I am watching Sam Seder interview a journalist from L.A. The news he is sharing is documented but not making national or local press across the nation. He told about the imposter caught dressed as an ICE agent who was looking to kidnap someone. He told about the conditions the prisoners of ICE are kept in. They are being held in the basement of the LA federal building with 20 people to a room with one bucket to use as a toilet. They are fed once a day a meal of crackers and water. He told about the people snatched off the street by ICE or bounty hunters that were found in a warehouse in San Diego but ICE denied they had anything to do with it. Several people have been held for ransom after being kidnapped by people dressed as ICE with no ID and masked. Below is the link. Hugs
27-Year-Old Hit With ‘Less-Lethal’ Munition Grapples With ‘Life-Changing’ Injury
DAILY MEMO: Bell Gardens Mayor Gets an ICE Agent’s Badge Number and More
DAILY MEMO: ICE Show at McArthur Park as We Pass The 30-day Mark and More
I watched the ICE militia that marched through this park to sow fear in the Latino population. 20 kids had minutes before been playing at the park when the chaperones got word of what ICE was going to do. The staff quickly ran the children to a building near the park and hid them. The children were traumatized. I will post the video on it tomorrow. Hugs
Heavily-Armed Federal Police In Armored Vehicles Target MacArthur Park
Please read. DeathSantis and ICE are doing horrible illegal things while breaking laws all in the name of white supremacy and getting rid of anyone not white in the US at the same time the Florida tax payer is entirely on the hook for all the costs. This story is even more proof of the authoritarian dictatorship the US is under along with the disregarding of any law or lawmaker that gets in the way of cruelty to brown / black people. Also I read that trump sent 200 marines to this place. The link to that store after this one Hugs
In a surprising and possibly unlawful act, five state legislators were denied entry Thursday into a taxpayer-funded migrant detention center deep in the Everglades, raising questions about what will happen behind the razor-wire fences that are being erected surrounding the controversial facility the state has named Alligator Alcatraz.
Armed only with state law and a growing list of humanitarian concerns, state Senators Shevrin Jones and Carlos Guillermo Smith, along with Representatives Anna V. Eskamani, Angie Nixon and Michele Rayner, arrived at the gates of the facility to conduct what they saw as a legally authorized inspection. What they encountered instead was silence, locked doors and a bureaucratic wall.
The state’s shifting justification for not letting them in — first a flat denial, then vague “safety concerns” — only fueled suspicions.
Wearing mosquito netting, Florida Sen. Shevrin Jones and state Representatives Michele K. Rayner and Anna Eskamani were denied entry along with fellow representatives into Alligator Alcatraz. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
“This is a blatant abuse of power and an attempt to conceal human rights violations from the public eye,” the legislators said in a joint statement. “If the facility is unsafe for elected officials to enter, then how can it possibly be safe for those being detained inside?”
Just hours earlier, Republican officials and even former President Donald Trump had toured the same site without issue. When the lawmakers attempted to speak with Florida Department of Emergency Management officials by phone, the call was abruptly cut off.
Now, with reports of flooding, extreme heat and detainees allegedly being held without due process, legislators say the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis is operating a secretive, $450 million detention network with no oversight— and no regard for the law.
The state legislators Michele Rayner arrived at the site to conduct what they said was a lawful inspection under Florida Statutes 944.23 and 951.225, which grant legislators access to state-operated detention centers without advance notice. Instead of transparency, they were met with locked gates and silence.
Workers install a permanent Alligator Alcatraz sign at the new state immigration detention facilty in the Everglades. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
Under Florida law, members of the Legislature have the clear right to access any state-run detention facility, including prisons and jails, without needing prior approval or notification. That legal mandate was ignored, according to Representative Michele Rayner, a civil rights attorney who represents parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.
“For two hours, we waited. We cited the law. We cited the press release announcing our visit. Still, we were denied,” said Rayner. “They cited ‘safety concerns,’ even though just hours earlier President Trump and GOP lawmakers had toured the very same facility.”
Rayner said that when she asked whether she could visit a client being detained inside, she was again refused—contradicting statements made to her moments earlier by Florida Department of Emergency Management officials. When legislators tried to clarify the denial with the agency’s general counsel and legislative affairs director, the call was abruptly disconnected.
“This is America right now,” Rayner said. “And everyone should be concerned.”
