Luis Leon of Allentown, who his family says was taken into custody by ICE in Philadelphia in June. The family had no idea of his whereabouts and even believed for a time that he was dead before finding out he is in a hospital in Guatemala, according to his granddaughter. (Contributed by the Leon family)
Relatives of 82-year-old Allentown resident Luis Leon are headed to a Guatemalan hospital Saturday in hopes of reuniting with the man they say disappeared without a trace into the American immigration system a month ago — and who, for a time, they thought was dead.
The last time anyone in the family saw Leon was June 20, when he went with his wife to a Philadelphia immigration office to have his lost green card replaced.
There, the family says, he was handcuffed by two officers, who led him away without explanation. His wife, who speaks little English, was left behind and kept in the building for 10 hours until she was released to her granddaughter, the family says.
Repeated inquiries to immigration officials, prisons, hospitals and even a morgue yielded no information. Leon’s name was not in ICE’s online database of detainees.
Finally, on Friday, a relative from Leon’s native Chile was told he had been taken first to a detention center in Minnesota and then to Guatemala. The hospital, citing privacy rules, would not verify his presence there when contacted by The Morning Call.
Leon was granted political asylum in 1987 after surviving torture at the hands of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime, according to his granddaughter, Nataly, who asked that her surname not be used because she fears U.S. government retribution against her and her relatives.
In Allentown, he lived a quiet life, raising four children and enjoying retirement after years working at a leather manufacturing plant.
It all fell apart, Nataly said, when he lost the wallet holding his green card and made the fateful appointment to replace it at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office on 41st Street in Philadelphia.
Frustration at not knowing Leon’s whereabouts turned to grief July 9, when a caller informed Leon’s wife that he had died, Nataly said.
An ICE official said Friday the agency is investigating the matter but would share no other information, refusing even to confirm that Leon was at the Philadelphia office in June.
Nataly, for her part, has run the gamut from confusion to grief to frustrated rage — often in the course of a few hours — as she has tried to learn her grandfather’s fate.
On Friday, after hearing he was in Guatemala, she tearfully said she wants the world to know how he’s been treated by the immigration system.
“I can see all my family is in pain right now,” she said.
The mystery surrounding Leon’s ordeal goes beyond ICE. Just days after his arrest, a woman claiming to be an immigration lawyer placed an unsolicited call to Leon’s wife and said she could help get Leon out on bail, but didn’t say where he was or how she learned about the case.
It was this woman who called to tell his wife that Leon was dead. A week after communication from the purported lawyer ceased, the family finally received word that Leon had been in detention in Minnesota and then transferred to a hospital in Guatemala City.
Nataly said she intended to fly to Guatemala on Saturday to see her grandfather, whose condition is unknown. He suffers from diabetes, a heart condition and high blood pressure, among other conditions, she said.
Nataly said the man she calls abuelo — Spanish for grandfather — is a well-liked figure around his Allentown neighborhood. He gardens, goes fishing with a close friend and, because he is skilled with tools, functions as a handyman for neighbors who need minor repairs.
The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation program was initially supposed to be directed at undocumented residents who have committed crimes. However, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which gathers data on federal immigration enforcement, says the vast majority of people in ICE detention as of July 13 — 40,643 out of 56,816, or 71.5% — have no criminal convictions.
Many of those with convictions were for minor offenses, including traffic violations, the organization said.
Leon, according to his family, never had so much as a parking ticket — a contention borne out by court records.
Staff writer Anthony Salamone contributed to this report.
July 24, 1974 The United States Supreme Court (U.S. v. Nixon) unanimously ordered President Richard Nixon to surrender tape recordings of White House conversations regarding the Watergate affair. Speaking for the Supreme Court in front of a packed and hushed courtroom, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (a Nixon appointee) rejected President Nixon’s claims of executive privilege (virtually total confidentiality for the White House) because the need for fair administration of criminal justice must prevail. The White House feared review of the recordings by a U.S. district judge would reveal, among other crimes, impeachable offenses. Listen to the tapes online (It’s a YouTube playlist!)
