Please execute this termination today

Jeffrey St. Clair >>

+ In a federal court filing last Thursday, the Trump administration admitted ICE agents did not have a warrant when they detained Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil in March, conceded that it was a warrantless arrest: “We were permitted to arrest him without a warrant, because he gave us reason to think he would escape, namely that he said he was going to walk away if we didn’t have a warrant.”

This admission by the Feds contradicts what officers told Khalil and his lawyers at the time of his arrest and in a later arrest report.

+ How Columbia grad student Mohsen Mahdawi was entrapped and kidnapped at his own citizenship hearing: “At his citizenship interview, he signed a pledge to “defend the Constitution.” The official left to go “check” something. Then masked & armed agents came in, shackled Mahdawi, and tried to fly him to Louisiana.”

+ How is it possible to feel any allegiance to the government of a country that does things like this to children who are citizens of the US as a matter of policy? “For months, NPR has been receiving tips about the Detroit-Canada border, immigrants and U.S. citizen children being held without access to legal counsel, because they took a wrong turn on the highway.”

+ After terminating legal support for noncitizen children, the Trump administration is making 4-year-olds represent themselves in immigration court.

+ It appears that a former Tesla employee, now a DOGE staffer, named Tarak Makecha who was working as an IT “advisor” at the Department of Justice, spearheaded the drive to eliminate funding for immigration lawyers for children. In an email to Deputy Attorney General William Taylor, Makecha wrote imperiously: “Please execute this termination today and please forward me the termination email to confirm it went out so I can report completion to the WH.”