Death By Government

We won't remember them for long, and that's understandable given the probability that there will be many more before we get our shit squared away.

I just think I can stop for a minute and acknowledge their existence.

Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres

Heber Sanchez Dominguez

Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz

Parady La

Victor Manuel Diaz

Geraldo Lunas Campos

Keith Porter

Renee Good

Alex Pretti

US witnessed many ICE-related deaths in 2026. Here are their stories

Shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good are two of at least nine deaths related to immigration law enforcement in US.

The killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by federal immigration agents this month has shocked the United States, prompting protests across the country and igniting calls for accountability.

But Pretti and Good are far from the only deaths linked to immigration law enforcement.

At least six immigrants have died in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency already in 2026, and a seventh person was fatally shot by an off-duty ICE officer.

Last year, 32 deaths were reported in ICE custody.

While most of the deaths were due to health complications, some of the late detainees’ families have made accusations of abuse and medical neglect against ICE.

Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, was killed by immigration officers on Saturday morning in Minneapolis. Good was shot on January 7, also in Minneapolis, after she tried to drive away from federal agents who surrounded her car.

Here are the stories of the others whose death is linked to immigration law enforcement:

Keith Porter

On New Year’s Eve, an off-duty ICE agent shot Porter, 43, to death in Los Angeles.

The exact circumstances of the shooting remain contested, and there are no known videos of the incident.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described Porter – who was Black – as an “active shooter”, but his family insists that he was merely firing his gun to welcome the new year, which is an illegal but widely observed US tradition.

“No parent should ever have to bury their child, and the pain of this loss is something I would not wish on anyone,” Porter’s mother, Franceola Armstrong, said in a statement on an online fundraiser.

“My son leaves behind two beautiful daughters, ages 10 and 20. They were his heart. Everything he did, every plan he made, was for them.”

No charges have been filed in the case.

DHS has pushed to justify the shooting, accusing Porter of shooting at the officer.

The department said the agent went outside his apartment complex to investigate the sound of gunshots, and when he encountered Porter, he ordered him to drop his weapon.

“When the subject refused to comply, the officer fired defensively with his service weapon at the subject to disarm him. The subject fired at least three rounds at the officer,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

The ICE agent was not harmed in the incident.

Porter’s family lawyer has raised questions over the DHS account, calling for evidence that the slain father of two fired at the officer.

Jamal Tooson, the lawyer, also criticised the ICE agent for confronting Porter with his weapon instead of involving the local police, who are well-trained and familiar with the community.

“Had he just stayed in his apartment for five minutes, Keith would be with us,” Tooson said in a news conference.

Geraldo Lunas Campos

Earlier this month, ICE announced that Cuban immigrant Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died on January 3 at the agency’s largest detention facility – Camp East Montana in Texas.

Since then, contradicting details have emerged about his death, which a medical examiner has ruled as a homicide – meaning caused by another person.

ICE initially said Lunas Campos “became disruptive while in line for medication and refused to return to his assigned dorm” and was placed in segregation.

He then became distressed, according to the agency.

“Medical staff responded, initiated lifesaving measures, and requested emergency medical services. Lunas was pronounced deceased by EMS,” ICE said in a January 9 statement.

The agency repeatedly highlighted Lunas Campos’s criminal record.

The authorities later changed their own story, claiming that Lunas Campos tried to kill himself.

“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” DHS’s McLaughlin said. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”

But an autopsy report found that Linas Campos was killed by someone.

“Based on the investigative and examination findings, it is my opinion that the cause of death is asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” Adam Gonzalez, deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, said in the report, according to The Washington Post.

“The manner of death is homicide.”

Lunas Campos’ three children have filed a legal petition aiming to block the deportation of any detainees who may have witnessed the incident, as they prepare to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

“According to an eyewitness to Mr Lunas Campos’s death, guards at the facility choked him to death,” the petition said.

Victor Manuel Diaz

Immigration authorities arrested Nicaraguan immigrant Victor Manuel Diaz on January 6 in Minneapolis as part of their immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Eight days later, he died in ICE custody at Camp East Montana in Texas.

“Contract security staff found Diaz unconscious and unresponsive in his room,” ICE said in a statement. “He died of a presumed suicide; however, the official cause of his death remains under investigation.”

But Diaz’s family is questioning the government’s story.

“I don’t believe he took his life,” Diaz’s brother Yorlan told ABC News. “He was not a criminal; he was looking for a better life and he wanted to help our mother.”

The family has also raised concerns over how the authorities are handling the investigation.

According to several US media reports, Diaz’s body was transferred to William Beaumont Army Medical Center for an autopsy, instead of the county medical examiner.

“This, taking of the body and doing the autopsy report and not letting the medical examiner do it? You’re then having the fox guarding the henhouse,” Randall Kallinen, the family’s lawyer, told the local outlet KTSM.

“It was with the federal government where the individual was staying and where he was killed. And now it’s the federal government who is controlling the investigation and the information included in the autopsy report.”

Parady La

Cambodian immigrant Parady La, 46, had been in the US since 1981. He had come to the US legally as a child but lost his Green Card due to criminal convictions.

Immigration authorities arrested him on January 6 and sent him to the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Philadelphia, where he started experiencing “severe drug withdrawal” symptoms, according to ICE.

“The next day, La was found unresponsive in his cell. FDC officers immediately administered CPR and several doses of NARCAN and called for medical assistance,” the US agency said.

NARCAN is a drug used for people experiencing a drug overdose, not withdrawals.

