Category: Abuse

Open Windows, Clay Jones

Trump Think

Donald Trump is not thinking about you

Clay Jones

Donald Trump is not thinking about you. Don’t take my word for it, take his.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.” Trump told us last June that he obliterated Iran’s capability to build a nuclear weapon. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if he hadn’t torn up the nuclear agreement that Iran had with the United States and five other nations, which the Obama administration had crafted.

Trump said this to reporters as he was boarding a plane to China. And on that plane were billionaires like Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Stephen Schwarzman, Larry Culp, and Larry Fink. Other executives on the trip included Meta’s Dina Powell McCormick, Cargill’s Brian Sikes, Micron’s Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, Visa’s Ryan McInerney, Mastercard’s Michael Miebach, Illumina’s Jacob Thaysen, and Coherent’s Jim Anderson.

Trump said on Truth Social that he would ask Xi to “‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic.” Their financial situations, he thinks about. Your financial situation, not so much. (snip-MORE)

Speaker Johnson sees nothing

which isn’t surprising, given where he is.

Ann Telnaes May 13, 2026

It’s easy to only be focused on Trump’s ever increasing unhinged behavior but his Republican enablers in Congress haven’t changed their tune. And they are the main reason he’s still in office.

From “The Onion’s” Newsletter:

Authorities Unearth Mass Grave Of Trump Advisors

Ryan Walters News!

Look what he’s up to now! (Gotta laugh. Well, I had to, for a minute or so; they have kids, also I worry for Mrs. Walters, but they’re likely all safer now. Interestingly, he is who filed, not she. Of course, poor behavior of prominent husbands is how no-fault divorce came about to begin with.)

Christian Nationalist Ex-Oklahoma Schools Chief Ryan Walters Is Getting No-Fault Divorced

Congratulations to his family on getting to spend less time with him.

Robyn Pennacchia

Former Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters is one of the holiest men in all the land. He worked tirelessly for many years to use the power of the state to convert children to Christianity, without care or regard to how “unconstitutional” that was. A Bible in every classroom! Every wall straight up papered with the Ten Commandments! State funding for Catholic charter schools! Forcing kids to watch videos of him praying to Donald Trump! Sure, many of his initiatives failed, but he did ultimately succeed in one thing: spending over $100,000 in taxpayer funds to pay PR firms to promote his “personal brand” and secure over 400 media appearances for him.

To be fair, he was also really good at sending and showing porn to his colleagues.

And now he is about to be very good at being alone.

Last Friday, Ryan Walters filed a petition to divorce Katie Walters, his wife of 15 years and mother to his four children. In the filing, Walters’s attorney cited “a state of complete and irreconcilable incompatibility” as the reason for the divorce, claiming that this “destroyed the aims of the marriage of the parties and rendered its continuation impossible.”

In other words, a no-fault divorce.

If you haven’t been paying too much attention to the worst people in the world, you may not be aware of the Right’s hysteria over “no-fault divorce” these last few years, which they claim has just ruined everything by allowing women to leave their shitty husbands without needing to prove abuse or adultery.

Sure, it’s also significantly decreased suicide rates in married women, decreased domestic violence across the board and led to far fewer men being fed arsenic-laced ham sandwiches by wives with no other recourse for getting out of a bad marriage. But it’s really inconvenienced men who would like to force the women they feel they own to stay married to them, as God intended.

While all states now allow for no fault divorces, Oklahoma allows for both no fault and fault divorce, which means he had the option to have a divorce of which his Christian Nationalist pals might have approved, but he decided against. One of the benefits, we might note, of no-fault divorce, is that people don’t end up having their dirty laundry made public in court records. Does Walters have something to hide? Did he send porn to too many people? Were there not enough Ten Commandment posters in their home, causing him to lapse and break the sixth?

Of course, it doesn’t actually seem as though Christian Nationalists are that mad at no-fault divorce when it’s the man who files, so perhaps that is the difference here? They haven’t been too clear about how they want this New Gilead to work beyond just, you know, women giving up all of their rights so that they can be happy.

Sure, it’s also significantly decreased suicide rates in married women, decreased domestic violence across the board and led to far fewer men being fed arsenic-laced ham sandwiches by women
Take females rights away before they take ours away. This is the only solution. - Abolish No Fault Divorce - Abolish marital rape laws - Abolish the 19th amendment - Abolish HR departments - Abolish all government aid services for females - Abolish and shut down all pro-female private charities - Establish harsh taxes for females 25+ who aren't married and mothers (amnesty given for widows and infertile females, and those with health complications).

