Sayfollah Musallet, a Palestinian-American born in Florida, was visiting family in the West Bank town of Al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya when Israeli settlers brutalized him, beating him unconscious and blocking an ambulance from reaching him, according to the victim’s family. The young Palestinian-American was pronounced dead by the time he arrived at a hospital.
And although days have passed since Sayfollah was apparently killed by Israeli settlers, no one from the White House has contacted the family. No one from Congress. No one who represents Florida, where Musallet hails from.
Kamel Musallet, Sayfollah’s father, spoke with Zeteo’s political correspondent Prem Thakker about the lack of accountability from both US and Israeli officials over the ongoing settler violence in the West Bank. “An American has been killed by Israeli violence… Israeli settler terrorism,” Kamel told Prem.
Sayfollah is the seventh American killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the past 21 months. Most US politicians remain conspicuously silent about the widespread violence carried out by Israeli settlers.
This video was released earlier on Zeteo.com, if you want to get earlier access, make sure you subscribe: zeteo.com/subscribe
This is long. Even long for a news nerd like me. But it is well worth it if you want to see how the current administration is using the military in ways it was not designed to do and against the laws to make it easier for them to be used in civilian control to enforce the will of tRump should he again refuse to accept the fact he has to leave office or if he wants something a governor / state won’t give him. The article shows how the military is tRump’s big stick to hit anyone who disagrees with him. Hugs
A U.S. Marine with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, attached to Task Force 51, guards a federal area in Los Angeles on July 12, 2025. Photo: Lance Cpl. Andrew Whistler/U.S. Marine Corps/DVIDS
In his first six months in office, President Donald Trump has overseen the deployment of nearly 20,000 federal troops on American soil, including personnel from the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines, according to the Pentagon’s public statements.
But the true number of troops deployed may be markedly higher. When asked directly, the Army said it has no running tally of how many troops have been deployed. These federal forces have been operating in at least five states — Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas — with more deployments on the horizon, all in service of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.
Experts say military involvement in domestic anti-immigrant operations undermines American democracy and has nudged the United States closer to a genuine police state.
“If the president can use the military as a domestic police force entirely under his control, it can be used as a tool of tyranny and oppression.”
“This level of involvement of the military in civilian law enforcement in the interior of the country is unprecedented — and really dangerous,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program, who told The Intercept that recent deployments violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a bedrock 19th-century law seen as fundamental to the democratic tradition in America which bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement.
She added: “If the president can use the military as a domestic police force entirely under his control, it can be used as a tool of tyranny and oppression. We’ve seen it all around the world and throughout history.”
The norms surrounding the use of military force within U.S. borders are eroding, and the executive branch is operating with free rein, emboldened by a legislature and judiciary seemingly uninterested in curtailing its actions.
These soldiers have been sent to patrol the border, put down popular protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, participate in ICE raids, and assist in immigration enforcement missions from coast to coast. Here, to the extent of what is known so far, is what they’ve been up to.
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President Donald Trump began the further militarization of America on his first day back in office. “Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics,” Trump announced on January 20, directing the military to “assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border.”
Despite the fact that Trump’s fearmongering was his typical hyperbole, more than 10,000 troops are deploying or have deployed to the southern border, according to U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which oversees U.S. military activity from Mexico’s southern border up to the North Pole.
Under the direction of NORTHCOM, military personnel — including soldiers from the Fourth Infantry Division at Fort Carson in Colorado, one of the Army’s most storied combat units — have deployed under the moniker Joint Task Force-Southern Border, or JTF-SB, since March, bolstering approximately 2,500 service members who were already supporting U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s border security mission.
One-third of the U.S. border is now completely militarized due to the creation of four new national defense areas, or NDAs: sprawling extensions of U.S. military bases patrolled by troops who can detain immigrants until they can be handed over to Border Patrol agents.
The Air Force is responsible for the recently created South Texas NDA, which encompasses federal property along 250 miles of the Rio Grande River. The Navy controls the Yuma NDA, which extends along 140 miles of federal property on the U.S.–Mexico border near the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Arizona.
The New Mexico NDA, created in April, spans approximately 170 miles of noncontiguous land along that state’s border, serving as an extension of the Army’s Fort Huachuca. Another NDA was created in May in West Texas and covers approximately 63 miles of noncontiguous land between El Paso and Fort Hancock, serving as an extension of the Army’s Fort Bliss.
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Around 8,500 military personnel were assigned to JTF-SB to “enhance US Customs and Border Patrol’s capacity to identify, track and disrupt threats to border security,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said at the beginning of the month. JTF-SB says the current number of personnel deploys stands at 7,600, while NORTHCOM says the current number of federal troops providing border security is closer to 8,600.
No one actually knows how many troops have been involved in border operations this year. “We do not maintain a running total of Service Members who have served with JTF-SB since its inception, so the total number since March is currently unavailable,” Kent Redmond, a spokesperson for JTF-Southern Border told The Intercept. NORTHCOM didn’t have a number on hand either. But more than 10 Task Forces have assisted JTF-SB, including Task Force Mountain Warrior, consisting of soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team; Task Force Castle, made up of soldiers from the 41st Engineer Battalion; 500 Marines and Navy personnel from Task Force Sapper; and 500 Marines and sailors from Task Force Forge. The latter replaced the Task Force Sapper troops and are now conducting patrols in the Yuma NDA.
