From San Francisco, this is Democracy Now!
Deaths in ICE custody continue to skyrocket past
previous records as the agency has been massively expanding
the immigration detention system.
A total of 48 people have died in ICE custody
so far during the current Trump administration.
As ICE rapidly expands its immigration jail system,
deaths in ICE custody are surging.
At least 17 people have died this year —
on average, a person every week. Forty-eight have died
since President Trump returned to office.
We’ll talk to Detention Watch Network.
Then, "Caught in the Crackdown: As Arrests at Anti-ICE Protests
Piled Up, Prosecutions Crumbled,"
a ProPublica-Frontline investigation.
Immigration officials conducted several raids
and arrested dozens of people.
An investigation into the Trump administration’s
monthslong crackdown.
Are you encountering a lot of resistance?
Most I’ve ever seen.
The pushback.
They are creating the emergency
and the crisis that we then need to deal with.
I’m asking who’s detaining me?
People live here!
And the fallout.
President Trump and I,
along with others in the administration,
have recognized that certain improvements
could and should be made.
We’ll speak to investigative reporter A.C. Thompson.
And finally, to the frontlines of the animal rights movement.
On Saturday, hundreds of activists attempted to rescue
2,000 beagles from Ridglan Farms,
a breeding facility in Wisconsin,
accused of animal cruelty.
The violence that we experienced today was off the charts.
And yet it does not compare to what the dogs go through!
Dozens of people were arrested. We’ll go to Madison, Wisconsin,
to speak with one of the organizers.
All that and more, coming up.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org,
The War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman in San Francisco.
There’s uncertainty over whether the U.S.
and Iran will hold another round of talks in Pakistan,
after the White House said Vice President JD Vance
was preparing to depart for Islamabad today,
even as Iran refused to confirm it would participate.
A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry
accused the U.S. of violating the 10-day ceasefire.
He cited the U.S. Navy’s seizure
of an Iranian cargo ship on Sunday,
while calling for the release of its sailors
and vowing to retaliate.
Meanwhile, President Trump has warned
he’s "highly unlikely" to extend the 10-day ceasefire
with Iran beyond Wednesday evening
and said the U.S. would likely resume bombing immediately
if Iran refuses a deal.
On Capitol Hill, dozens of military veterans
and their family members were arrested Monday
as they nonviolently occupied the Cannon House Office Building
to protest the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran,
while demanding a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson.
At least 62 people were arrested,
including elderly and disabled activists.
The protest was organized by a coalition that included
About Face, Veterans for Peace,
Common Defense and Military Families Speak Out.
This is Christina Sarson,
a U.S. Army veteran from Pennsylvania.
Christina Sarson:
"I personally am here for my sons.
As a veteran, I know the harm that wars
do to civilian populations, but also to our soldiers.
I’m talking about the loss of life.
I’m talking about injuries and lives changed forever.
I’m talking about PTSD and moral injury.
And that’s why I’m here today."
The State Department says it will host a second round
of talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington, D.C.,
on Thursday, the first negotiations
since a tenuous ceasefire went into effect last week.
The announcement came as people across Lebanon
held funerals Monday for loved ones
whose bodies were retrieved from the rubble of buildings
left flattened by Israeli strikes.
In Tyre, relatives prayed by the temporary graves
of 80-year-old Hussein Dbouk and his 32-year-old son Rabih,
who were killed in the hours before the ceasefire
took effect last Friday morning.
Sawsan Halaweh:
"This family, why is it their fault?
Is it because they didn’t leave Tyre?
Is this our fault, that we stayed?
We don’t want to leave our land.
Our land is our honor and our dignity. …
What did these people do wrong for Israel
to come and bomb them?
You, Israel, who were supposed to do a ceasefire,
committed a crime before it could take effect."
Lebanon’s Health Ministry says Israeli attacks in March
and April killed over 2,300 people,
leaving over 6,700 injured and 1.2 million
people displaced from their homes.
In Gaza, Israeli strikes have killed
at least five Palestinians in separate incidents.
With the latest strikes,
Israeli attacks have killed more than 750 Palestinians
since last year’s so-called ceasefire deal took effect.
In the occupied West Bank, Israel has officially
reestablished the Sanur settlement,
more than two decades after it was ordered dismantled.
Elsewhere, a Palestinian boy was killed earlier today
after being struck by a vehicle in the security convoy
of an Israeli minister in the occupied West Bank.
Sixteen-year-old Mohammad Majdi al-Jaabir was riding his bicycle
to school when he was run over.
Haaretz reports that the convoy was en route
to secure Israeli settlement minister Orit Strock,
who lives in an illegal Israeli settlement in Hebron.
Meanwhile, a joint report by the EU,
U.N. and the World Bank reveals that $71.4 billion
will be needed over the next decade
for Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction.
The report also warns that human development
across the Gaza Strip has been set back by 77 years.
Amnesty International has released
its annual global human rights report,
describing the leaders of Israel, Russia
and the United States as "voracious predators"
intent on economic and political domination.
The report documents the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran,
which has killed more than 3,000 people;
Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which have killed nearly 2,400;
and the death toll in Gaza,
which has surpassed 72,500 since October 2023.
