#defundcbp — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #defundcbp, aggregated by home.social.
-
#ICE Arrests Surge at #Airports, Opening New Front in Deportation Drive
Federal agents are arresting spouses of Americans, tech workers and others whose visas have expired, including many who have active applications to stay in the country.
By Hamed Aleaziz and Miriam Jordan
July 28, 2026Excerpt: "The Trump administration has begun arresting foreign citizens with expired U.S. visas as they travel through airports, including spouses of Americans, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with immigration lawyers — a tactic that opens up a vast new pool of people for deportation.
"Immigration agents in plain clothes have whisked away targets at check-in counters and arrival gates, with enforcement actions in at least 15 airports in recent weeks. Some of the arrests have occurred quietly, while others have happened as angry fellow passengers filmed the encounters.
"The recent arrests appear to be an expansion of an arrangement between the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Times reported in December that ICE officers were arresting people with deportation orders at airports with the help of information provided by airlines to the T.S.A.
"Now, through a review of #HomelandSecurity Department documents and interviews with lawyers for more than 25 people from more than a dozen countries recently detained at airports, The Times has learned that the program apparently now includes people with expired visas — a much larger group.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants and visitors overstay visas each year. Many with expired visas occupy a legal gray area, as they are awaiting #VisaExtensions or #GreenCards and have been issued work permits. Such individuals were not prioritized for deportation in the past unless they had committed crimes, and they were rarely detained while waiting for visa extensions or green cards. But that has changed under President #Trump, whose administration has undertaken a campaign of mass deportation and views all visa overstays as illegal." 'This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport,' a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. The agency did not confirm the expansion of the program.
"The department, which oversees ICE, has not disclosed how many people have been detained at airports as overstays under the new initiative. The arrests come during a period in which the White House has pushed ICE for more arrests across the country, and Homeland Security Secretary #MarkwayneMullin has pledged to turn 'up the heat on the streets.' To that end, the administration has set a target of 2,000 immigration arrests a day, roughly double the pace from earlier this year.
"Interviews with more than a dozen immigration attorneys, advocacy organizations and an airline employee reveal a broad cross-section of targets: an engineer awaiting a work-visa extension, several newlyweds married to U.S. citizens, and a former au pair.
"Footage of encounters between travelers and ICE officers have flooded social media. In one widely circulated video, Chantal Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old from Ecuador, was detained by plainclothes officers as she boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Oakland, Calif., on July 20. She had been spending the weekend with the family for whom she had worked as an au pair, according to the family."
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/us/ice-arrests-airports-visa-overstay.htmlArchived version:
https://archive.ph/brvNl#ICESucks #USPol #WorldPol #Fascism #DefundCBP #DefundICE #TSA #TrumpSucks #CharacteristicsOfFascism #DepartmentOfHomelandInsecurity
-
#Activist charged with felony after giving border agent #DuressCode that wiped his phone
The government says destroying his own data during an airport interrogation was illegal.
Ryan Whitwam – Jul 27, 2026
"In early 2025, Atlanta resident #SamuelTunick was on his way home following a trip abroad. After landing in the US, customs agents demanded access to his Pixel phone, which was running an alternative version of Android called #GrapheneOS. Rather than hand over his data, Tunick used a clever feature of the software to delete everything. Now, he’s facing federal charges.
"The first hearing in this case happened last week, according to The Guardian, during which government attorneys and agents claimed that Tunick was subjected to a standard secondary interrogation at an international airport. During that encounter, agents were 'looking for anything that’s prohibited.' However, Tunick’s legal team alleges he was targeted for his #activism.
"Tunick was involved with a group called #DefendTheAtlanta Forest, which opposed the construction of an enormous law enforcement training facility in the area often known as #CopCity. What Tunick didn’t know, according to his lawyers, was that he’d been placed on a watch list for his actions and that Customs and Border Protection had discussed over email plans to detain him upon his arrival back in the US for 'suspected terrorism activities.'
"During the interrogation, #CBP agents told Tunick they wanted to search his phone for evidence of child sexual abuse, and if he didn’t unlock the device, it would be confiscated. The government has long asserted broad authority to examine and seize electronic devices at the border for virtually any reason. Tunick claims he was never read his rights and requested legal counsel several times, but the requests were denied."
#Fascism #DefundCBP #DefundICE #HomelandInsecurity #USPol #SilencingDissent #StopCopCity #StopCopCitiesEverywhere #DefendTheForest
-
#ICE says agent faced danger in #HoustonTX Witnesses say that’s not what happened
A fatal ICE encounter in Houston is continues questions about transparency, use of force and accountability
By CK Smith, July 11, 2026
"A fatal shooting involving an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston is under growing scrutiny after witnesses challenged the federal government’s account of what happened.
"ICE officials said #LorenzoSalgadoAraujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national, was shot after he allegedly used his vehicle as a weapon during an enforcement operation.
"But three men who were inside the vehicle with Araujo dispute that account, saying the encounter unfolded differently and that officers were not in the path of the vehicle when shots were fired.
"The conflicting accounts have turned the shooting into another test of transparency and accountability surrounding federal immigration enforcement. The witnesses’ attorney has said their statements contradict the government’s description of the encounter, while officials have maintained that the agent acted in response to a threat, despite reports that #Araujo was not the person ICE was searching for.