The delegation’s visit came just one day after migrants were transferred into the detention center despite flooding caused by ongoing summer storms. Lawmakers say they’ve received reports of extreme heat, poor infrastructure, and a lack of mosquito protection, conditions they say that may be endangering the health and safety of detainees.
Florida House of Representatives denied entry, including State Rep. Anna .V. Eskamani, PhD at Alligator Alcatraz. The facility is within the Florida Everglades, 36 miles west of the central business district of Miami, in Collier County, Florida. , Florida, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
“I was bitten by insects as soon as I got here. My lips started to swell. And I’m outside for just a few minutes,” said Rep. Angie Nixon of Jacksonville. “Imagine what it’s like for the people inside who don’t have bug spray or clean bedding.”
Nixon expressed particular concern over reports in the Miami Herald that pregnant women and children could be housed in the facility. “We’re spending $450 million on this while refusing to expand Medicaid and closing public schools in Duval County,” she said. “This is not about public safety—it’s about cruelty as campaign theater.”
Smith did not mince words, calling the site a “makeshift immigrant detainment camp in the middle of the Everglades swamp,” built through no-bid contracts awarded to major Republican campaign donors.
“This isn’t about detaining dangerous criminals,” Smith said. “It’s about detaining housekeepers, cooks, and immigrants who had legal status five minutes ago—until it was stripped away by policy.”
Smith referenced a Miami Herald story that revealed the state may bring pregnant women and children to the site, despite public claims that the facility was intended for “the worst of the worst.” ICE data shows that fewer than 10% of current immigration detainees in Florida have any violent criminal history, and the majority had no prior offenses.
“We’re detaining vulnerable people for political spectacle,” Smith said. “And it’s not a coincidence this facility was unveiled just days after our legislative session ended—avoiding any real oversight.”
Jones added that the facility, built with $450 million in state funds, does not qualify for federal support. “The federal government has said this facility is ineligible for grants,” he said. “That means it’s 100% on Florida taxpayers—and it was done without a single committee hearing or floor debate.”
Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones, Rep. Anna Eskamani and fellow representatives were denied entry Thursday into Alligator Alcatraz. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
Jones emphasized that both Democratic and Republican lawmakers should be concerned. “This is not a partisan issue,” he said. “We have a duty to ensure that state-funded operations uphold basic standards of decency and legality.”
Rep. Anna Eskamani from Orlando described the detention center as a “political stunt” orchestrated by DeSantis. “Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to build what is essentially a concentration camp,” she said. “This is government by press conference and no-bid contract.”
Eskamani said reports indicate that the first detainees arrived without due process, and flooding had already compromised parts of the facility. “We’re here because the people of Florida deserve transparency. What is being hidden behind these walls?”
All five lawmakers said they plan to pursue legal remedies and initiate legislative inquiries into the construction, contracting, and operation of Alligator Alcatraz.
A check point at Alligator Alcatraz as Florida State Representatives denied entry. The facility is within the Florida Everglades, 36 miles west of the central business district of Miami, in Collier County, Florida. , Florida, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
They also demanded that the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the governor’s office provide a full accounting of who is detained at the facility, what conditions exist inside, and which companies received contracts—particularly those with political ties to the DeSantis administration.
“This is not over,” said Smith. “We will be back, and we will not stop until we get the answers Floridians deserve.”
This story was originally published July 3, 2025 at 6:09 PM.
Let’s start with the grifter in chief. I am old enough to remember when the office of president had a grave dignity that each resident of the office did their best to uphold. Now we have a carnival barker in the overall office using the presidency to hawk everything he can think of to separate his cult rubes from their money to make him profit. The presidency has become not a job to guide the nation but a profit seeking center of a crime family. But right wing media crowed non-stop about the Biden crime family over an alleged 20 thousand dollar payment. Meanwhile it was reported that tRump made almost 600 million in just the time he has been in office on a crypto scheme. And no one is stopping him. So much for the emolument clause of the constitution. Hugs
And speaking of hate for those no white …. what is the death of brown children worth these days compared to billionaires getting a tax cut to keep more money they will never need other than to claim to have it. Hugs.