La was transferred to a hospital and diagnosed with “anoxic brain injury, post-cardiac arrest, shock and multiple organ failures” before he died, ICE said.

But La’s family is voicing scepticism about the level of care he received.

His nephew, Michael La, said ICE’s version of the events leading to his uncle’s death “didn’t add up”.

“As we keep fighting for information, we’re finding out that there’s like levels of information that just become locked, you know?” Michael La told local public radio WHYY. “We’re still fighting for answers and still trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz

A father of three, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, 68, had been in the US for more than 20 years when ICE picked him up in New Jersey in November and transferred him to a detention centre in California.

He died on January 6 of “heart-related health issues” after being transferred to a hospital.

But his family has said that he was feeling ill for weeks and was only given pain medication.

“As a father, he was an excellent dad,” his daughter, Josselyn Yanez, told the news website northjersey.com. “As a grandfather, the best grandfather of all. We hoped our father would get out of that place, that he would come out alive – not the way he did.”

Heber Sanchez Dominguez

Seven days after ICE picked up Heber Sanchez Dominguez, the 34-year-old Mexican national was found dead in his cell at the Robert A Deyton (RAD) Detention Facility in Georgia on January 14.

“RAD medical staff discovered Sanchaz (sic) hanging by the neck and unresponsive in his sleeping quarters at approximately 2:05 am,” ICE said in a statement.

The lack of details has prompted calls for investigation, including from Mexican officials.

Sanchez Dominguez was arrested in Georgia for driving without a licence before being transferred to ICE custody.

“In coordination with the relevant US authorities, the Consulate General has requested that the circumstances of the incident be clarified and is cooperating in the necessary steps to ensure that the investigation is carried out promptly and transparently,” Mexico’s consulate in Atlanta said after Sanchez Dominguez’s death.

The Clayton County Democratic Committee in Georgia also called on state officials to push for an investigation.

“We further demand the immediate release of all records and documentation related to Mr. Sanchez Dominguez’s detention, medical treatment, and the events leading up to his death. Transparency is not optional, it is a moral and legal obligation,” the group said in a statement.

Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres

ICE has said that Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, a 42-year-old immigrant from Honduras, died on January 5 at a hospital in Houston, Texas, after being admitted for “chronic heart-related health issues”.

Nunez did not have a criminal record, but he had entered the country irregularly. ICE nabbed him during an immigration enforcement operation in November 2025 and transferred him to the Joe Corley Processing Center in Texas.

“ICE is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” the agency said in a statement, after Nunez’s death.

“Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”

Liam

(cribbed and paraphrased from a FB post by Richard Ojeda)

I look at my own sons now - grown and busy building their lives - and I have to think about how much has been possible only because they got to grow up safe, protected, and never afraid of the people who were supposed to be there to help.

That’s why the story of a five-year-old boy being detained by ICE, pulled out of a car in his own driveway and held hostage in order to lure his family out of their home, hits me like I've been kicked in the stomach. No parent should ever have to imagine their kids being put in that position, and no child should ever be forced to carry that kind of fear.

I’ve been around for quite a while, I've seen what real threats look like, and a kindergartener with a backpack, wearing a bunny hat, is not one of them.

Using a child to project power or to make a point isn’t law enforcement - it’s cruelty. And it violates everything this country claims to stand for.

When my kids were little, their biggest concerns were all about being on time for the school bus and playing and wondering if they could talk me into fixing their favorite chicken enchiladas for supper - feeling loved.

Liam’s world was shattered in an instant by masked agents who decided terrorizing a child was an acceptable tool for achieving a fucked political goal.

If we allow this to be normalized - if we look away because it’s happening to someone else’s kid - then we’ve already lost something fundamental about who we are.

Terrifying times. pic.twitter.com/iN7Z3US9Xk

— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) January 24, 2026

Game Recognizes Game

When the Germans are saying you look like a Nazi, you look like a Nazi.

So the question is: Who are you trying to impress with that shit?

Stephen Miller

The guy's a fuckin' lunatic.

And he says it out loud - "our hemisphere"

One question remains: "How did he escape that bunker in Berlin?"

And then his wife posted this:

Chippin' Away

The Republicans in the house lost another seat today, on the death of Doug Lamalfa (R-CA01).

I'd never heard of him, but I'm sorry the guy's dead, and I feel for the family on losing a patriarch.

What really galls me is that Trump, while announcing the guy's death to GOP members today, couldn't help but turn it into something about him.

Trump praised LaMalfa for his work on water rights before adding, “You know, he voted with me 100% of the time.”

Translated: I didn't know that schmuck from Adam's off-ox, but he voted with me, therefor he liked me, therefor he was an OK guy.

Trump continues to demonstrate that he's a graceless, worthless slug with no regard for anything or anyone but himself.

And that's not "Trump Derangement Syndrome". That's direct observation of provable fact.

So now, with the resignation of MTG, Mike "The Flaccid" Johnson has a majority of exactly 218. On any vote that requires a House majority, he can't afford even one defection. Not that we were looking forward to much of anything getting done this year, but it does bring up some interesting brain bits.

Key Areas of Legislation (per Google search)

• Appropriations: Finalized spending packages for Fiscal Year 2026, covering the Interior Dept., EPA, and Energy Dept., were recently unveiled.
• Health & Safety: Bills address e-cigarette regulation, accountability for organ procurement, and methamphetamine response.
• Technology & Education: Discussions include combating misinformation in schools, reporting adversarial education contributions, and federal data standardization.
• Immigration: Legislation aims to eliminate the H-1B visa program and mandate photo ID for federal elections.
• Government & Economy: Bills focus on reducing red tape, ensuring qualified civil service, and improving federal employee benefits. 