The report also points to signs of resistance,
including the growing number of states
joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
at the International Court of Justice.
This is Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
Agnès Callamard:
"It started with unlawful U.S. and Israeli
attack in violation of the U.N. Charter.
No self-defense can be invoked here.
It morphed into open warfare against civilians,
Iran launching indiscriminate,
disproportionate retaliatory strikes,
Israel escalating its attacks on Lebanon.
The conflict is endangering the lives
and health of millions of people across the region."
The report comes as Hungary’s
newly elected Prime Minister Péter Magyar
declared that his government would be legally obligated
to detain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
if he enters Hungarian territory while still subject
to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant.
Speaking to reporters, Magyar said,
"If a country is a member of the ICC
and a person who is wanted by the ICC enters our territory,
then that person must be taken into custody."
Japan has relaxed decades of restrictions
on the sale of weapons and ammunition,
clearing the way for arms
exports to more than a dozen countries.
Today’s announcement by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi
is a further shift away from Japan’s pacifist
postwar constitution, created by the U.S.
as it occupied Japan eight decades ago.
China said in response it is "seriously concerned"
about Japan’s "reckless militarization."
Cuba’s government has confirmed
it recently hosted U.S. officials on the island,
marking the first time senior American diplomats
have visited the island nation since 2016.
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Alejandro García del Toro
said lifting the U.S. oil blockade
was "a top priority," calling it
"an unjustified punishment of the entire Cuban population."
The talks come as President Trump
has repeatedly floated the use of military force against Cuba,
saying his attention could turn to the island
after the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Last week, Trump said,
"We may stop by Cuba after we finish with this."
Meanwhile, the leaders of Mexico, Brazil and Spain,
meeting in Barcelona as part of a gathering
of progressive heads of state, issued a joint statement
pledging increased humanitarian aid to Cuba
and calling for its sovereignty to be respected.
Deaths in ICE custody
have reached a record high this fiscal year,
with at least 17 immigrants reported dead since January.
The most recent case is of 27-year-old
Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt,
an immigrant from Cuba who was found unresponsive last week
while jailed in Miami.
He reportedly died of a presumed suicide,
but the cause is still under investigation.
We’ll have more on this later in the broadcast.
The Justice Department has demanded
that officials in Wayne County, Michigan,
turn over more than 860,000 ballots,
along with envelopes and receipts,
from the 2024 general election. Trump defeated Kamala Harris
to win Michigan’s 15 electoral votes,
but he lost in Wayne County, which is home to Detroit,
by nearly a quarter-million votes.
The DOJ’s threats come weeks after the FBI
subpoenaed election records in Arizona’s Maricopa County
and raided an elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia,
seizing thousands of ballots.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel
called the request "absurd" and "baseless."
She wrote, "Once again,
President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department
in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process
and turn it into his own personal agency
to interfere in state elections."
Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News
that arrests over the 2020 election
were coming as soon as this week.
Kash Patel has filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit
against The Atlantic magazine and journalist
Sarah Fitzpatrick, after she reported that
Patel has alarmed FBI colleagues with episodes of excessive
drinking, erratic behavior and unexplained absences.
The report cited more than two dozen people,
including current and former FBI officials,
members of Congress, lobbyists, former advisers and others.
Several officials said morning meetings at the FBI
were rescheduled until the afternoon
because Patel was incapacitated
following nights of heavy drinking.
Patel’s security detail reportedly struggled to wake him
on multiple occasions last year,
and in at least one instance requested
"breaching equipment" normally used by
SWAT teams to enter buildings.
U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned Monday
amid a series of reports that she abused her position.
She’s accused of using public funds for personal travel;
bringing subordinates to a strip club;
drinking on the job in government offices;
and having a romantic affair with her bodyguard.
This comes after Chavez-DeRemer’s husband Shawn
DeRemer was barred from the Labor
Department’s headquarters after at least two female staff
members reported he had sexually assaulted them. Lori
Chavez-DeRemer is the third member of Trump’s Cabinet
to be forced out in the last seven weeks
— all of them women —
following the departure of Homeland
Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Wired magazine has revealed new details
about how facial recognition technology
has been used to closely monitor sports fans at the iconic
Madison Square Garden arena in New York.
Over a two-year period, security staff for New York
Knicks owner James Dolan used the surveillance system
to track the movements of a trans woman,
in part to prevent her image from being seen on TV.
An 18-page dossier obtained by Wired
shows the system tracked all of her movements,
including when she entered and exited the bathroom.
Dolan also used the facial recognition system
to ban hundreds of people from the venue,
including a group of lawyers involved in disputes with him.
Photos of the lawyers
were fed into the facial recognition software
to prevent them from entering the Garden.
Hundreds of delegates are arriving at the United Nations
this week for the world’s largest
gathering of Indigenous peoples,
the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
This year’s forum centers on the survival of Indigenous
peoples in the context of armed conflict.
Advocates also warn that the artificial intelligence boom
is driving a new era of digital extractivism,
with tech companies scraping Indigenous medicinal knowledge,
traditional stories and genetic data
without consent, while massive data centers
threaten tribal lands and water resources.
The Trump administration has also made it
increasingly difficult for delegates from the Global South
to obtain U.S. visas to attend the forum.