It was all about not having a ship named after a gay navy hero because to these bigots somehow gay means weak. However some of the greatest military heroes are members of the LGBTQ+ community. They just needed the cover of claiming these other ships would be renamed also. There is no inclusion and diversity with these white supremacist haters. If someone thinks different from them, looks different from them, or has a different religious view from them that person must be destroyed by them. Such a person is a threat to them. Weird way to think. Hugs
Let’s talk about the attempt to whiten the US. That is what the entire goal is. It is not about removing criminals as the government just gave two convicted traffickers felon gang members asylum for at least one year and removed from jail just so they could accuse an innocent man the government deported “by accident”. These concentration camps and ICE actions are because people like Stephen Miller hate anyone not white especially if they speak Spanish which Miller can not understand which makes him sure that they are insulting him. It is about older white people scared that the brown people will do to the whites what they did to the brown people while they were in charge. Hugs
Add in the capitalist all the profit must be for us people who hate for a democratic socialist that wants to make live better for the lower incomes, along with the Christian freak out the man is Muslim claiming he will install his religious laws instead of theirs on the public, and the weirdest right wing shit like he will authorize killing all Jewish people and go on a terrorist campaign on the city, but the worst thing is corporate democrats are terrified to support the elected Democratic Party nominee because their corporate over lords don’t like he is going to do stuff for the public, for the people instead of shifting all possible profit to the wealthy like the corporate Democratic Party leadership republican lite members. Hugs
It’s rather telling that they’ve chosen to go after CNN, and NOT Apple nor the app creator. If they were serious, they’d attempt to stop it immediately by going after the app creator first and then Apple for allowing it to be available in their App Store and compatible with their iOS. (Apple could install a patch that would hinder the app.)
This is clearly about intimidating, censoring & controlling the media, and the fat fascist is just itching to destroy one of these entities.
tRump and crew do not care how many people lose their coverage. They claim those “able-bodied people” should get a job so they have healthcare. That is how out of touch most wealthy republicans are if they honestly believe that companies routinely offer health care now. Most companies either don’t or have strict requirements to qualify. The thing is republicans have been trying to cancel health care of the public, for the people since forever. Look how many times they tried to repeal the ACA / Obama care. This bill they just passed will let them roll back the subsidies and throw millions off the ACA rolls. Why? Because they don’t care, they got their healthy care so you can fuck off as it costs profits. You’re not wealthy enough to pay for care yourself than you don’t need or deserve it. Just suffer and then slink away and die. Hugs
This is the person who the cult felt was so much smarter and better than Joe Biden? I often ask how his cult could be taken in by him and the reply comes back “he speaks like we do, he hates who we hate”. WTF. Hugs
With all that is happening it is hard to keep up but we are in the land of nonsense where people with the least understanding of a subject override the advice and judgment of experts. Real scientists make judgments based on medical data / studies while these people run on emotional high that conspiracies give them. Dunning-Kruger effect. Hugs
At what point can we start calling and admitting tRump is not acting as a president of the US but as an authoritarian dictator trying hard to cement his power / authority to crush any dissent. When will our eyes be opened wide enough to see that time is short to stop the erosion of our rights and due process. The Democratic Party is not doing enough to get the message out. Hugs
As was widely reported during the 2022 and 2024 elections, hundreds of seasoned local and state election officials fled their jobs due to threats of violence by the cult. The statement below is from the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State.
So this guy who never served in the military and has no background in law enforcement will lead the army and the ATF, but is convinced he alone is smart enough and needs no help? No I think what this is about is they don’t want the civilians to find out planes to illegally use the military and to either try to stop it or tell people about it. Think on it, tRump wants complete unfettered control to use the military / Army to enforce tRump’s decrees. Maybe his taking over local or state elections apparatus to declare republicans
won when they clearly did not, to enforce voter suppression acts, or simply to back him as he demands a third
On Friday, Driscoll notified the 115 members of the Civilian Aides to the Secretary of the Army program, or CASA, an all-volunteer group that serves as the secretary’s eyes and ears in communities across the country, that their roles were being terminated.
Just last month, in a virtually unprecedented move, the service granted direct commissions at the rank of lieutenant colonel to a group of wealthy tech executives from firms including Palantir, Meta and OpenAI. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Army planners are quietly trimming down, or outright dismantling, programs seen as peripheral to the service’s high-tech future.
as the service doubles down on its push to modernize with a Silicon Valley-style lensI can imagine where that’s headed.
