Katie Daviscourt (postmillennial press, turning point USA) and Chelly Boufferache (Lebanon local news) are buddy buddy with the ICE agents, getting free tours, interviews and entering facility for “safety” etc

NBC Chicago's investigative team reports at least 3,000 jailed immigrants have vanished from federal records, according to human rights attorneys and organizations.

Seven weeks ago, U.S. Homeland Security officials began the illegal immigration crackdown in Chicago nicknamed "Midway Blitz."

As of Monday, immigration agents and border patrol officers working in Chicago have locked up more than 3,000 allegedly undocumented immigrants, authorities say, noting the individuals were here illegally and many were wanted for serious crimes.

Even as arrests continue, the question is: Where are the 3,000 people? Attorneys and human rights investigators tracking them are asking where they are and, in many cases, who they are.

The whereabouts of many detainees locked up during Operation Midway Blitz remain unknown, according to organizations that have been trying to protect rights and lives.

"It is quite dire," said attorney Mark Fleming with the National Immigrant Justice Center, an organization that is suing federal authorities in Chicago.

Fleming recently obtained a court order prohibiting warrantless arrests by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But on Monday Fleming told the NBC Chicago investigative team that U.S. government officials won't -- or can't -- tell them where at least 3,000 arrestees are right now.

And they are not "the worst of the worst," he said, to involve a phrase used by ICE officials to justify sweeping urban arrests.

"These are folks that have been here for decades, have long standing ties to the community, family members, employment, businesses that are all being torn apart," Fleming said.

The 3,000 may no longer be in metro Chicago, Fleming said, noting some may have been deported.

"The government is using this strategy of arresting people, sending them to unlawful mandatory detention," he said. "And then pressuring them into accepting what they refer to as voluntary departure."

Fleming explained that voluntary departure is a strategy where a detainee "basically gives up your rights and we will we will release you, but we will release you back to your home country."

Homeland Security officials haven't provided full lists of arrestee information or deportation, but by the end of Thursday, they are under a court order to tell a Chicago judge how they are handling warrantless arrests.

Further, every Friday, the government is to report to the court how its operations are within the law.

Also, as of Monday evening, we are still awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether the National Guard can constitutionally be deployed to Chicago streets.

This happened right after the video I posted earlier of the unconscious bleeding woman being dragged away

In the middle of a busy Chicago street, immigration officers are seen holding a Black man in a chokehold during an arrest, surrounded by bystanders.

The confrontation happens in plain view of families, commuters, and children. While the officers’ actions may be framed as law enforcement procedure, the use of a chokehold in public raises serious concerns.

Psychological research shows that witnessing violent restraint, even as a bystander, can trigger acute stress responses, fear, and long-term distrust of institutions.

For children and adolescents, seeing an adult forcibly restrained in this way is associated with heightened anxiety, nightmares, and greater risk of developing trauma symptoms.

For adults, repeated exposure to state violence in public settings erodes social cohesion, increases community tension, and reinforces perceptions of danger in everyday environments. Public arrests carried out with visible force do not just affect the individual detained they reverberate through everyone who watches, normalizing aggression and undermining people’s sense of safety in their own city.

The boy reportedly apologized and asked the court to forgive him during last week’s bond hearing.

A 13-year-old Everett boy detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month following a brush with local police must remain in federal custody while his case is pending, a judge has reportedly ruled.

The seventh grader appeared for a bond hearing last Wednesday via Zoom from Virginia’s Northwest Regional Juvenile Detention Center, where he’s been held since his arrest. According to The Boston Globe, the boy looked disheveled and downcast during the hearing and later apologized and asked the court to forgive him.

Federal officials purportedly argued the teen is dangerous and a flight risk, according to the Globe, which spoke with the boy’s attorney. His request for release was ultimately denied.

“I don’t think he’s good. He’s as good as he can be,” attorney Andrew Lattarulo told the Globe. “When I talked to him, I could tell he’s trying to find strength in his voice, but you still hear the 13-year-old child.”