Things aren't likely to get any better for Mr Johnson.

Mike Johnson brags about ‘a great year.’ House Republicans are discussing his replacement.

Other than the reconciliation bill, House Republicans say they have little to show for their time controlling Washington.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published last week, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declared 2025 “a great year” for House Republicans, calling it “one of the most productive first years of any Congress in our lifetimes.”

But in interviews with more than a dozen House Republicans last week, a far less rosy picture emerged. And as lawmakers prepare to return for what could be the final year of unified Republican control in Washington during Donald Trump’s presidency — if current polling holds — some members are already talking privately about new House leadership in the next Congress.

For Johnson, the case for GOP success rests almost entirely on one accomplishment: the reconciliation bill. Republicans passed the legislation this summer, with Trump signing it into law on July Fourth. In his op-ed, Johnson highlighted the package’s tax cuts, the billions in new border enforcement funding and the more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid.

The House Republicans who spoke to MS NOW agreed the reconciliation bill was a major accomplishment for their party. (It’s worth noting that no Republican took issue with any of the policies that became law in the reconciliation bill, like the tax cuts that are projected to reduce tax revenue by $4.5 trillion over the next decade or those Medicaid cuts that are projected to cause 10.9 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage over that same time period.) But many of these Republicans wondered what the GOP had accomplished since.

Beyond overseeing the longest government shutdown in history and passing a few mandatory bills, many Republicans said they have little to show for their time controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress.

“The latter half of the year, in particular, starting with the speaker’s baffling decision to keep the House out of session for two months while the country was mired in a very harmful shutdown, that did not really match the tone of the op-ed,” Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley of California told MS NOW.

Kiley, a frequent Johnson critic, said the low productivity during the second half of the year was a consequence of the speaker choosing to keep the House out of session during the historic 43-day government shutdown.

“The decision to absent the House from Washington for two months and cancel six great weeks of session,” Kiley said, “I’m not sure the speaker or the House really recovered from that at the end of 2025.”

A second House Republican, who spoke to MS NOW on the condition of anonymity, said the tax cuts delivered through the reconciliation bill were good. “But other than that, like, what else have we done?” the member asked. “Like, I can’t tell you, because we haven’t.”

This GOP lawmaker added that Trump had been very productive, particularly calling out what the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department had been doing. “Quite the opposite story when you get to both chambers of Congress,” this member said.

“I understand the point Johnson is trying to make here,” another House Republican told MS NOW, “but I don’t think his claims ring true for most Americans. With all due respect, this characterization does not reflect the reality facing the American people.”

This member added that Trump won “a resounding victory in 2024 with a clear mandate,” and yet now, Congress’ approval rating is near all-time lows and the American people are “rightly frustrated that we have not delivered more boldly on that mandate.”

And asked for their thoughts on Johnson’s op-ed, another House Republican called it “a very rosy way of writing their own story.”

The frustration isn’t particularly surprising, given the lack of legislative progress in the second half of last year. But what may be notable, however, is that Republicans are now discussing new leadership in the next Congress.

Yet another House Republican, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the sensitive conversations, told MS NOW that the current GOP leadership team “is generally viewed as weak, reactive and unintelligent.”

“It is the increasing sense across the entire continuum of the Republican Conference, from the Freedom Caucus to the Tuesday Group, that there is a need to elect an entirely new leadership team in the 120th Congress,” this member said, referring to the hard-line conservative and moderate GOP groups.

“Expect the silent majority in the GOP conference to push for entirely new faces, and an entirely new approach, in the next Congress,” this lawmaker added. “We are already hearing from those who will move to force the legacy figures to step aside at the end of this Congress, and replace them with new, fresh faces — new ideas and a new approach.”

While these conversations are mostly happening behind the scenes — with little appetite to change leadership in the middle of this Congress — some of the chatter has been making its way into public view.

In early December, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a member of House GOP leadership and a close Trump ally, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that Johnson “certainly wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow.”

Of course, there isn’t a vote tomorrow. And if Johnson loses the House majority, he would obviously face challenges to retain his position as the No. 1 Republican. But if the GOP were to somehow hold on to the majority, removing Johnson would be difficult.

Still, another GOP lawmaker agreed with Stefanik’s assessment that Johnson would lose a vote tomorrow: “A good attorney. A good man. A bad politician,” this member said.

Kiley said there were “definitely frustrations” with Johnson’s leadership among a cross section of the conference. “I don’t discount how challenging the job is, but he seems to have done the one thing that frustrates pretty much everyone in our conference, by simply making the House of Representatives a lot less relevant in recent months,” Kiley said.

That decaying relevance has come as Johnson has deferred much of Congress’ power to the executive branch. The legislative branch’s reduced role in the checks-and-balances system of government came into greater focus over the weekend, when Trump bombed Venezuela and put U.S. boots on the ground to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro — without congressional authorization.

Where congressional leaders of previous eras might take issue with the president conducting offensive strikes without authorization — or at least insist on congressional input — Johnson applauded the president Saturday for a “decisive and justified operation that will protect American lives.”

“President Trump is putting American lives first, succeeding where others have failed, and under his leadership the United States will no longer allow criminal regimes to profit from wreaking havoc and destruction on our country,” Johnson wrote on X.

