I have been waiting for the show to clip this interview. I watched it live when he was interviewed. I was blown away by Frost. He is the kind of Democratic elected members we need and the kind of candidates we should vote for. Please give the interview a watch. Hugs
I don’t care if a person can afford to have facial surgery and does to make themselves look prettier than nature did at birth, but this woman who clearly had a lot of work to change her appearance would object to a young adult trans person would do the same thing. But the point is this person is spending millions to cosplay to her heart’s content all over the Northern Hemisphere so she can put a pretty face to the horror her department is inflicting on people. Look she went to the El Salvadorian SECOT prison dressed up for a photo op. But what they are trying to hide is she was living in a mansion paid for by the US taxpayer …. meaning paid by us and so when that got found out she moved into a water front mansion her boyfriend was living in paid for by the US Coast Guard. The grifting and corruption of this administration is unbelievable. They cut every healthcare and food assistance for the poor in the US but they demand every amenity paid for by the taxpayer and think they are due it. Hugs
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BIG SPENDER
The DHS will pour a fortune into its “Stronger Border” ad campaign as Secretary Kristi Noem weathers a relentless storm of mockery.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
The Trump administration is set to spend up to $50 million on a wave of taxpayer-funded PR amid the torrent of negative coverage dogging his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
A planning forecast record posted this week by the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) pledges $20 million to $50 million as an “International Campaign Follow-on” to the “Stronger Border, Stronger America” ads that have starred Noem.
A DHS spokesperson told the Daily Beast that the spending on the campaign is not related to coverage of Noem.
Since being appointed Trump’s DHS secretary, Noem has been skewered over her cosplays and photo-ops promoting Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Trump’s hardline deportation agenda.
That mockery has reached a fever pitch with the latest season of South Park, which won record ratings while portraying Noem as a psychotic dog-killer—referencing her memoir admission that she shot dead her own dog—and mocked DHS’s own celebratory sizzle reels.
Noem wore an ICE vest in promotional stunts for the agency—the new tranche of spending comes as she has weathered intense mockery on ‘South Park.’TheDailyBeast/DHS
The PR campaign will be funded from September through March, listing the incumbent as People Who Think LLC—a company with ties to the GOP and Noem’s unofficial chief of staff, Corey Lewandowski, who also served as Trump’s 2016 campaign manager. Noem and Lewandowski, who are both married to other people, have denied longstanding rumors that they are romantically involved.
People Who Think was co-founded by Louisiana consultant Jay Connaughton, who worked alongside Lewandowski—described by some Homeland Security officials as Noem’s gatekeeper—on Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s campaign in 2024, according to Semafor. Connaughton also worked on ads for Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to the report.
Federal data shows the company has been awarded $26.7 million this financial year, suggesting it could stand to earn nearly double that in its latest deal. The Daily Beast contacted People Who Think LLC for comment.
The new spending is the latest tranche from a pot that Semafor reported as being worth up to $200 million, which has been budgeted for Noem’s nationwide and international messaging drive. The DHS began rolling it out in February.
Early spots featured Noem praising Trump in front of American flags and warning migrants—depicted as crossing the border en masse and purportedly handing over drugs—with Noem saying “we will find you and deport you,” and “you will never return.”
Images from one of the adverts in the campaign launched earlier this year—the DHS trumpeted the spots as a “nationwide and international multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning illegal aliens to leave our country now or face deportation.”TheDailyBeast/DHS
DHS insisted after the rollout that the buys were “competitive,” but a document posted in a federal database in March shows officials at that time invoked an “unusual and compelling urgency” tied to Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border, according to the Los Angeles Times. The measure allows federal agencies to skip a typical competitive process, the outlet reported.
The process sparked alarm from Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee, who wrote a letter to Noem slamming a “blatant misuse of American tax dollars,” and demanding records by April 4.
As of now, the committee hasn’t posted any DHS response.