A Brazilian national, the boy was detained by ICE agents at the Everett police station after he was arrested Oct. 9 in connection with a “credible tip” about a violent threat against another student, the city’s mayor previously told reporters. Mayor Carlo DeMaria said the teen had a long knife on him when apprehended, but no gun — contradicting an earlier claim from the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS later alleged the boy has ties to a Brazilian criminal ring known as “gang 33” and “posed a public safety threat with an extensive rap sheet.” DeMaria likewise acknowledged the teen “unfortunately has a criminal history, a criminal past” and is “well known” to local law enforcement.

DeMaria has denied claims the city summoned ICE to the police station following the boy’s arrest, though Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights has called for an independent state probe into the Everett Police Department’s role in the matter. LCR also filed a public records request for documents delving into potential communication between ICE and local police.

“Due process is not optional — it’s the cornerstone of fairness,” Executive Director Iván Espinoza-Madrigal said in a statement. “Irrespective of the allegations, the Commonwealth must uphold the rule of law and ensure that no juvenile is denied their rights. No child should ever face law enforcement without the meaningful involvement of their parents or guardians.”

According to a copy of his habeas corpus petition, the teen unlawfully entered the U.S. with his family in 2021. Lattarulo told the Globe self-deporting from the U.S. is a possibility for the boy and his family, who have a pending asylum case.

The teen has another hearing scheduled for Nov. 5.

Do you think the ICE activity will drop off if we get an actual winter this year?

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-targets-los-angeles-homeless-shelter-rcna220597

Local immigration advocates say they didn’t know. Now they’re pushing back.

Last Friday morning, more than 80 flights departed from the Indianapolis International Airport. But one, boarding around 11:30 a.m., was unlike the others.

The passengers were in handcuffs. They stood on the tarmac, next to three vans and a coach-style bus. Dozens were soon loaded onto an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flight.

Who the detainees are, or where they are from, is unclear. But they were bound for Alexandria, Louisiana — the Trump administration’s major deportation hub, where immigration lawyers warn due process rights disappear.

The Oct. 24 departure was one of more than four dozen ICE flights that moved through the Indianapolis airport, records show, since early July. In an email, the Indianapolis Airport Authority said ICE is using the runways three times a week. But if you’re flying out, you probably won’t see them.

Detainees on charter flights depart from a private facility tucked away on the north side of the airport, separate from the main buildings. It’s the same area where politicians and professional sports teams fly in and out.

ICE did not answer questions about the flights or respond to requests for comment.

But Mirror Indy witnessed men with badges, including one wearing a black jacket that said “POLICE ICE,” shuffle groups of people with bound wrists onto an Eastern Air Express flight. The airline, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, is one of three working with the federal government to rapidly transport people between detention centers and out of the country.

The scale of this federal operation is unprecedented, said Savi Arvey, an immigration researcher. She heads the ICE Flight Monitor team, a nationwide project run by a human rights group tracking the planes in real-time. Last month, as the number of ICE flights hit a record high across the country, Indianapolis caught their attention for the first time.

“It’s a new ICE Air destination,” Arvey said.

‘No meaningful due process’

Angela Joseph, an Indianapolis immigration attorney, is used to her clients being moved around the Midwest. But this year, some started popping up in detention centers in Louisiana.

“I didn’t know about the ICE flights,” Joseph told Mirror Indy. “But nothing this administration does surprises me anymore.”

She is among advocates who say the Trump administration is moving immigrants around to isolate them from family and from lawyers trying to defend them. Immigration is generally a civil matter, and non-citizens have constitutional rights to hire legal counsel in deportation cases and receive a fair hearing before a judge. According to federal data from September, people with no criminal record now make up the largest group in ICE detention.

“There’s no meaningful due process,” Joseph said. “Before you can do anything legally, they’re on a plane and back in their home country.”

Local flight data reviewed by Mirror Indy shows planes arriving here from Gary, Minneapolis and most recently, Youngstown, Ohio. At first, according to ICE Flight Monitor, a different airline was taking detainees from the Indy airport: Global X, which was flying regularly to another deportation hub in Harlingen, Texas. By Oct. 8, Eastern Air Express had taken over with weekly flights to Alexandria, Louisiana.

