Mohammadjamal Azizi and Hannaneh Alikaram requested asylum after arriving in the United States in late 2024, for fear of the persecution they would likely face as Christian converts in Iran, where they had twice been arrested due to their faith.

Since arriving in the U.S., they have faced sharply different versions of American justice, the result of a process advocates refer to bitterly as “immigration roulette”: Azizi — who goes by the name Liam — has been free for more than a year, after his asylum claim was granted, while Alikaram has suffered 21 months in detention, more than a year of that coming after her claim was rejected. 

Until recently, it is likely that Alikaram would not have spent nearly as much time in detention as she has. But amid the twin agendas of mass detention and mass deportation, the Trump administration has swept aside years of precedent by locking up people who would previously have been allowed to fight their cases from outside detention, while going after communities formerly protected from deportation due to the likelihood of persecution back home.

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Iranians have found themselves the crosshairs. Last year, amid the so-called 12-Day War between the U.S.–Israel and Iran, senior officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a scheme to begin deportations to Iran, a plan that resulted in three planes full of Iranian deportees being sent back to Iran on charter flights.

Those flights were suspended earlier this year after the U.S. and Israel launched the ongoing war on Iran, but multiple Iranians with final orders of removal have been deported to countries where they have no ties, including Panama and the Central African Republic. With so-called third-country flights leaving every month or so, Azizi and his wife live in constant fear that Alikaram might be put on a plane to a country where she knows no one and from which she has little hope of escaping.

Leaving detention after seven months, Azizi headed to the Iranian American hub of Los Angeles, where he has spent the past year working any job he can find to raise money for legal bills and fighting for his wife’s release. By the logic of the U.S. immigration system, that should be a simple prospect: As the spouse of an asylee, Alikaram is eligible for a status known as derivative asylum, a process intended to ensure family unification and act as a backstop against situations like the one in which Azizi and Alikaram find themselves, according to Carmen Maria Rey Caldas, a former immigration judge fired by the Trump administration last year.

“The person gets to have derivative asylum because family unity is a central tenet of our immigration system,” said Rey Caldas. “This is your money and my money that are being wasted in detaining this woman who is unquestionably eligible for asylum as the spouse of an individual that has been granted asylum.”

The couple currently has a petition for derivative asylum before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and have filed a petition for habeas corpus seeking to secure Alikaram’s release on the basis of prolonged detention. Amid the uncertainty, with no end in sight to his wife’s detention, Azizi said their separation — and his feeling of helplessness in the face of bureaucratic cruelty — weighs on him daily.

“Being separated from Hananneh is unbearable,” Azizi wrote in a statement to the court filed earlier this year. “Every night I go to sleep wondering if she is safe in detention. Every day I wake up with anxiety that she might be taken away from me and sent back to a country where she could be imprisoned, tortured, or even killed just because she sought freedom.”

Azizi and Alikaram married in 2018 and lived together in Isfahan, Iran, where both had gone to university. Azizi worked as a software engineer, while Alikaram ran a greenhouse business, cultivating plants and posting playful videos to YouTube in which she coached plant lovers on topics ranging from prepping plants for autumn to guarding against pests. In the videos, which include jokey, spliced-in clips from “Lord of the Rings” and Miyazaki films, Alikaram comes across as a happy young woman enamored with the natural world.

The couple found their way to Christianity first through friends, members of Isfahan’s sizable minority of Armenian Christians. Christians have lived in Iran for more than a millennium, and Iran’s constitution affords protections allowing ethnoreligious communities, most notably Armenians and Assyrians, to practice their faith and organize their families and communities accordingly.

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But the situation is very different for converts like Azizi and Alikaram, who are considered by Iran’s theocratic government to be apostates, and are subject to harsh punishments — up to and including execution. As a result, converts must worship in secret, in an underground network of so-called home churches.

It was in these home churches that the couple began exploring Christianity and where, in January 2024, they were baptized into the Anglican church. But it was also in a home church where the two met with their first experience of state terror, Azizi and Alikaram told The Intercept in telephone interviews and related in court documents. On March 5, 2024, they were worshipping with a handful of others in a home church in Isfahan when members of the pro-government Basij militia burst in, having been informed of the gathering by neighbors. Alikaram and Azizi, along with others, were taken into custody. Alikaram was beaten so badly she passed out and had to be hospitalized.

On June 9, 2024, after relocating for their own safety to the capital of Tehran, Alikaram and Azizi were arrested again on charges of practicing a foreign religion and inviting others to practice Christianity. She was held for two days, and he for four. After that ordeal, they decided it was time to leave. They secured a visa to enter Brazil, and left Iran on November 3, 2024. Five days later, a court in Tehran issued warrants for their arrest, according to court documents.

Azizi and Alikaram entered the United States on December 26, 2024, after an arduous trip overland from Brazil that took them through more than half a dozen countries. En route, they traveled through the infamous Darién Gap and spent two days as captives of a criminal group in Tapachula, Mexico, an ordeal that ended only after paying thousands of dollars for their release. 

In Mexico, they registered for CBP One, the mobile app designed by the Biden administration as the only method by which potential asylees could file a claim. Due to the danger in Mexico, including threats from a smuggler, Alikaram and Azizi said smugglers forced them to join a group of migrants from India, Iran, and a number of African countries in crossing the border wall separating Tijuana and San Diego.

“They told us, ‘You have to cross the border, you cannot stay in Mexico,’” Azizi recalled the smugglers saying. “It was out of our hands.”

On the other side, they soon found themselves in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol, who searched the migrants and separated the men from the women. 

“We told them we are married, we showed them our marriage certificate,” Azizi told The Intercept. “But they didn’t care. They separated us.”

In early January 2025, Alikaram was sent to Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, while Azizi was sent to another facility in Louisiana before ending up at a detention center in Houston, Texas. 

They have been apart ever since.

Alikaram went before Judge Jennifer A. May for her asylum hearing on July 2, 2025. May, who was appointed in 2018 under the first Trump administration, appears to be in line with the policy objectives of the current administration. Between 2021 and the end of 2025, she denied asylum in 91.8 percent of the cases she heard, according to data from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which collects data on immigration judges.

The hearing took place at a time in which judges were under ever greater pressure to deny claims, according to Rey Caldas, the former immigration judge, who was fired last year amid a purge of the immigration court system by the Trump administration.

“It was evident to me when I was on the bench, and it’s certainly evident to me now that they are exerting massive pressure so that judges deny all applications,” Rey Caldas said. 

In the hearing, which was conducted over Webex, May drilled into Alikaram’s claim, asking for details about her baptism, whether or not she had owned a Bible, and her reasons for converting to Christianity. Alikaram, clearly nervous, stumbled over her words at times, and at others gave answers that clashed with evidence provided to court. Some details also appeared to get lost in translation. At one point, a reference by Alikaram to the Basij, the paramilitary arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was transcribed as “a siege.” 

May did not find Alikaram to be credible. In her decision denying Alikaram’s asylum case, May focused mostly on what she described as inconsistencies in Alikaram’s testimony, including how long she’d been attending home churches and details of her arrest — inconsistencies that Alikaram and Azizi later blamed on her nerves while testifying. But May also tried to downplay the likelihood that Alikaram would face persecution if she returned to Iran.

“I find there is no independent evidence to show that the respondent would likely be tortured in Iran,” May wrote. “[T]his court is aware that Christians have been arrested and sent to jail for some period of time. But looking at the amount of people in Iran, the amount of people who are converts to Christianity, I cannot find that that percentage would be more than likely or not torture or persecution [sic] for this respondent.”

Six days later, Azizi who at the time was being held at a detention facility in Texas, went before Judge Nimmo Bhagat, fully expecting that his claim would be denied as well. To his shock, however, the judge approved his claim for asylum, and just two weeks later he was a free man.

“I was shocked,” Azizi said. “I thought if my wife couldn’t get asylum that I’d have no chance. But they gave me asylum.”

A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the branch of the Justice Department that oversees immigration courts, declined to comment. Neither ICE nor USCIS responded to requests for comment.

In light of his wife’s asylum denial, Azizi’s successful claim was a godsend for them both. Despite May’s decision, Alikaram should now be eligible for derivative asylum, upon which her own claim and its denial has no bearing.

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The couple filed for derivative asylum in December, after the Board of Immigration Appeals denied Alikaram’s appeal of May’s decision. USCIS issued a notice of receipt, and even scheduled an appointment in Jackson, Mississippi, for a biometrics appointment. But ICE failed to produce Alikaram for the appointment, and the derivative asylum process now appears to be languishing in limbo.

In April, Alikaram’s attorney, Emily Trostle, filed a petition for habeas corpus in an attempt to secure Alikaram’s release from detention. That case, too, has stalled, forcing Trostle to file a petition last week to expedite the process.

In detention, meanwhile, Alikaram is suffering from poor nutrition, failing eyesight, and severe anxiety and depression. 

“I can’t bear it anymore,” she told The Intercept in a telephone interview. “I know God has a plan for me, but sometimes now I say, ‘Just kill me so my husband and my family can move on with their lives.’”

The post Immigration Roulette: Husband Granted Asylum, Wife Locked Up Awaiting Deportation appeared first on The Intercept.

On Wednesday evening, United is scheduled to transport five shipments of military cargo onboard United Airlines flight 90, a passenger route from Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey, to Tel Aviv, Israel, a day after resuming the route and another direct flight to Israel, records show. 

The shipments, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept, include one transport to the “electro-optics” wing of the Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems, in Rehovot, Israel, where the arms maker has a major campus. Another shipment is bound for Elbit Systems Land, a division of the company formerly known as IMI Systems, located in Ramat Hasharon, Israel. And a further three shipments are scheduled to go to an Elbit Systems facility in Karmiel, Israel.

At least one of the shipments to Karmiel was specifically labeled as “FMS,” or foreign military sales, the records show, though all the military hardware bound for Israel on the Wednesday flight is destined for defense firms under Elbit’s umbrella.

The shipments appear to be a return to status quo for United, which had used civilian passenger flights to transport thousands of shipments of military cargo to Israel amid its wars in the occupied Gaza Strip and Lebanon and in the run-up to its joint attack on Iran alongside the U.S., according to a new report released this week by Movement Research Unit, Palestinian Youth Movement, People’s Embargo for Palestine, and the Democratic Socialists of America. (A spokesperson for United declined to comment. Representatives of Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, and the Israeli Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.)

The report, based on open-source data, found that United transported nearly 3,000 loads of military materiel over a seven-month period in 2025 and early 2026. The cargo ranged from critical components for fighter jets and tanks to helmet displays, electronics, and nuts and bolts. The transfers stopped only amid the outbreak of war with Iran.

“This report shows that United, consistently and on a regular basis, ships military materiel that is used by the Israeli military for its operations in Gaza, in Lebanon, and against Iran,” said Griffin Mahon, a co-chair of the national labor committee of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of the groups behind the report. “These parts are shipped on civilian passenger flights, and they represent one way that American companies enable the Israeli government’s war crimes.”

2,761 Shipments

Using open-source methods to find publicly accessible cargo documents, researchers with the Movement Research Unit — a group that provides investigative muscle for left-wing groups and causes — said they tracked 2,761 shipments to weapons manufacturers transported by United aboard 160 civilian passenger flights between July 24, 2025, and February 27, 2026.

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Due to the volume of data, the authors were only able to analyze a subset of the overall shipments, but after analyzing the product descriptions of a sample of 546 of those shipments, the group found 28 shipments of tank parts, 131 shipments of parts for weapons maker Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets, 67 shipments of components for other aircraft, and more than 100 other shipments of radio and communications equipment, nuts and bolts, and helmet-mounted display systems. 

Many of those parts include key components to some of the most critical military vehicles in Israel’s arsenal, many of which have been documented in the commission of alleged war crimes on numerous occasions, according to Belal Elsiesy, a spokesperson for Palestinian Youth Movement.

“We’ve seen parts directly tied to the carrying out of the genocide, from armored tank sights and gunner display units to the bomb-release units of the F-35,” Elsiesy said. “We often have seen videos of Israeli occupation forces on social media recordings from inside of a tank, the demolition of schools, mosques, and other buildings, and often the screen that they are recording on is a gunner display unit — the same gunner display unit that is transported by United Airlines. It’s not an abstract connection.”

The report found no evidence that United transported any explicitly hazardous material aboard passenger flights. The use of civilian infrastructure to carry weapons components to a belligerent in the midst of open conflict, however, raised ethical questions for the researchers, according to Abdullah, an investigator with Movement Research who spoke with The Intercept on the condition that he be referred to by his first name only due to the sensitive nature of his work.

“We all get on our flights and have to worry about taking too much water in our water bottles, and meanwhile, there are ammunition handling systems and F-35 parts and tank sites that are being transported on these flights, without us actually knowing,” Abdullah said. “Crimes are being committed in Gaza, so United needs to do a full and thorough review of their policy related to the transport of these components that might be violating international law.”

Weapons Parts on Domestic Flights

The cargo shipments were not just stowed away on flights bound for Israel, the report found.

While the majority of cargo documents for shipments did not reveal a domestic origin point other than Newark, 235 shipments were shown to have arrived at Newark on domestic flights from cities across the U.S., including flights from Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport, Houston International Airport, Atlanta International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, along with Washington’s Dulles International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

The domestic route with the most shipments in the period analyzed was a United flight from Dallas–Fort Worth to Houston, aboard which the airline transported 128 shipments, according to the report. That was followed by 90 domestic shipments onboard a United flight from Houston to Newark.