Johnson has seemed to grasp that his power as a Republican leader depends greatly, if not entirely, on Trump’s approval. And as Trump has seized power from the legislative branch — through tariffs, through impoundments, through executive orders, through emergency declarations and by his administration ignoring congressional orders — Johnson has been an enthusiastic partner of the president.

Reached for comment, the speaker’s office referred MS NOW to the message in the op-ed and the more than 100 influential conservative and industry and community leaders touting the House GOP’s accomplishments in 2025.

Still, the numbers paint a more humble picture.

With Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House, 38 bills became law this year — exactly half of the 76 bills that were enacted under full Democratic control in 2021 and far short of the 74 bills that were signed under full GOP control in 2017. (In 2009, when Democrats also had unified control of Congress and the White House, they passed 115 bills into law.)

Johnson wasn’t without defenders. Several Republicans pointed out that Johnson was grappling with a razor-thin majority — decreasing to a two-vote cushion at one point — which makes passing major legislation difficult.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a second-term lawmaker who is part of the Freedom Caucus, called 2025 “one of the best years Congress has had.”

“While we may not have passed a bunch of individual bills, the amount of legislation, and good legislation, that was passed in the ‘one big, beautiful bill’ is quite a bit,” Burlison said.

He did, however, push back on Johnson’s description of 2025 as “one of the most productive first years of any Congress in our lifetime.”

“I don’t know if you’d say the most productive,” Burlison said. “I’d say it’s the best in at least a generation. And by best, I mean we didn’t pass a bunch of swampy things; we passed really good legislation.”

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retiring moderate, similarly touted the breadth of policy in the reconciliation bill, as well as the annual defense policy bill, which Congress has passed every year for more than six decades.

“If you just look at the number of bills passed, it’s easy to say, I guess, that’s a low production, but I think if you have a little bit of nuance, it was probably more than just that low number, because the reconciliation bill had tons of tax policy in it,” Bacon said, though he added that “the real answer” is that “I sure wish we could have got more done.”

Notably absent from the list of accomplishments? A fix for health care, as Obamacare subsidies expired, driving up prices for tens of millions of Americans.

“Substantively, what we’ve done, the biggest thing is that ‘big, beautiful bill,’” one of the previously quoted lawmakers said. “And the biggest deficiency is certainly the health care.”

At the end of his op-ed, Johnson said “the best is yet to come.” But some House Republicans are just wishing for some normalcy.

Asked what they were most hopeful for in the second half of the 119th Congress, another one of the previously quoted lawmakers had a modest ambition: “Little or no drama.”

From John Fugelsang

(with a tiny bit of editing because I'm egotistical, and I need to "make things a little better")

Here’s the dirty little secret we came to understand in 2025, and it’s not as depressing as it seems:

Losing faith in institutions isn’t nihilism.

It's discernment. It's an informed response by an adult with a living thinking brain to watching dudebro arsonists assume control of the fire department.

About That 60 Minutes Thing

Fascism is when you have to

find a Canadian bootleg copy

of a news story produced

in your own country

because it makes

your government

look bad

More Intrusive Government

Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns

The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.

Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.

Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.

The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.

This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars.

This investigation, the first to reveal details of how the program works on America’s roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports.

The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.

The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers’ behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency’s network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border.

And it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican border region. In one example, AP found the agency has placed at least four cameras in the greater Phoenix area over the years, one of which was more than 120 miles (193 kilometers) from the Mexican frontier, beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. The AP also identified several camera locations in metropolitan Detroit, as well as one placed near the Michigan-Indiana border to capture traffic headed towards Chicago or Gary, Indiana, or other nearby destinations.

Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.”

“For national security reasons, we do not detail the specific operational applications,” the agency said. While the U.S. Border Patrol primarily operates within 100 miles of the border, it is legally allowed “to operate anywhere in the United States,” the agency added.

While collecting license plates from cars on public roads has generally been upheld by courts, some legal scholars see the growth of large digital surveillance networks such as Border Patrol’s as raising constitutional questions. Courts have started to recognize that “large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” might be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches, said Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University.

Today, predictive surveillance is embedded into America’s roadways. Mass surveillance techniques are also used in a range of other countries, from authoritarian governments such as China to, increasingly, democracies in the U.K. and Europe in the name of national security and public safety.

“They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities,” Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in response to the AP’s findings. “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.”

‘We did everything right and had nothing to hide’

In February, Lorenzo Gutierrez Lugo, a driver for a small trucking company that specializes in transporting furniture, clothing and other belongings to families in Mexico, was driving south to the border city of Brownsville, Texas, carrying packages from immigrant communities in South Carolina’s low country.

Gutierrez Lugo was pulled over by a local police officer in Kingsville, a small Texas city near Corpus Christi that lies about 100 miles from the Mexican border. The officer, Richard Beltran, cited the truck’s speed of 50 mph (80 kph) in a 45 mph (72 kph) zone as the reason for the stop.

But speeding was a pretext: Border Patrol had requested the stop and said the black Dodge pickup with a white trailer could contain contraband, according to police and court records. U.S. Route 77 passes through Kingsville, a route that state and federal authorities scrutinize for trafficking of drugs, money and people.

Gutierrez Lugo, who through a lawyer declined to comment, was interrogated about the route he drove, based on license plate reader data, per the police report and court records. He consented to a search of his car by Beltran and Border Patrol agents, who eventually arrived to assist.

