The Dictatorship
Trump’s deportation machine is writing its own rules
The last major overhaul of American immigration law took place decades ago and there’s been no will from Congress to revamp it since then. Instead, a string of presidents has sought to interpret the law to fit their preferred policies. What we’re seeing under President Donald Trump, though, is a federal bureaucracy abandoning the law as it exists, rewriting the rules that would constrain it from exercising maximum cruelty and dehumanization toward immigrants.
His determination marks a major shift in the way ICE functions and threatens to transform the immigration system more broadly overnight.
Over the last six months, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has served as the tip of the spear in the Trump administration’s mass deportation push. According to The Washington Postacting ICE director Todd Lyons issued a memo last week that instructs officers to hold immigrants in their custody “for the duration of their removal proceedings” — however long that takes. He asserted that immigrants who’d previously been allowed to request bond hearings may not be released from ICE custody” with release on parole relegated to being a rarity.
Lyons’ decision is based on “a section of immigration law that says unauthorized immigrants ‘shall be detained’ after their arrest,” according to the Post, “but that has historically applied to those who recently crossed the border and not longtime residents.” A spokesperson for ICE told NBC News on Tuesday that the decision to prevent detainees from receiving bond hearings “closes a loophole” in current law, arguing that people arrested in the country’s interior should be treated the same as those apprehended at the border.
His determination marks a major shift in the way ICE functions and threatens to transform the immigration system more broadly overnight. There was already massive backlog of immigrations proceedings even before this recent escalation. According to ICE’s annual report for fiscal year 2024there are “more than 7.6 million noncitizens in removal proceedings or subject to final orders of removal on the agency’s non-detained docket.” If all of them were to have been held for the entirety of their proceedings, the number would wildly dwarf the 155,655 inmates currently held in the entire federal prison system.
Moreover, the detainees held in ICE facilities last year were only in custody for “an average of 46.9 days.” The report further noted that “detention is not punitive, and the agency detains noncitizens only when required by law or based on the unique circumstances of the case.”
Lyons’ orders entirely overturns that general guidance to instead make detention the norm rather than the exception.
This policy change will only place further strain on a system that has been tasked with widening its dragnet and ramping up its arrest numbers. NBC News reported last week that while detentions are surging under Trump, deportations are lagging: “According to ICE data, its agents arrested roughly 30,000 immigrants last month, the most since monthly data was made publicly available in November 2020. But the number of immigrants deported in June — more than 18,000 — amounted to roughly half the number of arrests, according to internal figures obtained by NBC News.”
The imbalance has led to a lack of space in ICE’s current facilities, where NBC News also recently reported that overcrowding has prompted complaints from detention centers across at least seven states of “complaining of hunger, food shortages and spoiled food.” A tsunami of funding from Congress for immigration enforcement is meant to vastly expand ICE’s available detention space. The new policy from Lyons helps ensure all those new beds will be filled — and then some.
These moves notably aren’t exclusive to ICE but taking place across the administration.
But turning over some of those beds will be easier — thanks to another new policy rewrite from Lyons. In a memo issued last weekthe acting director took advantage of a recent Supreme Court ruling to speed up the process for deporting immigrants to an “alternative” country than the one they left behind. In some cases, these people may be sent to a country where they know nobody, don’t speak the language, and have no support with less than 24 hours’ notice to challenge the order.
These moves notably aren’t exclusive to ICE but taking place across the administration. The Justice Department last month circulated a memo outlining its Civil Division’s new priorities. Rather than focusing on voting rights or violations of the Civil Rights Act, the few remaining lawyers at the storied branch must now prioritize denaturalization among other new focal points. The memo from Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate provides 10 potential categories for the latter cases, including any referred to the division that it “determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
The overbroad scope of that last catch-all category is worrisome — but the one that most concerns me targets “individuals who acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentations.” While that language sounds relatively benign, it dovetails well with right wing rhetoric that falsely claims that the Biden administration “illegally” allowed millions of immigrants into the country. Any migrant who came in during those years and gained citizenship could potentially see their naturalization threatened because of this new focus.
Disturbingly, ICE has also taken upon itself to rewrite the oversight laws that Congress has passed, limiting the window in which legislators can turn up unannounced for inspections. Members of Congress are explicitly allowed to visit facilities that “detain or otherwise house aliens” without providing notice, but they must now provide ICE with a 72-hour advancing warning before visiting an ICE field office. While the memo draws a distinction between offices and detention centers, the law doesn’t, and migrants have been reportedly held at field offices for days on end due to overcrowding.
Taken together, these revisions provide a window into how Trump’s deportation machine will operate when it is finally fully up to speed.
The steady inflow of migrants to detention centers and their speedy exfiltration to random countries is poised to escalate into a near automated process, with no oversight or chance for the banished to appeal their fate. In stripping these supposed undesirables of their rights to due processtheir freedom while awaiting a hearing, and the protections the law should provide them, the administration is robbing them of their very humanity.
How much longer then will it take for even this streamlined process, devoid of any chance of appeal or semblance of mercy to be considered too time-consuming or expensive? What then will be the fate of the people stuffed into these camps with no hope of release? The answer may be one that we swore as a civilization never to allow happen again.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for BLN Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
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.”
In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.
In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.
The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.
“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”
“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.
The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.
Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”
Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)
“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.
Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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