The Dictatorship
I visited a client at an ICE detention center in L.A. What I learned horrified me.
There’s a basement about a fifteen-minute walk from where I live. It is small, cold, and perpetually lit. It can hold as many as seventy men for days at a time. The basement has one exposed toilet, with no doors, for the people it detains, which they use in front of one another. Sparse meals appear sporadically, sometimes at 3:00 a.m. and sometimes not at all. The men in this concrete, windowless cage sleep either standing up, leaning against one another for lack of space, or on the cold floor. The basement has a separate room for women; families of detainees there say the conditions appear to be the same.
Some of the people in the basement were put there by masked government agents. Some were on their way to or at work. Others were on the street, at home, or picking up their children from school. Eventually, their government might expel them to another country, maybe one they’ve never visitedfar from their families, loved ones, attorneys and anybody who cares for them.
The father I met with looked like so many other parents, including my own.
Families and attorneys like me try to visit the basement. They spend hours outside of a locked door. They miss work and other necessary commitments for a chance to visit and provide some comfort. Some arrive carrying medicine their loved one needs – and they are forced to wait for hours too.
This basement doesn’t exist in Russia, or Hungary, or China. It sits below an American federal building in downtown Los Angeles. Federal taxpayers’ dollars keep it running. The ongoing immigration raids in the city keep it full.
I learned about the basement when a panicked son reached out for help from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Lawthe non-profit that I lead and which files federal litigation to secure the rights of immigrants and refugees. His father was arrested by government agents, who violently pushed him to the ground, pepper sprayed his face, and dragged him off. He had already spent three nights imprisoned in the basement, as his son tried in vain to see him.
The only way to enter the space that houses the basement at 300 Los Angeles St. is down a vehicular driveway. There’s no signage or security check — only a glorified concrete stairwell that hosts a locked door, a call box, and cameras. Attorneys can show up at 8:00 a.m. to start their wait to meet their clients. All others must wait until 1:00 p.m. Visits end at 4:00 p.m.
When I arrived in the early morning, there was already a small crowd of lawyers, parents, children, and community members waiting. I made my plea to the call box, providing the name of the father I sought to meet. I was told that the staff were busy, and the wait would be long. For three hours, I stood in a concrete space, fly-infested and half exposed to the elements. The crowd grew, although several individuals, including attorneys, left before being able to meet the person they came to see.
Los Angeles stands as a lesson on the only proven ways to slow the flow of abductions.
I met a church pastor with a crowd of congregants, worry etched on each of their faces. I met an employer, U.S. passport in hand, seeking an employee who was abducted just as she arrived at her workplace. The passport proved her American citizenship.
After three hours, I was let into an air-conditioned, clean, and cavernous waiting room. Aisles of chairs sat empty. I was kept there, alone, for another hour, while the crowd outside continued to grow.
The father I met with looked like so many other parents, including my own. He should’ve been cradling his granddaughter, or watching Sabado Gigante, or dozing off on a plastic-wrapped couch.
Instead, he had dark bruises on his face and body. A large, fresh cut marked his forehead. These were the legacy of the arrest he’d suffered through days before. His eyes were bloodshot and when he cried, his tears triggered the pepper spray he hadn’t been able to wash off, or rub off with the back of his hand, still hurt. He hadn’t seen a doctor or slept.
The basement shouldn’t exist but it does. Members of Congressworried family members, and others have tried to visit it without success. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has promised to expand the raids that keep the basement full to Chicago, New York City, and other cities.
Los Angeles stands as a lesson on the only proven ways to slow the flow of abductions. It isn’t letters and speeches: it’s brave folks who are working daily on the streets to protect their communities from ICE raids, attorneys demanding the release of individuals, and local officials who refuse to cooperate.
Even so, the abductions continue. Soon, there might be a basement in your city. That means we all need to step up, in every way we can, to resist and fight the expanding efforts to terrorize our immigrant and refugee communities.
Sergio Perez
Sergio Perez is the executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
The identities of several members of the militia created by New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman have reportedly been revealed.
Blakeman’s quest to stand up a force of armed and deputized citizens in his capacity as Nassau County executive — to help with purported “emergencies” — has garnered comparisons to Nazi brownshirts. The Long Island militia has also been likened to the Ku Klux Klan and slave patrols during the era of chattel slavery, both of which deployed militias filled with civilians to terrorize Black people.
A onetime umbrella-holder for Donald Trump and a devout MAGA loyalist, Blakeman has said he will never disagree with Trump in public. He also has said that his militia of “special deputies” — which could be unleashed at his whim — might be used to quell civil rights demonstrationssaying it would be available “if there was a riot.”
Democrats have sounded the alarm that some of the militia members were unqualified and, in some cases, had run into issues with the law themselves. Such fears were seemingly confirmed by a recent court filing by Democrats who are suing to thwart the militia, as reported by Newsday.
The list of deputies includes Zachary Cohen, a nephew of Blakeman’s who, according to Newsday, “has no law enforcement or military experience.”
Per Newsday:
According to the documents, Zachary Cohen obtained his pistol license in the spring of 2024 but is without law enforcement or military experience. His résumé indicated he manages his family’s real estate portfolio as president and CEO of AMZ Management in Rutherford, New Jersey.
Cohen writes in his cover letter: ‘I am extremely interested in serving my community and following in the footsteps of my Uncle Bruce Blakeman.’
Cohen could end up working alongside a former New York Police Department officer whose manhandling of a suspect led to a massive civil settlement by New York City in 1995. (The officer was acquitted of assault.)
