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The Trump administration has detained more than 500 U.S. citizens since it began its mass deportation initiative, a ProPublica investigation has found.

Trump officials have insisted that U.S. citizens are not at risk under the president’s agenda. “We have said it a million times: ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens,” former DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement last October.

But that was a lie. A ProPublica story published Tuesday tracked every instance of an immigration agent holding a U.S. citizen during the second Trump administration.

They found 506 such cases, including at least 70 children and teenagers, and more than 100 Americans who were detained after federal agents questioned their citizenship status—nearly all of whom were people of color. ProPublica acknowledged that this total is likely an undercount.

At least 63 Americans were detained while they were recording and documenting their arrest, and 36 were refused the right to contact their lawyers or family for more than a day. Roughly a dozen U.S. citizens were deported, according to the report. Most of them were children.

“Of the more than 300 Americans we tracked as detained for allegedly assaulting or obstructing agents, we found fewer than half were actually charged in federal court, and many of those cases were dropped or dismissed,” ProPublica noted.

The nonprofit newsroom’s findings call into question practically every public assurance DHS has made. Instead, it’s become increasingly clear that federal immigration agents have run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution as they face mounting pressure from the Oval Office and White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to deport as many people as possible.

Miller has framed immigration as an “invasion.” He has advocated to end habeas corpus for immigrants, promoted large-scale raids at workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods, threatened the futures of immigrants who do not “self-deport,” and encouraged the White House to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Miller was fundamental in crafting some of the more draconian policies of Donald Trump’s first term, including separating families at the border, terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the executive orders that amounted to Trump’s Muslim ban.

In May 2025, Miller issued another tyrannical order to his ICE underlings: a minimum quota of 3,000 arrests per day. “President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every day,” Miller told Fox News at the time.

But that goal proved unsustainable, particularly after reports began to circulate that ICE agents had never been so miserable. Agents complained that the massive quota pushed them to detain noncriminal immigrants. The Justice Department walked back Miller’s directive in August that year, though even the loosened reins didn’t stop agents from arresting dozens of citizens.

During Operation Midway Blitz in September 2025, DHS pledged that ICE had “significant protections in place to ensure U.S. citizens are not arrested, detained, or mistakenly removed,” noting that there would be “no administrative arrests of U.S. citizens.” Something entirely different happened on the ground: at the height of the federal encroachment, agents detained more than 120 citizens across the state, according to the ProPublica report.

Darius Reeves, who ran ICE offices around the East Coast for roughly eight years before he retired in 2025, told ProPublica that he had “never seen so many U.S. citizen encounters in all my years.”

“It’s an embarrassment,” Reeves said.

The White House pressured the FBI to investigate anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles in violation of the Constitution, a whistleblower alleges.

A former supervisory intelligence analyst in the bureau’s field office in Los Angeles, Jill Fields, made a formal complaint to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Trump administration’s response to the protests around federal buildings last year, NBC News reports.

After President Trump saw a TikTok video of people using megaphones to alert the public about immigration agents, their legal rights, and the legal requirement of judicial warrants, he ordered FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate those organizers, according to the complaint. A person whose name was redacted in Fields’s letter told her that “the President wants this investigation.”

The protests came in response to stepped-up ICE activity across Los Angeles early last year. Fields’s complaint states that the FBI’s L.A. agents were pulled from active drug cartel cases to provide “optics” and “make a show for the president,” in the words of one of her supervisors.

When Fields spoke to a senior bureau official who dealt with privacy and civil liberties issues, that agent shared her concerns but said she planned to resign. Fields would later resign herself after she was removed from leading three programs, which she believes was retaliation. The FBI created a chilling effect within the workforce” and “signaled to other employees that raising constitutional or legal concerns could carry professional consequences,” Fields wrote.

The Justice Department called Fields’s complaint politically motivated and said that the Constitution does not protect violence, even though her letter only mentioned investigation of peaceful protesters.