They unearthed no contraband. But Beltran arrested Gutierrez Lugo on suspicion of money laundering and engaging in organized criminal activity because he was carrying thousands of dollars in cash — money his supervisor said came directly from customers in local Latino communities, who are accustomed to paying in cash. No criminal charges were ultimately brought against Gutierrez Lugo and an effort by prosecutors to seize the cash, vehicle and trailer as contraband was eventually dropped.

Luis Barrios owns the trucking company, Paquetería El Guero, that employed the driver. He told AP he hires people with work authorization in the United States and was taken aback by the treatment of his employee and his trailer.

“We did everything right and had nothing to hide, and that was ultimately what they found,” said Barrios, who estimates he spent $20,000 in legal fees to clear his driver’s name and get the trailer out of impound.

Border Patrol agents and local police have many names for these kinds of stops: “whisper,” “intel” or “wall” stops. Those stops are meant to conceal — or wall off — that the true reason for the stop is a tip from federal agents sitting miles away, watching data feeds showing who’s traveling on America’s roads and predicting who is “suspicious,” according to documents and people interviewed by the AP.

In 2022, a man from Houston had his car searched from top to bottom by Texas sheriff’s deputies outside San Antonio after they got a similar tipoff from Border Patrol agents about the driver, Alek Schott.

Federal agents observed that Schott had made an overnight trip from Houston to Carrizo Springs, Texas, and back, court records show. They knew he stayed overnight in a hotel about 80 miles (129 kilometers) from the U.S.-Mexico border. They knew that in the morning Schott met a female colleague there before they drove together to a business meeting.

At Border Patrol’s request, Schott was pulled over by Bexar County sheriff’s deputies. The deputies held Schott by the side of the road for more than an hour, searched his car and found nothing.

“The beautiful thing about the Texas Traffic Code is there’s thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for,” said Joel Babb, the sheriff’s deputy who stopped Schott’s car, in a deposition in a lawsuit Schott filed alleging violations of his constitutional rights.

According to testimony and documents released as part of Schott’s lawsuit, Babb was on a group chat with federal agents called Northwest Highway. Babb deleted the WhatsApp chat off his phone but Schott’s lawyers were able to recover some of the text messages.

Through a public records act request, the AP also obtained more than 70 pages of the Northwest Highway group chats from June and July of this year from a Texas county that had at least one sheriff’s deputy active in the chat. The AP was able to associate numerous phone numbers in both sets of documents with Border Patrol agents and Texas law enforcement officials.

The chat logs show Border Patrol agents and Texas sheriffs deputies trading tips about vehicles’ travel patterns — based on suspicions about little more than someone taking a quick trip to the border region and back. The chats show how thoroughly Texas highways are surveilled by this federal-local partnership and how much detailed information is informally shared.

In one exchange a law enforcement official included a photo of someone’s driver’s license and told the group the person, who they identified using an abbreviation for someone in the country illegally, was headed westbound. “Need BP?,” responded a group member whose number was labeled “bp Intel.” “Yes sir,” the official answered, and a Border Patrol agent was en route.

Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement shared information about U.S. citizens’ social media profiles and home addresses with each other after stopping them on the road. Chats show Border Patrol was also able to determine whether vehicles were rentals and whether drivers worked for rideshare services.

In Schott’s case, Babb testified that federal agents “actually watch travel patterns on the highway” through license plate scans and other surveillance technologies. He added: “I just know that they have a lot of toys over there on the federal side.”

After finding nothing in Schott’s car, Babb said “nine times out of 10, this is what happens,” a phrase Schott’s lawyers claimed in court filings shows the sheriff’s department finds nothing suspicious in most of its searches. Babb did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AP.

The Bexar County sheriff’s office declined to comment due to pending litigation and referred all questions about the Schott case to the county’s district attorney. The district attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is pending in federal court in Texas. Schott said in an interview with the AP: “I didn’t know it was illegal to drive in Texas.”

‘Patterns of life’ and license plates

A license plate reader used by U.S. Border Patrol is hidden in a sand crash barrel along the state Highway 80, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, in Douglas, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
A license plate reader used by U.S. Border Patrol is hidden in a sand crash barrel along the state Highway 80, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, in Douglas, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Today, the deserts, forests and mountains of the nation’s land borders are dotted with checkpoints and increasingly, surveillance towers, Predator drones, thermal cameras and license plate readers, both covert and overt.

Border Patrol’s parent agency got authorization to run a domestic license plate reader program in 2017, according to a Department of Homeland Security policy document. At the time, the agency said that it might use hidden license plate readers ”for a set period of time while CBP is conducting an investigation of an area of interest or smuggling route. Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed,” the document states.

But that’s not how the program has operated in practice, according to interviews, police reports and court documents. License plate readers have become a major — and in some places permanent — fixture of the border region.

In a budget request to Congress in fiscal year 2024, CBP said that its Conveyance Monitoring and Predictive Recognition System, or CMPRS, “collects license plate images and matches the processed images against established hot lists to assist … in identifying travel patterns indicative of illegal border related activities.” Several new developer jobs have been posted seeking applicants to help modernize its license plate surveillance system in recent months. Numerous Border Patrol sectors now have special intelligence units that can analyze license plate reader data, and tie commercial license plate readers to its national network, according to documents and interviews.

Border Patrol worked with other law enforcement agencies in Southern California about a decade ago to develop pattern recognition, said a former CBP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Over time, the agency learned to develop what it calls “patterns of life” of vehicle movements by sifting through the license plate data and determining “abnormal” routes, evaluating if drivers were purposely avoiding official checkpoints. Some cameras can take photos of a vehicle’s plates as well as its driver’s face, the official said.

