‘I couldn’t save my husband’: the Minnesota families ripped apart by ICE
Family members left stunned and bereft after their loved ones were spirited away by federal immigration agents
Miles Taylor explains how in tRump’s first term he was shocked to find the president had checks on his authority / power. Once he heard about the insurrection act he kept talking as if it gave him total power and control over the US, the kind of power he has always craved person power to rule by decree like in his personal business. Hugs
Full disclosure I love watching Digby when she is on The Majority Report. That lady knows her stuff. I don’t know much about Tom Sullivan but if she is willing to put him on her site I will give him the benefit of the doubt. As for Randy Fine. He is a fanatic Christian nationalist who wants the US to be run by his church doctrines, who help write and push for the don’t say gay bill in Florida saying he couldn’t tolerate that when LGBTQ+ people came out to their peers they were accepted instead of being ostracized and beaten up. Yes he wants to return to the days of being different from the straight cis majority got you harassed, harmed, and injured. I guess that means if you are too afraid to come out and live as who you are it will make you a good straight cis person willing to submit to his god? He also is desperately stupid and is full die hard maga. He is another racist who thinks might makes right. Hugs
Where are the Epstein files? A social media poster on Monday noted, “So when an ICE officer tells you to get out of the car, you’re supposed to get out of the car, what are you supposed to do when a judge tells you to release the Epstein files?”
Thus in the field failure to comply with orders barked by kitted-out and under-trained DHS enforcers merits a bullet to the head. Yet failure of AG Pam Bondi’s DOJ to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by Dear Leader, seems not to merit not even a slap on the wrist. Immediately after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, the right claimed her death was the consequences of her own choices.
Donald Trump’s “Great Again”: For my friends, a pardon; for my enemies, a bullet to the head. God bless America.
Here’s a choice a fine Republican from Florida’s 6th District made on Monday: H.R.7012 – To authorize the annexation and subsequent admission to statehood of Greenland, and for other purposes.
Is it a troll by a Trump brown-noser? The image suggests that that is likely. But these days, who can tell? Rep. Randy Fine has one cosponsor. Greenland has a tenth the population of Wyoming and no love for Donald Trump. Fine would likely oppose statehood for Puerto Rico or the District.
“By acquiring Greenland, we would prevent our adversaries from controlling the Arctic Region and secure our northern flank from Russia and China,” writes Fine.
Malcolm Nance, former naval intelligence officer, foreign policy analyst and pundit, itemized for Fine a few consequences of annexing Greenland. One assumes from the worst-case rant (and a few misspellings) that Nance is emptying both barrels at the former gaming executive. Nance’s response on X is over the top, but satisfying nonetheless:
CONSEQUENCES FOR DUMBASSES: You are an F’ing idiot. If we invade Greenland we go to war with 31 nations. NATO stays together but without us. Its HQ is in Brussels, not the Pentagon. Our global reach across the Atlantic will end with our closest refueling base in Israel or Egypt. 100,000 American soldiers will be forced to board civil airliners and sent home or be taken as POWs/Detainee sWITHOUT WEAPONS OR EQUIPMENT. Canada will close its airspace and sea space. US Ballistic Missile Defense at Pettufik and Fylingdales ENDS, which means we see nothing except what space sensors can see. US Intelligence is reduced to Fort Meade, Ft Gordon and Colorado Springs and Hawaii. CIA spies will be rolled up by their former friends in HOURS. NO ONE WILL SHARE ANYTHING WITH US. ALL GLOBAL SHIPPING WILL BE CLOSED TO US. Denmark operates the largest shipping company in the world. SIX OUT OF TEN global shipping companies are in Europe … Worlds Biggest container ships? DENMARK! Australia, NZ, Canada are Commonwealth so they will cut ties with us or be neutral too.
PS Denmark & locals tun all life support and generators at Pittufik and Canada resupplies it … all 150 US Spece force personnel would become POWs to guys on sleds. FYI They have troops there now and 35,000 Caribou hunting rifles.
FYI France and UK have nukes. Hundreds of them so you cannot intimidate them with that.
Oh and they collapse the US economy by sanctioning us and selling off 2.3 Trillion in US treasuries simultaneously. Also no Botox, Ozempic or insulin. Its made in Denmark.
Ya fucking dope.
That’s fair. Over the top, but fair. (I especially appreciate Nance’s observation about the potential loss of strategic refueling bases.)
Marcy Wheeler already pointed out that Trump admitted to the New York Times that his need to possess Greenland stems from a personal problem.