“Under President Trump, the Department of Justice will continue to vigorously uphold the First Amendment rights of all Americans and restore the rule of law,” a DOJ spokesperson told NBC News. “The DOJ and FBI have a responsibility to investigate any potential violations of federal law, and conspiracies to impede federal law enforcement and assaults on federal officers are against the law.”

Ultimately, Trump’s efforts to charge protesters in Los Angeles only resulted in dropped cases, and his decision to send federal troops to the city was shot down in federal court. But Trump wasn’t deterred from ramping up immigration enforcement in other cities across the country, such as Minneapolis and Chicago, and he continues to press on with his mass deportation efforts, defying the Constitution and federal courts every day. It remains to be seen if Democrats will put a stop to his policies if they take control of Congress after the midterms.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is taking action to strip 40 naturalized Americans of their citizenship.

According to a DOJ press release published Monday, the department has filed “denaturalization actions” against these individuals after they were accused of “serious offenses,” including “acting as an agent for a foreign government, committing voluntary manslaughter, and aggravated sodomy against a special-needs man.” The press release goes on to list the names, ages, countries of origin, and alleged crimes that each foreign-born citizen committed.

This move comes in the final months of a year that the president has spent doggedly pursuing his mass deportation agenda, which has included expanding denaturalization efforts so that no one born outside of the U.S.—not even those with legal status—feels safe. Reporting from The New York Times in April revealed that the Department of Justice was targeting 384 naturalized Americans from whom it wanted to revoke citizenship, an attempt to denaturalize Americans at a level not seen since the early nineteenth century. A DOJ official at the time told the Times that the department’s April effort was only “the first wave.”

“Today’s announcement marks the largest denaturalization effort in modern history,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Monday. “From an individual convicted of espionage to others convicted of sexual offenses against minors, these defendants concealed critical facts from the U.S. government and represent serious criminal offenders.”

“Every single one of these individuals lied their way into U.S. citizenship,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate added in the release. “This administration will continue to pursue the largest denaturalization effort in department history to restore trust and integrity in U.S. citizenship. Our message is clear: The United States will not tolerate deception in the naturalization process.”

This is indeed a massive escalation in the Trump administration’s denaturalization crusade. In comparison, an average of just 15 denaturalization cases were filed per year from 2017 to 2025.

The 40 foreign-born American citizens now in danger of losing their citizenship originally came from countries including Mexico, Colombia, Pakistan, Haiti, Nepal, and Ghana. For the millions of naturalized Americans living in the U.S. today, the message is clear: Your citizenship may not be safe.

President Donald Trump is playing damage control after being caught red-handed misusing taxpayer dollars for a desperate election-year advertising campaign. On Monday, Trump suddenly announced the government’s role in his propagandistic TV ad campaign, which had reportedly been illegally using taxpayer funds that Congress appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security.

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A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Trump can’t make ‘super intelligence’ happen…

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President Donald Trump called Natalie Harp a “perfect person” after showing her off to hundreds of rallygoers.

Trump invited a very special guest onstage at his rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, Monday night to deliver an executive order aimed at addressing the elevated fuel prices sparked by his war against Iran.

“So, tonight I’m going to sign a historic executive order to officially waive the off-road requirement and allow anyone to purchase tax-free red-dye diesel for any reason,” Trump said. “And I’d like to ask Natalie to come out. Natalie, come out! Bring it out here!”

As the president’s grinning blonde aide walked onto the stage, the crowd cheered wildly. After signing the document, Trump handed it back to Harp, patting her on the shoulder. As she departed the stage, the president looked back, just to ogle her one last time.

“She reminds me of, like, The Price is Right. ‘Thank you, Natalie! Come on!’ This perfect person comes up, hands it, walks up—we should go on television with this show, right?” Trump said.