The Goldman Environmental Prize,
widely known as the "Green Nobel,"
has announced its 2026 recipients.
For the first time since the prize was established in 1989,
all six winners are women.
They are Iroro Tanshi of Nigeria,
Borim Kim of South Korea,
Sarah Finch of the United Kingdom,
Theonila Roka Matbob of Papua New Guinea,
Yuvelis Morales Blanco of Colombia
and Alannah Acaq Hurley of the United States.
Hurley is the executive director
of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay.
She led a successful campaign against the Pebble Mine,
a proposed gold and copper mine that would have required
construction of a massive power plant,
natural gas pipeline and huge, toxic tailing ponds.
Alannah Acaq Hurley: "This award honors all of us,
those who stood against all odds,
those who never wavered in speaking up
against greed and destruction.
It honors those who have shown up year after year,
writing letters, testifying at hearings, protesting,
and raising their kids to value people over profit."
And those are some of the headlines this is Democracy
Now, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman.
AMY GOODMAN: As the Trump administration
continues to rapidly expand
its immigration jail system across the country,
we look now at the rising death toll of people in ICE custody,
which has reached a record high in over two decades.
At least 17 immigrants are reported to have died
in ICE custody since January —
that’s on average about an immigrant death a week.
The most recent death is of 27-year-old
Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt,
an immigrant from Cuba who was jailed in Miami.
He reportedly died of a presumed suicide,
but the cause is still under investigation.
At least 48 immigrants have died in custody
since President Trump returned to office.
The cause of death has varied,
but includes at least one homicide.
In January, El Paso County’s medical examiner
found that 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos
died from asphyxia due to neck and chest compression.
Lunas Campos was pronounced
dead January 3rd at Camp East Montana,
a sprawling immigration detention tent camp
at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso.
ICE claimed the Cuban father had died
after experiencing medical distress,
but several immigrants that he was jailed with later testified
they heard Lunas Campos pleading for medication
shortly before guards tackled him to the ground.
One of the witnesses said in a sworn court
declaration he heard a guard tell Lunas Campos,
"Shut up, or we’re going to make you faint."
He added, quote, "The last thing I heard was Geraldo
speak in a voice that sounded like he couldn’t breathe.
He said, 'Let go of me.
You're asphyxiating me,’" unquote.
The Associated Press also reported a witness
saw Lunas Campos handcuffed
as at least five guards held him down,
while one put an arm around his neck
and squeezed until he was unconscious.
Meanwhile, a San Francisco Chronicle investigation
found over a dozen deaths under the Trump administration
could have been prevented with proper medical care.
The Chronicle examined several cases,
including Maksym Chernyak — he had a seizure,
but they waited to call 911; Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz —
he complained of chest pain
but wasn’t seen by a doctor for weeks;
Santos Banegas Reyes — he was in withdrawal
but not sent to the ER; Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas —
he couldn’t breathe, but they told him to wait;
and Ismael Ayala-Uribe — he was in severe pain,
but they sent him back to his cell.
For more, we go to Washington,
D.C., where we’re joined by Setareh Ghandehari,
advocacy director at Detention Watch Network.
Can you explain this surge in deaths, Setareh?
I’m talking about deaths of immigrants in ICE custody.
Explain what you have found.
SETAREH GHANDEHARI: Good morning, Amy,
and thanks for having me.
As you said in your intro,
we’ve already seen 17 people die in ICE custody this year,
which is an average of about one death per week.
And I can tell you,
I’ve been tracking these numbers for several years now,
including during the COVID-19 pandemic,
which was another point where we hit a record number of deaths,
and I have never seen anything like this,
where I’m seeing ICE reporting out at least one death per week.
It’s really shocking.
And, of course, this comes on the heels
of a record number of deaths in ICE custody last year,
which also doesn’t include the number of deaths
that have occurred as ICE has been chaotically
and violently targeting immigrant communities
during their enforcement actions.
At this point, if we continue to see the same pace of deaths,
with one death per week,
we’re set to far exceed last year’s record
by the end of this year.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Setareh, how do you explain,
given all the amount,
all the extra, additional, skyrocketing amounts of money
that the Trump administration has given to ICE,
that they seem unable to provide the kind of care necessary
for the people they detain?
SETAREH GHANDEHARI: Sure. Well, you know,
ICE has been acting with impunity now for decades.
And we have seen, really,
that the system is inherently violent.
It’s inherently abusive.
We’ve seen these kinds of conditions
now that have been documented for decades.
And as the Trump administration came into office last year
and embarked on its violent
and cruel mass deportation campaign,
we know that immigration detention
has been a key pillar of that campaign.
You know, they issued several executive orders
in the first days,
all of which emphasized the need for expanding ICE detention.
They really kicked off this entire campaign
with their announcement
about expanding migrant detention at Guantánamo Bay,
and they entered into an agreement
with the government of El Salvador to offshore detention.
And so, these two announcements, in many ways,
really served to normalize
the sort of everyday expansion of the system,
where we have seen ICE expand its usual contracts
with local jails and sheriffs and local prisons.
We’ve seen them expand into military bases,
as you mentioned, at Fort Bliss in Texas and others.
