True Left

4-year-old girl receiving medical treatment in US could die if deported, lawyer says

Gina Amato, the lawyer for the 4-year-old girl, provided an update on the family's efforts to continue "lifesaving medical treatment" in the United States.

Opinion: Think Trump’s deportations have been bad? Wait until his civilian army gets started.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem incorrectly defined habeas corpus during a recent congressional hearing, augmenting serious doubts that top White House administration officials understand and are willing to respect the rule of law and legal rights of civilians on U.S. soil. 

Indeed, Noem oversees the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been “forcibly disappearing” undocumented immigrants, international students and permanent residents off the streets. ICE officers frequently wear masks, which could help them avoid accountability for tactics like warrantless arrests, “knock and arrests” and smashing car windows.

In practice, ICE operates with relatively little oversight, but in principle, it is accountable to the federal government and has been subject to extensive civil litigation in the courts.

Yes, ICE is deeply flawed, but there is a real risk of something far worse.   

Over the past few months, Erik Prince, former head of the private military company Blackwater (now known by the name Constellis), has pitched multiple proposals to the White House to help with mass deportations. Prince has argued that achieving President Trump’s aggressive deportation goals will require the government to “supplement” ICE’s capabilities. According to one of his proposals, a new Prince company, 2USV, would train and deploy an army of as many as 100,000 armed and deputized citizens.

The administration has not yet decided to implement the plan, though Trump said he “wouldn’t be opposed to it, necessarily.” As academic experts on non-state armed groups like militias and on immigration, we are alarmed at this possibility.

This is because scholarly research on the type of group Prince would mobilize suggests three key patterns. First, these groups are often tasked with committing human rights violations in pursuit of the government’s political goals. Second, the current domestic political environment in the U.S. is conducive to their formation. Lastly, employing groups like this would allow federal government officials — including the president ◊ to evade accountability for illegal or inhumane tactics.

Prince’s proposed “army” would be a “pro-government militia,” which the academic literature defines as an organized, armed group that is government-sponsored and not part of regular security forces.

Because these groups can be kept at arms’ length from political elites, research shows that many governments around the world use these militias to “evade accountability for strategically useful violence.” Governments shift blame to such militias to retain deniability in the face of domestic pressures or international condemnation. For this reason, they are associated with significant reductions in a country’s respect for human rights, as seen in other countries throughout history, including Serbia, Argentina and Chile.

The Serbian nationalist “Tigers” committed numerous war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s, but Serbian Security Service officials clearly linked to the group’s operations were acquitted on all charges by the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. That was because it could not be “proven beyond a reasonable doubt” that they “planned or organized the crimes.”

Other militias have conducted disappearances, assassinations and torture so that the government could keep its hands “clean,” as during Operation Condor in the 1970s in Argentina and in connection with the Sept. 11, 1973, coup in Chile. 

Paramilitaries are often thought of as characteristic of dictatorships, but research shows that informal pro-government militias tend to emerge in “weak” democracies where leaders are navigating fragile institutions of accountability. “Strong” democracies usually prevent these groups from emerging because they have more robust constraints on the executive branch and corruption is harder to hide from the public. 

The troubling fact is that Trump’s attacks on American political institutions and independent media integrity have eroded U.S. democracy.

One metric used by political scientists to measure regime types is the Polity score, which ranges from -10 (very autocratic, such as North Korea) to 10 (very democratic, such as Sweden). As of 2020, the U.S. had been downgraded to a 5, putting it in the category of “weak democracy.” 

What does this mean for the future of U.S. immigration enforcement?

Expanded efforts through shady paramilitary groups is becoming surprisingly possible in the U.S., and the conditions are ripe for this proposed army to commit human rights abuses. It’s worth remembering that Prince’s former company Blackwater was involved in human rights abuses in the past, including a massacre of at least 14 Iraqi civilians, whose perpetrators were pardoned by Trump in 2020.

The administration is already relying on dubious means to rush deportation processes while the courts try to slow them down. Consequently, the Department of Homeland Security is already choosing to ignore court rulings with some operations, like one recent deportation of migrants to South Sudan. Their willingness to violate the rule of law is captured by former acting ICE Director Tom Homan’s statement: “I don’t care what judges think.” 

