The Dictatorship
For many Americans, Trump’s mass deportation efforts are starting to hit close to home
This is an adapted excerpt from the May 29 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
On Thursday night, the United Federation of Teachers joined state and local officials at the Tweed Courthouse in lower Manhattan to protest for the release of Dylan Lopez Contreras, a Bronx high schooler. Contreras is an asylum-seeking migrant from Venezuela. He goes to a school called Ellis Prep in the Bronx and works as a delivery driver to help support his family.
Last week, he became the first known New York City public school student to be arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since Donald Trump’s second term began. All week, we have seen protest after protest for his release. The people of New York are clearly outraged, and they’re not the only ones.
“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” one Kennett resident told The New York Times. “But no one voted to deport moms.”
Kennett, Missouri, may be about as different from New York City as a place can be. While we don’t have election results for the city itself, it is the largest city in Dunklin County, which voted for Trump last year by a margin of more than 4 to 1. You would think that if anywhere in the country would support Trump’s immigration policies, it would be a place like Kennett.
But when Carol Hui, a long-time resident of Kennett and mother of three who works as a waitress at the local diner and is an active member of the local church, got arrested by ICE earlier this month, the residents were shocked.
“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” one resident told The New York Times. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves … This is Carol.”
The diner that Hui worked at, John’s Waffle and Pancake House, is normally closed Tuesdays. But last Tuesday it stayed open. They called it “Carol Day.”
The staff and their families wore shirts that read “Bring Carol Home.” All of the proceeds from every meal went to a fundraiser for her. They filled every seat and raised nearly $8,000 that way. But more people wanted to help than the diner had seats, so they put out a donation box for people who couldn’t get in, and they raised nearly another $12,000 that way. On every table, in between the jelly packets and the ketchup, was a petition to bring Hui home — hundreds of locals have signed it.
The Trump administration is reportedly aiming to deport a million people this year. Big numbers like that are abstract and hard to wrap your head around. But when someone from your own city, your own town, becomes one of those 1 million people, it becomes much more real.
worship ambrocio is a pastor at a local church in a town just south of Tampa, Florida. Just a few weeks ago, Ambrocio was arrested by ICE and is now slated for deportation. Speaking to NPR, one of Ambrocio’s neighbors said he voted for Trump, but when he heard about what happened to the pastor, he was beside himself. The neighbor said he was hoping Trump would target people “without papers” or “with criminal records.” But he never expected someone like Ambrocio to be taken away.
“You’re gonna take, you know, a community leader, a pastor, a hardworking man,” the neighbor said. “What, did you need a number that day?”
On Wednesday, during an appearance on Fox News, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller answered that question. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day,” Miller said. “And President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.”
To put that quota system in perspective, in the first 100 days of Trump’s new term, ICE averaged 665 arrests a day. That means this quota system is pushing ICE agents to arrest 4.5 times as many people per day than their already unbelievable pace.
On Wednesday, Axios reported that when Miller announced this quota internally, people at the Department of Homeland Security left the meeting “feeling their jobs could be in jeopardy if the new targets aren’t reached.”
Beyond how much these arrests have upset their communities, another thread links the arrests of Contreras, Hui and Ambrocio: Contreras was arrested at a courthouse after he showed up for a routine immigration hearing. Ambrocio, who has done a check-in with immigration agents once a year for the past 10 years without incident, was arrested at this year’s visit. Hui got a sudden call late last month asking her to drive three hours to ICE offices in St. Louis. It felt suspicious, but as she put it to the Times, “I didn’t want to run … I just wanted to do the right thing.” She was arrested and put in jail while she awaits deportation.
But to get the kind of deportation numbers Trump is aiming for, ICE appears to be arresting anyone it can.
These stories are, unfortunately, the new normal. All across the country, immigrants are showing up to routine court hearings and check-ins, doing their best to follow the law to become citizens legally, only to be arrested, jailed and slated for deportation.
Trump claims his immigration agents are only going after the worst of the worst, hardened criminals. But to get the kind of deportation numbers Trump is aiming for, ICE appears to be arresting anyone it can.
Earlier this week, The Los Angeles Times reported about a 4-year-old girl in California with a life-threatening medical condition who, along with her family, was ordered to leave the country despite her doctor’s warning that if treatment is interrupted, she would die in a matter of days.
On Thursday, The Washington Post reported on a 2-year-old American citizen who was deported to Brazil alongside her undocumented parents. However, since the girl is not a citizen of Brazil, she has become “all but stateless.”
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court stripped 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants of their protected status, opening them up to deportation. And Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States will “aggressively” revoke student visas from Chinese students. There are roughly 275,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S. right now.
What are the odds that one of those Venezuelan immigrants or one of those Chinese students lives in your city or your town? How soon until we all know a Dylan Lopez Contrera or a Carol Hui or a Pastor Maurilio Ambrocio from our own lives?
The Dictatorship
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LONDON (AP) — The BBC filed a motion Monday asking a U.S. court to dismiss President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against it, warning that the case could have a “chilling effect” on robust reporting on public figures and events.
The suit was filed in a Florida court, but the British national broadcaster argued that the court did not have jurisdiction, nor could Trump show that the BBC intended to misrepresent him.
Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way a BBC documentary edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and a further $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
Last month a judge at the federal court for the Southern District of Florida provisionally set a trial date for February 2027.
The BBC argued that the case should be thrown out because the documentary was never aired in Florida or the U.S.