Since March alone, Parnell said, the JTF-SB has conducted more than 3,500 patrols, including more than 150 “trilateral” patrols with CBP and the Mexican military. There have, however, been only seven temporary detentions by troops within the National Defense Areas, according to Redmond. He said the seven persons were “detained in place” by JTF-SB personnel for less than 10 minutes.
“The amount being spent to have the world’s best fighting force walk around the border to pick up a handful of people is shocking.”
“Setting aside the threats to democracy and liberty, the sheer waste is staggering. The amount being spent to have the world’s best fighting force walk around the border to pick up a handful of people is shocking,” said Goitein, who also noted that the detentions violated the Posse Comitatus Act.
“They may think if they detain people for only 10 minutes it’s not a violation, but that’s not how the law works,” Goitein explained. “They may also say that the Posse Comitatus Act simply doesn’t apply when the purpose is to protect a military base, but here it’s clear that the primary purpose is enforcement of immigration law.”
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The military has even dispatched Navy warships offshore to secure the border. After battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Gulf of Aden earlier this year, for example, the USS Stockdale — a guided-missile destroyer — was deployed to support NORTHCOM’s southern border operations alongside the Coast Guard on the U.S.–Mexico maritime border. That ship took over for the USS Spruance, another guided-missile destroyer drafted into anti-immigrant operations.
“We are dead serious about 100% OPERATIONAL CONTROL of the southern border,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a post on X in March.
Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly announced historically low apprehensions along the southern border. “The numbers don’t lie — under President Trump’s leadership, DHS and CBP have shattered records and delivered the most secure border in American history,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem earlier this month. And as early as April, DHS announced, “Customs and Border Protection now has total control of the border.”
Despite all of this, as well as the huge influx of troops and weapons of war deployed at the border, when The Intercept inquired whether full operational control of the border had been achieved and “if not, why not?” DHS demurred. A senior DHS official, who offered comments on the condition of anonymity for no discernible reason, provided rote talking points and praise of Trump and Noem. The official added that the department was “grateful” for JTF-SB’s “support.”
More than 5,000 troops have also been deployed to Los Angeles since early June.
The National Guard soldiers and Marines operating in Southern California — under the command of the Army’s Task Force 51 — were sent to “protect the safety and security of federal functions, personnel, and property.” In practice, this has mostly meant guarding federal buildings across LA from protests against the ongoing ICE raids sweeping the city.
Since Trump called up the troops on June 7, they have carried out exactly one temporary detainment, a Task Force 51 spokesperson told The Intercept.
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Parnell, the Pentagon spokesperson, described this deployment as Task Force 51 supporting “more than 170 missions in over 130 separate locations from nine federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Marshal Service, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security” in a briefing in early July. Task Force 51 failed to provide any other metrics regarding troops’ involvement in raids, arrests, or street patrols in response to questions by The Intercept.
Troops were sent to LA over the objections of local officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In addition to guarding federal buildings, troops have also recently participated in raids alongside camouflage-clad ICE agents. An assault on MacArthur Park, a recreational hub in one of LA’s most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods on July 7, for example, included 90 armed U.S. troops and 17 military Humvees. Its main accomplishment was rousting a summer day camp for children. No arrests were made.
California National Guard soldiers also backed ICE raids on state-licensed marijuana nurseries this month. The troops took part in the military-style assaults on two locations, one in the Santa Barbara County town of Carpinteria, about 90 miles northwest of LA and one in the Ventura County community of Camarillo, about 50 miles from LA. ICE detained more than 200 people, including U.S. citizens, during the joint operations. One man, Jaime Alanís Garcia, died while trying to flee from the raid in Camarillo.
On July 1, Task Force 51 announced that it would release approximately 150 members of the California National Guard from their LA duty. That same day, NORTHCOM said that the Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment were leaving Los Angeles but would be replaced by the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.
Last Tuesday, Trump administration officials announced that about 2,000 more National Guard members deployed to LA would be released from service. On Monday, the Trump administration announced it was withdrawing the 700 active-duty Marines from Los Angeles. The withdrawals followed repeated reporting by The Intercept highlighting the failure of the troops to do much of substance.
All told, since the deployments began, around 5,500 troops have been sent to southern California, according to Becky Farmer, a NORTHCOM spokesperson.
On the other side of the country, Marines are being hustled to Florida to aid the administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. Responding to a DHS request, Hegseth approved a mobilization of up to 700 active, National Guard, and Reserve forces.
The first contingent — approximately 200 Marines from Marine Wing Support Squadron 272, Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina — have been mobilized to support ICE’s “interior immigration enforcement mission” in Florida, NORTHCOM announced earlier this month. The command noted that they were only the “first wave” of ICE assistance. NORTHCOM says additional forces will be deployed to Louisiana and Texas. Hundreds more Guardsmen are expected to be sent to assist in more than a half dozen other states, including Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
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Some of these same states are also using their own National Guard members in their own anti-immigrant operations. More than 4,200 Texas National Guard soldiers and airmen on state duty are engaged in Operation Lone Star, a border security initiative launched by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in March 2021. Texas’s forces were bolstered, until April, by members of the Indiana National Guard.