We have seen a massive expansion into the federal prison system,
the reopening of shuttered Bureau of Prisons facilities,
agreements — really unprecedented agreements
— with state governments to open facilities,
including the cruelly dubbed
"Alligator Alcatraz" in Florida in the Everglades,
as well as the reopening
of a shuttered state prison in Indiana.
So, they have really gone all out.
And, of course, last summer, their efforts were boosted
by a massive, unprecedented infusion of funds from Congress
that has allowed them to really ramp up
this expansion of the ICE detention system.
So, as Congress is pouring more and more money into ICE and CBP,
this money is being used to really expand the system.
And, of course, the conditions remain as dire as ever
and are being exacerbated,
because we know that ICE doesn’t really care
about the well-being of the people in its custody.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And who is responsible
for providing medical care
and mental healthcare in ICE facilities?
Could you talk about the third-party contractors?
SETAREH GHANDEHARI: Sure, yes.
ICE contracts with third parties to provide medical care.
The reality is, the system is set up for —
you know, with a profit incentive.
And, of course, you know,
ICE isn’t really interested in caring
for the people in its custody.
They’re interested in getting as many people into detention
and deporting as many people as possible.
So, routine care goes ungiven.
People are ignored to the point of emergency.
And so, we see, you know, all deaths in
ICE custody really are preventable,
because no one should be in the system to begin with.
It’s inherently violent.
But we’re seeing more and more
that people are reaching the point of emergency
for issues that could easily be dealt with
if proper medical care was given.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the growing opposition
around the country to the ICE detention facilities?
And what has happened since Kristi Noem left,
purchasing warehouses across the country
to imprison thousands of immigrants?
What’s happened to those facilities, Setareh?
SETAREH GHANDEHARI: With the warehouses,
this is the most recent venture
that ICE has gone into in order to expand its system.
Of course, in December, they announced plans to purchase
dozens of former industrial warehouses across the country
and convert them into ICE detention facilities.
And, of course, we have seen a massive opposition
to these warehouses.
It’s been really inspiring to see people
across the country standing up in solidarity
with their immigrant neighbors and saying, you know,
"We don’t want these types of facilities
in our communities, in our country. It’s wrong."
And, you know, this is, again, part of a much broader effort
that has been going on for many years now.
At Detention Watch Network, we coordinate the Communities
Not Cages campaign, where folks across the country
have been fighting against ICE detention centers
in their communities for many years.
But what we’ve seen with the announcement of these warehouses
is really a grassroots sort of swelling opposition
to the growth of this system
into facilities that are warehouses.
They’re meant for industrial labor,
for warehousing goods, not for detaining people.
And they’ve been successful,
and it’s been such, such an inspiration to see.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, last week, Todd Lyons,
the acting director of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, resigned.
Now, he’d never been confirmed by the Senate
in his appointment.
Your reaction to his resignation and his tenure?
SETAREH GHANDEHARI: Sure.
I mean, what we’ve seen over the last several weeks
is sort of a superficial shake-up
of the leadership at ICE and DHS.
And I think it’s really important to note that,
you know, Todd Lyons might be out,
but the agenda and the goals of this administration
remain the same.
And I think what it does speak to, however,
is this growing opposition to this violent and chaotic
and cruel mass detention and deportation agenda.
People across the country are saying,
"No, this is not the kind of country
that we want to live in."
And so, I think that’s why we’re seeing
this sort of shaky place where the leadership is.
And, you know, I think we are prepared
to continue that opposition.
This weekend, together with folks across the country,
we’re engaging in coordinated actions
in more than 160 locations across the country to stand up
and fight back against this warehouse expansion.
And I think, you know, hearing that,
seeing that opposition over the last several months
has forced ICE to sort of put a pause on that.
But I think it’s important to remember,
you know, first of all, ICE lies.
I’m sure that there’s negotiations
happening behind the scenes.
Several warehouses have already been purchased
and are set to open.
So we’re going to — we’re going to do everything we can
to stop that infrastructure from being established.
And, you know, this is — it’s important to remember
that this is really part of a broader scheme
to expand the ICE detention system.
So, we really need to keep paying attention to this,
because ICE is determined to expand its capacity
to detain people
to more than 100,000 people at any given time,
which is really a shocking number
and, you know, parallel to the number of Japanese Americans
that were incarcerated during World War II.
So, I don’t think we can overemphasize how dire
and how unprecedented this agenda
is by the current administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, Setareh,
if you could describe the ongoing detention
of families and children at the Dilley
Immigration Processing Center in Texas?
That’s the ICE jail there.
Reporter Sarah Stillman writes in The New Yorker,
"Under the Trump Administration,
thousands of immigrant children have been detained,
… many have suffered from medical neglect."
If you can explain that?
And then, ultimately, who is responsible
for providing medical care all over?
Talk more about these third-party contractors.
SETAREH GHANDEHARI: Sure, yes. Well, as you mentioned,
the Dilley detention center in Texas
is a family detention center.
That means people are being detained there
with their children. This was a practice
that the United States has done for many years.
It went away during the last administration,
and the Trump administration has brought it back.
And as you said, hundreds of kids have been detained
in really horrific conditions.
