Latest news with #ImmigrationandCustomsEnforcementAgency
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
‘There will be repercussions' Homeland Security official targets Nashville mayor over immigration
Agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency reach into a car to pull Edgardo David Campos out on May 9, 2025 in Nashville. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell continued to serve as a social media target for federal officials Thursday over his response to the mass detainments of immigrants in Nashville earlier this month. On Thursday a Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs accused O'Connell of 'harboring' immigrants without legal status and 'doxxing' immigration enforcement agents — echoing comments made by Tennessee 5th District Congressman Andy Ogles the day before. 'It certainly looks like Mayor O'Connell was involved in some sort of obstruction or the harboring of criminal illegal aliens in the great city of Nashville,' Tricia McLaughlin said in a media interview posted on the official X account of the Department of Homeland Security. 'But also just last night his office put out the names of Homeland Security investigators and doxxed our ICE enforcement officers,' she said. 'They claimed it was a mistake. There's zero chance it was a mistake and there will be repercussions.' Late Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security published a list of cities, counties and states across the nation it said were 'deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities.' The list came with this demand that 'these jurisdictions immediately review and revise their policies to align with Federal immigration laws and renew their obligation to protect American citizens, not dangerous illegal aliens.' Nashville and Shelby County in west Tennessee, the county seat of Memphis, appear on the list, which was entitled 'Sanctuary Jurisdictions Violating Federal Immigration Law.' Neither Nashville nor Shelby County have adopted so-called sanctuary city policies, which are barred under Tennessee law. The accusations against O'Connell center on a longstanding executive order requiring city departments to report interactions with immigration officials. O'Connell revised the order in early May to require the reporting to take place within 24 hours. U.S. border czar: Nashville mayor, a critic of immigration sweeps, now faces investigation The revision took place in the midst of a joint operation by the Tennessee Highway Patrol and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which led to the detainment of nearly 200 immigrants during traffic stops in South Nashville, a diverse neighborhood that is home to many of the city's immigrant communities. The majority of those detained had no criminal records. The mayor's order requires all emergency and some non-emergency city agencies and officials to report any interaction with federal immigration to the Mayor's Office of New and Indigenous Americans, a department created to foster civic participation. The department posted a spreadsheet with summaries of the interactions on its website. As of Wednesday, there were 35 interactions reported between city officials and immigration authorities in May. One entry identified an ICE analyst by first name. Two others listed the full names of Homeland Security Investigations officials. A fourth entry listed the full name of an immigration supervisor. By Thursday morning, the names had been removed from the city's website. A statement from the mayor's office said the names had been posted in error. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'dragnet' in Nashville results in detentions 'It is not the normal practice to include the names of individuals in EO30 (the executive order) reporting. Any names mistakenly included have been removed.' Questions to the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday to clarify McLaughlin's comments about 'repercussions' for the mayor's actions went unanswered. The public comments about O'Connell by federal officials came a day after the announcement by White House 'border czar' Tom Homan that — as a result of O'Connell's public stance against the mass enforcement actions — multi-agency immigration crackdowns could soon return to Nashville. 'We'll flood the zone in the neighborhoods to find the bad guy. We'll flood the zone at work sites to find the bad guy, but we're going to do it, and he's (O'Connell) not going to stop us,' said Homan, the White House executive director of enforcement and removal operations. Earlier this week, Ogles held a press conference to denounce O'Connell, a Democrat, for 'aiding and abetting illegal immigration.' Ogles accused the Nashville mayor of obstructing the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, citing O'Connell's public statements and executive order. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Vacation hideaway for rich and famous hit by ICE raids as 40 arrested in Nantucket ahead of summer season
Federal immigration raids have spread to New England's summer island getaway destinations, with 40 people detained on Tuesday by agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and the FBI. ICE states in a press release that the raids occurred on the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The Nantucket Current reports that the action by federal authorities appears to be the largest immigration enforcement operation on the island in years. Federal agents pulled over multiple vehicles across the mid-island area beginning around 7 a.m., with at least a dozen people taken into custody. It is also not known whether this was a random sweep or if the arrests targeted known criminal suspects. Detainees were then removed from the island aboard the Coast Guard patrol boat Hammerhead around 1:30 p.m. 'ICE officers and FBI, DEA and ATF agents worked together to arrest a significant number of illegal alien offenders which included at least one child predator,' said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde. 