Nearly 70 Florida National Guard members are also on state duty, conducting base camp security at the remote migrant detention center in the state’s Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” While Trump insisted that the swamp gulag was reserved for “deranged psychopaths” and “some of the most vicious people on the planet,” it was revealed that hundreds of detainees had committed no offense other than civil immigration violations.
“Governors should be doing everything in their power to avoid their state’s national guard troops being pulled into this lawless, authoritarian power grab, not spending precious resources to help it along,” Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War, told The Intercept.
The Trump administration’s use of military forces in its anti-immigrant crusade has been criticized as a publicity stunt and an authoritarian power play.
The directive signed by Trump calling up the California National Guard, for example, cited “10 U.S.C. 12406,” a provision within Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services that allows the federal deployment of National Guard forces if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
There was, however, no rebellion. Vice President JD Vance even recently vacationed at Disneyland in Anaheim, about 25 miles from LA.
Still, experts say that the stunt deployments represent a clear danger to American democracy by violating the Posse Comitatus Act; normalizing the use of the military in civilian law enforcement activities; and further transforming the armed forces into a tool of domestic oppression by aiding ICE, which increasingly operates as a masked, secret police force.
“ICE is running a nationwide campaign of violent, racist kidnappings, and Hegseth’s Pentagon is bending over backward to make the military into ICE’s chief sidekicks,” said Haghdoosti. “Troops abetting violence against their own neighbors isn’t tenable for our communities, our democracy, or the troops themselves.”
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
Video from Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, puts fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used to reach the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement targets
‘You’ve got no rights’: teenage US citizen records violent arrest by immigration officers – video
On the morning of 2 May, teenager Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol.
In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest.
A highway patrol officer asked everyone in the van to identify themselves, then called for backup. Officers with US border patrol arrived on the scene.
Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men*, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: “You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use “funny” and quipping: “You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.”
“The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,” said Jack Scarola, an attorney who is advocating on behalf of Laynez-Ambrosio and working with the non-profit Guatemalan-Maya Center, which provided the footage to the Guardian. “Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.”
Chokeholds, stun guns and laughter
The incident unfolded at roughly 9am, when a highway patrol officer pulled over the company work van, driven byLaynez-Ambrosio’smother, and discovered that she had a suspended license. Laynez-Ambrosio said he is unsure why the van was pulled over, as his mother was driving below the speed limit.
Laynez-Ambrosio hadn’t intended to film the interaction – he already had his phone out to show his mom “a silly TikTok”, he said – but immediately clicked record when it became clear what was happening.
The arrest of an undocumented man in Florida, as caught on video by Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio on 2 May 2025. Photograph: Screengrab from video by Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio/Courtesy of the Guatemalan-Maya Center
The video begins after the van has been pulled over and the border patrol had arrived. A female officer can be heard asking, in Spanish, whether anyone is in the country illegally. One of Laynez-Ambrosio’s friends answers that he is undocumented. “That’s when they said, ‘OK, let’s go,’” Laynez-Ambrosio recalled.
Laynez-Ambrosio said things turned aggressive before the group even had a chance to exit the van. One of the officers “put his hand inside the window”, he said, “popped the door open, grabbed my friend by the neck and had him in a chokehold”.
Footage appears to show officers then reaching for Laynez-Ambrosio and his other friend as Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard protesting: “You can’t grab me like that.” Multiple officers can be seen pulling the other man from the van and telling him to “put your fucking head down”. The footage captures the sound of a stun gun as Laynez-Ambrosio’s friend cries out in pain and drops to the ground.
Laynez-Ambrosio said that his friend was not resisting, and that he didn’t speak English and didn’t understand the officer’s commands. “My friend didn’t do anything before they grabbed him,” he said.
Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, filmed his own arrest in Florida. Photograph: The Palm Beach Post/Reporter Valentina Palm
In the video, Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard repeatedly telling his friend, in Spanish, to not resist. “I wasn’t really worried about myself because I knew I was going to get out of the situation,” he said. “But I was worried about him. I could speak up for him but not fight back, because I would’ve made the situation worse.”
Laynez-Ambrosio can also be heard telling officers: “I was born and raised right here.” Still, he was pushed to the ground and says that an officer aimed a stun gun at him. He was subsequently arrested and held in a cell at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) station for six hours.
Audio in the video catches the unidentified officers debriefing and appearing to make light of the stun gun use. “You’re funny, bro,” one officer can be overheard saying to another, followed by laughter.
Another officer says, “They’re starting to resist more now,” to which an officer replies: “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.”
Later in the footage, the officers move on to general celebration – “Goddamn! Woo! Nice!” – and talk of the potential bonus they’ll be getting: “Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] $30,000 bonus.” It is unclear what bonus they are referring to. Donald Trump’s recent spending bill includes billions of additional dollars for Ice that could be spent on recruitment and retention tactics such as bonuses.
Laynez-Ambrosio said his two friends were eventually transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami. He believes they were released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, but said it has been difficult to stay in touch with them.