I mean, you know, the ICE detention system,
overall, is, as I said before, inherently inhumane,
and we have seen really unconscionable conditions
throughout the system that,
you know, no human being should suffer through,
and especially not kids.
And we’re seeing very similar conditions
to the adult detention centers at Dilley,
where kids are being detained
on a regular basis with their families,
you know, being denied proper medical care.
You know, their education is being interrupted.
I mean, there’s really no amount of detention
that is appropriate for a child,
and yet we’re seeing kids in these prolonged situations
in detention, and it’s really horrific.
And ultimately, ICE is responsible for the health
and well-being of the people in its custody,
and they’re utterly failing to provide that care.
They are — they do contract with third parties.
There’s a number of them that are contracted
to provide medical care
and other services inside of ICE detention centers.
But, ultimately, it’s ICE’s responsibility,
and ICE, you know, fails to hold their contractors accountable.
Congress has failed to hold ICE accountable.
So, it’s really just a vicious cycle that continues.
And the whole time, you know,
we have these private corporations
profiting off of the pain
and suffering of adults and children alike.
AMY GOODMAN: Setareh Ghandehari,
we want to thank you for being with us,
advocacy director at Detention Watch Network.
Coming up, "Caught in the Crackdown:
As Arrests at Anti-ICE Protests Piled Up,
Prosecutions Crumbled."
We’ll speak to A.C. Thompson about his new investigation
for ProPublica and Frontline. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "As I Walk,"
written by the Lebanese musical composer Marcel Khalife,
performed in New York by the NYC Palestinian Youth Choir.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.
I’m Amy Goodman in San Francisco,
with Juan González in Chicago.
I’m in San Francisco for the national theatrical release
of the documentary about Democracy Now!
called Steal This Story, Please!
We’re headed to California’s state capital,
to Sacramento, today.
The film will be showing at the Tower Theatre
in Sacramento at 7 p.m. I’ll be doing the Q&A afterwards
with the film’s director, Tia Lessin.
And then, tomorrow,
the film will show at the Roxie in San Francisco —
I’ll be introducing it at 6:00. —
and then in Berkeley, at the Rialto Elmwood,
and we’ll be doing a Q&A afterwards.
On Thursday, we’ll be in Seattle at SIFF.
That’s the Seattle International Film Festival on Thursday night
and on Friday night.
And then we’re headed to Portland, Oregon, and beyond.
It’s continuing to play in New York at the IFC
and all over the country, in Los Angeles and beyond.
You can go to democracynow.org
to get the latest details where I will be.
AMY GOODMAN: As we continue now to look
at President Trump’s immigration crackdown,
we turn to an in-depth investigation
into the law enforcement response to protesters.
In cities across the country,
from Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis,
residents took to the streets
to oppose the militarized immigration sweeps,
enforcement tactics and violence by ICE and Border Patrol agents.
The investigation by A.C.
Thompson for ProPublica is headlined
"Caught in the Crackdown: As Arrests
at Anti-ICE Protests Piled Up, Prosecutions Crumbled."
The accompanying Frontline documentary
is Caught in the Crackdown. This is the trailer.
JOE FRYER: Immigration officials conducted several raids
and arrested dozens of people.
NARRATOR: An investigation into the Trump
administration’s monthslong crackdown.
A.C. THOMPSON: Are you encountering
a lot of resistance?
GREG BOVINO: Most I’ve ever seen.
NARRATOR: The pushback.
MAYOR JACOB FREY: They are creating the emergency
and the crisis that we then need to deal with.
COLE SHERIDAN: I’m asking, "Who’s detaining me?"
PROTESTER: People live here!
NARRATOR: And the fallout.
TOM HOMAN: President Trump and I,
along with others in the administration,
have recognized that certain improvements
could and should be made.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the trailer
for the new ProPublica-Frontline film,
Caught in the Crackdown.
In a minute, we’ll be joined by the investigative reporter
A.C. Thompson to discuss what they found
when they looked into the tactics,
the arrests, the legal cases and impact of these protests.
But first, another clip.
This scene is from Minneapolis shortly after Renee Good
was shot and killed by ICE officer Jonathan Ross.
A.C. THOMPSON: We were reporting in the neighborhood
where Renee Good had been killed.
PROTESTER 1: Go home!
PROTESTER 2: You don’t need gas masks and more guns.
PROTESTER 3: What is that about?
A.C. THOMPSON: Agents were surrounding
and questioning a man.
PROTESTER 4: Take your guns home!
We don’t want guns in our neighborhoods!
PROTESTER 2: They don’t need that [bleep] hardware.
It’s ridiculous.
A.C. THOMPSON: People were coming out of their houses.
PROTESTER 3: Get the [bleep] out! You don’t belong here!
A.C. THOMPSON: The agents started to leave.
PROTESTER 5: Get the [bleep] out of here!
Move out! You heard them!
PROTESTER 6: Bye!
A.C. THOMPSON: One protester was pepper-sprayed
in the face at close range.
PROTESTER 7: That’s not necessary!
You’re [bleep] wrecking cars! Get the [bleep] out of here!
A.C. THOMPSON: I spoke with the man
they were questioning, Christian Molina.
He said the officers had rammed his vehicle.