Elon Musk’s own AI already reported that not owning Greenland is no impediment to building new U.S. bases there or expanding existing ones. As for mining, several reports observe that if whatever useful minerals lie buried in Greenland, if they were “getable,” mines would already be in operation:
Researchers say it would be extremely difficult and expensive to extract Greenland’s minerals because many of the island’s mineral deposits are located in remote areas above the Arctic Circle, where there is a mile-thick polar ice sheet and darkness reigns much of the year.
Not only that, but Greenland, a self-ruling territory of Denmark, lacks the infrastructure and manpower required to make this mining dream a reality.
“The idea of turning Greenland into America’s rare-earth factory is science fiction. It’s just completely bonkers,” said Malte Humpert, founder and senior fellow at The Arctic Institute. “You might as well mine on the moon. In some respects, it’s worse than the moon.”
So is our sitting president. Pray for consequences for him.
ICE is not following any police procedures or laws. They are disregarding all civil right granted by law or the constitution. ICE white supremacist gang thugs believe they have no restraint or can be held accountable in any way. I see their criminal actions in almost every clip and the way they use their weapons is horribly wrong. I was trained in pepper spray and can tell you that we had to be sprayed to be certified. I can bet none of them did. Because they wouldn’t do it at point-blank range as then it is no longer nonlethal but very lethal. In this clip a woman describes being picked up by ICE and harmed, harassed, taunted, threatened, and she is a citizen. She said ICE had no qualms about detaining her nor harming her. Plus ICE is proudly damaging people’s cars and phones and there is no one to go to for repairment. So the citizen must pay the costs for the ICE thug’s temper tantrums. Land of the free much? Hugs
OK I am fine with this. Look this is the only paramilitary force terrorizing the public claiming they have police authority and power allowed in the US. Why are they allowed to act like this? Because they are supporting and helping accomplish Stephen Miller’s goal of creating a white ethnostate. This is all because the US elected a man in severe mental decline who had racist ideas and surrounded himself with deeply racist people. Normal police are unmasked and follow laws and procedures, ICE thugs just use gang tactics to run rough shod over the public believing they have no laws or restrictions. Notice Russia is trying to protect ICE because they want the chaos and turmoil in the US, yet tRump is Putin’s asset in destroying the US. Hugs
A website dedicated to naming ICE and Border Patrol employees is coming under a “prolonged and sophisticated” cyber attack after the Daily Beast revealed it planned to make public 4,500 names of federal immigration staff.
The founder of ICE List said the website was overwhelmed by malicious web traffic originating in Russia after the Beast reported that a huge cache of personal IDs had been leaked to the site by an alleged Department of Homeland Security whistleblower.
more at the link
People were reporting in comments they were having trouble accessing the site. I saw the cyberattack news first from an Occupy Democrats post on Facebook. This is the first news report I could find.
The regular media seems slow to pick up on this whole story.
Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been released by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.
The Jan. 7 killing of the mother by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has sparked nationwide protests and worldwide outrage, including among some DHS employees.
The alleged leak to ICE List, a self-styled “accountability initiative,” is believed to be the largest ever breach of DHS staff data. It appears to include names, work emails, telephone numbers, roles, and some resumé data, including previous jobs of federal immigration staff.
There’s more at the link, including how ICE List plans to release the newly received information. It appears they are going to be judiciously selective.
Department of Homeland Security officials are not happy.
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Daily Beast that its “law enforcement officers are on the frontlines arresting terrorists, gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and rapists,” but that “thanks to the malicious rhetoric of sanctuary politicians, they are under constant threat from violent agitators.”
She added: “Publicizing their identities puts their lives and the lives of their families at serious risk.”
Given past behavior by the Trump regime, the reaction to this is likely going to be doubling and tripling down. That would be understandable — because resistance is starting to come together and it’s making them anxious.
The murder of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross and the regime’s actions to try to stonewall accountability has been something that is finally making clear to people how lawless they are.
If ICE thugs are now living in fear of violence, perhaps they should have considered that before destroying the rule of law. What goes around comes around.
It may be a bit late, but the news lately is starting to bring the words “turning point” to mind.
