Bosman, Hamed Aleaziz, Jesus Jiménez and Brent McDonald, Videos by Arijeta Lajka, Reporting from Chicago, Oct. 19, 2025
Windows are boarded up at an apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood where federal agents staged a massive raid. Todd Heisler/The New York Times
On a humid September night in Chicago, Cameo Polk was asleep in his fifth-floor apartment when he heard the thump thump thump of a helicopter overhead.
Outside, hundreds of men with masks and rifles were scurrying around the building. He briefly wondered if an invasion was underway.
But they were U.S. law enforcement agents, rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter and swarming the 130-unit building he lives in. Once inside, they kicked down doors, emptied bookshelves and overturned mattresses.
By dawn, at least 37 of Mr. Polk’s neighbors, nearly all Venezuelan nationals, would be in the custody of the U.S. government, part of President Trump’s plan to crack down on illegal immigration.
Trailed by drones and a camera crew, federal agents with their guns drawn carried out one of the most aggressive immigration operations in recent memory. The raid has become a defining image of the Trump administration’s surge of federal agents into Chicago, where masked immigration officers for weeks have been chasing down people suspected of being in the country illegally.
And while those arrests have drawn fierce protests, the apartment building raid, which took place on Sept. 30, raised even more concerns. In their effort to capture Venezuelans, agents led by the U.S. Border Patrol pulled dozens of American citizens from their apartments in the middle of the night, pointing their guns at sleepy men and women before zip-tying them and taking them outside.
The operation also highlighted the extent to which immigration enforcement and crime-fighting have become intertwined as bevies of officers from various federal agencies have been sent into American cities. The building, targeted by Border Patrol because undocumented immigrants lived there, has long been a hotbed of drug use and violence, residents said.
The raid focused on a mud-colored brick building that rises five stories tall and sits across from an elementary school in the predominantly Black neighborhood of South Shore along Lake Michigan. Residents said the living conditions had been poor for some time, and had worsened in the last year, as more people squatted in empty apartments and the management company, the landlord and the city government remained unresponsive to their pleas to fix the place up.
There have been nearly 500 calls to emergency services regarding the building so far this year, records show, and the city and a bank had been pressuring the landlord to make improvements. Some residents said after the raid that they hoped it might give the building a new start.
But what unfolded that night was an ordeal spanning several hours that left residents, Venezuelans and Americans alike, terror-stricken and humiliated. They bolted out of their beds at the sound of heavy footsteps in the darkened hallways, splintering doors, flash-bang grenades and barked commands. Restrained at the wrists, interrogated and separated by race and ethnicity, residents were forced onto buses while armed federal agents checked their names and records, determining whether they were living in the country legally or not.
Mr. Polk and his brother, Nate Howard, were not immigrants. But they were forced from their apartment anyway, and his brother was arrested after a federal agent found that he had missed a court date related to a years-old drug charge.
“I don’t understand how they decided who they can do that to,” Mr. Polk said. “They didn’t treat people like they were American.”
The Building
On this, the residents of 7500 S. South Shore Drive could agree: The building was full of danger.
The conditions inside were squalid, with mold, broken pipes and the persistent reek of urine in the darkened stairwells.
“Drugs, gangs, prostitution,” said Twana Pickens, 44, who had lived in the building for three years until she moved out this summer. “Anything illegal? Name it. It happened there. It’s just a very unsafe environment for people who just want to come home, go to work and try to raise their families there.”
Former residents said elevators were routinely broken, the mail was not delivered and trash was regularly left in the hallways. One person said she was once followed by a man with his penis in his hand, asking for sex.
Steven Jordan, 34, said he had long lived within a few blocks of the apartment building, and knew it as a place where people bought drugs and went to get warm in the winter.
“A lot of people go up in there because there are empty apartments and no locks on a lot of the doors,” he said.
Residents said that the Americans and the Venezuelans in the building generally left each other alone, but that the immigrants sometimes had conflicts among themselves and upset other tenants.
“Some of them were bad boys, I must say,” said Eleanor McMullen, 64, who lives on the third floor. “Sometimes they would break doors and bust the lights out. Foolish stuff, cause they were young.”
But she was friends with some of the immigrants, who greeted her when they passed in the hallway. She gave a tricycle that belonged to one of her grandchildren to one man’s little girl.
“We talked every day,” she said. “He would knock on my door and be like, ‘Oh, I’m home.’”
In recent months, the violence in the building escalated. A Venezuelan man, Gregori Arias, 31, was fatally shot in an apartment in the building in June in what federal officials described as a “brutal, execution-style murder.”
On Sept. 8, officers with the Chicago Police Department arrested another Venezuelan, Jose Coronado-Meza, 25, in connection to the murder.
At the time of the raid, the owner, Trinity Flood, a Wisconsin woman who purchased the apartment building in 2020 for $11.3 million, had been under legal pressure to improve conditions.
Ms. Flood did not return calls and emails seeking comment. Corey Oliver, the owner of Strength in Management, the property management company that handled the property, also did not return requests for comment.
Wells Fargo had sued Ms. Flood in April, seeking to foreclose on three Chicago apartment buildings that she had purchased in 2020 for about $18 million, including the one on South Shore Drive.
