Latest from The Intercept
The Intercept
16 minutes ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Trump Admin Prepares to Kick Mixed Immigration Status Families Out of Public Housing
President Donald Trump appears to be quietly reviving a plan from his first term that would kick families of mixed immigration status out of public housing and prohibit them from receiving most forms of rental assistance, escalating his administration's attacks on access to public services for immigrant communities. Last Wednesday, the Trump administration posted a proposed rule for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA. While details were scant on the website, the language mirrors an abandoned 2019 proposal that would have increased documentation requirements for federal housing assistance — and likely forced tens of thousands of mixed-status families to choose between homelessness, financial ruin, or family separation. Undocumented people are currently ineligible for most federally-funded rental assistance programs, but in families where some people have legal status, members who qualify can receive pro-rated housing assistance, allowing the whole family to live together in public housing. Under the proposed 2019 rule, those families would become ineligible for most federally-funded housing assistance programs if at least one member of the family is disqualified by their immigration status. Housing and immigration experts told The Intercept that the new proposal looks like a revival of that attempted rule. 'The choice that families will be faced with,' said Anna Bailey, a Senior Analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 'is going to be staying together, but losing the assistance that makes housing affordable, putting them at risk of eviction and instability and homelessness or splitting up… that's a really agonizing decision.' The Washington Post reported in April that the Trump administration was drafting a rule to exclude mixed-status families from public housing, which they'd previously attempted to implement in 2019. Now, experts believe the administration may have taken the first step in enacting that policy by posting the proposed rule to OIRA — a subset of the Office of Management and Budget that has to review the rule before it can go to HUD. HUD did not return The Intercept's requests for comment by the time of publication. '[The 2019 rule] was met with overwhelming opposition,' explained Marie Claire Tran-Leung, Evictions Initiative Project Director and a Senior Staff Attorney at the National Housing Law Project. 'There were 30,000 comments, which was the record at the time.' The first Trump administration ran out of time to finalize the rule, Tran-Leung said, and the Biden administration withdrew it. Though undocumented people can't access housing assistance programs themselves, the current rules allow them to benefit from limited financial assistance and increased housing stability for their families. A family with one undocumented parent and two U.S. citizen children, for example, would receive pro-rated assistance based on the two children. A family with one undocumented parent, one U.S. citizen parent, and two U.S. citizen children would receive assistance based on the three citizens in the family. Analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities based on the 2019 version of the rule found that the primary victims of this policy would be children, who made up over half of the population in public housing living in mixed-status households. According to their findings, roughly 58,200 children could lose housing as a result of the policy change — an estimated 56,000 of those children are U.S. citizens. Latino families would also be disproportionately impacted by the rule change. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report, roughly 85 percent of mixed-status families living in public housing were Latino. The analysis found that, on average, these families typically earned around $13,000 a year. 'These are families who also very much need this to stay stably housed,' said Sonya Acosta, Senior Policy Analyst with the Housing and Income Security team for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 'Losing this will automatically destabilize them.' Esther Reyes, a Campaign Strategist for the Protecting Immigrant Families coalition, said this change would have a 'profound' impact on children in mixed-status families. 'The impact is going to be not just widespread, but very profound. Stable housing is a really important determinant of a child's well-being,' she said. 'It's one of the foundational sources of stability that children need to be able to meet their other needs and milestones.' Research has consistently shown links between housing instability and a host of adverse outcomes for children — including mental health effects like depression and anxiety, and dangers to physical health, including increased emergency room visits. Acosta and Bailey noted that this time around, they expect a similar rule change could affect fewer families — because the Trump administration has effectively scared many mixed-status families out of accessing public benefits. In addition to prohibiting mixed-status families from living in public housing, the original rule also included new documentation requirements to check citizenship status. Experts predict the change would not only be difficult for many low-income families to obtain, but could also scare immigrants from applying for assistance in the first place. 'Already, a lot of families with immigrants are afraid of applying for assistance that they actually are eligible for,' said Bailey. The change could intensify that fear, she said, so 'even folks who are absolutely eligible for assistance may not apply and seek help that they need to have housing stability.' 'It doesn't matter if you're an immigrant or how long you've been in this country; everybody needs a safe, stable place to live.' Experts also expressed concern that the spread of fear and misinformation around the potential rule change could drive families out of their homes prematurely. 'The danger is that families make the calculus that they have to leave the housing that they currently have,' said Tran-Leung at The National Housing Law Project. 'We are trying to really prevent that, because until this final rule is passed, the law hasn't changed, and they have the right to stay there.' For now, the rule change is only in its initial stages. The administration still needs to post the proposed rule to HUD's website, along with a detailed policy proposal, and allow for public comment. Until that happens, its exact details will remain unclear. Acosta said she expects the rule to be 'essentially the same,' as the 2019 version, especially in its goals of excluding mixed-status families from subsidized housing. 'But at this point, it's pretty unclear.' No matter how the details turn out, the rule is another attempt to scapegoat immigrants for a housing crisis entirely within the U.S. government's power to solve, Acosta said. 'In a country as wealthy and as powerful as ours is, we actually could make sure that everyone has a safe place to live,' Acosta said. 'It doesn't matter if you're an immigrant or how long you've been in this country; everybody needs a safe, stable place to live. So part of what this kind of policy proposal is trying to do is pit the needs of some people against other.'
The Intercept
6 hours ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
The Pentagon Won't Track Troops Deployed on U.S. Soil. So We Will.