Another former Border Patrol official compared it to a more technologically sophisticated version of what agents used to do in the field — develop hunches based on experience about which vehicles or routes smugglers might use, find a legal basis for the stop like speeding and pull drivers over for questioning.

The cameras take pictures of vehicle license plates. Then, the photos are “read” by the system, which automatically detects and distills the images into numbers and letters, tied to a geographic location, former CBP officials said. The AP could not determine how precisely the system’s algorithm defines a quick turnaround or an odd route. Over time, the agency has amassed databases replete with images of license plates, and the system’s algorithm can flag an unusual “pattern of life” for human inspection.

The Border Patrol also has access to a nationwide network of plate readers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, documents show, and was authorized in 2020 to access license plate reader systems sold by private companies. In documents obtained by the AP, a Border Patrol official boasted about being able to see that a vehicle that had traveled to “Dallas, Little Rock, Arkansas and Atlanta” before ending up south of San Antonio.

Documents show that Border Patrol or CBP has in the past had access to data from at least three private sector vendors: Rekor, Vigilant Solutions and Flock Safety.

Through Flock alone, Border Patrol for a time had access to at least 1,600 license plate readers across 22 states, and some counties have reported looking up license plates on behalf of CBP even in states like California and Illinois that ban sharing data with federal immigration authorities, according to an AP analysis of police disclosures. A Flock spokesperson told AP the company “for now” had paused its pilot programs with CBP and a separate DHS agency, Homeland Security Investigations, and declined to discuss the type or volume of data shared with either federal agency, other than to say agencies could search for vehicles wanted in conjunction with a crime. No agencies currently list Border Patrol as receiving Flock data. Vigilant and Rekor did not respond to requests for comment.

Across five Republican and Democratic administrations, the U.S. government has repeatedly allowed and even actively helped American firms to sell technology to Chinese police.

Where Border Patrol places its cameras is a closely guarded secret. However, through public records requests, the AP obtained dozens of permits the agency filed with Arizona and Michigan for permission to place cameras on state-owned land. The permits show the agency frequently disguises its cameras by concealing them in traffic equipment like the yellow and orange barrels that dot American roadways, or by labeling them as jobsite equipment. An AP photographer in October visited the locations identified in more than two dozen permit applications in Arizona, finding that most of the Border Patrol’s hidden equipment remains in place today. Spokespeople for the Arizona and Michigan departments of transportation said they approve permits based on whether they follow state and federal rules and are not privy to details on how license plate readers are used.

Texas, California, and other border states did not provide documents in response to the AP’s public records requests.

CBP’s attorneys and personnel instructed local cities and counties in both Arizona and Texas to withhold records from the AP that might have revealed details about the program’s operations, even though they were requested under state open records laws, according to emails and legal briefs filed with state governments. For example, CBP claimed records requested by the AP in Texas “would permit private citizens to anticipate weaknesses in a police department, avoid detection, jeopardize officer safety, and generally undermine police efforts.” Michigan redacted the exact locations of Border Patrol equipment, but the AP was able to determine general locations from the name of the county.

One page of the group chats obtained by the AP shows that a participant enabled WhatsApp’s disappearing messages feature to ensure communications were deleted automatically.

Transformation of CBP into intelligence agency

The Border Patrol’s license plate reader program is just one part of a steady transformation of its parent agency, CBP, in the years since 9/11 into an intelligence operation whose reach extends far beyond borders, according to interviews with former officials.

CBP has quietly amassed access to far more information from ports of entry, airports and intelligence centers than other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. And like a domestic spy agency, CBP has mostly hidden its role in the dissemination of intelligence on purely domestic travel through its use of whisper stops.

Border Patrol has also extended the reach of its license plate surveillance program by paying for local law enforcement to run plate readers on their behalf.

A federal grant program called Operation Stonegarden, which has existed in some form for nearly two decades, has handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to buy automated license plate readers, camera-equipped drones and other surveillance gear for local police and sheriffs agencies. Stonegarden grant funds also pay for local law enforcement overtime, which deputizes local officers to work on Border Patrol enforcement priorities. Under President Donald Trump, the Republican-led Congress this year allocated $450 million for Stonegarden to be handed out over the next four fiscal years. In the previous four fiscal years, the program gave out $342 million.

In Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Dannels said Stonegarden grants, which have been used to buy plate readers and pay for overtime, have let his deputies merge their mission with Border Patrol’s to prioritize border security.

“If we’re sharing our authorities, we can put some consequences behind, or deterrence behind, ‘Don’t come here,’” he said.

In 2021, the Ward County, Texas, sheriff sought grant funding from DHS to buy a “covert, mobile, License Plate Reader” to pipe data to Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector Intelligence Unit. The sheriff’s department did not respond to a request for comment.

Other documents AP obtained show that Border Patrol connects locally owned and operated license plate readers bought through Stonegarden grants to its computer systems, vastly increasing the federal agency’s surveillance network.

How many people have been caught up in the Border Patrol’s dragnet is unknown. One former Border Patrol agent who worked on the license plate reader pattern detection program in California said the program had an 85% success rate of discovering contraband once he learned to identify patterns that looked suspicious. But another former official in a different Border Patrol sector said he was unaware of successful interdictions based solely on license plate patterns.