Most of the shipments going directly to Israel — 2,565 in total — appear to have been carried aboard United flights 84 and 90, passenger flights that travel directly from Newark to Tel Aviv. Data obtained by the report’s authors showed that Newark served as the primary hub for United’s shipments to Israel, with all but 45 of the shipments in the documented period arriving in Israel from there. Of the remaining 45 shipments, 36 left the U.S. from Chicago, and nine from Washington, the report found.

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Most of the shipments — 2,070 in total — were destined for Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer and a frequent target of Palestine solidarity activism, according to the report. A total of 78 shipments were transported to the Israeli headquarters of Lockheed Martin, while hundreds more were destined for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and to several military airbases in Israel, including the operational hub of the country’s fleet of F-35I jets, the Israeli version of Lockheed’s flagship stealth fighter, the report found.

While information on the senders of the shipments was only available in some cases, a portion of the transfers were shipped by Lockheed Martin and by Elbit System’s U.S. branch, according to the report’s authors.

A New Report

The Intercept reviewed a portion of the underlying data in the report, including cargo documents that showed the transport of F-35 parts and weapons systems for armored personnel carriers, but has not independently corroborated every claim made by Movement Research Unit and its partners.

Movement Research investigators provided a detailed explanation of its methodology to The Intercept, which agreed to withhold some details to prevent a clampdown on the research that made the report possible. Previous work by the group has exposed a multi-ton shipment of explosive material out of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and a Portland drone company shipping hardware to Israel.

Work on the report began last summer, after an investigative story by the Irish publication The Ditch revealed several shipments of military hardware aboard passenger flights passing through Irish airspace.

Suspecting the practice might be more widespread than the limited samples in The Ditch report, Movement Research delved deeper into the airline’s shipments to Israel over the ensuing seven months.

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The shipments appear to have mostly stopped in February, when U.S. direct flights to Israel were suspended amid the U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran. With those flights set to resume this week, the report’s authors hope to pressure United to cease its practice of moving military cargo onboard, according to Abdullah, the investigator with Movement Research.

“This is very timely, because United needs to commit to not shipping military cargo on those passenger flights,” Abdullah said. “Not only on the ones that are going directly to Tel Aviv, but also on flights within the U.S.”

The post United Airlines Ships War Materiel to Israel Aboard Passenger Flights appeared first on The Intercept.

In a federal court filing in New York, the Justice Department argued that the U.S. has a vested interest in OpenAI having access to a vast array of intellectual property. The Trump administration warned that restricting OpenAI’s access to the data could hamper scientific progress and harm the country’s dominance in the race for artificial intelligence.

“The United States has a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry that sets the standard for the practice and procedure of AI use globally,” said the filing, which was signed by associate attorneys general Stanley Woodward Jr. and Brett Shumate, along with the attorney general’s senior counsel Michael Weisbuch.

Matt Topic, the litigating attorney representing The Intercept in its lawsuit, warned that the Trump administration’s position was out of touch and a threat to the financial survival of media outlets.

“This is pretty reflective of the administration’s pro-AI policies, which are out of step with the public skepticism of AI and out of step with our long tradition in this country of protecting human expression,” said Topic. “If the administration’s position was accepted, it would result in an unprecedented, uncompensated transfer of IP rights from news organizations to tech companies.”

The Intercept originally filed its lawsuit against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft in February 2024, arguing that OpenAI’s use of work reported and written by its journalists constituted a breach of copyright law. In November 2024, the judge then presiding over the case dismissed all of The Intercept’s claims against Microsoft, but allowed its claim against OpenAI to proceed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The Intercept’s case was later consolidated under U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein alongside a number of other media plaintiffs, including the New York Times, Tribune Media Company, and Ziff Davis. 

OpenAI has argued that its practice of hoovering up staggering amounts of copyright-protected materials to feed its large language models — the underlying technology powering generative AI tools like ChatGPT — falls under the domain of “fair use,” a doctrine protecting the unlicensed use of copyrighted material under certain circumstances.

In its filing, the Justice Department supported OpenAI’s fair-use defense, accusing the Times and other plaintiffs of taking an overly narrow definition of the doctrine. OpenAI’s use of the material, the government argued, met the criteria for “transformative” use, one of the ways in which “fair use” comes into play.

“In this litigation, the New York Times seeks to narrow fair-use doctrine to exclude the training of OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs). That result would be inconsistent with basic copyright law principles and severely hamper ‘the Progress of Science and useful Arts,’” the filing says. “An erroneous fair use ruling would hamper competition in the market for LLMs, because only the largest technology companies might have the capital necessary to pay licensing fees.”

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The filing is the latest move from the Trump administration to protect the interests of U.S.-based artificial intelligence companies amid an AI arms race with companies based in other countries, most notably China.

In December 2025, Trump signed an executive order aimed at creating a federal standard, applicable in all 50 states, to “ensure that the United States wins the AI race, as we must.”

Topic, The Intercept’s attorney, said this position — combined with the fact that the Justice Department has not been privy to any discovery in the case — shows that the Trump administration is operating from a fixed position in support of tech companies, rather than arguing the merits of the case.

“What they’re saying isn’t based on any understanding of actual facts,” Topic said. “It just reflects what Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s PR machines have been putting out into the public.”

The post Trump Admin Tells Court: Let OpenAI Rip Off The Intercept’s Articles appeared first on The Intercept.

In the process, immigration officials indicate they complied with an Iranian request to repatriate three specific people who were living in the United States.

Hundreds of emails spanning from May to November of last year show ICE officials, operating under the orders of then-Acting Director Todd Lyons, scrambling to put together plans for three controversial charter flights to Iran in the clearest picture yet of the Trump administration’s behind-the-scenes planning for the trips.

The flights delivered more than 100 people to an uncertain fate in Tehran just months or weeks before the U.S. and Israel launched their current devastating war, which has to date killed thousands of Iranians. While Israel and the United States bombed Iran during the Twelve-Day War last year, the flight planning remained ongoing. The coordination marked a reversal in decades of immigration policy toward Iranians, who were typically allowed to remain in the United States, even with a final removal order, due to fear of persecution from a regime U.S. leaders have accused of wantonly murdering its own citizens. 

The emails, which were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Iranian American Council, or NIAC, and provided exclusively to The Intercept, show heavy pressure from high-ranking Trump administration officials to make the flights happen; discussion of coordination between ICE and Iranian officials, often through Qatari intermediaries but at times directly; and even an apparent mix-up in which ICE officials accidentally put the wrong person on a deportation flight bound for Iran.

Iranians were already under increased targeting by ICE, according to data obtained by NIAC. The timing of the about-face from long-standing policy was particularly cruel, said Jamal Abdi, the group’s president.

“It seemed clear that Iranians were under the microscope all of a sudden,” Abdi told The Intercept. “And we now know that it was actually in the middle of the [Twelve-Day] war where the White House was directing ICE to start removing Iranians.”

Each flight arrived in Tehran carrying at least a dozen deportees, including political activists and ethnic and religious minorities who had good reason to fear persecution upon arrival. Many of the people flown to Tehran were transported against their will, including one man who later told the New York Times that he attempted suicide before the flight and ICE agents physically forced him onto the plane.

The bulk of the emails released to NIAC illustrate the planning and execution of the first mass deportation to Iran on September 29, 2025.

Most of the correspondents have their identities and contact information redacted, with the exception of officials such as then-acting director Lyons, head of removal operations Marcos Charles, then-deputy director Madison Sheahan, and Joshua Coster, whose email signature identifies him as the ERO — Enforcement and Removal Operations — attaché at the agency’s U.S. Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv. In the run-up to the flight, Coster appears to have acted as the primary liaison with the Qatari government in back-and-forths over landing permits, passenger manifests, and details of the transfer in Doha to the final leg of the journey on a Qatar Airways charter. His level of involvement, Abdi said, “reveals how integral the ICE office in Tel Aviv has been to this transnational network of ICE officers removing people from America.”

In one of the most confounding episodes that took place during the first flight, Coster informed his colleagues that an Iranian national not included on the final list of deportees somehow wound up on the plane to Doha.

“An Iranian national not included on the final manifest we sent to Qatari MOI was boarded on the flight,” Coster wrote to colleagues on September 30, 2025. “This is unfortunate.”

“I have no idea how the case/person got through to the plane,” one of Coster’s colleagues responded. 

After the stopover in Doha, the accidental passenger was sent to Iran anyway.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, declined to comment on the apparent mix-up.

Formal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran have been severed since 1979, and communications between the two nations have typically taken place either through intermediaries or through Iranian representatives operating out of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C. That made the issuance of travel documents necessary for deportation nearly impossible, and Iranians were often allowed to remain in the country indefinitely.

Yet the move to begin deporting Iranians took place at a time in which relations between the U.S. and Iran were at a particularly low point.

The so-called Twelve-Day War was in full swing when, on June 19, 2025, the orders came down to ICE officers to begin putting plans into motion.

In an email sent from his BlackBerry to Charles and Sheahan that day, Lyons directed his underlings to “launch target cases as a priority.” Less than an hour later, Charles forwarded Lyons’s missive to several ICE officials and included marching orders of his own.

“Please begin working on a plan to remove all removable FO [final order] Iranians in custody,” Charles wrote. “We need a plan forward ASAP.”

In a series of emails among ICE officials, all of whose names were redacted, the pressure to develop a plan was clear. One staffer, whose email signature listed them as an assistant director of the ERO’s removal division, appeared pessimistic about the timing.

“Unfortunately I do not have great news,” wrote the staffer. “I’ve learned from the team that Iran is currently uncooperative and does not issue [travel documents] in a timely manner.”

As a result, the staffer told Charles, “removal will prove difficult.” To make matters worse, “due to the current conflict, the airspace in Iran is closed to all ( not just U.S.) until further notice,” wrote the official. “Neighboring land borders are also a challenge.”

Still, in other emails, the assistant director urged colleagues to press ahead with the orders.

“Please initiate conversations with [the Department of] State first this [sic] tomorrow,” the official wrote in an email forwarding the commands to his colleagues. “They need to help us identify a solution for this WH [White House] priority.”

Just 24 hours later, however, an ICE official wrote with good news.

“The team has come together and developed a few viable options for removals to Iran,” the official wrote. All of the plans were redacted.

Lyons, Charles, and Sheahan did not respond to requests for comment. When The Intercept contacted Coster at his official ICE email address, the reporter received an automatic out-of-office reply indicating that Coster’s area of focus had shifted to North Africa. 

For years, Iranians facing deportation from the U.S. have been protected by two realities: the lack of diplomatic relations between the two nations and the threat of retribution at home.

But the Trump administration has dispensed with both roadblocks in its quest for mass deportations, in which Trump has dismantled the asylum system for refugees from almost any country — with the notable exception of white Afrikaners. 

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“It seems that this administration will stop at nothing to make sure that these physical deportations actually happen, no matter what the cost, and they’ll just turn people over to despotic regimes,” said Hassan Ahmad, an immigration attorney who has represented a number of high-profile people targeted for deportation in recent years. “I’ve been an immigration lawyer a long time, but with this administration, every day it’s a new low.”

It has become virtually impossible for ethnic minorities and political dissidents fleeing persecution in Iran to find safety in the United States, despite Trump’s strident criticism of the Iranian government’s human-rights record.

“Iran commits grievous human rights abuses and arbitrarily detains foreigners, including United States citizens, on spurious charges without due process of law, subjecting them to abuse,” Trump wrote in a February 2025 national security policy memo announcing his administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign. The following January, during a deadly crackdown on protests against the Iranian government, Trump issued messages of support for the people of Iran opposed to the regime — even as ICE agents were set to deport a dozen more people to Tehran later that month.

Amid all its bluster against Iran, his administration was doing everything it could to send Iranians back to that government. In June 2025, according to figures tallied up in an email from Charles, there were 522 Iranian nationals in ICE detention, including 244 who were under a final order of removal, and another 278 who were in removal proceedings. Charles wrote that the agency’s internal portal showed more than 5,000 other cases of Iranians in deportation proceedings who were not in ICE custody.

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Around that time, ICE embarked on a dramatic scaling up of detentions of Iranian nationals not already in custody, arresting between 290 and 300 people between June and July of that year, according to NIAC’s data. 

“At the same time the U.S. and Israel were plotting a new phase of war with Iran, ICE’s attaché in Israel was coordinating to send asylees back to a government that threatens their lives,” Abdi said. “The people of Iran are wronged at every turn: by their authoritarian government and by the U.S. that speaks as if it is their ally, only to pursue policies that block them from the American dream, impoverish them, and drop thousands of bombs on their country.”

The first war with Iran under the second Trump administration ended on June 24, 2025, and efforts to organize the first flight to Tehran continued apace. Throughout August, ICE agents at field offices around the country made repeated mention of a charter flight scheduled for later that month. But by August 22, that charter appears to have fallen apart.

“It looks like there is some finger pointing going on,” wrote Coster, the ERO attaché then based in Tel Aviv, “because the Qataris, [Ministry of the Interior] and [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], are saying the Iranians did not approve in time.”

A few days later, his colleague was passing on an ask from Iranian officials. “Iran has requested that I amend the previous manifest an expedite the removal process,” an ERO officer wrote on August 29, with further specifics redacted. Within a month, the plan was a go.

On September 29, a plane operated by the private contractor Omni Air and brokered by CSI Aviation, neither of which responded to The Intercept’s requests for comment, took off from the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana and flew to Puerto Rico for a brief refuel before traveling on to Cairo, according email records and to data provided to The Intercept by ICE Flight Monitor at Human Rights First.

