#dhs
12 entries with this tag
A Guardian Investigation Found ICE Force-Fed Hunger-Striking Detainees — Restraining Them and Pushing a Tube Through the Nose Into the Stomach, One Kurdish Asylum Seeker for Eight Months, an Afghan Man Daily for Nearly Six — Using Court Orders, on People With No Lawyers, to Break Strikes Protesting Worm-Infested Food and Medical Neglect. Doctors and the UN Call It Torture
A Guardian investigation built on court records found that the Trump administration tried to subject at least 10 hunger-striking immigrants in ICE detention to involuntary medical procedures, including force-feeding — the practice of restraining a person and forcing a tube through the nose, down the esophagus, and into the stomach to deliver liquid nutrition against their will. At least three, and possibly five, were actually force-fed; five others abandoned their hunger strikes at the last moment rather than endure it. The durations are staggering: a Kurdish asylum seeker at ICE's Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos, Texas was force-fed for eight months; another striker at the same facility for six; an Afghan man was force-fed daily for nearly six months, from September 2025 through March 2026. ICE obtained court orders to authorize the procedures, and in six cases reviewed the detainees had no legal representation. Some were also placed in solitary confinement. The hunger strikes they were being punished for breaking were protests against the detention conditions themselves — overcrowding, spoiled and worm-infested food and water, inadequate medical care, and alleged physical and psychological abuse. Force-feeding a competent hunger striker is recognized by the World Medical Association as a violation of medical ethics and by United Nations experts as cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that can amount to torture. Nearly 50 Democratic lawmakers have demanded a watchdog investigation. DHS disputes the abuse reports and says detainees receive adequate care.
The Administration Spent the Summer Trying to Strip Legal Status From 350,000 Haitians and Send Them Back to a Country Ruled by Gangs — Losing in Court After Court but Never Stopping, Until the Whiplash of Last-Minute Reprieves Was Already Separating Families and Costing People Their Jobs
About 350,000 Haitians who have lived and worked legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status spent the summer of 2026 in engineered limbo. TPS exists precisely because a country is too dangerous to return people to, and Haiti — where armed gangs control most of the capital, there is no elected government, and the humanitarian situation is catastrophic — is the textbook case. The Trump administration moved to terminate the designation anyway. In June the Supreme Court cleared the way for terminations to proceed; but lower courts kept intervening, granting a February stay and then a series of last-minute reprieves that pushed the cutoff from February to July 10, to July 24, to July 27, as a D.C. Circuit panel rejected the administration's bid to end protections on 48 hours' notice. The Department of Homeland Security and the federal courts remain openly at odds. The practical result is not an orderly policy but chaos: families bracing for separation with days' notice, and employers — confused by work permits that are technically auto-extended but bear expired dates — already letting Haitian workers go, even though rejecting valid extended documents is itself unlawful. Whether or not the courts ultimately let the termination stand, the administration has already inflicted the harm: a third of a million people made to live week to week on whether they will be deported to a collapsed state, their jobs and families unraveling in the uncertainty the government manufactured.
After 23 States and Two Federal Courts Blocked It as Unconstitutional, Trump Asked the Supreme Court to Let His Mail-Voting Order Take Effect Before the Midterms — an Order That Would Bar the Postal Service From Mailing Ballots to Anyone Not on State-Submitted Lists, Put DHS in Charge of Screening Voter Rolls, and Prioritize Prosecuting Election Officials
On July 27, 2026, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court — via an emergency "shadow docket" application filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer — to lift lower-court blocks and let a sweeping executive order restricting mail voting take effect in time for the November midterms. The March executive order would: require states to submit lists of eligible mail voters to the U.S. Postal Service, which would be barred from sending a ballot to anyone not on those lists; give the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security new roles screening state voter rolls for supposed noncitizens; mandate individualized barcodes on ballot envelopes; and "prioritize" federal prosecution of state election officials who send ballots to ineligible voters. Twenty-three Democratic-led states sued, noting the Constitution leaves the running of elections to the states, not the White House. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked it as a separation-of-powers violation, and the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that block over the weekend, finding the order would "sow confusion" and "threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters." Sauer argued the injunction was "extraordinary" and that the order "merely sets forth general policy guidance." Voting-rights groups called it "plainly unconstitutional... yet another attempt by the president to unlawfully take control of elections from the states, deter eligible voters from casting ballots, and sow chaos as the November midterms approach." It is the same campaign documented here through the FEMA counterterrorism-funding blackmail, the purge of the Election Assistance Commission, and the primetime "China stole 220 million voter files" speech — now escalated to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to green-light federal control over an election the president has spent months insisting will be stolen.
