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Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation Endorses Day of Truth and Freedom January 23, 2026
January 16, 2026
For Immediate Release
Contact: Stacie Balkaran:
stacie@minneapolisunions.org / 971.291.9486
Minneapolis Labor Union Delegation and Local Regional Labor Bodies Endorse January 23: Day of Truth and Freedom—No Work, School, or Shopping
Minneapolis—The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO along with regional bodies throughout the state, including the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, the West Area Labor Council, the North East Area Labor Council and the East Central Labor Council, have joined in solidarity to endorse a powerful unified statewide action on January 23: Day of Truth and Freedom. The Minnesota labor movement is united against the violent ICE occupation of our beloved cities that has directly impacted union members, our workplaces and our families.
Workers are essential for our communities to function. Since the ICE campaign of terror began, both immigrant and non-immigrant workers have feared for their safety when going to work, being at work, and coming home from work. Union members and our families are being illegally detained at alarming rates, with workplaces and schools facing increased challenges.
Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, President of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, shared why union federations are joining this call:
“Working people, our schools and our communities are under attack. Union members are being detained commuting to and from work, tearing apart families. Parents are being forced to stay home, students held out of school, fearing for their lives, all while the employer class remains silent. Our labor federations are encouraging everyone to participate on January 23rd. It’s time for every single Minnesotan who loves this state and the notion of truth and freedom to raise their voices and deepen their solidarity for our neighbors and coworkers living under this federal occupation.”
Unions join the demands for the day that call for:
· ICE must leave Minnesota now.
· The agent who killed Renee Good must be held legally accountable.
· No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming Congressional budget and ICE be investigated for human and constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.
· Minnesotan and national companies to become 4th Amendment Businesses—cease economic relations with ICE and refuse ICE entry or using their property for staging grounds.
The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO is the umbrella organization of Minneapolis-area local unions and includes 175+ affiliated unions representing over 80,000 working people across seven Minnesotan counties. www.minneapolisunions.org
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CALL TO DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST NICK TILSEN BEFORE JANUARY 26, 2026
In 2022, an incident took place where a Native unhoused relative was being harassed and assaulted by Rapid City Police (RCPD) in Rapid City, South Dakota. Nick Tilsen, CEO and Founder of NDN Collective, pulled over to conduct a routine cop watch. One officer accused Nick of assaulting him despite no physical contact being made with the officer. During the interaction, Nick remained in his vehicle because he felt unsafe surrounded by several police cars. Nick communicated with an officer, who then got approval from someone off-site and allowed Nick to leave.
Despite no immediate action being taken at the time, more than a year later, the officer involved accused Nick of attempting to run him over, leading to a complaint and warrant for Tilsen’s arrest being filed on June 30, 2023 – the same day NDN Collective announced they would host a July 4th March Towards Justice.
Nick was originally charged with aggravated assault and obstruction of a police officer. But just a few weeks before the trial date (January 12, 2026), Nick was notified that the Pennington County Grand Jury added a “simple assault” to the list of charges.
Nick is being systematically targeted as local prosecutors intentionally sought out the police officer named in this case and encouraged him to press charges. The charges brought against Nick are false and inflated to criminalize, silence, and ultimately isolate him from his community through imprisonment. Nick is being targeted by RCPD because he has unapologetically stood on his values and has called for accountability and justice for people harmed by police in Rapid City.
NDN Collective has been pushing for a federal investigation into the Rapid City Police Department for over 3 years. This fight is bigger than just Nick Tilsen. It’s about protecting movement leaders, movement organizations, our right to free speech, and to demand justice for those harmed by colonial white supremacist systems and structures.
NDN Collective believes this to be a politically motivated effort to silence a movement leader by criminalizing his actions and misusing the legal system. If found guilty of these charges, Nick could face up to 26 years in prison.
Nick’s trial is set to begin January 26, 2026, at 9 am MT at the Pennington County Courthouse in Rapid City, SD.
As we see continued targeting of movement leaders, including Nick, we need your support to continue fighting these legal battles. Trials are expensive and are tactics used to drain movement resources. We need resources to continue this fight against legal repression and to continue our work.
This fund safeguards our organization against legal attacks aiming to suppress our leaders, imprison our people, and obstruct our movement’s objectives.
DONATE TO NDN LEGAL FUND HERE:
https://ndnlegalfund.org
SIGN PETITION: DROP THE CHARGES:
Support for the charges against Nick to be dropped is clear, with over 16,500 signatures on a petition to the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s office. If you haven’t already, please add your name to our petition:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTdap1GFD-1/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
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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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 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 auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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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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Articles
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1) Trump’s E.P.A. Has Put a Value on Human Life: Zero Dollars
The Environmental Protection Agency has stopped estimating the dollar value of lives saved in the cost-benefit analyses for new pollution rules.
By Maxine Joselow, Reporting from Washington, Jan. 21, 2026
“Last week, the E.P.A. stopped estimating the monetary value of lives saved when setting limits on two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone. Instead, the agency is calculating only the costs to companies of complying with pollution regulations.”
Los Angeles smog in 1979. For decades, government agencies have used a theoretical value of human life when calculating the costs and benefits of new regulations. Bettmann/Getty Images
Government officials have long grappled with a question that seems like the purview of philosophers: What is the value of a human life?
Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the answer has been in the millions of dollars. The higher the value, the more the government has required businesses to spend on their operations to prevent a single death.
But for the first time ever, at the Environmental Protection Agency the answer is effectively zero dollars.
Last week, the E.P.A. stopped estimating the monetary value of lives saved when setting limits on two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone. Instead, the agency is calculating only the costs to companies of complying with pollution regulations.
“The Trump administration is saying, literally, that they put zero value on human life,” Marshall Burke, an environmental economist at Stanford University, said in an email. “If your kid breathes in air pollution from a power plant or industrial source, E.P.A. is saying that they care only insofar as cleaning up that pollution would cost the emitter.”
It’s a drastic change to the way the government weighs the costs of curbing air pollution against the benefits to public health and the environment. It could lead to looser controls on pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial sites across the country, resulting in dirtier air.
And it appears to shelve a powerful tool, known as the value of a statistical life, that agencies have used for decades in the cost-benefit analyses that justify new regulations.
The E.P.A. has used the tool to assign a dollar value to the lives saved by clean-air rules, causing the benefits of these rules to dwarf the costs by at least a 30-to-1 ratio. That has allowed it to defend pollution controls that companies would otherwise challenge as too costly.
Other federal agencies have used the metric to justify regulations affecting everything from safety features on cars to cancer warning labels on cigarette packs.
Brigit Hirsch, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said in an email that the agency was still considering the health effects of fine particulate matter and ozone, but was no longer assigning them a dollar value in cost-benefit analyses. “We’re not putting a dollar value on those impacts right now,” she said. “That does not mean E.P.A. is ignoring or undervaluing them.”
Ms. Hirsch did not comment on whether the agency would stop using the value of a statistical life for all regulations beyond clean-air rules. But in general, she said, “saying we aren’t attaching a dollar figure to health effects is like saying we aren’t putting a price tag on clean air or safe drinking water. Dollars and cents don’t define their worth.”
For the past 30 years, the E.P.A. has pegged the value of a statistical life at around $11.7 million. Although experts have recommended increasing the value, the agency has updated the metric only to account for inflation and wage growth.
The value of a statistical life is a sensitive subject in Washington. Lower values have led to outcry from public interest groups, while higher values have drawn complaints from a range of industries, including oil and gas drillers, truck drivers and toy manufacturers.
Some critics have raised moral objections to using the tool at all, saying a human life is priceless. But supporters say its use has helped prevent hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, which kills more Americans each year than vehicle crashes.
The biggest driver of those deaths is fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, which refers to particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, small enough to enter the bloodstream. Another silent killer is ozone, a smog-causing gas that forms when emissions from power plants, factories and vehicles mix in the air on hot, sunny days.
A robust body of research has linked long-term exposure to both pollutants to premature death as well as asthma, dementia, and heart and lung disease. Even moderate exposure to PM2.5 can damage the lungs about as much as smoking, studies show.
But in a document posted online on Monday, the E.P.A. claimed that the economic benefits of reducing PM2.5 and ozone were too uncertain. The E.P.A. said that it would stop tabulating these benefits “until the agency is confident enough in the modeling to properly monetize those impacts.”
Some regulatory experts had mixed reactions to the move.
“On one hand, the administration does make some valid points that E.P.A. statements have implied a false precision in the past,” said Susan Dudley, who led the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during President George W. Bush’s second term and now teaches at George Washington University. “On the other hand, the way to rectify that is not to stop quantifying the health effects altogether.”
Others were less circumspect in their criticism.
“If the rationale is that benefits are uncertain, well, costs are uncertain, too,” said Alan Krupnick, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research group. “Considering costs without considering benefits is like trying to cut a piece of cloth with one blade of the scissors: The cut is likely going to be inaccurate and rough.”
Michael Greenstone, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, said the change could result in dirtier air, undercutting the gains made since Congress strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1970. Steep reductions in PM2.5 pollution have added 1.4 years to the average American’s life expectancy since 1970, according to research by the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index project.
“Clean air is one of the great success stories of government policy in the last half-century,” Dr. Greenstone said. “And at the heart of the Clean Air Act is the idea that when you allow people to lead longer and healthier lives, that has value that can be measured in dollars.”
Dr. Greenstone and other economists said the value of a statistical life has often been misinterpreted as the value that the government assigns to a single person’s life. But it is actually the value that the government assigns to slightly reducing the risk of death for a large group of people.
To determine this value, government economists have turned to studies on the labor market, which show that workers demand higher wages before agreeing to perform jobs with greater risks of workplace fatalities.
Say that employers must pay lumberjacks an additional $1,000 a year to perform work that generally kills one in 1,000 workers. It follows that most Americans would forgo $1,000 a year to avoid that risk and that 1,000 Americans would collectively forgo $1 million to avoid the same risk entirely. Therefore, in this example, the value of a statistical life would be $1 million.
Tweaking the tool raises thorny ethical and philosophical questions, said W. Kip Viscusi, an economist at Vanderbilt University whose research on the value of a statistical life has been cited by many agencies.
“Should the government place the same dollar value on everybody’s life?” Dr. Viscusi asked. “Should rich people’s lives be valued more? Should old people’s lives be valued less?”
The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for major oil and gas companies, has urged the E.P.A. to consider using a lower value for older people. In a 2018 public comment, the group wrote that most of the lives saved by stronger ozone standards would be “among the elderly population — not individuals in their highest earning years.”
Scott Lauermann, a spokesman for the institute, said in an email that the group was still reviewing the E.P.A.’s new approach but that it appreciated the agency’s focus on “sound science.”