After all, they seem to be pretty okay with all of Trump’s divorces in pursuit of younger women (though perhaps, in their world, it is a more valid reason than escaping domestic violence).

The Word Of The Term Is Corruption

I’d run across this article linked somewhere earlier this past week. But, I couldn’t read it or post it, because it was behind a paywall. Well, thanks to Punctuated.Equilibrium over on MPS Friday night, here it is! Well, a goodly snip of it. Give ’em a click to read it all, because they lifted the paywall so that everyone who wants to know can read it.

The everything, everywhere, all at once corruption story.

I’m pleading with you to look at the president’s self-dealing.

1 May 2026 Written by: Isaac Saul

(snip-skipping a bit at the top)

During President Joe Biden’s term, the Department of Justice could say, at least, that it had investigated the president’s son. Republicans in Congress also conducted a yearslong investigation into the Hunter Biden business ties and how they might link back to the president. Here, though, we have nothing; every story I’m about to point to has not produced even a unified statement of concern from, say, a half dozen Republican senators worried about government corruption. 

Remember, Hunter’s story was about drawing a $50,000/month salary while his dad was vice president and then allegedly trying to arrange some business ventures he might cut Joe Biden in on once he was out of office. Republicans’ yearslong investigation never turned up any hard evidence of the latter, though there was enough smoke I still think the story was plausible.

Today, we’re talking about the president’s children launching multi-billion dollar business ventures — several of them — while the president is in office, and then explicitly exchanging all manner of domestic policy victories, foreign policy concessions, and literal pardons in the construction of those deals. Trump himself has all but admitted this is happening. He told The New York Times that “nobody cared” when he tried to separate his family business from his administration during his first term, so he isn’t even trying now.

I have tracked these stories with one of my senior editors for the last year and a half. The list of things that have happened is so long and shocking when you see it all together that I’m not entirely sure how to present it. I’ve gone back and forth; maybe I should build a flow chart? What about a spreadsheet? Should this be a YouTube video, instead of a written piece? Will anyone actually read the entire thing? Can anyone actually process this level of self-dealing, corruption, and shadiness at once? 

Ultimately, I decided that the best I can do is try to write all these instances down in an engaging way that might grab your attention and wake us all up from whatever stupor we’re in. So… here goes.

Let’s start with the cryptocurrency.

Perhaps the largest vehicle for Trump’s self-dealing has been his foray into cryptocurrency. This is a complicated space that I will try to make as straightforward and simple as possible.

In 2024, the Trump family launched a crypto company called World Liberty Financial. Trump is listed as a “co-founder emeritus.” By December of 2025, they had profited roughly $1 billion from proceeds while holding $3 billion in unsold cryptocurrency tokens, amassing a fortune larger than their entire real estate portfolio. At the same time the president was pushing his family’s new crypto venture, he was cutting crypto regulation, touting the potential of private digital currencies to help the U.S. economy, and promising to unleash the industry he and his family were simultaneously profiting from.

But the president wasn’t only directly making money in an industry he was deregulating; the Trumps benefitted through intermediaries, too. Last summer, World Liberty Financial bought a publicly listed firm and raised $750 million from investors to buy its own cryptocurrency, WLFI. The Wall Street Journal tepidly described this setup as an “unusually circular transaction with the same party as buyer and seller” that could net the Trump family an additional $500 million. 

Essentially, the Trump family launched a cryptocurrency firm while deregulating the crypto industry, then bought a separate firm that it used to buy its own cryptocurrency while also raising three quarters of a billion dollars from investors to buy that same cryptocurrency. 

Just days before he was inaugurated, Trump also launched a personal “memecoin” called $TRUMP. Memecoins are cryptocurrencies made about internet jokes, pop culture moments, or viral trends. They have no underlying value or technological purpose; the value of the coin is driven entirely by social hype. Trump created hype for his memecoin by launching it months after being elected and just three days before being inaugurated. He promoted $TRUMP on social media and, while president, even held a dinner for the top 220 holders of the coin at one of his golf resorts in Virginia. He held another one at Mar-a-Lago this past weekend. The initial coin offering released 200 million tokens of its billion-token supply to the public on the first day. The price skyrocketed 300% overnight and hit an all-time high of $74.27 on January 19, right before Trump’s inauguration. $TRUMP has since cratered, losing 97% of its value (for context, if you had bought $1,000 at its peak, your $1,000 would now be worth about $30). 