Noem is carrying out what Trump wants—and he continues to support her by funding a PR blitz.Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERSNoem meeting with President of Costa Rica Rodrigo Chaves Robles in June—Lewandowski (second left) and Noem have both previously denied rumors of being romantically involved.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Given the time that has elapsed since the previous “tender,” and the fact that tens of thousands of arrests and deportations of migrants have occurred since Trump took power in January, it is not obvious his administration and the DHS can continue to argue an “unusual and compelling urgency.”
It is also unclear whether a competitive process was used this time around.
“Just yesterday, Secretary Noem announced 1.6 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. This data reveals the world is hearing Secretary Noem’s message loud and clear: if you are in America illegally, leave now or face arrest, deportation, and fines,” the DHS spokesperson told the Daily Beast on Friday.
“Following a competitive process with multiple companies competing to deliver the best service, product, and price for American taxpayers, Safe America Media and People Who Think both earned a shared contract for this targeted national and international campaign that warns illegal aliens to leave our country now, self deport, and not to enter our country illegally or face deportation,” they said, adding that multiple “career government officials oversaw this competitive procurement process.”
Noem at the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador in March—one of her many photo-ops since being appointed Homeland Security Secretary.Alex Brandon/Alex Brandon/Pool via REUTERS‘South Park’ has been mocking the stunts, achieiving record ratings in the process—Noem has called the parody “lazy” and “petty.”South Park/Comedy Central
The spokesperson also denied that the spending is part of an effort to counter negative coverage of Noem.
“To the Daily Beast’s chagrin, these ads are working, and illegal aliens are leaving in droves,” they said.
More racism. Plus what does this say about how the Republican Party which is the party that touts themselves as pro business yet in the name of racism they feel free to trash people’s places of business. Notice everyone they detained was working. Working. These are not criminals they are productive members of their community. Their real crime in the current US under Stephen Miller is not being white. Yes undocumented but how soon will it be before they come for US citizen brown people in their quest for a white ethnostate. We must stop them now. Hugs
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In a social media post, the business said immigration agents left behind a burned kitchen, torn ceiling tiles, broken doors and trashed food.
A local Mexican restaurant chain in Pennsylvania is trying to forge ahead a week after a worksite immigration raid left property damage at two of its storefronts and a workforce afraid to show up to their jobs, according to two employees and a witness who spoke with NBC News.
It all started Aug. 7 when immigration authorities showed up at two Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar locations in the Pittsburgh area. As many as 16 workers were detained — nine worked at a location in Gibsonia, a suburb north of Pittsburgh, and seven others worked at another location in the nearby township of Cranberry.
In a social media post that same afternoon, which included a video taken by a worker, the business accused agents of storming into its restaurants and leaving “a trail of fear, confusion, and destruction” that included a burned kitchen, torn ceiling tiles, broken doors, a safe cut open by an agent and trashed food. The incident raises questions over the tactics used by authorities at this particular raid.
Immigration authorities conducted a workplace raid on two Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar locations on Aug. 7. Courtesy Jaime Martinez
This week, gas plumbers fixed a stove that was damaged during the raid, according to two people working at the restaurant chain. Staffing was also thin at the locations targeted by immigration authorities as employees who witnessed the raid, including those who are U.S. citizens, remain “in shock,” they added. “No one wants to go back, everyone is scared.”
Both workers who spoke with NBC News requested to not be named to protect their family’s privacy because of an ongoing federal investigation in connection with last week’s events.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania declined to clarify what the investigation it is leading is about.
As the immigration arrests were happening last week, someone alerted an emergency response immigration hotline run by Casa San Jose, a local nonprofit that advocates for Latino and immigrant communities.
The organization quickly dispatched about 20 volunteers to both locations to act as legal observers, collect testimonies and provide support to the workers and families affected, according to Jaime Martinez, a community defense organizer at Casa San Jose.
At the Gibsonia location, “the raid actually caused a kitchen fire that agents were unable to extinguish at the beginning, which put people in danger,” Martinez told NBC News on Tuesday.
Employees who spoke to Martinez and his volunteers said the stove was on when agents entered the kitchen because workers were cooking food as they prepared to open the restaurant Thursday morning. The restaurant’s manager warned agents that the open burners were on, but witnesses alleged that agents didn’t do anything until a fire sparked, he said.