In 2003, during George W. Bush’s first term, the White House proposed that the E.P.A. use a 37 percent lower value of a statistical life for people older than 70. But the backlash was intense: Older Americans and environmentalists protested what they called a “senior death discount” at E.P.A. hearings. The AARP, a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of older Americans, ran ads featuring an older woman with a “37 percent off!” tag hanging from her glasses.
The Bush administration ultimately abandoned the idea, and the “environmental critics won the P.R. battle,” said John D. Graham, who led the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the time and now teaches at Indiana University Bloomington.
“My students tell me I should have started by pushing a premium on the value of saving the lives of children, since they have so many high-quality years of life ahead of them,” Dr. Graham said in an email. “In hindsight, that might have been a better approach.”
Dr. Viscusi said that if other agencies followed the E.P.A.’s latest approach, they would leave Americans more vulnerable to a range of threats to their lives and livelihoods.
“Whether it’s highway safety, job safety or consumer product safety, the biggest benefits of regulations are from saving lives,” he said. “If saving lives is made irrelevant, it will undermine the justification for all forms of protective policies.”
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2) The Heritage Foundation Wants to Send American Women Back Half a Century
By Jessica Grose, Opinion Writer, Jan. 21, 2026
Eleanor Davis
In the very first paragraph of the Heritage Foundation’s lengthy new policy paper, “Saving America by Saving the Family,” the authors go all the way back to 1776 for inspiration. “In understanding their crowning achievement, Americans must recognize that the founding fathers were, quite literally, fathers: Fifty-four of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence married and had a total of 337 children among them — an average of six each.”
Reading this, I wondered: Are they counting the six children Thomas Jefferson had with Sally Hemings — whom he enslaved and who could not legally refuse unwanted sex — or not? What kind of example is that supposed to set?
That’s just the opening salvo of this confused, retrograde report, which leaves out a lot of important details from its rose-colored history of marriage and family in the United States. It’s a curious set of guidelines for the future, since it seems mired in culture war battles from the 20th century, unable to face the past 60 years of change.
The Heritage Foundation — the think tank behind Project 2025, which has had an outsize influence on executive branch policy in the second Trump administration — seems to want to take a time machine back to when women were financially dependent on men and gay marriage was not legal, but the authors can’t decide exactly how far back they want to go. They call the report “a culturewide Manhattan Project that marshals America’s political, social and economic capital to restore the natural family.” (“Natural,” in their parlance, is the marriage of a man and a woman.) Comparing their natalist dreams to the creation of the nuclear bomb suggests that they believe they can achieve their goals only through destruction.
The report’s authors know they can’t tell all women to be stay-at-home mothers (returning the country to 1960s employment levels for women) because that would contradict their other goal, to dismantle the welfare state and put even more work conditions on parents receiving government aid. So instead, they throw a few tiny bones to modern working parents: encouraging remote work, conceding that affordability of child care is a major problem and saying it would be nice if more corporations offered paid family leave out of the goodness of their hearts.
But the bulk of the paper is about ways to whittle down government support for anybody who isn’t part of a traditional married family, ideally with a male breadwinner. For example, the report tells families it is less than optimal for their kids to go to day care as infants but offers only an extension of unpaid family leave, a few cash payments and tax credits as a policy salve. “According to N.I.H. studies,” — the studies they link to are from 1998 and 1999 — “by age 2, toddlers with a history of many hours in nonparental care exhibited more behavioral problems (such as aggression and disobedience) than did children reared primarily at home.”
This report’s authors want women to think they have been sold a bill of goods by liberals who told them they could have it all. There are passages in the report complaining about the ’60s feminists Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and claiming that second-wave feminism destroyed the family.
The authors quote a Daily Mail article from 2008, which they credit to Rebecca Walker, the daughter of the feminist writer Alice Walker, to support their argument about how “rabid” feminists ruined marriage and motherhood. Rebecca Walker told me, “These are words taken out of context from a piece I did not write and publicly renounced. Obviously, I fully reject the Heritage Foundation weaponizing my name and any of my personal family history in support of their regressive and unconstitutional war against women and families in our country and beyond.”
Not content with quoting a questionable, nearly 20-year-old article, at one point the report’s authors valorize the fictional “Brady Bunch” for its family’s large brood and frugality. (“All of the kids shared a single bathroom!”)
It is telling that the Heritage Foundation issued a grand statement about how welfare wrecked marriage and children two days after the Trump administration froze $10 billion in funding for needy families in five Democratic-led states, which includes $2.4 billion for the Child Care and Development Fund.
At first, the administration froze child care funds only for Minnesota, after a YouTube video by the conservative creator Nick Shirley about day care fraud in Somali-run centers went viral. (The Times and local outlets had already been reporting on welfare scandals in the state, and some of his claims were undermined by The Minneapolis Star Tribune.)
But just as the administration used the pretext of Shirley’s video to sic Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Minneapolis — with ongoing, tragic results — it also used the pretext of the video to cut funding to states Trump sees as the opposition, despite showing no evidence of fraud in California, Colorado, Illinois or New York.
This comes after other attempts by the Trump administration to withhold or cancel Head Start (which provides free child care for children 5 and under from low-income families) funding all over the country in 2025. The stop and start of federal grants continues to cause chaos for programs. “Rather than making life easier and more affordable for our families, Donald Trump is stripping away child care from Illinois families who are just trying to go to work,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said this month.
When I read policy screeds like the one from Heritage, I always marvel at how we agree on some of the problems American families face but have completely different solutions. The Heritage Foundation states that housing affordability and a paucity of stable jobs for young people may be contributing to the downturn of family formation. The authors note that young Trump-voting men rank children “as their No. 1 measure of life success,” citing NBC News polling from September. That group ranks marriage as No. 4, far higher than any other group, including Trump-voting young women, who rank children sixth and being married ninth, which is where young men who voted for Harris rank marriage.
Instead of looking at these stats and thinking that maybe there’s a deeper problem if only conservative men are bullish about having children, the authors look at the stats and think: If our government only pushed religion and traditional marriage harder legally and culturally, everyone else would fall in line.
But even they can’t fully commit to the argument that Americans are somehow underrating “the natural family,” as they spend large chunks of the report listing the many, many ways the government favors married couples. “Federal tax law provides married couples with substantial advantages unavailable to unmarried partners,” they note, along with inheritance and immigration laws and Social Security, retirement and military benefits; the list goes on. The federal government spends $150 million a year on Healthy Marriage & Responsible Fatherhood grants, with little to show for them.
While I do not think measuring happiness is useful or accurate or the right metric here, the Heritage Foundation’s authors use it to bolster their arguments: They claim marriage and churchgoing will make citizens happier. Yet year after year, the Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden — dominate the 10 happiest countries, according to the World Happiness Report. These countries are secular and are generous welfare states. Their marriage rates aren’t particularly high, and cohabitation is common.
Further, the authors claim that over the past 60 years, “casual sex, abortion, childlessness by choice and no-fault divorce became normalized, while marriage and the natural family became stigmatized.” Stigmatized? Moms “dominate influencer marketing,” according to PRWeek, and if the authors bothered to pay attention to what’s happening this century, they might be aware that one of the past year’s biggest cultural moments was when Taylor Swift, a Kamala Harris voter, and Travis Kelce, a professional football player, got engaged.
I have interviewed men and women of different political backgrounds about their family goals. Many are delaying or having fewer kids because they are worried about paying for college, about paying for their retirement and about job stability. They also worry about paying for birth in the best of circumstances, because even for women with employer-provided insurance, the average out-of-pocket payment for a hospital birth is nearly $3,000, more than what is in Trump’s newborn accounts. They worry about their kids dying in school shootings. Women worry about dying in states with anti-abortion laws that prevent pregnant women from getting adequate medical care.
These are problems of the present and future, and they will need new and inventive solutions. Even a majority of G.O.P. primary voters in a 2025 Bipartisan Policy Center/Cygnal poll said the government has a role to play in helping parents get access to safe and reliable child care.
Instead of figuring out a real way to make life easier for families, all the Heritage Foundation does is propose razing what little government support exists while scolding young people for their decadence because they want fewer children and more bathrooms.
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3) I’ve Covered Police Abuse for 20 Years. What ICE Is Doing Is Different.
By Radley Balko, Jan. 21, 2026
Mr. Balko is the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces” and the criminal justice newsletter The Watch.
Mark Peterson for The New York Times
Police agencies in the United States kill more than 1,000 people each year. After many of those deaths, the agencies involved put out statements. Those statements often use what’s known as the exonerative voice to minimize officers’ involvement. The first statement from the Minneapolis Police Department after George Floyd’s death, for example, said that the officers at the scene “noted that he appeared to be suffering from medical distress.” Quite the understatement. These communications often cast events in a light most favorable to the officers involved, sometimes to the point of deception. Too often, they’ll try to smear the deceased by citing a criminal record or suggesting a drug addiction or gang affiliation.
I have been covering policing for more than 20 years and have read and parsed a lot of these statements. The Department of Homeland Security’s response after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis this month is something else entirely.
For all their flaws, typical communications from police officials usually include a modicum of solemnity. There are assurances that there will be a fair and impartial investigation, even if those investigations too often turn out to be neither. There’s at least the acknowledgment that to take a human life is a profound and serious thing.
The Trump administration’s response to Ms. Good’s death made no such concessions. There were no promises of an impartial investigation. There was no regret or remorse. There was little empathy for her family — for her parents, her partner or the children she left behind. From the moment the world learned about her death, the administration pronounced the shooting not only justified but an act of heroism worthy of praise and celebration.
It isn’t just the lying; it’s that the lies are wildly exaggerated and easily refutable. All the evidence we’ve seen so far, including a meticulous Times forensic analysis of the available footage, makes clear that at worst, Ms. Good mildly obstructed immigration enforcement, disobeyed ambiguous orders or perhaps attempted to flee an arrest. None of those are capital crimes, nor do law enforcement officers get to dole out punishment in such cases. At one point, President Trump justified her shooting by claiming she’d been “very disrespectful” to immigration officers. That isn’t a crime at all.
The lies this administration is telling about Ms. Good aren’t those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They’re those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything. They’re a projection of power.
For the past decade or so, since the protests in Ferguson, Mo., America has engaged in a high-stakes dialogue about police abuse and accountability, the militarization of law enforcement and the push and pull between public safety and civil liberties. Those discussions, while occasionally heated, have been based on a shared understanding that the primary job of domestic law enforcement is to serve the public. What Mr. Trump is doing with federal immigration forces has rendered those debates obsolete.
The surge of federal forces into Minneapolis (like smaller, earlier surges into Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; Washington; and Chicago) isn’t about law enforcement at all. It is about an administration declaring — explicitly, at times — that the purpose of federal law enforcement isn’t to uphold the rule of law or promote public safety but to enforce the will of a single man.