Skeptics may argue that the U.S. is unique, that these abuses couldn’t happen here, or that American electoral institutions and the free press can still hold policymakers accountable for deeds of private contractors.

But democratic institutions in the U.S. are undoubtedly disintegrating. The press can only hold leaders accountable if it is believed, and current trust in the press is at an all-time low. 

It may be that Prince’s private army proposal will never be accepted. It may be that continued deportation efforts are challenged in courts and the administration will begin to abide by substantive rulings against it. It is possible future immigration policy will be more humane.

But for now, the political incentives exist for the unprecedented use of pro-government militias on American soil. Immigrants may be the current target of increasingly reckless enforcement efforts, but repressive action by domestic paramilitaries may not stop there.

This must be prevented while mechanisms of accountability still survive. 

Breaking down new numbers on immigration arrests under Trump

Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Trump's second term topped 100,000 this week, as federal agents intensified efforts to detain unauthorized immigrants in courthouses, worksites and communities across the U.S., internal government data obtained by CBS News shows. Camilo Montoya-Galvez breaks it down.

Speak of the devil: ("Law and Order", ROFL!!!)

'Never trust you again': Outrage as Trump eliminates 373 grants designed to help fight crime

ST. LOUIS — Violent crime was already trending down from a covid-era spike when President Donald Trump presented a picture of unbridled crime in America on the campaign trail in 2024. Now his administration has eliminated about $500 million in grants to organizations that buttress public safety, including many working to prevent gun violence.

In Oakland, California, a hospital-based program to prevent retaliatory gun violence lost a $2 million grant just as the traditionally turbulent summer months approach. Another $2 million award was pulled from a Detroit program that offers social services and job skills to young people in violent neighborhoods. And in St. Louis, a clinic treating the physical and emotional injuries of gunshot victims also lost a $2 million award.

They are among 373 grants that the U.S. Department of Justice abruptly terminated in April. The largest share of the nixed awards were designated for community-based violence intervention — programs that range from conflict mediation and de-escalation to hospital-based initiatives that seek to prevent retaliation from people who experience violent injuries.

Gun violence is among America’s most deadly public health crises, medical experts say.

Among programs whose grants were terminated were those for protecting children, victims’ assistance, hate-crime prevention, and law enforcement and prosecution, according to an analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. The grants totaled $820 million when awarded, but some of that money has been spent.

“Not only are these funds being pulled away from worthy investments that will save lives,” said Thomas Abt, founding director of the Violence Reduction Center at the University of Maryland, “but the way that this was done — by pulling authorized funding without warning — is going to create a lasting legacy of mistrust."

The Justice Department “is focused on prosecuting criminals, getting illegal drugs off the streets, and protecting all Americans from violent crime,” according to a statement provided by agency spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre. “Discretionary funds that are not aligned with the administration’s priorities are subject to review and reallocation, including funding for clinics that engage in race-based selectivity.”

The Council on Criminal Justice analysis of the terminated grants found that descriptions of 31% of them included references to “diversity,” “equity,” “race,” “racial,” “racism,” or “gender.”

Baldassarre’s statement said the department is committed to working with organizations “to hear any appeal, and to restore funding as appropriate.” Indeed, it restored seven of the terminated grants for victims’ services after Reuters reported on the cuts in April.

But the cuts have already prompted layoffs and reductions at other organizations around the country. Five groups filed a lawsuit on May 21 to restore the grants in their entirety.

Joseph Griffin, executive director of the Oakland nonprofit Youth Alive, which pioneered hospital-based violence intervention in the 1990s, said his organization had spent only about $60,000 of its $2 million grant before it was axed. The grant was primarily to support the intervention program and was awarded for a three-year period but lasted just seven months. The money would have helped pay to intervene with about 30 survivors of gun violence to prevent retaliatory violence. He’s trying to find a way to continue the work, without overtaxing his team.

“We will not abandon a survivor of violence at the hospital bedside in the same way that the federal government is abandoning our field,” he said.

The cuts are also hitting St. Louis, often dogged by being labeled one of the most dangerous cities in America. The city created an Office of Violence Prevention with money available under former President Joe Biden, and various groups received Justice Department grants, too.