Laynez-Ambrosio’s notice to appear in court confirms that the border patrol arrived on the scene, having been called in by the highway patrol. His other legal representative, Victoria Mesa-Estrada, also confirmed that border patrol officers transported the three men to the border patrol facility.
The Florida highway patrol, CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
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Trump officials increasingly recruit local police for immigration enforcement despite ‘red flags’
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Laynez-Ambrosio was charged with obstruction without violence and sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course. While in detention, he said, police threatened him with charges if he did not delete the video footage from his phone, but he refused.
Scarola, his lawyer, said the charges were retaliation for filming the incident. “Kenny was charged with filming [and was] alleged to have interfered with the activities of law enforcement,” he explained. “But there was no intended interference – merely the exercise of a right to record what was happening.”
In February, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an agreement between the state and the Department of Homeland Security allowing Florida highway patrol troopers to be trained and approved by Ice to arrest and detain immigrants. While such agreements have been inked across the US, Florida has the largest concentration of these deals.
The arrests of 2 May 2025. Photograph: Screengrab from video by Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio/Courtesy of Guatemalan-Maya Center
Father Frank O’Loughlin, founder and executive director of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, the advocates for Laynez-Ambrosio, says the incident has further eroded trust between Florida’s immigrant community and the police. “This is a story about the corruption of law enforcement by Maga and the brutality of state and federal troopers – formerly public servants – towards nonviolent people,” he said.
Meanwhile, Laynez-Ambrosio is trying to recover from the ordeal, and hopes the footage raises awareness of how immigrants are being treated in the US. “It didn’t need to go down like that. If they knew that my people were undocumented, they could’ve just kindly taken them out of the car and arrested them,” he said. “It hurt me bad to see my friends like that. Because they’re just good people, trying to earn an honest living.”
The Guardian is granting anonymity to Laynez-Ambrosio’s mother and the men arrested in the footage to protect their privacy
Dashcam footage of a 22-year-old driver pulled over in a Jacksonville, Fla. traffic stop has left lots of viewers with questions about police and excessive force.
Video of a traffic stop in Jacksonville, Fla., has gone viral. And although the incident occurred nearly six months ago, thousands of outraged viewers are now raising questions about what they believe to be excessive force used on a young Black man.
According to an arrest report obtained by News4JAX, Will McNeil Jr. was pulled over just after 4:00 pm on February 19 because his car “did not have its headlights or tail lights illuminated in inclement weather.” The report reads that McNeil Jr. was not wearing his seat belt and became “verbally combative” with the officer when he was asked to show his identification.
But recently released dash cam video paints a different picture and has many on the internet seeking justice for the 22-year-old driver. The footage shows McNeil Jr. was wearing his seat belt at the time he was pulled over and asked officers to call their supervisor to explain why he was being held when there was no rain or fog at the time he was stopped.
According to First Coast News, officers reported giving McNeil Jr. several warnings that they would break his window if he did not step out of his car. Although those warnings cannot be heard in the video, officers can be seen breaking the driver’s side window and striking McNeil Jr. in the head several times before he was forcibly removed from his car and forced to the ground.
McNeil Jr. told News4JAX that the incident left him with several injuries, including a concussion.
“I suffered a chipped tooth; my tooth went through my lip, and they slammed me on the ground and on the concrete. I had to get nine stitches. I also had a concussion and now I suffer from short-term memory loss,” he said.
In a statement on X, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office acknowledged the incident and said they are conducting their own investigation into the events leading up to the young man’s arrest.
“We are aware of a video circulating on social media showing a traffic stop represented to be from February 19, 2025. We have launched an internal investigation into it and the circumstances surrounding this incident. We hold our officers to the highest standards and are committed to thoroughly determining exactly what occurred,” it reads.
But social media has been flooded with comments from people who believe the proof that the police department is in the wrong is in the video.
“You saw exactly what happened because it was completely recorded. Your own officers stated the reason for his arrest in the video, and he was not resisting. The force used was completely unnecessary. This was a blatant abuse of power. The City of Jacksonville should be ashamed,” wrote someone on X.
Attorney Ben Crump, who will be representing McNeil, told News4JAX that the video evidence is clear that the police were out of line, “It should be obvious to anyone watching this video that William McNeil wasn’t a threat to anyone. He was calmly exercising his constitutional rights, and they beat him for it.”
I am posting a different article on this kidnapping and disappearing of a long time resident and family man because the right wing media keeps telling us that they are detaining the worst of the worst, only deporting the dangerous criminals. The thug in charge of ICE Tom Homan keeps mumbling that anyone protesting is wanting rapist, arsonists, murders gang drug runners in your neighborhood. This man was a green card holder and a threat to know one. They way that ICE treated his elderly wife was horrific in itself. Hugs
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images
An 82-year-old man in Pennsylvania was secretly deported to Guatemala after visiting an immigration office last month to replace his lost green card, according to his family, who said they have not heard from him since and were initially told he was dead.
According to Morning Call, which first reported the story, longtime Allentown resident Luis Leon – who was granted political asylum in the US in 1987 after being tortured under the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – lost his wallet containing the physical card that confirmed his legal residency. So he and his wife booked an appointment to get it replaced.