In Trump’s second term, Border Patrol has extended its reach and power as border crossings have slowed to historic lows and freed up agents for operations in the heartland. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, for example, was tapped to direct hundreds of agents from multiple DHS agencies in the administration’s immigration sweeps across Los Angeles, more than 150 miles (241 kilometers) from his office in El Centro, California. Bovino later was elevated to lead the aggressive immigration crackdown in Chicago. Numerous Border Patrol officials have also been tapped to replace ICE leadership.

The result has been more encounters between the agency and the general public than ever before.

“We took Alek’s case because it was a clear-cut example of an unconstitutional traffic stop,” said Christie Hebert, who works at the nonprofit public interest law firm Institute for Justice and represents Schott. ”What we found was something much larger — a system of mass surveillance that threatens people’s freedom of movement.”

AP found numerous other examples similar to what Schott and the delivery driver experienced in reviewing court records in border communities and along known smuggling routes in Texas and California. Several police reports and court records the AP examined cite “suspicious” travel patterns or vague tipoffs from the Border Patrol or other unnamed law enforcement agencies. In another federal court document filed in California, a Border Patrol agent acknowledged “conducting targeted analysis on vehicles exhibiting suspicious travel patterns” as the reason he singled out a Nissan Altima traveling near San Diego.

In cases reviewed by the AP, local law enforcement sometimes tried to conceal the role the Border Patrol plays in passing along intelligence. Babb, the deputy who stopped Schott, testified he typically uses the phrase “subsequent to prior knowledge” when describing whisper stops in his police reports to acknowledge that the tip came from another law enforcement agency without revealing too much in written documents he writes memorializing motorist encounters.

Once they pull over a vehicle deemed suspicious, officers often aggressively question drivers about their travels, their belongings, their jobs, how they know the passengers in the car, and much more, police records and bodyworn camera footage obtained by the AP show. One Texas officer demanded details from a man about where he met his current sexual partner. Often drivers, such as the one working for the South Carolina moving company, were arrested on suspicion of money laundering merely for carrying a few thousand dollars worth of cash, with no apparent connection to illegal activity. Prosecutors filed lawsuits to try to seize money or vehicles on the suspicion they were linked to trafficking.

Schott warns that for every success story touted by Border Patrol, there are far more innocent people who don’t realize they’ve become ensnared in a technology-driven enforcement operation.

“I assume for every one person like me, who’s actually standing up, there’s a thousand people who just don’t have the means or the time or, you know, they just leave frustrated and angry. They don’t have the ability to move forward and hold anyone accountable,” Schott said. “I think there’s thousands of people getting treated this way.”

Bulwark Takes

You know you're in a really bad place when the most important profit center driving your business - and your business decisions - is the guy monitoring Trump's social media feeds.

Franklin Fights Back

'Franklin' publisher slams Hegseth for his post of the turtle firing on drug boats

The publisher of the Franklin children's book series has rebuked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he posted a meme of the anthropomorphic turtle firing on drug boats.

Hegseth's social media post from Sunday shows the turtle, clad in tactical gear, standing on a helicopter and aiming a machine gun at one of several boats in the water below. It's designed to look like an edition of the children's book, but titled Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.

"For your Christmas wish list …" Hegseth wrote in the caption, as he faces growing scrutiny over the legality of a set of strikes on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean in early September.

On Monday, Toronto-based publishing house Kids Can Press released a statement defending Franklin as a "beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy and inclusivity."

"We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent or unauthorized use of Franklin's name or image, which directly contradicts these values," it added.

Franklin, who usually wears a red neckerchief and baseball cap (not a ballistic helmet), has delighted kids since the debut of his book series in 1986 — with dozens of titles including Franklin Goes to School and Franklin Wants a Pet — and an animated TV series a decade later.

It is not clear why Hegseth — who is a father and stepfather of seven children — chose the turtle of all characters, though Franklin book covers have inspired some popular parodies in the past.

When asked for comment, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told NPR over email: "We doubt Franklin the Turtle wants to be inclusive of drug cartels… or laud the kindness and empathy of narco-terrorists."

A number of Democrats were quick to condemn the post, as well as the larger controversy behind it.

Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who has openly sparred with the Pentagon in recent weeks, told reporters that the meme is just one reason why the defense secretary should be fired, calling him "not a serious person."

Congress steps in as questions mount over who authorized a second strike at sea
"He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons and he's putting out … turtles with rocket-propelled grenades," Kelly said.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the floor Monday, called Hegseth a "national embarrassment" and described the Franklin meme as a "sick parody."

"Tweeting memes in the middle of a potential armed conflict is something no serious military leader would ever even think of doing," Schumer added. "The only thing this tweet accomplishes is to remind the whole world that Pete Hegseth is not up to the job."

Questions mount over September incident

Hegseth was already in the hot seat, facing bipartisan scrutiny and questions from Congress about what happened — and whether any war crimes were committed — on Sept. 2, when the U.S. carried out the first of over 20 strikes on alleged drug vessels.

U.S. officials have described their targets as "narcoterrorists" from Latin America, though they have not released information about who was on board those boats or evidence that they were ferrying drugs.

Trump administration officials originally described the first attack as a single strike on a Venezuelan vessel that killed 11 alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But in the ensuing weeks, as the U.S. has shared grainy videos of the growing number of strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, more questions and revelations emerged about the one that started it.

Last week, the Washington Post reported — and a source confirmed to NPR — that Hegseth gave a spoken directive to kill the surviving occupants of the boat with a second strike. Attacking "wounded, sick or shipwrecked" combatants violates the law of war, according to a Pentagon manual.