After a stop in Cairo, the plane continued on to Qatar, with 54 Iranians onboard, who were transferred to a charter flight operated by the state-owned Qatar Airways. On October 1, at about 11:00 a.m. local time, the Qatar Airways flight arrived at its final destination, at Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. 

For reasons that are not made clear in the emails, the Iranian deportees numbered fewer than half the 120 Iranian nationals that Qatar and Iran were expecting. The Qataris were not happy. 

“We would like clarification on why the number of passengers has been reduced from 120 to 54, as this directly affects our internal operations,” wrote a representative of the Qatari Ministry of the Interior in an email to ICE officials. “Last-minute changes are not welcome, especially since we are an intermediary with the Iranians.”

If U.S. officials gave an explanation to Qatar, it does not appear in the correspondence. The emails do reveal the inclusion of an Iranian not slated for the flight — as well as further specific requests from Iran, in which officials appear to ask that certain individuals be sent back to the country.

“The lran Embassy just issued passports or travel documents for the three listed below. They requested they be added to the flight leaving out on the 29th,” an official wrote on September 26, 2025.

The description of coordination between representatives of the two hostile nations, and the requests from Iran that individuals be included in the flight appears to bolster claims made in a lawsuit filed last month in federal court by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, which accused ICE of handing over sensitive information to the Iranian government. In court filings, ICE has dismissed those claims as “hearsay.”

In response to a detailed list of questions, a spokesperson for DHS again denied sharing sensitive information with the Iranian government.

“These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE,” the spokesperson wrote. “ICE is committed to ensuring that illegal aliens are informed of their right to communicate with their consular representatives. Consistent with established protocols, ICE provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and agency policy.”

The emails end on November 25, when the U.S. was planning a second flight that transited deportees to Iran through Kuwait on December 7. A third flight took place on January 25, again through Kuwait, and a fourth one was scheduled for late March.

According to filings in the lawsuit, it was derailed when, in late February, the U.S. and Israel again began bombing Iran.

The post ICE Worked With Iranian Regime to Set Up Deportation Flights as Trump Laid Plans for War appeared first on The Intercept.

The lawsuit is in response to a scheme announced last month by the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social platform to charge as much as $100,000 per month for early access to the president’s posts. 

By offering preferred access to presidential missives, the monetization plan, dubbed “Truth API,” would violate the First Amendment rights of journalists and other members of the public to equal access to official information, the lawsuit argues, while allowing Trump to trade his public statements for cold hard cash.

“Trump is trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell,” said Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept. “We won’t let it stand.”

The complaint filed in the Southern District of New York also asserts that the monetization scheme, which it described as an “out-and-out plan of extortion,” would violate the Fifth Amendment by charging “unreasonable sums” for equal access to government information and by undermining the right to equal protection under the law.

“This lawsuit seeks to vindicate the principle that the president of the United States cannot profit from the official government statements of the president,” said Nikhel Sus, Chief Counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which provided legal support for the lawsuit. “Every American is entitled to equal access to the president’s public statements. Individuals who pay $100,000 to the president’s personal company do not have any greater entitlement to those public statements.”

Truth API is part of a broader effort to bring Trump Media & Technology Group into the black. Despite a steep up-front cost ranging from $60,000 to $100,000 per month, the company’s interim CEO Kevin McGurn has been explicit about the potential dividends awaiting customers willing to pay — and the potential gain for Trump and other shareholders.

“Truth API delivers a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths while advancing our strategy to monetize proprietary assets through a high-margin, recurring revenue stream,” McGurn said in a July 16 press release. “As adoption grows, we expect Truth API to become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders.”

No shareholder stands to benefit more than Trump, who holds the largest single stake in the company through a trust established when he retook the White House in January 2025. At the time, his 52.1 percent stake in the company was valued at $4 billion. The company’s stock has plunged in value since entering the market, causing the value of Trump’s stake to fall to around $1 billion, according to the complaint. 

In addition to the president, the lawsuit names as defendants Trump’s executive assistant Natalie Harp, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Scavino, the Executive Office of the President, and the White House Office. Representatives for the defendants and for Trump Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Truth Social has its roots in the interregnum between the two Trump administrations, when Trump, an early adopter of X who used the platform extensively in his first term as president, was banned from his beloved app and other social media platforms in 2021 in the wake of the attempted insurrection on January 6. 

Weeks after the ban, he formed Trump Media & Technology Group and announced plans for a proprietary social media platform to be known as Truth Social. The platform, essentially a right-wing clone of X, launched in 2022, and Trump Media went public in 2024 via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, a process of entering the stock market that is typically subject to less scrutiny than a traditional initial public offering.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter and renaming it X, Elon Musk allowed Trump back onto the platform, and other social-media companies later followed suit. But Trump has continued to use Truth Social as his first and primary means of communication with the public. 

Still, despite enjoying the benefits of Trump’s universal name recognition and the potential for access-granting fringe benefits of investing in the company, Trump Media & Technology Group has been something of a financial loser. Just days after announcing Truth API, McGurn revealed in an earnings call on Monday that second-quarter losses had totaled $238 million.

Despite such dismal numbers, the potential return on investment for parties sinking money into the company goes beyond earnings by acting as a potential side-door for influence peddling and buying access, according to critics. Although his relationship with the administration has recently soured, few cases illustrate this more clearly than that of Justin Sun, a billionaire crypto kingpin who swiftly resolved an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission after investing $30 million in the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Other major investors with a clear interest in gaining Trump’s favor have included an Emirati powerbroker and a failed businessman under investigation for money laundering.

“If you look back through the American presidency, there’s really no comparison for this kind of self-enrichment,” said Molly White, a researcher who has written critically of Trump’s crypto ventures and their various backers. “People have made quite a stink in the past about presidents selling books or family members of presidents peddling off of their connections, and that’s certainly true. But I mean, the scale here is just unprecedented.”

Critics of the president have raised similar concerns about Truth API. In a letter to the SEC last month, Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pointed to numerous instances in which Trump had used Truth Social to hype individual stocks, including CitiGroup, Palantir, and Intel.

“The Trump Administration is the most corrupt in the nation’s history, and questions about inappropriate insider access to information about its policies and actions have raised questions on multiple occasions,” the senators wrote. “But even amid these clouds of corruption, Trump Media’s plan to disseminate market-moving information through the President’s own company, while charging insiders for access ahead of the public for the benefit of his company — and to the detriment of the investing public — represents a shocking abuse of the office of the President and the trust of the American public for his personal gain.”

The post The Intercept Sues Trump for Selling Premium Access to Truth Social Announcements appeared first on The Intercept.

Despite Cuba being severely hobbled by in the throes of a humanitarian crisis engineered by U.S. sanctions and fuel blockades, the new report paints the country as a major threat.

The report appears to be the brainchild of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a first-generation Cuban American who has made the overthrow of the Cuban government a top priority under the second Trump administration.

Published Monday without a listed author, the report says Cuba is the “capital of 21st century communism,” ideologically immovable, and a permanent enemy committed to the destruction not just of the U.S. but also of “Western civilization” through the spread of “Third Worldism.”

If that sounds like a throwback to the long-settled Cold War, that’s because it is — something critics of the report in Congress seized upon.

Whatever truths the report contains, they’re largely overshadowed by a feverish paranoia about the alleged reach of Cuban intelligence into American civil society, according to Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., days after returning from a fact-finding trip to Cuba.

“It may be the stupidest, most fantastical, most biased thing I’ve ever read from a governmental agency,” Pocan said in a statement Tuesday. “This report focuses on the 1960s & 70s with no clear connection to today. Yet somehow, the State Department uses this report to say that this impoverished nation is responsible for everything from Black Lives Matter to Antifa, the anti-ICE protests and more.”

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., who went on the fact-finding mission with Pocan, said the report was aimed at manufacturing consent for an invasion of the island — and to crack down on dissent at home.

“This report was intentionally designed to instill fear of the Cuban people and to justify a military attack on Cuba,” Ramirez told The Intercept. “It’s hypocrisy at its finest, because while criticizing the regime in Cuba, it instead attacks Americans’ constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.”

In sketching a broad, anti-American conspiracy in nearly dozens of left-wing social movements, organizations, and educational institutions, the report also functions as a broadside on civil society in the U.S — and hardly for the first time.

“Cuba is not a new cudgel,” said Miriam Pensack, a historian at Princeton University specializing in Latin America and the Caribbean. “The Cuban revolution was a galvanizing event for the way that the United States thought about its national security, really until the end of the Cold War. And it still has an ideological utility, even as the country is limping along.”

Center of Global Conspiracy

Running 100 pages, the report lays out what its authors describe as a decadeslong effort by Cuba to foment revolutionary movements throughout the world and to build a latter-day “axis of evil” by allying with other governments opposed to U.S. interests, including the current-day governments of Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea.

“Even as it expands and revitalizes its network within the next generation of American left-wing activists, it has also forged new partnerships — or deepened and repurposed old ones — with other foreign governments and movements around the world,” the report warns. “The regime continues to act as a force multiplier for a much broader anti-American coalition, positioning itself as a staging ground for a wide range of foreign adversaries to conduct operations against the United States.”

Cuba, the authors allege, is “less a nation-state than an all-encompassing intelligence and subversion operation, focused around its existential revolution against the United States.”

The report goes on to list a slew of left-wing groups and individuals as accomplices, both witting and unwitting, of this intelligence operation, including the Democratic Socialists of America, Code Pink, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and left-wing streamer Hasan Piker.

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In a section stretching nearly five full pages on the National Lawyers Guild, a long-standing right-wing bugaboo, the report’s authors describe the venerable progressive law association as “one of the most persistently relevant — and insidious — organizations in Cuba’s U.S. network.”

Posting to X for the first time since March, the organization quipped, “We have been called much worse, by much better.”

Academic Freedom at Home

The report took aim at universities in the U.S. for maintaining exchange programs and partnerships with Cuban universities, implying that such programs functioned as a feeding ground for Cuban agents looking to recruit spies and fellow travelers.

The report singled out Harvard University, pointing to trips by faculty to Cuba as recently as 2017.

If anything, however, the Cuban government has been wary of exchange programs with American schools, according to Alejandro de la Fuente, a professor of Latin American history and economics at Harvard who chairs the university’s Cuba Studies Program and took part in a trip to Cuba in 2017 that is mentioned in the report.

“They did their best to delimit those exchanges as much as possible because they understood that knowledge production requires freedom and a plurality of viewpoints — precisely what they do not allow,” de la Fuente told The Intercept in an email Wednesday. “Indeed, they would probably argue that it was U.S. universities that were trying to penetrate Cuban institutions and to foment subversion there!”

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Born in Cuba, De la Fuente is hardly an apologist for the Cuban government, at whose feet he laid the blame for the country’s collapse. He acknowledged that Cuban intelligence may have targeted American students and academics in the past, but scoffed at the underlying thesis of the report that Cuba continues to pose a grave threat to the U.S.

“The ineptitude and corruption of the regime have destroyed the country’s economy and society, to the point that the very existence of the nation is in danger,” de la Fuente said. “Can a country like this pose a threat to the national security of the United States today? The answer, any reasonable observer would agree, is emphatically no.”

“War on the Cuban People”

Cuba has made no secret of its support for revolutionary movements throughout the 20th century. And it was a vital partner to left-wing governments in Latin America in the 21st century.

With Cuba today crippled by sanctions and fuel shortages, however, Ramirez, the member of Congress, said the report’s notion of the country as a central node in some threatening conspiracy was a “fiction.”

Accusations about Cuba’s extensive reach into protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, antifascist organizing, and Black Lives Matter don’t square with the reality of the severe crisis that has gripped Cuba. In early January, the Trump administration tightened its embargo of the country into a virtual blockade on all fuel arriving in Cuba.

Already weakened by internal tensions and by decades of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., the island nation has in recent months been plunged into repeated, extended blackouts; its tourism-dependent economy has effectively collapsed; and its citizens face a daily question of where to find their next meal.

Her voice on the verge of tears as she described the humanitarian crisis she witnessed on the island, Ramirez forcefully rejected the notion that the U.S. has anything to fear from Cuba.

“Under no circumstances, at any moment during my trip, did I see anything to make me believe that Cuba poses an existential threat to the United States,” Ramirez said. “On the contrary, what I witnessed was a war on the Cuban people by the United States, and specifically by Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.”

The post Rubio’s Paranoid Cuba Report Designed to “Justify a Military Attack on Cuba,” Says Democratic Rep. appeared first on The Intercept.

On Wednesday, when he saw someone posting on Reddit that they had received sudden approval for a loved one’s initial application for permanent residence, he wondered if he and his wife had gotten lucky.

Miranda quickly went to check the application status on the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees visas and naturalization.

To his delight, the portal showed that their application had also been approved to move on to the next step in the process. Yet he had a nagging suspicion: Was this coming too soon? Wait times for approval of just the first step in the process can stretch more than two years, so could his wife’s application really be getting moved along so quickly?

When he called the agency’s helpline Thursday morning to confirm the approval, his suspicions proved correct. Miranda said the employee answering his call told him that his wife’s application status was unchanged.

And they weren’t the only people affected: According to Miranda, the employee acknowledged that USCIS was aware of a glitch affecting numerous applicants.

“It was heartbreaking,” Miranda told The Intercept of learning that their application status had not in fact changed. “I get that there’s technical stuff behind the scenes, but at the same time, what kind of glitch causes these mass approvals?”