July 24, 1983 Canadians and Americans spanned the international border at Thousand Islands Bridge, linking New York and Ontario, to protest nuclear weapons and border harassment of peace activists. Thousand Islands Bridge
July 24, 1983 Women tagged a U.S. warplane with anti-nuclear graffiti at Greenham Common, an air base in England. The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp had been set up just outside the perimeter of the base in 1981 to get U.S. Cruise missiles, some of which were deployed at the base, out of their country. Other tactics included disrupting construction work at the base, blockading the entrance, and cutting down parts of the fence. Read more about The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp
A U.S. Army veteran who was arrested during an immigration raid at a Southern California marijuana farm last week said Wednesday he was sprayed with tear gas and pepper spray before being dragged from his vehicle and pinned down by federal agents who arrested him.
George Retes, 25, who works as a security guard at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, said he was arriving at work on July 10 when several federal agents surrounded his car and — despite him identifying himself as a U.S. citizen — broke his window, peppered sprayed him and dragged him out.
In this image taken from video provided by United Farm Workers, George Retes speaks about being arrested at an immigration raid at a Southern California marijuana farm during a press conference held over Zoom in Oxnard, Calif., Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (United Farm Workers via AP)
“It took two officers to nail my back and then one on my neck to arrest me even though my hands were already behind my back,” Retes said.
Massive farm raids led to hundreds being detained
The Ventura City native was detained during chaotic raids at two Southern California farms where federal authorities arrested more than 360 people, one of the largest operations since President Donald Trump took office in January. Protesters faced off against federal agents in military-style gear, and one farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse roof.
The raids came more than a month into an extended immigration crackdown by the Trump administration across Southern California that was originally centered in Los Angeles, where local officials say the federal actions are spreading fear in immigrant communities.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke on the raids at a news conference Wednesday, calling Trump a “chaos agent” who has incited violence and spread fear in communities.
“You got someone who dropped 30 feet because they were scared to death and lost their life,” he said, referring to the farmworker who died in the raids. “People are quite literally disappearing with no due process, no rights.”
Retes was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where he said he was put in a special cell on suicide watch and checked on each day after he became emotionally distraught over his ordeal and missing his 3-year-old daughter’s birthday party Saturday.
Milk is poured on a protester’s face after federal immigration agents tossed tear gas at protesters during a raid in the agriculture area of Camarillo, Calif., Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker)
He said federal agents never told him why he was arrested or allowed him to contact a lawyer or his family during his three-day detention. Authorities never let him shower or change clothes despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, Retes said, adding that his hands burned throughout the first night he spent in custody.
On Sunday, an officer had him sign a paper and walked him out of the detention center. He said he was told he faced no charges.
Retes met with silence when seeking explanation
“They gave me nothing I could wrap my head around,” Retes said, explaining that he was met with silence on his way out when he asked about being “locked up for three days with no reason and no charges.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed Retes’ arrest but didn’t say on what charges.
“George Retes was arrested and has been released,” she said. “He has not been charged. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is reviewing his case, along with dozens of others, for potential federal charges related to the execution of the federal search warrant in Camarillo.”
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests without warrants in seven California counties, including Los Angeles. Immigrant advocates accused federal agents of detaining people because they looked Latino. The Justice Department appealed on Monday and asked for the order to be stayed.
The Pentagon also said Tuesday it was ending the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles. That’s roughly half the number the administration sent to the city following protests over the immigration actions. Some of those troops have been accompanying federal agents during their immigration enforcement operations.
Retes said he joined the Army at 18 and served four years, including deploying to Iraq in 2019.
“I joined the service to help better myself,” he said. “I did it because I love this (expletive) country. We are one nation and no matter what, we should be together. All this separation and stuff between everyone is just the way it shouldn’t be.”
Veteran pledges to sue federal authorities for his ordeal
Retes said he plans to sue for wrongful detention.
“The way they’re going about this entire deportation process is completely wrong, chasing people who are just working, especially trying to feed everyone here in the U.S.,” he said. “No one deserves to be treated the way they treat people.”
Retes was detained along with California State University Channel Islands professor Jonathan Caravello, also a U.S. citizen, who was arrested for throwing a tear gas canister at law enforcement, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X.
The California Faculty Association said Caravello was taken away by agents who did not identify themselves nor inform him of why he was being taken into custody. Like Retes, the association said the professor was then held without being allowed to contact his family or an attorney.
Caravello was attempting to dislodge a tear gas canister that was stuck underneath someone’s wheelchair, witnesses told KABC-TV, the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles.
A federal judge on Monday ordered Caravello to be released on $15,000 bond. He’s scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 1.