Locals say the efforts have helped: The 33% drop in the city’s homicide rate from 2019 to 2024 was the second-largest decrease among 29 major cities examined by the Council on Criminal Justice.

“I don't think there's any doubt that there's some positive impact from the work that's happening,” said University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Chris Sullivan, who received a grant from the Justice Department to assess the work of the city’s new Office of Violence Prevention. That research grant remains in place.

But the Justice Department slashed two other grants in St. Louis, including $2 million for Power4STL. The nonprofit operates the Bullet Related Injury Clinic, dubbed the BRIC, which provides free treatment for physical and mental injuries caused by bullets.

The BRIC had about $1.3 million left on its grant when the award was terminated in April. LJ Punch, a former trauma surgeon who founded the clinic in 2020, said it was intended to fund a mobile clinic, expand mental health services, evaluate the clinic’s programs, and pay for a patient advisory board. The BRIC won't abandon those initiatives, Punch said, but will likely need to move slower.

Keisha Blanchard joined the BRIC’s advisory board after her experience as a patient at the clinic following a January 2024 gun injury. Someone fired a bullet into her back from the rear window of a Chevy Impala while Blanchard was out for a lunchtime stroll with a friend from her neighborhood walking group. The shooting was random, Blanchard said, but people always assume she did something to provoke it. “It’s so much shame that comes behind that,” she said.

The 42-year-old said the shooting and her initial medical treatment left her feeling angry and unseen. Her family wasn’t allowed to be with her at the hospital since the police didn’t know who shot her or why. When she asked about taking the bullet out, she was told that the common medical practice is to leave it in. “We're not in the business of removing bullets,” she recalled being told. At a follow-up appointment, she said, she watched her primary care doctor google what to do for a gunshot wound.

“Nobody cares what's going to happen to me after this,” Blanchard recalled thinking.

Before she was referred to the BRIC, she said, she was treated as though she should be happy just to be alive. But a part of her died in the shooting, she said. Her joyful, carefree attitude gave way to hypervigilance. She stopped taking walks. She uprooted herself, moving to a neighborhood 20 miles away.

The bullet stayed lodged inside her, forcing her to carry a constant reminder of the violence that shattered her sense of safety, until Punch removed it from her back in November. Blanchard said the removal made her feel “reborn.”

It’s a familiar experience among shooting survivors, according to Punch.

“People talk about the distress about having bullets still inside their bodies, and how every waking conscious moment brings them back to the fact that that's still inside,” Punch said. “But they're told repeatedly inside conventional care settings that there's nothing that needs to be done.”

The Justice Department grant to the BRIC had been an acknowledgment, Punch said, that healing has a role in public safety by quelling retaliatory violence.

“The unhealed trauma in the body of someone who's gotten the message that they are not safe can rapidly turn into an act of violence when that person is threatened again,” Punch said.

Community gun violence, even in large cities, is concentrated among relatively small groups of people who are often both victims and perpetrators, according to researchers. Violence reduction initiatives are frequently tailored to those networks.

Jennifer Lorentz heads the Diversion Unit in the office of the St. Louis Circuit Attorney, the city’s chief prosecutor. The unit offers mostly young, nonviolent offenders an opportunity to avoid prosecution by completing a program to address the issues that initially led to their arrest. About 80% of the participants have experienced gun violence and are referred to the BRIC, Lorentz said, calling the clinic critical to her program’s success.

“We're getting them these resources, and we're changing the trajectory of their lives,” Lorentz said. “Helping people is part of public safety.”

Punch said the BRIC staffers were encouraged during the Justice Department application process to emphasize their reach into St. Louis’ Black community, which is disproportionately affected by gun violence. He suspects that emphasis is why its grant was terminated.

Punch likened the grant terminations to only partially treating tuberculosis, which allows the highly infectious disease to become resistant to medicine.

“If you partially extend a helping hand to somebody, and then you rip it away right when they start to trust you, you assure they will never trust you again,” he said. “If your intention is to prevent violence, you don't do that.”

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Trump, the failed "businessman" who has bankrupted multiple businesses will clearly never understand why a leader needs to be trustworthy. This will be one of his biggest failures yet! No one does business with people they cannot trust if they can avoid it, should all SERIOUS business people understand this?