Trump, naturally, profited. The exact figures are hard to pin, but The Financial Times estimated that the scheme netted him personally about $350 million, while Trump’s holdings of the coin through a separate partnership could be worth billions more. It wasn’t just the president, either; First Lady Melania Trump launched her own memecoin, which also skyrocketed in value before a massive sell-off that she profited from (what people in the industry call a “rug pull”). Most of the people who bought and held the coin based on the hype the Trumps created ended up losing most of their money, but the coin’s creators got rich (or, in this case, richer).

This cryptocurrency foray hasn’t just been a vehicle for self-enrichment, but also a vehicle for quid pro quos. Perhaps the most obvious and overt involved Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire who was being investigated by the SEC for fraud. Sun, in the midst of his investigation, bought $75 million of WLFI — the World Liberty Financial coin — and then became an adviser at the company. Shortly after that investment, the SEC backed off its investigation and settled with him for $10 million, a small fraction of the expected penalties he was set to pay (on top of potential prison time). Of course, it’s possible that the SEC, an organization now openly being influenced by the president, just happened to back off its investigation in the weeks following Sun’s $75 million investment into Trump’s crypto firm. 

It’s also possible that the two events are related.

The crypto story, though, hardly ended there. In late April, CBS reported that Sun was suing the Trump administration’s World Liberty Financial, alleging fraud. That’s right: Sun, whose initial case has since concluded, has now turned around and sued the Trump family, alleging that the president and his sons are illegally blocking him from selling his digital tokens that are worth as much as $1 billion. Sun also claims that World Liberty Financial tried to pressure him into investing in its stable coin, and that the company froze his tokens after he refused to commit more money to the business. 

It’s hard to identify the villain.

Sun’s apparent quid pro quo to get out from under government oversight is just one example. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, was pardoned by President Trump shortly after Zhao helped boost WLFI’s prominence by allowing the currency to be traded on the crypto exchange Binance, which Zhao started. After the pardon, Zhao became one of the Trumps’ business partners, boosting the family’s crypto empire while skating serious charges that he allowed money to flow to terrorists, cyber criminals, and child abusers on his platform.

If that’s not enough, more shocking news broke this week. According to The Wall Street Journal, World Liberty Financial inadvertently partnered with two men the U.S. government had sanctioned a month before for helping run a transnational criminal syndicate that had stolen billions of dollars from Americans through online scams. To repeat: Last fall, the Trump administration announced criminal charges against a transnational criminal syndicate for stealing billions of dollars from Americans in online scams. A month later, two of the men it sanctioned partnered with the Trump family’s crypto company. 

The evidence of crypto investments from foreign nationals operating as de facto bribes doesn’t end there. Consider the story of Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) president and one of the most powerful politicians in the Middle East (he’s served as the UAE’s national security advisor since 2016). He stewards an empire of wealth worth roughly $1.5 trillion, and a firm closely tied to him secretly signed a deal for a 49% stake in WLFI worth $500 million — including $187 million paid upfront to Trump family entities just days before Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after Trump took office, the administration undid a national security block that would have prevented the UAE from getting up to 500,000 advanced Nvidia AI chips. 

Some right-wing writers, like National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, have been brave enough to take this story head-on — but many have ignored it.

Sometimes, the favors happen en masse. The crypto industry as a whole was a top donor to Trump’s 2025 inauguration fund, and the SEC then dropped or paused over a dozen cases against crypto firms, or simply handed them huge access to government-directed crypto entities. Several of those cases, like Sun’s, were tied directly to donations. Coinbase donated $1 million; its lawsuit was dropped. Ripple ($4.9 million) and Solana ($1 million) had their tokens added to the national Digital Asset Stockpile.

I want to pause here to remind people that we spent all four years of the Biden administration talking about Hunter Biden’s alleged $50,000 a month salary while working at an energy firm in Ukraine, and the possibility that he was setting up some business deals for his father after he left the vice presidency. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced articles of impeachment alleging Biden “abused the power of the Office of the Vice President, enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, by allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits—including financial compensation—from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.” 