When he arrived at the office on 20 June, however, he was handcuffed by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, who led him away from his wife without explanation, she said. She said she herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.
The family said they made efforts to find any information on his whereabouts but learned nothing.
Then, sometime after Leon was detained, a woman purporting to be an immigration lawyer called the family, they said, claiming she could help – but did not disclose how she knew about the case, or where Leon was.
On 9 July, according to Leon’s granddaughter, the same woman called them again, claiming Leon had died.
A week later, however, they discovered from a relative in Chile that Leon was alive after all – but now in a hospital in Guatemala, a country to which he has no connection.
According to Morning Call, the relative said Leon had first been sent to an immigration detention center in Minnesota before being deported to Guatemala – despite not appearing on any Ice detention deportation lists.
Ice on Monday evening denied the Morning Call story, calling it a hoax.
Morning Call claimed it repeatedly requested confirmation and details from Ice throughout its reporting. Morning Call also claimed it was introduced to the family during a Lehigh county courthouse protest over Ice’s operations there.
It noted the family ceased responding to its requests for clarification on Monday.
A recent supreme court decision ruled the Trump administration could deport immigrants to other countries beside their country of origin.
In his nearly 40 years living in the US, Leon spent his career working in a leather manufacturing plant, and raised a family. He had since retired.
He suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and a heart condition, according to his family, who said they are planning to fly to Guatemala to see him.
An Ice official told the Morning Call it was investigating the matter. The Guatemala Migration Institute denied that Leon was deported from the US to Guatemala.
Morning Call reported on Sunday that Leon was recovering from pneumonia in Guatemala, according to his family, and that he arrived in Guatemala City on 1 July. According to the family, reported Morning Call, his phone was taken away and Ice officers kept referring to him and other detainees as “Mario.”
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.
Mario Guevara reports from a local police traffic enforcement area in Stone Mountain, Georgia, on 29 April 2025. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA
‘No Kings Day’ protests have swept the US as over 100,000 rally in New York City against the Trump administration’s policies on 14 June 2025.
Photograph: Carlos Chiossone/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
Law enforcement officers patrol as a ‘No Kings Day’ protest takes place in Dekalb county, Georgia, on 14 June 2025.
Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP
A Salvadorian reporter with an audience of millions, Mario Guevara was arrested while livestreaming a protest against Trump in June – and is still struggling for freedom
Prosecutors dropped the last remaining charges against Atlanta-area journalist Mario Guevara last week after he was arrested while livestreaming a protest in June. But the influential Salvadorian reporter remains penned up in a south Georgia detention center, fending off a deportation case, jail house extortionists and despair, people familiar with his situation told the Guardian.
Donald Trump’s administration has been extreme in unprecedented waysto undocumented immigrants. But Guevara’s treatment is a special case. Shuttled between five jail cells in Georgia since his arrest while covering the “No Kings Day” protests, the 20-plus-years veteran journalist’s sin was to document the undocumented and the way Trump’s agents have been hunting them down.
Today, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists,he’s the only reporter in the United States sleeping in a prison cell for doing his job.
‘No Kings Day’ protests have swept the US as over 100,000 rally in New York City against the Trump administration’s policies on 14 June 2025. Photograph: Carlos Chiossone/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
“For the first time in my life, I’m seeing what absolute power can do,” said Guevara’s attorney, Giovanni Díaz. “Power that doesn’t care about optics. Power that doesn’t care about the damage to human lives to achieve a result I’ve only heard about as some abstract thing that we heard about in the past, usually talking about other governments in the way that they persecute individuals. This is powerful.”
Around Atlanta, Guevara has been the person that immigrants call when they see an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raid going down in their neighborhood.
Guevara had been working for La Prensa Gráfica, one of El Salvador’s main newspapers, when he was attacked at a protest rally held by the leftwing group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in2003. The former paramilitary organization viewed reporters from his paper as aligned with the rightwing government, and threatened his life. He fled to the United States in 2004, seeking asylum with his wife and daughter, entering legally on a tourist visa.
He has been reporting for Spanish-language media in the United States ever since, riding a wave of Latino immigration to the Atlanta suburbs to career success and community accolades. He began reporting on immigration crackdowns under the Obama administration, one of the few reporters to note a tripling of noncriminal immigration arrests in the Atlanta area, as noted in a 2019 New York Times video profile of his work.. He meticulously documented cases and interviewed the families of arrestees. People around Atlanta began to recognize him on the street as the journalist chasing la migra.
His work continued through the Trump administration, drawing an audience of millions that followed him from Mundo Hispánico to the startup news operation he founded last year: MGNews or Noticias MG.
“It’s a unique niche that was met by Mario’s innovation and entrepreneurialism, if you will,” said Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials and GALEO Latino Community Development Fund. “He developed a really strong relationship with the community. He developed significant trust with much of that community. And because of that, his eyeballs started increasing.”
An immigration court judge denied Guevara’s asylum claim in 2012 and issued a deportation order. Guevara’s lawyers appealed, and the court granted administrative closure of the case. He wasn’t being deported. But he wasn’t given legal residency either. Instead, the government issued him a work permit, his lawyer said. With a shrug, he went back to work.
