Trump’s Mass Deportation Op Grinds On
We start today with two incidents that are reminiscent of the peak Trump administration violence during mass deportation operations back in the winter, then turn to a major appeals court ruling that should temper some of the worst elements of the administration’s brutal third-country deportation policy.
ICE Shooting in Austin
An ICE agent shot Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan national, during a traffic stop in Austin, Texas, on Sunday. He was reportedly initially hospitalized, with a gunshot wound to the torso, but later reports suggested he was no longer at the hospital and had been released into ICE custody. DHS confirmed late Sunday that he was in ICE custody. His whereabouts and condition remain unclear.
Videos of the incident on social media that were verified by the New York Times show the later stages of the traffic stop, when shots were fired:
The video then shows an officer exiting the driver’s side of the unmarked S.U.V. and circling around to the back passenger side of the Toyota Corolla. The immigration officer remains to the side of the vehicle as it rolls forward slightly.
Three gunshots ring out, and the Toyota continues rolling forward slowly before coming to a stop. The video then shows the officer running to the driver’s side of the vehicle.
Neither federal, state, or local officers on the scene initially provided medical assistance to Garces Perez, who remained conscious in the videos, according to the NYT.
ICE Injures U.S. Citizen in Illinois
A U.S. citizen suffered injuries to his head, neck, and teeth while being briefly detained by ICE on Sunday morning, local police in Evanston, Illinois said. In a statement, Evanston police said they are investigating the incident and described one officer’s encounter with a federal immigration agent:
The agent told the officer that agents had attempted to identify an individual who resembled a person they were seeking. He said the individual refused to provide identification, was detained for fingerprinting, and resisted detention. Agents later determined he was not the person they were seeking and learned that he was a U.S. citizen. He was released.
A video posted to Facebook appears to show the end of incident, when agents returned to their vehicle and drove away, leaving the injured man sprawled in the street.
Major Ruling on 3rd Country Deportations
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals imposed due process requirements on the Trump administration before it deports people to countries not their own and to which they have no prior ties.
The ruling by two Biden appointees and a Bush II appointee came in a closely-watched class-action case in Boston in which the Trump administration has flouted lower court orders. The case had earlier reached the Supreme Court, which blocked the judge’s initial attempt to impose due process protections and consider holding the administration in contempt.
At its core, the new appeals court ruling requires the administration to give deportees “a meaningful opportunity” to raise fears of persecution or torture in the third country — which necessarily implies notice and an opportunity to be heard, two pillars of due process that have been notably absent. In doing so, the appeals court rejected the administration’s position that a blanket assurance from the third country that deportees will not be persecuted or tortured was sufficient protection.
In related news:
NYT: A Central African Hotel Has Become a Nightmare Prison for U.S. Deportees
WaPo: How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation
4 Killed in Lawless U.S. Boat Strike
Four people were killed Saturday in a U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea. It was the 69th known strike in the year-old lawless high-seas campaign and brought the overall death toll to at least 231 people.
Trump Targets ICC With Sanctions
The Trump administration is preparing to impose sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court that would prohibit it from conducting transactions in U.S. dollars, cutting it off from much of the global financial system, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Greenland Deal Saves Face for Trump?
With the three sides offering starkly different descriptions of what has been agreed to, it remains unclear whether the yet-to-be-signed new security agreement among the United States, Denmark, and Greenland merely restates the existing state of relations among the principals or meaningfully changes the status quo. The agreement could be signed as soon as this week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City. Stay tuned on this one …
Trump Wants Thanks for Kennedy Center
Among the latest developments in Trump’s attack on the Kennedy Center:
WSJ: “At a recent closed-door meeting in the Oval Office, the president expressed deep frustration to advisers that prominent figures in Washington hadn’t publicly thanked him for trying to overhaul the Kennedy Center, according to a senior administration official.”
NYT: How President Trump Broke the Kennedy Center
WaPo: Thousands rally outside shuttered Kennedy Center, chanting ‘Hands off!’
In related news — seriously — Trump has launched a new attack on freedom of the press. See below.
Trump Bans 3 Outlets From White House
In a familiar pattern, President Trump appeared to vent his pique over a court setback in the Kennedy Center fiasco and reassert his dominance of the media narrative by barring from the White House reporters for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico because he disliked their news coverage.
The flagrant viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment was quickly met with a lawsuit by the three outlets this morning after their reporters were denied access to the White House grounds over the weekend.
Arch Madness: Snipers, Drones, and Ammo
In a transparent attempt to cloak a personal vanity project in national security terms that the Roberts Court might be inclined to defer to the president on, President Trump declared over the weekend that his monstrosity of a triumphal arch will be a “military complex” for drones, snipers, and ammunition.
In the similar White House ballroom project, the only traction Trump has had legally in defending his demolition of the East Wing has been in couching it in national security terms: The ballroom is merely the lid on an underground bunker that courts can’t question.
With his ever more preposterous pronouncement, Trump is essentially daring the six right-wing justices to either call out his fictions or to show their servile obsequiousness.
Prove It
President Trump claimed that Don Jr. will reimburse a Putin-connected Russian businessman for the Bahamian wedding soiree he threw for the princeling and his new bride earlier this year.
The fact that the president felt the need to make the claim suggests the election year heat over the lavish gift from a foreign national had become too much to bear. But it’s not clear how the public will ever know (i) if Don Jr. actually reimbursed Umar Kremlev; (ii) for how much; or (iii) whether that matched the amount Kremlev actually spent.
“A person close to Donald Trump Jr. confirmed that Kremlev was reimbursed,” the WSJ reported, without giving an amount, a date for the reimbursement, or any indication that Kremlev accepted the repayment.
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As a follow-up to the articles cited above, the Guardian has a comprehensive write-up on migrants running afoul of DHS, bundled bound and shackled aboard an aircraft, and whisked off to some bleak prison in an autocratic African country, part of a network of "co-operating" countries that have signed "hosting" — LOL! — agreements with the US to take on deportees NOT originally from these locations. Truly frightening reading, and yet again a measurement of "cruelty is the point", which in fact was stated in so many words by DHS as a "deterrent" to people contemplating migration to the States, and to "encourage" those here already but without papers in hand to "self-deport".
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/21/trump-deportation-deals?utm_term=6ab10ab182667ecafcfe25ca34168e5e&utm_campaign=USMorningBriefing&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=usbriefing_email