This is about the post Ali sent me the link to and I then posted. This is where I first heard it. I love when Sam shares the news. He says that being terrorism as anyone who holds anti-Christian, anti traditional family values (read LGBTQ+), anti capitalism, anti ICE, anti American exceptionalism sediments. If you have any of those ideas or feeling you are a terrorist according to Stephen Miller and Russell Vought. Hugs
Caller witnessed ICE arrest a US citizen. He also told a police officer and the cop did nothing. They stopped the guy because he looked Hispanic. Racial profiling which Kavanaugh originally said was OK but now says it is not when it is already too late. Racism on steroids. One guy handed them his wallet to prove his citizenship but the ICE gang thugs just threw it away. They make a bonus for each body so they don’t care if a person is a citizen or not. Hugs
I am sorry but ICE and DHS / FBI are on a mission to ethnically cleanse the US of non-white people. They feel it is OK to do anything to accomplish that. They are like religious fanatics in that way. Anything for their deity or god, and in this case their god is white supremacy. Nothing may be allowed to come between their goal of a white only US. Just as fanatical Christian hate groups want to cleanse the US of the LGBTQ+ and other religious groups so only their religion is the one people see or can use, the ICE white supremacist only want white people in the US and they want those white people to be obedient to authority, especially the white woman. At this point they will do anything including murder people to get what they desire. If we do not stop them now we will be stuck fighting them in every city and blue state in the US. Notice the claim by the government … does it sound familiar? Hugs
… the federal agency had claimed that two men were inside a van that officials said tried to ram ICE vehicles and run over agents during a Dec. 24 operation in Glen Burnie.
Department of Homeland Security officials have changed their account of last month’s shooting involving ICE agents in Glen Burnie. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security via X)
Department of Homeland Security officials changed their account of last month’s shooting involving ICE agents in Glen Burnie, a day after Anne Arundel County police disagreed with the federal government’s original version of events, according to a Baltimore Banner report.
Until Friday, the federal agency had claimed that two men were inside a van that officials said tried to ram ICE vehicles and run over agents during a Dec. 24 operation in Glen Burnie. Agents opened fire on the van and wounded its driver, identified as Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, an immigrant from Portugal whose U.S. visa expired in 2009. The second man, Salomon Antonio Serrano-Esquivel of El Salvador, was also injured.
However, on Thursday, Anne Arundel County police said Serrano-Esquivel was not in the van during the incident. According to police, he was already in custody in an ICE vehicle.
Following the release of the new details by police, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin walked back the agency’s claims that Serrano-Esquivel was in the passenger’s seat of Sousa-Martin’s van, according to a statement obtained by the Banner.
Find out what’s happening in Glen Burniefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
On Friday, McLaughlin also said that Serrano-Esquivel was in ICE custody and was injured when Sousa-Martins rammed the ICE vehicle he was in.
According to federal authorities, ICE officers were conducting a targeted operation in Glen Burnie on Christmas Eve when they approached the van driven by Sousa-Martins. Federal officials claimed Sousa-Martins was told to turn off the engine; however, officials said he refused and tried to flee, ramming his van into several federal vehicles and attempting to run officers over.
The officers fired their weapons and hit Sousa-Martins, who crashed the van, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s statement.
The new version of events provided by both federal and local authorities echoed an account given to The Banner shortly after the shooting by an attorney who visited Serrano-Esquivel at the hospital.
Alex Major told the Banner that Serrano-Esquivel, a landscape worker, was pulled over by federal agents along with a family member in Southern Maryland and taken into custody Wednesday morning, hours before he was accused of riding in the van that rammed ICE officers.
A bystander’s video reviewed by The Banner also showed a white van following a crash. Agents removed one man from the vehicle and took him away on a stretcher. In the video, there was no sign of a second man inside the van.