In his first six months in office, President Donald Trump has overseen the deployment of nearly 20,000 federal troops on American soil, including personnel from the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines, according to the Pentagon's public statements. But the true number of troops deployed may be markedly higher. When asked directly, the Army said it has no running tally of how many troops have been deployed. These federal forces have been operating in at least five states — Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas — with more deployments on the horizon, all in service of the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda. Experts say military involvement in domestic anti-immigrant operations undermines American democracy and has nudged the United States closer to a genuine police state. 'If the president can use the military as a domestic police force entirely under his control, it can be used as a tool of tyranny and oppression.' 'This level of involvement of the military in civilian law enforcement in the interior of the country is unprecedented — and really dangerous,' said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's liberty and national security program, who told The Intercept that recent deployments violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a bedrock 19th-century law seen as fundamental to the democratic tradition in America which bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement. She added: 'If the president can use the military as a domestic police force entirely under his control, it can be used as a tool of tyranny and oppression. We've seen it all around the world and throughout history.' The norms surrounding the use of military force within U.S. borders are eroding, and the executive branch is operating with free rein, emboldened by a legislature and judiciary seemingly uninterested in curtailing its actions. These soldiers have been sent to patrol the border, put down popular protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, participate in ICE raids, and assist in immigration enforcement missions from coast to coast. Here, to the extent of what is known so far, is what they've been up to. President Donald Trump began the further militarization of America on his first day back in office. 'Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics,' Trump announced on January 20, directing the military to 'assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border.' Despite the fact that Trump's fearmongering was his typical hyperbole, more than 10,000 troops are deploying or have deployed to the southern border, according to U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which oversees U.S. military activity from Mexico's southern border up to the North Pole. Under the direction of NORTHCOM, military personnel — including soldiers from the Fourth Infantry Division at Fort Carson in Colorado, one of the Army's most storied combat units — have deployed under the moniker Joint Task Force-Southern Border, or JTF-SB, since March, bolstering approximately 2,500 service members who were already supporting U.S. Customs and Border Protection's border security mission. One-third of the U.S. border is now completely militarized due to the creation of four new national defense areas, or NDAs: sprawling extensions of U.S. military bases patrolled by troops who can detain immigrants until they can be handed over to Border Patrol agents. The Air Force is responsible for the recently created South Texas NDA, which encompasses federal property along 250 miles of the Rio Grande River. The Navy controls the Yuma NDA, which extends along 140 miles of federal property on the U.S.–Mexico border near the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Arizona. The New Mexico NDA, created in April, spans approximately 170 miles of noncontiguous land along that state's border, serving as an extension of the Army's Fort Huachuca. Another NDA was created in May in West Texas and covers approximately 63 miles of noncontiguous land between El Paso and Fort Hancock, serving as an extension of the Army's Fort Bliss. Around 8,500 military personnel were assigned to JTF-SB to 'enhance US Customs and Border Patrol's capacity to identify, track and disrupt threats to border security,' chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said at the beginning of the month. JTF-SB says the current number of personnel deploys stands at 7,600, while NORTHCOM says the current number of federal troops providing border security is closer to 8,600. No one actually knows how many troops have been involved in border operations this year. 'We do not maintain a running total of Service Members who have served with JTF-SB since its inception, so the total number since March is currently unavailable,' Kent Redmond, a spokesperson for JTF-Southern Border told The Intercept. NORTHCOM didn't have a number on hand either. But more than 10 Task Forces have assisted JTF-SB, including Task Force Mountain Warrior, consisting of soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team; Task Force Castle, made up of soldiers from the 41st Engineer Battalion; 500 Marines and Navy personnel from Task Force Sapper; and 500 Marines and sailors from Task Force Forge. The latter replaced the Task Force Sapper troops and are now conducting patrols in the Yuma NDA. Since March alone, Parnell said, the JTF-SB has conducted more than 3,500 patrols, including more than 150 'trilateral' patrols with CBP and the Mexican military. There have, however, been only seven temporary detentions by troops within the National Defense Areas, according to Redmond. He said the seven persons were 'detained in place' by JTF-SB personnel for less than 10 minutes. 'The amount being spent to have the world's best fighting force walk around the border to pick up a handful of people is shocking.' 'Setting aside the threats to democracy and liberty, the sheer waste is staggering. The amount being spent to have the world's best fighting force walk around the border to pick up a handful of people is shocking,' said Goitein, who also noted that the detentions violated the Posse Comitatus Act. 'They may think if they detain people for only 10 minutes it's not a violation, but that's not how the law works,' Goitein explained. 'They may also say that the Posse Comitatus Act simply doesn't apply when the purpose is to protect a military base, but here it's clear that the primary purpose is enforcement of immigration law.' The southern border increasingly resembles the site of one of America's post-9/11 foreign occupations, as military personnel employ weapons and gear originally intended for foreign battlefields. Troops have used Stryker armored vehicles (for the first time on the border since 2012), Black Hawk helicopters, Humvees, hulking up-armored MRAPs, long range advanced scout surveillance systems (which the Army uses for 'line of sight target acquisition'), Black Hornet microdrones, tethered aerostats (surveillance balloons with high-powered cameras), command launch units (which provide thermal imaging), AN/TPQ-53 Quick Reaction Capability Radar (used in the event of attack by rockets and mortars), AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radar systems (used to counter low-flying aircraft and drones), while conducting, ground patrols, mounted patrols in armored vehicles, helicopter aerial 'deterrence' patrols, and even 'air assaults.' The military has even dispatched Navy warships offshore to secure the border. After battling Yemen's Houthi rebels in the Gulf of Aden earlier this year, for example, the USS Stockdale — a guided-missile destroyer — was deployed to support NORTHCOM's southern border operations alongside the Coast Guard on the U.S.–Mexico maritime border. That ship took over for the USS Spruance, another guided-missile destroyer drafted into anti-immigrant operations. 'We are dead serious about 100% OPERATIONAL CONTROL of the southern border,' Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a post on X in March. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly announced historically low apprehensions along the southern border. 'The numbers don't lie — under President Trump's leadership, DHS and CBP have shattered records and delivered the most secure border in American history,' said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem earlier this month. And as early as April, DHS announced, 'Customs and Border Protection now has total control of the border.' Despite all of this, as well as the huge influx of troops and weapons of war deployed at the border, when The Intercept inquired whether full operational control of the border had been achieved and 'if not, why not?' DHS demurred. A senior DHS official, who offered comments on the condition of anonymity for no discernible reason, provided rote talking points and praise of Trump and Noem. The official added that the department was 'grateful' for JTF-SB's 'support.' More than 5,000 troops have also been deployed to Los Angeles since early June. The National Guard soldiers and Marines operating in Southern California — under the command of the Army's Task Force 51 — were sent to 'protect the safety and security of federal functions, personnel, and property.' In practice, this has mostly meant guarding federal buildings across LA from protests against the ongoing ICE raids sweeping the city. Since Trump called up the troops on June 7, they have carried out exactly one temporary detainment, a Task Force 51 spokesperson told The Intercept. Parnell, the Pentagon spokesperson, described this deployment as Task Force 51 supporting 'more than 170 missions in over 130 separate locations from nine federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Marshal Service, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security' in a briefing in early July. Task Force 51 failed to provide any other metrics regarding troops' involvement in raids, arrests, or street patrols in response to questions by The Intercept. Troops were sent to LA over the objections of local officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In addition to guarding federal buildings, troops have also recently participated in raids alongside camouflage-clad ICE agents. An assault on MacArthur Park, a recreational hub in one of LA's most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods on July 7, for example, included 90 armed U.S. troops and 17 military Humvees. Its main accomplishment was rousting a summer day camp for children. No arrests were made. California National Guard soldiers also backed ICE raids on state-licensed marijuana nurseries this month. The troops took part in the military-style assaults on two locations, one in the Santa Barbara County town of Carpinteria, about 90 miles northwest of LA and one in the Ventura County community of Camarillo, about 50 miles from LA. ICE detained more than 200 people, including U.S. citizens, during the joint operations. One man, Jaime Alanís Garcia, died while trying to flee from the raid in Camarillo. On July 1, Task Force 51 announced that it would release approximately 150 members of the California National Guard from their LA duty. That same day, NORTHCOM said that the Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment were leaving Los Angeles but would be replaced by the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment. Last Tuesday, Trump administration officials announced that about 2,000 more National Guard members deployed to LA would be released from service. On Monday, the Trump administration announced it was withdrawing the 700 active-duty Marines from Los Angeles. The withdrawals followed repeated reporting by The Intercept highlighting the failure of the troops to do much of substance. All told, since the deployments began, around 5,500 troops have been sent to southern California, according to Becky Farmer, a NORTHCOM spokesperson. On the other side of the country, Marines are being hustled to Florida to aid the administration's anti-immigrant agenda. Responding to a DHS request, Hegseth approved a mobilization of up to 700 active, National Guard, and Reserve forces. The first contingent — approximately 200 Marines from Marine Wing Support Squadron 272, Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina — have been mobilized to support ICE's 'interior immigration enforcement mission' in Florida, NORTHCOM announced earlier this month. The command noted that they were only the 'first wave' of ICE assistance. NORTHCOM says additional forces will be deployed to Louisiana and Texas. Hundreds more Guardsmen are expected to be sent to assist in more than a half dozen other states, including Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia. Some of these same states are also using their own National Guard members in their own anti-immigrant operations. More than 4,200 Texas National Guard soldiers and airmen on state duty are engaged in Operation Lone Star, a border security initiative launched by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in March 2021. Texas's forces were bolstered, until April, by members of the Indiana National Guard. Nearly 70 Florida National Guard members are also on state duty, conducting base camp security at the remote migrant detention center in the state's Everglades known as 'Alligator Alcatraz.' While Trump insisted that the swamp gulag was reserved for 'deranged psychopaths' and 'some of the most vicious people on the planet,' it was revealed that hundreds of detainees had committed no offense other than civil immigration violations. 'Governors should be doing everything in their power to avoid their state's national guard troops being pulled into this lawless, authoritarian power grab, not spending precious resources to help it along,' Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War, told The Intercept. The Trump administration's use of military forces in its anti-immigrant crusade has been criticized as a publicity stunt and an authoritarian power play. The directive signed by Trump calling up the California National Guard, for example, cited '10 U.S.C. 12406,' a provision within Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services that allows the federal deployment of National Guard forces if 'there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.' There was, however, no rebellion. Vice President JD Vance even recently vacationed at Disneyland in Anaheim, about 25 miles from LA. Still, experts say that the stunt deployments represent a clear danger to American democracy by violating the Posse Comitatus Act; normalizing the use of the military in civilian law enforcement activities; and further transforming the armed forces into a tool of domestic oppression by aiding ICE, which increasingly operates as a masked, secret police force. 'ICE is running a nationwide campaign of violent, racist kidnappings, and Hegseth's Pentagon is bending over backward to make the military into ICE's chief sidekicks,' said Haghdoosti. 'Troops abetting violence against their own neighbors isn't tenable for our communities, our democracy, or the troops themselves.'