The apparent glitch resulted in dozens or more applicants for green cards receiving false notices of approval for a key step in the process, according to multiple people who received the false approvals and accounts of similar approvals posted online. (USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

In addition to Miranda, The Intercept spoke with two other green card applicants who received false notices of approval for the I-130 form, the first major hurdle in the process for obtaining a permanent residency visa for relatives of a U.S. citizen.

Dozens more people on Reddit and a user on an immigration-related Discord server reported experiencing the same false approval notices when they checked their application status on Wednesday and Thursday.

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People began to report on immigration forums on Wednesday that they’d received approval the I-130 form, but elation turned to devastation as they came to understand the notices as an error.

On Thursday, the USCIS site appeared to be down for a time. When it came back up, accounts for applications of at least two of the people who spoke to The Intercept still showed their loved ones’ green cards as being “approved.”

Americans’ Loved Ones

The I-130 form is just the first step in applying for a green card for the spouse or relative of a U.S. citizen.

Wait times for the form’s approval range, on average, between 10 and 20 months. Often, however, they stretch out to two years or more. During that time, the applicant is unable to live or work in the U.S.

Approval, then, is the first sign that couples or families are one step closer to living their lives together in the U.S.

“This feeling of not having your partner here is already painful enough,” Miranda said. “It’s even more painful when you have that approval waved in your face, only to have your dreams crushed.”

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Kate, an American citizen whose spouse and stepchild have applications pending, told The Intercept she saw an erroneous approval notice for her case on the USCIS website on Thursday after reading online posts about a flurry of approvals overnight.

Kate, who spoke with The Intercept on the condition that her surname and certain identifying details be withheld for fear of affecting her spouse’s immigration process, said she and her partner and stepchild had applied for the I-130 nearly a year ago and are living apart from one another as they await approval. 

She happened to be visiting her spouse’s country of origin, and they were thrilled to be able to celebrate the milestone of being one step closer to a green card together. When she got back from their celebratory lunch, however, she checked the site again and found that none of the usual signifiers of an approval were showing up, including an approval notice that would usually appear in the site’s documents tab.

She said she had not yet told her spouse that the approval appeared to be the result of a glitch.

“It’s just devastating,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. He’s going to be devastated.”

“Straight Up Unfair”

On a Reddit forum dedicated to the pain and suffering of the I-130 process — called “r/I130Suffering” — dozens of people reported similar experiences with the glitch, starting with sudden elation and ending more demoralized than ever.

And on Track My Visa, a Discord where applicants swap advice and gripes about the immigration process, numerous users reported the same. On Thursday, the moderators of the forum suspended a channel dedicated to celebrating approval notices lest people celebrate prematurely.

The glitch is just the latest frustration for Miranda, who said the process to bring his wife to the U.S. has been so fraught that it’s forced a reassessment of long-held political beliefs.

The son of Mexican immigrants who immigrated legally and ultimately received citizenship, Miranda said he had long considered himself a Republican and felt that tough immigration policy was necessary to ensure a fair shot to people immigrating legally.

Now, he said, seeing how difficult it is to immigrate legally, even as the spouse of a citizen, he’s wondering if he had it wrong.

“I always thought ‘they’re just going after illegals,’” he said. “But this is affecting legal immigration to the point where it’s almost stopped. You can have a million dollars and get a green card, but if you’re trying to process a loved one and you can’t — that’s just straight up unfair.”

The post U.S. Website Gave False Approval to Green Card Applicants — Then Blamed Glitch and Took It Away appeared first on The Intercept.

At least five of the candidates to replace Platner have come out in favor of abolishing or “dismantling” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal agents gunned down Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.

The scramble to denounce ICE by would-be Democratic Senate nominees came days ahead of a scheduled debate on Thursday evening, where the hopefuls will face off to make the case for why they should take on incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

Panagioti Tsolkas, a spokesperson for the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, said he was “heartened” to see the outpouring of anger from candidates in the wake of the shooting, but cautioned that a sustained effort would be needed from Maine’s politicians.

“We want to see the state of Maine step up right now and take action on a full investigation and accountability in this killing,” Tsolkas said. “It’s gotta be more than lip service, and it has to be more than just showing up at the vigils when you have a chance to speak on stage.”

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Durán Guerrero died early Monday morning after an ICE agent shot the 25-year-old during a traffic stop targeting another man, according to a spokesperson for the agency.

Durán Guerrero’s father told a news station in his native Colombia that his son was in the country legally, according to a report in the New York Times, and worked two jobs as a food delivery driver and cleaner at a veterinary clinic. Durán Guerrero leaves behind a wife and 3-year-old daughter.

The killing sparked furious protests across the state and turned immigration enforcement into a centerpiece issue of Maine political chatter and the crowded mini-race, which kicked off last week and is set to culminate in a nominating convention in Bangor, Maine, on July 25. 

Platner — who dropped out of the race last week after allegations emerged that he had sexually assaulted a former girlfriend, which he denies — had also called for ICE to be abolished. In his July 10 letter removing himself from the race, he signed off by saying, “F*ck ICE.”

The unusual circumstances of Platner’s self-ejection from the race — despite the popularity of the movement that won him the primary in June — has set a curious political mood in Maine. Candidates seeking to replace him are hewing to his message while differentiating themselves from his scandal-plagued personal brand. 

With just days left to make their pitch to Mainers, many of the candidates to replace Platner veered toward the nearest solidarity rally or anti-ICE protest as news of the killing filtered out of Biddeford.

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The candidates calling for ICE to be abolished include Troy Jackson, a progressive from northern Maine who’s swept up a raft of endorsements from local politicians and labor groups despite an underwhelming showing in the recent gubernatorial primary; fellow gubernatorial also-ran Dr. Nirav Shah; social worker Paige Loud and former political operative and fundraiser Jordan Wood, both of whom ran in the Democratic primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District; and Dan Kleban, the founder of a beer company in Maine who threw his hat into the ring for the Senate race last week.

While most Democrats in Maine have been highly critical of ICE and President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda — especially in the wake of a surge of federal agents to the state in January — only Jackson and Loud appear to have called for the agency to be abolished prior to Monday’s shooting. With a majority of the candidates now declaring a full-throated commitment to scrapping ICE altogether, this week marked a sharp leftward shift in immigration discourse in Maine in the wake of Durán Guerrero’s killing.

Other candidates, while sharply criticizing ICE for the killing of Durán Guerrero, stopped short of calling for the agency to be abolished. Shenna Bellows, the current Maine secretary of state, spoke in Biddeford about having denied Border Patrol the use of undercover license plates in the state during the surge earlier this year. On X, she employed the slogan “ICE off our streets.”

The post Would-Be Platner Replacements in Maine Rally Around “Abolish ICE” (or Something Close) appeared first on The Intercept.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court by Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, seeks to reverse sanctions brought under Executive Order 14203.

The order, which President Donald Trump made in February 2025, grants the administration power to issue penalties against any person or group seeking to bring a case against the U.S. or its allies — namely Israel — before the International Criminal Court.

The plaintiffs, both of whom coordinate with international NGOs in an effort to hold the U.S. and Israel accountable for war crimes, are seeking a declaration that the ICC sanctions are in violation of their First Amendment rights because they create obstacles to free association. The lawsuit also asks for an injunction barring the Trump administration from using sanctions to stymie free speech.

Trump’s assault on the ICC — most recently including a vow to “dismantle” the court — has focused mostly on efforts to hold Israel accountable for war crimes. In November 2024, the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Israeli official, and an official with the armed Palestinian group Hamas for activities during the time period of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The White House executive order came down shortly after the arrest warrants were issued.

The rights groups’ lawsuit specifically highlights sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the U.N. official tasked with probing human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, and three Palestinian nongovernmental organizations. According to the plaintiffs, the sanctions impinge on their First Amendment rights by preventing them from engaging in protected speech activities with Albanese and the NGOs.

“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders but to police the political expression of millions of Americans,” said Omar Shakir, the executive director of DAWN, which was founded by journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his assassination by the Saudi government. “The government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide.”

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The defendants named in the suit are Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Brad Smith, the director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. (None of the American government officials immediately responded to requests for comment.)

Trump and his allies’ war on the international human rights community goes back years: In 2020, Trump issued sanctions against an ICC prosecutor after she called for an investigation into U.S. human rights abuses in Afghanistan.

Shortly after retaking the White House, Trump lifted Biden-era sanctions on Israeli settlers involved in violence against Palestinians and destruction of their property. Trump then issued Executive Order 14203, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” which placed visa restrictions and financial penalties on individuals and groups seeking to help the ICC in any potential case against the U.S., Israel, or other allies.

Months later, the administration issued sanctions against Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur. Albanese was briefly removed from the sanctions list in May after a federal judge ruled that the sanctions violated her rights, but the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers U.S. sanctions, added her to the list again days later, according to Al Jazeera.

The Albanese sanctions were followed in September 2025 with an edict sanctioning three NGOs: Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

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In addition to penalizing Albanese and the NGOs, the sanctions bar any U.S. people or groups from engaging with them and make it a federal offense to receive or provide any “service” related to designated groups and people — an action the plaintiffs argue is in violation of their First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit comes at a moment of heightened attention to the sanctions against the ICC. Days before the lawsuit was filed, Rubio launched a broadside against the ICC in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece laying out a case for “dismantling” the court. Rubio specifically cited calls by DAWN for an investigation into potential war crimes in the U.S. bombing campaign against Iran.

“The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.,” Rubio wrote. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”

The timing of Rubio’s renewed attack on the ICC alongside the lawsuit appears to be a coincidence, but only serves to further underscore the stakes, according to Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, a spokesperson for DAWN.

“The fact that he mentioned DAWN in his Wall Street Journal op-ed shows that the risk [of prosecution] to Americans is real,” Schaeffer Omer-Man told The Intercept. “But our primary goal is to get legal clarity that we can continue to have a working relationship with Francesca Albanese, and, equally if not more importantly, that we can resume working shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian civil society and human rights groups.”

The post Trump’s Sanctions Against the ICC Are Unconstitutional, Rights Groups Say appeared first on The Intercept.

On Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested an Ecuadorian man at a court at 26 Federal Plaza and a man from the Dominican Republic at another court at 290 Broadway, both in Lower Manhattan. The arrests continued on Monday, when ICE agents detained a third man, originally from Guatemala, at 290 Broadway.

In legal filings challenging the detentions of the men taken Thursday, advocates with the nonprofit Make the Road New York accused ICE of not only violating their clients’ right to due process, but also of brazenly flouting a federal court order.

The judge’s order barred ICE from making arrests at Manhattan immigration courts in all but a narrow handful of exceptions, while a similar ruling issued on June 23 from a federal court in California applies nationwide.

By detaining the men at court on Thursday, ICE appears to be directly contravening the New York order without yet providing a justification, according to Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y.

“ICE continues to flagrantly violate the law by arresting immigrants who are attending their mandatory court hearings, despite a court order mandating an end to courthouse arrests,” Goldman said in a statement to The Intercept, adding that his office was working to get the men released.

ICE appears to be acting outside the law, according to Murad Awawdeh, the head of the advocacy group New York Immigration Coalition.

“We’re witnessing ICE, yet again, operate in a lawless and rogue fashion and not following court orders,” Awawdeh said. “We’re supposedly a nation under the rule of law, and our judicial branch has said that this agency must stop engaging in this lawless behavior, and they continue to do so.”

In its habeas corpus filings, lawyers from Make the Road demanded that the two men arrested Thursday be released and allowed to continue navigating the immigration process.

In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for ICE denied that the agency had violated any court order. The spokesperson did not explain how the arrests fit into the exceptions to the ban on courthouse arrests put in place by the federal judge.

No Exceptions

From May 18 until last week, just two arrests had taken place at Manhattan immigration courts; in both cases, the detainees were swiftly released after lawyers and immigrant rights groups mobilized to invoke the federal judge’s order.

That has not been the case for the men arrested on Thursday and Monday. All three men have since been transferred to detention centers, according to ICE records.

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The Dominican man arrested Thursday is currently being held at ICE’s Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, while the Ecuadorian man arrested the same day is being held at the D. Ray James ICE Processing Center in Folkston, Georgia. The Guatemalan man arrested on Monday is being held at the Orange County Detention Facility in upstate New York. (The Intercept is withholding the detained men’s names because of the sensitive nature of their cases.)

The arrests appeared to end a brief period of calm at Manhattan immigration courts in the wake of the May 18 ruling by Judge Kevin Castel requiring ICE to revert to a policy put in place in 2021. The Biden-era policy allowed for courthouse arrests with prior authorization in only a handful of instances, including when a person might pose a threat to national security or to public safety — narrowly defined as cases in which agents are in direct pursuit of a subject or if it would not be possible to make the arrest in another location.

In their statement, the ICE spokesperson pointed to a conviction for trespassing on the part of the Dominican man and a 2025 conviction for disorderly conduct on the part of the Ecuadorian man.

One immigration lawyer said the courthouse arrests were part of a growing pattern of increased ICE detentions.

“For whatever reason, that order is essentially being disregarded, and we’ve seen a pretty significant uptick in detentions,” said Benjamin Remy, senior coordinating attorney at the immigration protection unit of the New York Legal Assistance Group.

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In the year and a half since President Trump returned to office and unleashed the agency as part of his mass deportation agenda, ICE has repeatedly been found in violation of orders around the detention of immigrants. The alleged violations have been ramping up in recent months, according to advocates and court records.