Trump’s comment comparing Harp to a model only deepens assertions that the two have a wildly inappropriate working relationship. As Trump’s “human printer,” Harp has become the de facto gatekeeper to the president of the United States. In turn, Harp seems to have developed an unhealthy obsession with the president’s approval. Her own writing reveals that Harp views Trump as a kind of spiritual adviser, a father figure, and a Mr. Darcy-type romantic lead.

It was only two months ago that the White House raged over the speculation about Trump’s relationship to his 35-year-old assistant. Now the president doesn’t seem the least bit committed to putting those rumors to bed.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been on a real media blitz. But whether he’s doing damage control for his company’s recent scandals or participating in a new Luca Guadagnino biopic, it hasn’t seemed to improve his image. In an interview with Politico, Altman said that “the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” referring to the large language models being developed by his company and its competitors.

What things does Sam Altman think are bad? He offered a few examples during a two-part interview with Vanity Fair published this week. Altman called it a “bad thing” for kids to be “glued to a touchscreen of some sort scrolling through brain rot short form video,” and said he would limit his own kids’ access to technology. People using LLMs to “create novel pathogens” would also be bad, he asserted. When Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci asked him to weigh in on a recent New York Times op-ed by journalist Laura Reiley—whose daughter committed suicide shortly after speaking to ChatGPT—an OpenAI publicist attempted to intervene. Altman eventually answered the question, and equivocated on whether it is good or bad for people experiencing a mental health crisis to turn to an LLM. “This is just like, this is new,” he said. “And the fact that someone in a moment of need that maybe can’t get help or isn’t willing to talk to a therapist can get some help here. Clearly people think there’s a version of this that is good. There are also clearly versions of it that are bad.”

As Altman has made clear in these and other interviews, however, he thinks it would be very bad for governments to regulate his industry in a way that suppresses innovation. He explained to Guiducci that he’s driven by the belief that putting powerful LLMs “in the hands of everyone and giving people a legitimate new superpower relative to I think what any of us could imagine a few years ago will do tremendously more good than bad.” The upshot here is that Altman would like the public to trust OpenAI to judge when the good is outweighing the bad. And although the “goods” of LLM development remain largely speculative—like curing cancer and granting wishes—the bads continue to pile up.

OpenAI faces a growing mountain of legal risks over incidents of its products hacking into government agencies around the world, not to mention providing advice to mass shooters, as Florida’s attorney general’s office has alleged. Nearly every company that’s developing large language models—OpenAI, Nvidia, SpaceX, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet—has contracted with a Pentagon that’s been proudly killing fishermen in Latin America, and that continues to wage an illegal war on Iran. While the self-styled good guys at Anthropic declined to work with the military several months back, the company hasn’t balked at building a predictive surveillance system to monitor activists. Silicon Valley executives have largely dismissed concerns that the data centers fueling their technologies threaten everything from local aquifers to electricity rates, and have seemed relatively unconcerned about the ways that LLM-generated slop is rapidly distorting people’s ability to think and reason independently.

The trouble with trusting AI companies to decide what’s good and what’s bad is that, like other CEOs, Altman and his colleagues have a financial interest in the answers to these moral questions. There are obvious commercial upsides for the executives in continuing to portray their companies (their “labs,” as they like to call them) as upstanding research entities, and mere stewards of a fundamentally mysterious, powerful, and inevitable technology. But they have just as much to gain from the public conversation about LLMs orbiting around the question of whether individual CEOs are good people. It doesn’t really matter one way or the other. They run large and powerful companies that sell products and have no legal obligation to the public good. Those companies appear to be committing crimes, which they could be tried for, using laws that already exist. As far off as real enforcement and regulation might seem, such laws are the only things that will keep the rest of us from being subject to their lousy ethics.

National Republicans are dropping $5 million to try to save South Carolina’s Senate seat, Axios reported on Tuesday, as the Palmetto State race—like other contests in GOP territory—is slipping away from Republicans in the final stretch of the midterms. “It’s an insurance policy. We’re going to be there for Darline,” an unnamed “Republican briefed on the plans” told Axios of the spending.