“I want everyone to know what happened. This doesn’t just affect one person,” Retes said. “It doesn’t matter if your skin is brown. It doesn’t matter if you’re white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran or you serve this country. They don’t care. They’re just there to fill a quota.” ___ Associated Press writer Jamie Ding contributed from Los Angeles.
July 23, 1846 Author Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax as a protest against the Mexican war, which in turn led to his writing “Civil Disobedience.” This essay became a source of inspiration for Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. From Thoreau’s essay: “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” Daguerreotype of Henry David Thoreau Out of Thoreau’s jailing grew a legend: The great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail. Emerson asked, “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau replied, “Why are you not here? Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Thoreau was not alone in his opposition: Thomas Corwin of Ohio denounced the war as merely the latest example of American injustice to Mexico: “If I were a Mexican I would tell you,‘Have you not room enough in your own country to bury your dead.’” Henry Clay [former speaker of the House and presidential candidate] declared, “This is no war of defense, but one of unnecessary and offensive aggression.” Abraham Lincoln also opposed the war, and lost his seat in Congress as a result. The entire essay (in annotated form)
July 23, 1967 Detroiters angry at loss of jobs and, especially, at the abusive and virtually all-white police department, started rioting in what became known as the Detroit Rebellion. The intitiating incident was an early-morning raid on a blind pig (Detroit for after-hours drinking club) on 12th Street. The violence spread elsewhere in the city, and led to President Lyndon Johnson’s calling out 8000 members of the National Guard. Order was not restored for six days. In the end, there were 43 known dead, 347 injured, 3800 arrested, 1000 families homeless. Thirteen hundred buildings burned to the ground and twenty-seven hundred businesses were looted. Online documentary on all aspects of what happened, “Ashes to Hope” The Rebellion from a 40-year perspective
While asshole billionaires are enjoying the continuation of huge tax cuts, Donald Trump and Republicans realized, maybe, that this will actually increase our national debt. Why didn’t somebody say something? So in order to slow down the bleeding, the goons looked for where they could make some cuts and save. No, they did not cut the budgets for ICE, defense, bombs for Israel to drop on the kids in Gaza, Trump golf trips, or Trump birthday parades. Maybe they could sell the plane Qatar bribed Trump with, if anyone else actually wanted it.
Trump and Republicans passed a bill that will cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for PBS and NPR. Trump is all giddy about this and posted to ShitSocial…
Of course, this impacts Sesame Street. What kind of asshole hates Sesame Street? Donald Trump is that kind of asshole. Donald Trump was an asshole millionaire by the time he was 8 years old. His allowance at 3 years old was around $200,000 a year. That explains why he doesn’t have any appreciation for Sesame Street. If nothing else, Sesame Street could have taught him how to count his money and maybe realize that if you spend more than you bring in, you will increase debt. Cookie Monster knows this. You can’t eat more cookies than you have. Maybe if Trump watched Sesame Street, he wouldn’t speak like a drugged-out crackhead and could talk the king’s English as well as the president of Liberia.
Sesame Street might have saved Trump from being the kind of asshole who sexually assaults and rapes women. It could have saved him from being a grifter and a thief. It could have saved him from growing up into a racist liar. Sesame Street could have saved Trump from turning into Trump.
As Matt Hooper said in Jaws while describing a Great White Shark as a machine, “All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that’s all.” Trump is also a machine, and all that asshole machine does is grift, sexually assault women, and make little assholes.
By the way, have you seen a photo of Barron Trump lately? He’s cultivating the asshole look. He may be taking grooming tips from older brother, Don Jr. Fortunately, Barron hasn’t developed the coke-up dazed expression yet, so for now, he only has the Christian Bale serial killer look from American Psycho.
Anyhoosies, we’re supposed to be talking about Big Bird and not Big Turd, the serial killer of democracy. I wanted to avoid drawing Big Bird for a cartoon on this subject, as so many other cartoonists did this week. But after I got the bucket idea, how could I not?
That’s the blog for today, Peezeheads. One of my clients asked for a local cartoon this morning, and he asked about an hour ago if he could have it by 11 a.m. tomorrow. I haven’t even read the article yet, so I should do that. You’re also going to get a blog about Ozzy. Stay tooned. And no talking about Ozzy in the comments until the Ozzy blog. Pretend you’re a Republican and Ozzy is the Epstein Client List. (snip-MORE)
This is a fun half from an Emma Thursday 07-17-2025
This last one is from the Nazi authoritarian cult of tRump maga who I posted a meme of getting fired and asking for money because his boss felt his was not a good fit for the company. FAFO
Last Friday, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence (sic), released a report she claims showed a “treasonous conspiracy in 2016” by top Obama administration officials to harm Donald Trump.