Guevara is arguably the most-watched journalist covering Ice operations in the United States, a story that the English-language media had largely been missing, Gonzalez said. And local police were well aware of his work. He has been negotiating with them for access to immigration enforcement scenes for more than a decade.
“Mario Guevara is well known – sometimes liked sometimes not – but definitely well known by law enforcement agencies, particularly in DeKalb county and Gwinnett county, and also with federal agents, and particularly immigration agents,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez, among others, believes this put a target on his back in the current administration.
“It seems like law enforcement coordinated and colluded with the federal agents,” Gonzalez said. Gonzalez points to the misdemeanor traffic charges laid by the Gwinnett county sheriff’s office shortly after Guevara’s arrest in DeKalb county by the Doraville police department as evidence.
“The facts and the timeline indicate that pretty clearly to anybody that’s been following this,” he claimed. “In this regard it’s particularly troubling, given that he is a journalist and his situation. He had no reason to have been targeted for his arrest.”
The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to a request for comment about their relationship with local law enforcement. The Gwinnett county sheriff’s office said in a response to a lawmaker’s inquiry that it cooperates with Ice when deemed “mutually beneficial” but has not responded to requests for additional comment.
Doraville’s police chief, Chuck Atkinson, has not replied to an email seeking answers and fled from questions about the case at a city hearing. But Doraville’s mayor, Joseph Geierman, denied a connection between Ice and Doraville’s arrest of Guevara.
On 14 June, the day of his arrest, in Atlanta’s DeKalb county, Guevara darted around a Doraville police truck. A group of riot cops nearby took note. One shouted “last warning, sir! Get out of the road!”
Guevara was helmeted and wearing a black vest over his red shirt with the word “PRESS” in white letters. James Talley, an officer with the Doraville police department, was wearing an olive drab Swat jumpsuit with a helmet and gas mask.
A masked demonstrator set off a smoke bomb near the cops. Guevara ran into the street with a stabilized camera in hand to capture the police reaction and the crowd scampering out of the way, as was shown on a police body camera video.
Police had issued a dispersal order and were kettling protesters out of Chamblee-Tucker Road. They chased the suspected bomb thrower into the crowd, to no avail. But Guevara was in front of them on a grassy slope.
Police from DeKalb county managing the raucous protest had been taking verbal abuse from demonstrators for a while – a sharp contrast from other protests around Atlanta held that day. The protest was winding down. Body camera video from the event suggests Talley was in an arresting mood.
“Keep your eye on the guy in the red shirt,” Talley said to another Swat officer from Doraville. “If he gets to the road, lock his ass up.”
Talley pulled another police officer aside. “If he gets in the road, he’s gone,” Talley said. “He’s been warned multiple times.”
The other officer drew a finger across his chest. “The press?” Yep, Talley replied.
The three of them waited about 50ft away as a DeKalb county police officer approached Guevara on the hill, ordering him to get on the sidewalk. Guevara backed away from the officer, his attention focused on the recording, took two steps into the street, and the Doraville police pounced.
Guevara pleaded for the police to be reasonable.
“I’m with the media, officer!” Guevara said. “Let me finish!”
People shouted at the officers “That’s the press!” as they walked him handcuffed to a vehicle. “Why are you all taking him! He didn’t do nothing.”
More than one million people were watching Guevara’s livestream when he was arrested.
Trump has stepped up his rhetorical attacks on journalists since his inauguration. Last week, he described a reporter asking about warnings and emergency response in the Texas flooding disaster as “an evil person”, an epithet he has turned to with increasing frequency.
The Guevara case is a sign of increasing hostility toward a free press, said Katherine Jacobsen, a program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. She traced a through line from the Associated Press being barred from government briefings after it refused to accept the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, then lawsuits and investigations reopened against media companies, then attacks on journalists covering protests in Los Angeles, then Australian writer Alistair Kitchen’s deportation seemingly in relation to his reporting on student protests.
“Next thing you know, we have Mario Guevara, a long time Spanish-language reporter in the Atlanta metro area, who is in Ice detention,” she said. “It’s growing increasingly concerning by the day.”
Guevara’s audience views it as more than an attack on press freedom, though. They view it as an attack on themselves.
“He’s a test case to push the envelope for legal immigrants that have committed no crime, to trump up charges against them,” GALEO’s Gonzalez said. “And the second piece is how to target journalists.”
Guevara’s arrest set off an immigration nightmare akin to the kind he has spent the last decade documenting.
His arrest on a Saturday led to a weekend in DeKalb county’s decaying jail and a bond hearing that Monday. A magistrate court judge granted Guevara a no-dollar bond, but by then Ice had become aware of the arrest and placed Guevara on a hold. The jail released him into Ice custody, and held him briefly in a metro Atlanta facility.
The next day, Gwinnett county charged Guevara with three misdemeanor traffic offenses, claiming that they were related to Guevara livestreaming a law enforcement operation a month earlier. The charges would be sufficient to keep him in jail and provide Ice an argument for his deportation at a federal bond hearing. The Gwinnett county sheriff’s office said Guevara’s livestreaming “compromised” investigations.