"The case is also drawing attention because the witnesses themselves are now part of the immigration enforcement system. The men who were in the vehicle have disputed the official narrative while facing their own potential immigration consequences, raising questions about how investigations involving undocumented witnesses are conducted and whether those witnesses can safely participate.
"The central question now is not simply whether ICE agents had legal authority to use force. It is whether investigators and the public have access to the full picture of what happened."
#DefundICE #AbolishICE #USPol
#ICESucks #MurderPatrol #DefundCBP #JusticeForLorenzo -
#ArmedDrones and Ethical Policing: Risk, Perception, and the Tele-Present Officer
Christian Enemark, June, 2021
"On 29 May 2020 a #PredatorClassDrone diverted south from its routine patrol of the US–Canadian border and then circled in the sky above the city of Minneapolis for around three hours. Public protests were under way there following the killing of George Floyd by local police officer Derek Chauvin four days previously. The remotely controlled aircraft, operated by US Customs and Border Protection (#CBP), carried no weapons, but it had a mounted camera for transmitting video footage of events on the ground. It was reportedly deployed to Minneapolis to 'aid in situational awareness' at the request of 'federal law enforcement partners.'
"Later, however, thirty-five members of Congress criticized this use of a military-grade drone to surveil protesters inside the United States, arguing that such surveillance could be unduly intimidating and could have an unwelcome 'chilling effect' on participation in public life.
"The deployment for a law enforcement purpose of such a large drone (capable of bearing heavy payloads and flying at high altitudes for long periods) was nevertheless exceptional. Usually, in the United States and elsewhere, a 'police drone' means a small, short-range, multirotor aircraft of the kind produced by civilian manufacturers and widely available commercially. But the use of these drones has generated concerns about the intrusiveness of police surveillance and its impact on individual privacy and freedoms, too. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, police agencies in several countries used drones equipped with cameras (and sometimes loudspeakers) to monitor and enforce public compliance with social distancing rules. Sometimes, this prompted accusations that aerial surveillance in locked-down societies was breaching people's privacy rights and exacerbating a 'police state' atmosphere. The intrusiveness and privacy implications of (unarmed) drone use is an important and well-canvassed ethical issue on its own. It arises in the context of numerous other technological developments with policing applications including, for example, closed-circuit television, long-range audio sensors, and online financial transaction monitoring.
"In this article, however, the focus of attention is the potential use by police of small drones equipped with weapons as well as cameras, and the concern for human rights extends to the right to life which underpins ethical principles restraining police use of force. During the last two decades, armed drones have been extensively deployed over foreign territories, mainly by the US government. Drone strikes involving guided missiles have been carried out as part of armed conflicts in, for example, Afghanistan and Iraq. In this war paradigm, principles of military ethics (which underpin international humanitarian law) are applicable and these traditionally afford a broad moral permission for killing. By contrast, in non-war situations, where state violence is instead wielded within the peacetime paradigm of law enforcement, a more stringent morality based on human rights is applicable. According to several analyses of foreign drone use, the intentionally lethal use of armed drones 'outside armed conflict' is likely to offend those rights, because the conventional restrictions on using force for law enforcement purposes are difficult to satisfy.
"In a domestic context, too, a drone-based targeted killing carried out by a government would likely be an abuse of human rights in the form of an extrajudicial execution. However, even if the violent use of a drone to perform a punitive law enforcement function is impermissible for this reason, it remains to be considered whether an armed drone could properly be used as part of a state's protective (policing) effort to enforce the law. When former US president Barack Obama insisted that none of his successors should 'deploy armed drones over U.S. soil,' he was probably envisaging large (Predator-sized) drones launching Hellfire missiles with deliberately deadly effect. This differs, though, from a scenario in which a police officer's intention is not (or not solely) to kill and where they are using a drone armed, for example, with weapons not designed to be lethal. In such circumstances, it is worth asking: how (if at all) might the use of an armed drone satisfy the ethical principles that guide police use of force? And when (if ever) might it be morally permissible for police to use an armed drone against a criminal suspect or to protect public safety?
"This article explores such questions by first describing the utility of drone technology for police purposes and then outlining the ethical principles that traditionally guide and restrain police use of force. These principles inform the subsequent discussion of ethical challenges an officer is likely to face when remotely controlling an armed, camera-equipped drone. Drone use promises to reduce police exposure to danger, and this seems likely sometimes to yield the benefit of reduced risk of harm (caused by fearful officers) to criminal suspects and innocent bystanders. Weighing against this benefit, however, is the increased risk to the latter associated with any perception problems experienced by distanced police officers, as well as the risk that police remoteness might make public cooperation with policing efforts more difficult to achieve. At the time of writing, there have been no reports of armed drones being violently deployed by police anywhere in the world. Even so, as the next section shows, the requisite technology already exists, and some corporations, legislators, and non-government organizations have begun to anticipate the advent of police drone weaponization."
Read more:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8367046/#DefundCBP #PoliceDrones #DroneWeaponization #MilitaryState #ACAB #USPol #GlobalPol #Orwell #NineteenEightyFour #SilencingDissent #Autocracy #Fascism #BLM #GeorgeFloydProtests #surveillance #SurveillanceState #PoliceState #ArmedDrones #WeaponizedDrones