'Our partners in the U.S. Coast Guard facilitated a safe and efficient transport of the alien offenders off Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, ensuring the safety of the residents of those communities. ICE and our federal partners made a strong stand for prioritizing public safety by arresting and removing illegal aliens from our New England neighborhoods.' Nantucket Police Lieutenant Angus MacVicar stated that they were notified on Monday by ICE regarding the timing of the operation. 'We were not asked to support their operation in any way [nor] have we assisted today,' he said. The Current reports that a woman was left behind in the passenger seat of a Toyota 4Runner after federal agents pulled it over and took two men into custody on Old South Road, which runs near the island's airport. In addition, on Fairgrounds Road, island resident Mason Kennelly was pulled over by ICE agents who questioned him before saying they 'had the wrong guy.' White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly demanded that immigration agents significantly increase daily arrests to 3,000 in a 'tense' meeting last week. Miller, President Donald Trump's top adviser and architect of the administration's aggressive immigration policies, and Noem told agents they needed to up daily arrests and deportations during the meeting at Immigration and Customs Enforcement's headquarters in Washington, D.C. on May 21, according to Axios. The figure is approximately triple the number of daily arrests that ICE agents were making at the beginning of the Trump administration, the outlet noted. The administration deported 17,000 people in April, according to ICE, which is a 29 percent increase over April 2024, according to NBC News. The ICE sweep comes at the start of the peak tourism season. As a popular — and expensive — destination, Nantucket's population swells to 80,000 during summer months. Following his election defeat in November 2024, President Joe Biden and his family spent Thanksgiving on the island. Martha's Vineyard similarly sees its population swell from 20,000 to over 200,000 in the summer. Famous regular visitors include the Clintons, the Obamas, Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz, and numerous Hollywood and media figures.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Private groups work to identify and report student protesters for possible deportation
NEW YORK (AP) — When a protester was caught on video in January at a New York rally against Israel, only her eyes were visible between a mask and headscarf. But days later, photos of her entire face, along with her name and employer, were circulated online. 'Months of them hiding their faces went down the drain!' a fledgling technology company boasted in a social media post, claiming its facial-recognition tool had identified the woman despite the coverings. She was anything but a lone target. The same software was also used to review images taken during months of pro-Palestinian marches at U.S. colleges. A right-wing Jewish group said some people identified with the tool were on a list of names it submitted to President Donald Trump's administration, urging that they be deported in accordance with his call for the expulsion of foreign students who participated in 'pro-jihadist' protests. Other pro-Israel groups have enlisted help from supporters on campuses, urging them to report foreign students who participated in protests against the war in Gaza to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The push to identify masked protesters using facial recognition and turn them in is blurring the line between public law enforcement and private groups. And the efforts have stirred anxiety among foreign students worried that activism could jeopardize their legal status. 'It's a very concerning practice. We don't know who these individuals are or what they're doing with this information,' said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. 'Essentially the administration is outsourcing surveillance.' It's unclear whether names from outside groups have reached top government officials. But concern about the pursuit of activists has risen since the March 8 arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student of Palestinian descent who helped lead demonstrations against Israel's conduct of the war. Immigration officers also detained a Tufts University student from Turkey outside Boston this week, and Trump and other officials have said that more arrests of international students are coming. 'Now they're using tools of the state to actually go after people,' said a Columbia graduate student from South Asia who has been active in protests and spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about losing her visa. 'We suddenly feel like we're being forced to think about our survival.' Uncertainty about the consequences Ayoub said he is concerned, in part, that groups bent on exposing pro-Palestinian activists will make mistakes and single out students who did nothing wrong. Some groups pushing for deportations say their focus is on students whose actions go beyond marching in protests, to those taking over campus buildings and inciting violence against Jewish students. 'If you're here, right, on a student visa causing civil unrest ... assaulting people on the streets, chanting for people's death, why the heck did you come to this country?' said Eliyahu Hawila, a software engineer who built the tool designed to identify masked protesters and outed the woman at the January rally. He has forwarded protesters' names to groups pressing for them to be deported, disciplined, fired or otherwise punished. 'If we want to argue that this is freedom of speech and they can say it, fine, they can say it,' Hawila said. 