The Intercept
11 hours ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
State Cops Quietly Tag Thousands as Gang Members — and Feed Their Names to ICE
Police gang databases are known to be faulty. The secret registries allow state and local cops to feed civilians' personal information into massive, barely regulated lists based on speculative criteria — like their personal contacts, clothing, and tattoos — even if they haven't committed a crime. The databases aren't subject to judicial review, and they don't require police to notify the people they peg as gang members. They're an ideal tool for officials seeking to imply criminality without due process. And many are directly accessible to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An investigation by The Intercept found that at least eight states and large municipalities funnel their gang database entries to ICE — which can then use the information to target people for arrest, deportation, or rendition to so-called 'third countries.' Some of the country's largest and most immigrant-dense states, like Texas, New York, Illinois, and Virginia, route the information to ICE through varied paths that include a decades-old police clearinghouse and a network of post-9/11 intelligence-sharing hubs. Both federal immigration authorities and local police intelligence units operate largely in secret, and the full extent of the gang database-sharing between them is unknown. What is known, however, is that the lists are riddled with mistakes: Available research, reporting, and audits have revealed that many contain widespread errors and encourage racial profiling. The flawed systems could help ICE expand its dragnet as it seeks to carry out President Donald Trump's promised 'mass deportation' campaign. The administration has cited common tattoos and other spurious evidence to create its own lists of supposed gang members, invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center prison, also known as CECOT. Gang databases The Intercept identified as getting shared with ICE contain hundreds of thousands of other entries, including some targeted at Central American communities that have landed in the administration's crosshairs. That information can torpedo asylum and other immigration applications and render those seeking legal status deportable. 'They're going after the asylum system on every front they can,' said Andrew Case, supervising counsel for criminal justice issues at the nonprofit LatinoJustice. 'Using gang affiliation as a potential weapon in that fight is very scary.' Information supplied by local gang databases has already driven at least one case that became a national flashpoint: To justify sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT in March, federal officials used a disputed report that a disgraced Maryland cop submitted to a defunct registry to label him as a member of a transnational gang. The report cited the word of an unnamed informant, Abrego's hoodie, and a Chicago Bulls cap — items 'indicative of the Hispanic gang culture,' it said. The case echoed patterns from Trump's first term, when ICE leaned on similar information from local cops — evidence as flimsy as doodles in a student's notebook — to label immigrants as gang members eligible for deportation. As Trump's second administration shifts its immigration crackdown into overdrive, ICE is signaling with cases like Abrego's that it's eager to continue fueling it with local police intelligence. Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, argued that this kind of information-sharing boosts ICE's ability to target people without due process. 'This opens the door to an incredible amount of abuse,' she said. 'This is our worst fear.' In February, ICE arrested Francisco Garcia Casique, a barber from Venezuela living in Texas. The agency alleged that he was a member of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang at the center of the latest anti-immigrant panic, and sent him to CECOT. Law enforcement intelligence on Garcia Casique was full of errors: A gang database entry contained the wrong mugshot and appears to have confused him with a man whom Dallas police interviewed about a Mexican gang, USA Today reported. Garcia Casique's family insists he was never in a gang. It's unclear exactly what role the faulty gang database entry played in Garcia Casique's rendition, which federal officials insist wasn't a mistake. But ICE agents had direct access to it — plus tens of thousands of other entries from the same database — The Intercept has found. Under a Texas statute Trump ally Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in 2017, any county with a population over 100,000 or municipality over 50,000 must maintain or contribute to a local or regional gang database. More than 40 Texas counties and dozens more cities and towns meet that bar. State authorities compile the disparate gang intelligence in a central registry known as TxGANG, which contained more than 71,000 alleged gang members as of 2022. Texas then uploads the entries to the 'Gang File' in an FBI-run clearinghouse known as the National Crime Information Center, state authorities confirmed to The Intercept. Created in the 1960s, the NCIC is one of the most commonly used law enforcement datasets in the country, with local, state, and federal police querying its dozens of files millions of times a day. (The FBI did not answer The Intercept's questions.) 'This opens the door to an incredible amount of abuse.' ICE can access the NCIC, including the Gang File, in several ways — most directly through its Investigative Case Management system, Department of Homeland Security documents show. The Obama administration hired Palantir, the data-mining company co-founded by billionaire former Trump adviser Peter Thiel, to build the proprietary portal, which makes countless records and databases immediately available to ICE agents. Palantir is currently expanding the tool, having signed a $96 million contract during the Biden administration to upgrade it. TxGANG isn't the only gang database ICE can access through its Palantir-built system. The Intercept trawled the open web for law enforcement directives, police training materials, and state and local statutes that mention adding gang database entries to the NCIC. Those The Intercept identified likely represent a small subset of the jurisdictions that upload to the ICE-accessible clearinghouse. New York Focus first reported the NCIC pipeline-to-immigration agents when it uncovered a 20-year-old gang database operated by the New York State Police. Any law enforcement entity in the Empire State can submit names to the statewide gang database, which state troopers then consider for submission to the NCIC. The New York state gang database contains more than 5,100 entries and has never been audited. The Wisconsin Department of Justice, which did not respond to requests for comment, has instructed its intelligence bureau on how to add names to the NCIC Gang File as recently as 2023, The Intercept found. Virginia has enshrined its gang database-sharing in commonwealth law, which explicitly requires NCIC uploading. In April, Virginia authorities helped ICE arrest 132 people who law enforcement officials claimed were part of transnational gangs. The Illinois State Police, too, have shared their gang database to the FBI-run dataset. They also share it directly with the Department of Homeland Security, ICE's umbrella agency, through an in-house information-sharing system, a local PBS affiliate uncovered last month. The Illinois State Police's gang database contained over 90,000 entries as of 2018. The data-sharing with Homeland Security flew under the radar for 17 years and likely violates Illinois's 2017 sanctuary state law. 'Even in the jurisdictions that are not inclined to work with federal immigration authorities, the information they're collecting could end up in these federal databases,' said Gupta. Aside from the National Crime Information Center, there are other conduits for local police to enable the Trump administration's gang crusade. Some departments have proactively shared their gang information directly with ICE. As with the case of the Illinois State Police's gang database, federal agents had access to the Chicago Police Department's gang registry through a special data-sharing system. From 2009 to 2018, immigration authorities searched the database at least 32,000 times, a city audit later found. In one instance, the city admitted it mistakenly added a man to the database after ICE used it to arrest him. The Chicago gang database was full of other errors, like entries whose listed dates of birth made them over 100 years old. The inaccuracies and immigration-related revelations, among other issues, prompted the city to shut down the database in 2023. Other departments allow partner agencies to share their gang databases with immigration authorities. In 2016, The Intercept reported that the Los Angeles Police Department used the statewide CalGang database — itself shown to contain widespread errors — to help ICE deport undocumented people. The following year, California enacted laws that prohibited using CalGang for immigration enforcement. Yet the California Department of Justice told The Intercept that it still allows the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office to share the database, which contained nearly 14,000 entries as of last year, with the Department of Homeland Security. 