July 6, 1892 In one of the worst cases of violent union-busting, a fierce battle broke out between the striking employees (members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers) of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Company and a Pinkerton Detective Agency private army brought on barges down the Monongahela River in the dead of night. Twelve were killed. Henry C. Frick, general manager of the plant in Homestead, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had been given free rein by Carnegie to quash the strike. At Frick’s request, Pennsylvania Governor Robert E. Pattison then sent 8,500 troops to intervene on behalf of the company. Read more (2 links)
July 6, 1942 In Nazi-occupied Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family were forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse under threat of arrest and deportation to a concentration camp by the Einsatzgruppen (Task Force), a part of the German Gestapo. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect
July 6, 1944 Irene Morgan, a 28-year-old black woman, was arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus eleven years before Rosa Parks did so. Her legal appeal, after her conviction for breaking a Virginia law (known as a Jim Crow law) forbidding integrated seating, resulted in a 7-1 Supreme Court decision barring segregation in interstate commerce. Irene Morgan More about Irene Morgan June 3, 1946: Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia Zinn Ed Project
July 6, 1965 As many as 500 students in Berkeley, California, attempted to block trains carrying troops destined for Vietnam along the Santa Fe Railroad tracks; there were no casualties. Organized by the Vietnam Day Committee, this was the first civil disobedience at UC-Berkeley against the Vietnam War.
I have long liked this young YouTuber. I started following him when he was more into debunking stuff while also producing atheist content. I felt he understood what a lot of people were going through in that he was trying hard to hide being an atheist from his parents and family which gave him an idea what many in the LGBTQ+ community were going through with their families. He himself noted that similarity. One of the things I like about him is his calm quiet fact filled delivery. If others have not noticed I don’t like aggressive angry yelling videos, they are too close to what I grew up with and suffered in my childhood. Drew is not a fervent anti-Christian like so many atheists are. Instead he simply is against the bad stuff some people do in the name of religion / Christianity. I like that. At the end of this video he again says if you are getting something good from your faith, don’t leave it, just change it to make it better. I agree. He explains how Christianity was abused by corporations and wealthy people to get people to do things against their own interest they otherwise wouldn’t do. In the name of god work more at a lower cost to make money for your employer type stuff. Hugs
There are videos at the link below. I don’t know where we are a species right now. It seems more and more people are willing to give in to the lowest of our natures while mocking those who try to live up to the best we could be. The Christians trying to keep books that have LGBTQ+ characters out of schools can’t be bothered by the shooting of starving people including kids trying desperately to get something to eat. They are not doing anything to help, just everything they can to lash out bashing a minority group just for existing using their god to do it. Yet did not their god say to feed the hungry? To help the immigrants among you? They are so desperate to control others sexuality but they don’t care about those acting cruelty to the ones most needing help. Hypocrites, which side of god do they get to sit on? Hugs
American contractors guarding aid distribution sites in Gaza are using live ammunition and stun grenades as hungry Palestinians scramble for food, according to accounts and videos obtained by The Associated Press.
Two U.S. contractors, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were revealing their employers’ internal operations, said they were coming forward because they were disturbed by what they considered dangerous and irresponsible practices. They said the security staff hired were often unqualified, unvetted, heavily armed and seemed to have an open license to do whatever they wished.
They said their colleagues regularly lobbed stun grenades and pepper spray in the direction of the Palestinians. One contractor said bullets were fired in all directions — in the air, into the ground and at times toward the Palestinians, recalling at least one instance where he thought someone had been hit.
“There are innocent people being hurt. Badly. Needlessly,” the contractor said.
He said American staff on the sites monitor those coming to seek food and document anyone considered “suspicious.” He said they share such information with the Israeli military.
Videos provided by one of the contractors and taken at the sites show hundreds of Palestinians crowded between metal gates, jostling for aid amid the sound of bullets, stun grenades and the sting of pepper spray. Other videos include conversation between English-speaking men discussing how to disperse crowds and encouraging each other after bursts of gunfire.
The testimonies from the contractors — combined with the videos, internal reports and text messages obtained by the AP — offer a rare glimpse inside the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the newly created, secretive American organization backed by Israel to feed the Gaza Strip’s population. Last month, the U.S. government pledged $30 million for the group to continue operations — the first known U.S. donation to the group, whose other funding sources remain opaque.