'But that doesn't mean that you will escape the consequences of society after you say it.' Pro-Israel groups that circulated the protester's photo claim that she was soon fired by her employer. An employee who answered the phone at the company confirmed that the woman had not worked there since early this year. In a brief phone conversation, the protester, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing, declined to comment on the advice of an attorney. Calls to report students to the government The unearthing and spreading of personal information to harass opponents has become commonplace in the uproar over the war in Gaza. The practice, known as doxing, has been used to expose both activists in the U.S. and Israeli soldiers who recorded video of themselves on the battlefield. But the use of facial-recognition technology by private groups enters territory previously reserved largely for law enforcement, said attorney Sejal Zota, who represents a group of California activists in a lawsuit against facial recognition company ClearviewAI. 'We're focused on government use of facial recognition because that's who we think of as traditionally tracking and monitoring dissent,' Zota said. But 'there are now all of these groups who are sort of complicit in that effort.' The calls to report protesters to immigration authorities have raised the stakes. 'Please tell everyone you know who is at a university to file complaints about foreign students and faculty who support Hamas,' Elizabeth Rand, president of a group called Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism, said in a Jan. 21 post to more than 60,000 followers on Facebook. It included a link to an ICE tip line. Rand's post was one of several publicized by New York University's chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Rand did not respond to messages seeking comment. NYU has dismissed criticism that she had any influence with its administrators. In early February, messages from a different group were posted in an online chat group frequented by Israelis living in New York. 'Do you know students at Columbia or any other university who are here on a study visa and participated in demonstrations against Israel?' one message said in Hebrew. 'If so, now is our time!' An accompanying message in English by the group End Jew Hatred included a link to the ICE hotline. The group did not respond to requests for comment. Facial recognition looms over protests Weeks before Khalil's arrest, a spokesman for right-wing Jewish group Betar said the activist topped a list of foreign students and faculty from nine universities it submitted to officials, including then-incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who made the decision to revoke Khalil's visa. Rubio was asked this week how the names of students targeted for visa revocation were reaching his desk and whether colleges or outside groups were providing information. He declined to answer. 'We're not going to talk about the process by which we're identifying it because obviously we're looking for more people,' he told reporters late Thursday during the return flight from a diplomatic trip to Suriname. In a one-sentence statement, the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, said the immigration agency is not 'working with' Betar, nor has it received any hotline tips from the group. But DHS declined to answer specific questions from The Associated Press about how it was treating reports from outside groups or the usage of facial recognition. Betar spokesman Daniel Levy said that some people on its list were identified using the facial-recognition tool called NesherAI created by Hawila's company, Stellar Technologies, which was launched from his Brooklyn apartment. The software takes its name from the Hebrew word for 'eagle.' Demonstrating the software for a reporter recently, Hawila paused repeatedly to tweak computer code to account for what he said was the just-completed ingestion of thousands of additional photos scraped from social media accounts. After some delay, the software matched a screenshot of a fully masked protester — seen on video confronting Hawila at a recent march — with publicity photos of a woman who described herself online as a New York artist. He said he would report her to the police for assault. Hawila, a native of Lebanon, is no stranger to controversy. He was the subject of news stories in 2021 when, after marrying an ultra-orthodox woman in New York, he was confronted with accusations that he lied about being Jewish. Religious authorities have since confirmed that his mother was Jewish and certified his faith, he said. Hawila said he no longer works directly with Betar but continues to share protesters' names with it and other pro-Israel groups and said he has discussed licensing his software to some of them. He showed an email exchange with one group that appeared to confirm such contact. 'Technology, when used in good ways, makes the world a better place,' he said. Trump promised to crack down during campaign As a candidate, Trump campaigned on a promise to crack down on campus antisemitism and threatened to deport activists with student visas that he called violent radicals. Soon after the election, Betar claimed on social media that it was working to identify and report international student protesters to the incoming administration. 'Entire university departments have been corrupted by jihadis,' Levy said in a recent e-mail exchange with the AP. Days before his arrest, Khalil said in an interview that he was aware of Betar's call for his deportation and that it and other groups were trying to use him as a 'scapegoat.' Students protesting Israel's conduct in Gaza have been unsure what to make of Betar, which the Anti-Defamation League recently added to its list of extremist groups. The ADL has also voiced support for revoking the visas of foreign student activists. At the University of Pittsburgh, leaders of Students for Justice in Palestine said they spoke with police in November after an online message from Betar that said it would be visiting the school to 'give you beepers' — an apparent reference to Israel's detonation of thousands of electronic pagers last fall to kill and wound members of Lebanon's Hezbollah militia. Ross Glick, who was Betar's executive director at the time, said that the message was 'a tongue-in-cheek dark joke,' not a threat. Both sides said police eventually decided no action was warranted. Months later, Betar said that Pitt students were among those on its deportation list. Students dependent on visas fear being targeted The efforts to target protesters have fueled anxiety among international students involved in campus activism. 