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Only 17 percent of Americans approve of how President Donald Trump is handling the cost of living, according to a recent poll from the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

This is a record low for both of Trump’s presidential terms—notable as he spent much of his 2024 campaign criticizing Democrats on the issue. About 70 percent, including about half of Republicans, said the president’s cost-of-living policies have been “worse than expected.”

The Associated Press reported that Trump’s economic approval mirrors Biden’s 28 percent in June 2022 during the initial years of the Covid-19 pandemic. A few months later, 55 percent of Americans said that affordability struggles were outside his control. But now, Americans are blaming Trump, with 65 percent reporting that the high cost of living is a result of Trump’s policies. 

The survey was based on 2,140 US adults and was conducted from September 24-28 with a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. 

President Trump invited infamous election denier Tina Peters to the White House to discuss plans for the midterms.

Former Department of Justice official Ed Martin revealed the meeting to Eric Bolling on the conservative network Real America’s Voice Monday, saying that Trump had met with Peters about two hours earlier.

“Tina Peters, you know, from Colorado, was in the Oval Office meeting with the president on election integrity, and they were talking about the plans,” Martin said.

Peters was the Mesa County clerk and recorder, a position that put her in charge of local elections, including polling logistics, candidate paperwork, voter registration, and processing ballots. After the 2020 election, she swallowed the MAGA conspiracy theory that the election was rigged through voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems.

That led her to give a security badge to a fellow election conspiracist, Conan Hayes, who used the access to copy the hard drive of a voting machine while Peters ensured security cameras were turned off. The data was turned over to MyPillow magnate Mike Lindell.

For her efforts, Peters was convicted of election tampering and sentenced to nine years in prison. Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis caved to pressure from Trump in May and ultimately commuted her sentence. Since then, she has basked in positive attention from right-wing media, repeating her claims of voter fraud and asking Trump for a job.

Monday’s visit was Peters’s second time at the White House, as she was invited to meet with Trump in June.

“What she went through should never happen to anyone again,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time. “Just think of it, she caught the Democrats cheating, and they put her in jail for Voter Fraud.”

Of course, Peters found no proof of election fraud, which raises concerns about the supposed midterm plans the president wanted to discuss with her. On Monday, Martin claimed they discussed how Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in August “that election voting machines use parts from China and Russia and foreign places and are therefore compromised.” It appears that Trump is taking the word of a convicted election fraudster and trying to mess with November’s elections.

Vice President JD Vance spoke for roughly 35 minutes at a MAGA rally in Fairbanks, Alaska, Monday evening. Within that time, he managed to admit that he really didn’t do very much while representing his home state of Ohio.

The confession came on the back of an insult toward Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate, Mary Peltola, who served as one of the state’s representatives from 2022 to 2025.

“Her sole job was to support Alaskans in the House of Representatives. Yet she couldn’t be bothered to show up for one in five votes,” Vance said.

“I was a senator for all of two years. It’s not that hard of a job,” he continued. “You show up. You fight for your people. At a bare minimum, just show up and cast your vote.”

During another portion of the campaign stop, Vance shared an exchange he had with former senator and current State Secretary Marco Rubio in which he effectively chalked up his current role to the efficacy of conservative news pundits.

“Marco said, there are two kinds of guys in the United States Senate,” the vice president recalled. “There are the guys who want to go on TV and earn a lot of credibility for themselves, and there are guys who get things done.”

“I said, ‘Marco, first of all, don’t criticize the people who show up on TV,’” Vance said. “That made me vice president of the United States.”

The trip, which constituted Vance’s first visit to Alaska, was in support of Senator Dan Sullivan and Representative Nick Begich, both of whom were endorsed by Donald Trump.