This is bizarre because over the past eight years, the entire Intelligence network agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to undermine our elections and to help Donald Trump win the presidency.
Also, it could be treasonous for an American president to manipulate an election, but it’s not treasonous to oppose Donald Trump, which is how the administration is framing this. When Trump lied that Obama “wiretapped” Trump Tower, he called it “treasonous.” It could be illegal without a warrant, but it wouldn’t be treasonous. However, it was a huge lie. Maybe lying to the American people repeatedly should be considered treasonous.
President Barack Obama never broke the law. Trump has broken the law repeatedly. He’s breaking the law now.
Trump likes to call what happened in 2016 the “Russia hoax.” Robert Mueller was never able to assert that Trump colluded with Russia, but only because the investigation ended early after then-Attorney General William Barr basically pulled the rug out from under Mueller. But Trump did collude with Russia. The Trump Campaign shared polling data with Russia. Isn’t that colluding? They invited Russians into their campaign HQ to provide “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Trump even asked Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s “missing emails.” Does anyone remember, “Russia, if you’re listening”? Does anyone remember that Russia started hacking the Democratic National Committee on that very same day? Asking for Russia’s help, and receiving it on the same day, sure sounds like colluding.
Intelligence agencies and Senate investigators spent years reviewing the investigations and concluded that during the 2016 election, Russia conducted probing operations of election systems to see if they could change vote outcomes. While Russia extracted voter registration data in Illinois and Arizona, and probed in other states, there was no evidence that they attempted to actually change votes.
The Obama administration never claimed that Russian hackers manipulated votes, just that they meddled, as in conducting influence operations to change public opinion, using fake social media posts from the Russian Troll Farm to sow division among voters, and leaking documents stolen from the DNC to hurt Clinton. These are not opinions, they’re facts. Even a Republican-led Senate report said this was true. One of those Republicans today is Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Obama ordered intelligence officials to review the material they had collected and report what they had learned before he left office. Obama was worried that the incoming Trump regime would bury all reports and facts about Russia’s meddling, and Obama was right to be concerned.
Later in Helsinki, Donald Trump stood next to Vladimir Putin and took his side over that of America, and defended Putin from accusations of meddling in our election.
Garbage, I mean Gabbard is upset by an email from an assistant to then-Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, that said Obama was seeking a new assessment of the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” Gabbard believes that’s treasonous, but then again, she’s always been a useful idiot for Putin.
How exactly is it treasonous or even A-ha, to ask, “How did Russia do it?”
Now, the CIA is referring James Brennan, the former CIA Director, to the FBI, run by conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, for a criminal investigation. How is conducting an investigation, not on Trump but on Russia, criminal?
Gabbard’s report highlighted that there was “no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count,” then contrasted that with the spy agencies’ ultimate conclusion in December 2016 that Putin “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”
The report is saying that our election system (pay attention, MAGAts) wasn’t manipulated, just that Putin tried to manipulate the results of the election.
The report focused on a decision intelligence officials made at the time against producing an article for the president’s daily intelligence briefing that would have said that the Russians “did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” That report was not added to President Obama’s daily briefing because they didn’t know if it was true. It wasn’t.
While Russia did not impact the vote count, it did affect the results. How is Obama having these investigations done, which were to protect our nation, treasonous? A better question might be: Is it treasonous for a president to engage in real estate deals and accept free jets from monarchies?
If an American president (sic) acted treasonously, it’s Donald Trump for trying to steal the 2020 election he lost.
One of my senators, Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Gabbard’s report compared two different things: Russian attempts to hack into voting systems and Russian influence operations meant to sway public opinion. If Gabbard can’t understand that difference, and we know Trump can’t, then she’s not qualified to be the Director of National Intelligence.
Good luck explaining the difference between hacking into a voting system and swaying public opinion, as Gabbard’s comprehension skills are on the same level as your attic-dwelling MAGA uncle.
The Director of National Intelligence should have some intelligence. She’s as qualified for her position as Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi are for theirs.
Warner said, “This is one more example of the director of national intelligence trying to cook the books. We’re talking about apples and oranges. The Russians were not successful at manipulating our election infrastructure, nor did we say they were.”