CHRISTIAN MOLINA: They hit my car for no reason, man.
They hit me. A.C. THOMPSON: What happened?
CHRISTIAN MOLINA: They followed me
for no reason and hit my car. They looked at me,
and they decided to pull me over for no reason.
Do you believe that?
A.C. THOMPSON: That Ford SUV?
CHRISTIAN MOLINA: I’m a U.S. citizen.
A.C. THOMPSON: Suddenly…
Oh, here. Careful.
ICE AGENT 1: Move back!
A.C. THOMPSON: Someone threw a snowball
in the direction of the agents.
ICE AGENT 1: Move back!
A.C. THOMPSON: One of them tossed a tear gas canister
into the crowd.
PROTESTER 7: You’re tear-gassing a [bleep] neighborhood!
PROTESTER 8: It’s peaceful!
PROTESTER 7: People live here!
ICE AGENT 1: Back it up!
A.C. THOMPSON: An agent pepper-sprayed protesters
and a news photographer up close.
Another fired pepper balls into the crowd.
I was hit three times.
I got shot repeatedly with pepper balls.
CAMERA OPERATOR: Fix your hat. Fix your hat.
PROTESTER 7: This isn’t a [bleep] war zone!
This is a [bleep] neighborhood!
PROTESTER 9: I was in the car,
and they threw [bleep] underneath the [bleep] car.
Yes!
PROTESTER 10: I can’t see!
PROTESTER 11: Shame on you!
PROTESTER 12: Hey! Ahh! I need help. I need —
A.C. THOMPSON: As they left,
an agent shot pepper spray from his window.
It hit my colleagues in the face.
You need this?
CAMERA OPERATOR: Yes.
A.C. THOMPSON: Here. Give me the camera.
Give me the —
PROTESTER 13: Water! PROTESTER 14: I got water!
PROTESTER 15: Water!
PROTESTER 16: Anybody need an eye wash?
CAMERA OPERATOR: Was that spray?
Did they just spray from a moving van?
A.C. THOMPSON: In the months I’d been covering this story,
I had seen the same pattern everywhere we went:
federal agents using weapons like tear gas and pepper spray
against protesters and bystanders.
The courts would try to rein them in,
but they’d move on to the next city and do the same things.
On local TV, Bovino was unapologetic.
GREG BOVINO: We’re here to conduct a Title 8 mission.
It won’t stop.
Despite rioters, agitators and vast amounts of violence
against federal officers, we’re not going to stop.
AMY GOODMAN: There’s also a scene
from the Frontline documentary
where A.C. Thompson shows the same footage from Minneapolis
to former law enforcement officials,
first Christy Lopez,
who spent years investigating law enforcement misconduct
for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
A.C. THOMPSON: I showed footage from the scene to Christy Lopez.
PROTESTER 7: You’re tear-gassing a [bleep] neighborhood!
PROTESTER 8: It’s peaceful!
PROTESTER 7: People live here!
CHRISTY LOPEZ: We see just use of excessive force
after use of excessive force.
In no scenario is it OK to be pepper-spraying people
as you’re leaving the scene.
It’s just they’re mad, they’re scared.
You know, they’re able to get away with it,
so they’re just using the power
they have to use force against people.
AMY GOODMAN: Then A.C. Thompson shows the footage
to Chris Magnus,
a former head of Customs and Border Protection,
who once oversaw Bovino.
Magnus also served as a police chief in multiple cities.
CHRIS MAGNUS: Pretty awful.
You know, I mean, one of the things in policing
when it comes to use of force, it’s proportionality.
Is the force really proportional to what you’re —
what you’re receiving or what you’re dealing with?
People may well get under your skin
under a lot of circumstances.
You don’t like it, but professionals don’t react to it.
AMY GOODMAN: Those were clips from the new
ProPublica-Frontline documentary,
Caught in the Crackdown,
now streaming for free on YouTube,
PBS.org and the PBS app.
The ProPublica investigation by A.C. Thompson is headlined
"Caught in the Crackdown: As Arrests at Anti-ICE Protests
Piled Up, Prosecutions Crumbled."
When we come back, A.C.
Thompson will join us from San Francisco.
Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Vietnamese
musician Mai Khôi performing at Joe’s Pub in 2020.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.
I’m Amy Goodman in the Bay Area, in Berkeley,
and Juan González is in Chicago.
We’ve just been talking about this very important
PBS investigative series called Caught in the Crackdown.
It is a Frontline-ProPublica piece.
A.C. Thompson is the investigative reporter on this.
A.C., if you can just summarize?
I mean, you have very dramatic footage here.
You were in Minneapolis right after an ICE officer,
Jonathan Ross, killed Renee Good.
Talk about the protests,
from Chicago to Minneapolis to Los Angeles,
what people were doing when they were arrested,
not to mention brutalized and, in some cases, killed,
and then how their prosecutions crumbled.
A.C. THOMPSON: You know, it was fascinating for me to watch
from June 2025 in Los Angeles to the fall in Chicago
to winter in Minneapolis
and following the immigration sweeps
led by then-Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino
and the rest of the immigration agents,
agencies, and looking at the protests
that were erupting around the country.
It was this situation where there was allegations
of a massive surge in assaults on federal agents.
