Latest news with #JordanWells
CTV News
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
DIY skatepark pops up in Centretown, unsanctioned by the city
Jordan Wells skateboarding at the DIY skatepark in Centretown on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025 (Katelyn Wilson/CTV News Ottawa) A new skatepark has appeared in Ottawa's Centretown but it wasn't built by the city. It's tucked away at the corner of Bronson Avenue and Slater Street and was built by local skateboarders. It's what's known as a DIY or 'Do It Yourself' skatepark—an unsanctioned, community-created spot. 'It's very much like a part of skateboard culture in the sense of it's a DIY effort,' said skateboarder Jordan Wells. 'Really it's kind of like putting graffiti on the wall and making an art piece in that kind of way.' The DIY park has drawn skaters of all levels, with some saying it includes unique obstacles and features. 'A lot of this stuff you won't find at your average skatepark,' one skater told CTV News, 'aside from maybe the rail and the box.' But while the space is already proving popular, it's not officially sanctioned and that means the city could remove it at any time. In a statement the city says, 'While the street is not in use at this time, the City is planning to permanently close this section of road and work with the adjacent landowner to create a development opportunity. In the meantime, staff are currently determining next steps for the improvised skatepark, which includes reaching out to a local skateboarding association.' Aaron Cayer with the Ottawa Skateboarding Association says the park is part of a larger movement of DIY skateparks, one that reflects how communities can reclaim and repurpose public space. 'Skateboarders have a tendency to look at the world differently,' he said. 'It's an interesting example of how a community group can reappropriate public space in our city.' He says the association is recommending DIY spaces like this be part of the city's longterm vision. 'Leeside Park in Vancouver is a great example, where something started like this and I believe they created a memorandum of understanding,' he said. For the people who helped build the space, it's about more than just having a place to skate, it's about creating something meaningful and shared. 'I hope we can just have a space to informally create,' Wells said. 'I hope I get a chance to play with more concrete.'
San Francisco Chronicle
17-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Lawsuit targets ICE arrests at immigration courthouses
Immigration courthouses, once considered safe places for migrants seeking the right to remain in the United States, have become sites of massive arrests and deportation orders under a Trump administration policy that was challenged in a nationwide lawsuit Wednesday. The policy discards decades of practices under presidents of both parties and unconstitutionally 'deprives noncitizens of a meaningful opportunity to be heard' in court, lawyers for immigrants and advocacy organizations said in a suit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. The immigrants 'have been abruptly ripped from their families, lives, homes and jobs for appearing in immigration court,' the lawyers said. One of the attorneys in the case, Jordan Wells of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, said the administration's drastic changes 'forsake any notion of immigration courts as a neutral forum, weaponizing them into a trap for immigrants who show up in reliance on the American promise of a fair process before a judge, only to be met instead with handcuffs and shunted into a fast-track deportation process.' California does not allow federal immigration agents at state courts, a policy that does not affect U.S. immigration courts. Immigration courts, whose judges are appointed by the Justice Department, hear cases of undocumented immigrants seeking asylum and others applying for legal status. Under previous administrations, the lawsuit said, immigrants appearing at the courts were protected from arrest unless their presence posed a threat to public safety or national security, rules intended to encourage migrants to attend their hearings. But those restrictions were repealed in the first few days of Donald Trump's administration. Then in May, the suit said, Trump's Department of Homeland Security adopted an 'unprecedented policy' of directing its attorneys to seek immediate dismissal of immigrants' cases, allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to seize immigrants at the courthouses and hold them in custody. They were then placed in 'expedited removal' proceedings before a judge, with little or no access to a lawyer. Those proceedings, which can result in swift deportation, were formerly limited to migrants who had been in the U.S. for no more than two weeks and were found within 100 miles of the border. But the Trump administration now applies expedited removal to immigrants who have been in the U.S. for up to two years, or sometimes longer, the suit said. The lawyers said one plaintiff had been shot and imprisoned in Cuba before fleeing, and has a daughter and partner who are legal U.S. residents. He entered the U.S. in 2022 and was attending immigration proceedings this May when his case was suddenly dismissed and he was arrested and eventually moved to a detention facility in Tacoma, thousands of miles from his family. Another plaintiff fled Liberia after suffering female genital mutilation and was hospitalized after her arrest in immigration court, the lawyers said. The plaintiffs also include a gay man who fled Ecuador, was deported in less than 30 days under the new policy, and now is in hiding in Ecuador, the suit said.