Chicago officials met with property managers in June and instructed them to install burglar bars on vacant units and to work with police to remove squatters. A lawyer for the city wrote in August of flooding in the laundry room, urine in the stairwell and “armed occupants,” with criminal activity and shootings taking place.
Ms. Flood’s lawyers told the court on Sept. 26 that the owner had spent $2 million on repairs, maintenance, security and evictions since 2020. They said that managers had “invested hundreds of hours working with law enforcement” to stop squatters and criminals from entering the building.
In response to the continuing complaints, the judge set a hearing on an emergency motion for the appointment of a receiver, giving the parties a court date of Oct. 1.
About 24 hours before the hearing, federal agents raided the building.
The Raid
The operation began with a confidential tip, officials said.
Officials have not said who tipped them off, but records show that agents carried out the raid with the consent of the owner, and that they targeted apartments that they were told were not currently being rented and were presumably occupied by squatters.
Several residents said that agents had left some apartments alone while bursting into others. Miyah Hill, 22, said some residents who peeked into the hallway during the raid were ordered to go back inside. One man who asked not to be identified because he was still living in the building, said he had found a floor plan of the building in the aftermath of the raid with some apartments shaded in green, others in white and some in red.
Brian McGraw, 64, who lives on the first floor and was not targeted by the agents, said that he later found orange tape on his door with the words “NO GO” written on it; two other doors on the first floor had similar tape, he said.
“They must have had some advance intelligence or information, where somehow they knew I wasn’t one of the ones they were looking for,” he said.
Border Patrol officials, who were accompanied on the raid by officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies, said that among those arrested were people they believed to be members of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
“The intelligence was showing that they would move about inside the apartment complex freely and known to carry weapons inside the apartment complex,” David Kim, an assistant chief patrol agent at Border Patrol, said in an interview.
Another Border Patrol official, who did not agree to be named because he works undercover, said that gang members were squatting in units and extorting people in the complex, and that the building owner had not been able to get them out.
Just after 1 a.m. on the night of the raid, Mr. McGraw, the first-floor resident, peered out of his apartment’s first-floor windows and saw federal officers approach and cut through the back door with a power saw.
As the federal agents roamed through the hallway, Mr. McGraw heard one of them say, “There’s a whole village on the second floor.”
On the fifth floor, Keisha Clark’s apartment door came crashing down as federal agents battered their way in and then tossed in a flash-bang grenade.
Ms. Clark, a 43-year-old American, said that federal agents had grabbed her, scratching her left arm, put her wrists in restraints and took her out of her apartment.
“Clearly you can see that we’re American,” she said, recalling her fury at her treatment. “Why are we in handcuffs?”
Brian Boyd, 56, a tenant and lifelong Chicagoan, woke up in a state of shock when he saw what felt like an army of agents swarming the building.
“They were just on straight-up chaos,” he said.
The agents forced everyone to line up. Keep your focus ahead, they told residents, as they marched them downstairs and outside into the night. They brought them through a fence into a school parking lot where dozens of people were collected, including Venezuelan children and their mothers, some of them only partly clothed because they had been pulled out of bed, witnesses said.
Eboni Watson, who lives next to the building, said she had seen a federal agent with a group of Venezuelans forcibly remove a baby from its mother’s arms.
Venezuelans were separated from Americans, and some residents were placed on buses for at least an hour, they said. Officers checked people’s names to see if they had any open warrants before letting them go.
Ms. McMullen, on the third floor, was briefly detained with several Venezuelans who she said had been squatting in the building.
After being questioned and remaining on a bus for hours, she was allowed to go back to her apartment.
“My bed was turned upside down,” she said. “My mattress and stuff flipped over. My paperwork and stuff just thrown out.
Mr. Kim, of the Border Patrol, said agents arrested anyone who was not legally in the country, whether or not the person was an original target of the raid.
“Well, guess what?” he said. “You’re coming with us.”
Aid groups, lawyers and journalists have all had difficulty identifying and locating many of the Venezuelans who were taken by immigration agents. Federal officials have not publicly identified most of them and have not said where they are, making it impossible to verify their claims about the immigrants’ criminal histories. Three people whom The New York Times was able to identify as being arrested in the raid had no known criminal histories.
Mr. Polk said his brother was let out of jail the day after the raid and returned home.
It was not long before state and local officials in Chicago protested the actions of the federal agents, saying they had acted with unnecessary aggression.
“This raid wasn’t about public safety,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said several days later. “It was certainly not about immigration. This was about a show of authoritarianism, a forceful display of tyranny.”
Days after the raid, a walk through the building showed the aftermath of the destruction, and efforts to clean it up. Debris was being cleared and lightbulbs replaced. In the front courtyard, workers trimmed branches from overgrown trees and removed broken windowpanes from a third-floor unit.
Roderick Johnson, 67, a longtime resident, said he was still suffering from the trauma of the raid, recalling federal agents breaking into his apartment with flash-bang grenades while he was trying to sleep.
Now he has a new fear: that the building will be sold, and that the new management will evict him. “The way it looks, they’re trying to close the building down.”
Susan C. Beachy and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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