ICE Agents Shot and Killed Two Men Six Days Apart — a Houston Man on His Way to Work and a Colombian Food-Delivery Driver in Maine — Neither Was the Person They Were Looking For, Neither Agent Wore a Body Camera, and When ICE Paused Traffic Stops, Trump Ordered Them Resumed the Same Day
In the span of six days in July 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot two men — and in both cases, the man they killed was not the person they had come to arrest. On July 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, in Houston as he headed to work. On July 13, ICE officer David Brouillette shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian food-delivery driver, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. Neither man was the target of the operation. In both shootings, the agents were not wearing body cameras. Witnesses in the Maine case gave accounts "extremely different" from ICE's — saying no agent was ever in front of the vehicle and that shots came from the side of the van, contradicting the agency's report. Federal immigration agents have now killed at least four people this year, part of a documented pattern of escalating deadly force as arrests went quieter and more violent. Nationwide "ICE Out" protests erupted in Houston, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Columbia, and beyond. ICE announced it was pausing most traffic stops and expanding body-camera use — and then, on July 15, Trump issued a statement saying ICE "cannot give up" traffic stops, and vehicle stops were permitted to resume the same day. Separately, a New York Times review found that 213 of more than 400 resolved federal cases accusing people of assaulting or impeding ICE and Border Patrol agents had been dismissed, withdrawn, or ended in acquittals — collapsing the "agents under assault" narrative used to justify the aggression.
FEMA Will Withhold 20% of a $1 Billion Anti-Terrorism Grant Program — Money for Cybersecurity and Protecting Crowded Public Spaces — Unless States Rewrite Their Elections to Trump's Demands Before the Midterms, a Power the Constitution Gives Him Zero Authority Over
The Trump administration is holding counterterrorism money hostage to force states to change how they run elections before the November 2026 midterms. FEMA's fiscal-year 2026 Homeland Security Grant Program notice says the agency will withhold 20% of each state's total award — from a $1.064 billion program that funds cybersecurity, emergency planning, training, equipment, and protection of crowded public spaces — until the state proves it has complied with new "Election Security" requirements. Those requirements: submit a plan to abandon electronic voting systems that use bar codes/QR codes and move to hand-marked paper ballots (eliminating ballot-marking devices); conduct 5% manual post-election audits; reconcile voters against ballots cast; run the entire voter roll through the DHS "SAVE" citizenship database within 120 days; and verify the citizenship of every poll worker and vendor. In FY2025 the election-related hold was just 3% for three modest actions; FY2026 escalates it to 20% and a far larger list. The 3% election-security set-aside and the 20% holdback are explicitly separate — meeting one does not release the other. The grants flow largely to populous urban states: New York alone expects about $204 million in FY2026. Switching to hand-marked paper ballots would cost states hundreds of millions — Georgia's Republican secretary of state estimated $66 million for his state alone. The Constitution gives the president no authority over election administration; a federal judge recently wrote exactly that while blocking parts of Trump's anti-voting executive order, and another judge blocked DHS from using SAVE to purge voters, finding the administration "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens." The DOJ has separately sued 30 states for refusing to hand over voter lists and warned election officials in all 50 states they could face criminal charges. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul: the administration is "once again putting New Yorkers' lives at risk to forward their political agenda." Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows: "Trump is trying to meddle in how states run American elections because he's terrified of losing power after the 2026 midterms."
DHS Shutdown Ends After Record-Shattering 76 Days — 1,000+ TSA Officers Quit, ICE Still Unfunded
Congress finally funded most of DHS after a record 76-day shutdown that left 260,000 workers in limbo. Over 1,000 TSA officers quit. Airline security lines hit historic waits. The bill funds TSA, Coast Guard, FEMA, and Secret Service through September — but deliberately excludes ICE and CBP, which remain a separate political fight.
Trump Seizes Federal Control Over Mail-In Ballots — Experts Say He Lacks the Authority
Trump signed an executive order directing DHS to create national voter eligibility lists and the Postal Service to only send ballots to "verified" voters. Experts: "The Constitution doesn't give DHS any power over elections." ACLU immediately pledged to sue.
"Meltdown": House GOP Rejects Senate DHS Deal, Prolonging 42-Day Shutdown
Day 42 of the DHS shutdown: House Republicans rejected the bipartisan Senate deal and passed an 8-week punt that can't pass the Senate. 61,000 TSA workers have missed $1B+ in pay. 510 have quit. Johnson called the Senate deal "a joke."
Lewandowski Ran Pay-to-Play Scheme at DHS; Noem Lied to Congress
Corey Lewandowski — installed at DHS as Noem's adviser with no experience — personally approved multimillion-dollar contracts and demanded kickbacks from contractors. Noem denied it under oath. Both were fired.
$70 Million DHS Jet with Private Bedroom for Noem and Lewandowski
DHS leased a $70M Boeing 737 MAX with a private cabin/bedroom in the rear — twice the cost of all seven other deportation planes combined. Noem and Lewandowski traveled together in the private cabin. Lewandowski fired a pilot over a blanket.
$220 Million No-Bid DHS Ad Campaign Starring Kristi Noem
$220M in no-bid taxpayer-funded "self-deportation" ads featured Noem on horseback at Mount Rushmore. One contractor was created 11 days before receiving $143M. The key subcontractor's CEO was married to the DHS official who funded the contracts.
Deployed Unidentified Federal Agents Against Portland Protesters
Trump deployed 750+ federal agents in camouflage without identification badges who used unmarked vehicles to snatch protesters off the streets. One protester was shot in the head. The mayor was tear-gassed.