We started to see this in the way the Trump administration responded to previous shootings by immigration officers, including of Carlitos Ricardo Parias in Los Angeles and Marimar Martinez in Chicago. Administration officials quickly declared those shootings justified — and righteous — with hyperbolic language similar to that used after Ms. Good’s killing. Those claims would also later be disproved by witnesses’ accounts and other evidence. The government eventually dropped the charges against Ms. Martinez. A judge dismissed Mr. Parias’s charges with prejudice, meaning they can’t be brought again.
In fact, nearly all of the administration’s responses to deaths in custody, shootings or other accusations of abuses have used maximalist language to venerate immigration officers, dehumanize their victims and villainize anyone who doesn’t support the Trump administration. There are no disinterested parties. No innocent bystanders. People are either criminal immigrants or radical leftists who deserve what happens to them, or they are heroic, patriotic federal cops incapable of mistakes. There is no humanity for the civilians and no humility for the officers.
Last week, after federal agents dragged Aliya Rahman, a U.S. citizen, from her car and arrested her, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson referred to her as an agitator who was obstructing immigration operations. She was trying to get to a doctor’s appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center. When immigration officers used pepper spray and possibly flash grenades on a vehicle with a family inside, sending three children to the hospital, the department posted to social media, “It is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to violent riots. PLEASE STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN.” The family was headed home from a child’s basketball game.
In addition to such language, the administration has embraced fear tactics long associated with totalitarian regimes. Until now, law enforcement officers in the United States rarely masked their faces, save for during specialty operations like SWAT raids. For most agencies, this isn’t a written policy; it’s just been accepted that masked policing isn’t consistent with a democratic society. We want law enforcement officers to see themselves as accountable to the community. And we want community members to see officers as approachable, so they’ll cooperate. Masks undermine both. They instill fear in the community and encourage a menacing aura of infallibility among officers.
Instilling fear is a drawback only if your goal is public safety. This administration has made clear that it doesn’t want marginalized communities — immigrants, Somali U.S. citizens, residents of Latino neighborhoods and so on — to feel safe. It wants them living in fear. This is why they mask. It’s why they shatter car windows. It’s why Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, went on cable news to assure federal immigration officers, incorrectly, that they have complete immunity from criminal or civil liability and why, after Ms. Good’s death, Department of Homeland Security social media accounts reiterated Mr. Miller’s claim.
The administration has resurrected tactics that professional policing groups have deemed dangerous or counterproductive. ProPublica recently reported on 40 incidents over the past year in which federal immigration officers used potentially fatal chokeholds that are banned by most police agencies. Federal agents have shot into cars at least 10 times since September. This, too, is prohibited by most big city police agencies, in part because it’s too easy to mistake a driver’s intent.
Videos from cities where Mr. Trump has sent federal agents have shown agents attempting to stop fast-moving vehicles with techniques that most police departments prohibit or reserve for rare confrontations involving exceptionally dangerous people. They’re now being used against people suspected of immigration violations or who are irritating officers with their protest. Mr. Ross was involved in a previous incident in which he reached into a car and used a stun gun on a person while the car was in motion — reckless tactics that should have gotten him fired.
It’s clear that immigration officials are routinely breaking the law. There’s persuasive evidence that they’ve been explicitly racially profiling people in Minneapolis and elsewhere. (The Supreme Court effectively permitted profiling people by race and other factors in a September ruling.) They’ve been requiring U.S. citizens to produce proof of their citizenship on demand — also a violation of federal law. And we’ve seen U.S. citizens dragged from their cars, homes and workplaces, then arrested or detained.
We’ve seen the unlawful arrest and incarceration of Somali refugees who have legal permission to be here, warrantless raids on private homes and reports that detainees are being denied access to lawyers. And we’ve seen routine excessive force against protesters, from casual use of chemical irritants to physical violence to firing less lethal munitions at them from close range. These are all violations of the law. Not only is there no indication that the administration has investigated any of this, but the videos it posts to social media even seem to celebrate it.
All of which brings us back to Ms. Good. Over the weekend, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said on Fox News that there will be no federal investigation into her killing. The administration has already said the F.B.I. will not share the evidence it collected with the local police so they can conduct their own investigations, either. This is the very definition of a cover-up. It’s just being done in plain sight.
There are still important, unanswered questions about what Mr. Ross and other agents did in the moments leading up to Ms. Good’s death and whether he was legally justified to use lethal force. Those questions will now be much more difficult to answer.
We conduct these investigations not just to determine whether an officer should be charged with a crime. We also conduct them to determine if a shooting was necessary — and if it wasn’t, if there are policy changes that could prevent similar shootings.
In refusing to investigate Ms. Good’s death, the Department of Justice is, at a minimum, indicating that it doesn’t believe that preventing similar deaths is all that important. But the real explanation may be more sinister. Since she was killed, we’ve seen multiple videos in which immigration officers refer to her death to threaten people lawfully observing or recording them. The real motivation appears to be to make all the other Renee Goods out there, the liberal “wine moms” watching over immigration raids, to wonder if they might be next.
The Department of Justice instead opened a federal investigation into Ms. Good’s partner, specifically into whether she obstructed federal agents in the moments before the shooting and if she has any ties to activist groups. This prompted six federal prosecutors to resign. The administration then announced it had opened criminal investigations into whether Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis obstructed immigration enforcement. The department subpoenaed them and three other Minnesota leaders on Tuesday.
It’s one thing to tank or slow-walk an investigation. It’s quite another to publicly declare that no investigation will happen on any level and then announce that you’ll be investigating the victim’s partner and supporters instead. Both paths are unethical and corrupt. Undermining an investigation at least pays lip service to the idea of accountability and public trust. The administration’s actions in Ms. Good’s case are a declaration that there will be no accountability and that it would prefer to instill fear rather than trust.
We can still stop these abuses of power, but we need to be clear about what we’re facing. This is no longer a conversation about law enforcement or immigration policy. This is about authoritarianism.
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4) ICE Arrest of a Citizen, Barely Dressed, Sows Fear in Twin Cities
A Hmong immigrant, who is a U.S. citizen, was released after being questioned for an hour. Federal officials said they had been seeking sex offenders.
By Maia Coleman, Reporting from St. Paul, Minn., Published Jan. 20, 2026, Updated Jan. 21, 2026
It was over in a flash.
Masked federal agents descended on a one-story home in St. Paul, Minn., on Sunday and dragged a man wearing nothing but his underwear and slip-on shoes from his doorstep, through an icy snowbank and into an idling S.U.V.
Tires screeched. Whistles sounded. Neighbors shrieked in the background. And then the agents and the man were gone.
The arrested man was identified as ChongLy Scott Thao, a Hmong immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen with no criminal record, according to his family. He was released about an hour later without being charged, they said.
The images of the diminutive, barely clad man being led away through freezing temperatures spread instantly. The Department of Homeland Security said Mr. Thao’s arrest was made amid an attempt by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain convicted sex offenders. But in a community on edge, the operation quickly came to represent what critics call a callous and brutal enforcement campaign.
It has also has touched off panic on St. Paul’s east side, where a large population of Hmong people has lived for decades. Neighbors in the area have described a surge of immigration raids in recent days targeting people of Asian descent.
The Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that the arrest had been part of a targeted operation seeking two sex offenders who lived at the address with Mr. Thao. On Tuesday, they identified two men from Laos and said both are wanted for sexual assault. It was unclear on Tuesday whether the two men were the intended targets of Sunday’s raid, or were connected in some way with Mr. Thao.
Local officials and Mr. Thao’s family have disputed the department’s account, describing instead a chaotic case of mistaken identity and an incursion of armed agents who forcibly removed a U.S. citizen from a residence without presenting a warrant or allowing him to show identification.
“ChongLy was taken outside in freezing weather wearing only underwear and Crocs, placed into an SUV, and driven around for nearly an hour while being questioned,” Louansee Moua, Mr. Thao’s sister-in-law, wrote in a description of the event on a GoFundMe page fund-raising for Mr. Thao’s legal fees and other costs.
The family declined to comment further on the arrest on Tuesday. But in an earlier interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Thao said the agents did not explain or apologize for the arrest. “They didn’t say sorry or anything,” he said.
Mayor Kaohly Her of St. Paul, who said she knows the Thao family personally, said that available evidence showed that agents had the wrong person and were offered information to confirm that. “And they just ignored that information,” she said.
Dana Haberman, a neighbor who witnessed the raid, said roughly 10 vans carrying federal agents appeared on the street. The agents, some of whom carried rifles and riot shields, walked up the front steps to Mr. Thao’s home and knocked several times, waiting about a minute, before using a battering ram to break down the door, he said.
“Seeing this elderly man being taken out like that,” Mr. Haberman said, “the frustration is palpable.”
Once inside, the agents pointed guns at Mr. Thao’s family and handcuffed him, as his 5-year-old grandson watched from the couch, his family said in the GoFundMe page. Minutes later, under heavy snowfall, he was taken away with only a red blanket draped over his shoulders, according to Mr. Haberman and videos of the raid. Agents escorted him into a black S.U.V., which soon sped off.
Mr. Thao was driven around for almost an hour while the agents questioned him. After fingerprinting him and running his information, they returned him home, Ms. Moua said.
In its statement on Monday, homeland security said that Mr. Thao had refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified and that he had matched the description of the two sex offenders they were seeking. “It is standard protocol to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for safety of the public and law enforcement,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the department, wrote on social media. It did not appear that any other members of the family were arrested on Sunday.
Mr. Thao is not listed in the Minnesota registry of sex offenders.
The ordeal has been particularly painful for Hmong residents in the Twin Cities, many of whom fled Laos as refugees after supporting the United States in its fight against communism during the Vietnam War. The Twin Cities has one of the largest concentrations of Hmong immigrants in the United States.
Mr. Thao’s mother, a nurse, served as head of two hospitals during the conflict in Laos, according to the family, and she treated many American soldiers.
In St. Paul, Mayor Her said that some Hmong vendors have reported that business is down nearly 70 percent, with many patrons too afraid to leave their homes.
The entire city has felt the impact of the federal immigration crackdown, she added. Local schools have begun delivering food and supplies to families too afraid to leave their homes, Mr. Haberman said. Restaurants have limited their hours or closed entirely, and one school district is transitioning to remote learning for several days next week.
“This is just a complete injustice to our residents,” Ms. Her said.
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5) You Can’t Denaturalize Me
By Carlos Lozada, Opinion Columnist, Jan. 21, 2026
Armando Arorizo
The Trump administration is eager to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship, and the reasons seem to vary wildly.
Official grounds include fraudulent citizenship applications, financial wrongdoing, violent crime and ties to gangs or drug cartels. But the president has also added justifications that are more subjective and idiosyncratic. “I’d do it in a heartbeat if they were dishonest,” he said in a recent interview with The Times. Or if they “complain” too much or “cause trouble” or if they “hate our country.” The administration is even setting a quota for how many denaturalization cases it hopes to take up: 100 to 200 per month.