The Department of Justice was labeling the people
who were in the streets as domestic terrorists,
as agitators, as extremists.
They were rounding them up in large numbers,
arresting people from city to city to city.
And then, what we would see after these arrests
would happen is,
as these cases moved through the court system,
the allegations made against the individuals
tended to fall apart under scrutiny.
So, we looked at 300 arrests in these various cities
and found that more than a third of them had collapsed.
Prosecutors had decided to dismiss them.
They had refused to even file charges in the first place,
or juries acquitted the defendants.
And so, the claims that the government was making
about this massive surge in assaults,
about all these people being terrorists
and domestic extremists and all this sort of stuff,
it just didn’t match up to the reality that,
one, that we were seeing on the ground as we were filming,
and, two, what the courts were finding
as they looked at the evidence,
and prosecutors looked at the evidence,
and said, "This is not going to hold up.
We’re dismissing this case."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, A.C., you mentioned Chicago.
There were — you report there were 109 arrests there,
but prosecutors eventually dropped 75.
That’s nearly three-quarters of all the people they arrested.
The charges just disappeared?
A.C. THOMPSON: And that’s a conservative —
that’s a conservative number, too.
I think that number is going to grow in time
as we get more evidence about exactly what’s happened.
But, yeah, the vast bulk of the arrests in Chicago
have been dropped by prosecutors.
And the handful of cases that are still going on
are still working through the system,
but there seem to be some problems
with some of those, as well.
Experts told us — law enforcement experts,
former Department of Justice civil rights personnel said,
"Look, this looks like a pattern and practice of bad arrests,
of unjustified arrests."
And that looks like what we’re seeing across the country.
When you have arrest after arrest that doesn’t hold up,
that prosecutors don’t have faith in the evidence,
that juries don’t have faith in the evidence,
that’s telling you that this is sort of more
than just your normal, run-of-the-mill police effort.
These are bad arrests.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how do these compare to the normal rates
for U.S. attorneys or federal authorities in criminal cases?
A.C. THOMPSON: I mean,
that’s what stands out so much — right?
— is, in federal court, federal prosecutors
win more than 90% of their cases.
Very few are dismissed.
They lose very, very few at trial.
They are incredibly successful.
This wave of arrests, stemming from the immigration sweeps
and the protests against them,
they’ve been very unsuccessful with.
They’re having problems in city after city
trying to do these cases.
And that means, you know, that is a reflection of,
in all likelihood, unjustified arrests being made
by Border Patrol agents, ICE agents, other federal agents
that, frankly, don’t normally deal with protests,
with crowds, with these kinds of situations
that they’ve been thrust into over the past year.
AMY GOODMAN: A.C. Thompson,
we want to thank you for being with us,
investigative reporter with ProPublica
and the PBS series Frontline.
His new documentary, Caught in the Crackdown,
is streaming on YouTube, PBS.org and the PBS app.
We thank you for being with us.
He’s talking to us from San Francisco.
I’m in the Bay Area, too.
We’ll be at Tower Theatre in Sacramento tonight
at 7:00 for the theatrical premiere of Steal This Story,
Please!, about Democracy Now! I’ll be doing the Q&A
with the director Tia Lessin after the film.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show in Wisconsin,
where police fired tear gas,
pepper spray and rubber-coated steel bullets
at hundreds of animal rights activists
Saturday as they attempted to rescue
about 2,000 dogs from a facility
that breeds beagles for medical experimentation.
The crackdown by Dane County sheriff’s
deputies left scores of people injured,
including a protester who had two teeth knocked out.
Twenty-five people were arrested.
Protesters were attempting to enter a property
owned by Ridglan Farms, which agreed last fall
to surrender its state breeding license
and stop selling dogs to other labs by July
1st as part of a deal
to avoid prosecution on animal mistreatment charges.
A state judge found Ridglan Farms
likely broke Wisconsin animal cruelty laws
by housing beagles in brutal conditions,
performing surgeries without anesthesia,
and leaving wounds untreated, along with other violations.
Former workers say some beagles had their vocal cords
surgically cut to silence them, a process known as debarking.
Ridglan Farms still holds federal research credentials
and plans to continue breeding beagles
for its own experimentation.
Last month, activists successfully
entered the property and freed about two dozen beagles,
who were subsequently adopted.
For more, we go to Madison, Wisconsin,
where we’re joined by Rebekah Robinson
with the Coalition to Save the Ridglan Dogs.
She’s been involved in the animal protection movement
for over a decade. She was one of those arrested
at Saturday’s action at Ridglan Farms.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Rebekah.
Can you describe exactly what happened on Saturday
and why you were involved with this protest?
REBEKAH ROBINSON: Yeah.
So, we have been trying for over a decade
to get the government to do something
to help the Ridglan beagles.
And so, on Saturday, nonviolent protesters
attempted to rescue those beagles,
who were in desperate need of help.
These were teachers, veterinarians,
students, software engineers. These were ordinary citizens
who were trying to help these Ridglan dogs,
to go in and take them to safety,
get them the veterinary care that they needed.
And what we were met with
was overwhelming police brutality.
There’s no other way to describe it.