Hegseth denied those reports as "fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory," saying U.S. operations in the Caribbean are "lawful under both U.S. and international law … and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command."

But that didn't satisfy lawmakers, several of whom — on both sides of the aisle — raised concerns about a potential war crime. Over the weekend, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees opened investigations into the incident.

Then, on Monday, the White House confirmed that there had been a second strike, but attributed the directive to another military leader.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Hegseth had authorized Adm. Mitch Bradley — who led Joint Special Operations Command at the time — to conduct the strikes, adding that Bradley "worked well within his authority and the law." Later that day, Hegseth tweeted in "100% support" of Bradley and his combat decisions.

But a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly has since disputed the White House's account, telling NPR's Tom Bowman that Hegseth issued the command for "two strikes to kill" and two additional strikes to "sink the boat."

For his part, President Trump has defended Hegseth but distanced himself from the incident. When asked by reporters on Sunday night whether he would be okay with Hegseth having ordered a second strike, Trump said, "He said he didn't do it, so I don't have to make that decision."

Adm. Bradley, who was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations Command a month after the incident, is scheduled to provide a classified briefing to lawmakers on Thursday.

More Bye Bye

DOGE is dead.

It was never about governing, or making government work better, or making it more cost-effective, or any of that shit. It was about dismantling government. It was about making it worse, so people would be even more dissatisfied, and thus more inclined to go along with the Plutocrats when they propose shit-canning the whole thing and starting over.

1793 can't get here fast enough

Exclusive: DOGE 'doesn't exist' with eight months left on its charter

• DOGE disbanded eight months ahead of scheduled end in July 2026
• Former DOGE employees take new roles in administration
• Elon Musk initially led DOGE, promoting its work on social media

WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump's pledge to slash the government's size but which critics say delivered few measurable savings.

"That doesn't exist," Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE's status.

It is no longer a "centralized entity," Kupor added, in the first public comments from the Trump administration on the end of DOGE.

The agency, set up in January, made dramatic forays across Washington in the early months of Trump's second term to rapidly shrink federal agencies, cut their budgets or redirect their work to Trump priorities. The OPM, the federal government's human resources office, has since taken over many of DOGE's functions, according to Kupor and documents reviewed by Reuters.

At least two prominent DOGE employees are now involved with the National Design Studio, a new body created through an executive order signed by Trump in August. That body is headed by Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, and Trump's order directed him to beautify government websites.

Gebbia was part of billionaire Elon Musk's DOGE team while DOGE employee Edward Coristine, nicknamed “Big Balls,” encouraged followers on his X account to apply to join.
The fading away of DOGE is in sharp contrast to the government-wide effort over months to draw attention to it, with Trump, his advisers and cabinet secretaries posting about it on social media. Musk, who led DOGE initially, regularly touted its work on his X platform and at one point brandished a chainsaw to advertise his efforts to cut government jobs.

"This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy," Musk said, holding the tool above his head at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, in February.

DOGE claimed to have slashed tens of billions of dollars in expenditures, but it was impossible for outside financial experts to verify that because the unit did not provide detailed public accounting of its work.

"President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government, and he continues to actively deliver on that commitment," said White House spokeswoman Liz Huston in an email to Reuters.

TRUMP OFFICIALS HAVE BEEN SIGNALING DOGE'S DEMISE

Trump administration officials have not openly said that DOGE no longer exists, even after Musk's public feud with Trump in May. Musk has since left Washington.

Trump and his team have nevertheless signaled its demise in public since this summer, even though the U.S. president signed an executive order earlier in his term decreeing that DOGE would last through July 2026.

In statements to reporters, Trump often talks about DOGE, in the past tense. Acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason, whose background is in healthcare tech, formally became an adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy in March, according to a court filing, in addition to her role with DOGE. Her public statements have largely focused on her HHS role.

Republican-led states, including Idaho and Florida, meanwhile are creating local entities similar to DOGE.

A government-wide hiring freeze - another hallmark of DOGE - is also over, Kupor said.
Trump on his first day in office barred federal agencies from bringing on new employees, with exceptions for positions his team deemed necessary to enforce immigration laws and protect public safety. He later said DOGE representatives must approve any other exceptions, adding that agencies should hire "no more than one employee for every four" that depart.

"There is no target around reductions" anymore, Kupor said.

FORMER DOGE EMPLOYEES MOVE ON TO NEW ROLES

DOGE staff have also taken on other roles in the administration. Most prominent is Gebbia, whom Trump tasked with improving the “visual presentation” of government websites.
So far, his design studio has launched websites to recruit law enforcement officers to patrol Washington, D.C., and advertise the president's drug pricing program. Gebbia declined an interview with Reuters via a spokesperson.

Zachary Terrell, part of the DOGE team given access to government health systems in the early days of Trump's second term, is now chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services. Rachel Riley, who had the same access according to court filings, is now chief of the Office of Naval Research, according to the office’s website.

Jeremy Lewin, who helped Musk and the Trump administration dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, now oversees foreign assistance at the State Department, according to the agency's website.

Musk shortly after Trump’s election said he had a mandate to “delete the mountain” of government regulations. He made undoing government regulations and remaking the government with AI two key tenets of DOGE, in addition to eliminating federal government jobs.

The administration is still working toward slashing regulations. The White House budget office has tasked Scott Langmack, who was DOGE’s representative at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with creating custom AI applications to pore through U.S. regulations and determine which ones to eliminate, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Musk, meanwhile, has reappeared in Washington. This week, he attended a White House dinner for Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.