Top Tweets for #DefundIce

Border Patrol pulls over a 20-year-old in Slidell, LA for “white lights on the back of your vehicle… your reverse lights are on the whole time.” Then, before writing a single ticket, the agent asks: “What’s your citizenship?” The driver, Alan Laureano, was born in Slidell. His passenger — his 13-year-old stepbrother — was born in Pearl River, Louisiana. Both are U.S. citizens. Didn’t matter. Twice, on camera, the agent tells Laureano he’s going to “check” the kid and “if he’s illegal, I will take him.” He tries to open the 13-year-old’s car door himself. Laureano locks it and rolls the window down instead. The agent then interrogates the child directly — full name, spelling, date of birth, birthplace — while Laureano stands his ground and refuses to hand over his own ID, telling the agent he doesn’t have the right to stop him over a taillight. Immigration attorney Michael Gahagan reviewed the video and called it what it is: “an illegal detention.” Border Patrol isn’t authorized to detain someone over a traffic violation — they need independent reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation, and that has to come first, not get invented after the stop. DHS’s after-the-fact statement claims the stop was based on “reasonable suspicion or probable cause of federal law violations” — but doesn’t say what that violation was. WWL Louisiana asked twice. No answer either time. This is the pattern: pretext stop, pivot to citizenship, threaten a kid with removal before confirming anything. It only looks “routine” until you’re the one being asked to prove you belong in the country you were born in.

A second ex-wife of the ICE agent who killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine has come forward. "If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes. ... I have feared for a long time that his anger, aggression, and escalating behavior would eventually result in severe, life threatening violence."

🚨BREAKING: An ICE detention center employee shot a protester, outside the facility, and then drove away, in Aurora, Colorado. According to police, the woman and her friend took photos of employees’ vehicles before walking away. Investigators say the employee, Brandon Booth, then pulled out a handgun, fired a shot that struck her in the lower body, and drove away. He has been arrested on probable cause of attempted second-degree murder, assault, felony menacing, and other charges. And before you act shocked… We’ve watched video after video of vehicles leaving ICE detention centers while firing pepper spray, and pepper-ball rounds, at protesters… We’ve watched them hit protesters with their cars… And now we’re seeing an ICE detention employee shoot a protester, and drive away. Force is becoming normalized against people exercising their First Amendment rights, and this is the unfortunate expected outcome. No one protesting outside a government detention center should have to wonder if they’re going to be shot for holding a sign, or taking a photo. This is exactly why accountability matters. Because if this pattern is allowed to continue, it won’t stop on its own.