Both Vance and Trump are expected to stay on the campaign trail for the next few weeks as the executive branch leaders attempt to prop up their struggling party members ahead of midterms. Trump, for his part, is expected to attend rallies for more than 94 percent of the time between now and November 3.

That will effectively place Trump at the center of an election cycle in which Republican candidates have increasingly tried to peel away from his influence.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll published in August suggested that the president’s influence is waning: Just 13 percent of Americans strongly approve of the president—compared to a 2025 YouGov poll that found 23 percent of people felt the same way a year prior.

Top issues weighing down Trump’s popularity include the seemingly endless Iran war, the rising cost of living, an economy and supply chain thrown out of whack by the president’s reckless tariffs, the cost of health care, and the encroachment of artificial intelligence and the industry’s data centers into American communities—a hot topic that Trump has unequivocally backed.

Kansas Senator Roger Marshall used unapproved images of children in his recent attack ad against Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton.

The Tall Oaks Camp and Conference Center publicly called on Marshall to stop using the campaign ad, which featured an image of its campers while accusing Hamilton of being related to a sexual abuse scandal at the Church of the Resurrection, which he founded. This has nothing to do with Tall Oaks.

“Our concern is straightforward,” Tall Oaks’ Board of Directors President Lea Ann Combs told the Kansas Reflector. “This advertisement creates a misleading association between Tall Oaks, the young people pictured and events that did not happen here. Protecting the dignity of these young people and accurately representing our organization should be a shared priority.”

Marshall’s chief of staff said the campaign believed the Tall Oaks picture was a stock image, and acknowledged it was not taken at Hamilton’s church. That wasn’t enough for the Hamilton campaign.

“Marshall lies and uses children as political pawns to distract from the fact he had pregnant mothers arrested and jailed over small medical debts, and voted to protect the predators named in the Epstein files,” said Hamilton’s campaign, striking back. “Roger Marshall is desperate to hide from his record of protecting predators, and preying on low-income families in Kansas.”

This all comes as the race for Senate in Kansas is the closest it’s been in almost 100 years, with Trump’s dismal approval rating in the state making Marshall’s chances at reelection all the more precarious.

President Donald Trump flipped out over an ugly photograph of his golf club.

The New York Times published a story Sunday about the ethical red flags surrounding Trump’s decision to hold an international summit at Trump National Doral, his private golf club in Miami, Florida. Never one to concern himself with his own ethics, Trump was more concerned about the photograph they used.

Trump accused the publication of using a “DOCTORED” picture of the building’s facade. “These people are STONE COLD LOSERS—Totally dishonest. That’s why they’re going TO HELL, and their subscription numbers are way down!” he wrote on Truth Social Monday night.

The president compared the Times photograph, taken by Scott McIntyre, showing a yellowed facade with noticeably dark and dirty spots, to a promotional photograph from the Trump Organization website, in which the facade looks white and pristine.

Earlier that day, Trump claimed the publication had used a “picture where the facade has been blackened and denigrated by them in order to make it look shoddy, filthy, and just plain BAD.”

“They want World Leaders to see this, knowing it is not the ‘TRUMP’ way,” he added.

Clearly, Trump’s way is to ignore any of the actual issues facing Americans to harp on his own petty bullshit—and that was actually his second temper tantrum of the day. The president had only just finished raging at a report that there were empty seats at his recent rally in Ohio. (Spoiler alert: there were.)

9 minutes agoWalter EinenkelTrump administration wants to tie infrastructure funds to birthratesPolitico: Copy linkShare on FacebookShare on XShare via email 15 minutes agoWalter EinenkelDemocratic candidate mocks Tom Cotton’s daylight saving time distractionArkansas farmer Hallie Shoffner appeared on MS Now to remind voters that she wants to do the job Sen. Tom Cotton continues to fail to do.