“We have therefore challenged jurisdiction of the Florida court and filed a motion to dismiss the president’s claim,” the corporation said in a statement.
In a 34-page document, the BBC also argued that Trump failed to “plausibly allege facts showing that defendants knowingly intended to create a false impression.”
Trump’s case “falls well short of the high bar of actual malice,” it said.
The document further claimed that “the chilling effect is clear” when Trump is “among the most powerful and high-profile individuals in the world, on whose activities the BBC reports every day.”
“Early dismissal is favoured given the powerful interest in ensuring that free speech is not unduly burdened by the necessity of defending against expensive yet groundless litigation, which would constrict the breathing space needed to ensure robust reporting on public figures and events,” it said.
The documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — was aired days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The program spliced together three quotes from two sections of a speech Trump made on Jan. 6, 2021, into what appeared to be one quote, in which Trump appeared to explicitly encourage his supporters to storm the Capitol building.
Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Trump’s lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction” of him, and called it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The broadcaster’s chairman has apologized to Trump over the edit of the speech, admitting that it gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action.” But the BBC rejects claims it defamed him. The furor triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news last year.
State bar associations play an important accountability role across the country. Trump administration lawyers know that their legal licenses are subject to censure, because practicing law in the United States remains a privilege, not a right. But if Attorney General Pam Bondi has her way, even this guardrail could disappear.
Last week, Bondi proposed a new rule that would allow the Department of Justice to take over investigations of alleged attorney misconduct of its own lawyers. State bar authorities would have to pause their investigations while the Justice Department conducts its own probe. The rule gives the DOJ the ability to delay or even derail a state investigation.
The rule gives the DOJ the ability to delay or even derail a state investigation.
It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that there has been a series of state ethics complaints filed against Trump administration lawyers, including Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and federal prosecutors handling immigration cases. President Donald Trump’s polarizing pardon attorney Ed Martin is currently facing just such a complaint from the D.C. Bar.
As outlined in the Federal Registerthe proposal argues that “political activists have weaponized the bar complaint and investigation process.” Of course, even if it were true that frivolous complaints were being filed against Justice Department lawyers, state bar grievance authorities should be able to weed them out just as effectively as the department’s own investigators. In fact, having an independent review process would provide more credibility than the DOJ would in dismissing such claims.
Federal law requires all federal prosecutors to comply with the ethics rules of the state where they practice law, including the District of Columbia. The new rule requires Justice Department lawyers to obey the substance of their state’s ethics rules, but gives the DOJ the authority to investigate violations. According to the proposal, whenever a bar grievance is filed, “the Department will have the right to review the allegations in the first instance and shall request that the bar disciplinary authority suspend any parallel investigations until the completion of the Department’s review.”
From there, multiple scenarios are possible. First, “if the Attorney General decides not to complete her review,” the state bar disciplinary authorities “may resume their investigations or disciplinary hearings.” Second, if the attorney general finds misconduct, “the State bar disciplinary authorities will then have the option of beginning or resuming their investigations or disciplinary proceedings” and, if appropriate, “to impose additional sanctions beyond those already imposed by the Department, including suspension or permanent disbarment.”
But what is missing from the language of the rule itself is a potential third scenario. What if the attorney general clears the attorney of misconduct? On that, the rule is silent.
Say, for example, a federal prosecutor in Minnesota is accused of making false representations to an immigration judge. The judge or opposing party could file a grievance with the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility. Under the new rule, the state bar would be required to stand down and await a DOJ investigation, with no provisions for time limits or transparency. Of course, even the delay could compromise the subsequent Minnesota probe. But if the Justice Department clears the lawyer, it is also unclear what happens next. According to Bloomberg“If the DOJ finds no violation, that blocks the state from investigating the alleged infraction.” This conclusion may be a fair inference for a department that has thrown its weight around. According to the proposed rule, “the Attorney General retains the discretion to displace State bar enforcement and to create an entirely Federal enforcement mechanism.”
But even if the rule merely delays state enforcement, the DOJ could slow-walk a grievance into oblivion. According to a comment posted by the Illinois State Bar Association, the DOJ is attempting to “shield” its lawyers from accountability. The proposed rule also includes an ominous provision that if bar disciplinary authorities refuse the attorney general’s request, “the Department shall take appropriate action to prevent the bar disciplinary authorities from interfering with the Attorney General’s review of the allegations.”
Even if the rule merely delays state enforcement, the DOJ could slow-walk a grievance into oblivion.
In the decades since the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department has conducted robust investigations of allegations of ethical misconduct by its own attorneys and imposed discipline. In fact, it was common for state bar authorities to wait for the DOJ to complete its investigations before initiating their own probes, because the federal process held attorneys to standards even higher than state ethics rules. But that landscape changed last year, when Bondi fired the head of the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and its chief ethics officer. Now there is a risk that DOJ lawyers will be even further sheltered from meaningful ethical oversight.
In the first nine days of the 30-day notice and comment period, the proposed rule has attracted more than 30,000 comments. And once implemented, the rule will no doubt invite legal challenges and ultimately could be struck down. But until then, it threatens to give carte blanche to DOJ lawyers who represent the Trump administration not just zealously but with impunity, knowing that the attorney general can simply delay or even block state bar ethics complaints. And the rule represents one more openly regressive blow against the checks and balances that are essential to democracy.
Barbara McQuade is a former Michigan U.S. attorney and legal analyst.
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