This escalation of what had become an uncommon practice — the United States denaturalized an average of 11 citizens per year from 1990 to 2017 — would do more than reaffirm the hypocrisy of a president and a party that long claimed to support lawful immigration. It reveals a willful misunderstanding of what it means to become an American citizen, of all that propels people to leave the place where they were born and to embrace a new one, this one, as their own. And it reiterates the administration’s zeal to redraw the limits of belonging in this country.
When you redefine who gets to be American, you are also redefining what it means to be America.
Naturalization is not merely a bureaucratic transaction. It is not just about filing paperwork or applying for a blue passport. It is the commitment to an idea, the culmination of a personal and political transformation, the fulfillment of a long-held ambition. I became an American citizen in 2014, at age 43, when I stood in a federal building in Maryland and swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies.” But I’ve slowly been becoming one all my life.
You could seize the certificate of naturalization that I received that day from the Department of Homeland Security, which attests that I have “complied in all respects with all of the applicable provisions of the naturalization laws” and am “entitled to be admitted as a citizen of the United States,” and declare it invalid. But you would not denaturalize me.
You could go back to when I filed my application, and you could search for fraud or for a fleeting error that you can pretend is fraud, a wrong date or a missing accent mark or a typo, and you could try to use that to take back my citizenship. Still, you would not denaturalize me.
You could take the form letter I received from a prior American president (“We embrace you as a new citizen of our land, and we welcome you to the American family”) that hangs above my desk at home, and you could bust the frame apart and rip the paper into pieces, and even then you would not denaturalize me.
To denaturalize me, you would have to do more than revoke my papers. You would have to revoke my life. You would have to unmake every step along the path that brought me here from Peru, first as a child, later as a young man. You’d have to identify the convictions and experiences that have bound me to the United States and pry them out of me, all of them.
That is not possible, even for a government with such powers and resources as ours.
To denaturalize me, you would have to go back to my early childhood in the 1970s, to when my family had just arrived in California, green cards in hand, and you would have to keep me from hearing the confidence and certitude with which my father spoke about the United States. He simply called it “este país”: this country.
In este país, he said, I would have opportunities. In este país, I could educate myself and earn a good living. In este país, I was free to think for myself. How many times, during my earliest years in this country, did I hear him go on and on about this country?
To denaturalize me, you’d have had to make him unsay it — or you’d have to make me forget it.
You’d have to come with me, in the 1980s, when my family returned to live in my native Lima, where my American-accented Spanish earned me the schoolyard nickname “gringo.” I soon shed the accent and polished my Spanish, but the name stuck throughout my high school years. Even in my native land, my bond with America marked me. To denaturalize me, you’d have to change that name, break that bond.
To denaturalize me, you’d have to keep me from reading, in my early teens, my father’s copies of John Jakes’s eight-volume American Bicentennial series, improbably heroic stories of American valor and sacrifice, stories that showed me that America means a daily choice between high-minded principles and self-serving impulses, between a welcome and a slap. You’d have to undo my continued reading, in the decades since, of American politics and history, a fixation that I’ve come to understand as part of my effort to claim a spot.
To denaturalize me, you’d have to keep me from returning to the United States at age 17; from educating myself in American universities, as my father had hoped; from making a home here; from seeing my children born in America’s capital. You’d have to nullify my votes in U.S. elections, undo my travels throughout the country and erase my years of writing — sometimes admiring, often critical — about the American experience. And you’d have to retract my old arguments with my father about whether este país was living up to its promise.
“American” is not just the legal status I’ve obtained; it is the life I have lived. I am a Peruvian citizen by birth, but I am an American citizen by choice. I voted with my feet. My U.S. citizenship does not just mean that I am a naturalized American; it means that America has become second nature. It is embedded in me, and it cannot be stripped away, not without doing violence to the whole.
If you cannot denaturalize me, you can instead try to de-Americanize America. Even more so than the president he so obsequiously serves, Vice President JD Vance seems intent on achieving this. On various occasions, he has downplayed the ideals that define this country, favoring instead the notion of America as a geographic entity reserved for a certain kind of people.
“America is not just an idea,” he said in a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2024. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” He spoke of his family’s cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky and of the many generations laid to rest there, generations that built this country.
“That’s not just an idea, my friends,” he said. “That’s not just a set of principles. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.”
Why would the vice president of the United States, the same man who swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” speak so dismissively of the principles that are meant to govern the nation? Certainly, people will fight for their home, but even more so, they’ll fight for the right to live freely in that home. Absent that right — that abstraction — what exactly are we defending?
Without the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, without equality before the law, without the consent of the governed, America would be a place like any other, neither distinctive nor exceptional. It would cease to be este país.
By exalting the place over the idea, by diminishing the creedal nature of America, Vance shows us who he thinks really belongs here. If you’re not from the place, if you can’t point to generation upon generation that has lived here before, you are somehow a lesser American. He hails Americans who can trace their ancestors to the Revolutionary era or the Civil War, and he warns that we cannot just “swap” in what he calls “low-wage serfs” from elsewhere.
In recent social media posts, federal agencies have underscored their adherence to this worldview. “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American.” That one’s from the Department of Labor. The same Department of Homeland Security that issued my citizenship certificate 11 years ago now posts this message: “The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear: Remigration now. Help Arrest Them. Help Deport Them.” And an Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruitment ad promises, “We’ll have our home again,” a partial echo of a song favored in white-nationalist circles.
Our home. One heritage. Arrest them. Remember who you are. All citizens may be Americans, but apparently some are more American than others.
By contrast, the Constitution of the United States does not establish hierarchies of citizenship. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside,” the 14th Amendment reads. That “all” is encompassing; it does not parse lineage or landholdings. “All” means all.
When Vance, in an almost childlike desire to please his boss, banged on the table in approval at a cabinet meeting last month after the president demeaned Somali Americans in Minnesota as “garbage” who “come from hell” and “do nothing but bitch,” the vice president made clear what kind of Americans he believes are the real thing. Real Americans don’t point out America’s tensions and contradictions, Vance has argued; they must simply express “gratitude” for what they’ve been granted — as if quiescence and deference were traditional American values.
Pick up the Declaration of Independence, however, and you’ll see that America’s founders bitched plenty. They complained of a tyrannical leader who “obstructed the administration of justice” and “excited domestic insurrections amongst us.” They assailed that monarch for “cutting off our trade with all parts of the world,” for “quartering large bodies of armed troops among us” and for “protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.”
They also criticized that leader, by the way, for “obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners.”
This administration is hardly the first that has sought to denaturalize foreign-born citizens. Throughout its history, the United States has listed various criteria for such action. A fraudulent application, the lack of “good moral character” and race have been relevant criteria. (People of Indian descent, for example, were deemed racially ineligible for naturalization in the 1923 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.) Anarchists, such as Emma Goldman, lost their citizenship, as did some members of the German American Bund during World War II. At other times, voting in foreign elections, marrying a foreigner or taking up residence abroad too soon after acquiring American citizenship have been reasons for denaturalization.
Who do members of the current administration wish to denaturalize? Essentially, foreign-born citizens they do not like. In his Times interview, the president seized on Ilhan Omar, a Somali American member of Congress from Minnesota, calling her a “disaster” and a “troublemaker” who does nothing but “complain, complain, complain.” She should “absolutely” lose her citizenship, he said.
When President Trump says he would denaturalize citizens who “hate our country,” it helps to remember how frequently he conflates love of America with love for him. In defending his pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters, he said, “These were people that actually love our country.” And he once branded Democratic lawmakers as traitors to the United States just because they did not clap for him at a State of the Union address. “Can we call that treason?” the president asked. “Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
The administration’s actions aim to curtail the breadth of Americanness, to place its perceived enemies beyond a zone of not just patriotism but also legitimacy. If you work for the wrong government agency, speak the wrong language, support the wrong party, hail from the wrong city or state or country, read the wrong history or hold the wrong political positions, then you inhabit a different America, one with fewer rights and protections, one where the consent of the governing, not of the governed, matters most. The overwhelming presence of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis — outnumbering even the city’s police officers — is but one example of these new rules. Once confined to that zone of illegitimacy, you are not a citizen but a traitor, not a protester but a domestic terrorist, not a newcomer but an eternal outsider.
Is it worth it? Is purging America of immigrants so crucial that in the process you must unmake America itself? Or is this how you intend to denaturalize me — by turning the country I joined into one I cannot recognize?
The tragedy is that immigrants know well and hold dear the same American principles that the president and vice president so readily downplay or violate. Many of us were drawn here and sought citizenship here because of those ideals. We studied them; we believe in them; we’ll cling to them in whatever language we speak. We are duty bound to uphold them; unlike native-born citizens, we took an oath to do so. Their endurance gives meaning to the sacrifices we made to get here.
You could strip all immigrants out of this country but not without doing violence to the whole.
Naturalization is not a moment; it’s a life. Even the Department of Homeland Security understands this, or it once did. When I became an American citizen, I received, along with my certificate, a sheet of paper labeled “Important Information for New Citizens.” It covered not just my rights but also my responsibilities as an American, listing them side by side, in bullet points. “Our system of government relies on an active and engaged citizenry,” it reads. “Your efforts will help ensure that America’s promise of freedom, democracy and liberty is secured for generations to come.”
The first right the sheet lists is the freedom to express myself; the first responsibility is to defend the Constitution, that old American blueprint so full of abstractions. Other responsibilities span the daily life of a citizen: Stay informed. Participate in the democratic process and in the life of my community. Respect the law and the rights of others. There’s nothing about constant expressions of gratitude or sufficient applause for a leader and certainly nothing requiring mindless subservience. With good reason: Obeisance and docility have never struck me as particularly American qualities.
The last responsibility listed on the sheet is to “defend the country if the need should arise.” That need, I believe, is now arising.
America is not the plot you own or the ancestry you claim; it is what you are and what you strive to become. Citizenship is not about where you live in America or how long you’ve lived in America. It is about how you live in America.
That is why there is something deeply unnatural about denaturalization. That’s why you cannot denaturalize me. Not so long as this country is still este país.
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6) Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Would Have Global Scope but One Man in Charge
The initiative is the latest example of the president’s dismantling the post-World War II international system and building a new one, with himself at the center.
By Anton Troianovski, Reporting from Washington, Published Jan. 21, 2026, Updated Jan. 22, 2026
The U.N. Security Council endorsed the creation of the Board of Peace in November in a resolution welcoming the U.S.-brokered peace plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza, but the board’s mission apparently would extend beyond Gaza. Credit...Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
In the proposed charter of the “Board of Peace” that the United States sent to national capitals in recent weeks, one man has the power to veto decisions, approve the agenda, invite members, dissolve the board entirely and designate his own successor.
His name is spelled out in Article 3.2: “Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural chairman.”
“If Trump, then peace,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, one of President Trump’s closest allies in Europe, wrote on Facebook on Sunday after Mr. Trump invited him to join the board. “We have, of course, accepted this honorable invitation.”