Conversely, the final tally of investments from parties with conflicts of interest into crypto assets personally managed by the Trump family safely enters the range of billions of dollars — a scale of thousands of millions, in just one sector and in just over one year, while the president was actually in office.

It’s not just cryptocurrency.

(snip-MORE. It reads just as quickly on the page)

Pete Hegseth’s Far-Right Pastor: “Immodestly Dressed Women Are Sluts Who Just Give It Away To Every Slob”

Pete Hegseth’s Far-Right Pastor: “Immodestly Dressed Women Are Sluts Who Just Give It Away To Every Slob”

 

The Times of London reports:

A week before the US went to war with Iran, Pete Hegseth, the war secretary, invited the head of his church to lead prayers at the Pentagon. From his pulpit in Idaho, Doug Wilson, a 72-year-old ultraconservative pastor, preaches that homosexuality is a sin, women who dress immodestly are “sluts”, and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the “silliest thing in the world”.

Despite Hegseth’s evangelising, Wilson says the Trump administration is far from morally pure. He says the president is “not someone I would call a godly Christian man”, and disagrees with Trump’s appointment of a gay man, Scott Bessent, as his Treasury secretary because homosexuality is not just a sin, it is “a bad one”.

Of all his gripes, however, Wilson is most indignant about the 1960s sexual revolution, a moral catastrophe that he condemns frequently in his blog posts, sermons and books. He thinks women should dress modestly. But what is modest dress? “Not what they’re doing now,” he says. “I could pick on yoga pants.” He continues: “Men know what they think of hookers, which is not very much. When you’re just giving it away to every slob on the bus who wants to look, you’re degrading the currency.”

Does that mean Wilson and his followers sympathise with the dress codes enforced by Shia clerics in Iran? “No, because wrapping them up in a bedsheet is another way of degrading them. It is possible to be modest and attractive — attractive without attracting. Bundling them up the way really conservative Muslims do is a different kind of degradation. Like you’re not a person. But for a woman to dress like a slut is a different kind of degradation. Both kinds of degradation play off of each other.”

Read the full article. It’s quite the deep dive.

Wilson appeared here last month when he called for criminalizing homosexuality and outlawing all LGBTQ events.

In March, Wilson declared that under his Christian nationalist theocracy, all non-Protestant public events – such a Catholic parades that venerate the Virgin Mary – would be banned.

Also in March, a separate pastor at Hegseth’s church prayed for God to kill Senate candidate James Talarico.

Pete Hegseth’s pastor: ‘Women who dress immodestly are sluts’

— The Times and Sunday Times (@thetimes.com) 2026-05-05T11:45:51.187Z

 

 

Vatican criticizes conversion therapy, features gay Catholic testimony in ‘historic’ report

https://religionnews.com/2026/05/05/vatican-criticizes-conversion-therapy-features-gay-catholic-testimony-in-unexpected-report/

Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.
Vatican criticizes conversion therapy, features gay Catholic testimony in ‘historic’ report
Some of the hundreds of LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families who joined a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome, celebrating a new level of acceptance in the Catholic Church and crediting Pope Francis for the change, walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Aleja Hertzler-McCain

May 5, 2026

The Vatican released a report on Tuesday (May 5) that included the testimony of two married gay Catholics and acknowledged the church’s role in “the solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families.” The report also reflects on the negative impacts of conversion therapy, or “the devastating effects of reparative therapies aimed at recovering heterosexuality.”

“ It’s a big deal because they included testimonies and published testimonies from two LGBTQ people, both of them married, which is also unusual for the Vatican to do,” said the Rev. James Martin, a founder of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic ministry. “As far as I know, it’s the first time that in any official publication of the Vatican, they’ve included witnesses and testimonies and stories from LGBTQ Catholics in any kind of detailed way.”

The report comes from a group of theologians, including bishops, priests, a sister and a layperson, convened by the Vatican to study “controversial” issues raised by the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis’ signature listening initiative, to which Martin was a delegate. Though church reform advocates hoped — and traditionalists feared — that the synod would bring major changes to church teaching around gender and sexuality, the decision to relegate contentious issues, such as LGBTQ+ inclusion, to study groups instead of general discussion was widely seen as a damper.

As expected, the synod study group report does not announce major changes to church doctrine, but it does suggest that the Catholic Church address the impasse between “doctrinal firmness” and “pastoral welcome” by listening and using a transdisciplinary approach, such as incorporating insights from psychology, alongside the Bible and church doctrine.