A spokesperson for Safe Reach Solutions, the logistics company subcontracted by GHF, told the AP that there have been no serious injuries at any of their sites to date. In scattered incidents, security professionals fired live rounds into the ground and away from civilians to get their attention. That happened in the early days at the “the height of desperation where crowd control measures were necessary for the safety and security of civilians,” the spokesperson said.
Aid operation is controversial
Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians are living through a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off the 21-month war, Israel has bombarded and laid siege to the strip, leaving many teetering on the edge of famine, according to food security experts.
For 2 1/2 months before GHF’s opening in May, Israel blocked all food, water and medicine from entering Gaza, claiming Hamas was stealing the aid being transported under a preexisting system coordinated by the United Nations. It now wants GHF to replace that U.N. system. The U.N. says its Gaza aid operations do not involve armed guards.
Over 57,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since the war erupted, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants.
GHF is an American organization, registered in Delaware and established in February to distribute humanitarian aid during the ongoing Gaza humanitarian crisis. Since the GHF sites began operating more than a month ago, Palestinians say Israeli troops open fire almost every day toward crowds on roads heading to the distribution points, through Israeli military zones. Several hundred people have been killed and hundreds more wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and witnesses.
In response, Israel’s military says it fires only warning shots and is investigating reports of civilian harm. It denies deliberately shooting at any innocent civilians and says it’s examining how to reduce “friction with the population” in the areas surrounding the distribution centers.
AP’s reporting for this article focuses on what is happening at the sites themselves. Palestinians arriving at the sites say they are caught between Israeli and American fire, said the contractor who shared videos with the AP.
“We have come here to get food for our families. We have nothing,” he recounted Palestinians telling him. “Why does the (Israeli) army shoot at us? Why do you shoot at us?”
A spokesperson for the GHF said there are people with a “vested interest” in seeing it fail and are willing to do or say almost anything to make that happen. The spokesperson said the team is composed of seasoned humanitarian, logistics and security professionals with deep experience on the ground. The group says it has distributed the equivalent of more than 50 million meals in Gaza in its food boxes of staples.
GHF says that it has consistently shown compassionate engagement with the people of Gaza.
Throughout the war, aid distribution has been marred by chaos. Gangs have looted trucks of aid traveling to distribution centers and mobs of desperate people have also offloaded trucks before they’ve reached their destination. Earlier this month, at least 51 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded while waiting for the U.N. and commercial trucks to enter the territory, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and a local hospital. Israel’s military acknowledged several casualties as soldiers opened fire on the approaching crowd and said authorities would investigate.
Videos, texts, internal reports document havoc at food sites
AP spoke to the two contractors for UG Solutions, an American outfit subcontracted to hire security personnel for the distribution sites. They said bullets, stun grenades and pepper spray were used at nearly every distribution, even if there was no threat.
Videos of aid being dispensed at the sites seen by the AP appear to back up the frenetic scenes the contractors described. The footage was taken within the first two weeks of its distributions — about halfway into the operations.
In one video, what appear to be heavily armed American security contractors at one of the sites in Gaza discuss how to disperse Palestinians nearby. One is heard saying he has arranged for a “show of force” by Israeli tanks.
“I don’t want this to be too aggressive,” he adds, “because this is calming down.”
At that moment, bursts of gunfire erupt close by, at least 15 shots. “Whoo! Whoo!” one contractor yelps.
“I think you hit one,” one says.
Then comes a shout: “Hell, yeah, boy!”
The camera’s view is obscured by a large dirt mound.
The contractor who took the video told AP that he saw other contractors shooting in the direction of Palestinians who had just collected their food and were departing. The men shot both from a tower above the site and from atop the mound, he said. The shooting began because contractors wanted to disperse the crowd, he said, but it was unclear why they continued shooting as people were walking away.
The camera does not show who was shooting or what was being shot at. But the contractor who filmed it said he watched another contractor fire at the Palestinians and then saw a man about 60 yards (meters) away — in the same direction where the bullets were fired — drop to the ground.
This happened at the same time the men were heard talking — effectively egging each other on, he said.
In other videos furnished by the contractor, men in grey uniforms — colleagues, he said — can be seen trying to clear Palestinians who are squeezed into a narrow, fenced-in passage leading to one of the centers. The men fire pepper spray and throw stun grenades that detonate amid the crowd. The sound of gunfire can be heard. The contractor who took the video said the security personnel usually fire at the ground near the crowds or from nearby towers over their heads.