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Belarus, Pakistan and several more countries also said they were joining, ahead of the signing ceremony Thursday in Switzerland.
But many officials and experts in international affairs were stunned by the breadth of the initiative, the latest example of Mr. Trump taking apart the American-built, post-World War II international system and building a new one, with himself at the center.
“This is a direct assault on the United Nations,” said Marc Weller, a Cambridge international law professor who specializes in peace negotiations and has worked closely with the global body. “This initiative is likely to be seen as a takeover of the world order by one individual in his own image.”
The U.N. Security Council itself endorsed the creation of a Board of Peace in November in a resolution welcoming the U.S.-brokered peace plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza. According to that resolution, the board is to function as a “transitional administration” through 2027 to oversee the redevelopment of Gaza.
But in unveiling the Board of Peace in the last week, the Trump administration has cast Gaza as only a part of what the new institution would do. While its powers are not defined, its mission would overlap with the United Nations’ aim of maintaining international peace and security.
“Trump has proven himself a pretty capable and aggressive leader,” said Fred Fleitz, the chief of staff of the National Security Council for part of Mr. Trump’s first term. “This is taking advantage of it.”
The proposed charter, seen by The New York Times, says the board would seek to “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s peace envoy, who was named as a member of the group’s “executive board,” told CNBC that more than 20 countries had already agreed to join and that the Board of Peace would be “a great group of leaders coming together” in “sharing opinion to achieve peace.” He listed Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Sudan and Syria as among the places in need of “bridging relationships.”
“I wish the United Nations could do more,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday. “I wish we didn’t need a Board of Peace.”
Asked whether he wanted the board to replace the United Nations, Mr. Trump said that it “might.” He added: “I believe you got to let the U.N. continue because the potential is so great.”
The United Nations itself has sought to play down any tensions. A spokesman, Farhan Haq, told reporters that it “has coexisted alongside any number of organizations.”
But the Trump administration’s ambiguous messaging about the Board of Peace has added to the head-spinning nature of an extraordinary January in American foreign policy. The U.S. attack on Venezuela, the threats of strikes on Iran and Mr. Trump’s demands to take over Greenland have all sent the message that the United States is seeking to exert its global power in a newly unilateral way.
The Board of Peace, with its sprawling mission and with Mr. Trump as its long-term chairman, appeared to be an attempt at building an institution to codify the American dominance that the president envisions. Norway, Sweden and France have already said they do not intend to join. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said his country would say “no to creating an organization as it has been presented, which would replace the United Nations,” according to The Associated Press.
“The bond of trust has been broken” between the United States and its allies, said R. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, China and elsewhere. “The overreach by the administration on Greenland and the miscalculation they have made has really brought about a different European view and Canadian view.”
Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump withdrew from 66 international organizations that his administration deemed “wasteful, ineffective, and harmful.” He has suggested that he sees his board filling some of that vacuum — offering the world a more assertive brand of American engagement, personified by Mr. Trump.
The Board of Peace “will be established as a new international organization,” Mr. Trump wrote in his letter to Mr. Orban, which the Hungarian prime minister posted online. The organization’s charter says in its opening line that “durable peace” requires “the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed.”
Mr. Fleitz, who is now at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank close to the administration, said the decision to include Russia and China among the invited members reflected the intended “broad-based” nature of the board.
“They want to reduce the possibility that various countries will try to sabotage it,” he said.
Russia and China have veto power on the U.N. Security Council, so they would be likely to look askance at any weakening of the body. But both have also tried to curry favor with Mr. Trump.
China has said it was invited but not whether it would accept. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia also stopped short of accepting the invitation, saying his foreign ministry needed to analyze the matter. But in an example of how countries can try to use Mr. Trump’s ambitions to advance their own interests, Mr. Putin added that Russia was prepared to contribute $1 billion to the board — as long as the money comes out of the Russian assets that were frozen in the West after Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine.
The draft charter for the board stipulates the $1 billion fee for countries that seek to stay on for longer than a three-year term. A U.S. official said on Tuesday that the board “will implement the highest financial controls and oversight mechanisms” for the cash it collects, and that “funds will sit only in approved accounts at reputable banks.”
The U.S. official confirmed that Mr. Trump could play a central role in the board even after leaving the presidency. Mr. Trump can hold the chairmanship “until he resigns it,” the official said. “A future U.S. president, however, may choose to appoint or designate the United States’ representative to the board.”
Mr. Weller, the peace negotiations specialist, argued that the expected $1 billion contributions could further sap funding from the United Nations, whose agencies were told by the United States in December that they needed to “adapt, shrink or die.”
And he said that the central personal role envisioned for Mr. Trump was unlike any other agreement he had seen in his experience in international affairs. It was, he said, unlikely to represent a sustainable pathway to world peace.
“Peace in the world requires a broad, international consensus,” Mr. Weller said. “That can hardly be created through a new institution that is entirely dependent on the will of one man.”
Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner, Aaron Boxerman, Michael Crowley and Zolan Kanno-Youngs.
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7) Death of Cuban Detainee in El Paso ICE Facility Is Ruled a Homicide
An autopsy from the county medical examiner said the detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, was asphyxiated and restrained by law enforcement. Federal officials described his death as a suicide.
By Pooja Salhotra, Published Jan. 21, 2026, Updated Jan. 22, 2026
Camp East Montana, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso. Credit...Paul Ratje for The New York Times
A Cuban immigrant’s death in an El Paso detention center this month was ruled a homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the county medical examiner’s office.
The detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, became unresponsive while he was physically restrained by law enforcement on Jan. 3 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility called Camp East Montana, the report said. Emergency medical workers tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The autopsy listed the cause of death as “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” The report also described injuries Mr. Lunas Campos had sustained to his head and neck, including burst blood vessels in the front and side of the neck, as well as on his eyelids.
The determination by the medical examiner’s office does not necessarily indicate criminal culpability. It is a classification of how a person died, not a legal determination of guilt.
Mr. Lunas Campos’s death has brought renewed scrutiny to the detention center this month after The Washington Post reported the episode last week. His family has asserted that he was killed by the facility’s guards, citing a witness who said he saw guards choking Mr. Lunas Campos to death. The family is preparing a wrongful-death lawsuit, according to their lawyer, Will Horowitz.
“He was being abused and beaten and choked to death,” Jeanette Pagan Lopez, the mother of two of Mr. Lunas Campos’s children, told The New York Times last week. On Wednesday, Ms. Pagan Lopez said she had not yet seen the autopsy report.
Federal officials have offered a different account of how Mr. Lunas Campos died. In a Jan. 9 news release, they said he died on Jan. 3 after experiencing medical distress, but after the Washington Post article published, they described his death as a suicide.
In an emailed statement on Wednesday, a Department of Homeland Security official again said that Mr. Lunas Campos had tried to take his own life, saying he had “violently resisted the security staff” who tried to save him and that emergency workers had made attempts to resuscitate him.
The official did not respond to questions about the autopsy report.
Along with the autopsy, the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner released a toxicology report, which said Mr. Lunas Campos had a history of bipolar disorder and anxiety. The report identified the presence of trazodone and hydroxyzine, two prescription medications that can be used to treat depression and anxiety.
On Tuesday, Mr. Lunas Campos’s family petitioned a federal judge to stop the deportation of two individuals who they say witnessed the death or the moments leading up to it. The family said in the petition that a fellow detainee had seen guards choke Mr. Lunas Campos to death, and that another detainee had seen him struggle with the guards before he died.
Both of those detainees have since been given deportation notices. The children of Mr. Lunas Campos asked the court to stop the deportations so the witnesses could testify in the family’s wrongful-death suit.
According to federal officials, Mr. Lunas Campos was arrested last July in Rochester, N.Y., and was transferred to the El Paso facility in September. He had been convicted of at least 10 crimes, including criminal possession of a weapon, reckless driving and petit larceny, since he entered the United States in 1996, officials said.
Mr. Lunas Campos is one of three people who were in custody at Camp East Montana and have died since the facility opened in August on the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso. On Dec. 3, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, of Guatemala, died about two weeks after he was admitted to an El Paso hospital, officials said. An autopsy report in his case says he died of complications of alcohol-related liver disease.
On Jan. 14, Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, of Nicaragua, died of a “presumed suicide,” according to federal officials, who said the official cause of death was under investigation. Mr. Diaz’s autopsy was being performed at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center, not the medical examiner’s office, according to Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for homeland security.
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8) ‘High Alert, All the Time’: Minneapolis Sees ICE Around Every Corner
Federal agents have been carrying out an immigration crackdown in Minnesota for weeks. Some residents say they carry a sense of dread even on empty streets.
By Julie Bosman and Matthew Purdy, Reporting from Minneapolis, Jan. 22, 2026
A memorial for Renee Good in the neighborhood where she was killed in Minneapolis earlier this month. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Over the last several weeks, the Rev. Rachael Keefe has spotted them again and again.
In her heavily Mexican American enclave in a southeast suburb of the Twin Cities, armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in fatigues have been circling in their S.U.V.s and knocking on her neighbors’ doors.
Yet even when the agents are not there, as she is walking her dog through the quiet, snowy streets of a Minnesota winter, the feeling of dread remains.
“I’m always conscious of them,” said Ms. Keefe, the pastor of a small church in Minneapolis. “It’s like being hypervigilant, on high alert, all the time.”
Weeks into what the Department of Homeland Security is calling Operation Metro Surge, federal agents are not visible everywhere all the time, but the reality that they could appear anywhere at any time has put Minnesotans on edge.
In that sense, the ICE operation is everywhere, even when agents are not.
What is constantly visible, even among residents with legal status in this country, are signs of fear. Many public schools look nearly deserted, closed to students as teachers prepare to reopen and offer remote learning. Outside day cares, volunteers wear watchful expressions and orange whistles around their necks, ready to sound the alarm when ICE agents are sighted.
In neighborhoods with heavy immigrant populations, business at grocery stores and restaurants has plummeted. Some small businesses now keep their doors locked even when they are open, admitting patrons one by one. In church basements, volunteers sort canned goods for neighbors too frightened to leave the house. Residents in apartment buildings have taken to pulling their blinds closed all day and night, hoping to escape notice from ICE agents.
Signs on front doors of houses declare that ICE is not welcome inside.
Sandra Maurer, a therapist in St. Paul, has a view of the street from her home office, where the thought of immigration agents is a regular distraction.
“I can’t get through a few minutes without watching a car go by and thinking, ‘Is that ICE?’” she said.
Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official, has said that the work of immigration agents was needed to root out crime. “Our operations are lawful,” he said this week. “They’re targeted, and they’re focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community.”
But many people in the Minneapolis area described an operation that has functioned with seeming randomness and expanded with little clear definition, sweeping up undocumented immigrants, but also colliding with many others in ICE’s path including U.S. citizens, bystanders, people with brown skin or accents that suggest they were born outside the United States.