“ It’s a really good — I would even say historic — document,” said Yunuen Trujillo, a lesbian lay minister from Los Angeles. “ It’s still calling for all Catholics to engage in a process of discernment that is respectful of people’s lived experiences.”

Trujillo, author of “LGBTQ Catholics: A Guide to Inclusive Ministry,” said it might take a while for LGBTQ+ Catholics in the pews to feel the impact and noted that the document only focuses on lesbians, gays and bisexual people. “But I do believe it would be a positive impact, not a negative one,” she said.

In this Oct. 4, 2023, file photo, Pope Francis, far right, participates in the opening session of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican.  (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Marianne Duddy-Burke, a married lesbian Catholic and DignityUSA’s executive director, said, “ The most significant thing for me was the recognition that top-down trying to dictate behavior and morality on the basis of dogma isn’t working,” adding she was “hopeful” to see the report using the language of a “paradigm shift.”

The “paradigm shift” the report proposes is a move away from applying abstract theological principles to on-the-ground realities and instead seeing theory and practice as a “virtuous cycle.” For the two to effectively inform each other, the report argues, requires a focus on relationships, transparency and learning. The document offers this theological framework not just for LGBTQ+ issues but for broader use, including in nonviolent activism and protest.

This synod document was written by the study group, not the pope, but its release to the public would have required his authorization.

The report’s release garnered some blowback, a portion of which fell on Pope Leo XIV. Far-right Catholic news organization LifeSite published a story on the report, raising concerns that the report was questioning “the sinful nature of homosexuality” and leaving unresolved the “debate on same-sex ‘marriage.’” Co-founder John-Henry Westen released a video warning that the report’s pro-LGBTQ+ stance makes clear the meaning of “synodality” under Leo.

Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.

“ I was expecting a rather bland report. And this was not that,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which serves LGBTQ Catholics. “ In days gone by in the church, they would try to tick off the token box by getting someone who had certain traits and characteristics, but who was just not critical of the church in any way.”

Martin said this is the first time he remembers seeing conversion therapy “critiqued that strongly” in a Vatican document. “There have been certain bishops who have been very muted in their critique of conversion therapy, but then there have also been bishops who have used organizations whose techniques really verge on conversion therapy,” he said.

One gay Catholic wrote of “wounds from the Christian community” in his Vatican-released testimony. “I cannot ignore the scars I carry. I have witnessed the devastating effects of ‘conversion therapies’ and the break-up of families, which felt like an attack on God’s sensitive and blameless creation. These experiences deeply hurt, because they target the inherent dignity of a person who simply bears the love of another of the same gender.”

“I feel the Church needs to move beyond mere ‘welcoming’ and ‘pity,’” he wrote in the testimony. “We need to proclaim the unspoken truth: God loves you and desires your wholeness. Sexuality is one part of our life, and difference is a hallmark of Creation.”

DeBernardo said the testimonies of LGBTQ+ people and their advocates have also been moving for the 17 bishops who have participated in three different meetings with New Ways Ministry in recent years. “We had a bishop at the end of the meeting in tears because he was so regretful of the way he had thought about LGBTQ people,” DeBernardo said.

“Dialogue really is the first step,” said DeBernardo. “ The genius of Pope Francis is that he realized that people had to start talking with one another, and learning about each other and not having the fear and the stereotypes.”

For Duddy-Burke, who represents a grassroots group led by LGBTQ+ Catholics that was banned 40 years ago from meeting in Catholic spaces — and who said she has struggled for years as a result to even have these conversations — the document inspires hope: “We didn’t have a place at the table and, and this document says that it’s time that we did,” she said.

At the same time, Duddy-Burke worries about whether those who hold the power will continue to dialogue and be willing to have their “minds and hearts changed.”

The synod report also addresses “active nonviolence,” highlighting the examples of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Filipino “People Power” and Polish “Solidarity” anti-government movements, as well as the experience of a Catholic Serbian conscientious objector. Peace has been a major focus of Leo’s pontificate, and his recent anti-war statements have led to conflict with the Trump administration, which has used theological language to promote its war in the Middle East.

In the Vatican report, the theologians suggest that “just war theory,” which Catholic U.S. Vice President JD Vance has referenced to defend the war, is “inadequate” in the modern context. “Since war can no longer be confined to military targets but overflows into civilian life, taking on new forms (hybrid, asymmetrical, etc.), the recourse to frameworks used in the past for legitimate defence — and even more so for ‘just war’ — appears increasingly inadequate,” they write.

