The Trump reign of fear ups the stakes.
Two harrowing stories: one in Massachusetts, one in New Jersey.
Newark, NJ:A woman was led by federal agents in cuffs away from her family, through a throng of community organizers trying to stop it, and into an unmarked car. The local police arrived to prevent the community from protecting their neighbor from an unlawful kidnapping. They succeeded, and in the process arrested two of the people who tried to stop it.
[...]
And then I see the mother, a young woman in a green shirt, wailing, crying, held on either side by menacing white men in tactical vests, black neck warmers pulled over their noses in the style du jour for our secret police forces.
Surrounding them are a few dozen community members who were tipped off about the ICE raid and got to it before the police did. Before I arrived, they demanded to see a warrant. The ICE agents refused to provide one, so they created a human chain, which the ICE officers eventually broke through.
[...]
An ICE agent opens the door and the woman's daughter shrieks—an unforgettable noise of agony. Her mother is about to disappear, into the purposefully vague bureaucratic world of forced removal.
[...]
A Worcester cop comes over, stepping between the open car door and the community, past the ICE agents stuffing the mother into the back seat, and he looks at a woman holding the shrieking daughter's baby.
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The woman's daughter then jumps on the hood of the car. A Worcester cop pulls her off.
[...]
These federal agents were wearing a myriad of badges and few of them had name tags. Most of them had "POLICE" written somewhere on their tactical vests. There were ICE insignias, but also Customs and Border Patrol, and one ATF.
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[F]ederal agents showed up, without saying why, intending to bring [the woman] to an undisclosed somewhere without even proving they had the legal right.
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In the background, a Worcester police officer looks at the desperate woman holding her baby trying to stop the agents from taking her mother and says "Do you want to stay with your baby?" The tacit threat of separation for her protestation of another separation. Later he would complain "She's putting the baby in harm's way." A classic move: "harm" goes undefined because the harm is him.
[...]
Another officer, frustrated, says "They don't need a warrant." Finally, one of them tells the truth. Due process is not a matter they're concerned with. The deportation must proceed. Trying to stop it is the unlawful thing.
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A cop pulls his cruiser behind us—we're boxed in now—and from the intercom says "This is the Worcester Police Department. This is an unlawful assembly, I'm warning you to disperse right now or you will be subject to arrest."
[...]
As the car pulls away, nudging into the thick crowd, the daughter shrieks another horrible horrible horrible shriek, communicating the non-communicable as the disappearers take another step toward disappearing her mother. As the car breaks from the crowd she runs after it. A Worcester police officer, his voice frothing with anger, shouts "Arrest her right now. You are under arrest." And then four cops swarm her, grab her, throw her to the ground. All the while she's crying crying crying. Her hair's caught in her mouth and matted to her face, wet with spit and tears. Four cops hold her pinned to the ground.
[...]
Next to me is a TV reporter from a Spanish language station and her cameraman. She yells out, "What's your name?" and the woman responds in Spanish. I can't make it out. She asks her age and this one I catch: “dieciséis.”
Not a woman—a girl. A 16-year-old girl. Now in custody for the crime of reacting in an unruly way to the sudden forceful disappearance of her mother.
I keep asking about the charges. The only cop who doesn't ignore me explains "I'm not the arresting officer." The arresting officers go on ignoring me.
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Eventually I get an answer, and it's the usual package job: disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly. The charges they throw on anyone they want to arrest for the sake of arresting them, knowing they're unlikely to stick. But sticking isn't the goal. The officer who tells me this has a tactical K9 Unit vest on. He tells me the 16-year-old girl was interfering with police business.
[...]
In a statement posted to the department's Facebook page Thursday night, the WPD said they responded to "a report of a federal agent who was surrounded by a large group of about twenty-five people." The daughter was charged with reckless endangerment of a child, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. [A] community organizer faces charges of assault and battery on a police officer, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (unknown liquid), disorderly conduct, and interfering with a police officer. Both were out on bail by Thursday night, according to local organizers. The name and whereabouts of the woman taken by ICE remains unknown.
Welcome to the World
Why is oversight in BS quotes?The mayor of Newark was arrested Friday at an ICE detention facility in New Jersey where congressional leaders had scheduled an afternoon "oversight" visit.
NBC
Private prisons in a police state.A spokesperson confirmed Mayor Ras Baraka was taken into custody by federal police outside Delaney Hall, a detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group, in Newark.
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Baraka had visited the facility in recent days amid efforts to close the recently reopened prison. The mayor has made public claims that the detention center is not operating legally.
Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join a scheduled tour of the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
"We’re at Delaney Hall, an ICE prison in Newark that opened without permission from the city & in violation of local ordinances," Rep. Coleman wrote in a post on X.
When federal officials blocked Baraka's entry, a heated argument broke out, according to Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. It continued even after Baraka returned to the public side of the gates.
“The agents started intimidating and putting their hands on the congresswomen. There was yelling and pushing,” Martinez said. “Then the officers swarmed Baraka. They threw one of the organizers to the ground. They put Baraka handcuffs and put him in an unmarked car.”
In a statement, The Department of Homeland Security said that the lawmakers had not asked for a tour of the facility, contrary to witnesses' accounts. The department said further that as a bus carrying detainees was entering the facility, “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
It said Menendez, Watson Coleman, and a number of protesters were currently “holed up in a guard shack” at the facility.
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[I]n February, ICE awarded a 15-year contract to The Geo Group Inc. to run the Newark detention center. Geo valued the contract at $1 billion, which is an unusually long and large agreement for ICE.
The announcement was part of President Donald Trump’s plans to sharply increase detention beds nationwide from a budget of about 41,000 beds this year.
Baraka sued GEO Group soon after the deal was announced.
Geo touted the contract with Delaney Hall during its earnings call with shareholders Wednesday, with CEO David Donahue saying it was expected to generate more than $60 million a year in revenue.
UPDATE 05/09/2025: Also, in DC today...
UPDATE 07:56 pm:
UPDATE 05/10/2025:
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