'Each user must document their need to know/right to know prior to logging into CalGang,' and that documentation is 'subject to regular audit,' a California Department of Justice spokesperson said. Read Our Complete Coverage Local police also share gang information with the feds through a series of regional hubs known as fusion centers. Created during the post-9/11 domestic surveillance boom, fusion centers were meant to facilitate intelligence-sharing — particularly about purported terrorism — between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Their scope quickly expanded, and they've played a key role in the growth of both immigration- and gang-related policing and surveillance. The Boston Police Department told The Intercept that agencies within the Department of Homeland Security seek access to its gang database by filing a 'request for information' through the fusion center known as the Boston Regional Intelligence Center. In 2016, ICE detained a teenager after receiving records from the Boston gang database, which used a report about a tussle at his high school to label him as a gang member. Boston later passed a law barring law enforcement officials from sharing personal information with immigration enforcement agents, but it contains loopholes for criminal investigations. In the two decades since their creation, fusion center staff have proactively sought to increase the upward flow of local gang intelligence — including by leveraging federal funds, as in the case between the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, which works directly with the Department of Homeland Security. An email from 2013, uncovered as part of a trove of hacked documents, shows that an employee at the Maryland fusion center threatened to withhold some federal funding if the D.C. police didn't regularly share its gang database. 'I wanted to prepare you that [sic] your agency's decision … to NOT connect … may indeed effect [sic] next years [sic] funding for your contractual analysts,' a fusion center official wrote. 'So keep that in mind…………..' Four years later, ICE detained a high schooler after receiving a D.C. police gang database entry. The entry said that he 'self-admitted' to being in a gang, an Intercept investigation later reported — a charge his lawyer denied. For jurisdictions that don't automatically comply, the Trump administration is pushing to entice them into cooperating with ICE. The budget bill Trump signed into law on the Fourth of July earmarks some $14 billion for state and local ICE collaboration, as well as billions more for local police. Official police partnerships with ICE had already skyrocketed this year; more are sure to follow. Revelations about gang database-sharing show how decades of expanding police surveillance and speculative gang policing have teed up the Trump administration's crackdowns, said Gupta of the American Immigration Council. 'The core problem is one that extends far beyond the Trump administration,' she said. 'You let the due process bar drop that far for so long, it makes it very easy for Trump.'
The Intercept
a day ago
- Health
- The Intercept
Our Reporter Got Into Gaza. He Witnessed a Famine of Israel's Making.
It was Tuesday, June 10 when Khalil heard from neighbors that an aid truck had arrived a few kilometers from where he lived in Deir al Balah, Gaza. By then he had already lost about 45 pounds since the war began in 2023. With his brothers and a friend, Khalil set off on foot. On the walk over, the 26-year-old could hear intermittent shelling, but the promise of food, he felt, was worth the risk. 'Hunger has become stronger than fear,' said Khalil, who agreed to speak on the condition that his last name not be published. When they arrived around 6:30 a.m., a huge crowd was gathering at the aid point in Netzarim. 'People start heading there before sunrise because the lines get impossibly long,' Khalil said. Thousands had clearly gotten the same tip. The sheer amount of desperate, hungry people was overwhelming. Khalil said, 'I hadn't eaten properly in days. I was dizzy and weak.' The distribution site was run by a new aid provider active in Gaza for only a few weeks. Khalil quickly noticed military presence. 'We saw the Israeli soldiers in full military uniform standing next to their armored vehicles. We arrived knowing the place was dangerous. But, there was no clash, no threat to them,' Khalil said. (The Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories bureau did not respond to written requests for comment for this article.) 'I got closer to death that day than a piece of bread' He stood in line with hundreds of others. There were children, women, and elderly men. 'Some were barefoot, some had been waiting since the night before,' he recalled. As his group inched closer to the point where they hoped they would be able to grab a parcel of items, gunshots rang out. Khalil ran for his life. 'They began shooting directly at unarmed civilians,' he said. 'The bullets were chasing us as if we were targets on a shooting range, and not just hungry people. We scattered under a hail of bullets. I got closer to death that day than a piece of bread.' Khalil survived that quest for food — alive to starve another day instead. But at least 36 Palestinians did not, and 207 more were wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Since Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas in mid-March, more than 875 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food. Reporting from inside Gaza over the last few months, The Intercept observed a famine that is manufactured and an aid distribution system seemingly designed to cause more suffering and death. Amid the war, Israel has rendered Gaza inaccessible to the foreign press; American journalist Afeef Nessouli accessed the Strip by volunteering as an aid worker for a medical nonprofit and reporting in his off-hours. Usually during war, the distribution of medical care and food to a besieged population would not be administered by any party waging war against it, much less by an illegally occupying military. And in most situations, aid operations would closely involve established organizations already active in the area. But that's not the case in Gaza. Israel has effectively banned the biggest and longest-running aid group in the region: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA. And by gutting the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, a critical funding vehicle for aid groups including UNRWA, U.S. President Donald Trump has strangled international aid in Gaza. Israel and the U.S. have instead rolled out a new scheme centered around a fledgling U.S.-based nonprofit that operates alongside the same Israeli military responsible for killing more than 230 journalists, 1,400 health care workers, and 17,000 Palestinian children in the last two years. With a few small exceptions, all aid reaching Gaza since May has moved through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was established in Delaware in February. The organization has received tens of millions from the U.S. to distribute aid in Gaza — and, reportedly, some $100 million from an unnamed country. GHF did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story. Since it started operations, the number of locations in Gaza where residents could receive aid has plummeted from around 400 to four sites. 'Sometimes only one hub is actually operating,' said Hanya Aljamal, the senior project coordinator at the aid group Action for Humanity, who is based in Deir al Balah. Sometimes, Aljamal said, the sites are closed for security reasons, other times for maintenance. Khalil corroborates this: 'I went a few days ago and it wasn't open.' He says now he checks the GHF's Facebook page, which informs people of the schedule. Aljamal says she believes 'they operate semi-daily for only two hours a day.' Arriving in Gaza in late March just as Israel broke the ceasefire, The Intercept witnessed firsthand what happened to Gaza's most vulnerable after the U.S. defunded USAID and UNRWA and turned those agencies' work over to the Israeli military and GHF. Famine has been a problem in Gaza since the early days of the war. But when Israel and Hamas announced a ceasefire on January 19, 2025, access to goods became easier. 