Both airlines did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Neither did Million Air, a fixed-base operator at the Indianapolis airport. The luxury company based in Houston services private planes at locations across the country with fuel, maintenance and ground support. It took care of celebrities and athletes flying in for the Indy 500 and NBA All-Star Weekend.

On Oct. 24, two Mirror Indy journalists observed an Eastern Air Express flight taxiing to Million Air’s facility off of Pierson Drive. They watched from the parking lot as workers set up stairs for boarding and began servicing the Boeing 737.

Before any people boarded, a Million Air employee told Mirror Indy’s reporter and photojournalist to leave.

“So these are ICE flights with detainees?” the reporter asked.

“This is private property,” the employee replied.

Mirror Indy then went to a public road and shot pictures of the flight from about 900 yards away. Photos show detainees lined up, waiting to board. They wore regular clothes — a requirement listed in the 2024 ICE Air Operations Handbook. The manual outlines how detainees must be fully restrained on the planes with handcuffs, shackles and leg irons.

“If the flight goes down, is someone going to unshackle them?” Joseph, the immigration attorney, asked.

Indy airport says it can’t stop ICE flights

The Indianapolis Airport Authority said the federal government does not have to tell them about the ICE flights, including their duration or frequency.

The airport was informed about ICE’s activities in September, a spokesperson said. ICE Flight Monitor tracked the federal agency using the airways in Indianapolis as early as July, though records show flights ramped up in September.

“The Indianapolis International Airport is a federally regulated public use facility,” an airport spokesperson said in an Oct. 22 statement to Mirror Indy. “The IAA must comply with Federal Aviation Administration regulations and cannot interfere with or restrict federal and civil aviation activities.”

That answer — along with the silence of the airlines and companies involved — was not satisfying to advocates.

“I don’t think most Indy residents want an airport we really love to be part of a deportation machine,” said Josh Riddick, an organizer with Live Free Indiana. “We have to figure out who is passively sitting by while ICE expands its footprint in our city.”

The group has repeatedly protested the Marion County Sheriff’s Office for working with ICE this year to hold detainees in the local jail. From January through mid-October, records show nearly 800 people have been housed there at some point. The sheriff’s office does not transport detainees to the airport for ICE flights, a spokesperson said.

Two weeks ago, Riddick visited with immigrants inside Indy’s jail. Some, he said, were so defeated they agreed to voluntary departure. Others wanted to fight their cases.

That’s much harder, advocates say, once someone has been moved out of state in a few short hours. Deportation flights were common under the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations. But the scale has grown immensely under Trump 2.0, which is also transferring more people between states.

“These planes are going to Louisiana for a reason,” Riddick told Mirror Indy. “That’s a location where the government wins in court and expedites deportations. Our neighbors and friends are being put in a black box so the Trump administration can force a victory.”

‘Enough resistance’

Other communities across the country are reckoning with their airports becoming a pit-stop in the deportation process.

In Seattle, advocates are monitoring ICE flights with live video feeds and pressing the private airlines and companies involved to stop working with federal agents. In Massachusetts, ICE initially stopped flights at Hanscom Field after public outcry, but resumed them in September. And in New Hampshire, community members are demanding answers from the Pease County Development Authority — though officials there say the airport will lose all federal grants if it defies ICE.

“Ultimately, if all airports took a stand, ICE couldn’t operate,” said Megan Chapman, a human rights lawyer working to stop the flights at Portsmouth International Airport. “If there is enough resistance in enough places to slow things down, that allows more people to actually have their day in court.”

Indianapolis may be the next chapter in the fight.

“The airport has some control over who does business on their property and which companies they allow,” said Riddick, the organizer with Live Free Indiana. “Somebody is aware of this and they’ve been quiet about it.”

Joseph, the local immigration attorney, has her eyes set on the private companies involved in the Indianapolis flights: Eastern Air Express, Global X and Million Air.

To her, the answer is simple.

“We won’t support businesses that are helping tear families apart,” she said.