“We’ve seen ICE have a fairly flexible and adaptive relationship when it comes to the truth and the facts,” Remy said, “and to complying with court orders and frankly to rule of law as a fundamental concept.”

An Impossible Bind

Beginning in May 2025 and continuing for almost exactly a year, ICE arrests at 26 Federal Plaza, 290 Broadway, and another immigration court at 201 Varick Street were commonplace, with hundreds of people swept up by masked ICE agents when they showed up for scheduled hearings. According to an analysis published last August by The City Reporter, a local news site, more than half of courthouse arrests nationwide were taking place in New York.

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Like the overwhelming majority of people arrested in immigration courts over the past year, the men arrested over the past week were following demands made of them by the immigration system.

Both men arrested last week had fled home due to persecution, entered the U.S., and been detained before obtaining release as their cases proceeded, according to petitions filed on their behalf by Make the Road New York. When summoned to court, both showed up as instructed.

ICE has repeatedly defended the arrests as legitimate. Immigration advocates, however, have warned that it puts immigrants in an impossible bind, forcing them to decide between risking arrest by following the law and showing up to court, or losing any chance of lawfully remaining in the country by skipping a hearing.

“It is not uncommon for me to encounter folks walking into court in the morning already just sobbing,” Remy told The Intercept. “These arrests are discouraging the legal process. It’s discouraging people’s fundamental constitutional right to due process and to be able to have their day in court.”

The post ICE Flouting Federal Judge’s Order to Stop Arresting Immigrants at New York Courts appeared first on The Intercept.

The New Jersey Regional Operations and Intelligence Center, one of the so-called fusion centers that serve as intelligence clearinghouses for cops, warned in a bulletin earlier this year that disaffected Americans were increasingly blaming society’s ills on rich people and corporate bigwigs.

The report specifically cited the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024 — allegedly by Luigi Mangione — as an expression of anti-fat-cat rhetoric. To the analysts at the New Jersey fusion center, Thompson’s killing hinted at a larger trend.

“Public discourse increasingly attributes the challenges faced by the middle and lower classes to the actions and influence of wealthy corporate executives,” the fusion center memo says.

By warning corporate security outfits of the danger posed by average Americans who blame their problems on the actions of corporate executives, the report effectively dedicates public resources to securing a private system that has made the few extremely wealthy at the expense of the many.

Michael German, a former FBI agent specializing in domestic terrorism and longtime critic of fusion centers, said that by warning CEOs of threats, the bulletin was effectively taking the side of the rich and powerful over ordinary people who are critical of inequality — a typical dynamic at fusion centers.

“The way it’s written, the report seems to be putting forth the view that that is an extremist viewpoint, rather than something that the state has some responsibility in correcting,” German said. “All the resources of the national network of fusion centers, which includes federal resources along with state and local resources, are devoted toward providing security information to private entities.”

Brian Thompson Murder

The “Quarterly Executive Threat Watch” bulletin warned corporate bodyguards to switch up the daily routines of execs, limit information on public engagements, and remove bosses’ personal information from the web. The report says bosses should “remain vigilant of lone offenders with personal grievances.”

“Following the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the current political climate, there is a heightened threat environment surrounding corporate executives,” the report says. “Online glorification of the murder of Brian Thompson and calls for violence are still apparent and further create a risk for a lone offender attack.”

A spokesperson for New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, the agency that oversees the fusion center, did not respond to a request for comment.

Days after Thompson’s killing in late 2024, Mangione was arrested and charged with the murder, allegedly motivated by injustices in the healthcare system. The then-26-year-old quickly became a cause célèbre for a wide array of supporters and a bête noire of right-wing figures, including those at the Trump administration, who branded him as a violent extremist.

Mangione’s legal team declined to comment on the fusion center report, but has in the past decried attempts to tie him to unrelated acts of violence.

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The Persistent Push to Depict Luigi Mangione and His Supporters as Terrorists

The report went on to cite a list of seemingly disparate incidents to highlight a possible surge in threats to the wealthy, including a satirical Christmas wishlist that called for sabotaging CEOs; a handful of 4chan posts calling for violence against executives at Netflix and elsewhere; a “far-left forum” calling for a campaign against people tied to a mining project in Michigan; and an act of vandalism by pro-Palestine activists at the home of a New York Times executive.

Another incident that made the list was the federal case against the so-called Turtle Island Liberation Front, a group of left-wing activists arrested last year whose alleged bomb plot appears to have been largely driven by a member of their group who was a longtime paid FBI informant.

“The problem with a lot of these fusion center reports is that they take a handful of incidents, not necessarily related to one another, and use them to justify and amplify these threats without any kind of analysis,” said German. “Rather than actually looking at data, their performance is measured by the number of reports they produce.”

Fusion Centers

Fusion centers, which bring together state and federal law enforcement agencies to share intelligence on potential terror threats, rose to prominence in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The centers operate under state authority, often with grants from federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security.

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While data on any terror plots actually foiled by fusion center operations is scant, they have been roundly criticized for compiling surveillance and data on protest movements, communities of color, student organizers, and, recently, critics of AI data centers.

New Jersey’s only fusion center, officially known as the New Jersey Regional Operations and Intelligence Center, has been criticized for operating outside the typical oversight to which most state agencies are subject.

A 2023 report by Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race, and Rights warns of the potential for abuse in the New Jersey fusion center. The report cited the fusion center’s practice of drafting dossiers on “known troublemakers” and its reliance on so-called “intelligence-led policing,” a practice of surveilling and data collection that the American Civil Liberties Union has cited as a potential violation of the right to due process.

The Quarterly Executive Threat Watch, the bulletin that included the warning for CEOs, appears to be internally categorized as terrorism-related intelligence and was later disseminated by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer to recipients across the country. (CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Then there is the issue of the center’s shadowy public-private partnership. The New Jersey fusion center does not make public which private agencies or organizations it partners with, or to whom it disseminates reports.

The January report drew heavily on the work of SITE Intelligence, a for-profit firm that has come in for criticism because of its labeling Islamic charities as terror fronts and mistakenly identifying video game footage as terror propaganda.

Like its counterparts across the country, the New Jersey fusion center feeds its reports into a national network of public and private agencies dedicated to the gathering and dissemination of information about potential threats — a practice that frequently crosses the line into surveillance of political speech, according to German and other critics of fusion centers.

“There is a lack of public accountability here,” German said. “Because they’re joint enterprises, it’s very ambiguous who is actually in charge and who is responsible for ensuring that the participants within these centers are acting in accordance with the law.”

The post Cops Warn CEO Bodyguards That Luigi Mangione Fever Could Spark Class War appeared first on The Intercept.

After primary election night in New York marked a high-water point for the left, a GOP prankster left a bouquet of flowers at the door of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who was widely seen as one of the night’s biggest losers.

“Three losses in one night is tough,” said Mike Marinella, the spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement. “We wanted so-called ‘Leader’ Jeffries to know our thoughts are with him, his candidates, and whatever remains of his influence in the Democrat Party.”

He was referring to three House candidates with the backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — two of them card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America — who notched victories against more established opponents.

In New York’s 7th Congressional District, state Assembly Member Claire Valdez handily beat Antonio Reynoso, a progressive backed by outgoing Rep. Nydia Velázquez; in NY-10, former City Comptroller Brad Lander swept away Rep. Dan Goldman; and in the closest and perhaps most surprising result of the night, former Columbia University pro-Palestine student organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier narrowly edged out Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a powerful figure in Manhattan Democratic circles and chair of the Democratic Party’s Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

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In the wake of the stunning sweep, Republicans spent Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning gloating at the electoral headache they foresee the insurgent strain of left-wing populism causing for the Democratic Party. Or rubbing salt in the wounds of their enemies: President Donald Trump seemed giddy on Wednesday over the loss by Goldman, a centrist pro-Israel Democrat and an old foe from Trump’s first term who worked as lead counsel in his first impeachment inquiry.

“Weak and pathetic Congressman Dan Goldman just lost, BIG!” Trump wrote on social media. “I guess people didn’t like him illegally targeting President TRUMP. In any event, this jerk is finally GONE!”

Not everyone on the right was laughing, however. Christopher Rufo, the messaging wiz who helped build a comprehensive conservative rebuttal to 2020-era “wokeness,” took to X to mutter darkly about therising threat of socialism, a phenomenon he described as the left moving “from ‘woke’ to Third-Worldism.”

“Third-Worldism is a more serious threat to life, liberty, and property,” Rufo wrote.

Trump, too, took a moment to be serious and call the candidates “communists,” making an impassioned pledge: “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!” he wrote Wednesday.

The victories of all three left-wing congressional candidates appeared to confirm a staying power for Mamdani’s popularity and power six months into his term in office, with numerous commentators declaring him a kingmaker. But Republicans predicted his profile is just as high at a national level — and not in a way that some Democrats would like.

“Republicans need a national boogeyman,” said one GOP operative in the House. “I think it’s going to be very difficult for your mainstream Democrat in a toss-up district to separate themselves from Mamdani and those kinds of socialist insurgents who are running in these primaries. And our view is that they are just unelectable in a swing district where you’re trying to win voters in the middle.”

Corbin Trent, a former aide to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said he thought that GOP strategy was destined to backfire. 

“These ideas that [democratic socialists are] lifting up again are very divisive, but I think we’re misinterpreting who they’re divisive with,” Trent told The Intercept Wednesday. “They’re divisive with people that are going to D.C. dinners, they’re divisive to people at fundraisers, they’re divisive to people in Beltway, and they’re certainly divisive among the big donor class. But I think what [Republicans are] going to be surprised by is how they’re not divisive among the electorate, among the 80 percent of Americans that have been struggling to understand how it is they live in the richest nation in history — and yet they can barely scrape by.” 

In the attacks, Trent saw a potential for the class-based politics of affordability championed by the Democratic Socialists of America slate in New York, along with other insurgent primary winners like Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner, who was so successful in winning over supporters that his establishment-backed opponent stopped campaigning weeks before the primary.

That sense of hope did not appear to be shared by centrist Democrats, who in the wake of the political upset in New York appeared every bit as gloomy as the GOP was gloating. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., took to Fox News Tuesday night to denounce the pro-Palestine bent of the DSA winners in New York, while Jeffries told Spectrum News NY1 that he was more focused on swing states than on his own backyard.

“We’re not in the business of winning Democratic primaries and state seats that are going to be blue regardless of who wins a primary,” he said. “In order for us to be able to take back control of the House of Representatives, we got to flip seats in tough areas.”

On Wednesday, when The Intercept sought comment from Jeffries, a reporter found him busy, standing shoulder to shoulder in the U.S. Capitol with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., unveiling a giant congressional time capsule for the country’s 250th birthday.

The post The Left Is Unstoppable, According to Republicans appeared first on The Intercept.

On May 29, along with scores of others, Rozendaal responded to calls on social media to gather outside of Delaney Hall, the immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey.

The privately run U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility had, in recent weeks, become the site of daily protests, spurred by a detainee hunger strike against alleged ghastly conditions inside.

When Rozendaal went to Delaney Hall, he took his cello with him. 

“I consider music to be a de-escalatory thing to do,” he told The Intercept. “I sat down on the concrete barricade facing north and started to play.”

That night, however, the scene outside Delaney Hall quickly took a violent turn. New Jersey State Police and ICE agents issued a dispersal order and began to clear protesters from the area by force — with officers deploying chemical weapons and charging protesters on horseback. 

“As I played, I saw this wall of plastic riot shields and cops in tactical gear advancing,” Rozendaal recalled. “There were tear gas canisters flying overhead. I could see horses behind the riot shields, flash-bangs. So it was quite dramatic.”

Moments later, Rozendaal was arrested by the New Jersey State Police and, according to an arrest report viewed by The Intercept, charged with one count of obstructing law enforcement. The charge was minor — but a week later, things took a strange turn when Rozendaal received a call from the FBI. 

“The agent said, ‘We’re calling because you were arrested at Delaney Hall,’” Rozendaal told The Intercept. (The FBI declined to comment.)

In the following minutes, Rozendaal said the agents asked if he would be willing to provide the FBI with information on protesters that they described as “anybody planning to go to Delaney Hall with not the right intentions.”

“So, I mean, they were asking me to inform,” Rozendaal said.

Mainstay FBI Tactic

Rozendaal is not the only Delaney Hall protester to receive a call from the FBI.

In the weeks since arrests began stacking up at the protests — approximately 90 people have been arrested so far — at least half of those taken into custody have received calls from federal agents looking for information, according to Benjamin Van Meter, a deputy public defender with the Essex County Public Defender’s Office who represents a number of protesters facing charges.

Van Meter lodged a complaint with authorities over the matter, claiming the FBI contact with his clients violated their constitutional rights.

The phone number used to contact Rozendaal, according to call history logs reviewed by The Intercept, is registered to the FBI’s New York field office and is posted online as an anonymous tipline.

Rozendaal said he rejected the offer immediately and, when the agent attempted to question him further, invoked his right to remain silent, ending the conversation.

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The FBI has a long track record of trying to turn protesters, political dissidents, and ethnic and religious minorities into informants. The strategy, which is still commonly used today, can serve agents by both collecting information while stoking distrust among members of political movements and religious communities, according to Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s New Jersey chapter.

“With every major protest movement in United States history, there have been attempts at infiltration and attempts to disrupt them and to sow discord,” Sinha said. “The FBI has repeatedly been on the wrong side of history every time they’ve tried these tactics of infiltration.”