In the application Donald Alesi submitted to join the volunteer program he touted his decorated service with the FBI and the NYPD’s narcotics division, recently released court documents show. Omitted are dozens of allegations and complaints throughout his time as an officer in the 1980s and 1990s, including having been one of two Brooklyn officers charged with assaulting the driver of a passenger van, leaving the man paralyzed from the neck down.
While Alesi and the other officer were acquitted in the criminal case, the city paid a $16.6 million civil settlement, according to news reports. Newsday found the information in a search of police misconduct records using Alesi’s name.
Newsday did not obtain comment from Cohen or Alesi. When asked for comment on the names being released, a Blakeman spokesperson told Newsday that the judge in the case had ties to Democrats and should recuse himself.
The list reportedly includes a bunch of other people whose expertise on matters of law enforcement is questionable — to say the least. For example, there are several registered gun owners listed, including a former team dentist for the NHL’s New York Islanders, a former member of Blakeman’s transition team and a tractor-trailer driver.
A dentist. A truck driver. A Blue Light News. Sounds like a fine group of people if you’re looking to haul cargo, write a press release or replace a cavity. But nothing about this bunch of gun-toting volunteers suggests they have any competency more useful in this case than their willingness to take orders at the behest of a Trump sycophant.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* An understandable reaction: “During his press briefing today, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, reacted to Trump’s Easter Sunday post threatening to destroy bridges and power plants if Iran doesn’t make a deal soon. ‘We were alarmed by the rhetoric, seen in that social media post that threatened American attacks on power plants, bridges and other infrastructure should Iran not agree to a deal,’ Dujarric said.”
* Crisis conditions in Lebanon: “More than 1.1 million people, which is more than 20% of Lebanon’s population, are now displaced within the country’s borders as Israel continues its military offensive, the U.N. said in a report today. A third of those affected are children.”
* Artemis II: “NASA’s Artemis II mission made history on Monday by sending humans farther from Earth than ever before.”
* Keep an eye on this one: “Almost immediately after an immigration agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis this winter, the federal government cast the injured man as an attempted murderer and the agent as the victim of a brutal beating. That version of events began unraveling when prosecutors dropped felony charges against the injured man, Julio C. Sosa-Celis, and one of his housemates, Alfredo A. Aljorna, who had fled from immigration agents. Yet video footage of the shooting, newly obtained by The New York Times, raises questions about why it took weeks for the government’s case to fall apart.”
* The latest on the Bannon case: “The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump Justice Department’s request to vacate an appeals court ruling against Steve Bannon, after the Department of Justice told the high court that it wants to dismiss the matter that was brought against the Donald Trump ally during the Biden administration.”
* U.S. marshals waived training rules? “Members of Elon Musk’s private security team were deputized as federal agents last year even though some of the billionaire’s guards lacked the required training and law enforcement experience, according to newly released government emails.”
* It’s not at all clear why anyone would follow this executive order as binding: “President Donald Trump has signed a second executive order aimed at fixing college sports, this time laying out specific transfer and eligibility rules, limiting how athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness and threatening schools that violate rules with financial penalties, the White House announced Friday.”
* Noted without comment: “Just a few months after opening, the controversial Trump Truth Store in [Chicago suburb] Crystal Lake has temporarily shut down, citing a drop in sales amid the ongoing Iran war.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
An official in charge of privacy issues at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which oversees voting rights laws, resigned last week as the Trump administration continues to pursue sensitive voter data for its voter suppression efforts.
NPR reported Friday on the resignation of Kilian Kagle, who worked in the division led by far-right lawyer Harmeet Dhillon:
Kilian Kagle was the chief FOIA officer and senior component official for privacy for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division before leaving his post in recent days. His resignation has not been previously reported. For nearly a year, the DOJ has been making unprecedented demands for sensitive voter data from most states — including voters’ driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth and addresses — that some say violate privacy law.
In the past year, President Donald Trump has suggested that “we shouldn’t even have” midterm elections in 2026 and that Republicans should “take over” elections in parts of the country controlled by Democrats. And to help implement his autocratic ambitions, the president has installed election-denying zealots at the Justice Department, which has demanded sensitive voter information from states to feed into the administration’s error-prone SAVE voter eligibility tool. More than a dozen Republican-led states have complied with the demand, while other states’ attorneys general are suing in court — with good reason.
Kagle confirmed his departure to NPR but declined to comment. Neither Kagle nor the Justice Department responded to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Though he didn’t give a specific reason for his departure, Kagle joins scores of other former employees from the Civil Rights Division who have left as Dhillon has perverted it into an agency known for assaulting many of the rights it historically defended, including voting rights. In December, almost 300 now-former DOJ employees signed an open letter warning that Dhillon and her allies at the division were undermining civil rights and causing lasting harm to the department’s credibility.
They wrote:
Every election brought changes, but the fundamental mission of our work remained the same. That’s why most of us planned to stay at the Division following the 2024 election. But after witnessing this Administration destroy much of our work, we made the heartbreaking decision to leave — along with hundreds of colleagues, including about 75 percent of attorneys. Now, we must sound the alarm about the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel.
The first year of Trump’s second term has been a nightmare for privacy experts, who raised issues to NPR about the president’s efforts to acquire sensitive voter data.
Others have sounded the alarm elsewhere on other controversies, including the administration’s interest in high-tech surveillance tools that have been deployed by authoritarian governments.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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