During a single distribution in June, contractors used 37 stun grenades, 27 rubber-and-smoke “scat shell” projectiles and 60 cans of pepper spray, according to internal text communications shared with the AP.
That count does not include live ammunition, the contractor who provided the videos said.
One photo shared by that contractor shows a woman lying in a donkey cart after he said she was hit in the head with part of a stun grenade.
This photo, provided by an American contractor on condition of anonymity because they were revealing their employers’ internal operations, shows a woman slumped over in a donkey cart after the contractor said she was hit in the head with part of a stun grenade at a food distribution site in Gaza run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in June 2025. (AP Photo)
An internal report by Safe Reach Solutions, the logistics company subcontracted by GHF to run the sites, found that aid seekers were injured during 31% of the distributions that took place in a two-week period in June. The report did not specify the number of injuries or the cause. SRS told the AP the report refers to non-serious injuries.
More videos show frenzied scenes of Palestinians running to collect leftover food boxes at one site. Hundreds of young men crowd near low metal barriers, transferring food from boxes to bags while contractors on the other side of the barriers tell them to stay back.
Some Palestinians wince and cough from pepper spray. “You tasting that pepper spray? Yuck,” one man close to the camera can be heard saying in English.
SRS acknowledged that it’s dealing with large, hungry populations, but said the environment is secure, controlled, and ensures people can get the aid they need safely.
Verifying the videos with audio analysis
To confirm the footage is from the sites, AP geolocated the videos using aerial imagery. The AP also had the videos analyzed by two audio forensic experts who said they could identify live ammunition — including machine-gun fire — coming from the sites, in most cases within 50 to 60 meters of the camera’s microphone.
In the video where the men are heard egging each other on, the echo and acoustics of the shots indicate they’re fired from a position close to the microphone, said Rob Maher, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Montana State University and an author and research expert in audio forensic analysis. Maher and the other analyst, Steven Beck, owner of Beck Audio Forensics, said there was no indication that the videos’ audio had been tampered with.
The analysts said that the bursts of gunfire and the pop sequences in some of the videos indicated that guns were panning in different directions and were not repeatedly aimed at a single target. They could not pinpoint exactly where the shots were coming from nor who was shooting.
GHF says the Israeli military is not deployed at the aid distribution sites. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said the army is not stationed at the sites or within their immediate proximity, especially during operating hours. He said they’re run by an American company and have their own security.
One of the contractors who had been on the sites said he’d never felt a real or perceived threat by Hamas there.
SRS says that Hamas has openly threatened its aid workers and civilians receiving aid. It did not specify where people were threatened.
Palestinians carry boxes containing food and humanitarian aid packages delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed organization approved by Israel, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana,File)
American analysts and Israeli soldiers work side by side, contractors say
According to the contractor who took the videos, the Israeli army is leveraging the distribution system to access information.
Both contractors said that cameras monitor distributions at each site and that American analysts and Israeli soldiers sit in a control room where the footage is screened in real time. The control room, they said, is housed in a shipping container on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The contractor who took the videos said some cameras are equipped with facial recognition software. In live shots of the sites seen by the AP, some videos streams are labeled “analytics” — those were the ones that had the facial recognition software, said the contractor.
If a person of interest is seen on camera — and their information is already in the system — their name and age pops up on the computer screen, said the contractor. Israeli soldiers watching the screens take notes and cross-check the analysts’ information with their own drone footage from the sites, he said.
The contractor said he did not know the source of the data in the facial recognition system. The AP could not independently verify his information.
An internal SRS report from June seen by the AP said that its intel team would circulate to staff a “POI Mugs Card,” that showed photos of Palestinians taken at the sites who were deemed persons of interest.
The contractor said he and other staff were told by SRS to photograph anyone who looked “out of place.” But the criteria were not specified, he said. The contractor said the photos were also added to the facial recognition database. He did not know what was done with the information.
SRS said accusations that it gathers intelligence are false and that it has never used biometrics. It said it coordinates movements with Israeli authorities, a requirement for any aid group in Gaza.
An Israeli security official who was not named in line with the army’s protocol, said there are no security screening systems developed or operated by the army within the aid sites.
Scottie's Playtime 