'Meat, vegetables and chicken — and even snacks — were reachable, albeit at a slightly expensive price,' Aljamal said. 'But we had options.' When the holy month of Ramadan began on February 28, it wasn't hard to find a simple meal of rice or lentils for dinner, or labneh and za'atar for suhoor before fasting for the day. But on March 2, Israel cut off food imports to Gaza when it imposed a blockade. On March 18, Israel shattered the ceasefire when it restarted its campaign of airstrikes. Even after Eid, which marked the end of the Holy Month, one meal a day remained standard practice — if not a luxury. At the time, community kitchens like Shabab Gaza were running low on food. But they were still delivering what they could to areas the Israeli military referred to as 'red zones'— swaths of land Israel has evacuated and banned aid from entering, such as Khan Yunis. By spring, 70 percent of Gaza was considered a 'red zone.' Shabab Gaza, 'the youth of Gaza' in Arabic, was making meals of rice so people could break their fast at sundown. Inside a makeshift kitchen housed in a tent, the men, fasting themselves, worked in groups to cook the rice in vats. They packaged it quickly to deliver to the surrounding area, but neighbors also showed up with pots and pans, ready to grab the food for their families, or ready to eat themselves. The Shabab Gaza community kitchen in Al Qarara, Khan Yunis, Gaza, seen on June 1, 2025. Photo: Afeef Nessouli There were about 170 operational community kitchens before the crossings closed in early March. Just two months later, dozens had ceased operating. The blockade halted the entry of vital goods for months, resulting in scarcity and price hikes. It was made worse by the resumption of fighting between Israel and Hamas, which restricted access to domestic produce 'because of new evacuation orders from the north, Rafah, and areas in Khan Yunis where new crops were cultivated,' Aljamal said. At the market, produce was fresh but limited. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and sometimes potatoes were for sale, grown on the shards of Gazan farmland remaining. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reported that Israel has destroyed 83 percent of Gaza's agricultural cropland and restricted access to some of what remains, rendering less than 5 percent of cropland 'available for cultivation.' 'It used to be that three kilos of these onions were just $3,' an older woman said in her makeshift kitchen in eastern Khan Yunis. By April, an onion cost a dollar apiece. Flour became incredibly expensive, with a single bag selling for hundreds of dollars. Because nearly every bank branch and ATM remain inoperable in Gaza, people cannot find cash to pay for even a single bag of flour. They are reliant on an unregulated network of cash brokers to get money for daily life with commissions hovering around 40 percent. Even domesticated chickens have been laying fewer eggs than usual, one international aid worker said. 'Food isn't available for them, neither are supplements or animal feed that provide stuff like calcium, which is essential to egg production,' the worker said. And like humans, chickens also experience stress. The Israeli military's bombs and quadcopters are loud. As of July, OCHA reports that 100 percent of the population in Gaza was projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity. That includes 1 million people facing 'emergency' levels of food insecurity, and 470,000 facing 'catastrophic' levels of food insecurity. 'I have lost nearly 37 kilos,' said Basel, one of the men at Shabab Gaza's community kitchen. He showed pictures of himself from 2023, back when he used to weigh 247 pounds. Basel is bald with blue eyes, with a 6-foot, 2-inch frame. Now 165 pounds, he looks thin, his face gaunt. Several men showed pictures of this kind of transformation. They described the indignity of going hungry every day and how weakened they feel. 'Look at what they are doing to us. We are so tired,' Basel explained. 'By God, it has been almost two years, really we are so hungry,' he said. Basel on July 17, 2023, on the left, and on July 12, 2025 on the right. Photo: Courtesy of Basel Lehya Nessouli, the Intercept reporter, volunteered in Gaza with Glia, a medical nonprofit, from late March to early June. With other medical workers, he ate once per day — usually rice or lentils. Sometimes there would be tomatoes or peppers, occasionally canned tuna. During that time, he lost 12 pounds. People begging for food at the market, rushing international aid workers' cars on the seaside road, or even knocking on doors looking for flour became commonplace. 'Now we are reduced to one meal per day,' Aljamal, the aid worker, explained, which usually consists of 'a variation of the same thing: lentils.' Lentils can take the form of soup or falafel, be steamed, or cooked into a gravy. But sometimes, Aljamal said, the sole meal of the day consists of 'bread, plain bread.' UNRWA was set up in 1949 to provide humanitarian relief to Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Originally, it was intended to provide jobs on public works projects and direct relief. It grew to offer education, health care, and social services to wide swaths of Palestinian society, even serving more than 5 million registered Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the diaspora. The Palestinian Authority has been a recipient of UNRWA's services and support as it has governed the West Bank since 1993 and Gaza until the U.S.-monitored election of 2006, in which Hamas gained power. At its height, UNRWA employed over 30,000 staff, 99 percent of whom were Palestinian. Most of UNRWA's funding came from European countries and the United States, but this largely disappeared after Israel accused UNRWA employees of participating in the October 7 attacks. (A U.N. investigation cleared most of the accused UNRWA workers but found that nine of the 13,000 people who worked for the organization in Gaza may have participated in the attacks.) USAID also once provided financial support to the Palestinian people for various development and humanitarian projects. Since 1994, the United States has steered more than $5.2 billion in aid to Palestinians. This funding dried up after Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised in March to cut USAID's foreign grants by 83 percent before shuttering it entirely on July 1. Ending USAID, a Cold War tool of soft power founded in 1961 as 'an independent executive branch agency responsible for administering foreign aid and economic development assistance outside the US,' has been a signature policy of Trump's second administration. For decades, the agency has played a key role in treating HIV/AIDS and in providing lifesaving care to LGBTQ+ people, including in Gaza. One study estimates the USAID cuts will result in the deaths of 14 million people by 2030. Read our complete coverage Over the decades, most international aid to Gaza has been run through either UNRWA or USAID partners, though Qatar too has been a key funder, providing over $1 billion in reconstruction funds and stipends for poor Palestinians between 2014 and 2019. Much of the Strip's economic activity has been reliant on aid infrastructure, with UNRWA specifically playing a critical role in the distribution of food even before the war began. 'UNRWA has been the backbone that held Gazan society together,' Aljamal said. 'As a child I went to UNRWA schools and was offered the best possible education available with the smallest of resources. When me or any of my siblings got sick or needed medical attention, we rushed into subsidized UNRWA clinics that even provided us with the needed meds, too. When it comes to food, lots of refugee families relied on their three-month dry ration distributions,' which consisted of 'flour, cooking oil, sugar, rice, lentils, chickpeas per family member for three months.' For years, this program helped ensure food security in the region. 