'They've abducted someone on our campus, and that is a key source of our fear,' said the Columbia student from South Asia. She recounted cancelling spring break plans to travel to Canada, where her husband lives, for fear she would not be allowed to reenter the U.S. She has also shut down her social media accounts to avoid drawing attention to pro-Palestinian posts. And, because her apartment is off campus, she said she offered accommodation to other international students who live in university housing and are wary of visits by immigration officers. Leaders of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at George Washington University and Pittsburgh said some international students have asked to have their email addresses and names removed from membership lists to avoid scrutiny. A Columbia graduate student from the United Kingdom said that when he joined a pro-Palestinian encampment last year, he never considered whether it might affect his immigration status. Now he's rethinking an incident in October, when someone scattered fliers in a campus lounge celebrating the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war. A classmate who supports Israel accused him and others in the room of being responsible for the fliers and snapped their photos, according to the student, who said he had nothing to do with the material distributed. 'My main worry … is that he shared those photos and identified us and shared it with a larger group of people,' the student said. Other students have been dismayed by an atmosphere that encourages students to inform on their classmates. 'It really bothered me because this cultivates this environment of reporting on each other. It kind of gives memories of dictatorship and autocratic regimes,' said Sahar Bostock, who was among a group of Israeli students at Columbia who wrote an open letter criticizing efforts to report pro-Palestinian protesters. 'I had to say, 'Do you think this is right?'' ___ Associated Press reporters Jake Offenhartz and Noreen Nasir in New York and Matthew Lee in Miami contributed to this report.
USA Today
07-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Images show Latin American, not Indian, migrants being deported
Images show Latin American, not Indian, migrants being deported | Fact check Show Caption Hide Caption US military will fly migrants to Guantanamo Bay for first time U.S. officials say the first military aircraft carrying detained migrants to Guantanamo Bay is expected to depart on Tuesday. The claim: Images show Indian migrants who entered the US illegally being deported A Feb. 5 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) includes photos of handcuffed people walking in a line and sitting in a plane. "Handcuff & chained Indians," reads text above the images. "Indians who risked their life entering U.S. illegally are being deported back to Amrit Kal (sic)." The post was shared more than 700 times in two days. Other versions of the claim were shared on Facebook and X. More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page Our rating: False The photos show migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Cuba in the process of being deported. They don't show Indian migrants. Images show Latin American, not Indian, migrants The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, also known as ICE, launched a wave of raids during the first several weeks of President Donald Trump's second term as part of the administration's crackdown on immigration. The raids resulted in the deportation of more than 100 Indian migrants, according to The Associated Press. But the images in the Facebook post don't show these migrants. The Associated Press captured the photo of the group sitting on a bench with their feet handcuffed on Jan. 30. The picture shows migrants aboard a military aircraft in El Paso, Texas, waiting to be deported to Guatemala, according to the picture's description. The outlet also shared the image on Instagram the same day with a similar caption. The photo of the migrants sitting in various rows inside what appears to be a military aircraft was captured by the Department of Defense at the Tucson Internation Airport on Jan. 23. Though the picture's caption doesn't specify the aircraft's destination, the local Arizona outlet ABC15 News reported that the migrants were deported to Guatemala. Fact check: No, Mexico's president did not make statement about 'sending felons' to US USA TODAY was unable to locate the photo of the handcuffed men walking in a single-file line, but the Rio Grande outlet KRGV News published a clip of the same four men in the clothes shown in the post. The clip was captured at the Hidalgo International Bridge in Texas, where migrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Cuba were handed over to Mexican officials, according to the article. Reuters captured similar photos of the group being escorted across the bridge on Jan. 27, including the one shown below. Both pictures' captions cite the same location as the KRGV article. "Amrit Kaal" is not a place but a Hindi phrase that means "auspicious era," according to the Associated Press. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has used the phrase to describe the country's resurgence during his term. USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Lead Stories also debunked the claim. Our fact-check sources Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here. USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta.