Guevara’s attorneys tried to work quickly, Diaz said. “The detained dockets are so backed up, and the immigration detention centers are so overwhelmed that what used to take us two or three days to get a bond hearing now is taking about a week,” he said.
Attorneys working for immigration enforcement argued in court that Guevara’s reporting constituted a “threat” to immigration operations.
Jacobsen with CPJ was listening to the hearing when the government made that argument.
“We felt a sense of alarm,” she said. “Alarm bells were raised by the government’s argument, as well as the judge not necessarily pushing back against the government’s argument that live streaming poses a danger to threaten law enforcement actions.”
Law enforcement officers patrol as a ‘No Kings Day’ protest takes place in Dekalb county, Georgia, on 14 June 2025. Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP
The immigration judge granted Guevara a $7,500 bond for the immigration case. But Guevara’s family was not allowed to pay it because government attorneys appealed the bond order to the board of immigration appeals. But it took seven days for the court to issue a stay to the government’s appeal. Meanwhile, Ice began playing musical jail cells with Guevara.
Over the course of the next three weeks, Ice shuttled Guevara between three different counties around Atlanta and eventually to the massive private prison Ice uses in Folkston, Georgia, 240 miles south-east of Atlanta on the Florida line.
“We weren’t surprised that they appealed, because the government’s reserving and in most cases appealing everything, even stuff where they shouldn’t appeal because they’re wasting everybody’s time,” Diaz said. “But we didn’t really know the breadth of what they were trying to do to him.”
Earlier this week, Todd Lyons, Ice’s acting director, issued a memo changing its policy on bond hearings, arguing that detainees are not entitled to those hearings before their deportation case is heard in court. Immigration advocates expect to challenge the move in court.
But Guevara is not facing a criminal charge. The Gwinnett county solicitor’s office dropped the traffic charges last week, noting that two of them could not be prosecuted because they occurred on private property – the apartment complex – and the third lacked sufficient evidence for a conviction.
For now, Ice has mostly kept Guevara in medical wards in jails even though he is healthy, Diaz said. “From the beginning, they’ve been keeping Mario under a special segregation because they’re claiming he’s a public figure. They want to make sure nothing happened to him.”
Doraville is a municipality of about 10,800 in DeKalb county with a separate police force, and had been asked to assist managing the protest in the immigrant-heavy Embry Hills neighborhood nearby. Protests have become a regular occurrence in DeKalb county since the Trump administration’s immigration raids began.
Doraville’s cops have displayed a more cooperative relationship with immigration law enforcement than many other metro Atlanta departments, and observers have raised questions about whether its police department arrested Guevara to facilitate an Ice detainer.
Geierman, the mayor, denied those accusations.
“The Doraville police department was not operating under the direction of, or in coordination with, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during the June 14th protest,” he said in a statement. “To the department’s knowledge, no Ice personnel were present at the event. Doraville officers were on site to support the DeKalb county sheriff’s office as part of a coordinated public safety effort.”
Observers have also questioned Guevara’s charges from Gwinnett county – ignoring traffic signs, using a communication device while driving, and reckless driving – that stemmed from an incident that occurred in May, a month before his arrest.
“Mario Guevara compromised operational integrity and jeopardized the safety of victims of the case, investigators, and Gwinnett county residents,” the department said in a statement.
But Gwinnett’s belated prosecution left his attorneys gobsmacked.
“In the narrative that they put out, they say he was livestreaming a police operation, and he was interfering,” Diaz said. “But when they went to a judge to get warrants, the only warrants the magistrate was able to sign for them was for traffic violations. I mean, that’s kind of telling.”
“I think the whole thing is suspicious,” he added. “From the beginning, just everything seemed they were really making efforts to make it difficult for him to go free.”
Marvin Lim, a Filipino American state representative whose district contains the apartment complex in Gwinnett in Guevara’s citation, has asked the sheriff’s office a detailed set of questions about the department’s relationship with federal immigration enforcement. He has not received an adequate response, he said in an open letter to the sheriff.
An array of six advocacy organizations challenged Gwinnett’s sheriff, Keybo Taylor, in a letter Tuesday over Guevara’s arrest and the sheriff’s posture toward immigration enforcement, demanding details about the relationship. GALEO, among them, also issued a separate letter Wednesday calling on Taylor to be transparent about the Guevara arrest.
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Guevara “was arrested while doing the vital work that journalists in a democracy do”, GALEO’s letter states. “Not only do the circumstances surrounding his incarceration and subsequent immigration detainment stir serious civil rights concerns, but they also build upon an expanding sense of fear and confusion in Georgia’s most diverse county.”
“I am being persecuted,” Guevara wrote in a 7 July letter seeking humanitarian intercession from, of all people, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s rightwing president.
“I am about to complete a month in jail, and I need to get out in order to continue with my life, return to my work, and support my family,” Guevara wrote. “I have lived in the United States for nearly 22 years. I had never been arrested before. In these past three weeks, I have been held in five different jails, and I believe the government is trying to tarnish my record in order to deport me as if I were a criminal.”