Sinha said it was important for anyone approached by federal agents to remember their right to remain silent and to ask for an attorney to be present for any questioning.

“Unless the FBI produces a warrant, you have the right to refuse entry, ” Sinha said. “You certainly have the right to stay silent and to demand a lawyer. You are not under any obligation to speak to them about anything — especially if they are charging you with a crime.”

“The Rights of Our Clients”

Samuel Becker, another protester facing local charges after an arrest outside Delaney Hall, told The Intercept he too got a visit from federal agents in the days following his arrest.

“The FBI would rather intimidate and punish the people protesting outside of Delaney Hall than investigate the physical, sexual, and psychological violence that ICE agents and their auxiliaries are inflicting on detainees across this country every day,” Becker said.

Van Meter, the public defender, wrote a letter to Robert Frazer, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, and two high-ranking FBI officials in New York and New Jersey, demanding that the FBI stop their attempts to question his clients without an attorney present. (The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.)

“These attempts at contacting our clients at their homes and by phone violate their right to counsel and we ask that you immediately cease and desist from all attempts to question or interrogate our clients without their counsel present,” Van Meter wrote in the letter, dated June 9. “Any further efforts to question our clients are a continued violation of their constitutional right to counsel and our office remains ready to seek all available relief under both state and federal law.”

In a statement to The Intercept, Karen Paff, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, said Van Meter and his colleagues were simply looking “to ensure that the rights of our clients are respected.”

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“When law-enforcement officers seek to question individuals who are represented by counsel about matters within the scope of that representation, it is our responsibility to notify the appropriate agencies that counsel has been assigned and that any such communications must comply with the law,” Paff said. “This is not a new or case-specific practice. It is a routine part of our responsibility to clients in any matter where represented individuals may be approached for questioning.”

For Rozendaal, the intent of the FBI agents who sought him out seemed to go beyond just fishing for information.

“I think the real intent is to divide us, to make us scared to talk to each other, too scared to talk in general, scared to go to Delaney Hall,” Rozendaal said. “It won’t work.”

The post FBI Tried to Flip Anti-ICE Protesters Into Informants appeared first on The Intercept.

At the June 3 protests outside the detention center sparked by a hunger strike inside, detectives in plainclothes worked alongside uniformed officers to arrest Samuel Becker, a protester alleged to have thrown items into a fire days earlier, according to a criminal complaint. 

The protests had taken place for nearly a month outside Delaney Hall, a privately run ICE facility located on an industrial corridor in Newark, New Jersey, where detainees and their families have complained of poor conditions and retaliation by staff.

The operation was strictly aimed at arresting Becker, 30, who is accused of dragging a tarp into a fire during a raucous protest several days earlier, according to the complaint filed in Newark Municipal Court by police officer Elddy Torres.

“A PLAN WAS DEVISED TO DEPLOY TWO UNDERCOVER NEWARK POLICE DETECTIVES TO MONITOR AND REPORT REAL TIME INFORMATION TO SURVEILLANCE UNITS,” Torres wrote, describing what happened after Becker was identified. “AS THE UNDERCOVER DETECTIVES REMAINED WITHIN THE CROWD, BECKER WAS OBSERVED COORDINATING PROTESTERS PAST THE BARRICADED PROTEST ZONE.”

Law enforcement presence at protests can have a chilling effect, said Amol Sinha, the executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who declined to discuss the specifics of the arrest, with which he was not familiar. The psychological effect of undercover officers — and the fear of undercovers — stands out as especially problematic.

“The use of plainclothes officers presents the concern of people constantly being surveilled when they are engaging in First Amendment-protected activity,” Sinha told The Intercept. “These are moments that should be celebrated as part of democracy and not viewed through the lens of suspicion.”

While the use of undercover officers at protests is not unusual, advocates said the tactic could raise questions about suppression of speech if the aim goes beyond keeping the peace, according to Aedan Neary, a defense attorney in Kearny, who is not involved in the case.

“The concern arises out of the question of, at what point do the actions of these undercover agents become a pressure tactic as opposed to a law enforcement tactic?” Neary told The Intercept. “Is this being used to ensure that things remain peaceful? Or is this more about gathering intelligence?”

ICE Role Unmentioned

The arrest and police report also raise thorny questions about cooperation between ICE and local authorities, which is prohibited for immigration matters by a New Jersey state law passed in March.

According to Becker and two eyewitnesses to the arrest, ICE agents led the ambush that led to Becker’s detention and initially took him into custody.

“An ICE agent chased and grabbed me and quickly handed me over to an NPD officer,” Becker told The Intercept in a written statement. “The NPD officer brought me back over to the other side of the street and sat me down on the side of the ICE minivan that led the ambush.”

While Newark police and Becker’s accounts align on basic details — such as the time and location of the arrest behind Delaney Hall, where protesters had gone to monitor vehicle traffic in and out of the facility — the complaint by Torres, the officer, says the arrest was the work of Newark police with the support of Essex County Police, omitting ICE’s role.

“ONE OF THE NPD UNDERCOVER DETECTIVES ADVISED US THAT THE GROUP WAS PLANNING TO LIGHT THE DUMPSTER ON FIRE AND PUSH IT IN THE REAR FENCE EXIT. A PLAN WAS DEVISED TO INTERRUPT THE GROUPS CONDUCT AND DISPERSE THEM BEFORE THEY COULD HURT ANYONE OR CAUSE ANY DAMAGE,” said Torres’s complaint. “NUMEROUS NPD DETECTIVES AND ESSEX COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE SWAT PERSONNEL RESPONDED TO THE AREA TO MOVE THE GROUP ALONG.”

At least one of the vehicles that arrived in the convoy to make the arrest, Becker told The Intercept, was driven by ICE agents, converging on the group at the rear of Delaney Hall.

According to Becker, his interaction with that initial ICE agent making the arrest indicated some degree of intelligence sharing between federal authorities and local police.

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“As I was surrounded by ICE agents and the arresting officer, one of the ICE agents accused me of [setting a] fire a different night,” Becker told The Intercept in a statement. “The ICE agent’s words matched the language NPD used when it put out a statement about my arrest the next day.”

In a statement made in a Facebook post announcing Becker’s arrest, Newark Public Safety Director Emanuel Miranda said, “He was identified by Newark Police as the individual responsible for setting a dumpster fire during the weekend protest at Delaney Hall and also attempting to start a second fire there on Wednesday night.”

The two eyewitnesses, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution, confirmed Becker’s account of the arrest in interviews with The Intercept.

No Sanctuary

While no law in New Jersey prohibits local police from cooperating with ICE on non-immigration matters, such collaboration has become a hot button for Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who oversaw a zealous crackdown on protests outside the facility despite publicly opposing President Donald Trump’s deportation blitz.

The recent sanctuary law prohibits New Jersey police from assisting immigration agents in enforcement of federal immigration law, but leaves room for exceptions, including the enforcement of state criminal law.

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The ACLU’s Sinha said that his organization had pushed for a broader version of the law that would have prohibited any collaboration between police and ICE.

“This is why we were advocating for an end to collaboration, period,” said Sinha. “We wanted to make sure that there was no instance of collaboration between immigration enforcement and law enforcement, and the fuller version of the law that did not ultimately make its way through the legislature would have prevented that sort of collaboration.”

Catherine Adams, a spokesperson for Miranda, the public safety director, told The Intercept, “To ensure that public safety is provided to peaceful protesters in accordance with their First Amendment rights, and for the safety of other members of the public, as well as the Officers at Delaney Hall, we deploy plainclothes officers, cameras, drones, etc., to identify those at the protest site who unlawfully damage property, start fires, or commit other crimes.”

Lifeline for ICE Operations

Demonstrations outside Delaney Hall were relatively small but attracted attention due to the ferocious responses from ICE agents and employees of GEO Group, the private prison firm that operates the jail.

Over the course of several weeks, ICE agents repeatedly charged protesters in an effort to clear them from the entrance to allow vehicles to move in and out of the facility, often deploying batons, pepper spray, and pepper balls against demonstrators, as well as taking some into custody.

Becker suffered an injury during a charge by ICE agents, when one agent swung a baton so hard that it fractured Becker’s shoulder, according to his account. On the night of his arrest, Becker’s arm was in a sling.

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After initially keeping a wide berth from the clashes, state and local police operating under orders from Baraka and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill — both of whom are Democrats who have spoken out against ICE crackdowns — involved themselves in policing the protesters in late May. The scene immediately became even more volatile, with police firing tear-gas canisters, charging protesters on horseback, and kettling dozens of protesters for mass arrest. 

On May 31, Baraka instituted a curfew in the vicinity of Delaney Hall, and Newark police set up barricades to keep protesters more than half a mile away from the facility for several days. In the weeks since the curfew ended, protests have continued sporadically, but with less intensity or energy as in the initial weeks.

Baraka has repeatedly sought to minimize the city’s role in policing the protests, claiming he was trying to “bring down the temperature,” not bring an end to protests. That posture eventually shifted.

“It is not the responsibility of the Newark Police Division to secure a private facility,” Baraka said in a June 4 statement. “Our intention was never to protect Delaney Hall or HSI” — ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division — “but to bring calm. It is a clear contradiction to the city’s position with GEO group to remain there.” 

For Becker and many other protesters, the presence of police from various agencies in New Jersey were a godsend to ICE and GEO Group — not to public safety.

“State and local police ramped up their repression of the protestors because ICE agents were having an increasingly difficult time carrying out their daily operations at Delaney Hall by themselves,” Becker said. “Without the ramped-up support of the state and local police, ICE and GEO would have continued to encounter growing difficulty suppressing the strike and operating the concentration camp.”

The post Undercover Cops Infiltrated Delaney Hall ICE Protest to Spy and Make Arrest appeared first on The Intercept.

Plainspoken populism won the oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran support among fed-up Mainers, who nominated him in a landslide that The Associated Press called with just 8 percent of the vote in.

“Over the last nine months I have seen Mainers come together behind a vision to take back our power from corporations and billionaires,” Platner said in his acceptance speech Tuesday. “I love every single one of you. Everyone who has shown up at a town hall, who has knocked on a door, who cast their vote — not for me but for a vision of a life in Maine that you can afford; a life of dignity and a government that actually serves its people.”

Platner’s appeal seemed unshaken amid months of negative press stemming from his inflammatory comments on Reddit and an ill-advised tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol. But a recent series of damaging stories in national media, including revelations in the Wall Street Journal about extramarital sexting and allegations in the New York Times of abusive behavior in past relationships, have given some voters and political observers pause. Others say that in Maine, a fiercely independent state where residents nurse a healthy suspicion of influence “from away,” Platner supporters have dismissed those stories as meddling from an establishment fearful of a political maverick.

“From what I can tell, I don’t think the Times piece moved the needle much,” said Shay Stewart-Bouley, a longtime Maine resident who has written both critically and supportively of Platner on her blog, Black Girl in Maine. “I heard some women say it made them uneasy, but I haven’t heard anyone say it changed how they’re going to vote.”

In other cases, the coverage appears to have cemented Platner’s status as an outsider to an establishment embodied by Collins, who has represented Maine in the Senate since 1997. Like many incumbents nationwide, the Republican senator will have to run amid a shrinking job market and rising costs, points that Platner has seized on throughout his campaign. And Collins’s association with the establishment could prove a major liability, even among onetime supporters of President Donald Trump, according to Charles Pray, a former state senator and veteran figure in Maine Democratic politics.

“Part of Trump’s rise was a total frustration with incumbents and people in power, and a lot of people who were Trump supporters who hoped he was going to address rising grocery prices and stuff now see him saying that affordability is not an issue,” said Pray. “Well, affordability is a big issue in Maine, and I think that hurts Collins.”

Platner faced a nominal challenge in Tuesday’s primary from Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign in April but remained on the ballot, and from David Costello, a former Democratic nominee in the 2024 Senate race who was little more than an afterthought in the latest contest.

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Just days before the primary, the Times reported disturbing allegations about Platner, including that an ex-girlfriend accused him of drunkenly locking her in a room during a fight and physically restraining her at times. (Platner has acknowledged the relationship with the accuser, a longtime Republican operative in Washington, but denies he engaged in violent behavior.)

Pray said that among people he’s spoken with, the allegations, while concerning, are undercut by Collins’s support for the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh despite the sexual assault accusations against him, and by her support of Trump despite the many accusations against him and his consistently hostile behavior toward women interviewers.

“I think people aren’t buying the double standard. She confirmed Kavanaugh, she supports Trump despite his behavior,” Pray said, pointing to the president’s recent outburst on NBC News. “I spoke to three women, including Republicans, who were very upset by that and who said ‘Susan just goes along with that.’”

To Platner’s most ardent supporters, the revelations look like meddling by an establishment that never wanted him to be the candidate, said Andy O’Brien, a former state senator who writes about politics in the state and supports Platner. (O’Brien works for the AFL-CIO of Maine, which has endorsed Platner, but did not speak to The Intercept on behalf of his employer).

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“So many people know Graham, and they listen to what he says, they don’t listen to all the crap coming from Washington and New York and California,” said O’Brien. “They like Graham because he speaks to them, and they believe him and trust him. They know he had a messy personal life. I think that there’s a lot of grace that they’re showing him, partly because of his post-traumatic stress from combat and also because there’s this sense that Trump has already lowered the bar so much.”

Mostly, however, Mainers are weary of the national attention the primary brought to their state — with little hope in sight of a let-up, Stewart-Bouley said.