People were tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed
and pushed down, injured in horrible ways,
after simply trying to help the dogs.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how many people were arrested?
What were they charged with?
REBEKAH ROBINSON: So, there are about 25 people arrested.
I was one of them.
I’m still not clear on what I was charged with.
I was given no paperwork.
I wasn’t told why I was being arrested.
I wasn’t read my Miranda rights.
When we asked why we were being arrested,
the cops just kind of shrugged.
And so, I’m still not clear on why I was arrested.
The five who are still in custody
are going to be arraigned later today.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about the broader
crackdown against animal rights advocates nationwide,
particularly under the so-called
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006?
REBEKAH ROBINSON: Yeah.
So, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act
basically protects any animal enterprise,
but it does so in such an unjust way
that it essentially limits
our First Amendment rights to protest
and to expose what’s happening at these corporations.
Ridglan Farms is a multimillion-dollar business,
but there is no visibility into what happens there.
And if we were to try and go in and take footage
or try and expose what’s happening there,
the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act
is designed to prevent that,
to prevent even workers there from sharing their footage
and what is going on inside of those buildings.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And why is it continuing to —
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Democratic Congressman Mark
Pocan of Wisconsin asking Health Secretary
Robert F. Kennedy last week why the National Institute of Health
continues to provide grants to groups that use beagles
from Ridglan Farms for experimentation.
REP. MARK POCAN: We have something called Ridglan
Farms, that’s a beagle breeder for research.
They’ve had 311 code violations,
including very serious harm to the health of dogs.
The head of NIH, which you can ask,
I said some of the nicest things about —
I really like your head of the NIH, that you have —
said that there’s a policy about beagle
testing that would not allow animals to be tortured.
And that’s part of what’s happening with this facility.
So, grants are still, in the last month,
going to groups that are getting beagles from Ridglan Farms.
Could you please take a look at this?
Because they are under, right now, not a court order,
a settlement to close down
part of their breeding facility by July 1st,
but they’re not getting rid of the 2,000 beagles they have.
And if they don’t, we know what’s going to happen.
They’re going to get euthanized.
And I just want to make sure that for that commitment,
which is a good commitment, not to harm the beagles,
right now you’re still giving money to groups through the NIH
that are using beagles from this highly questionable farm.
HEALTH SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: I have a
hard time —
I believe you, but I have a hard time believing that.
I need to look into this —
REP. MARK POCAN: I would appreciate it.
HEALTH SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: — and talk
to the office, because we’re trying to end —
we’ve done more than any other administration in history
to end animal testing.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Wisconsin Congressman Mark
Pocan questioning the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy.
If you can say, Rebekah Robinson,
why does Ridglan Farms
still hold federal research credentials,
and why is it still operating in Wisconsin?
REBEKAH ROBINSON: So, the USDA is responsible
at the federal level for inspecting Ridglan Farms.
And the USDA has sent the same inspector
for over a decade to inspect Ridglan Farms,
and he has just been rubber- stamping their operations there.
His inspection reports are two to three sentences
that basically say, "Yep, everything’s great here."
He’s clearly got a relationship with them.
And so, we haven’t been able to get the USDA to step up
and actually take a look
at what’s going on inside Ridglan Farms.
And that’s not just related to Ridglan Farms.
The USDA, overall, the inspector general put out a report
saying that USDA inspections of puppy mills nationwide
has been a problem.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what do you expect to happen
July 1 now with the deadline for Ridglan Farms
to shut down these particular projects?
REBEKAH ROBINSON: So, on July 1st, Ridglan Farms
will no longer be able to sell those beagles.
But because of work that we’ve done to let their buyers
know about the conditions at Ridglan
Farms, those buyers have stopped buying from Ridglan Farms,
so they have, essentially,
a lot of beagles that they’ve been unable to sell,
and those beagles are at risk of euthanasia.
We are very concerned that those beagles
are simply going to be euthanized en masse,
because they can’t be sold and they can’t be used.
And so, we’re very concerned
about the safety of those beagles.
And that’s why we went in,
to try to get those beagles to safety.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 20 seconds, Rebekah.
Explain what debarking is.
REBEKAH ROBINSON: So, the way it was conducted
at Ridglan Farms,
the workers would go to the kennel,
and they would essentially hold the dog
while another worker would reach down the dog’s throat
with, like, scissors or forceps.
And then they would rip out the dog’s vocal cords
and throw them on the ground in these barns.
This is what former employees have told us
was happening there. It’s a really horrific practice,
because the dogs are barking in distress.
These are dogs living on wire flooring for their whole lives,
never getting outside, never seeing sunlight.
And then, so, when they’re distressed
and they are barking like that, the workers don’t like it,
so they devocalize them, according to the employees.
AMY GOODMAN: Rebekah Robinson,
I want to thank you for being with us,
member of the Coalition to Save the Ridglan
Dogs, arrested at the action this weekend in Wisconsin.
That does it for our show.
Tonight, I’ll be at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento
for a Q&A after the screening of Steal This Story,
Please! Tomorrow, Thursday,
I’ll be introducing the film at the Roxie in San Francisco
and the Rialto Elmwood in Berkeley,
then at the Seattle International Film
Festival, Uptown Cinema in Seattle.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.