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Daily Kos Opinions is a forum for sharp commentary and shrewd conversations. These pieces reflect guest contributor views and don’t represent an official endorsement by Daily Kos. If Democrats win Congress in November, what’s the first bill they introduce? House Democrats already have an answer. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in June it’ll be a bill to lower costs…

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Dr. Oz thinks butter costs a dollar.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator and TV doctor revealed just how out of touch he was with the average American on Fox News Monday night.

“You have no idea what things are gonna cost. I brought you some things [for] example,” he told Fox’s Laura Ingraham, holding a pack of butter. “Stick of butter, bag of peanuts. Butter in America, it’s about a buck [for] a stick like this.”

Ingraham checked him immediately.

“Where are you shopping? It’s not a buck, it’s like $4,” she said.

“I just bought this, so it’s close to that,” Oz stumbled. “Maybe it’s going bad!”

Dr OZ: We went grocery shopping. Butter in America is about a buck.

Laura Ingraham: Where are you shopping? It’s not a buck. pic.twitter.com/B9NeYUhXv0

— Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 (@LucasSa56947288) October 5, 2026

Butter is about $4 according to the Department of Labor, but someone as wealthy as Oz likely would never remember that.

“I want to challenge Dr. Oz. I will fly out on my own dime to D.C. and we can go to every grocery store he chooses, but at least 20 and we’ll stop when he finds butter for $1 lb,” former American Heart Association Chairman Craig Beam commented. “I’ll arrange a video crew to film it all.”

It’s ridiculous that Oz confidently brought a whole pack of butter on air just to be wildly incorrect about how much the average American—whom the Trump administration claims to care about—is paying for it. This isn’t the first time Oz has exposed his lack of connection to the average consumer. In 2022, during a failed Senate run in Pennsylvania, he was widely lambasted for posting an embarrassing video of him shopping at “Wegner’s” (not a real store) complaining about how much crudités cost. It’s clear he’s just as clueless now as he was then. It’s that kind of ignorance, that kind of apathy, that defines the Trump administration. It’s painfully obvious that they just don’t care.

If there’s one thing the White House loves, it’s hiring young fascists—particularly to run communications and social media. It’s just a whole bunch of Zoomers spewing garbage. So while 29-year-old former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has headed over to Fox News, another toddler is already on their way as assistant White House press secretary—and she also comes from the right…

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At a rally in Nebraska Tuesday night, President Trump told his supporters exactly what he thinks about the well-being of the American people.

Trump first said that the prices of goods and services, which have gone up thanks to his ill-advised Iran war and tariff policies, were “just a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe—keeping our country safe.

“They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay,” Trump said. “And it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.”

Trump: "With the war, it's just artificial. It's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay ... let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay." pic.twitter.com/iIelj5sPUt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 5, 2026

Conservative activists have argued that Trump didn’t really mean that losing the two cities is a “small price to pay,” but that he was referring to high gas prices. In that generous interpretation, Trump was arguing that his war, which has killed scores of civilians in the Middle East and an estimated 23 U.S. soldiers, is preventing Iran from waging large-scale attacks on American cities. But Iran’s targets during the war have been U.S. installations in the Middle East, and it wasn’t targeting American cities before the war, either.

California leaders, however, have taken his words at face value.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blasted Trump’s words as “irresponsible,” saying the remarks “could potentially compromise” the city’s safety.

“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” Bass said in a statement. The mayor of San Diego, Todd Gloria, concurred, saying his city was “not collateral damage.”

“We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay,’” Gloria wrote in a post on X. “Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

California’s Democratic nominee for governor, Xavier Becerra, also criticized the president’s speech.

“Thirteen million Californians call LA and San Diego counties home,” Becerra said. “Their lives are not a ‘small price to pay’ or a punchline for Donald Trump.”

Meanwhile, gas prices continue to go up thanks to Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and its allies in Yemen, the Houthi militia, controlling the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea. As of Tuesday morning, the average price of gas nationwide is $4.37 per gallon, while diesel fuel is a whopping $6.32 per gallon.