“The general mood is people are really tired of this primary,” she said before Platner’s Tuesday night victory. “But if Platner wins, I suspect we’re not going to be out of the woods.”

In his remarks Tuesday, Platner acknowledged errors in his past and thanked the people of Maine for putting their trust in him despite them.

“Redemption is not just some simple or easy destination. It’s a journey. I’ve made mistakes in my life. Mistakes that I regret, that I live with and that I continue to learn from. And I’m still far from perfect. But every day I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little bit kinder than I was before,” Platner said. “And if you give me the chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator.”

Update: June 9, 2026, 9:39 p.m. ET
This story has been updated with news of Platner’s victory in the Maine primary.

The post Graham Platner Wins in Maine, Turning Anti-Establishment Fight on Susan Collins appeared first on The Intercept.

In addition to passionate debates about the Olympics themselves — the geopolitics of the Games and their effect on local hosts — Wasserman has come in for criticism over his ties to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, his support for Israel, and the potential that the Games might bring him profits through his role as a talent manager for entertainment stars.

The controversies, especially revelations about his relationship with a member of Epstein’s inner circle, nearly led to Wasserman’s ouster from his role atop LA28, the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee.

Now, another personal wrinkle is coming to light: Wasserman’s daughter, Stella, is training to compete for the Israeli equestrian team at the 2028 Games.

Stella Wasserman, 21, is training to compete with the Israeli team in the show jumping competition, according to a recent profile in World of Show Jumping, a trade publication covering the sport. Instagram accounts for Stella Wasserman and her mother, Laura Ziffren Wasserman, posted in the wake of the article to celebrate Stella’s plans to compete with the Israeli team.

There’s a very real possibility that the man responsible for orchestrating an American Olympic games will have a child competing for another country that has become an international pariah due to its genocide in Gaza and wars with Lebanon and Iran — a team that is likely to face protests in LA. (Casey Wasserman, Stella Wasserman, LA28, and the Israeli Olympic committee did not respond to requests for comment.)

Casey Wasserman is himself an outspoken supporter of Israel. In December, he took a trip to Israel during which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pledged that the safety of athletes, and particularly Israeli athletes, was his “number one concern,” according to Algemeiner, a right-wing, New York-based newspaper covering Jewish issues.

“If you’re claiming that this thing that you’re promoting so heavily is going to bring all these benefits to Los Angeles, but you’re also promoting the interests of a foreign genocidal state — and on top of that your daughter is representing that state in the Games — that’s a conflict,” said Miguel Camnitzer, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace Los Angeles. “Somebody else, without those very personal connections to Israel, might be able to make a different call, but he’s unable to.”

Wasserman, a longtime local powerbroker and grandson of Hollywood Golden Age tycoon Lew Wasserman, has been central to bringing the Games to Los Angeles, a role that has come under increased scrutiny due to his ties to Epstein and the late pedophile’s former companion, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

While his connections to the Epstein world were known to some degree for years  — he rode with Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private jet for a humanitarian mission to Africa — the release of the so-called Epstein files earlier this year revealed graphic sexual emails between Wasserman and Maxwell. The revelations sparked a backlash from some of the artists represented by his eponymous talent agency, which in March changed its name to The Team; Wasserman also announced he would be selling the company.

This week, Wasserman reaffirmed that he has no plans to step down as the chair of LA28.

Olympian Hypocrisies

Despite her young age, Stella Wasserman is an accomplished show jumper and owns at least four competition horses, according to a report in the Chronicle of the Horse.

It is common for athletes from one country to compete for a country in which they hold dual citizenship; the International Olympic Committee requires that competitors be nationals of the countries on whose behalf they are competing.

Amid the genocide in Gaza, the Israel connection underscores arguments from critics of the Olympics who say that the Games whitewash human rights abuses by nations taking part — and that international approaches to the Games foster a global double standard that penalizes some nations while allowing others to compete. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian teams were barred from competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics; Israel has faced no such sanction.

The yearslong campaign by Wasserman and others — including former Mayor Eric Garcetti — to host the Olympics in Los Angeles has met with stiff opposition from local activists. Forming a coalition, dubbed NOlympics, the activists sought to call attention to the ways in which they say the Games would exacerbate issues of affordability, surveillance, and anti-immigrant policing by federal law enforcement.

“When we started organizing against the Olympics 10 years ago, LA was already reeling from homelessness, housing shortages, brutal policing, and ICE. And 10 years later these issues are all worse,” said Jonny Coleman, an organizer with NOlympics LA. “Mega-events like the Olympics or the World Cup don’t necessarily create problems from whole cloth, but they accelerate them.”

In December, LA28 announced it had raised more than $2 billion in sponsorship revenue, according to Reuters. If the costs of the Games exceed what the Olympic committee is able to fundraise, however, Los Angeles would be on the hook for the first $270 million of over-cost expenses, with the next $270 million to be covered by the state of California.

The Games, activists said, could be a boon for Wasserman. Wasserman chaired a host committee to bring the Super Bowl to LA in 2022; his client Kendrick Lamar was featured in the halftime show — a coveted slot not least for the millions the exposure can bring.

For Coleman, Casey Wasserman’s relationship to Ghislaine Maxwell and Stella Wasserman’s potential competition on behalf of Israel only further highlights the corrupt nature of the Olympics.

“We know these mega-events are a way to legitimize awful regimes,” said Coleman. “It’s disgusting, but I don’t really care about the supposed integrity of the sports, personally. So yeah, let her play — why not?”

The post Daughter of 2028 Olympics Chair Dreams of Competing in LA — for Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

The revelation comes amid renewed scrutiny of DiNapoli’s spending spree on Israel Bonds, a financial instrument that directly funds the state of Israel. DiNapoli, the administrator of New York pension funds, is facing his first primary fight in 18 years as comptroller, and the branded, non-tradeable assets have become an issue in the race.

The trip was paid for by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which has a financial relationship to Israel Bonds, the organization that issues Israeli government debt securities in the U.S.

In a February 2, 2024, letter to the comptroller, the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government approved reimbursement for DiNapoli by the JCRC, but raised concerns that the sponsored trip could create an appearance of potential improper influence.

The ethics commission informed DiNapoli that several commissioners raised concerns “the proposed reimbursement could give reasonable basis for the impression that a person could improperly influence you,” according to the letter, which was obtained through a public records request and shared exclusively with The Intercept.

DiNapoli has been an enthusiastic backer of investing New York pension and investment funds in Israel Bonds. Amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, efforts by the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel have gained steam — including campaigns urging divestment from Israeli bonds. DiNapoli tilted in the opposite direction, including a $20 million New York pension fund investment in Israel bonds in the wake of the October 7 attacks.

According to an itinerary of the trip drafted by JCRC and obtained by the group Jewish Voice for Peace New York, DiNapoli was slated to meet with Israel Bonds staffers. In 2024, according to its website, JCRC received financial backing from Israel Bonds — which Jewish Voice for Peace organizers said could hint at a potential improper influence. The Israel Bonds donation was for a float in the 2024 Israel Day parade organized by the JCRC, a spokesperson for the group said. DiNapoli regularly attends the rally, including in 2024.

On Sunday, DiNapoli and other state and local electeds marched in the parade again, joined by an array of extremist Israeli political figures including Bezalel Smotrich, the current finance minister and a far-right champion of illegal settlements.

“By participating in trips organized and paid for by an organization that receives institutional donations and is closely and publicly aligned with Israel Bonds, while simultaneously promoting his office’s ongoing investments in Israel Bonds, Comptroller DiNapoli engaged in a foreign policy function far outside his statutory mandate as a fiduciary to millions of pensioners and public employees,” Lisa Mulleneaux, a researcher with JVP’s “Break the Bonds” campaign, wrote in an October complaint to the ethics commission.

“This represents a serious violation of his ethical obligation under §74(3)(f) to avoid any impression that his official duties can be swayed by outside groups,” Mulleneaux wrote. “At minimum, it undermines public trust in the independence of the Comptroller’s office and the integrity of the state’s investment decisions.”

In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for DiNapoli pointed to the ethics commission’s ultimate approval of the JCRC reimbursement and said his office was unaware of any ethics complaint filed in relation to the trip. (The New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government declined to comment.)

In his 18 years as comptroller — and particularly in the months and years following October 7 and the launch of Israel’s genocide in Gaza — DiNapoli has turned the state’s pension fund into one of the largest holders of Israel Bonds nationwide. Since the February 2024 trip, Dinapoli has invested $120 million of the state’s common retirement fund in the instruments, bringing the total investment of state pension funds in Israel Bonds to $332.5 million.

“Officials like Comptroller DiNapoli are responsible for the safeguarding of pension funds through strategic investing that prioritizes the needs of public sector workers and retirees,” said Dani Noble, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace. “Instead, Comptroller DiNapoli is investing the NY pension in Israel Bonds — unrestricted loans to the Israeli military and government used for every aspect of violence against Palestinians.”

Israel Bonds in Primary

DiNapoli’s fervent support for Israel Bonds have become a talking point in his primary race, with challengers Raj Goyle and Drew Warshaw both pledging to divest from investments in Israel should they take office.

Running from DiNapoli’s left, Goyle’s and Warshaw’s positions are in line with former New York City comptroller and current House candidate Brad Lander, who chose not to buy new Israel Bonds while overseeing the city’s pension fund.

For the most vocal critics, the moral argument against public investment in Israel Bonds is paramount. Becky Silber, a New York state employee and member of Jewish Voice for Peace told The Intercept that she was horrified to learn in 2024 that her hard-earned retirement funds were being used to send money to the state of Israel.

“When I became aware that my pension fund was being used to fund Israel, I was gutted, honestly,” Silber told The Intercept. “I was horrified watching the news coming out of Gaza. I was checking every purchase in the grocery store to make sure that my money wasn’t funding it. And so to learn that hundreds of millions of dollars of my pension fund were being sent to Israel with no guardrails on how it was spent, that was devastating.”

Critics of the investments also point to a fiscally responsible argument against the bonds. Unlike traditional foreign-debt assets, Israel Bonds cannot be sold on a secondary market and instead must be held until they mature. That makes them a potentially unsound bet, especially considering the rapid decline of Israel’s credit rating in recent years.

“It is hard to justify this as financial prudence or an effective strategy for diversification, especially when many other comparable investments are less risky; more transparent; and more liquid,” said Kaycee Wimbish, a Kingston, New York, resident active with the Mid-Hudson Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. “These utterly disproportionate investments reveal a hidden political agenda.”

The post New York Comptroller’s Trip to Israel Raised Ethical Concerns, State Commission Said appeared first on The Intercept.

Staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Delaney Hall Detention Facility — a Newark immigration jail operated by the private prison giant GEO Group — took steps to crack down on the strikes, including attacking immigration detainees with pepper spray and batons, transferring protest leaders to other facilities, and shutting down family visitation, advocates and relatives of detainees told The Intercept.

One woman who spoke with her nephew inside Delaney Hall told The Intercept that she was told negotiations were set to take place between guards and striking inmates — but instead, her nephew reported, guards attacked the detainees with pepper spray.

“My nephew can’t see right now because he was hit on the head with a baton,” said the woman, who requested anonymity for fear of further retaliation against her nephew. “Prison operators told my nephew and the others on the hunger strike that ICE was going to negotiate on Thursday. They got hit instead.”

Members of Congress from New Jersey and New York made repeated visits to inspect the facility this week. On Wednesday, New York Democratic Reps. Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler emerged from Delaney Hall looking deeply shaken and spoke of hearing about miserable conditions inside with no doctor onsite.

“Detainees told me about scalding hot showers that have led to burns and blisters; worms in food; and being denied medical care, visitation rights, and time outdoors,” Goldman told The Intercept. “Many of them believed that this treatment is in retribution for the ongoing hunger strike, which they have initiated to bring attention to the horrific conditions they are enduring despite having committed no serious crimes.”

The alleged retaliation against detainees matches a long-standing pattern, according to a 2021 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, which detailed systematic abuses carried out against hunger strikers at dozens of facilities across 24 states.

In a post to X on Thursday, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he was barred from visiting the unit on which the physical abuses were alleged to have taken place, but said he spoke with detainees on another unit who reported several of their fellows being taken to the hospital for injuries sustained in attacks by guards.

In a statement to The Intercept, GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira confirmed the use of chemical agents against detainees on Thursday as part of a “physical altercation involving detainees at Delaney Hall,” but did not address questions about the attacks on detainees coming as retaliation.

“In accordance with established policies and protocols approved by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Ferreira said, “staff implemented appropriate response and control measures to safely resolve the situation, including the limited use of chemical agents.”

The accusations came amid ongoing protests outside the facility, at which federal agents have repeatedly attacked demonstrators, including family members of those inside, with pepper spray and batons. (ICE referred a request for comment its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond.)

For nearly a week, family members have been denied visitation, and protesters have set up a tent outside Delaney Hall to provide support for those who had hoped to visit their loved ones inside.

“Relatives of detainees haven’t been let in since Saturday,” said Ana Paola Pazmino, the director of Resistencia en Acción NJ, a local grassroots group. “This is despite the fact that DHS has said there has been no hunger strike. They are liars.”

Protesting Poor Conditions

The hunger and labor strikes began last week when detainees began refusing food and stopped showing up for their jobs to protest their poor conditions inside the facility. Among their demands are the release of elderly and very young detainees and those with serious medical conditions.

In response to a call from one detainee leader’s wife for solidarity demonstrations, protests began gathering outside the facility on May 21, with demonstrators showing up virtually around the clock every day since, despite attacks by armed ICE agents.