Warner pointed out that as recently as March, the intelligence community reported that Russia is still using influence campaigns to sow dissent in the West. Duh. They never stopped. And why would they when it works? They’ve hacked into other Western nations, but they had their greatest success with our elections, probably because American voters are more gullible. And not just conservatives. Raise your hand if you believed Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert are going to do a show together because you saw it on Facebook.
The report found that “Moscow probably believes information operations efforts to influence U.S. elections are advantageous,” and that undermining the integrity of American elections was a key goal.
Warner said, “They acknowledged that Russia’s effort to meddle goes on. That was an assessment under her watch,” he said, referring to Gabbard. See? She’s stupid.
Warner said his committee found no attempt by Obama or senior officials to manipulate the findings.
William Barr appointed a special counsel shortly before Trump left office in 2021 to investigate the investigators, and none of this came up.
You know what Harry would say? This is some bullshit.
Trump and his goons, like Tulsi Gabbard, have weaponized National Intelligence, which we used to trust, against democracy.
I hope this MAGA conspiracy theory works out even better for them than the Epstein Client List theory.
Creative note: I wanted to hit this subject after seeing that nearly every MAGA cartoonist went after it with Trump’s talking points and without any context. All their cartoons said is that President Obama committed treason. They don’t even understand the issue. These MAGAt cartoonists have a better chance of explaining quantum physics in Greek than they do of understanding this issue.
Here’s onecartoon on this, and here’s another one, and here’s one more(it wasn’t a DOJ investigation, dum-dum), and hey…I found another one, and another one(by our favorite racist duo), and here’s one by another of our favorite racists, and an idiot to boot. Nice label, dumbass. There’s not one bit of context in any of these six cartoons.
Context is hard for MAGAts, but talking points are easy.
Legacy media is very concerned with the ‘Gen Z Stare’
In the past week, there’s been robust discourse in legacy media about the so-called ‘Gen Z Stare’ and the bursts of generational conflict it reportedly captures.
It’s gotten write-ups by The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, NBC News, ABC News, CNBC, Newsweek, Indy100, Axios, Fortune, Vox, Vice, Business Insider, The Independent, Forbes, Buzzfeed, Slate, HuffPost, Glamour, People, and Marie Claire, among others.
As a millennial, I am apparently urged to be concerned about this phenomenon of Gen Z folks supposedly failing to appropriately interact with me through sufficiently pleasant facial expressions, so I thought it might be helpful to offer my thoughts:
The sitting president of the United States is currently covering up a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children and likely implicates a number of powerful people who are currently out in the world and free to continue preying on children.
The sitting president of the United States just successfully pressured Paramount and CBS to cancel the #1 late-night talk show on broadcast television as part of what appears to be a blatant bribery deal because the host has been critical of him.
The sitting president of the United States just got the extremist Republican majority in Congress to strip 11 million Americans of health care coverage by the end of 2026 and upwards of 17 million Americans when you account for new federal work requirements. (snip-MORE; it’s succinct and quick, and it’s all good facts for grocery/other places lines, for discussion.)
I would like people to compare the “tough guy” speech given by the ICE person about removing child molesters and kidnappers, rescuing children from forced labor, the worst criminals, murders, making mom and pop safe with the four crimes they mentioned that of the dozens and dozens arrested were accused of. One guy was charged with fentanyl distribution, one was charged with trespass, a third was charged with driving without a license and refusing to show identification. Wow mom and pop are so much safer now that the worst of the worst are in detention with no due process. Let’s be clear, they are going after legal immigrants, they are going after those following the rules, they are showing up at places where these people are working and looking for work because the goal is to remove all the brown people. It is that simple, it is a white supremacy thing driven by racist like Stephen Miller who hates Spanish speaking people and those with brown skin. They held a US citizen veteran for three days with no due process and no explanation. Take a guess of his skin color? Brown? Great guess and correct. These gang thugs are not trying to make the US safer for anyone, they are determined to make it whiter. At the 5:21 mark ICE thugs abruptly stop their car in the middle of the street and with guns and tasers ready while masked and in no uniform they rush a woman who is a well known activist who has been openly filming them for weeks. This is an attempt to cause fear and stop people from viewing and reporting their actions. This is such a 1930s Hitler’s Germany moment in the US. And Vaush talks about how the nation if flooded with guns and these masked people with no uniforms rushing at people could be shot by people in reasonable fear for their lives as Roger also has been saying. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 