On Tuesday night, as a deep freeze settled over the Twin Cities, Bruno Suarez Bango dropped off cans of soup at a food collection site in South Minneapolis, figuring it was the least he could do. “It’s close to my heart, this whole thing,” he said.
Mr. Suarez Bango, a graphic designer, was born in the United States in 1993, but his family moved to Ecuador when he was 3 months old. He moved to Chicago at age 18 to study art and, after living in several countries, moved to his wife’s home state, Minnesota.
Now, Mr. Suarez Bango sees videos of ICE agents questioning American citizens speaking with foreign accents and thinks of stories his Jewish grandfather told him, of fleeing Tunisia for France during World War II only to fall under the scrutiny of the Gestapo. He takes no chances, carrying his passport everywhere he goes.
“I’ve been around a lot,” he said of his global travels, “and I haven’t been scared. But I’m scared now, which is scary.”
Erin Maye Quade, a Democratic state senator who lives in the suburb of Apple Valley, said that she constantly sees clues that ICE agents have been nearby. There are the empty cars, for instance, parked askew along the edges of highways and side streets in the Twin Cities, their engines sometimes still running. So many such drivers have been arrested by immigration enforcement that local tow truck companies began removing the cars at a steep discount for families.
Ms. Maye Quade is bombarded by texts and updates on her phone from neighbors, warning that ICE agents were spotted.
“We’ve adjusted so much of our daily life to account for the ‘any moment, anywhere, any time-ness of it all,’” Ms. Maye Quade said.
Standing outside Stonebridge World School in South Minneapolis this week, Omer Goodovich, 42, was on volunteer watch duty, scanning the area for ICE agents.
He has yet to see ICE agents in person. But the fear of them appearing is real.
“I’ve got my head on a swivel,” he said. “I’m very anxious, in case anything does happen.”
A woman working at a fabric store in a South Minneapolis neighborhood, who declined to give her name out of fear for her safety, recounted some of the traumatic events of the past few weeks: the killing of Renee Good, the 37-year-old woman shot by an ICE agent in her car; and the disappearance of a friend who was detained and deported and hasn’t been heard from since.
Even with legal status in the United States, the woman said she worried that agents might be nearby and could confront her on her way home.
Some Minnesotans have offered support for ICE, saying that the tense situation has stemmed from so-called sanctuary city policies, which limit local law enforcement agencies’ cooperation with immigration enforcement.
“As they thumb their nose at law enforcement, thumb their nose at federal officials, that’s what’s causing this escalation,” said Kendall Qualls, a Republican candidate for governor. “It never would have gotten to that point under my administration.”
Yet when ICE agents have appeared in a neighborhood, they have frequently operated with force, interviews and videos show.
In the last several weeks, Ms. Maurer, the therapist in St. Paul, has been driving around, running errands, even grocery shopping, when ICE agents materialize.
“All of a sudden there’s a huge assault rifle in the shopping cart area,” she said. “They’re pretty unpredictable, and they’re very violent.”
Last week, Judge Kate M. Menendez of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota placed restrictions on the federal agents in an 83-page opinion criticizing their tactics.
The opinion, based on sworn statements and videos, describes a pattern in which ICE agents treat citizens harshly as they gather both to observe and to loudly protest ICE. One person was “body-slammed” to the ground. Another had “a chemical irritant” sprayed into his eyes. When a pregnant woman was tackled to the ground and another protester tried to intervene, an agent yelled, “Let’s get him” and put him on the ground.
But on Wednesday, an appellate court blocked those restrictions.
In recent weeks, widespread anger in the Twin Cities over the Trump administration’s crackdown has forged unlikely alliances.
During the civil unrest that tore through Minneapolis in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, the local and state governments and the protesters were at odds. That has shifted, with local and state officials and residents in Minneapolis generally united in their opposition to ICE tactics.
“Can we find a way to make sure that we can do these things without scaring the hell out of our community members and freaking everyone out?” Chief Axel Henry of the St. Paul Police Department asked.
The immigration crackdown has landed especially hard on a stretch of Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, known as Eat Street for its zesty mix of international foods. This week, a halal store was shuttered, and the man taking orders at the neighboring Thai restaurant said he hadn’t seen anyone there in days.
Life is altered at La Casa Market across the street, where a sign boasts, “Where You Find the Taste of Home.” Now, many regular customers are wary of leaving their homes.
The market, which regularly opened at 6 a.m., now opens at 10 a.m. since the early morning clientele has dwindled. Plus, the worker who handled the early shift left for New York. Now, more white people are shopping at La Casa, often asking what would be appropriate to buy for immigrant neighbors, an employee said.
At closing time each evening, white residents protesting ICE gather in front of the store to monitor any action by federal agents against the employees as they leave for the day.
Business has plunged at a nearby restaurant known for its Ecuadorean specialties. The owners have turned one of the booths into a makeshift supply closet of diapers and other necessities for families fearful of going shopping.
Lisette Cando, 31, who was born in New York and is a member of the South American family that owns the restaurant, said she realized that she had reacted to “unconscious fear” by speaking Spanish less, particularly in public.
Ms. Cando said she finds herself in tricky conversations with her 7-year-old son, who has classmates whose parents have been detained or deported.
She tries to reassure her son, and herself. “I told him we’re safe,” Ms. Cando said.
Maia Coleman and Lauren McCarthy contributed reporting from Minneapolis.
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9) Consumer Prices Rose 2.8 Percent Through November, a Sign of Sticky Inflation
The Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge for inflation in October and November was released belatedly after the government shutdown.
By Talmon Joseph Smith, Jan. 22, 2026
Goods inflation, which had been notably cooling since 2022, swung back up after the Trump administration implemented tariffs last spring. Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Consumer prices increased moderately in October and November, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge.
Data released on Thursday from the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, as the gauge is called, showed a 0.2 percent monthly increase in prices in October and a 0.2 percent increase in November. Compared with the same time the previous year, prices were up 2.7 percent in October and up 2.8 percent in November.
Altogether, the numbers tell a story in which inflation — while far down from its highs after the pandemic — continues to nag households. Goods inflation, for instance, which had been notably cooling since 2022, swung back up after the Trump administration implemented tariffs last spring.
The reading is several months old because of the government shutdown last fall, which prevented key data collection functions. But the numbers will provide the Federal Reserve with more information to consider at its policy meeting next week. Traders expect that Fed officials will decide to not cut interest rate cuts again, for now, as economic growth has surprised to the upside, unemployment remains tame, and inflation has plateaued.
The data also showed that consumer spending, the beating heart of the U.S. economy, is still holding up, even as concerns about affordability for lower-income households persist.
“Affluent” households “continue to power the economy forward,” said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG. “The concentration of gains in the hands of a few households masked the underlying pain many are expressing in consumer attitude surveys.”
Personal income increased $80 billion overall in November 2025, registering a steady 0.3 percent monthly rate of growth. But inflation-adjusted “real” disposable personal income was down by a tenth of a percentage point in October, before rebounding by a tenth of a percentage point in November — a clear indication that the bite of price pressures is still hitting households.Inflation has been above the Fed’s 2 percent target since 2021. Even though the White House is hoping to provide households with lower mortgage rates, those rates are influenced by inflationary conditions as much as Fed policy. And as long as inflation remains nearer to 3 percent than 2 percent, some Fed officials may be hesitant to lower interest rates. And the parts of the bond market that affect mortgage rates may not budge.
The president is expected in the coming weeks to name a nominee to replace the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell. Yet most market analysts still expect the Fed’s policy committee to operate rate policy according to prevailing economic conditions, not the president’s whims.
Labor market data shows that while unemployment is historically low, at 4.4 percent as of December, net hiring levels have substantially deteriorated, affecting new graduates and the long-term unemployed alike. Still, new jobless claims, which are measured weekly state by state, have been remarkably low and steady, an indicator that layoffs remain muted.
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10) Malfunction Forces Japan to Take Restarted Nuclear Plant Offline
The setback occurred hours after one of the world’s largest nuclear complexes restarted, ending more than a decade of dormancy following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi meltdown.
By River Akira Davis and Kiuko Notoya, Reporting from Tokyo, Jan. 22, 2026
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant seen from a residential neighborhood in Niigata Prefecture this month. Credit...Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times
Less than six hours after Japan restarted one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants, a technical malfunction forced the facility back offline, dealing a setback to the government’s efforts to restore nuclear energy as a cornerstone of the nation’s energy mix.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, said an alarm was triggered just after midnight Thursday. The utility had restarted Unit 6 of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in northern Niigata Prefecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, ending years of dormancy following the 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was caused by a tsunami and earthquake.
The alarm sounded on Thursday while technicians were adjusting Unit 6’s control rods, the cylinders used to regulate or stop the power output of a nuclear reactor. Because the cause of the alarm could not be immediately identified, TEPCO opted to halt the reactor to conduct inspections.
TEPCO said that safety was its “top priority” and that it would announce the results of its investigation as soon as possible. In an earlier statement, the utility said that the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was in stable condition and that there was no radioactive impact to the outside.
Fifteen years after the Fukushima disaster displaced more than 160,000 residents, Japan is reviving its nuclear sector to meet a growing demand for clean, stable and lower-cost electricity. The restart of the Niigata facility — which at full capacity is one of the world’s largest nuclear complexes — was seen as a milestone in the country’s push to bring more of its 33 operable reactors back online.
Before the 2011 disaster, Japan maintained one of the world’s most extensive nuclear programs. In the years since, only 15 reactors, including the unit at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, have resumed operation, largely because of a rigorous approval process from local and prefectural governments.
The restart was also a high-stakes test for TEPCO, the utility company that operated the doomed Fukushima plant in 2011, and has since struggled to regain public trust. A survey conducted by Niigata Prefecture in October found that 60 percent of residents believed conditions for a restart had not been met, while 70 percent expressed concerns regarding TEPCO’s management of the site.
The final green light for Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s restart followed a December vote by Niigata’s prefectural assembly to support the move, a resolution subsequently endorsed by the prefecture’s governor.
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11) Filipino Journalist Gets Prison in Case Seen as Attack on Free Press
Frenchie Mae Cumpio and her former roommate were convicted of financing terrorism and sentenced to up to 18 years in prison.
By Jason Gutierrez, Reporting from Manila, Jan. 22, 2026
Frenchie Mae Cumpio, right, and her former roommate Marielle Domequil arriving at Tacloban Regional Trial Court on Leyte island, in the Philippines, on Thursday. Jam Sta Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A Philippine court on Thursday convicted a journalist on charges of financing terrorism and sentenced her to more than a decade in prison, in a ruling that rights and press groups said was a blatant attack on press freedom.
The Regional Trial Court in Tacloban City gave the journalist, Frenchie Mae Cumpio, and her former roommate Marielle Dumaquil a jail sentence of 12 to 18 years, the maximum allowed. But the women, who have been in prison since they were arrested in 2020, were acquitted of charges of possessing firearms and explosives.