'We often held great pride in the fact that wherever you went and however bad it had gotten, you wouldn't possibly sleep without food,' she said. Community kitchens also played a critical role in aid distribution in Gaza. Glia's head of mission, Moureen Kaki, a Palestinian American, moved from Texas to Gaza more than a year ago to help; she never left. She also volunteers at Shabab Gaza in Khan Yunis. Kaki, who switches breezily throughout her day between Palestinian Arabic and English with a slight Texas lilt in her voice, notes that when she arrived, community kitchens across Gaza were producing 250,000 meals a day, feeding about 800,000 people — about 45 percent of the Strip's population. Back then, community kitchens were able to reliably source food via donations and USAID. But now, it is extremely difficult to operate. Today, community kitchens still exist, but their capacity has dropped from 250,000 meals a day to about 25,000, Kaki says, because they simply cannot source supplies. The current famine, she says, is 'the worst I have seen, hands down.' Moureen Kaki speaks to a man at Shabab Gaza community kitchen on June 1, 2025, in Al Qarara, Khan Yunis, Gaza. Photo: Afeef Nessouli World Central Kitchen — founded by chef José Andrés and one of the most recognized food distributors in Gaza, and whose workers were killed in a 2024 Israeli airstrike — ceased operations in May after it ran out of supplies; it resumed operations recently. Smaller mutual aid organizations like the Sameer Project have continued to churn out as many meals as they can, even after their camp coordinator Mosab Ali was killed. Shabab Gaza's capacity dropped from 15,000 meals a day to 3,000 in June — and by July had to stop operations because rice became too expensive. The group hopes to resume as soon as possible. As long-standing aid providers languish in Gaza, Israel and the United States have embraced a new approach: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. According to the New York Times, Israeli officials, military leaders, and businesspeople began discussing the concept of an Israeli-backed food distribution system in December 2023, and had brought a former CIA agent-turned-private security contractor on board by the summer of 2024. The new program was announced on May 19, 2025, as a U.S.-led initiative, with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee saying it was 'wholly inaccurate' to characterize it as an Israeli plan. By June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the initiative had in fact originated in Israel. Unlike prior aid distribution systems, GHF planned to use a small number of distribution hubs in southern Gaza that would be secured by private U.S.-backed contractors, with the Israeli military keeping watch 'at a distance.' The aid would be prepackaged, filled with a hygiene kit, medical supplies, and food rations. Each meal was budgeted to cost only around $1.30 each. Soon after it launched, officials said the GHF system would attempt to screen people for involvement with Hamas by using facial recognition or biometric technology, violating a core tenet of addressing hunger: that no political litmus test can be imposed for access to human rights like food and water. The United Nations rejected the new U.S.-backed distribution plan and sayings that it did not meet its long-held principles of 'impartiality, neutrality and independence.' The U.N. aid chief said the new system would force further displacement, expose people to harm, and restrict aid to one part of Gaza. Oxfam and 240 other nongovernmental organizations called for immediate action to end the Israeli distribution scheme. In late June, Israeli soldiers corroborated what Palestinians had been claiming about the GHF aid distribution sites: Commanders explicitly ordered soldiers to shoot unarmed civilians. Massacres were a result of soldiers doing what they were told to do. Video obtained by Afeef Nessouli One video shows thousands of people crowded all around at GHF distribution site in Rafah, according to Al Jazeera. The phone camera pans to the left, and the sound of gunshots hitting a mound of earth about 200 meters in front of the crowd is piercing. The video shows sand kicking up in a whirl upward from the bullets as people crawl on their knees trying to dodge the gunfire. 'Imagine if Toronto was starving,' Dorotea Gucciardo hypothesized at a press conference at the Canadian Parliament in June. Gucciardo is the director of Glia, the NGO Nessouli volunteered with in Gaza, and with whom he and reporter Steven Thrasher have also worked to deliver antiretroviral medication into Gaza since reporting on AIDS in the Strip in January. In this Canadian analogy, Gucciardo said, 'The U.N. system would deploy over 1,300 distribution sites. The GHF model? Ten. In Montreal, the U.N. would open 850 sites, while GHF's version? Six.' 'And in Gaza, the UN. .had a well-maintained system of 400 aid sites,' she said. 'GHF has replaced those with only three.' Glia was founded in 2015 with a focus on providing low-cost medical supplies using 3D printing technology, beginning with a stethoscope design. Over the years, its services have expanded. Since 2017, the group has rotated doctors, nurses, and other personnel into Gaza to support local health care workers. 'Aid is distributed by gunpoint by American mercenaries.' Glia doctors operating in Gaza's incredibly damaged health care system have been treating malnourished patients throughout the war. Since GHF began operating on May 26, '20 to 50 Palestinians have been killed per day at the aid distribution sites,' Gucciardo explains. They are treating an ever-rising number of malnourished patients injured waiting for food. 'Everybody my medical team treats is skin and bones,' Gucciardo said. Gucciardo called the switch to the GHF program an engineered starvation. 'Aid is distributed by gunpoint by American mercenaries. It is inhumane, degrading, dangerous, and it violates every principle of humanitarian law,' she says. The AP has reported that GHF contractors have shot live ammo at aid sites, allegations that GHF denies. GHF has also denied that multiple violent incidents have even occurred near their aid distribution sites, regularly blames outside agitators for the incidents it does acknowledge, and stated that 'GHF remains focused on its mission: to safely, quickly and effectively feed as many people as possible, every day.' When GHF's original executive director, American veteran and entrepreneur Jake Wood, announced he was stepping down after just a couple of months, one reason he cited was because it was impossible to fulfill GHF's 'plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.' 'From the outset, they were placed in active red zones — especially in southern Gaza, in Rafah,' said Majed Jaber, a Palestinian volunteer emergency room doctor who has worked at several hospitals in the southern part of Gaza. 'We saw far too many headshots to ever call it random.' 'At Nasser and the Red Crescent hospitals, where I worked during those distributions, we regularly received 50 to 100 wounded people in a single day. Dozens arrived already dead or died shortly after,' he said. 'Every other day, the number would spike. The injuries were horrific. Limbs blown off by high-caliber bullets. Vital organs pierced — hearts, aortas, lungs. We saw far too many headshots to ever call it random.' Tarek Loubani, a Canadian doctor in Gaza and the medical director of Glia, observed a similar pattern of wounds in those killed or injured at GHF distribution sites. 'Today, I saw patients with gunshots to the head, gunshots to the neck … the gunshots to the head and neck are almost always targeted. Usually shot by snipers,' he said. When there are shots to other parts of the body, Loubani explained, it's usually from 'a machine gun being used to shoot on the crowd.' For its part, GHF acknowledges the dangerous proximity of the Israeli military to its distribution centers, writing on Facebook, 'Our dear precious residents of Gaza, We ask you not to be near our centers between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m., for your safety, due to the possibility of the IDF conducting military operations in the area.' [newsetter][/newsletter] Amal, a trans woman who lives in Gaza City, sent The Intercept a picture of her bandaged arm on WhatsApp in early June. Amal gave The Intercept a pseudonym for safety. 'Do you see what happened to me?' Amal said in her voice note. Her voice was trembling and angry, but still soft. 'Yesterday, I went to the GHF distribution point to pick up some aid to get a bag of flour,' she said. 'I finally got a bag after a really hard time, I was exhausted. And then after all of that, thieves stole my bag and stabbed me with a knife.' Hunger is painful, Amal said. She complained of joint pain, stomach pain, and a lack of concentration. 'I faint and fall,' said Amal, who stands 6 feet tall and weighs just 119 pounds. 'I do not want anything, I only want to eat.' Despite the Trump administration axing thousands of USAID awards (and firing the accompanying officers who managed these funds), GHF does not seem to lack for funds. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the State Department is considering giving GHF an additional $500 million. Zeteo reported that GHF requested $30 million dollars from USAID. The group's social media accounts regularly publish accusations against international aid groups and journalists. GHF has denounced the U.N. and Oxfam for standing 'by helplessly while their aid is looted,' and allege that The Associated Press's 'Middle East bureau has sadly devolved into a propaganda vehicle — amplifying unverified claims, omitting critical context, and publishing narratives that serve a designated terrorist group.' Its belligerent posts have a Trumpian quality, down to the use of all caps ('let's go through the history of how we got here in the first place. … HAMAS IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION WITH AN ACTIVE PROPAGANDA ARM') and are marked with denial of any problems with their approach ('Scenes like this prove the GHF model is working'). 'People have been comparing it to 'Squid Game' or 'Hunger Games.'' On June 17, reports emerged that Israeli tanks had killed over 50 Palestinians as they were waiting for aid trucks in Khan Yunis in the southern part of the Strip. On July 16, over 20 Palestinians were killed at a GHF distribution site in southern Gaza. Most of the victims were reported to have died in a stampede. Many Palestinians in Gaza who have limited supplies refuse to go to the new aid sites. 'We don't go to GHF aid points because they're death traps,' says E.S, a 28-year-old restrained to a walker because of complications due to his HIV status. 'I can't fight through the crowds because of my disability plus we all know the whole situation is messy,' he continues. 'There is no line and there is no distribution method at all, they offload everything into a big arena, in fact, people have been comparing it to 'Squid Game' or 'Hunger Games,'' E.S explains. 'It becomes a battle because everyone is desperate for food.' The number of people reportedly killed by Israeli gunfire at GHF aid distribution sites continues to climb, as the people of Gaza face starvation. The Gaza Health Ministry has counted 1,021 people killed and another 6,511 wounded at GHF sites since the program was put in place, including at least 38 killed by Israeli fire this past weekend. A newborn baby died of malnutrition at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Saturday, and Palestinian journalists have been posting image after image of people dying of starvation. More than 20 countries, including the U.K., France and Canada, released a statement Monday saying that 'the suffering of civilians has reached new depths,' and calling for the war in Gaza to end now. 'The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,' the statement continued. 'We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.' On Monday morning, Israel also began a new military invasion of Deir al Balah, where Nessouli was based in June. As Israeli tanks moved into the dense area, packed with many thousands of displaced people, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a water desalination plant, killing five more people in the blast.
The Intercept
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
U.S. Nonprofits Funnel Millions to Israeli Army Volunteers
American volunteers for the Israeli army have partied with Ben Shapiro in Boca Raton, met with House Republicans Brian Mast and Mike Lawler in Washington, and joined New York City Mayor Eric Adams at Gracie Mansion. On a Manhattan rooftop late last year, they sipped cocktails and reconnected with people they'd met before — supporting Israel in its campaign of bombing, displacement, and starvation in Gaza. These efforts were organized by Nevut, a New York-based charity supporting American 'lone soldiers' who sign up for the Israeli military. Among its upcoming events is a wellness retreat to Panama for lone soldier veterans who served in the Israeli military during its ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 58,000 people — nearly half of them children — according to Gaza's health ministry. Other estimates put the death toll at 80,000 or higher. Nevut, which operates across 22 states, is one of at least 20 U.S.-based charities directly funding lone soldier programs. Since 2020, according to The Intercept's analysis of their tax forms, these organizations have spent over $26 million to recruit and support lone soldiers from initial drafting to reintegration. The groups provide subsidized apartments, therapy, wellness retreats, and equipment to Israeli military units. The Intercept reviewed five years of tax documents that show 2023 was the most lucrative year on record for lone soldier programs. After Israel began calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists in the wake of Hamas's October 7 attack, U.S. donors poured funding into the organizations. Each year from 2002 to 2020, between 3,000 and 4,000 lone soldiers served in the Israeli military, about a third of them from North America. Since October 7, 2023, it is estimated that 7,000 lone soldiers from the U.S. alone have either signed up or returned to Israel to serve. The programs have helped to prop up an Israeli military now facing its biggest recruitment crisis in decades. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drags the assault on Gaza through its second year, civilians have protested his government and soldiers have refused to show up for reserve duty. With an estimated 100,000 Israeli soldiers refusing service, volunteers from the U.S. and other countries provide reinforcements. Last year, the Israeli military estimated that at least 23,000 American citizens were currently serving, a combination of lone soldiers and Americans who immigrated to Israel with their families. On social media, Nevut and other organizations post pictures, videos, and testimonies from lone soldiers serving in Gaza. Earlier this month, Nevut promoted a video advertising a day at a shooting range as 'a little dose of enjoyable fire.' A man wearing military tactical gear says: 'All the guys here serve in the IDF; a majority serve in the war in Gaza.' Another Instagram video encourages lone soldier veterans to reach out if they're thinking of going back into combat. One Nevut post advises viewers on 'What not to ask a lone soldier,' including: 'Did you kill anyone?' 'How many people died over there?' and 'Were you in Gaza or Lebanon?' 'These can potentially feel like dismissive, political, or emotionally charged questions,' the post warns. A screenshot from Nevut's Instagram. Screenshot: Nevut / Instagram While the United States' steady supply of weapons shipments to Israel has come under scrutiny from elected officials to the United Nations, thousands of U.S. civilians who travel to Israel to join the army have received markedly less attention. Back at home, American lone soldiers do speaking tours to cleanse the reputation of the Israeli military. 'I almost died for Palestinian children,' said lone soldier Eli Wininger at an event in an Alabama church put on by the Massachusetts-based lone soldier organization Growing Wings. A Los Angeles native, Wininger has touched many sides of the lone soldier ecosystem: He was recruited after taking part in the youth scouts program Garin Tzabar, served with the Israeli military in Gaza, returned to the United States, and recently started a volunteer position as a youth leader with the U.S. nonprofit Friends of the IDF. Speaking at the Growing Wings event earlier this year, he said he was instructed 'not to kill Palestinian children. There is not a single soldier in there that is doing that.' According to the U.N., over 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza since October 7, 2023 — though this is likely an undercount. Wininger did not respond to The Intercept's request for comment. In response to questions on lone soldiers and the army's affiliation with U.S. nonprofit groups, the IDF told The Intercept it had 'no comment.' Neither Nevut nor Growing Wings responded to The Intercept's requests for comment. Federal law prohibits recruiting for foreign armies within U.S. borders, but it allows donations and promotion of foreign volunteering. Where, if at all, efforts to help American teens join the Israeli military run afoul of U.S. policy on foreign fighting is hard to determine, experts say. 'The State Department basically says on the website that we don't want Americans serving abroad,' said David Malet, an associate professor of justice, law, and criminology at American University who researches foreign fighters. 