Great reporting from @benfowlkesMMA on growing safety concerns among TKO employees and contractors working UFC and WWE events in Saudi Arabia.
Several workers spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation, accusing the company of prioritizing profits over their safety.
Others expressed frustration over the lack of communication and contingency plans surrounding upcoming events.
Uncrowned reached out to TKO for comment but received no response.
Really important story. Worth reading in full.
For anyone who hasn't heard about this yet: ICE showed up at the front door of Dr. Ann Lawani in Lodi, California, while she was still in her pajamas, shackled her at the wrists, waist, and ankles, and shipped her all the way to a detention center in Louisiana.
She’s a frontline nurse who worked through the worst of COVID, directs the master's nursing program at the University of San Francisco (overseeing 230+ nursing students), and takes care of her 83-year-old dad.
When her family and lawyer tried to find out where she was taken, ICE’s online locator came back with "0 results." It turns out ICE quietly changed its policy the day before her arrest to stop listing thousands of detainees in the public database, so her family had no idea where she was for days while she was bounced from Stockton to Bakersfield to El Paso to Louisiana.
DHS put out a statement claiming she had a 2013 removal order, but they conveniently left out that on the *exact same day* in 2013, an immigration judge granted her Withholding of Removal blocking her deportation to Nigeria because she faced persecution there.
She has zero criminal record, has checked in with ICE for 13 years, and has a valid federal work permit through 2029. Because they legally can't send her to Nigeria, Rep. Josh Harder says ICE has been trying to quietly deport her to an undisclosed third country behind her lawyer's back.
Full write-up and breakdown of what happened here:
https://t.co/cu2O8Gz0Md
Support independent coverage & frontline updates:
https://t.co/cRnzhrQHyV
Trump's ICE thugs used her credit card while she was in ICE 🧊 custody!
Hanne Engan, a Norwegian citizen living in California with Type 1 diabetes.
#HoldTheCrooksAccountable
ICE confiscated her continuous glucose monitor & insulin causing her blood glucose to spike over 500 mg/dL, alongside a 10-pound weight loss & infections.
Translation:
He has to say objectively terrible things to get more attention. This sport and the fanbase embrace terrible things, so he'll keep doing it because it's profitable for him. There's no code of conduct and certainly no repercussions from the UFC.
NEW: The @nytimes confirms that ICE deliberately electronically "disappeared" tens of thousands of people in detention and ordered contractors to refuse to reveal where they're held to family or lawyers.
30% of all immigrants detained in ICE jails now have their location hidden.
Josh Barnett sounds off on slap fighting after seeing what happened to Jake Hager:
“It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
We've had our differences in the past, but watching Jake Hager go out there, it's just like, what are you doing? What are you thinking?
It's the dumbest thing you could ever do.
It kills me to see an Oklahoma wrestler, a collegiate D1 wrestler, an All-American, who wrestled in WWE and AEW and fought in Bellator, out there doing this.
There's so much more you could do with your life and career. You'd be better off doing MMA than ever doing slap fighting... I can't say anything good about slap fighting.”
@NFLNumbersGuy No matter how tough you are or if you can actually fight…. NEVER get in a street fight …. Just way too many cowards willing to cheap shot you and concrete… ya, the ground will be your worst enemy