I love Erin’s posts and reporting. The attack on trans rights and health was planned and coordinated by religious conservatives who felt they lost the culture war on gay acceptance and same sex marriage so they decided to jump quickly on the trans issue with lots of money. Their first attempt failed because they went after the idea of trans people itself. So then they changed to the old “protect the children” play book with the entire focus on protecting little cis girls but they never mention the trans boys that cis boys need to be protected from. See how patristical it is? It is all about males needing to protect the little womans. They don’t care about trans kids, they don’t care about female sports. It is about not letting trans kids transition with puberty blockers and the correct hormones as then the kids will grow up as they are fitting the societal view of what men and women look like. That scares the straight cis male religious guys because they are terrified they will be attracted to a trans woman. Imagine the horror if trans people moved freely in society not raising any question of their gender because they conformed to how society sees each gender. That sounds like a grand thing to me, but it terrifies these fanatical religious grifters that want to control how everyone lives to please their god. They make up untrue and scary what ifs, what if a man uses the letting trans people use the bathroom of their gender ID to go into a girls … notice they phrase it girls not womans because that make people more protective from the start, and they harm a little girl, your little girl? Well nothing stops a man from doing that now! Predators don’t need permission and won’t wait for it. And that has happened where a straight cis male dragged a little girl into the male bathroom and raped her while his friend watched. There was a famous court case on it. Look it up if you want. Want to know what has not happened, a trans woman going into the female’s bathroom and assaulting a female. Sorry. The right has tried hard to make one happen, but each claim of a trans person in a locker room or bathroom acting inappropriate has been debunked and disproven. This is all a made up scandal and crisis by people who can not accept the society progressing beyond the old traditional binary they grew up with and they think their holy books claim must be as their god insists on it. Weird how it is always how their god insists on what they already believe or promote. Handy that. So many people can not move past the idea that if it dangles you MUST be a boy regardless of how you feel and if it is an inny you must be a girl regardless of anything else idea. They can not seem to grasp personal feelings, needs, or medial science. Hugs
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
Vermont Bill Would Create State Trust Fund For Private Trans Youth Care Clinics As Trump Threatens Hospital Funding
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
Across the United States, gender-affirming care has come under sustained attack in Republican-led states and from the Trump administration. For transgender youth, those attacks have been especially severe, with roughly half of U.S. states now banning such care outright. At the federal level, the administration has waged an intense pressure campaign against hospitals, threatening funding and prompting many systems to drop their care programs altogether. That campaign has now escalated further, with the federal government moving to threaten hospitals’ entire Medicaid and Medicare funding if they continue providing transgender youth care. In response, some states and cities are beginning to fight back by establishing their own funding mechanisms for trans healthcare. The latest example comes from Vermont, where lawmakers have introduced a bill to create a trust fund for gender-affirming care designed to be entirely insulated from federal funding threats.
H.576, introduced by Representatives Daisy Berbeco, Tiffany Bluemle, and Troy Headrick, would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund. Administered by the State Treasurer, the fund would provide direct monetary support to healthcare providers and nonprofits offering gender-affirming care in Vermont. It would cover costs for patients who would otherwise go without treatment, fund the establishment of Vermont-based clinics, and pay for malpractice and liability insurance for clinicians who continue offering care. The bill is part of an increasing movement towards private clinics as a mechanism to survive federal threats.
The bill also includes provisions designed to protect patient information from both federal pressure and out-of-state threats, going further than the recent “refuge” or “shield” laws passed in several blue states to protect transgender youth care. It explicitly bars the board and other state actors from disclosing patient-identifiable data, the identities of providers, or the identities of award recipients to the federal government. This is a significant protection given the wave of abusive legislation and attempts to subpoena transgender healthcare records nationwide. While federal preemption may ultimately be litigated, these provisions give clinics a stronger legal footing to resist such demands—particularly as similar subpoenas have been repeatedly quashed in recent court cases.
The bill comes as families scramble to locate alternatives to hospital systems that are abandoning them. With more than 20 hospitals closing their doors to transgender youth care out of fear and preemptive compliance with the Trump administration, many families have been forced to seek alternatives. Just this week, major hospital systems across Colorado, for example, have stopped providing care. Groups like the Trans Youth Emergency Project say they have the capacity to refer displaced patients to private clinics, and in many places those clinics do exist and are absorbing demand. But as hospital-based programs continue to shut down and demand rises, those private providers will need sustained support—and more clinics will need to be created. Bills like this are a targeted way to do exactly that.
If this bill passes, Vermont would be the latest state to protect care in this way—but it would not be the only one. Massachusetts passed a similar measure last year, allocating $1 million toward transgender youth care clinics, though that funding has already come under criticism as insufficient to meet statewide need in the wake of major clinic closures. In New York City, newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged $65 million for transgender healthcare. If that funding is realized, it would position New York City as a major hub for private clinics capable of absorbing demand created by hospital closures across the country. This strategy could prove to be a critical backstop for private providers that are already emerging—and that are likely to come under increasing strain in the years ahead.
The bill allows funding from state appropriations, private donations, grants, and—importantly—federal funds under a future administration that is protective of transgender healthcare. It would take effect immediately upon passage, with the board required to convene by August 1, 2026. There are still hurdles ahead: the bill must advance through committee, pass both chambers, and ultimately receive meaningful funding to function as intended. But its introduction alone signals something important. At a moment when hospitals are retreating and families are being forced into crisis planning, Vermont lawmakers are putting forward a concrete framework to protect access to care rather than surrender it. For Vermonters who want to see their state take a clear stand, residents can find and contact their legislators through the Vermont General Assembly website to make clear where they stand on protecting transgender healthcare.
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
DHS response?
UPDATE: · xaxnar
Scottie's Playtime 