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Andre Beresford Burger, an organizer with the group Movimiento Cosecha, told The Intercept on Thursday that he had been pepper-sprayed by ICE agents but remained undeterred.

“If ICE agents are willing to storm into a crowd and brutalize people on camera and in front of the press,” he said, “what does this say about what they’re doing to people inside immigration detention, away from the cameras?”

Deploring the conditions, members of Congress called for Delaney Hall to be closed.

“The situation here just gets worse every day,” Pallone, the House member from New Jersey, said in a video after visiting the facility. “This place needs to be closed down. The conditions are horrible. You can’t get due process, you can’t see a doctor on any kind of regular basis. The reality is that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security … are trying to ship people out that are trying to tell the stories.”

Ferreira, the GEO Group spokesperson, denied reports of poor conditions at the facility, which he labeled a “coordinated, politically motivated campaign by outside groups to dismantle ICE and federal immigration detention.”

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On Thursday evening, New Jersey state troopers and Newark police shut down traffic on Doremus Avenue, the industrial thoroughfare on which Delaney Hall sits, but protests continued well into the night. Long standoffs between demonstrators and ICE agents were punctuated by bursts of violent aggression from federal officers, who swung at protesters with batons, doused them in pepper spray, and fired pepper balls into the crowd.

From outside Delaney Hall, detainees could be seen in windows raising their fists and lights could be seen flickering periodically, a signal from those inside that they heard their supporters on the outside.

The post ICE Pepper-Sprayed, Beat Detainees for Protesting “Horrific Conditions” in Delaney Hall Jail appeared first on The Intercept.

The 192-page report, authored by a Democratic strategist and first published by CNN on Thursday morning, goes in-depth on several factors found to be detrimental to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign in its ultimate loss to Donald Trump. Despite the contention within the party over then-President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, however, the war doesn’t get a single mention.

Also missing from the document are the words “Israel,” “Palestine,” “Arab American,” and “Muslim.”

A spokesperson for the DNC declined to comment on the omission of anything having to do with Gaza, instead pointing The Intercept to a Substack written by party chair Ken Martin in which he acknowledged what the committee found to be several shortcomings by the report’s author, Democratic strategist Paul Rivera.

One policymaker who spoke with Rivera in July 2025 for the qualitative, fact-finding portion of the autopsy research told The Intercept that he was surprised when the report emerged with no mention of Gaza or the resulting conflicts within the Democratic coalition. He said that his group had discussed the impact of Gaza policy with Rivera at length. 

“Paul was very clear with us in our conversation that they had done the quantitative review,” said the politico, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, “and that the data clearly showed that Gaza had hurt Biden and Harris.”

In recent weeks, pressure mounted to release the report in full — a move Martin said he was reluctant to take due to major flaws in the report, which he dubbed “not ready for primetime.”

“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” Martin wrote Thursday in a post on the DNC’s Substack. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.”

Martin also fails to mention Gaza, Israel, or any other terms related to the genocide in his post.

The policymaker said he had found Rivera to be thorough and professional, and he believes Martin is shifting the blame.

“My strong suspicion is that Paul was being thrown under the bus,” he said. “It’s very convenient to a lot of people that a lot seems to be missing, and it would be very convenient if the reason it’s missing is ‘oh, Paul’s really bad at his job.’”

Others defended Martin’s conduct. James Zogby, a founder of the Arab American Institute and a candidate for vice-chair of the DNC in 2024, praised Martin’s leadership but called his pledge to release the report an “unforced error” that was being seized upon by a consultant class hostile to his on focus rebuilding state party infrastructure.

“We know what the mistakes were,” Zogby said. “The question now is how do we not make them again, and we didn’t need to make a fuss over a report that wasn’t going to tell us anything we didn’t know.”

The Intercept attempted to reach Rivera via The Capacity Shop, a firm that lists him as an advisor, but the group did not respond to a request for comment.

“Nothing about this surprises me,” said Linda Sarsour, an organizer from Brooklyn who was active in organizing a campaign to pressure Harris to take a stance against the war. “If they don’t change course quickly to center Palestine, foreign policy and recognize the influence of Arab/Palestinian/Muslim/young/progressive American voters, they will likely have to write another autopsy report post 2028 presidential elections.”

In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza became a key point of contention between the Democratic establishment, on one side, and progressive Democrats, including Arab Americans, on the other. The progressives argued that the failure to take a stance against unflinching support for the genocide was tamping down excitement among the party’s base, especially young voters.

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A group of delegates that dubbed themselves the “Uncommitted Movement” fought to get push the party left on Gaza. The activists put forward a slate of suggested speakers at the party convention in Chicago, including Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American state representative in Georgia, but none of the speakers were accepted.

Romman, who is currently running for Georgia’s state Senate, said she was deeply disappointed to see the lack of mention of Gaza in the report.

While the Gaza war was a key issue for many Arab American and Muslim voters, particularly in a swing state like Michigan, Romman acknowledged that most voters nationwide and in her home state of Georgia were not listing Gaza as their top concern. Still, she said, the issue emerged as something of a smell test for the integrity of Democratic politicians hoping to sell their message to an electorate beset by financial insecurity and healthcare woes.

“For most voters, if you look at what was their top issue, it’s the economy — of course,” Romman said. “But if you want politicians that are going to put you first and implement the kind of economic issues that you need to have a better life, those are going to be the politicians that are not beholden to special interests. And so Gaza became a way to look for that.”

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, has sought to thoroughly distance itself from the report, going so far as to release an annotated version highlighting missing data and unsubstantiated claims.

The document contains a disclaimer at the top of every page: “This document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”

Update: May 21, 2026, 2:35 p.m. ET
This story has been updated with comments from a policymaker who spoke with Paul Rivera for the DNC autopsy report.

The post DNC Autopsy of 2024 Loss Doesn’t Mention Gaza or Israel at all appeared first on The Intercept.

The woman, a dual citizen of New Zealand and the United States with residences in Manhattan and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was one of 30 passengers who left the MV Hondius expedition cruise ship while it docked at Saint Helena island, in the South Atlantic, in late April after one passenger had already died of a lethal strain of hantavirus. A second and third passenger died days later, one on board and one in a hospital in South Africa, but by the time the ship had become a focus of headlines worldwide, the woman was well on her way on a globe-hopping itinerary.

The CDC informed health officials in various states of other Americans potentially exposed to the virus, but failed to alert New York health officials about the Manhattan woman.

There is no indication that the woman intended to come back to the United States or to New York any time soon. Instead, she continued on a multi-continental trip around the world. Her ability to continue traveling — and the lack of notice issued to authorities in the location to which she might eventually return — raise worrying questions about the potential spread of the disease, said Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.

“If she’s on the loose, then we need to be aware of where she might come back to,” Karan said. “So the New York Department of Health, and officials at the port of entry, they need to make sure this person is flagged when they return.”

The traveler, a 75-year-old former pharmaceutical executive, matches the description of a former ship passenger who is now in quarantine in Taiwan, according to local news reports there. Her peregrinations first came to light in reporting by Intercept contributor Jacqueline Sweet, who published a report on the traveler on her personal Substack.

The woman’s dual nationality and connection to addresses in multiple states appears to have muddied the lines of communication.

A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health told The Intercept that after raising the issue with the CDC, they learned that the agency had notified a different state of the woman’s possible exposure to the virus. The spokesperson did not identify the state in question, but public records show the woman is registered to vote at an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Despite her voter registration in Florida, she has referred in social media posts to the co-op she owns in Manhattan as her home.

Representatives of the CDC and the Florida Department of Health did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment. Florida has not reported that it is monitoring any residents for possible exposure to hantavirus.

New York and other states — including California, Arizona, Washington, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina — have reported residents with possible exposures, with some states indicating they received notice from the CDC and others saying cruise passengers self-reported. All 18 U.S. citizens who returned to the country directly from the cruise are currently in quarantine in Omaha, Nebraska, and Atlanta, Georgia, while another 16 citizens who shared a plane with a woman evacuated to Johannesburg are being monitored.

From the South Atlantic to a Global Conference

The outbreak took place aboard the MV Hondius, an “expedition” cruise ship that takes adventurous passengers on a monthlong specialized polar tour, stopping at hard-to-reach islands in the South Atlantic. The cruise attracted wildlife enthusiasts, biologists, and extreme travelers attempting to visit as many countries and territories as possible, willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for the trip.

On April 6, one of those travelers, a 70-year-old Dutch man who prior to the sea voyage had spent more than three months traveling in South America, became ill. He died onboard on April 11, and on April 24, the victim’s 69-year-old wife disembarked at Saint Helena; the next day, she flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died soon after. A third passenger died on May 2 — the same day that the World Health Organization declared an outbreak of hantavirus as the culprit.

The CDC has been accused of a slow response to the outbreak, holding its first briefing on the crisis on May 9, a week after WHO announced that the deaths were caused by the rare Andes strain of hantavirus, which is spread in South America by the pygmy rice rat and which can be transmitted among humans via close physical contact with someone already showing signs of infection. Because the early symptoms of the virus, including fever, fatigue, and muscle aches, are common in many other viral infections, the disease can be hard to identify before the rapid onset of more serious symptoms like pneumonia and respiratory distress.

In the case of the hantavirus outbreak, as with other public health crises, officials need to walk a careful line between ensuring safety and avoiding panic, Karan said. And the key to keeping a lid on the outbreak is ensuring proper quarantine for anyone with a potential exposure.

“Because this took place on a cruise ship, it actually helped us detect this quickly, and for now it appears to be decently contained,” Karan said. “But the problem is that, it’s not like you have a camera on these people to know if they’re not going out or seeing other people. So you don’t definitely know unless they’re quarantining at a monitored center.”

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Compounding the trouble, however, is that many of the passengers on the cruise are part of an “extreme travel” subculture whose lifestyle centers around relentless jetsetting. Even with the international attention being paid to the ship and its passengers, a number of people have been found to have trekked globe-spanning itineraries since the outbreak was revealed. 

The itinerary of the Manhattan woman after she left the MV Hondius showed a complexity typical of such “extreme travelers.” In a social media post on April 28, the traveler said she had flown from Saint Helena to Johannesburg, where she stayed in a hotel before flying on to Hong Kong and then to Bangkok, Thailand. In Bangkok, she wrote that she took a shuttle across the city to its second airport and flew to Trang, in southern Thailand, where she stayed in a hotel overnight before taking a boat to the island of Ko Ngai. Her most recent social media post was from Hanoi, Vietnam, several days before reports surfaced of the former ship passenger matching her description under quarantine in Taiwan.

She was just one of 30 travelers who left the ship while it docked at Saint Helena, prior to the declaration of an outbreak — setting off a scramble by global public health officials to identify everyone who might have been exposed.

The profile of the passengers themselves complicated the picture, according to Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and co-author of “VIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19” who advocated for more scrutiny of a possible lab origin for the virus that caused the Covid pandemic.

“The cruise selected for these extreme travelers, and you cannot ask for a potentially better superspreader,” Chan said. “And if one of the passengers presented to an international hospital with symptoms without the hospital being aware of their exposure on the ship, by the time the hospital would know, healthcare workers could have already been exposed.”

Most public health officials agree the hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to transform into a pandemic. But the incubation period for the Andes virus is anywhere from four to 42 days, raising concerns that the traveler and others who left the ship prior to the outbreak becoming known could transmit the virus to others if they become sick. That’s led global health officials to scramble to identify passengers and notify their home countries. But the timing of these communications, and how they unfolded, are unclear, as the case of this woman reveals.

While the CDC alerted a number of states, including New York, to the fact that residents with potential exposures could be coming home, the Manhattan-based traveler appears to have slipped through the cracks, and state health officials there only learned of her connection to the state after receiving inquiries from Sweet.

It appears that the MV Hondius’s parent company first reported that this passenger was a New Zealand national to New Zealand health authorities. After The Intercept began making inquiries with the New Zealand Ministry of Health in conjunction with reporters from news outlet Radio New Zealand, as well as to the woman and other conference attendees, the Ministry of Health told Radio New Zealand that although the woman had ignored their previous attempts to contact and assist her, on Tuesday she suddenly contacted them. The Ministry of Health said they had alerted the United States last week that she was in fact a resident of the U.S., and not New Zealand, and on Tuesday, they also alerted health officials in the country she is in currently, which is unknown.

On Monday, news from New Zealand broke that an American woman, since reported as being from California, had turned up in remote Pitcairn Island, a tiny South Pacific island with less than 50 residents. She had flown from Saint Helena after departing the MV Hondius early to San Francisco, before flying to Tahiti and then taking a boat voyage to Pitcairn. It’s unknown if any health authorities contacted her before her travels. She is now being quarantined on the island.

Reached by The Intercept, a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health pointed to an existing press release about monitoring hantavirus exposures and added: “When we have new information to share, we will do so.”

Chan advised that “the WHO should make a list of all passengers available to all countries so they can be aware of visitors with exposure, rather than rely on each country.” Communication between the WHO and the United States was delayed in the days of the MV Hondius outbreak, since the Trump administration left the global health alliance, but the CDC and the WHO have reportedly been working together for the past week. 

“In a best-case scenario there are no more waves, but this shows the WHO and the CDC are not prepared. This was the best-case scenario, with the passengers all known from the cruise,” Chan said. “When you can mess up with this controlled of a scenario, what will happen next time?”

The post CDC Didn’t Tell New York About Resident on Hantavirus-Plagued Cruise appeared first on The Intercept.