Theme: resistance and witness
Who refuses, documents, or intervenes — whistleblowers, journalists, judges, neighbors, the planned testimony.
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The First Bumbling Raid
Investigative journalist Radley Balko launched an ongoing series cataloguing the false official statements that the Department of Homeland Security has issued after specific acts of abuse or violence by ICE and Border Patrol officers in the field; the first installment examines the illegal raid on ChongLy Scott Thao and his family.
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Adding to the War Crimes File
Reading the Secretary of Defense's public statement that the mission would not be 'guided by rules rooted in the law of armed conflict,' former UN special rapporteur David Kaye flagged the declaration as material for any future war crimes prosecution.
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The Only Other Witness
The only passenger in the car when an ICE officer shot and killed a US citizen in Texas had planned to publicly contradict the government's official account of the shooting; before he could testify, he died in an unrelated car crash.
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Trained to Disregard
ICE whistleblower Ryan Schwank, a former agency instructor and staff attorney, testified that field agents were trained to disregard constitutional rights — making rights violations a matter of policy rather than aberration.
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After the Letters Were Published
Letters from children imprisoned in the Dilley, Texas family detention camp — including a seven-year-old held for seventy days, a five-year-old, and a nine-year-old held for one hundred thirteen days — reached ProPublica. The day the resulting story was published, federal personnel raided the dormitories to confiscate further letters.
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The Thirty-Eighth Killing
A running tally maintained by independent observers records the United States military's thirty-eighth instance of unlawfully killing civilians under the orders of the Secretary of Defense and the President; the cumulative count of dead is at least one hundred thirty.
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Five Patterns of Defiance
Federal judges hearing immigration cases have begun to articulate a recurring playbook of administrative noncompliance with their orders — across detainee transfers, deadlines, release conditions, post-release treatment, and bond hearings.
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She Has Not Gone Outside
Thi Dua Vang, a Hmong asylum-seeker in St. Paul who fled religious persecution in Vietnam and has legal status in the U.S., was detained by ICE in January, transferred to Texas, and ordered released by a judge after two weeks; since her return, she has been unable to leave her home because ICE agents continue to come to the door.
2026
2025
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Operation in the Most Conservative Neighborhood
A Border Patrol operation seized people working in the front yard of a home in Edison Park, Chicago, transferred them in a parking lot in a neighboring suburb to a prisoner van, and was met by neighbors blowing whistles and shouting at the agents.
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Fifty-Plus Cases That Fell Apart
A ProPublica investigation methodically tracked over fifty cases of US citizens detained by immigration agents on charges that were either dismissed in court or never filed at all — including a woman accused of an assault that wasn't on video and a charge listing the injury as 'the thumb of an ATF Special Agent.'