Before her arrest, Ms. Cumpio, who turns 27 this month, worked as a radio reporter and wrote articles for Eastern Vista, an online publication focused on the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. The authorities said her coverage of the community and local politics was biased in favor of communist insurgents, who have long had a presence in the region. She was convicted of being a conduit for funds for the rebels.
To many, Ms. Cumpio’s case was a glaring example of “red-tagging,” a practice by some Filipino authorities of linking their critics to the communist insurgency. She was arrested when Rodrigo Duterte was in power, a president who repeatedly attacked his critics in the media and moved to silence them. His successor and the current president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., had vowed to support a free press in the Philippines.
“This absurd verdict shows that the various pledges made by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to uphold press freedom are nothing but empty talk,” said Beh Li Yih, the Asia-Pacific director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Although the journalist was cleared on the charge of illegal possession of firearms, the ruling underscores the lengths that Philippine authorities are willing to go to silence critical reporting.”
“The Philippines must free Frenchie Mae Cumpio without conditions and stop criminalizing journalists,” she continued.
Reporters Without Borders, an organization that advocates press freedom, said it had carried out its own investigation into the allegations against the women and concluded that it was a fabricated case.
“We are appalled by this verdict,” said Aleksandra Bielakowska, the advocacy manager for the group. She added that the conviction was a “devastating failure on the part of the Philippine justice system and the authorities’ blatant disregard for press freedom.”
A spokesman for the government’s National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict said the ruling was “a clear affirmation” that the justice system worked because the court threw out the weapons possession charge against Ms. Cumpio.
“This alone demolishes the false narrative that the courts are mere rubber stamps for the state or instruments of political persecution,” Joel Sy Egco, the spokesman, said in a statement. “It shows judicial independence.”
Ms. Cumpio and Ms. Dumaquil are expected to appeal the ruling.
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12) It’s ‘Psychological Torture’: The Woman Who Was Granted Parole but Not Released
By Rachel Louise Snyder, Ms. Snyder is a contributing Opinion writer, Jan. 22, 2026
Jan Robert Dünnweller
Shajia Ayobi is a 59-year-old grandmother imprisoned for her role in the murder of her abusive husband. Last January, she went before California’s parole board and was found suitable for release. During her 14 years in prison, she has become a leader to her peers: running substance abuse classes, attending chapel and earning educational and good behavior credits. She was even assigned to live in the honor dorm — a unit of the Central California Women’s Facility reserved for model inmates. And yet a year later, Ms. Ayobi, along with nearly 200 other incarcerated people in the state, remains stuck in prison. And she may be there for months to come.
I first learned about Ms. Ayobi when I wrote about how our country’s self-defense laws fail to protect women trapped in abusive relationships. Ms. Ayobi hired an acquaintance to kill her husband after years of extreme abuse. He had destroyed a computer with an ax and threatened the couple’s son. He had stalked her and grown increasingly erratic and dangerous during the years of their marriage.
After Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office reviewed her case, she was assigned a parole officer in San Francisco and found housing through a nonprofit organization. The end of her imprisonment seemed near. She looked forward to spending time with her children, now all grown, and her grandchildren. But just when she was supposed to be freed, she was told that a lawsuit challenging a state program stood in her way.
No one could tell Ms. Ayobi how long she’d have to wait, or the time frame for the lawsuit to be resolved by the California Supreme Court. Another year or two was the likely best-case scenario.
The worst-case scenario, though, was far worse. If a lower court ruling is upheld, people who have been granted parole like Ms. Ayobi would be forced to essentially surrender their good-behavior credits and serve longer sentences. “People will lose years,” said Heidi Rummel, a University of Southern California law professor who directs the Post-Conviction Justice Project.
Ms. Ayobi found herself struggling to process the news. How could a person serve her time, pay her debt to society, have all relevant parties agree to grant her freedom and then be locked up indefinitely? “I was super sad, angry, disappointed and trying to figure out, how do I tell my kids now?” she told me by phone, her voice breaking.
The problem affects nearly 200 people across California prisons — all of whom have been approved for parole. And the number grows each month. The lawsuit stems from a California ballot initiative approved in 2016 called the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016, or Proposition 57, which was aimed at reducing the state’s enormous prison population. In 2011, the overcrowding in California’s prisons was so bad that it was determined to be cruel and unusual punishment, and the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to release or relocate upward of 30,000 incarcerated people.
Proposition 57 was an answer to the Supreme Court’s directive. It outlined three reforms: First, it required judges rather than prosecutors to decide when juveniles could be tried as adults; second, it set up a new parole process for nonviolent offenders; third, it gave the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation the authority to create a system in which incarcerated people could earn credits in the form of time off their sentences for their efforts at rehabilitation.
Ms. Rummel told me that one of the main goals of Proposition 57 was to incentivize rehabilitation. The ballot initiative purposely included broad language to give the corrections department discretion to determine standards of eligibility and the kinds of activities, such as vocational training, education classes and domestic violence courses, that would earn a person credits.
The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victim’s rights nonprofit, brought the lawsuit against the corrections department, claiming Proposition 57 was never intended to release violent offenders. Referring to the department, the foundation’s legal director, Kent Scheidegger, said in a press release: “The C.D.C.R. has been releasing violent criminals, including murderers, years earlier than the law allows.”
The specific issue in the lawsuit is whether or not the department has the authority to award credits that could reduce the sentences of people who have “indeterminate” sentences, such as 25 years to life. These sentences are nearly always for violent crimes.
California’s Board of Parole Hearings publishes an annual report that includes recidivism rates for released offenders. The most recent report says that from 2011 to 2020, fewer than 1 percent of those released after serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole were convicted of new felony offenses against other people within three years of their release. When all misdemeanors and felonies were included, the rate was still just 2.5 percent.
In America, incarceration is based on four pillars: deterrence, retribution, incapacitation and rehabilitation. We aim to deter future crimes, punish past ones, take dangerous people off the streets and rehabilitate those who can be reformed. It is this last pillar that is arguably most vexing. What counts as reformed? How can any of us know the intent inside a person’s heart? Some people function well under the strict discipline of prison but fall apart once they’re released and must manage their own lives.
Under the Newsom administration, California has gone further with rehabilitation than most states by adopting what it’s called the California Model. Based in part on Norway’s model of incarceration, it emphasizes rehabilitation, trauma-informed staffing and mutual respect between staff members and inmates. The hope is to increase public safety, reduce recidivism and create a model of incarceration that parallels normal life outside as much as possible.
The California Model has its opponents, to be sure. But what is happening to Ms. Ayobi and others amounts to what Danica Rodarmel, a criminal justice reform lobbyist, calls “psychological torture.”
“It’s one thing to change a policy going forward,” Ms. Rodarmel told me, “but it’s another thing to take things away that were already given.”
For Ms. Ayobi, the stress is palpable. Even a minor infraction can get her parole revoked. News travels fast around prisons, and several people told me how those who are trapped by the lawsuit walk around with a terrifying sense of vulnerability. Stepping out of bounds, for example, can elicit a write-up. “People are denied parole routinely for very normal human contact,” Ms. Rodarmel said. They are now sitting in prison “with the knowledge that if something goes wrong during that time, they could lose their grant.”
Ms. Ayobi told me about a person in her unit whom she suspected was making hooch. If this turned out to be true and was discovered, the entire unit could be written up, which would be enough to revoke her parole. So she requested and has been approved for a single cell.
People who perpetrate violent crime deserve some punishment. But punishment alone cannot drive the conversation because the story of crime does not end at incarceration. At some point, nearly every person we incarcerate will be released. Life in prison without parole is generally reserved for the worst of crimes. So it seems particularly brutal to say to someone like Ms. Ayobi that she’s done everything she was meant to do, stayed out of trouble and proved to the best of her ability that she reformed and could contribute meaningfully to society, but she must nevertheless sit in purgatory for her foreseeable future.
“A lot of them,” Ms. Rummel told me, “are trying to balance the joy and the optimism of knowing they will be released one day, against probably the darkness of thinking they might never be released.”
One might even call it cruel and unusual.
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13) We Asked 300 People About Health Care Costs. The Numbers Are Shocking.
By Tracie McMillan, Ms. McMillan is a journalist covering health care, Jan. 22, 2026
When Congress allowed the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire at the end of December, my monthly health insurance bill went up by about $200 a month. That’s a good chunk of the $25,000 I expect to earn, after business expenses, in 2026.
I am not alone in paying more for health care. More than 300 Times Opinion readers responded to a January invitation to share their experience of rising health care costs. They included a cancer patient who shifted care mid-recovery to a new insurance plan that doesn’t cover all her doctors. A mother who began skipping birthday parties to avoid the cost of a gift. A small-business owner who closed his doors. Many readers shared accounts of relying on retirement funds to pay for insurance. More than one Republican voter said they now regretted voting for that party. I am sharing a selection of these stories below, which have been edited for length and clarity.
Recently, 17 Republicans joined with House Democrats to vote to reinstate the subsidies. The issue now rests with the Senate, though President Trump says he might veto any legislation to extend them. Senators should keep in mind these stories, which show just how untenable health care costs have become, fueling distrust, fear and anger across incomes and political persuasions. Lawmakers should restore the subsidies, which will provide much-needed relief to some 20 million Americans. It is the least they can do.
Lance Loewenstein, 57, Parkville, Mo.
Job: Attorney, private practice
Household income: $144,000
2026 monthly bill: $3,698.67 for 2 people, up from $1,785.72 in 2025
2026 premiums + maximum out-of-pocket cost: $61,984.04
I am a self-employed attorney, and my wife runs a small nonprofit. Before the Affordable Care Act, my wife had considerable pre-existing conditions that made us uninsurable without an employer plan. The Affordable Care Act was a lifeline.
Between the increase in health care costs and my wife’s cancer diagnosis, I’ve had to raise my hourly rates by almost 10 percent, and my wife has cashed in her retirement account. Add on to that an 80 percent increase in property taxes for our building in Jackson County, Mo., and we are barely able to cover the increased cost of living.
These geniuses in Washington don’t get the number of self-employed small-business owners (mostly Republicans, like me) who are using these plans. I’ve passed on the extra cost to my clients and I’ve told them why. I have been a donating, volunteering Republican for 30 years, usually voting a straight ticket. That ended last year, when I voted for exactly one Republican statewide. Who does this to people, increasing their costs 100 percent without warning, glide path or alternative?
MaryBeth Bognar, 36, Westerville, Ohio
Job: Nonprofit consultant
Household income: $111,000
2026 monthly bill: $1603.09 for 3 people, up from $775.09 in 2025
2026 premiums + maximum out-of-pocket cost: $37,537.08
We had a baby and we bought a house in 2024. We’ve always been responsible with money, and these were life decisions we made based on a sense of our income and bills. Spending nearly $1,000 more a month, that’s not something we factored in.