The detained employees, who had their arms and ankles shackled, were the ones who directed the agents to find the fire extinguisher and instructed them on how to use it after initially failing to operate it, according to employees who spoke to Martinez and his volunteers.
“By the time the fire department got there, the fire had already been put out with a dry chemical extinguisher, but only after this delay,” Martinez said.
As many as 16 workers were detained at two locations in the Pittsburgh region.Courtesy Jaime Martinez
A spokesperson with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News in an email Thursday that the “damage to the restaurant, including the small fire, was created by the illegal aliens themselves while they were trying to escape or hide from law enforcement officers.”
According to ICE, the agents showed up at the locations in Gibsonia and Cranberry to execute federal search warrants based on information it got alleging that the restaurants were employing undocumented workers, WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh, reported. The agency added that the 16 people detained lack legal status and are now in ICE custody, undergoing immigration proceedings.
“But in the process of coming in with that warrant, they also terrorized the community, pointed guns at people and destroyed a local business,” Martinez said.
In response to this, the ICE spokesperson told NBC News, “All agents and officers followed established legal procedures while executing the warrants.”
At the Cranberry location, Casa San Jose volunteers interviewed a worker who described seeing officers come into the restaurant, shouting “police” and pointing their long guns at the employees. One female employee who was in the kitchen said an agent “pointed the gun at her head” while telling her to stop cooking, according to Martinez.
While she was not detained after showing proper documentation, “this lady is now going to have to live with the trauma of having law enforcement point a gun at her head while she was at work,” Martinez said.
Martinez and one of the workers who spoke with NBC News said agents lined up all of the cuffed employees and made them kneel while pointing their weapons at them.
“Agents and officers operated within established law enforcement standards in order to ensure the safety of law enforcement officers, the public and the illegal aliens themselves,” the ICE spokesperson said in response to this allegation.
An ICE spokesperson said agents were also present in June as part of the same investigation.Courtesy Jaime Martinez
Last week was not the first time immigration authorities attempted to detain employees from Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar.The ICE spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that a June incident was part of “an investigation that ultimately led to the execution of the warrants” this month.
Martinez said that on a night in June, he got a call on the hotline, reporting unmarked vehicles surrounding a nearby apartment complex. When the volunteer who was dispatched arrived at the area, she noticed the vehicles were parked with their engines still running, in front and behind the restaurant.
According to Martinez, it looked like federal agents inside the vehicles were waiting for workers to come out of the restaurant as it was closing. The vehicles left once TV crews arrived on the scene, he said.
“There were nine people in that restaurant on lockdown,” Martinez said, adding his group doesn’t know the immigration status of those workers since it doesn’t ask people about that as part of its policy. “But you don’t have to be undocumented to be afraid of getting detained.”
Since launching the hotline in March, Casa San Jose has received more than 650 calls reporting more than 100 immigration detentions in the area and has dispatched volunteers in at least 70 instances, according to Martinez.
In the wake of the raids at Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant and Bar locations, the community came together and collectively donated more than $133,000. The workers who spoke with NBC News said the business plans to use the funds to cover bond expenses, one month worth of salary for each employee detained and repair damage done to the restaurant.
This is why the administration is blocking legal oversight and demanding illegally to have three days prior warning for inspections. They are keeping these kidnapped victims in horrific conditions to force them to agree to deportation. The facility in Florida a former worker admitted that and said it worked.
“Under such conditions, some of those arrested are pressured into accepting voluntary departure,” the lawsuit stated.
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Dakota Smith
5 min read
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) stands outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building downtown earlier this summer. On Monday, he was allowed to enter the ICE processing facility in the basement. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
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For two months, several Democratic members of Congress have been unable to enter a downtown L.A. processing center run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompting widespread complaints and a federal lawsuit.
On Monday, the Congress members got their first look at the basement facility known as B-18.
But Reps. Brad Sherman, Judy Chu and Jimmy Gomez said that they were left with more questions than answers — and accused the government of sanitizing the center.