On Tuesday, the Vatican also released the report of another Synod study group dedicated to bishop selection and other bishop issues. That report proposed broad consultation — including the perspectives of lay people, in addition to clergy and religious — when it comes to potential bishop candidates as well as ideal future bishop qualities.

FL Man Arrested On Felony Hate Crime Charges For Brutally “Beating The Gay Out Of” Five-Year-Old Boy

FL Man Arrested On Felony Hate Crime Charges For Brutally “Beating The Gay Out Of” Five-Year-Old Boy

West Palm Beach’s CBS affiliate reports:

A Florida man is facing life felony charges after allegedly brutally assaulting a defenseless 5-year-old boy in an act of hate-fueled child abuse. “This was a brutal and hateful attack on a defenseless child. There is absolutely no excuse for it. We will make sure justice is served and these children get the safety and support they deserve,” Sheriff Grady Judd said.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said that on Sunday, May 3, 33-year-old Andre Brown Jr. from Davenport was arrested for child abuse. According to officials, this charge has been categorized as a life felony because it is considered a hate crime.

During interviews with the children in Browns care, it was revealed that Brown had been physically abusive toward a 5-year-old boy, specifically targeting him because he was “mad at him for being gay.” Brown reportedly told deputies that he abused the child because of his sexual orientation, claiming he would “beat the gay out of him if possible.”

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

The boy told authorities he was afraid of Brown and did not want to talk much about what happened. He had the worst injuries of the three: marks and bruising on his legs, arms, back, and stomach; a fracture to his right wrist; and a contusion to his forehead. He had marks all over his body consistent with being hit by a belt, the sheriff’s office said.

When deputies attempted to remove Brown from the scene, he pulled away, became loud and began yelling slurs, the sheriff’s office said. He continued yelling and pulling away once placed in handcuffs, according to the release, and also was charged with resisting arrest.

Brown has a lengthy criminal history, including domestic battery strangulation, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, kidnapping with intent to commit a felony, home invasion robbery with a firearm and battery on a law enforcement officer, the release said.

He’s being held without bond.

 

 

Collateral Arrests

Immigration street sweeps led to more ‘collateral’ arrests of noncriminals

By:Tim Henderson-May 2, 2026

A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights.

Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March.

Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.

But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.

Labeled for the first time ever, the collateral arrests are reported from August to early March in ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline. In that time there were about 64,000 collateral arrests, a quarter of the 253,000 total arrests by ICE.

About 70% of the collateral arrests were for people with immigration-related crimes or violations alone, compared with 41% for arrests with warrants. Less than 2% of those with collateral arrests were convicted of a violent crime, one-third the rate of other arrests, and only 18% were convicted of any crime, compared with 33% for other arrests.

The collateral arrests contributed to an overall pattern of lower and lower shares of arrests for serious crimes, and more for immigration offenses alone.

Arrests climbed from about 12,000 in January 2025 to more than 40,000 in December, but fell back to 30,000 this February. The share of people with only immigration-related crimes and violations rose to more than half in December and January, the peak months for collateral arrests, and the share of violent criminals fell from 10% to 4% of arrests in that time.

(This chart is interactive. If you can’t see the arrest data here by mousing over states, you can on the page, linked in the title above, & also at the end of this post.)

New policy

ICE announced a new policy in January to issue warrants in real time if agents think an immigrant is deportable and “likely to escape,” though that policy faces a court challenge.

Total arrests and collateral arrests have been falling since December, whether because of the new policy or because of cutbacks in the large-scale street sweeps that tend to produce them.

One factor is public outrage over raids sweeping up noncriminals in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

“The sort of large operations within big cities, as they were occurring, seems to have subsided somewhat,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said. “After the kind of public outcry following Minneapolis, it seems as though, at least for now, that tactic has kind of been paused.”

The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation opened the way for more collateral street arrests with less investigation, she added.

“If it’s a more targeted arrest, they would take the time to sort of essentially have an investigation. It’s a pretty resource-intensive way that just would not yield the kind of numbers ICE was being told to produce,” she said.

The new policy was filed in court papers in February as a response to a lawsuit over ICE sweeps in the District of Columbia last year, alleging ICE agents “have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino.”