'But realistically, we know it's kind of hard to enforce that.' A State Department spokesperson said U.S. citizens serving in the Israeli military are not required to register their service with the U.S. government. Dual citizens must comply with the laws of both countries of which they are a citizen, including any mandatory military service. The department said U.S. citizens are encouraged to consult current travel advisories for Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. (It recommends that people reconsider their travel to Israel and the West Bank, and not travel to Gaza.) 'Our embassies overseas maintain rough estimates of U.S. citizens in their countries for contingency planning purposes, but these estimates are imperfect, can vary, and are constantly changing, which is why we do not generally disclose them publicly,' a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. 'U.S. citizens are not required to register their travel to a foreign country with us, so we cannot track with certainty how many U.S. citizens are in any particular country.' The State Department referred questions about legal implications of serving in a foreign military to the Department of Justice. DOJ referred questions to the Department of Defense, which referred questions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS referred questions back to the State Department. Across the Jewish diaspora and in Israel, lone soldiers are receiving more recognition than ever. 'I'm definitely aware of increased numbers of volunteers which are welcomed in Israel right now,' Malet said. 'You can see a lot more recognition and efforts to honor fallen lone soldiers than you would have seen before October 7.' Becca Strober was hailed as a hero when she returned to the U.S. while serving as a lone soldier in Israel. As she walked around her father's synagogue in Philadelphia in 2009, the congregants stood up to shake her hand and thank her. 'I had just finished guarding a West Bank settlement,' said Strober, now an anti-occupation activist. 'Even then, I was like, this is such a weird experience.' Strober was first introduced to the possibility of joining the Israeli military when she was 17, during a high school semester she spent in Israel. She said alumni of the semester in Israel program wearing miliary uniforms spoke to her group. 'There were a lot of informal ways of talking about enlisting in the army,' Strober told The Intercept. She later joined after participating in the Garin Tzabar program, which runs two major drafting sessions each year. The program is funded by Tzofim, the biggest Zionist youth movement in Israel and the U.S. Also known as the Friends of Israel Scouts, the group has a U.S. nonprofit in New York. Tzofim 'begins educating kids at five years old,' said one former Zionist youth leader in Australia, who requested anonymity for fear of professional retaliation. He took part in groups affiliated with Tzofim as a teen. 'There is a direct funnel from educating toddlers to, as soon as they turn 18 — they're of military age and they're indoctrinated and groomed and brainwashed, and they're ready to fight the battle.' Garin Tzabar continues to recruit lone soldiers from the U.S., who often end up serving in combat in Gaza and 'protecting civilians' in the West Bank — where Israeli settlers and forces have killed 1,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023. Israeli soldiers talking to settlers in the West Bank in April 2025. Photo: Georgia Gee The recruitment pipeline includes many U.S. day schools — from more conservative yeshivas to modern Jewish day schools — that advertise how many alumni go on to serve in the Israeli military. The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, had 51 alumni serving in the Israeli military as of 2023. Another school in New Jersey, the Rae Kushner Yeshiva, has congratulated an alum who became a social media manager in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. 'Her work was recognized as important for hasbara by the Israeli news,' the school boasted on Facebook, using a term for Israeli public diplomacy, including propaganda tailored to international audiences. Another alum of the school served as a lone soldier in the army and was a friend of the son of Netanyahu, who commemorated him after he died while traveling in 2018. One charity reviewed by The Intercept, the Lone Soldier Foundation, specifically provides funds for the children of families that attend a synagogue in northern New Jersey who join the Israeli military. According to the group's most recent tax filing, it also supports the units in which the children of members of its congregation serve. In 2023, the group spent over $80,000 on providing 'non-combat and equipment to IDF units in which eligible American citizens served.' Read our complete coverage North American lone soldiers are a 'great example of the Zionist spirit or the Zionist dream,' Strober told The Intercept. 'It keeps American Jewish communities very, very close to the Israel question. It doesn't allow them to think critically because it's so close, because you know people who have been killed, or people who have served.' Under heightened public scrutiny, U.S. nonprofits have distanced themselves from directly funding projects in the West Bank or other settlements, which are illegal under international law. But U.S.-based nonprofits granted $8.8 million to specific lone soldier programs in 2023 alone, The Intercept found. It's possible the real number is higher, as nonprofits only have to report foreign grants above a certain threshold. 'It doesn't allow American Jewish communities to think critically, because you know people who have been killed.' The biggest known funder is Friends of the IDF, which has spent nearly $20 million on its lone soldier program since 2020, supporting more than 6,500 lone soldiers each year, according to documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service. In a statement, Friends of the IDF, an official partner of the Israeli military, said it provides more than 7,000 lone soldiers 'with practical, emotional and mental health support throughout their service to make sure they never feel alone.' The group said about half of the soldiers it backs are from Israel but are considered lone soldiers because they don't have family support. On its Instagram page, the group says it is the 'only U.S. non-profit working directly with IDF leadership to provide critical support for Israel soldiers' health, well-being & education.' Other organizations help offset the costs of living for lone soldiers. Bayit Brigade, which operates in both the U.S. and Israel, helps lone soldiers find affordable housing in Tel Aviv and raises emergency funds to help transport soldiers to their bases and provide supplies in the field. Bayit Brigade has posted videos of volunteers providing resources to the Israeli military's Yahalom Unit, which conducts 'tunnel warfare' and demolitions in Gaza, including destroying areas to allow the military to operate. The organization's revenue jumped from approximately $160,000 in 2022 to $1.3 million in 2023, according to nonprofit documents. In a statement, the group told The Intercept that following October 7, it 'temporarily expanded its community support efforts to address urgent needs on the ground,' but have 'no formal relationship with any government entity or with the IDF.' The lines between support, education and recruitment of lone soldiers — including what a formal relationship entails — are often blurred, said Strober, the former lone soldier. Garin Tzabar, for example, is operated in part by Israel's Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. Other efforts to finance lone soldiers, like Bayit Brigade, distance themselves from any sort of affiliation with the Israeli government. Other organizations also advertise their support for soldiers who fought in Gaza. Friends of Emek Lone Soldiers held concerts in the West Bank for women who served in Gaza. The website of the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Foundation includes testimonies of soldiers who received support while serving in Gaza. When she was part of the Israeli military, Strober still considered herself a believer in human rights, she told The Intercept. She was working for a human rights organization that supported Gazans' freedom of movement when, in 2014, Israel launched a series of attacks on Gaza that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians in under two months. 'I didn't really know anything about Gaza,' Strober said. 'It was kind of the first time that I had any concept of who Palestinians were on the other side and how much control Israel had.' Strober said she watched her friends get called up from the reserves and realized she didn't want to go serve in Gaza. 'I just remember thinking, I'm not going to go zero in guns to kill Gazans when I'm talking to Gazans on the phone every day,' she said.