Trump’s claims that the war is almost over belie the fact that talks aren’t going anywhere right now. The president rejected Iran’s peace proposal on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month, and mediators haven’t made much headway. Meanwhile, the conflict has escalated in recent days as the Houthis have attacked Saudi Arabia’s airports, with the Saudis bombing Yemeni targets in response. The midterms are less than one month away, and Trump has nothing to show for his war.

Consider supporting my work so I can continue creating it: Substack: https://nickanderson.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/editorialcartoons Ko-Fi: https://www.patreon.com/c/editorialcartoonsCartoon Related | Trump’s airplane switcheroo proves he’s a selfish coward…

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This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Federal Judge Kathleen Cardone granted a preliminary injunction Friday to halt construction on the border wall in Texas’ expansive Big Bend sector, including the national and state parks.

Cardone read a brief order from the bench after hearing more than four hours of testimony from conservation groups and residents of the Big Bend region, known internationally for its dark night skies, abundant biodiversity and rugged river canyons. 

Cardone said that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in at least one of their claims and to suffer irreparable harm if construction continues. Her ruling stops border barrier construction in the entire Big Bend sector—which spans more than 500 miles across West Texas—until the federal government complies with all applicable laws. 

An analyst testified that the Big Bend sector is a “distant last place” in unauthorized border crossings, contrary to the government’s claims.

The ruling applies to all of Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and the border along the Rio Grande in the rest of the sector. The injunction will remain in place while the court considers the lawsuit, which was filed in April.

Plaintiffs and their supporters embraced and wept outside the federal courtroom in El Paso Friday afternoon following the ruling. Many had traveled hundreds of miles from Big Bend communities, including Terlingua and Marfa, to attend. 

The Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Ruidosa Church, and Danny Miller Jr., a river guide, sued the US Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Markwayne Mullin for waiving dozens of laws to fast-track the border wall through the Big Bend region. The Texas Civil Rights Project and the Center for Biological Diversity are representing the plaintiffs. 

The federal waivers cover the entire Big Bend region. This had allowed construction to proceed without following the National Environmental Policy Act, the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act and many other laws. Under the injunction, the effect of the waivers is stayed.

Customs and Border Protection has changed its plans for border barrier construction in the Big Bend region numerous times since February. The federal government currently plans to build vehicle barriers and access roads within the state and national parks. A 30-foot steel wall is planned for private land in Big Bend outside the parks. 

One plaintiff, a river guide, called the construction a “visible scar that will never go away.”

In mid-August, advocates documented excavators and bulldozers clearing land within Big Bend National Park. Customs and Border Protection then issued a construction pause in the park on August 17. That pause lifted this week. Construction recently began on a new 30-foot steel wall in Hudspeth County, east of El Paso.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs called eight people to testify Friday. Their arguments centered on the lack of evidence that the Big Bend sector is an area of “high illegal entry,” as stated in the federal waivers. They argued that the plaintiffs were already suffering and will continue to suffer harm if border wall construction continues.

Adam Isaacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, presented data showing the Big Bend sector is a “distant last place” in unauthorized border crossings compared to the nine sectors that make up the US border with Mexico. The plaintiffs’ attorneys explained that they requested granular data about how many people are detained in Big Bend National Park, as opposed to the vast area that makes up the rest of the sector, and the federal government never supplied that information.

Miller, the river guide, said his business depends on access to the Rio Grande and explained how property he owns along the river will be irrevocably damaged if the wall is built. 

He described border wall construction as a “visible scar that will never go away.” Miller and several other individuals giving testimony broke down in tears when asked how a border wall could change their relationship to the Rio Grande.

Department of Justice attorneys presented few counterarguments and did not present any witnesses. The White House referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We stand by our assessment and remain confident in our legal authorities to secure the border while preserving the unique landscape of the Big Bend region,” a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said. “We are working with the Department of Justice on next steps.”