Guevara’s American-born son turned 21 this year, permitting him to sponsor Guevara’s green card and eventual citizenship. His application is pending, Diaz said. It may not matter.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a stay filed for someone who has no convictions, has almost no criminal history in 20 years, and only had pending traffic violations,” Diaz said.
“It’s clear that everybody’s working really hard to keep him detained.”
This is about racism and misogyny. It follows the Russian all white male jacked up soldiers who are getting their asses handed to them in Ukraine. This clown “Kegseth” is clueless what a modern military is and can be. Remember he was picked because he was a weekend host on Fox opinion net work. Hugs
Hegseth doing pushups with sailors aboard the USS Dewey | Department of Defense
Pete Hegseth loves to have his picture taken doing jumping jacks, jogging with the troops, and hanging with buff special ops commandos. In fact, the Secretary of Defense is all about appearances, making a constant show of being more virile than anyone who’s ever preceded him.
In the name of warfighting and military readiness, Hegseth is self-appointed commanding general of the war on wrinkles.
His obsession has provoked a slew of new rules and regulations about “standards” of grooming and appearance, a deadly serious effort encompassing everything from banning eyelash extensions to offering government-funded laser hair removal procedures. With an emphasis on rules that most impact women and minorities, Hegseth wants to establish his own wokeness, a campaign that stresses looks over actual excellence.
Looks like DOGE missed a spot
The new grooming standards, one Army directive says, are “in support of Army readiness” — military speak for the ability to act swiftly and effectively. Far from some obscure policy, Hegseth believes that disciplined hair care will lead to a disciplined military, restoring the “warrior ethos” he often laments the armed forces have lost.
“We’re looking at overall fitness standards, overall grooming standards, overall basic standards across our formations that we believe have slipped certainly under the previous administration, but over decades,” Hegseth told Congress last month.
“It’s almost like the broken windows theory of policing: when you ignore the small stuff from criminals … it creates a culture where big stuff you’re not held accountable for,” he pontificated at a town hall meeting in February.
Army briefing on “Male Grooming Standard” | Defense Department
Here are three new grooming standards that particularly caught my eye:
Shaving, particularly for soldiers who seek waivers to standard policies due to health complications that daily shaving can cause. This is most common for black and brown folks who have curly hair; so common in fact that the directive makes explicit mention of “pseudofolliculitis Barbae,” or razor bumps, which can become infected.
The directive enumerates three phased treatment plans corresponding to mild, moderate and severe cases. A fourth phase provides the option of laser hair removal to soldiers unresponsive to the previous treatments or with chronic issues.
Eyelash extensions are now banned. No real justification is given but I’m sure it’s a coincidence that this also impacts black and brown people the most. Similarly, nail polish must now be “clear or French or American Manicure only,” a sacrifice to the gods of uniformity which feels more arbitrary than purposeful.
Petty changes to uniforms are being directed, from a ban on duty identifier patches, to shorter boots (“8-12 inches”), to important contingency plans on how to wear one’s sleeves (“the cuffs will remain visible, and the sleeve will rest at, or within 1-inch of, the forearm when the arm is bent at a 90-degree angle”; though “Commanders may prohibit rolling of sleeves and folding of cuffs.”)
It is a hodgepodge of “new” directives that are mostly costly annoyances but overall leave enlisted soldiers I’ve talked to feeling like the Pentagon and “leadership” are just playing a sadistic game of Simon Says.
Clean-shaven soldiers, however, aren’t going to bring the U.S. military closer to an end to the war in Ukraine or create greater security in the Middle East. More creases aren’t going to help tackle the challenges of drones and artificial intelligence, or fight the new Cold War with China.
In fact, Hegseth seems to be taking a page out of the Russian military playbook, which upon suffering over one million casualties in Ukraine, is also trying to stress appearances over serious failures of policy and humaneness.
Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has launched his own campaign to improve troop discipline by clamping down on non-standard haircuts, according to British intelligence, which assessed that this caused him to be “focused on presentation over substance.” In Russia’s case, a laughably undisciplined and corrupt force indeed needs to reform. But emulating Gerasimov is more of an insult to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces.
But this is more about Hegseth, for whom “presentation over substance” seems like his entire worldview. Here he is posing on the Pentagon lawn while signing an order on drone production, a piece of paper that was delivered by drone. The contents of the order didn’t get much attention but the image of the smartly dressed Secretary plucking the paper from the drone instantly became a meme.
Since his first appearance at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in February, when Hegseth mistakenly got ahead of President Trump’s negotiations by declaring Ukraine’s intent to regain its territory as “unrealistic” — prompting criticism from his own party’s Chair of the Armed Services Committee Sen. Roger Wicker, who called it “amateur” — Trump’s secretary has not had a hair out of place.
In every photo I can find, Hegseth’s hair seems painstakingly coiffed, right down to the occasional, ostensible cowlick. He looks like Christian Bale’s depiction of Bruce Wayne but with a MOAB-sized helping of hairgel.
The irony is that, amid all the chaos — of his alleged sexual misconduct, to the mass firing of his staff, to Signalgate and on and on — the man is always perfectly manicured. One has a sense that Hegseth will be more pleased in being named best-dressed of 2025 than anything else.
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