The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in December requiring a halt to warrantless arrests without establishing probable cause that the person is living here illegally and is a flight risk.

One plaintiff in the class-action case, José Escobar Molina, said in the lawsuit that agents in two cars pulled up to him as he approached his work truck on Aug. 21, grabbing him by the arms and legs and handcuffing him without asking any questions. Escobar, 47, said in the court papers that he’s lived in the district for 25 years and has had temporary protected status as a Salvadoran native the whole time. He was held overnight in Virginia before being released.

Other lawsuits are also challenging collateral arrests, such as an incident in Idaho in which agents with warrants for five people ended up arresting 105 immigrants at a Latino community event in October.

In North Carolina, four U.S. citizens and a visa holder sued in February, saying they were arrested in the Charlotte’s Web immigration crackdown in November without warrants, as is typical of collateral arrests.

“I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me,” said Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, one of the citizens and a North Carolina native, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. He said he was doing landscaping work Nov. 15 when agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, then held him in a car before releasing him.

One Illinois case that started in the first Trump administration challenged warrantless arrests and traffic stops used as a pretext for immigration arrests. A 2022 settlement required ICE to document “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before arresting somebody. The case continues since a judge found in February that the new ICE policy of issuing warrants in real time after a detention violates the consent decree.

Shares of collateral arrests

In the months since August where collateral arrests are now labeled, the District of Columbia and Illinois stand out with high shares of collateral arrests. More than half the arrests in the district were collateral, as were 41% of those in Illinois. There were eight states in which at least 30% of arrests were collateral: Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota.

West Virginia, where there was a “statewide surge” of immigration enforcement in January with state and local cooperation, stands out for its high rate of total arrests as well as a large share of collateral arrests.

https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/04/08/ice-labeled-1300-arrests-during-operation-metro-surge-as-collateral/

For the eight months between August and early March, West Virginia had 1,831 arrests, or 1 in 10 of the state’s noncitizen population as of 2024, the latest data available. That’s by far the largest share in the country, followed by 7% in Wyoming (where truck drivers were targeted for immigration arrests in February) and 4% in Mississippi.

West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, in a statement, cited the cooperation of state and local agencies with ICE through the 287(g) program that assists with immigration enforcement. He praised ICE, saying “they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens.”

Few of those arrested in the surge were violent criminals, however. More than half of those arrested during the surge were collateral arrests, and only 1% — nine immigrants — had a violent crime conviction, according to the Stateline analysis. More than three-quarters, about 500 people, had only an immigration-related violation or crime.

Judges didn’t always agree that collateral arrests and detentions in the West Virginia surge were legal under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ordered two detainees released in January. He noted that “similar seizures and detentions are occurring frequently across the country” without any evidence they’re necessary as required by the Constitution.

https://kansasreflector.com/2026/05/02/repub/immigration-street-sweeps-led-to-more-collateral-arrests-of-noncriminals/

DOJ Targets IL Schools For Teaching LGBTQ “Ideology”

On the last post I made about this I was going to write a long intro.   However when I read the comments every point I would have made is made in the comments in far fewer words than I would have done.  So if you wish to see opinions on what the government is doing to follow Russia and wipe the LGBTQ+ from society in the name of protecting children / straight people / cis people / and religious privilege to discriminate then please read the comments.   Hugs

DOJ Targets IL Schools For Teaching LGBTQ “Ideology”

John Fugelsang: Reclaiming Jesus’ Teachings

I love this video.  John Fugelsang is a wonderful person to elaborate on the bible and he does so as a follower of Jesus, not Paul or the Old Testament.  His mother was a nun and his father was a monk and the way he describes his father wearing his robes is as the Christian jedi of Flatbush.  He explains how those using the bible to attack or bash others including the LGBTQ+ are not following Jesus that they are following Paul.  He explains clearly how Jesus brought a new covenant for the people doing away with the old one in Leviticus.  He explained how those using the bible to bash others and not feed  & clothe the stranger/ immigrant are totally against what Jesus preached.   He also mentioned how those trying to force the Old Testament of the bible in schools never want the words of Jesus hung in classrooms in public schools, they never want the sermon on the mount posted on the walls.   Those kind of people only want authoritarian laws or do and dont do pushed on kids.   Enjoy the video, I listen to him on The Daily Beans (news with swearing) friday newscast and his Sirius talk show.  Hugs