My son was born with a chronic health problem and needed surgery. When we needed the children’s hospital, the only one in our area, we learned that it was not in network. At first, I was frustrated with myself, like, “Oh my gosh, why didn’t I check that?” Then everyone I talked to was like, “Wait, that’s a thing?”
I think we were up to like $40,000 in bills. After many months and many phone calls by me following up with many people, they did cover the surgeries at least. So I think now we are at around like $15,000 that’s all just pending.
I’ve definitely lost sleep and just felt anger that I don’t want to be feeling because we tried so hard to do the right thing. That’s the thing that’s so frustrating. We really tried to do the research, but it really just feels like it doesn’t matter. You’ll lose and lose.
Caroline Hanssen, 57, San Anselmo, Calif.
Job: Writing specialist
Household income: $75,000
2026 monthly bill: $0 after dropping insurance, down from $406.47 in 2025. It would have been $1,122.99 for 1 person if Ms. Hanssen kept her plan.
2026 premiums + maximum out-of-pocket cost: Unlimited
I’m sort of proof of the theory that healthy people are going to drop insurance. I’m hoping I can just skate through until this gets figured out. Kind of on a wing and a prayer.
The subsidies brought my payment down last year to about $400, which was manageable. This year, I lost my subsidies entirely. My premiums jumped to more than $1,100. California offered me a dollar a month in subsidy. Thanks anyway!
When prices are so inflated that it costs $1,100 a month for a healthy person to have bronze-basic coverage, that’s not my fault. But it prices me out of health insurance. When you make the premium that astronomical and out of reach, then you’re not playing along with me, right? You have all the cards, insurance company, and I am a financial victim of your basically predatory scheme.
The total of my premiums and out-of-pocket max would have been $20,000. What’s going to happen to me that’s going to cost that much? I don’t know. If I go two or three years without insurance, I can save that money, and I can be prepared. But if some sort of chronic illness crops up, well, then I’m concerned.
William Thompson, 52, Charlottesville, Va.
Job: Consultant
Household income: $270,000
2026 monthly bill: $2,932.39 for 6 people, up from $2,275.43 in 2025
2026 premiums + maximum out-of-pocket cost: $50,188.68
We’re going to pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for medical costs. Do I want to pay that much for insurance? No. But do I want to pay $100,000 in one month because I had a knee surgery? No. So this is the deal. We’re investing in insurance to keep some catastrophic thing from happening. We’re privileged to be able to make that choice. But all the while I have no idea how to save for retirement. I have no idea how to move forward.
Even though I didn’t qualify for a subsidy last year, I still saw my premiums spike by more than $650 a month this year. That’s because insurers have been raising rates to make up for the fact that so many healthy people are dropping coverage in response to losing their subsidies.
Even with insurance, we had to pay tens of thousands in out-of-network costs when we were dealing with a serious health crisis. I work as a chef on the weekends. I take outside catering gigs, I’ll do speaking, anything I can. My wife and I are both working all the time. We’re choosing slow debt over catastrophic debt. I don’t think that I’m, like, some sort of victim here. It’s just astonishing to me that as hard as it is for us, it is so much harder for other people.
Lynn Weidner, 43, Allentown, Pa.
Job: Home caregiver
Household income: $51,000
2026 monthly bill: $680.36 for 1 person, up from $401.52 in 2025
2026 premiums + maximum out-of-pocket cost: $16,714.32
I work as a full-time caregiver for my partner, who is on Medicaid. I make $14.11 an hour and I work 79 hours a week. There are no benefits included. I make too much money to get any medical assistance, but don’t make quite enough to get what I need. I have medical debt all the time. I just roll over whatever new bill that I incurred onto my payment plan. I never get to zero. There’s like $2,800 right now.
I have pre-existing conditions, so when I tried to purchase private insurance before the Affordable Care Act, the high-risk pool costs were too high for my income. I just didn’t have insurance. I didn’t go to the doctor. It was pretty awful, honestly. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had iron-deficient anemia, so I was really run down. I attributed it to depression and my working literally from sunup to sundown. I didn’t know I was sick until I was able to get on the Affordable Care Act and get blood work done.
I researched moving out of the country, but home care isn’t one of those skills that other countries are looking for. I was like, well, I guess I’ll just have to try to make our broken system better. Now I work with my union to push for better health care policies.
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14) ICE Detains Four Children From Minnesota School District, Including 5-Year-Old
By Andrew Jeong/The Washington Post, January 22, 2026
Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos is taken into custody by federal immigration officers as he returns home from preschool on Thursday in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. (photo: Columbia Heights Public Schools)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota have detained at least four children from the same school district this month, including a 5-year-old boy, school officials in a Minneapolis suburb said Wednesday.
The events have inflamed tensions between residents and ICE officers, sparked by the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renée Good by an ICE officer this month. The Trump administration has sought to justify the presence of ICE agents by saying that the officers are detaining immigrants convicted of violent crimes.
“Why detain a 5-year-old?” Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public Schools district, located just north of Minneapolis, said at a news conference. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, whom the Department of Homeland Security identified as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias in an emailed statement, were detained in their driveway Tuesday afternoon, just as they were returning from the child’s preschool, according to a news release from Columbia Heights Public Schools.
The father fled on foot when ICE officers approached him, DHS said. “For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias,” it added.
After detaining the father, ICE officers then asked Liam to knock on the door to see if any other people were inside the home, “using a 5-year-old as bait,” according to the school district.
Another adult living in the home who was outside at the time, “begged the agents” to leave the child with them, the school district said. ICE agents refused.
Liam’s middle-school-aged brother returned home 20 minutes later to find that his younger brother and father had been taken away.
Liam and his father are now in San Antonio in the custody of Homeland Security authorities, the family’s lawyer, Marc Prokosch, said in an email. They are not U.S. citizens but “have been following the legal process perfectly, from presenting themselves at the border to applying for asylum and waiting for the process to go through,” he said.
DHS said it was not targeting Liam and that ICE’s policy is to ask parents if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person designated by a parent.
It was not immediately clear why ICE officers had not left Liam in the care of the adult whom school officials say had begged the officers to leave Liam there.
Ella Sullivan, Liam’s teacher in the district’s prekindergarten program, said at the news conference that Liam is “a bright young student.”
“He’s very friendly. He comes into class every day, and he just brightens the room,” she said. “His friends haven’t asked about him yet, but I know that they’ll catch on.”
Three more students at Columbia Heights have been detained this month by ICE officers, according to school officials.
A 17-year-old high school student on their way to school was removed from their car earlier Tuesday and taken by armed and masked agents, believed to be ICE agents, according to the news release. “No parents were present,” it said.
Last week, “ICE agents pushed their way into an apartment and detained a 17-year-old Columbia Heights High School student and her mother,” the school district said.
A week before that episode, a 10-year-old fourth-grader was detained by ICE agents with her mother. “During the arrest, the child called her father to tell him the ICE agents were bringing her to school,” the district said. “The father immediately came to the school to find that both his daughter and wife had been taken.” The girl and her mother are in a detention center in Texas, according to the school officials.
Mary Granlund, the chair of the Columbia Heights Public Schools board of education, expressed exasperation at a meeting this week.
“I have spent the last few weeks trying to make sure that our students and staff and families and everybody in our community are safe,” she said.
“I saw the power of community,” she continued. “But at the end of the day, we have whistles and they have guns.”
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15) Israel Orders Gaza Families to Move in First Forced Evacuation Since Ceasefire
By Nidal al-Mughrabi/Reuters, January 22, 2026
A child looks out from a tent as displaced Palestinians shelter in a tent camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, January 19, 2026. (photo: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters)
Israeli forces ordered dozens of Palestinian families in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes in the first forced evacuation since October's ceasefire, as residents and Hamas said on Tuesday the military was expanding the area it controls.
Residents of Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis, said the leaflets were dropped on Monday on families living in tent encampments in the Al-Reqeb neighbourhood.
"Urgent message. The area is under IDF control. You must evacuate immediately," said the leaflets, written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, which the army dropped over the Al‑Reqeb neighbourhood in the town of Bani Suhaila.
Israel's military denied having plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from the area. It confirmed the leaflet drops but said they were aimed at warning Palestinians not to cross the armistice line with Hamas.
In the two-year war before the U.S. brokered ceasefire was signed in October, Israel dropped leaflets over areas that were subsequently raided or bombarded, forcing some families to move several times.
Residents and a source from the Hamas militant group said this was the first time they had been dropped since then.
SIDES FAR APART ON NEXT PHASES
The ceasefire has not progressed beyond its first phase, under which major fighting has stopped, Israel withdrew from less than half of Gaza, and Hamas released hostages in return for Palestinian detainees and prisoners.
Virtually the entire population of more than 2 million people are confined to around a third of Gaza's territory, mostly in makeshift tents and damaged buildings, where life has resumed under control of an administration led by Hamas.
Israel and Hamas have accused each other of major breaches of the ceasefire and remain far apart on the more difficult steps planned for the next phase.
Mahmoud, a resident from the Bani Suhaila area, who asked not to give his family name, said the evacuation orders impacted at least 70 families, living in tents and homes, some of which were partially damaged, in the area.
"We have fled the area and relocated westward. It is maybe the fourth or fifth time the occupation expanded the yellow line since last month," he told Reuters by phone from Khan Younis, referring to the line behind which Israel has withdrawn.
"Each time they move it around 120 to 150 metres (yards) inside the Palestinian-controlled territory, swallowing more land," the father-of-three said.
HAMAS CITES STATE OF HUMANITARIAN DISRUPTION
Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said the Israeli military had expanded the area under its control in eastern Khan Younis five times since the ceasefire, forcing the displacement of at least 9,000 people.
“On Monday, 19 January 2026, the Israeli occupation forces dropped warning leaflets demanding the forced evacuation of the Bani Suhaila area in eastern Khan Younis Governorate, in a measure that falls within a policy of intimidation and pressure on civilians,” Thawabta told Reuters.
He said the new evacuation orders affected approximately 3,000 people.
“The move created a state of humanitarian disruption, increased pressure on the already limited shelter areas, and further deepened the internal displacement crisis in the governorate,” Thawabta added.
Israel's military has previously said it has opened fire after identifying what it called "terrorists" crossing the yellow line and approaching its troops, posing an immediate threat to them.
It has continued to conduct air strikes and targeted operations across Gaza. The Israeli military has said it views "with utmost severity" any attempts by militant groups in Gaza to attack Israel.
Under future phases of the ceasefire that have yet to be hammered out, U.S. President Donald Trump's plan envisages Hamas disarming, Israel pulling out further, and an internationally backed administration rebuilding Gaza.
More than 460 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers have been reported killed since the ceasefire took effect.
Israel launched its operations in Gaza in the wake of an attack by Hamas-led fighters in October 2023 which killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's assault has killed 71,000 people, the enclave's health authorities say.
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