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“They wanted to show us nothing,” said Gomez, whose district includes downtown L.A. “It was nothing, it was like no one was there. It was deliberate so members of Congress cannot conduct oversight.”
Scores of migrants, as well as some U.S. citizens, have been taken from Home Depot parking lots, car washes and other locations by masked and heavily armed agents and brought to B-18 since early June. Some detainees have complained of overcrowding and being held for multiple days.
The facility can hold up to 335 migrants, but there were just two people in one of the holding rooms Monday, the members said at a news conference in downtown L.A. after their visit.
The group’s previously scheduled visit was canceled by ICE. Monday’s visit took days of planning and advance notice, according to the politicians.
They described a sparse scene inside B-18, with nine holding rooms, each with two toilets.
Chu, whose district includes Monterey Park, described the floors as concrete and said that there were no beds. She said ICE detainees are supposed to be held at the facility for only 72 hours, but she has heard stories of people kept there for 12 days.
Some detainees have reported receiving one meal a day, she said. On Monday, she visited the food pantry at B-18, which Chu described as “scanty.”
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“I am deeply disturbed by what I saw and what I heard,” Chu said.
Chu also said she has been told that detainees have no soap or toothbrushes.
“It’s alarming that it’s taken so long for congressional members to gain access to this site,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a nonprofit that seeks to protect the rights of immigrants.
Perez was able to visit Narciso Barranco, a Mexican national whose three sons are U.S. Marines, in June. Perez said he saw Barranco after he’d been held at the facility for three days. Perez said Barranco, who was punched and pepper-sprayed during his arrest, did not receive medical attention.
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The Department of Homeland Security shared video of his arrest on social media and said Barranco attacked an agent with his gardening tool.
Barranco told Perez that each of the rooms held 30 to 70 people at the time and that some had to sleep standing up, Perez said. Food was scarce and they didn’t have access to showers.
The ICE facility was designed as a processing center, not a detention facility, Perez said.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin denied that individuals don’t receive medical care. She also disputed Chu’s suggestion that an individual was held at the facility for 12 days.
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Addressing the politicians’ other complaints about B-18, McLaughlin wrote, “Now, politicians are complaining about ICE processing facilities being TOO CLEAN.”
McLaughlin said that claims of poor conditions at ICE facilities are false and that the agency “has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” she said.
Sherman, who represents parts of the San Fernando Valley and Pacific Palisades, said that one of the two detainees at B-18 on Monday rested with his head on a table.
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Sherman said he “illegally” took a picture during his visit and that he shouted out to several people being brought into the facility for processing, asking them whether they were U.S. citizens or green card holders. No one replied, he said.
Sherman, Chu, Gomez and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who joined the group after their visit, criticized the ongoing immigration enforcement, and in particular the use of masked, roving agents.
A federal judge last month temporarily barred the government from mass sweeps in Los Angeles and seven nearby counties without first establishing reasonable suspicion that the targets are in the U.S. illegally.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which sued the federal government over the sweeps, described B-18 as “dungeon-like” and accused the administration of failing to “provide basic necessities like food, water, adequate hygiene facilities, and medical care.” Detainees were allegedly subjected to overcrowding and did not have adequate sleeping accommodations.
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“Under such conditions, some of those arrested are pressured into accepting voluntary departure,” the lawsuit stated.
On Monday, Chu said that she asked ICE representatives during the tour why people were jumping out of vans with masks, and no identification.
She said the representatives replied, “That’s not us, and we go in if there’s probable cause, if there’s a warrant out there.”
Gomez, who has been repeatedly turned away from entering the B-18 facility since the crackdown started this year, is part of a group of Democratic House members suing the federal government over the lack of access.
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The lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Washington, said the individuals attempted to visit a detention facility, either by showing up in person or by giving Homeland Security Department officials advance notice, and were unlawfully blocked from entering.
ICE recently published new guidelines for members of Congress and their staff, requesting at least 72 hours’ notice from lawmakers and requiring at least 24 hours’ notice from staff before an oversight visit.
Times staff writer Andrea Castillo contributed to this report.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
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